Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/12

4 gain their favor, stole a number of precious articles from his own parents and brother, or induced his niece to steal them, and thereafter good fortune attends him as a reward for this action. I might cite other similar instances from the Navaho myths. In these days of increasing wealth, the Navahoes may look with disfavor on the thief ; but the time is evidently not long gone by when with them, as among the Spartans, adroit theft was deemed honorable.

Although the Indians have a system of kinship so different to ours, they have a regard for the sacredness of kinship equal or superior to ours. If a man marries within the forbidden degrees of kindred, there is perhaps no worse real punishment for him than social ostracism. As I shall explain later, there are imaginary punishments which in all probability will never come to him. Formal and recognized marriage within forbidden degrees of kindred is perhaps unknown among the Navahoes. The book of Genesis leaves us to infer that consanguineous marriages took place among the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, but the Navaho Origin Legend provides the children of First Man and First Woman with exogamous wives and husbands.

Clandestine intimacies among the closely related are apparently not altogether unknown; but the traditions leave us in no doubt that such intimacies, if unpunished, are yet execrated. The Navaho story of the Origin of the Utes is much like the Hebrew tradition of the origin of the Moabites, but the Navaho shows a delicacy above that of the Hebrew by making the father the willing transgressor and the daughter the innocent victim. When her son is born, she feels no maternal regard for him, but kicks him into a badger-hole and leaves him to his fate. The Navaho scores a point against his enemy, the Ute, just as the Hebrew scores one against his enemy of Moab, by tracing the ancestry of the Ute to this unfortunate child. In the myth of Natinesthani it is indicated that only witches and cannibals are guilty of incest.

Marriage and divorce are both so readily effected among Navahoes that one might easily suppose such a thing as illegitimacy was not recognized among them, or that, if recognized, no stigma could attach to the condition; yet the Navahoes have a word (yutaski) for this state, and the myths indicate that the child who knows not his father is regarded as unfortunate. Except perhaps occasionally a slight whipping, I do not think any punishment falls to the lot of the unfaithful wife. The position of the Navaho woman is one of great independence. In the Navaho Origin Legend it is indicated that severe punishments (such as amputation of the nose) for conjugal infidelity once existed, that they have been abandoned, that the execution of these lay with the husband, but that he might not