The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

8. Brandon, Last Americans, p. 6.
9. Lewis Henry Morgan, Ancient Society or Researches in
the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery Through
Barbarism to Civilization (New York, 1877).
10. Clark and Evans, Sacagawea, p. 96.
Kochinnenako in Academe: Three Approaches
to Interpreting a Keres Indian Tale
1. John M. Gunn, Schat Chen: History, Traditions and
Narratives of the Queres Indians of Laguna and Acoma
(Albuquerque, N. Mex.: Albright and Anderson, 1917; reprint,
New York: AMS, 1977). Gunn, my mother’s uncle, lived among
the Lagunas all his adult life. He spoke Laguna (Keres) and
gathered information in somewhat informal ways while sitting in
the sun visiting with older people. He married Meta Atseye, my
great-grandmother, years after her husband (John Gunn’s
brother) died and may have taken much of his information from
her stories or explanations of Laguna ceremonial events. She had
a way of “translating” terms and concepts from Keres into
English and from a Laguna conceptual framework into an
American one, as she understood it. For example, she used to
refer to the Navajo people as “gypsies,” probably because they
traveled in covered wagons and the women wear long, full skirts
and head scarves and both men and women wear a great deal of
jewelry.
2. His use of the term may reflect the use by his informants,
who were often educated in Carlisle or Menaul Indian schools,
in their attempt to find an equivalent term that Gunn could
understand to signify the deep respect and reverence accorded
the hocheni tyi’a’muni. Or he might have selected the term
because he was writing a book for an anonymous non-Keres
audience, which included himself. Since he spoke Laguna Keres,