Page:Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society V.djvu/283

Rh shoulder-blades. All these bows are shown as complete (or strung) except those on the left leg and left side of the back, which are represented open or unstrung, as shown in the plate and fig. 41. The symbol at the left leg is made first, that on the left shoulder last of all. All the component lines of the symbol are drawn from above downward; fig. 41 shows the order in which they must be drawn. The symbols must all turn in one direction. The personator wears a collar of fox-skin, a number of rich necklaces of shell, turquoise and coral, a fine skirt or sash around his loins (usually scarlet baize, bayeta, but velvet or any rich material will do), a belt decorated with silver, and ordinary moccasins. He carries in his right hand a great stone knife, with which, in the scene of succor, he makes motions at the patient and at the medicine-lodge to draw out the disease. The patient prays to him, and gives him a cigarette painted black and decorated with the bow-symbols in white. This cigarette is preferably deposited under a piñon-tree. A dry-painting of this god has never been seen by the author, and he has been told that none is ever made.

Fig. 41. Diagram of the bow-symbol on the left leg of the personator of Nayénĕzgani. Fig. 42. Diagram of queue-symbol on the left leg of the personator of Tó'badzĭstsíni.

270. Plate VII. represents the personator of the War God, Tó'badzĭstsíni, or Child of the Water, as he appears in the act of succor described in notes 206 and 269. His body and limbs are painted with a native red ochre; his hands are smeared with white earth; and eight symbols are drawn in his body in white,—two on the chest, two on the arms, two on the legs, and two on the back, partly over the shoulder-blades. As with the bow-symbols of Nayénezgani (note 269), two of the symbols are left open or unfinished,—that on the left leg (painted first) and that over the left shoulder-blade (painted last), to indicate (some say) that the labors of the god are not yet done. Fig. 42 shows the order and direction in which each component line of the symbol must be drawn. The symbols repre-