5 Versions differ as to the number of worlds through which the
progenitors of the Navaho passed. Some give three before this one,
others but one. The version adopted by the Bahozhonchi, a religious
order or medicine society whose rites and ceremonies are the oldest
and most widely known of any in the tribe, treats of two worlds
only: the one below, from which the Digi{~COMBINING BREVE~}n, or Holy People, migrated
in the form of insects, birds, and beasts, and to which the dead
return; and the present, into which was born man in his present
image, created of pollen, corn, white shell, turquoise, and rain by
the Digi{~COMBINING BREVE~}n. These Digi{~COMBINING BREVE~}n were the animals which never assumed
absolute material form on this earth, and the gods who perfected the
creation. The creation of the world below, together with all food
products, plant life, and animals known to the Navaho, is credited
to First Man and First Woman, Astse Hastin and Astse Estsan; but the
myth does not go back to that creation, nor, save for the plant and
animal life and a little earth used in making mountains, does it
assume the use of any part of the underworld in the making or
completion of this. So far as the inhabitants now found in the image
of man are concerned, they were made, and first existed, on this
earth, and did not develop from a lower order.
6 The Navaho sometimes vary the assignment of their directional colors
by relating, like the Apache of Arizona, black to the east and white
to the north.
7 These four names still survive among the Navaho, applied to as many
clans.