Matilda Coxe Stevenson

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“While it was generally observed by early travelers among the {{w|Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Indians}}, that they employed plants for medicinal purposes, it was long believed, even by scientific students, that the practice of Indian doctors was purely {{w|Shamanism|shamanistic}}. The late Dr. {{w|Washington Matthews}}, however, declared from the beginning of his ethnological investigations that the Indians employed many plants of real value in medicine.”

“{{cite book|chapter=Ethnobotany of the Zuñi Indians by Matilda Coxe Stevenson|year=1915|title=Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Volume 30, Thirtieth annual report, 1908-1909|series=published for Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology, U.S. Bureau of American Ethnology|publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office|location=Washington, D.C.|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PtriAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA36|pages=31–102, with 3 plates}} (quote from p. 36)”

“The long winter nights were devoted by the {{w|Zuni people|Zuñi}} to the ceremonies of their secret fraternities, exhorting their most benevolent gods; rain priests in retreat invoked their anthropic deities for rain to fructify the earth, and elders taught the youths, sitting attentively at their knees by the flickering firelight, the mysteries of their life and religion. Of all the secrets of their lives none is more strictly guarded or more carefully transmitted than the knowledge of healing. The "doctor" instructs in the lore of plants, and the relation of plants to man and beast.”

“The children are industrious and patient little creatures, the boys assisting their elders in farming and {{w|Pastoralism|pastoral pursuits}}, and the girls performing their share of domestic duties. A marked trait is their loving-kindness and care for younger brothers and sisters. Every little girl has her own water vase as soon as she is old enough to accompany her mother to the river in capacity of assistant water-carrier, and thus they begin at a very early age to poise the vase, Egyptian fashion, on their heads.”