Frank Hamilton Cushing's stay at Zu_i pueblo from 1879 to 1884 made him the first professional anthropologist actually to live with his subjects. Learning the language and winning acceptance as a member not only of the tribe but of the tribal council and the Bow Priesthood, he was the original participant observer and the only man in history to hold the double title of "1st War Chief of Zu_i, U. S. Ass't Ethnologist." A pioneer in southwestern ethnology, he combined the discipline of science with a remarkable imaginative capacity for identifying with Indian modes of thought and perception?and corresponding gifts of expression.

The twenty-five myths offered here were recorded for a 1891 Bureau of American Ethnology report. They have been edited and annotated to present Zuni thought on cosmology, ethics and social order.

Presents the previously unpublished account, by the great anthropologist Frank Hamilton Cushing, of the origins and early months of the Hemenway Expedition to the American Southwest in the late 19th century, which sought to trace the ancestors of the Zuni Indians.