The Zuni, a Puebloan people of New Mexico, hold land in Apache County, Arizona, not contiguous with the main reservation. The land was placed in federal trust in recognition of its significance “since time immemorial for sustenance and the performance of certain religious ceremonies,” by Public Law 98‐408 (August 28, 1984). Numerous University of Arizona collections hold materials relevant to Zuni history and culture.
Synonymy
“Zuni” and variations appears throughout early Spanish and English documents, a rendering of a Keresan term. The autonym is šiwi (currently rendered as Shiwi). See also Shroeder and Goddard in Handbook of North American Indians, v. 9, pp. 479‐81.
Includes Haile’s extensive notes, likely transcribed from interviews, on a wide range of topics, from material objects to animals and plants to natural phenomena and cosmology. Not dated. Haile adverts to one informant known as “Nick” throughout his notes.
Contains materials that are largely concerned with the St. Anthony Mission, Zuni, New Mexico, including clippings, correspondence, and yearbooks from the 1950s replete with images of students, teachers, and mission school events and activities. Additional materials include reservation maps from different sources, including the U.S. Soil Conservation Service (SCS).
Includes Taylor Ealy’s diary of his time as schoolmaster and Presbyterian missionary to the Zuni. He describes daily routines, gardening, packing wool, relationships, and challenges of regular school attendance. Materials contain observations of Zuni practices, including pilgrimage to Kołuwala:wa (Arizona), planting of “feathers” [i.e., prayer sticks], the arrival of Frank H. Cushing, ethnographer, and correspondence with Garrick Mallery on sign language.
Contains correspondence, notes, and legislation for the acquisition of Arizona lands for the Zuni, with extensive negotiation over the status of lands, tax implications, and a report on traditional Zuni uses of land in Arizona.
Includes two project‐and‐research files on the Zuni, one comprised of clippings on self‐governance and power line construction in the early 1970s, and the other a collection of printed materials, tribal economic and development plans, and correspondence with tribal members and BIA officials.
Includes a single, unpublished paper, prepared for the 1989 annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), entitled “Hopi and Zuni Prayer Sticks: Magic, Symbolic, Texts, or Persons?”
Includes Rabbi Fierman’s research notes on Sam Danoff Zuni.
Arizona Historical Society Materials
The materials located in this section can be found at the Arizona Historical Society Tucson location, an institution separate from the University of Arizona. There you can find manuscript materials, photographs, oral histories and books that highlight Indigenous life in the U.S./Mexico borderlands. This selection represents only a small fraction of the Arizona Historical Society's materials related to Indigenous life in the borderlands. Please contact their archivists for questions about additional materials.
