The Lafayette advertiser. [volume] (Vermilionville [i.e. Lafayette], La.) 1865-19??, 1904-07-27
Ml0RATlONS OF THE ZUNIS.
Three Hundred Defendants of the
Cliff Dwellers of Arizona and
New Mexico at the Worlds
Fair In St. Louis.

The early records of our country
when legend supplied the place of
history tell us that the original in
habitants of North America, the So
called Indians, were nOmads: that is
to say in war as we'll as peace, they
wandered from place to place wher-
ever their hunting and predatory in
stinct might lead them. Coming down
to a later time, but still in the legend
airy rather than the historical realm,
We find whole tribes of Indians as
having abandoned their wandering
existence, as having resorted tt a
mode of life more nearly akin to that
of the white race which finally SUBJ
dued or as we say, civilized them.
Among the most important of these
converts to existence under modern
conditions are the Zunis, MOkis, and
PueblOs of the great Southwest. more
particularly of New Mexico and
Arizona who to day inhabit the mesas
and the cliff caverns of the Colorado
river whose canyOn-bed is the worlds
greatest geological mystery.
The Worlds Fair at St. Louis
offers countless marvels of a human
kind to visitors. Not one of the
strange, rare and curious things to be
seen at that wonderful exhibition
rivals or even approaches in human
interest the exhibit known as the Cliff
Dwellers. This is more than a merely
diversiOnal scheme: it is a contribu-
ton to the science of ethnology which
teaches the derivation of the tribes of
the human family, a science which
seeks to answer the great question:
whence came a man and whittier is he
going. To study these questions just
such an exhibition as that of the Cliff
Dwellers at the Worlds Fair in st.
Louis furnishes the best For
here we not only see an interesting
horde of highly gifted ~semi-savages
pursuing their daily lives under per-
fectly natural conditions, but these
extraordinary humans have built for
themselves in the heart of the metrOpO-
lis of the Mississippi Valley a home
large enough to accommodate all of
their tribes, but that home is a faithful
duplication of the homes they have
left in Arizona and New Mexico and
whittier they will again go when the
term of their Worlds Fair sojourn
shall have been completed.
These Indians, unlike most North
American abOrigines, have the
theatrical instinct. They are great
mimics: they present entire plays in
their native tongue and under native
auspices. Even the little children
take part in them when they dance the
Eagle Dance, the KiOte Dance and
similar festal shows. In sleight-of-
hand, an accomplishment in which the
fakirs of Farther India excel, these
Mokis distance their Oriental proto-
types in elegance and justification of
portrayal. If, as has been said.
necrOmancy is the art of apparently
making something out of nothing, the
great ShungOpavi of the Zunis among
the Cliff Dwellers is a past grand
master of this ''black art" Herman.
Kellar, Houdin, Blitz and ever the
famed CagliOstrO are Out-classed by
the marvels of this son of the western
wild, whose stateliness of demeanOr is
the best endorsement of the complete
ness of his performance.
Since the opening of the Cliff Dwell
Ter Reservation ut the Worlds Fair
it has been visited by thousands of
travellers from all parts of this cOun-
try and abroad. Staid men of science
have set in rapt attention in the little
TearO HOki not through M perform
ance of the Zuni miracle-wOrkecs, but
through several in the vain attempt to
solve the mysteries there presented.
When they have gone away baffied,
NJ longer able to believe ''the sensible
and true avouch of their own eyes,
they have cOntented themselves with
watching the Indian women weaving
marvellous blankets and rugs, the men
at the manufacture of their imple-
ments of the chase and the children
at their vigorous, never-tiring play.
All these episodes of native life at
the Cliff Dwellers are being exploited
by these men of science as is no other
display of whatsoever kind in all the
greatest of Worlds Fairs.