Japanese Links To New Mexico’s Zuni Tribe

By James Donahue

We have written about the peculiar similarities between the Navajo people and the Mongolian tribe members who shared a joint meeting while I was working as a reporter for the White Mountain Independent at Show Low, Arizona.

Both lived in territory that included a Four Corners where territorial boundaries touched on the extreme opposite sides of the Earth, both shared similar customs, raised sheep and made bright blankets with similar art work, and both spoke a similar language. We concluded that the Navajo ancestors came to the North American continent from Asia long before the white European settlers arrived.

Just east of Show Low, over the New Mexico border, is found the Zuni Tribe. My wife and I visited this reservation at least once, and we met some of the Zuni people. We realized something very unique about them that seemed to set them apart from the Navajo, Hopi and Apache among whom we lived and worked.

Now an Alaska native, Nancy Yaw Davis, a cultural anthropologist, has discovered what may be an interesting link between the Zuni and the Japanese. Her research has turned up strange similarities in words used by both cultures and the fact that they both place the verb as the last word in the sentence. This is unique among the Zuni when their native language is compared to the native language of the neighboring tribes.

Davis also discovered that both Zuni and Japanese commonly have Type B blood, they suffer from the same rare kidney disease and share similar mythology concerning the origins and traditions of the people.

Davis theorizes that Buddhist missionaries somehow traveled to America from Japan, possibly sometime in the Twelfth Century, and inbred with the local tribal people. That is one theory.

But how do we find similar links between the Mongolians and Navajo tribes, both groups living not that far apart from one another at opposite ends of the world? Could it be possible that the ancestors of both groups traveled either by ship or walked what was believed to have been an ancient land route between Siberia and Alaska to explore the North American Continent?