Zuni Folktales · Chapter
The Maiden the Sun Made Love To, and Her Boys explained
The Sun fathers twin boys with a secluded priest-chief's daughter.
What happens
The Sun fathers twin boys with a secluded priest-chief's daughter. After the maiden is killed during a dance meant to draw her out, the twins are raised by Badgers. The Sun later reveals their origin and sends them to reclaim their mother's bones from a ceremonial chamber where they are used in nightly dances.
Themes in this chapter
Folklore vs. Science
The narrative blends supernatural elements (Sun as a lover, Eagle as a guardian) with a mythic explanation for the origin of anger and the twins' birth.
Transformation and Identity
The twins' journey from abandoned infants to agents of recovery, and the mother's resurrection with a lost eye, highlight themes of change and incomplete restoration.
Death and Mourning
The maiden's death, the use of her bones in nightly dances, and the twins' quest to reclaim them underscore rituals of death and remembrance.
Characters to notice
- The Maiden the Sun
The Sun is the lover of the priest-chief's daughter and father of the twin boys; he visits her daily on a ray of light.
- The Priest-Chief's Daughter
The secluded maiden who never leaves her house; she is loved by the Sun and later killed during the Óinahe dance.
- The Eagle
A wise old Eagle set by the Sun to watch over the maiden; he is kept in a cage on the housetop.
- Áhaiyúta
One of the twin gods (the Twain) who, with his younger brother Mátsailéma, leads the dance that results in the maiden's death.
- Mátsailéma
The younger twin god who accompanies Áhaiyúta in compelling the maiden to come forth.
- The Badger
An old Badger who finds the twin boys after their mother's death and brings them home to his wife to raise.
Key passages
“Now, day after day at noon-time, when the Sun stood in the mid-heavens, he would look down from the sky through a little window in the roof of her house. And he it was who instant was her lover, and who, descending upon the luminously yellow trail his own rays created, would talk to her.”
Each day at noon, the Sun peered through a roof window into her home, descending on his own sunbeam to be her lover and companion.
Establishes the Sun's intimate relationship with the secluded maiden.
“Then the young man ran up as fast as ever he could, but alas! he dropped one of his mother's eyes out of the blanket. He kept on running until he reached the foot of the hill upon which the town stood; and when he came to the spring down on the plains he stopped to drink, and lo! his mother had come to life!”
The younger twin fled with his mother's bones but accidentally dropped one of her eyes; when he stopped at a spring, she was resurrected with a shrunken eye.
Climactic moment of resurrection and loss, explaining the mother's imperfect restoration.