In the East, the use of the reddish or purple powder called the "gulál" is widely prevalent, but it is used at the feast of Huli, which occurs at the time of the vernal equinox. There seems to have been used in Japan in very ancient days a powder identical with the hoddentin, and, like it, credited with the power to cure and rejuvenate. In the mythical period, from the most ancient times to about B. C. 200, being the period of the so-called pure Japanese "medicine," it is related that Ona-muchi-no-mikoko gave these directions to a hare which had been flayed by a crocodile: "Go quickly now to the river mouth, wash thy body with fresh water, then take the pollen of the sedges and spread it about, and roll about upon it; whereupon thy body will certainly be restored to its original state."[398] There is no indication that in the above case the "pollen of the sedges" had ever occupied a place in the list of foods. It would appear that its magical effects were strictly dependent upon the fact that it was recognized as the reproductive agent in the life of the plant. No allusion has yet been made to the hoddentin of the Navajo, who are the brothers of the Apache. Surgeon Matthews[399] has referred to it under the name of tqa-di-tinᐟ, or ta-di-tinᐟ, "the pollen, especially the pollen of corn." This appears to me to be a very interesting case of a compromise between the religious ideas of two entirely different systems or sects. The Navajo, as now known to us, are the offspring of the original Apache or Tinneh invaders and the refugees from the Rio Grande and Zuñi Pueblos, who fled to the fierce and cruel Apache to seek safety from the fiercer and more cruel Spanish. The Apache, we have shown, offer up in sacrifice their traditional food, the pollen of the tule. The Zuñi, as we have also shown, offer up their traditional food, the meal of corn, to which there have since been added sea shells and other components with a symbolical significance. The Navajo, the progeny of both, naturally seek to effect a combination or compromise of the two systems and make use of the pollen of the corn. Kohl narrates an Ojibwa legend to the effect that their god Menaboju, returning from the warpath, painted his face with "pleasant yellow stripes ... of the yellow foam that covers the water in spring," and he adds that this is "probably the yellow pollen that falls from the pine." He quotes[400] another legend of the magic red powder for curing diseases once given by the snake spirit of the waters to an Ojibwa. Godfrey Higgins[401] has this to say of the use of pollen by the ancients which he recognizes as connected with the principle of fertility: