Part 22
583. Soon the Eagles were all ready for the fray. They raised their war-cry, and charged over the hill into the sandy plain. The Navaho remained behind the hill, peeping over to see what would occur. As the warriors approached the plain a whirlwind arose;[258] a great number of tumble-weeds ascended with the wind and surged around madly through the air; and, at the same time, from among the sunflowers a cloud of bumblebees arose. The Eagles charged through the ranks of their enemies, and when they had passed to the other side they turned around and charged back again. Some spread their wings and soared aloft to attack the tumble-weeds that had gone up with the whirlwind. From time to time the Navaho noticed the dark body of an Eagle falling down through the air. When the combat had continued some time, the Navaho noticed a few of the Eagles running toward the hill where he lay watching. In a moment some more came running toward him, and soon after the whole party of Eagles, all that was left of it, rushed past him, in a disorderly retreat, in the direction whence they had come, leaving many slain on the field. Then the wind fell; the tumble-weeds lay quiet again on the sand, and the bumblebees disappeared among the sunflowers.
584. When all was quiet, the Navaho walked down to the sandy flat, and, having gathered some of the seeds and tied them up in a corner of his shirt, he collected the tumble-weeds into a pile, using his black wand. Then he took out his fire-drill, started a flame, and burnt up the whole pile. He gathered some tsildilgi'si, as the Spider Woman had told him, chewed it, and went in among the sunflowers. Here the bees gathered around him in a great swarm, and sought to sting him; but he spat the juice of the tsildilgi'si at them and stunned with it all that he struck. Soon the most of them lay helpless on the ground, and the others fled in fear. He went around with his black wand and killed all that he could find. He dug into the ground and got out some of their nests and honey; he took a couple of the young bees and tied their feet together, and all these things he put into the corner of his blanket. When the bees were conquered he did not forget the wishes of his friend, the Spider Woman; he went around among the dead eagles, and plucked as many plumes as he could grasp in both hands.
585. He set out on his return journey, and soon got back to the house of Spider Woman. He gave her the plumes and she said: "Thank you, my grandchild, you have brought me the plumes that I have long wanted to adorn my walls, and you have done a great service to your friends, the Eagles, because you have slain their enemies." When she had spoken he set out again on his journey.
586. He slept that night on the trail, and next morning he got back to the towns of the Eagles. As he approached he heard from afar the cries of the mourners, and when he entered the place the people gathered around him and said: "We have lost many of our kinsmen, and we are wailing for them; but we have been also mourning for you, for those who returned told us you had been killed in the fight."
587. He made no reply, but took from his blanket the two young bumblebees and swung them around his head. All the people were terrified and ran, and they did not stop running till they got safely behind their houses. In a little while they got over their fear, came slowly from behind their houses, and crowded around the Navaho again. A second time he swung the bees around his head, and a second time the people ran away in terror; but this time they only went as far as the front walls of their houses, and soon they returned again to the Navaho. The third time that he swung the bees around his head they were still less frightened, ran but half way to their houses, and returned very soon. The fourth time that he swung the bees they only stepped back a step or two. When their courage came back to them, he laid the two bees on the ground; he took out the seeds of the tumble-weeds and laid them on the ground beside the bees, and then he said to the Eagle People: "My friends, here are the children of your enemies; when you see these you may know that I have slain your enemies." There was great rejoicing among the people when they heard this, and this one said: "It is well. They have slain my brother," and that one said: "It is well. They have slain my father," and another said: "It is well. They have slain my sons." Then Great Wolf, chief of the white pueblo, said: "I have two beautiful maiden daughters whom I shall give to you." Then Fox, chief of the blue pueblo in the south, promised him two more maidens, and the chiefs of the other pueblos promised him two each, so that eight beautiful maidens were promised to him in marriage.
