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
exposed chests, arms, and thighs display the colors of which the entire
bodies were originally composed. The glòï (weasel, _Putorius_) is sacred
to these goddesses. Two of these creatures are shown in the east,
guarding the entrance to the lodge. The appendages at the sides of the
heads of the goddesses represent the glòï-bitcà, or headdresses of glòï
skins of different colors which these mythic personages are said to
wear. Each one bears attached to her right hand a rattle and a charm, or
plume stick, such as the gods in the second picture carry; but, instead
of the basket shown before, we see a conventionalized representation of
a branch of choke cherry in blossom; this consists of five diverging
stems in blue, five roots, and five cruciform blossoms in white. The
choke cherry is a sacred tree, a mountain plant; its wood is used in
making certain sacrificial plume sticks and certain implements of the
dance; it is often mentioned in the songs of this particular rite. Some
other adjuncts of this picture--the red robes embroidered with sunbeams,
the arms and legs clothed with clouds and lightning, the pendants from
the arms, the blue and red armlets, bracelets, and garters--have already
been described when speaking of the second picture. The object in the
left hand is a wand of spruce.
[Illustration:
Bureau of Ethnology
Fifth Annual Report Pl. XVII
THIRD DRY-PAINTING]
173. The rainbow which incloses the picture on three sides is not the
anthropomorphic rainbow. It has no head, neck, arms, or lower
extremities. Five white eagle plumes adorn its southeastern extremity.
Five tail plumes of some blue bird decorate the bend in the southwest.
The plumes of the red shafted flicker (_Colaptes auratus_ var.
_mexicanus_) are near the bend in the northwest and the tail of the
magpie terminates the northeastern extremity. Throughout the myth, it
will be remembered, not only is the House of Dew-Drops spoken of as
adorned with hangings and festoons of rainbows, but many of the holy
dwellings are thus embellished.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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