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
new moccasins to protect his feet, the Navajo set out from the cave.
35. It was nightfall when he emerged. He turned his face in the
direction of his home and walked rapidly all the night. As day dawned he
began to feel hopeful; but, ere the sun rose, distant sounds, which grew
louder and louder, reached his ear. He knew them to be the voices of his
pursuers and again he became sorely afraid. He hurried on and came near
the foot of a high isolated pinnacle of rock, whose top appeared to be
inaccessible. Glancing to the summit, however, he beheld standing there
a black mountain sheep. Thinking that this singular vision was sent to
him as a sign from the yays (gods) and boded well for him, he came to
the base of the rock, when the sheep addressed him, saying: “My
grandson, come around to the other side of the rock and you will find a
place where you may ascend.” He went around as he was bidden and saw the
cleft in the rock, but it was too narrow for him to climb in it. Then
the sheep blew into the cleft and it spread out so wide that he entered
it easily and clambered to the summit. Here he found the sheep standing
in four tracks, marked or sunken in the rock, one hoof in each track,
and under the center of his body was a small hole in the rock. Into this
hole the sheep bade him enter; but he replied that the hole was too
small. Then the sheep blew on the hole and it spread so wide open that
both the man and the sheep entered easily and descended into the heart
of the rock. Here there were again four apartments; two of them were
blue and two were black; rainbows extended in all directions through
them. In the fourth room, which was black, the sheep left the Navajo to
rest, and departed. Soon the fugitive heard, as on the previous day,
when he lay hidden in the cave of Qastcèëlçi, the voices of the angry
Ute calling and haranguing all around the rock, and he continued to hear
them for a very long time. Soon after the clamor ceased the sheep
returned to him to notify him that his enemies had withdrawn and that he
could set out on his journey again without fear.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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