588. The chief of the white pueblo now conducted the Navaho to his house and into a large and beautiful apartment, the finest the poor Indian had ever seen. It had a smooth wall, nicely coated with white earth, a large fireplace, mealing-stones, beautiful pots and water-jars, and all the conveniences and furniture of a beautiful pueblo home. And the chief said to him: "Sadáni, my son-in-law, this house is yours."
589. The principal men from all the pueblos now came to visit him, and thanked him for the great service he had done for them. Then his maidens from the yellow house came in bringing corn meal; the maidens from the black house entered bringing soap-weed, and the maidens of the white house, where he was staying, came bearing a large bowl of white shell. A suds of the soap-weed was prepared in the shell bowl. The maidens of the white house washed his head with the suds; the maidens of the black house washed his limbs and feet, and those of the yellow house dried him with corn meal. When the bath was finished the maidens went out; but they returned at dark, accompanied this time by the maidens of the blue house. Each of the eight maidens carried a large bowl of food, and each bowl contained food of a different kind. They laid the eight bowls down before the Navaho, and he ate of all till he was satisfied. Then they brought in beautiful robes and blankets, and spread them on the floor for his bed.
590. Next morning the Navaho went over to the sky-hole, taking with him the young bees and the seeds of the tumble-weeds. To the former he said: "Go down to the land of the Navahoes and multiply there. My people will make use of you in the days to come; but if you ever cause them sorrow and trouble, as you have caused the people of this land, I shall again destroy you." As he spoke, he flung them down to the earth. Then taking the seeds of the tumble-weeds in his hands, he spoke to them as he had spoken to the bees, and threw them down through the sky-hole. The honey of the bees and the seeds of the tumble-weeds are now used in the rites of yói hatál, or the bead chant.
591. The Navaho remained in the pueblos of the Eagle People twenty-four days, during which time he was taught the songs, prayers, ceremonies, and sacrifices of the Eagles, the same as those now known to us in the rite of yói hatál;[259] and when he had learned all, the people told him it was time for him to return to the earth, whence he had come.
592. They put on him a robe of eagle plumage, such as they wore themselves, and led him to the sky-hole. They said to him: "When you came up from the lower world you were heavy and had to be carried by others. Henceforth you will be light and can move through the air with your own power." He spread his wings to show that he was ready; the Eagles blew a powerful breath behind him; he went down through the sky-hole, and was wafted down on his outstretched wings until he lit on the summit of Tsótsil.
593. He went back to his own relations among the Navahoes; but when he went back everything about their lodge smelt ill; its odors were intolerable to him, and he left it and sat outside.[260] They built for him then a medicine-lodge where he might sit by himself. They bathed his younger brother, clothed him in new raiment, and sent him, too, into the lodge, to learn what his elder brother could tell him. The brothers spent twelve days in the lodge together, during which the elder brother told his story and instructed the younger in all the rites and songs learned among the Eagles.
594. After this he went to visit the pueblo of Kintyél, whose inmates had before contemplated such treachery to him; but they did not recognize him. He now looked sleek and well fed. He was beautifully dressed and comely in his person, for the Eagles had moulded, in beauty, his face and form. The pueblo people never thought that this was the poor beggar whom they had left to die in the eagles' nest. He noticed that there were many sore and lame in the pueblo. A new disease, they told him, had broken out among them. This was the disease which they had caught from the feathers of the eaglets when they were attacking the nest. "I have a brother," said the Navaho, "who is a potent shaman. He knows a rite that will cure this disease." The people of the pueblo consulted together and concluded to employ his brother to perform the ceremony over their suffering ones.
