The name Zuni refers to a people, their town, and their reservation. The Zuni are a pueblo- or village-dwelling Native American people living in and around the town of Zuni, New Mexico, approximately forty-five miles south of Interstate 40 and the town of Gallup, and fifteen miles east of the New Mexico-Arizona state line. The Zuni have a unique, complex system of medicine rooted in their unique, complex culture. This article describes Zuni culture and medicine and shows how Zuni medicine reflects Zuni culture.
The present-day Zuni are the descendants of two prehistoric southwestern cultures. The Anasazi, whose multistory towns still stand in adjoining areas of Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico, left their villages and fields, wandered southwest, and blended with the people of the Mogollon culture. The latter, known for their finely decorated pottery, were moving northeast from homes in what is now Arizona, northern Mexico, and New Mexico.
The two peoples came together to create a new tribe and together wandered across the land looking for a place destined to be theirs, the spot that in their ancient stories and present-day speech alike the Zuni call "The Middle Place." The descendants of these two commingled tribes have lived there for more than nine hundred years; accordingly, they call themselves the People of the Middle Place.
The name the Zuni chose for their land and for themselves applies to their culture as well. Students of culture who have described the Zuni have noted that they emphasize the middle way in all that they think, do, and dream. Ruth Benedict, a leading American anthropologist who studied at Zuni in the 1920s, described the idea Zuni, and thus the Zuni ideal, as being cooperative and noncompetitive.
Perhaps because their culture is the result of the blending of two previous cultures, the Zuni are remarkably open to new ideas and technologies. They also are known for being friendly and helpful to outsiders. Frank Hamilton Cushing, who developed and refined participant-observer fieldwork theory and practice while living at Zuni in the 1880s, noted that the people were impressed with Euro-American agricultural tools and wished to have them for their farming; and an anthropologist who visited Zuni in the 1940s noted with some amazement the easy juxtaposition of a bowl, used to contain sacred cornmeal, and modern radio. Bowls of corn meal are still seen today, but the radios have been replaced by color televisions and VCRs.
The Zuni openness to new ideas and technologies has not, however, in any way deprived them of their own traditions. The Zuni have freely adopted ideas and technologies they found useful but have maintained their values, myths, rituals, and dances.
Zuni is well known for the richness of its culture. In Zuni, time is measured by two important ceremonial dances held in association with the longest and shortest days of the solar year. The major summer ceremony is the Midsummer Dance; the major winter ceremony is Shalako. The Zuni word Shalako refers not only to the midwinter ceremony but also to the spirits the dancers personate and the costumed figures of the dance. The date for the Shalako ceremony is determined by the solar observations of the pelwin (sun priest), a high-ranking religious official, and is publicly announced by him and other religious officials at a ceremony about
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