Page:Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society V.djvu/237

Rh 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 inclosure. They lighted the fires and dressed the atsá'lei 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 Kĭndotlĭz` 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.

Stay down and eat.

The blue-corn plant's great ear sticks up.

Stay down and eat. The yellow-corn plant's great ear sticks up.

Stay down and eat.

The black-corn plant's great ear sticks up.

Stay down and eat.

All-colored corn's great ear sticks up.

Stay down and eat.

The round-eared corn's great ear sticks up.

Stay down and eat.287

599. This seemed a strange song to the pueblo people, and they all wondered what it could mean; but they soon found out what it meant, for they observed that the dancing Navaho was slowly rising from the ground. First his head and then his shoulders appeared above the heads of the crowd; next his chest and waist; but it was not until his whole body had risen above the level of their heads that they began to realize the loss that threatened them. He was rising toward the sky with the great shell of Kĭntyél, and all the wealth of many pueblos in shell-beads and turquoise on his body. Then they screamed wildly to him and called him by all sorts of dear names—father, brother, son—to come down again, but the