The fact that the myths of the Apache relate that Assanut-li-je spilled hoddentin over the surface of the sky to make the Milky Way may be looked upon as an inchoate form of a calendar, just as the Aztecs transferred to their calendar the reed, rabbit, etc.
So constant is the appearance of hoddentin in ceremonies of a religious nature among the Apache that the expression "hoddentin schlawn" (plenty of hoddentin) has come to mean that a particular performance or place is sacred. Yet, strange to say, this sacred pollen of the tule is gathered without any special ceremony; at least, I noticed none when I saw it gathered, although I should not fail to record that at the time of which I speak the Apache and the Apache-Yuma were returning from an arduous campaign, in which blood had been shed, and everything they did--the bathing in the sweat lodges and the singing of the Apache and the plastering of mud upon their heads by the Apache-Yuma--had a reference to the lustration or purgation necessary under such circumstances. Not only men but women may gather the pollen. When the tule is not within reach our cat-tail rush is used. Thus, the Chiricahua, confined at Fort Pickens, Florida, gathered the pollen of the cat-tail rush, some of which was given me by one of the women who gathered it.
Before making an examination into the meaning to be attached to the use of hoddentin, it is well to determine whether or not such a powder or anything analogous to it is to be found among the tribes adjacent.
The term "kunque" as it appears in this chapter is one of convenience only. Each pueblo, or rather each set of pueblos, has its own name in its own language, as, for example, the people of Laguna and Acoma, who employ it in all their ceremonies as freely as do the Zuñi, call it in their tongue "hinawa." In every pueblo which I visited--and I visited them all, from Oraibi of Tusayan, on the extreme west, to Picuris, on the extreme east; from Taos, in the far north, to Isleta del Sur, in Texas--I came upon this kunque, and generally in such quantities and so openly exposed and so freely used that I was both astonished and gratified; astonished that after centuries of contact with the Caucasian the natives should still adhere with such tenacity to the ideas of a religion supposed to have been extirpated, and gratified to discover a lever which I could employ in prying into the meaning of other usages and ceremonials.