Note 25 — THE HERMIT MÍTSINA

The words “terrace,” “sacred terrace,” “terraced plain” (awithluiane, awithluian-pewine), and the like, wherever they occur, refer to the figurative expression for the earth in the Zuñi rituals addressed to the gods, where they are used as more nearly conforming to the usage of the gods. The symbol of the earth on the sacred altars is a terraced or zigzag figure or decoration, and the same figure appears in their carvings and other ornamental work. The disgraced god Mítsina applied the term to the robe spread out as the bed for his game. It may be stated in further explanation that the country in which the Zuñis have wandered and lived for unnumbered generations, and where they still dwell, is made up largely of mesas, or flat-top mountains or elevations, rising one above another and showing as terraces on the horizon. Beheld at great distances, or in the evening, these mountain terraces are mere silhouettes and serve to exaggerate the zigzag spaces of light between them. As the conventional sacred emblem for the earth is a terrace, outspread or upreaching, as the case may be, so the conventional sacred emblem for the sky is an inverted terrace.

To the gods the whole earth is represented as having seemed so small that they invariably spoke of it as the terraced plain, and in their playing of this game they are supposed to have used it as the bed for the game, as the Zuñi people used the outspread buffalo robe for the purpose. Back