[89.] The next part of the ceremonies (or, shall I say, the treatment?) was a fumigation. The medicine man took from the fire a large glowing coal, placed it beside the woman, and scattered on it some powdered substance which instantly gave forth a dense smoke and a strong fragrance that filled the lodge. The woman held her face over the coal and inhaled the fumes with deep inspirations. When the smoke no longer rose the coal was quenched with water and carried out of the lodge by the chief, Manuelito, probably to be disposed of in some established manner. Then the woman left the lodge and singing and rattling were resumed.
[90.] While the rites just described were in progress some assistants were busy with other matters. One made, from the spotted skin of a fawn, two bags in which the akáninilis or couriers were to carry their meal on the morrow’s journey. Another brought in and hung over the doorway a bundle of dry, withered plants which he had just gathered. Glancing up at them I recognized the Gutierrezia and the Bouteloua. The bundle may have contained the other plants mentioned in the myth (paragraph [44]). They were hung up there till the next day, to be then used in a manner which will be described (paragraph [101]).
[91.] The sheepskin on which the sacrifices had been placed was taken away and a blanket was spread on the ground to receive some more sacred articles from the bag of the chanter. These were five long notched wands, some tail feathers of the wild turkey, some small downy feathers of the eagle, and some native mineral pigments—yellow ocher, a ferruginous black, and a native blue. With the pigments the assistants painted the notched wands; with the plumes the chanter trimmed them. (See [Fig. 51] and [Plate XI].) Then they were called çobolçà, a word of obscure etymology, or in¢ia‘, which signifies sticking up or standing erect. They are called in this paper “plumed wands.”
[92.] While some were making the çobolçà others busied themselves grinding, between stones, large quantities of pigments, coarser than those referred to above, to be used in making the sand pictures or dry paintings of the ceremony. They made five colors: black, of charcoal; white, of white sandstone; red, of red sandstone; yellow, of yellow sandstone; and “blue,” of the black and white, mixed in proper proportions; of course this was a gray, but it was their only cheap substitute for the cerulean tint, and, combined with the other colors on the sanded floor, in the dim light of the lodge, it could not easily be distinguished from a true blue. It may be remarked in passing that the Navajo apply to many things which are gray the term they use for blue (çolíj); thus the gray fox is called màï-çolíj (blue coyote) and a gray sheep is called a blue sheep. Yet that they make a distinction between these colors is, I think, fairly evident from the fact that in painting small articles, such as kethàwns and masks, they use the more costly articles of turquoise, malachite, and indigo. These coarse pigments for the dry paintings were put for convenience on curved pieces of piñon bark.
From time to time, during this and the following days, as the heaps of colored powder diminished under the hands of the artists, more stones and charcoal were pulverized to replenish them.
[93.] About noon they cleared off that portion of the floor of the lodge which lay west of the fire, and brought, in blankets, a quantity of dry sand, which they spread out over the cleared portion of the floor in a layer of the nearly constant depth of three inches. They smoothed the surface with the broad oaken battens used in weaving. Now for a time all operations were suspended in the lodge while the chanter went out to plant the çobolçà, or plumed wands, in front of the medicine lodge, and to lay beside them the collars of beaver skins and the symbols for wings which the couriers were to wear next day. ([Fig. 51].) These articles, it was said, were placed outside as a sign to the gods that the holy pictures were being drawn; but it is not improbable that they were intended also as a sign to uninitiated mortals. However that may be, they were taken in as soon as the picture was finished. The great painting was begun about 1 o’clock p.m., was finished about 3, and was allowed to remain until the ceremonies at night were concluded. It will be described later. (Paragraphs [160] et seq.)
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Fig. 51. The çobolçà, or plumed wands, as seen from the door of the medicine lodge. |
[94.] When the picture was completed food was brought in, and there was a good deal of eating and sleeping and smoking done. Being informed that nothing more would be done until after nightfall, I went to my own shelter, to elaborate some of my more hasty sketches while matters were still fresh in my mind. At 7 o’clock a messenger came to tell me that ceremonies were about to be resumed. During my absence the principal character in the night’s performance—a man arrayed in evergreens—had been dressed.
[95.] I found, on returning to the lodge, a number of spectators seated around close to the edge of the apartment. The fire burned in the center. The sick woman, with some companions, sat in the south. The qaçàli, with a few assistants who joined him in singing and shaking rattles, was seated at the north, at the place where the circumference of the lodge was enlarged. (Paragraph [83].) There was a space about two feet wide and six feet long between them and the wall, or roof if you choose so to call it, of the lodge. I was assigned a place in the west. The sick woman was directed to move from the position she occupied