_From Copyright Photograph 1904 by E.S. Curtis_
The domestic equipment of the Navaho is simplicity itself and reflects the
simple life of the tribe. Of household furniture there is none. The
bedding consists usually of a few sheepskins; cooking utensils are earthen
pots of their own making, and cups, knives, and spoons of civilization.
Plates they do not need, as the family eat directly from the pot in which
the food is cooked. The principal food is mutton, boiled, and corn
prepared in many ways. Considerable flour obtained from traders is
consumed; this is leavened slightly and made into small cakes, which are
cooked over the embers like Mexican tortillas.
The women are an important factor in the Navaho tribe. The sheep usually,
and the house, with all that pertains to it, always are the property of
the wife. The independent spirit of the women, instilled by this
incontestable property right, manifests itself throughout the tribe, and
by reason of it the Navaho husband is not apt to seek an opportunity to
criticise his wife so long as she is in a position to say, "If I and the
hogan do not suit you, go elsewhere!" Polygamy is common, but as a rule
the wives of one man are sisters, an arrangement conducive to domestic
harmony.
Many of the Navaho men are skilled silversmiths. Every well-to-do Navaho
possesses a silver belt consisting of a dozen or more wrought oval discs,
each about two by three inches, fastened to a leather strap. Such a belt,
weighing several pounds, is of course a valuable piece of property. The
wearer may also have a broad silver bracelet set with turquoise, a heavy
string of silver beads with a massive pendant of the same material, and a
pair of deerskin leggings with a row of silver buttons on the outer side.
Frequently their horses are gaily bedecked with bridles and saddles
heavily weighted with silver ornaments. The long strap over the shoulder,
from which the pouch of the medicine-man is suspended, is always studded
with silver buttons. Mexican coins, especially the peso, are the principal
source of all this silverwork, the Navaho preferring this coin to our own
dollar because it is heavier. Buttons and beads also are made from
American dimes and twenty-five cent pieces; the small beads from dimes,
and the larger ones from two coins of the same value. They learned
silversmithing from the Mexicans, but since their first lessons have
developed a high degree of individuality in the art. While the metal-work
of the Navaho at the present time is practically all in silver, only a few
copper objects being made, their earliest work in metal was with iron, and
occasionally an example of this is found. The silver and shell bead
jewelry of the Navaho is his savings bank. During times of prosperity he
becomes the possessor of all the jewelry his means afford, and when poor
crops or long winters threaten distress he pawns it at a trader's, so that
many of the traders often have thousands of dollars' worth of silverwork
and shell beads on hand at one time. The system seems to be a very fair
one, and in time of stress is certainly a boon to the impecunious Navaho.
The little pottery made by this people is an undecorated ware for
utilitarian purposes only. For carrying water a gum-coated water bottle of
basketry is in general use. Few baskets are made, and these are of but a
single pattern--a flattish tray for use in ceremonies. Most of the baskets
used by the Navaho in their ceremonies, however, are purchased from
neighboring tribes, especially the Havasupai and the Paiute, who weave
them primarily for purposes of trade. Such baskets must be of a prescribed
pattern, with a break in the design at one side. When the basket is in use
this side is always placed toward the east.
Most Navaho ceremonies are conducted, at least primarily, for the purpose
of healing disease; and while designated medicine ceremonies, they are, in
fact, ritualistic prayers. There are so many of these ceremonies that no
student has yet determined their number, which reaches into scores, while
the component ritual prayers of some number hundreds. The principal
ceremonies are those that require nine days and nine nights in their
performance. Of the many now known the names of nine are here given: Kleje
Hatal, Night Chant;(4) Tzilhki{~COMBINING BREVE~}chi Hatal, Mountain Chant; Hozhoni Hatal,
Happiness Chant; Natoi Hatal, Shooting Chant; Toi Hatal, Water Chant;
Atsosi Hatal, Feather Chant; Yoi Hatal, Bead Chant; Hochonchi Hatal,
Evil-Spirit Chant; Mai Hatal, Coyote Chant. Each is based on a mythic
story, and each has four dry-paintings, or so-called altars. Besides these
nine days' ceremonies there are others whose performance requires four
days, and many simpler ones requiring only a single day, each with its own
dry-painting.
[Illustration: _Pike{~COMBINING BREVE~}hodiklad_ - Navaho]
_Pike{~COMBINING BREVE~}hodiklad_ - Navaho
_From Copyright Photograph 1907 by E.S. Curtis_
This, the first of the dry-paintings employed in the rites of the Mountain
Chant--a nine days' healing ceremony of the Navaho--as in the Night Chant,
is used on the fifth night, when the purpose of the performance is to
frighten the patient, and thus banish the evil within him. The name of
this painting, "Frighten Him On It," is identical with that of the one
used at the corresponding moment in the Night Chant.
