Forever from the ceiling of his house there hung suspended his basket-drum, made of a large wicker bowl, over the mouth of which was stretched tightly a soft buckskin, even like the basket-drums which we use in the playing of cane-cards today, and which you know are suspended with the skin-side downward from the ceilings of the gaming rooms in the topmost houses of our town. Though the one he had was no better than those we have today, save that it was larger and handsomer perhaps, yet he delighted to call it his cloud canopy, bethinking himself of the drum-basket of his former associates, the gods, which is even the rounded sky itself, with the clouds stretched across it. Forever upon the floor of his house there lay spread a great buffalo robe, the skin upward dressed soft and smooth, as white as corn-flour, and painted with the many-colored symbols and counting marks of the game, even as our own. But he delighted to call it his sacred terraced plain,[25] bethinking himself of the robe-spread of the gods, which is even the outspread earth itself, bordered by terraced horizons, and diversified by mountains, valleys, and bright places, which are the symbols and game marks whereby the gods themselves count up the score of their game.
[25] The words “terrace,” “sacred terrace,” “terraced plain” (_awithluiane_, _awithluian-pewine_), and the like, wherever they occur, refer to the figurative expression for the earth in the Zuñi rituals addressed to the gods, where they are used as more nearly conforming to the usage of the gods. The symbol of the earth on the sacred altars is a terraced or zigzag figure or decoration, and the same figure appears in their carvings and other ornamental work. The disgraced god Mítsina applied the term to the robe spread out as the bed for his game. It may be stated in further explanation that the country in which the Zuñis have wandered and lived for unnumbered generations, and where they still dwell, is made up largely of mesas, or flat-top mountains or elevations, rising one above another and showing as terraces on the horizon. Beheld at great distances, or in the evening, these mountain terraces are mere silhouettes and serve to exaggerate the zigzag spaces of light between them. As the conventional sacred emblem for the earth is a terrace, outspread or upreaching, as the case may be, so the conventional sacred emblem for the sky is an inverted terrace.