The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony: Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1883-84, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1887, pages 379-468Matthews, Washington
Religion
The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony: Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1883-84, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1887, pages 379-468
Matthews, Washington
Mountainway (Navajo rite); Navajo Indians -- Rites and ceremonies
21. Next day the elder brother desired the younger to stay at home,
saying that he would like to hunt alone. As usual, the old man warned
him against the south, and directed him to hunt in the country north of
the hogán. He set out, accordingly, to the north; but he returned at
night without any game. Again on the following morning he set out alone,
and this time went to the west, as his father had directed. He hunted
all day without success, until near sunset, when it was time for him to
return. Then he remembered what his father had told him of the shrubs
that would always have deer for his arrow. Looking around he saw a cliff
rose, into which he shot his dart, and at the same instant he observed a
deer falling in the shrub. He ran to the spot and found a dead doe. When
he had skinned and dressed it, he could discover no high tree at hand
that he might hang it on to keep it safe from the wolves, so he laid the
meat on the top of the cliff rose, spread the skin over it, stuck an
arrow upright on the top of it, and went home. On his way he often said
to himself, “Why does my father bid me never to go to the south?” He
pondered much on the subject, and before he reached the hut he had
determined to satisfy his curiosity and to go to the south on the first
good opportunity. When he got home he told where he had laid the meat,
and, fearing that the crows or coyotes might get at it, he begged his
brother to hasten and bring it in. When the meat came he asked that a
piece might be broiled for his lunch on the hunt next day. All that
night the thought of his father’s prohibition continued to haunt his
mind and would not be dismissed.
22. On the morrow, when he went forth on his hunt, his father gave him
the usual injunctions, saying: “Hunt in any direction from the lodge
that you will; but go not to the south.” He departed as if he were going
to the east; but when he got out of sight from the hogán he turned round
to the south and pursued his way in that direction. He went on until he
came to the San Juan River, and he forded it at a place a little above
Beautiful Under the Cottonwoods, where they had crossed it before. He
went on to a place called Tyèl-saka¢ (Erect Cat-Tail Rushes) and thence
to a place called Dsiskí¢ (Clay Hill). Here he laid his deer skin mask
and his weapons on the ground and climbed the hill to observe the
surrounding country for game. But instead of looking south in the
direction in which he was going he looked to the north, the country in
which dwelt his people. Before him were the beautiful peaks of
[¢]epéntsa, with their forested slopes. The clouds hung over the
mountain, the showers of rain fell down its sides, and all the country
looked beautiful. And he said to the land, “Aqalàni!” (greeting), and a
feeling of loneliness and homesickness came over him, and he wept and
sang this song:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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