Zuni Fetishes (1999)

Frank Hamilton Cushing (1857-1900) was born in Northeastern Pennsylvania, later moving with his family to western New York. He published his first scientific paper when he was only 17. After a brief period at Cornell University, he was appointed curator of the ethnological department of the National Museum in Washington, D.C.. There he came to the attention of John Wesley Powell and was invited by him to join an anthropological expedition to New Mexico. The group travelled by rail to the end of the line at Las Vegas, then on to Zuni Pueblo where Cushing, "went native," living with the Zuni from 1879 to 1884. Cushing was an innovator in the development of the anthropological view that all peoples have a culture that they draw from. He was ahead of his time as the first participant observer who entered into and participated in another culture rather than studying and commenting on it as an outside observer. His works include: Zuni Fetiches (1881), Myths of Creation (1882), A Study of Pueblo Pottery (1882-83), The Arrow (1895), Outlines of Zuni Creation Myths (1896), Primitive Motherhood (1897) and Zuni Folk Tales (1901).… (more)