592. They put on him a robe of eagle plumage, such as they wore themselves, and led him to the sky-hole. They said to him: “When you came up from the lower world you were heavy and had to be carried by others. Henceforth you will be light and can move through the air with your own power.” He spread his wings to show that he was ready; the Eagles blew a powerful breath behind him; he went down through the sky-hole, and was wafted down on his outstretched wings until he lit on the summit of Tsótsĭl.
593. He went back to his own relations among the Navahoes; but when he went back everything about their lodge smelt ill; its odors were intolerable to him, and he left it and sat outside.[260] They built for him then a medicine-lodge where he might sit by himself. They bathed his younger brother, clothed him in new raiment, and sent him, too, into the lodge, to learn what his elder brother could tell him. The brothers spent twelve days in the lodge together, during which the elder brother told his story and instructed the younger in all the rites and songs learned among the Eagles.
594. After this he went to visit the pueblo of Kĭntyél, whose inmates had before contemplated such treachery to him; but they did not recognize him. He now looked sleek and well fed. He was beautifully dressed and comely in his person, for the Eagles had moulded, in beauty, his face and form. The pueblo people never thought that this was the poor beggar whom they had left to die in the eagles’ nest. He noticed that there were many sore and lame in the pueblo. A new disease, they told him, had broken out among them. This was the disease which they had caught from the feathers of the eaglets when they were attacking the nest. “I have a brother,” said the Navaho, “who is a potent shaman. He knows a rite that will cure this disease.” The people of the pueblo consulted together and concluded to employ his brother to perform the ceremony over their suffering ones.
595. The Navaho said that he must be one of the atsáʻlei,[261] or first dancers, and that in order to perform the rite properly he must be dressed in a very particular way. He must, he said, have strings of fine beads—shell and turquoise—sufficient to cover his legs and forearms completely, enough to go around his neck, so that he could not bend his head back, and great strings to pass over the shoulder and under the arm on each side. He must have the largest shell basin to be found in either pueblo to hang on his back, and the one next in size to hang on his chest. He must have their longest and best strings of turquoise to hang to his ears. The Wind told him that the greatest shell basin they had was so large that if he tried to embrace it around the edge, his finger-tips would scarcely meet on the opposite side, and that this shell he must insist on having. The next largest shell, Wind told him, was but little smaller.[262]
596. Three days after this conference, people began to come in from different pueblos in the Chaco Canyon and from pueblos on the banks of the San Juan,—all these pueblos are now in ruins,—and soon a great multitude had assembled. Meantime, too, they collected shells and beads from the various pueblos in order to dress the atsáʻlei as he desired. They brought him some great shell basins and told him these were what he wanted for the dance; but he measured them with his arms as Wind had told him, and, finding that his hands joined easily when he embraced the shells, he discarded them. They brought him larger and larger shells, and tried to persuade him that such were their largest; but he tried and rejected all. On the last day, with reluctance, they brought him the great shell of Kĭntyél and the great shell of Kĭ′ndotlĭz. He clasped the first in his arms; his fingers did not meet on the opposite side. He clasped the second in his arms, and the tips of his fingers just met. “These,” said he, “are the shells I must wear when I dance.”
Fig. 37. Circle of branches of the rite of the mountain chant, after ceremony is over.
597. Four days before that on which the last dance was to occur, the pueblo people sent out messengers to the neighboring camps of Navahoes, to invite the latter to witness the exhibition of the last night and to participate in it with some of their alíli (dances or dramas). One of the messengers went to the Chelly Canyon and there he got Gánaskĭdi, with his son and daughter, to come and perform a dance. The other messengers started for the Navaho camp at the foot of Tsótsĭl on the south (near where Cobero is now). On his way he met an akánĭnĭli, or messenger, coming from Tsótsĭl to invite the people of the Chaco Canyon to a great Navaho ceremony. (You have heard all about the meeting of these messengers in the legend of the mountain chant. I shall not now repeat it.)[263] The messengers exchanged bows and quivers as a sign they had met one another, and the messenger from Kĭntyél returned to his people without being able to get the Navahoes to attend. This is the reason that, on the last night of the great ceremony of yói hatál, there are but few different dances or shows.
598. On the evening of the last day they built a great circle of branches, such as the Navahoes build now for the rites of the mountain chant ([fig. 37]), and a great number of people crowded into the enclosure. They lighted the fires and dressed the atsáʻlei in all their fine beads and shells just as he desired them to dress him. They put the great shell of Kĭntyél on his back, and the great shell of Kĭ′ndotlĭz on his chest, and another fine shell on his forehead. Then the Navaho began to dance, and his brother, the medicine-man, began to sing, and this was the song he sang:—
The white-corn plant’s great ear sticks up.