driven
the wandering tribes from one region to another and filled them with a
passionate yearning for a centre of rest, let us now learn from Mr.
Cushing how they planned their metropolis and organized themselves, when
they had found the long-looked-for goal, in the Zuni valley and "settling
there, built seven great cities therein.

"All their subtribes and lesser tribes were distinctively related to and
ruled from a central tribe and town through priest chiefs representatives
of each of these, sitting under supreme council or septuarchy of the
'Master priests of the house' in the central town itself, much as were the
divisions and cities of the great Inca dominion in South America
represented at and ruled from Cuzco, the central city and power of them
all.

"Zuni is divided, not always clearly to the eye, but very clearly in the
estimation of the people themselves, into seven parts, corresponding not
perhaps in arrangement topographically, but in scheme to their
subdivisions of the worlds or world-quarters of this world. Thus one
division of the town is supposed to be related to the north and to be
centred in its kiva or estufa which may or may not be at its centre;
another division represents the west, another the south, another the east;
yet another the upper world and another the lower world; while a final
division represents the middle or mother and synthetic combination of the
all in the world.

"By reference to the early Spanish history of the pueblos, it may be seen
that when discovered the Ashiwis or Zunis were living in seven quite
widely separated towns the celebrated seven cities of Cibola and that this
theoretic subdivision of the only one of these towns now remaining is in
some manner a survival of the original subdivision of the tribes into
seven into as many towns. It is evident that in both cases, however, the
arrangement was and is, if we may call it such, a mythic organization;
hence my use of the term of mytho-sociologic organization of the tribe. At
all events this is the key to their sociology as well as to their mythic
conception of space and universe.

"... There were nineteen clans, grouped in threes, to correspond to the
mythic subdivision. Three to north, west, south, east, Upper, Lower. The
_single_ clan of Macaw is midmost or of middle and also as the all
containing and mother clan of the entire tribe, for in it is 'the seed of
the priesthood of houses' supposed to be preserved.(52)