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
25. They set out on their journey again early in the morning. At
Çòinçeski‘ (Scattered Springs) they stopped for a little while to eat,
but the only food they gave the Navajo was the full of his palm of
service berries. When they arrived on the south side of Çòtsosi (Narrow
Water) they halted for the night and a number went out to hunt. Among
them they secured two deer, one large and one small; the feet of these
they gave to their captive for his supper. Next morning they gave him a
piece of liver, half of which he ate and the rest he kept. They moved on
rapidly and rested for the night at Dsil nahoyàl, where there was a
spring. They had given him nothing to eat all that day, and at night
they gave him nothing; so it was well for him that he had secreted part
of the liver. This he ate after dark. On the third morning he had to set
out fasting and had to go on foot as usual. About noon, however, one of
the Ute took pity on him and lent him a horse to ride, while the owner
of the horse walked all the afternoon. That night they arrived at the
bank of a large river, and here they gave him to understand, by signs,
that this was the last river they would cross until they got home.
Beyond the river there was nothing in sight but a great plain.
26. By the light of the morning, however, on the next day, he discerned
some mountains showing their points faintly above the northern horizon.
To these the Ute pointed and motioned to him to go ahead. They did not
follow him immediately; but saddled up at their leisure while the Navajo
went on. Though he was now for some time alone on the trail and out of
sight of his captors, he knew that he could not escape; all around and
before him was a desert plain where he could not discover a single
hiding place; so he trudged on, tired and hungry and sorrowing, and he
wept all along the way. At noon they gave him another handful of
berries.
27. At night they came to a plain situated between four mountains, one
on the east, one on the south, one on the west, and one on the north,
and here there was a great encampment of Ute, whose tents were scattered
around in different places on the plain. There was one tent whose top
was painted black and whose base was painted white and which had a
forked pole set in the ground in front of it. To this his master, the
old man who had saved his life and taken him by the arm on the occasion
of his capture, led him, while the rest of the war party departed to
their respective tents. The old man hung his own arms and accouterments
on the pole, and the slave, following his example, hung his deer skin
mask and robe on the forks and laid his crutches against the pole, and
he prayed to the head of the deer, saying:
Whenever I have appealed to you, you have helped me, my pet.
Once you were alive, my pet.
Take care that I do not die, my pet.
Watch over me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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