Volume 48, Number 13 · August 9, 2001
Zuni Tunes
By Larry McMurtry
Zuni and the American Imagination
Eliza McFeely
Hill and Wang, 204 pp., $24.00
How could any anthropologist with an iota of ambition possibly resist Zuni, an ancient, remote, impacted society, for centuries agrarian, with—I hope I get these numbers right—twelve matrilineal clans; thirteen medicine societies (sometimes called fraternities); the Koyemshi, or Mudheads (clown-priests); a society or group of highly trained masked dancers (male); a priesthood or theocracy of rain-bringers (hereditary); and a much put-upon secular governor (elected) who has the thankless task of dealing with whatever non-Zunis might appear: soldiers from the nearby army base (Fort Wingate), missionaries of various faiths, tourists (usually lost), traders, speculators, looters, journalists, and, of course, those bloodsucking leeches the anthropologists themselves, one or more of whom have maintained a presence in or near Zuni almost continuously for one hundred and twenty years?
Review, 3707 words
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