# Zuni Folktales — Character guide

> Key figures in Zuni Folktales by Frank Hamilton Cushing.

- [The Young Man](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/young_man.md): He arrives at the priest-chief's house with gifts wrapped in white buckskin, navigating the delicate protocols of Zuni courtship with careful ceremony. His restraint at the meal—eating 'ever so little'—reveals a young ma
- [The Maiden](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/maiden.md): She moves through her father's house with quiet competence, placing wafer-thin héwe before the visiting stranger and sweeping crumbs after his modest meal. Her beauty is legendary, yet her role in the household—serving, 
- [Coyote](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/coyote.md): Coyote stages an elaborate performance of self-mutilation and miraculous healing, substituting antelope bones for his own legs with theatrical cries of pain. His flattery—'there is no deer that can run away from me'—hook
- [Old Tarantula](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/old_tarantula.md): Old Tarantula's theft triggers a communal crisis, sending men, women, and children with digging-sticks and baskets to tunnel after him until they strike the mountain's bedrock. His den becomes a symbol of elusive wrongdo
- [The Old Demon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/old_demon.md): The Demon complains of hard times catching deer and antelope, his eyes sticking out further as Coyote boasts of outrunning any quarry. His vanity—'Do you think I am a baby? or a woman?'—makes him the perfect mark for Coy
- [The Turtle](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/turtle.md): Turtle's reputation for cleverness rests on his ability to outlast and outthink opponents who underestimate him. Though his body is slow, his mind works with a deliberateness that mirrors his pace, making him a foil to t
- [The Old Grandmother](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/old_grandmother.md): She is the grandmother whose house the boy runs to when the contest of frights demands more than human nerve. Far from a passive hearth-keeper, she blackens one side of his face with soot and the other with ashes, then h
- [The Eagle](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/eagle.md): In the great white-walled house of the Eagles, reached only through roof openings, this old man rises to pronounce the youth and Eagle-maiden wife and husband. He belongs to a winged people who can take human or bird for
- [Great Kingfisher](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/great_kingfisher.md): He belongs to the winged powers that hover at the edges of the Mátsaki courtship story, where a suitor climbs a ladder with a bundle of mantles and necklaces rolled in white buckskin. The tale moves with careful ceremony
- [Friend Mouse](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/friend_mouse.md): He lives under the wall of the old woman's corral, with no grandmother to feed him, and grows bold on the Tâkâkâ Cock's tortilla crumbs. Caught mid-theft, he loses his long tail to one hard peck and mourns it as a young 
- [The Cock](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/cock.md): Kept by a poor old Italia-kwe woman in a wattle-and-rawhide cage too tall to fly from, he sits in the sun kâ-tâ-kâ-tok-ing and dreaming of worms. Fed only refuse, he mistakes the Mouse's naked tail for one and bites it c
- [The Bear](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/bear.md): He meets the boy on the plateau with a bellow of ownership — 'They are mine!' — and proposes a trial: whoever can scare the other keeps the ground. He charges from the thicket snapping trees and snarling, yet the boy nev
- [The Gopher](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/gopher.md): The Gopher belongs to the animal folk who populate Zuni storytelling, a creature of the earth whose burrowing ways give him advantages no winged or four-footed rival can match. His defining trait is cunning rather than s
- [Mátsailéma](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/matsailema.md): Mátsailéma is one of the Beloved Two, sons of the Sun-father and the Waters of the World, raised on Twin Mountain with their old grandmother. Where his elder brother Áhaiyúta rushes forward, Mátsailéma counsels patience 
- [Old Mítsina](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/old_mitsina.md): Old Mítsina dwells away from the pueblos, a solitary figure whose long memory of the ancients makes him a source of wisdom for travelers and suppliants. His withdrawal from communal life sets him in quiet tension with th
- [Átahsaia](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/atahsaia.md): Átahsaia is the terror of the ancient days, a giant who devours men, women, and children and carries a bow of mountain-oak and a knife as broad as a man's thigh. For all his ugliness he is a great liar and flatterer, lur
