Notions of after-life and meaning of death in Zuni society

Bachelor's thesis called Visions of the afterlife and the importance of death for the Zuni Indian tribe is trying to provide a comprehensive view of the funeral rituals and death beliefs among the selected society of the Puebloan Indians. At first, I try to outline the historical background of the development of the Zuni tribe, along with a brief description of the manner of life and religion and its changes, especially under the influence of Spanish conquerors and Christian religion. After that I am trying to put topic itself into this outline. The paper also briefly deals with selected myths that are one of the main sources of ideas about the afterlife among Zuni for this thesis. The thesis devotes most attention to the afterlife along with funerary ritual. The main objective of this work is both to see how ideas about the death of Zuni reflect their society, and what is meaning of death for them. The paper strives to show that importance of death is in the context of maintaining the unity of a society that is so typical for this tribe