The whole represents the den of a hibernating bear. Inside the ceremonial
hogan is thrown up a bank of earth two or three feet high, with an opening
toward the doorway. Colored earths picture bear-tracks leading in;
bear-tracks and sunlight--sun dogs--are represented at the four quarters,
and the bear himself, streaked with sunlight, in the centre. The twigs at
the entrance of the bear den represent trees, behind which bears are wont
to dig their dens in the mountain side. Everything tends to make the
patient think of bears. He enters midst deep silence and takes his seat
upon the pictured animal. The play of his imagination has barely begun
when a man, painted and garbed as a bear, rushes in, uttering hideous
snarls and growls, in which all assembled join. Women patients seldom fail
to faint.
The figures shown in the dry-paintings are conventionalized
representations of the characters in Navaho mythology and of incidents in
the myth. With how many such paintings the Navaho medicine-men are
familiar is an unanswered question; but more than sixty have been noted,
some of them most elaborate. In making them, the ground within the
ceremonial hogan is evenly covered with fine brown earth, upon which the
figures are drawn with fine sands and earths of many colors allowed to
flow between the thumb and the first two fingers. The Navaho become so
skilled in this work that they can draw a line as fine as a broad pencil
mark. Many of the paintings are comparatively small, perhaps not more than
four feet in diameter; others are as large as the hogan permits, sometimes
twenty-four feet across. To make such a large painting requires the
assistance of all the men who can conveniently work at it from early
morning until mid-afternoon.
The most elaborate ceremonies are conducted between the first frost of
autumn and the second moon following the winter solstice. While primarily
designed to restore the health of an individual, they are intended also to
benefit the entire tribe, many of the prayers being offered for the
general welfare of the people rather than for the patient under immediate
treatment. Nor, so far as the individual is concerned, is the ceremony
designed necessarily for the cure of an acute ailment, but is for the
treatment of long-standing chronic afflictions, mental or physical.
Especially peculiar is the Navaho belief that many illnesses are the
results of fright to which ancestors have been subjected during prenatal
life, and long and costly ceremonies are often performed to rid persons of
such baneful inheritance. In fact Indians physically normal have submitted
to prolonged treatment by their medicine-men when advised by them for such
imaginative reasons to submit to it.
The medicine-men, who are termed singers, _hatali_, are a dominant factor
in the Navaho life. Like all primitive people, the Navaho are intensely
religious, and the medicine-men, whose function it is to become versed in
the mysteries of religion, are ever prone to cultivate in the minds of the
people the belief that they are powerful not only in curing disease of
mind and body but of preventing it by their incantations. Anyone who
possesses the requisite ability may become a medicine-man, but owing to
the elaborate ceremonies connected with their practices it requires long
years of application ere one can attain sufficient knowledge to give him
standing among his tribesmen. To completely master the intricacies of any
one of the many nine days' ceremonies requires close application during
the major portion of a man's lifetime. The only way a novice has of
learning is by assisting the elders in the performance of the rites, and
as there is little probability that opportunity will be afforded him to
participate in more than two or three ceremonies in a year, his
instruction is necessarily slow. The medicine-men recognize the fact that
their ritual has been decadent for some time, and they regard it as
foreordained that when all the ceremonies are forgotten the world will
cease to exist.
[Illustration: _Hastin Yazhe_ - Navaho]
_Hastin Yazhe_ - Navaho
_From Copyright Photograph 1904 by E.S. Curtis_
The most pronounced dread manifested by the Navaho is that derived from
their belief respecting the spirits of the dead. It is thought that the
spirit leaves the body at death and travels to a place toward the north
where there is a pit whence the gods and the animals emerged from an
underworld before the first Navaho were created, and which the dead now
enter. Their myths tell of the disappearance of a beautiful daughter of
one of the animal chiefs on the fourth day after the gods and the animals
came up into this world; diligent search was unrewarded until two of the
searchers looked down through the hole and espied her sitting beside a
stream in the lower world combing her hair. Four days later death came to
these searchers, so that now the Navaho will go to any extreme to avoid
coming into contact with spirits of the dead, _tsi{~COMBINING BREVE~}ndi_, which they
believe travel anywhere and everywhere at will, often doing evil, but
never good. The body is prepared for burial previous to death, and is
never touched afterward if it can be avoided.
To the end that the spirit may begin aright its journey to the afterworld,
the body is taken out of the hogan through an opening specially made in
the wall on the northern side, for the doorway always faces the east. The
immediate relatives of the deceased avoid looking at the corpse if
possible. Friends of the family or distant relations usually take charge
of the burial. A couple of men dig a grave on a hillside and carry the
body there wrapped in blankets. No monument is erected to mark the spot.
Before the body is taken out, the hogan is vacated and all necessary
utensils are carried away. The two men who bury the remains of the former
occupant carefully obliterate with a cedar bough all footprints that the
relations of the deceased may have made in the hogan, in order to conceal
from the departed spirit the direction in which they went should it return
to do them harm. The premises are completely abandoned and the house often
burned. Never will a Navaho occupy a _tsi{~COMBINING BREVE~}ndi hogan_, and when travelling
at night he will take a roundabout trail in order to avoid one. Formerly
horses were killed at the grave. So recently as 1906 a horse was
sacrificed within sight of a Catholic mission on the reservation, that its
spirit might accompany that of a dead woman to the afterworld. This horse
was the property of the woman, and her husband, fearing to retain it, yet
not daring to kill it himself, called upon another to do so.