Page:Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society V.djvu/280

250 charms. The songs often mention some property of a god which they say is "Bĭza-yedĭgĭ'ngo" (The treasure which makes him holy or sacred). (See par. 367 and note 280.)

247. These medicines are still in use among the Navahoes. The medicine made of gall consists mostly of gall of eagles. If a witch has scattered evil medicine on you, use this. If there are certain kinds of food that disagree with you, and you still wish to eat them, use the vomit medicine. Hunters obtain the materials when they go out hunting. All the totemic animals named (puma, blue fox, yellow fox, wolf, and lynx, see par. 548) vomit when they eat too much. So said the narrator.

248. Buteo borealis. The tail is described as red ("bright chestnut red," Coues) by our ornithologists; but the Navahoes consider it yellow, and call the bird atsé-litsói, or yellow-tail.

249. A-tsó-si-dze ha-tál, or a-tsó-si ha-tál, means feather chant or feather ceremony. The following particulars concerning the ceremony were given by the narrator of the story. Dry-paintings are made on the floor of the medicine-lodge much like those of the klédzi hatál, and others are made representing different animals. It is still occasionally celebrated, but not often, and there are only four priests of the rite living. It lasts nine days, and it has more stories, songs, and acts than any other Navaho ceremony. A deer dance was part of the rite in the old days, but it is not practised now. The rite is good for many things, but especially for deer disease. If you sleep on a dry, undressed deer-skin or foul one, or if a deer sneezes at you or makes any other marked demonstration at you, you are in danger of getting the deer disease.

250. Yó-i ha-tál, or yói-dze ha-tál (bead chant), is a nine days' ceremony, which is becoming obsolete. The author has been informed that there is only one priest of the rite remaining; that he learned it from his father, but that he does not know as much about it as his father did.

251. The device of setting up forked sticks to assist in locating fires seen by night and in remembering the position of distant objects is often mentioned in the Navaho tales. (See pars. 382 and 497.)

252. Equisetum hiemale, and perhaps other species of Equisetum, or horse-tail.

253. ["Klĭs-ka', the arrow-snake, is a long slender snake that moves with great velocity,—so great that, coming to the edge of a cliff when racing, he flies for some distance through the air before reaching the ground again. The Navahoes believe he could soar if he wanted to. He is red and blue on the belly, striped on the back, six feet long or longer. Sometimes moves like a measuring-worm."] From the above description Dr. H. C. Yarrow, formerly curator of reptiles in the Smithsonian Institution, is of the opinion that the arrow-snake is Bascanium flagelliforme.

254. Accipiter cooperii, called gíni by the Navahoes.

255. Compare with description of Spider Woman and her home in paragraph 306. It would seem that the Navahoes believe in more than one Spider Woman. (May be they believe in one for each world.) In paragraph 581 we have an instance of black being assigned to the east and white to the north. (See note 18.)

256. There are several plants in New Mexico and Arizona which become tumble-weeds in the autumn, but the particular weed referred to here is the Amarantus albus. It is called tlotáhi nagi'si, or rolling tlotáhi, by the Navahoes. Tlotáhi is a name applied in common to several species of the Amarantacea and allied Chenopodiacea. (See "Navaho Names for Plants." 312) The seeds of plants of these families formerly constituted an important part of the diet of the Navahoes, and they still eat them to some extent.

257. Tsĭl-dĭl-gĭ'-si is said to mean frightened-weed, scare-weed, or hiding-weed,