selected. But usually
these war chiefs are something more than war chiefs, for they also
constitute a constabulary to preserve peace and mete out punishment; and
young men from the various clans are designated as warriors and advanced
in military rank according to merit. There is thus a brotherhood of
warriors, and every man in this brotherhood recognizes all others of the
group as being elder or younger, and so assumes or yields authority in
all matters pertaining to war and the enforcement of criminal law.

In addition to the secular government there is always a cult
government. In every tribe there are Shamans, designated variously by
white men as "medicine men," "priests," "priest doctors," "theurgists,"
etc. In many tribes, perhaps in all, the people are organized into
Shamanistic societies; but that these societies are invariably
recognized is not certain. The Shamans are always found. Among the Zuni
there are thirteen of these cult societies. The purpose of Shamanistic
institutions is to control the conduct of the members of the tribe in
relation to mythic personages, the mysterious beings in which the savage
men believe. In the mind of the savage the world is peopled by a host of
mythic beings, anthropomorphic and zoomorphic. The difference between
man and brute recognized in civilization, is unrecognized in savagery.
All animal life is wonderful and magical co sylvan man. Wisdom, cunning,
skill, and prowess are attributed to the real animals to a degree often
greater than to man; and there are mythic animals as well as mythic
men--monsters dwelling in the mountains and caves or hiding in the
waters, who make themselves invisible as they pass over the land. Not
only are there great monsters, beasts, and reptiles in their mythology,
but there are wonderful insects and worms. All life is miraculous and
is worshiped as divine. The heavenly bodies, the sun and moon and stars,
are mythic animals, and all of the phenomena of nature are attributed to
these zoic beings. For example, the Indian knows nothing of the ambient
air. The wind is the breath of some beast, or it is a fanning which
rises from under the wings of a mythic bird. All the phenomena of
nature, the rising and setting of the sun, the waxing and waning of the
moon, the shining of the stars, the coming of comets, the flash of
meteors, the change of seasons, the gathering and vanishing of the
clouds, the blowing of the winds, the falling of the rain, the spr