Eighth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology: to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1886-1887, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1891
History
Eighth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology: to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1886-1887, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1891
Navajo Indians -- Rites and ceremonies; Pueblo Indians -- Antiquities; Pueblo architecture
The construction of the second sweat house began at sunrise and was
completed at nine o’clock. Several large rocks were heated and placed in
the sweat house and as before white sage and _Bigelovia Douglasii_ were
thrown in, the fumes of which were designed as medicine for the sick
man. After the invalid entered the sweat house, buckskin blankets, etc.,
were drawn over the entrance. The song-priest, accompanied by two
attendants, sat a little to the south. He sprinkled meal around the west
base of the house and over the top from north to south and placed the
wands around its base in the manner heretofore described (the twelve
wands and medicine used were the special property of the theurgist). The
song-priest holding the rattle joined the choir in a chant. To his right
were two Navajo jugs filled with water and an Apache basket partly
filled with corn meal. A bunch of buckskin bags, one of the small blue
medicine tubes, a mountain sheep’s horn, and a piece of undressed hide
lay on the meal. Near by was a gourd half filled with water in which
meal was sprinkled; near this was a small earthenware vase containing
water and finely chopped herbs. At the conclusion of the chant the
song-priest passed his rattle to one of the choir and stirred the
mixture in the bowl with his forefinger, and after a few remarks to the
invalid, who was still in the sweat house, he threw some of the mixture
in upon the hot rocks. This was repeated four times, when the
song-priest returned to his former position. The sweat-house priest took
from his shoulders a Navajo blanket and spread it near the door a little
to the right. A call from one of the attendants was a signal for
Hasjelti and Hostjoghon to appear. The two men personating these gods
were behind a tree south of the sweat house, their bodies, arms, and
legs painted white. Foxskins were attached pendent to the backs of their
girdles. As the gods approached the sweat house, the patient came out
and sat upon the blanket, and Hasjelti took a mountain sheep’s horn, in
the right hand and the piece of hide in the other and rubbed the sick
man, beginning with the limbs; as he rubbed down each limb, he threw his
arms toward the eastern sky and cried “yo-yo!” He also rubbed the head
and body, holding the hands on opposite sides of the body. After this
rubbing, the sick man drank from the bowl of medicine-water, then arose
and bathed himself with the same mixture, the filled gourds being handed
to him four times by Hasjelti, each time accompanied with his peculiar
hoot. Hostjoghon repeated the same ceremony over the invalid. There was
a constant din of rattle and chanting, the gods disappeared, and
immediately thereafter the theurgist gathered the twelve wands from the
base of the sweat house. He removed the blue reed from the basket and
laid it a little to the left of the priest of the sweat house, who in
turn handed it to an attendant to be deposited with the wood of the
sweat house in a neighboring tree.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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