Summary Of How The Coyote Joined The Dance Of The Burrowing Owl

Bronislaw Malinowski, considered one of the most important anthropologists of the 20th century, disagreed with the validity of the Freudian method of myth analysis and expressed the importance of truly understanding a culture in order to accurately understand its myths. Empirical knowledge of daily life, rituals and practices, and social norms is required to grasp the true meaning behind the stories, folktales, and fables, and the same goes for myths. This functionalist method of analysis can be applied to the Zuñi Indians, their culture, and their myths.

“How the Coyote Joined the Dance of the Burrowing Owls” can be analyzed by utilizing the framework behind Zuñi power dynamics, specifically about clan and kinship regarding ritualistic customs

and inner-group connections, to ultimately see how the two fit into functionalist notions about people’s relations within society. We will begin by introducing a summary of “How the Coyote Joined the Dance of the Burrowing Owls” found in Frank Cushing’s Zuni Folk Tales.
There exists a valley where villages of various animals lived peacefully together. The Prairie-dogs, Rattlesnakes, Adders, Chameleons, Burrowing-Owls, and Horned Toads mutually respect each other’s lands, especially with regards to the Owls as they were seen as creatures of importance and holiness. One day, the Burrowing-Owls decide to engage in a ritualistic dance that only they can understand and perform. With their crooked legs and limbs, the men and maidens dance while perfectly balancing bowls of foam on their heads to the whistling and clapping.
A wandering Coyote happens upon this ritualistic ceremony. Enthralled by the peculiar sight, he longs to join the dancers. And so, he spoke to the chief master of ceremonies, who explains that they are dancing for their own pleasure and good of the village. The Coyote tries to pry into the customs and meaning behind the oddities of the dance. The Owl decides to deceive the nosy Coyote; he claims that the bowls of foam are actually the weathered white hairs of the many Burrowing-Owls’ grandmothers. Furthermore, he describes how each Owl broke their own legs in order to achieve the limping motions of the dance. Coyote is fascinated and asks to learn the dance. Having succeeded in his quest to teach the sneaking Coyote a lesson, the Owl agrees to allow the Coyote’s request to learn the dance and urges him to return with the necessary materials and fulfill the conditions.
Coyote dashes back to his grandmother’s abode. While his grandmother was not paying attention, Coyote smacks her viciously with a leg-bone and saws off her head. He claps it onto his own head and is pleased with his appearance. Next, he uses a sharp-edged rock to break his own legs into splinters to have the limping stance for the ritual. When he returns to the Burrowing-Owls, the chief Owl welcomes him once more and they resume dancing. In immense pain, Coyote is unable to follow the gracefulness of the dancers as he stumbles, winces in pain, and continuously loses his grandmother’s head. The rest of the Burrowing-Owls bursts into laughter as they cannot believe the foolishness and gullibility of the Coyote. Embarrassed, the Coyote threatens to harm the Owls with pell-mell, which causes them to flee.
Filled with regret, Coyote profusely apologizes to his dead grandmother and tries to stitch her back to life to no avail. As he howled and wept, a Horned-Toad sneakily jumps into his throat. The Horned-Toad also wanted to teach the Coyote a lesson for terrorizing his village. He threatens to puncture the Coyote’s liver and stomach. Finally, the Horned-Toad comes across the Coyote’s heart. Despite Coyote’s desperate pleas, he punctures his heart, and Coyote perishes.
The central theme of the story explains how the act of meddling into unrelated matters makes the Coyote an ultimate nuisance, which is still a characteristic of the animal today. Therefore, one should respect societal rules about kinship in terms of ritualistic customs and inner-group connections. Using Alfonso Ortiz and William Sturtevant’s Handbook of North American Indians, we will provide a background of Zuni society and customs to understand the central theme’s importance.
In earlier Zuni society, there were groupings of four to five pit houses that reflect larger kin groups. As of 1977, there were fourteen clans. The clan system enforced, controlled, and regulated the socio-religious behavior patterns of Zuni society. While there were different clans and kinship systems, the mother’s household was always considered to be of the upmost importance as it was referred to “social, religious, and economic unit” (Ortiz and Sturtevant, 482) in Zuni society. Additionally, women boasted other important powers. After marriage, women acquired property, children, and agricultural lands. Children were automatically members of their mothers’ clans first, then secondarily attached to their fathers’ clans.
Clan and kinship boundaries were further contributed to by membership in religious and ceremonial organizations that cut across such boundaries based on clan affiliation. Just as the mother’s unit was deemed the most critical unit, religious and ceremonial ceremonies were considered an integral foundation of Zuni ritual life. One aspect of these ceremonies was male initiation. Male Zuni members had to undergo initiation into one of six groups, called kivas. However, membership in one did not necessarily have to be lifelong as males could often choose to switch into another one. When a young man joins a kiva, he often gained a new set of both younger and older brothers. Sponsors also played a role in the development of Zuni kinship structure. A Zuni male would call his sponsors “father” and “mother.” He would also often call leaders of his kiva “father” and the older men “grandfather.” Such a relationship would exist between the male and his fellow Kiva clan members and sponsors in any of the other religious and ceremonial organizational as well. Furthermore, Zuni individuals must understand and be keenly aware of his relationships as he is never confused among his blood kind, clan kin, and religious and ceremonial relationships.
Lastly, clan and kinship boundaries were also influenced by religious leaders who played a key role in shaping Zuni society’s power dynamics. They also contributed to the monitoring of religious and ceremonial organizations. For example, during rituals, if anything or anyone was deemed “irregular,” such as acting queer or developing environmental crises, the religious leaders raised suspicions of witchcraft. Those committing such offenses were sought to be punished either in public or private. There were specific types of religious and ceremonial leaders; The Rain Priest, officers of medicine societies, and other religious kiva officials were not supposed to deal with conflict in violence as they were portrayed to remain “pure of heart” (Ortiz and Sturtevant, 488). As a result, enforcement of punishments within kinship tribal affairs fell onto the responsibilities of the siwanis. They could utilize violence as their means in conflict resolution. Another important societal group that maintained the power dynamics of Zuni society was the supreme council. The supreme council had been developed when the Zunis lived in separate towns. They created this council specifically for mutual protection in bringing together and respecting their various groups.
With this information, we can now analyze “How the Coyote Joined the Dance of the Burrowing-Owls” in a newfound way to bring out new insights due to the given background on Zuni societal power relations. The tale begins with the Prairie Dogs, Burrowed-Owls, Horned-Toads, and other animal groups mutually respecting each other’s territories. This trait resembles how the Zuni have different clans and organizations that co-exist in the same environment. With this connection, the functionalist notion of rights to land and an inherently and mutually agreed upon justification on why people do things that way they do them. This ultimately points to the central theme of the tale and how Zuni culture shapes the way we are able to understand it.
When the Coyote inquires how to join in on the Burrowing-Owls’ ritualistic dance, the chief Owl explains that “these my children are initiated and so trained in the mysteries of the scared society in which it is custom that they can do very strange things in the observance of our ceremonies” (Cushing, 206).

