Sacred Texts  Native American  Southwest 

Pueblo Indian Folk-Stories

By Charles Lummis

[1910]

This is a collection of stories from the Isleta Pueblo people of New Mexico. Charles Lummis [1859-1928] was a pioneering writer, photographer, amateur anthropologist and adventurer who, according to himself, invented the term 'The Southwest'. In 1884, Lummis took a hike from Cincinnati to Los Angeles, which he later chronicled in his best-selling book, A Tramp Across the Continent (1892). In 1885, he became city editor for the Los Angeles Times, and later covered the Apache wars in Arizona. In 1888, Lummis suffered a stroke. To convalesce, he moved to New Mexico, where he embedded himself in Pueblo culture and collected the stories in this book. This was originally published as The Man Who Married the Moon in 1894, and revised and enlarged as the present text in 1910. Lumis moved back to Los Angeles, where he made his home, El Alisal, and founded the Southwest Museum in 1914, at the foot of Mount Washington in East Los Angeles. He also helped restore the Spanish missions in California.

--J. B. Hare