Cushing's Zuni Sketchbooks: Literature, Anthropology, and American Notions of Culture

Abstract

IN THE SUMMER OF 1882, A PHYSICALLY SCARRED WHITE MAN PICTURED in ceremonial garb of Zuni pueblo tribe, along with his Indian brothers, made it onto pages not only of Popular Science Monthly, but also of three of America's elite literary magazines: Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Monthly, and Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine.' On pages declared by their editors to be participating in wholesome movement ... for purification of American public life, Frank Hamilton Cushing held forth on his ritual initiation into Priesthood of Bow, highest priestly society of Zuni, and of trials he endured to do so.2 Alongside Henry James writing about Venice and influence of Punch illustrator George Du Maurier on London society, one reads of Zunis piercing lobes of Cushing's ears while doing little shuffling dance ... in time to a prayer chant to sun.3 Paired with serialization of a new novel by dean of American realism, William Dean Howells, one finds Cushing's description of a dog's horrible mutilation at hands of two Zuni clowns during the Dance of Great Knife.4 By thus situating Cushing's adventures, America's new class of genteel magazines created a stark juxtaposition between high and first portents of anthropological cultural relativism. Cushing has been remembered historically as not only colorful figure who helped invent ethnographic practice of participantobservation, but also as one of few (perhaps only) American anthropologist to have predated Franz Boas in using term culture