595. The Navaho said that he must be one of the atsá`lei,[261] or first dancers, and that in order to perform the rite properly he must be dressed in a very particular way. He must, he said, have strings of fine beads--shell and turquoise--sufficient to cover his legs and forearms completely, enough to go around his neck, so that he could not bend his head back, and great strings to pass over the shoulder and under the arm on each side. He must have the largest shell basin to be found in either pueblo to hang on his back, and the one next in size to hang on his chest. He must have their longest and best strings of turquoise to hang to his ears. The Wind told him that the greatest shell basin they had was so large that if he tried to embrace it around the edge, his finger-tips would scarcely meet on the opposite side, and that this shell he must insist on having. The next largest shell, Wind told him, was but little smaller.[262]
596. Three days after this conference, people began to come in from different pueblos in the Chaco Canyon and from pueblos on the banks of the San Juan,--all these pueblos are now in ruins,--and soon a great multitude had assembled. Meantime, too, they collected shells and beads from the various pueblos in order to dress the atsá`lei as he desired. They brought him some great shell basins and told him these were what he wanted for the dance; but he measured them with his arms as Wind had told him, and, finding that his hands joined easily when he embraced the shells, he discarded them. They brought him larger and larger shells, and tried to persuade him that such were their largest; but he tried and rejected all. On the last day, with reluctance, they brought him the great shell of Kintyél and the great shell of Ki'ndotliz. He clasped the first in his arms; his fingers did not meet on the opposite side. He clasped the second in his arms, and the tips of his fingers just met. "These," said he, "are the shells I must wear when I dance."
597. Four days before that on which the last dance was to occur, the pueblo people sent out messengers to the neighboring camps of Navahoes, to invite the latter to witness the exhibition of the last night and to participate in it with some of their alíli (dances or dramas). One of the messengers went to the Chelly Canyon and there he got Gánaskidi, with his son and daughter, to come and perform a dance. The other messengers started for the Navaho camp at the foot of Tsótsil on the south (near where Cobero is now). On his way he met an akáninili, or messenger, coming from Tsótsil to invite the people of the Chaco Canyon to a great Navaho ceremony. (You have heard all about the meeting of these messengers in the legend of the mountain chant. I shall not now repeat it.)[263] The messengers exchanged bows and quivers as a sign they had met one another, and the messenger from Kintyél returned to his people without being able to get the Navahoes to attend. This is the reason that, on the last night of the great ceremony of yói hatál, there are but few different dances or shows.
598. On the evening of the last day they built a great circle of branches, such as the Navahoes build now for the rites of the mountain chant (fig. 37), and a great number of people crowded into the enclosure. They lighted the fires and dressed the atsá`lei in all their fine beads and shells just as he desired them to dress him. They put the great shell of Kintyél on his back, and the great shell of Ki'ndotliz on his chest, and another fine shell on his forehead. Then the Navaho began to dance, and his brother, the medicine-man, began to sing, and this was the song he sang:--
The white-corn plant's great ear sticks up. Stay down and eat.
The blue-corn plant's great ear sticks up. Stay down and eat.
The yellow-corn plant's great ear sticks up. Stay down and eat.
The black-corn plant's great ear sticks up. Stay down and eat.
All-colored corn's great ear sticks up. Stay down and eat.
The round-eared corn's great ear sticks up. Stay down and eat.[287]
599. This seemed a strange song to the pueblo people, and they all wondered what it could mean; but they soon found out what it meant, for they observed that the dancing Navaho was slowly rising from the ground. First his head and then his shoulders appeared above the heads of the crowd; next his chest and waist; but it was not until his whole body had risen above the level of their heads that they began to realize the loss that threatened them. He was rising toward the sky with the great shell of Kintyél, and all the wealth of many pueblos in shell-beads and turquoise on his body. Then they screamed wildly to him and called him by all sorts of dear names--father, brother, son--to come down again, but the more they called the higher he rose. When his feet had risen above them they observed that a streak of white lightning passed under his feet like a rope, and hung from a dark cloud that gathered above. It was the gods that were lifting him; for thus, the legends say, the gods lift mortals to the sky. When the pueblos found that no persuasions could induce the Navaho to return, some called for ropes that they might seize him and pull him down; but he was soon beyond the reach of their longest rope. Then a shout was raised for arrows that they might shoot him; but before the arrows could come he was lost to sight in the black cloud and was never more seen on earth.
NOTES.
