It has been stated that the Navaho is exceedingly superstitious about making or allowing to be made any representation of a snake, and that on one occasion a silversmith who offended by beginning to make a bracelet of rattlesnake design was cruelly beaten, his workshop demolished, and the hated emblem destroyed. This may be true, but I have ridden all over the Navaho reservation wearing both a rattlesnake ring and bracelet, and have had several made for me, on different parts of the reservation, by different peshlikais. I am now wearing a ring of rattlesnake design made by a Navah silversmith and given to me with this thought as explained to me by the donor: "The snake watches and guards for us our springs and water-courses. Water is the most precious thing we possess in the desert. I make for you this ring in the form of a snake, that the power that guards our most precious thing may always guard you."
Wife of Leve Leve, Wallapai Chief.
The March of the Antelope Priests, Oraibi, 1902.
I wore this ring when unfortunately I was bitten by a rattlesnake at Phœnix, in February, 1902; but as I speedily recovered, I am satisfied that my Navaho friend will insist that it was the ring and its virtues that kept me from sudden death, and that hastened my complete recovery.[4]
A most interesting settlement of Navahoes is that of To-hatch-i, or Little Water, some forty miles northwest of Gallup, New Mexico. Here I was invited by Mrs. E. H. De Vore, the teacher of the government school. The drive is over an interesting country, part of which is covered by junipers and cedars, and where the road winds around strangely and fantastically sculptured rocks as it reaches the great Navaho plateau.
The major portion of the Navahoes were kind and hospitable and greeted me cordially. The day after my arrival I was talking with Hosteen Da-ä-zhy about the other Indian tribes I had visited, when suddenly the thought came to me which I immediately expressed: "When I go to my friends the Hopis and Acomas and Zunis they always know I am weary and tired with my long journey across the sandy desert, and they have their women prepare a bowl of "tal-a-wush" and cool and refresh me by shampooing my head." Talawush is the Navaho for the root of the amole (soap-root), which, macerated and then beaten up and down in a bowl of water, produces a delicious lather, which, for a shampoo, has no equal.