[Illustration: _Yébĭchai_ Sweat - Navaho] _Yébĭchai_ Sweat - Navaho _From Copyright Photograph 1904 by E.S. Curtis_ Each morning during the first four days of the Navaho Yébĭchai healing ceremony, or Night Chant, the patient is sweated—sometimes inside a small sweat-lodge, oftener by being placed upon a spot previously heated by a fire and covered with heavy blankets. The three figures are medicine-men, or singers, chanting. The patient lies under the blankets surrounded by a line of sacred meal in which turkey-feather prayer-sticks, _kĕdán_, are implanted. A description of the ritual and form of the Yébĭchai ceremony,—Kléjĕ Hatál, or Night Chant,—covering its nine days of performance, will give a comprehensive idea of all Navaho nine-day ceremonies, which combine both religious and medical observances. The myth characters personified in this rite are termed Yébĭchai, Grandfather or Paternal Gods. Similar personations appear in other ceremonies, but they figure less prominently. _First Day_: The ceremonial, or medicine, hogán is built some days in advance of the rite. The first day’s ceremony is brief, with few participants. Well after dark the singer, assisted by two men, makes nine little splint hoops—_tsĭpa__n__s yázhĕ kĕdán_—entwined with slip-cords, and places them on the sacred meal in the meal basket. Following this, three men remove their everyday clothing, take Yébĭchai masks, and leave the hogán. These three masked figures are to represent the gods Hasché̆ltĭ, Talking God, Haschĕbaád, Goddess, and Hasché̆lapai, Gray God. When they have gone and passed to the rear of the hogán, the patient comes in, disrobes at the left of the centre, passes around the small fire burning near the entrance of the hogán, and takes his seat in the centre, immediately after which the singing begins. During the third song Hasché̆ltĭ enters with his cross-sticks—_Hasché̆ltĭ balíl_—and opens and places them over the patient’s body, forcing them down as far toward the ground as possible. The second time he places them not so far over the body; the third, not lower than the shoulders; the fourth time, over the head only, each time giving his peculiar call, _Wu-hu-hu-hu-u!_ Then Hasché̆ltĭ takes up a shell with medicine and with it touches the patient’s feet, hands, chest, back, right shoulder, left shoulder, and top of head,—this being the prescribed ceremonial order,—uttering his cry at each placing of the medicine. He next places the shell of medicine to the patient’s lips four times and goes out, after which Haschĕbaád comes in, takes one of the circle _kĕdán_, touches the patient’s body in the same ceremonial order, and finally the lips, at the same time giving the slip-cord a quick pull. Next comes Hasché̆lapai, who performs the same incantations with the _kĕdán_. Again Hasché̆ltĭ enters with the