Navaho Legends

by Unknown

Fig. 20. Ordinary loom.

39. He had not been many weeks in New Mexico when he discovered that the dances to which Dr. Letherman refers were religious ceremonials, and later he found that these ceremonials might vie in allegory, symbolism, and intricacy of ritual with the ceremonies of any people, ancient or modern. He found, erelong, that these heathens, pronounced godless and legendless, possessed lengthy myths and traditions—so numerous that one can never hope to collect them all, a pantheon as well stocked with gods and heroes as that of the ancient Greeks, and prayers which, for length and vain repetition, might put a Pharisee to the blush.

40. But what did the study of appalling “succession of grunts” reveal? It revealed that besides improvised songs, in which the Navahoes are adepts, they have knowledge of thousands of significant songs—or poems, as they might be called—which have been composed with care and handed down, for centuries perhaps, from teacher to pupil, from father to son, as a precious heritage, throughout the wide Navaho nation. They have songs of travelling, appropriate to every stage of the journey, from the time the wanderer leaves his home until he returns. They have farming songs, which refer to every stage of their simple agriculture, from the first view of the planting ground in the spring to the “harvest home.” They have building songs,[6] which celebrate every act in the structure of the hut, from “thinking about it” to moving into it and lighting the first fire. They have songs for hunting, for war, for gambling, in short for every important occasion in life, from birth to death, not to speak of prenatal and post-mortem songs. And these songs are composed according to established (often rigid) rules, and abound in poetic figures of speech.

41. Sacred Songs.—Perhaps the most interesting of their metrical compositions are those connected with their sacred rites,—their religious songs. These rites are very numerous, many of them of nine days’ duration, and with each is associated a number of appropriate songs. Sometimes, pertaining to a single rite, there are two hundred songs or more which may not be sung at other rites.

42. The songs must be known to the priest of the rite and his assistants in a most exact manner, for an error made in singing a song may be fatal to the efficacy of a ceremony. In no case is an important mistake tolerated, and in some cases the error of a single syllable works an irreparable injury. A noteworthy instance of this rule is a song sung at the beginning of work on the last night of the great ceremony of the night chant. The rite is one which may cost the patron from two hundred to three hundred dollars. It has lasted eight days and nights, when four singers, after long and careful instruction by the priest, come forth painted, adorned, and masked as gods to sing this song of the atsáʻlei. Several hundred people—many from the farthest confines of the Navaho land—have come to sit up all night and witness the public ceremonies. The song is long, and is mostly made up of meaningless or obsolete expressions which convey no idea to the mind of the singer, yet not a single vocable may be omitted, mispronounced, or misplaced. A score or more of critics who know the song by heart are listening with strained attention. If the slightest error is made it is at once proclaimed, the fruitless ceremony terminates abruptly, and the disappointed multitude disperses.

43. The songs all contain significant words; but these, for poetic requirements, are often greatly distorted, and the distortions must be kept in mind. In speaking thus, scant justice is done to the Navaho poets. Similar distortions found in an Aryan tongue with a written literature are spoken of as figures of orthography and etymology, and, although there is yet no standard of spelling for the Navaho language, we would perhaps do well to apply the same terms in speaking of the Navaho compositions. The distortions are not always left to the whim of the composer. They are made systematically, as a rule. If the language were reduced to a standard spelling, we should find that the Navaho poets have as many figures of these classes as the English poets have, and perhaps more.

44. Some of the words, too, are archaic,—they mean nothing in modern Navaho; but the priests assign traditional meanings to them, and this adds to the task of memorizing. But, in addition to the significant words, there are (as instanced above) numerous meaningless vocables in all songs, and these must be recited with a care at least equal to that bestowed on the rest of the composition. These meaningless sounds are commonly introduced in the preludes and refrains of the stanzas and in the verse endings, but they may occur anywhere in the song.

Fig. 21. Loom for weaving diagonal cloth.