1. How and when the name Navajo (pronounced Na'va-ho) originated has not been discovered. It is only known that this name was given by the Spaniards while they still claimed the Navaho land. The name is generally supposed to be derived from navaja, which means a clasp-knife, or razor, and to have been applied because the Navaho warriors carried great stone knives in former days. It has been suggested that the name comes from navájo, a pool or small lake. The Navahoes call themselves Diné` or Diné, which means simply, men, people. This word in the various forms, Dénè, Tinnéh, Tunné, etc., is used as a tribal designation for many branches of the Athapascan stock.
2. The Carrizo Mountains consist of an isolated mountain mass, about 12 miles in its greatest diameter, situated in the northeast corner of Arizona. It is called by the Navahoes Dsilnáodsil, which means mountain surrounded by mountains; such is the appearance of the landscape viewed from the highest point, Pastora Peak, 9,420 feet high.
3. The San Juan River, a branch of the Colorado of the West, flows in a westerly direction through the northern portion of the Navaho Reservation, and forms in part its northern boundary. It is the most important river in the Navaho country. It has two names in the Navaho language: one is Sánbito` (Water of Old Age, or Old Age River), said to be given because the stream is white with foam and looks like the hair of an old man; the other is To`baká (Male Water), given because it is turbulent and strong in contrast to the placid Rio Grande, which the Navahoes call To`baád, or Female Water. (See note 137.) Perhaps the river has other names.
4. Tu-in-tsá is derived from to` or tu (water) and intsá or intsá (abundant, scattered widely). The name is spelled Tuincha, Tuintcha, and Tunicha on our maps. The Tuincha Mountains are situated partly in New Mexico and partly in Arizona, about 30 miles from the northern boundary of both Territories. They form the middle portion of a range of which the Chusca and Lukachokai Mountains form the rest. The portion known as Tuintsá is about 12 miles long. The highest point is 9,575 feet above sea-level. The top of the range, which is rather level and plateau-like, is well covered with timber, mostly spruce and pine, and abounds in small lakes and ponds; hence the name Tuintsá.
5. The basket illustrated in fig. 16 is made of twigs of aromatic sumac (Rhus aromatica, var. trilobata). It is 13' in diameter and 3-3/8' deep. In forming the helical coil, the fabricator must always put the butt end of the twig toward the centre of the basket and the tip end toward the periphery, in accordance with the ceremonial laws governing the disposition of butts and tips (see notes 12 and 319). The sole decoration is a band, red in the middle with black zigzag edges. This band is intersected at one point by a narrow line of uncolored wood. This line has probably no relation to the "line of life" in ancient and modern pueblo pottery. It is put there to assist in the orientation of the basket at night, in the dim light of the medicine-lodge. In making the basket, the butt of the first twig is placed in the centre; the tip of the last twig, in the helix, must be in the same radial line, which is marked by the uncolored line crossing the ornamental band. This line must lie due east and west on certain ceremonial occasions, as for instance when the basket, inverted, is used as a drum during the last five nights of the night chant. The margin of this, as of other Navaho baskets, is finished in a diagonally woven or plaited pattern, and there is a legend, which the author has related in a former paper,[321] accounting for the origin of this form of margin. If the margin is worn through or torn, the basket is unfit for sacred use. The basket is one of the perquisites of the shaman when the rites are done; but he, in turn, must give it away, and must be careful never to eat out of it. Notwithstanding its sacred uses, food may be served in it. Fig. 25 represents a basket of this kind used as a receptacle for sacrificial sticks and cigarettes. In this case the termination of the helix must be in the east, and the sacrifices sacred to the east must be in the eastern quarter of the basket.
Fig. 17 shows the other form of sacred basket. It is also made of aromatic sumac, and is used in the rites to hold sacred meal. The crosses are said to represent clouds, and the zigzag lines to indicate lightning.
6. The ceremonies of "House Dedication" are described at some length by Mr. A. M. Stephen in his excellent paper on "The Navajo,"[329] and he gives a free translation of a prayer and a song belonging to these rites.
