WAYS OF THOUGHT AMONG THE ANCIENT PUEBLOANS
Wouldn’t it be nice to think that in 2010, we educated folks acted rationally at all times? On the website GM.TV (Jan. 22,2008 page), I found a list of modern superstitions. People buy lottery tickets using numbers that are meaningful to them, birthdates, for example, thinking that will increase their odds of winning. People still touch wood for good luck and worry about breaking mirrors. People read their horoscopes and, alas, make decisions based on their astral profile. And people forward on chain letters like they’re s’posta else bad luck will slip through their internet connection and into their brains and then who knows what will happen.
Of course, as Professor Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire points out, we all just want to “gain a sense of control in our lives.” I would add a supposition on my part: whenever times are uncertain and seem particularly dangerous, we come up with more irrational explanations and expectations.
Which brings me to my preoccupation, the puebloan Native Americans around 1600. I’ve been researching this time and place and people for my historical novel, Crimson Sky, and found some interesting examples of superstitions (as opposed to religion) in Elsie Crew Parsons’ Pueblo Indian Religion, Vol. 1.
One habit of mind among the people Parsons studied was thinking that like causes like. For instance, when the shaman wanted to encourage rain to come, he might blow little smoke puffs with his pipe to mimic a rain cloud. So that rain will fall on the corn fields, a woman might dash water on the back of the men on their way to the fields to plant.
Some thinking was based on the principle of “much from little.” Parsons’ example was to toss a piñon nut into the house and tomorrow the house will be full of nuts. This one in particular I imagine no one believed literally but it was fun to practice and tease the children with. Ever know someone, who shall remain nameless, who told a child that if he could pour salt on that little bird’s tail, then the bird would become his pet? This little “superstition” kept one of my little guys busy on a summer afternoon.
It’s easy enough to see how people could reverse cause and effect: Rather than summer bringing summer birds, puebloans believed summer birds brought summer weather. Rather than realizing that abundant water is required for a willow to grow, they would observe that willows explain, rather than indicate, the presence of water. We do this a lot in 2010 – how many times have you seen an observation that assumes cause and effect when it is merely an example of correlation? Or merely a small piece of a more complicated explanation?
In my novel I want very much to show respect for a successful, intelligent, resourceful people and yet also give some idea of how they thought about the world in ways different from our own. That it was different from twenty-first century sensibilities makes it interesting, but that their thinking was not that far off from ours makes it essentially human.