The initiation of the owls resembles how Zuni men undergo initiation to join a kiva. It is important to establish the necessity of ritualistic initiation in daily Zuni culture because it sets how the Coyote violates functionalist themes about society doing things the way that they are. The initiation is a specific cultural institution function that supports the structure of Zuni society. One cannot simply try to bypass the rules of society. It is in the moment when the Coyote pesters the chief Owl to teach him the dance and its meanings that it is understood Zuni society’s power dynamic and kin relations have been ignored. A functional analysis of the potential reason as to why the Coyote desired so badly to become integrated into the Burrowing-Owl clan also points structural issues in Zuni society. The fact that the Coyote was willing to meddle in another group’s customs perhaps may demonstrate his own dissatisfaction with his own kin system. As a result, he wanted to feel valuable and went to extreme lengths and literally killed off a member of his own kin system, his grandmother, to under a process of initiation into another’s

clan.
A Zuni individual must be keenly aware of his relationships that encompass and separate blood kin, clan, and ceremonial relationships, which is what the chief Owl wanted to teach the Coyote a lesson about. As a result, the chief Owl decides to trick the Coyote by telling him false information on why the Owls have broken legs and foam bowls. However, he does not literally use physical forms of violence; the Coyote chooses to injure himself and kill his grandmother. The chief Owl represents the actions of the Rain Priest, officers of medicine societies, or other religious organization officials who supposed to act “pure of heart” without using violence. The Coyote intrudes upon the Burrowing-Owls as an “irregular” intruder, therefore, he has violated the boundaries regarding clan and kinship systems so the Owl must restore the structure of his village’s social whole, which follows functionalist ideals. Safety and relaxation of his village are two of the universal human needs in functionalism that the Owl aspires to restore.