7. A-na-yé, or a-ná-ye, is composed of two words, aná and yéi or ye. Aná, sometimes contracted to na, signifies a member of an alien tribe,--one not speaking a language similar to the Navaho,--and is often synonymous with enemy. Ye (see par. 78) may be defined as genius or god. The anáye were the offspring of women conceived during the separation of the sexes in the fourth world.
8. Ti-é-hol-tso-di is a water god, or water monster, a god of terrestrial waters,--not a rain god. He seems akin to the Unktehi of the Dakotas. He is said to dwell in the great water of the east, i.e., the Atlantic Ocean. Although commonly spoken of as one, there is little doubt that the Navahoes believe in many of the Tiéholtsodi. Probably every constant stream or spring has its own water god, (See note 152.) A picture of this god is said to be made in a dry-painting of the rite of hozóni hatál, but the author has not seen it. Tiéholtsodi is described as having a fine fur, and being otherwise much like an otter in appearance, but having horns like a buffalo. (See pars. 140, 187, 484, 485.)
9. Tsús-kai or Tsó-is-kai is the name given by the Navahoes to a prominent conical hill rising 8,800 feet above sea-level, in northwestern New Mexico, about twenty-six miles north of Defiance Station on the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad. It is called Chusca Knoll, Chusca Peak, and Choiskai Peak by geographers. It rises abruptly four hundred feet or more above the level of the neighboring ridge, is visible at a great distance from the south (but not from the north), and forms a prominent landmark. The Navahoes limit the name Tsúskai to this knoll, but the Mexicans, and following them the Americans, apply the name in different forms (Chusca Mountains, Sierra de Chusca, Chuska, Chuskai, Tchuskai, etc.) to the whole mountain mass from which the knoll rises. The name, not accurately translated, contains the words for spruce (tso) and white (kai).
10. The bath forms an important part of the Navaho rites, being administered on many occasions, and it is often mentioned in the tales. It usually consists of a suds made in a water-tight wicker basket by soaking the root of some species of yucca (see note 88) in water; the root of Yucca baccata being usually preferred, as it seems richest in saponine. After the application of the suds, the subject is commonly rinsed off with plain water and dried by rubbing on corn meal. In different ceremonies different observances are connected with the bath. In the myth of "The Mountain Chant,"[314] pp. 389, 390, a bath is described as part of the ceremony of the deer-hunt. It is given, no doubt, in preparing for the hunt, for practical as well as religious reasons. It is important that the hunter should divest himself as much as possible of his personal odor when he goes to kill game.
11. Pollen (Navaho, thaditín) is obtained, for sacred uses, from various plants, but Indian corn is the chief source of supply. The pollen is carried in small buckskin bags, which also usually contain small sacred stones, such as rock crystal and pyrophyllite, or small animal fetishes. The administration or sacrifice of pollen is a part of all rites witnessed, and almost always follows or accompanies prayer. It is used in different ways on different occasions; but the commonest way is to take a small pinch from the bag, apply a portion of it to the tongue and a portion to the crown of the head. For some purposes, the shaman collects a quantity of pollen, puts it in a large bag, immerses in it some live bird, insect, or other animal, and then allows the prisoner to escape. This is supposed to add extra virtue to the pollen. In one kind called i`yidezná a bluebird, a yellowbird, and a grasshopper are put in the pollen together. In note 49 we have a mythic account of pollen put on the young of the sea monster and then preserved. Pollen which has been applied to a ceremonial dry-painting is preserved for future uses. Pollen in which a live striped lizard has been placed is used to favor eutocia. The term thaditín is applied to various things having the appearance of an impalpable powder, such as the misty hues of the horizon in the morning and evening, due in Arizona more frequently to dust in the air than to moisture. Captain Bourke, in "The Medicine-men of the Apache,"[295] chapter ii., describes many modes of using pollen which exist also among the Navahoes.
12. The following are a few additional observances with regard to kethawns:--