Museum Returns Carving of Zuni God to Tribe

In a quiet, closed-door ceremony Tuesday at the Museum of Man, two leaders of the Zuni Indian tribe prayed over a sacred wooden carving of their war god and prepared to transport the image to their New Mexican homeland.

The carving of the god, known as “Ahayu:da,” had been missing from one of the Zunis’ sacred shrines since 1913, when two young men biking and hiking their way across the country came upon the shallow cave shrine atop a 1,000-foot plateau near Zuni, N. M.

The men took a handful of wooden artifacts from the cave, including two war god images, said Stefani Salkeld, curator for the museum’s Southwest Collection. She said one of the men eventually settled near San Diego and, in 1972, donated the carving to the museum.

“He had a sense that they shouldn’t have taken these objects but didn’t know what to do about it,” Salkeld said. “So when he was dying, he tried to relieve his conscience and asked his wife and daughter to bring it here.”

Museum officials told a group of visiting Zuni students about the image but heard no more about the matter until tribal officials contacted the museum in 1978, she said. In line with Zuni religious beliefs, they asked that the museum not exhibit the relic, publish anything about it or allow women to care for the piece.

Zuni priest Perry Tsadiasi, who, as Chief of the Bow is officially charged with taking physical possession of the war god and returning it to the sacred shrine, and Joseph Dishta, head councilman of the Zuni tribe, arrived in San Diego on Monday.

Their journey to recover the war god image is one of many such trips that Native Americans have recently made to museums to reclaim a part of their heritage, Salkeld said. For the Zunis, these trips have resulted in the recovery of 65 similar war god carvings.

The Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act, adopted in November, enables Native Americans to reclaim many cultural relics and skeletal remains from federally funded museums if those objects originally came from their ancestors, according to Donna Peterson, a tribal operations specialist at the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs in Yuma, Ariz.

Anthropological experts say the war god carvings were made to be put in a shrine maintained by a Zuni priest, not to be displayed on the open market.

The simple carving, Salkeld said, stands 22 inches high and depicts basically a head with only the suggestion of a body. It is weather-beaten and its age difficult to determine, she said.

The Zunis make only two images of the war god each year, both on their New Year’s Day. They store them in shrines along the mountainsides, where they believe the images release their blessings as they age and protect Zuni villages.

The term war god may have been a mistranslation of the original Zuni word, Salkeld said. The term “seems misleading to us, because the image is believed to be full of benevolence and good wishes,” she said.

“As far as I’ve been able to tell from my research and study, they have nothing to do with war,” Salkeld said. “They do protect the village, which is part of their benevolence.”

Salkeld said the two Zunis left after the ceremony to return the image to the sacred shrine, but not before informing her of one major change in tribal practice.

“The shrines will be guarded and protected by steel mesh barriers,” she said.