- [Áhaiyúta](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/ahaiyuta.md): Áhaiyúta is the elder of the Beloved Two, born of the Sun-father and the Waters of the World and raised on Twin Mountain with his grandmother. He is quick to act and quick to quarrel, and when the cry of Átahsaia sounds 
- [The Deer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/deer.md): The Deer is the leader and foster-mother of a great herd, who long ago found a mortal infant and nursed him as her own. When the people discover the herd and decree a grand hunt, she must tell the youth the truth of his 
- [The Young Swift-Runner](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/young_swift_runner.md): The Young Swift-Runner belongs to the world of Zuni animal tales, where human and creature meet on equal footing and every encounter carries a test. His defining ordeal is the loss of his garments to the Aged Tarantula, 
- [The Stranger](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/stranger.md): The Stranger arrives at the priest-chief's door in Mátsaki with a bundle of mantles and necklaces, hoping to win the hand of the beautiful maiden within. His tension lies in the delicate dance of Zuni etiquette: he must 
- [The Eagles](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/eagles.md): A group of eagle characters, sometimes including young ones, in various stories.
- [The Priest-Chief](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/priest_chief.md): As the father of the beautiful maiden of Salt City, the Priest-Chief presides over the largest house in Mátsaki, a dwelling adorned with buckskins, turquoises, and shells from the ocean. His authority is both religious a
- [The Maiden the Sun](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/sun_maiden.md): A maiden who is loved by the Sun and bears his children.
- [The Priest-Chief's Daughter](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/priest_chiefs_daughter.md): The Priest-Chief's Daughter moves through her father's great house with the ease of one accustomed to turquoise-covered portholes and endless stores of buckskin. She serves wafer bread to visiting strangers and sweeps aw
- [Coyotes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/coyotes.md): A group of coyote characters who act together in certain tales.
- [Blackbirds](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/blackbirds.md): Birds who dance with Coyote in a trickster tale.
- [The Turkeys](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/turkeys.md): Birds that appear as characters, sometimes as helpers or in trickster tales.
- [Etawa](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/etawa.md): An elder character mentioned in some Zuni narratives.
- [The Owl](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/owl.md): A single owl character appearing in specific tales.
- [Locust](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/locust.md): An insect character who races or competes with others.
- [The Beetle](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/beetle.md): A small insect character who interacts with Coyote.
- [The Ravens](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/ravens.md): Birds who race their eyes in a trickster tale with Coyote.
- [The Twain](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/twain.md): A pair of characters, often twins or companions, in certain stories.
- [The Poor Turkey Girl](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/poor_turkey_girl.md): The Poor Turkey Girl drives her flock through the plazas of Mátsaki, watching the people prepare for the Dance of the Sacred Bird while she remains ugly and ill-clad, excluded from every festival. Her loneliness is softe
- [The Rattlesnake](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/rattlesnake.md): A snake character who appears in stories explaining its nature.
- [The Maiden of Mátsaki](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/maiden_of_matsaki.md): A maiden from Mátsaki who features in a specific tale.
- [Grandmother Spider](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/grandmother_spider.md): A wise spider elder who helps or advises characters.
- [The Badger](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/badger.md): A burrowing animal character appearing in some stories.
- [The Ugly Wild Boy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/ugly_wild_boy.md): A wild boy who drives a bear away from a mesa.
- [Grandfather Burrowing-Owl](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/grandfather_burrowing_owl.md): An elder owl character who serves as a priest to prairie dogs.
- [Kólowissi](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/kolowissi.md): A named character or spirit in Zuni mythology.
- [The Centipede](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/centipede.md): A creepy-crawly character appearing in some tales.
- [Mice](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters/mice.md): Small rodent characters appearing in some tales.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/zuni_folktales_se/characters