Page:Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society V.djvu/60

42 the notes. But there are six elements of the worship which constitute such important parts in all the great rites that brief descriptions of them are presented in this introduction. These six are: Sacrifice, painting, masquerade, dance, prayer, and song. The last has been already discussed (par. 41 et seq.).

93. Sacrifices.—The sacrifices of the Navahoes are innocent and bloodless. Their kindly gods are easily propitiated. Like their worshippers, they are all fond of tobacco, and they prize a few feathers and beads. Even the chief war god demands no smoking hearts or blood of captives; a little painted cigarette is all he asks in return for his favors. An extensive chapter might be written about the sacrificial cigarettes and sticks which the Navahoes call ketan (Englished, kethawn), but a short description of them must suffice here. (See note 12.)

94. Cigarettes.—The cigarettes are usually made of the hollow joints of the common reed (Phragmites communis), but other plants are sometimes used. To form a cigarette, a piece of the reed is cut off with a stone knife, the node being excluded; it is rubbed with sandstone, so that the paint may adhere; it is painted with some symbolical device; a wad of feathers is inserted into it to keep the tobacco from falling out; it is filled with some kind of native tobacco,223 usually the Nicotiana attenuata, or dsĭ´lnato of the Navahoes; it is sealed with moistened pollen and symbolically lighted with a rock crystal, which is held up to the sky and touched to the tip of the cigarette. After it has been prayed over it is taken out and left for—i.e., sacrificed to—the god for whom it is intended. The god, they say, recognizes it by its symbolic painting and by the place where it is sacrificed. He picks it up, smells and examines it. If he is satisfied that it is properly made and that it is for him, he takes it and bestows on the supplicant the favors asked.

95. Sacrificial Sticks.—Besides the cigarettes, small sticks are used as sacrifices to the gods. These are made from a variety of woods,—different gods and different occasions requiring woods of different sorts,—and they are painted in a variety of ways for the same reasons. They are usually made in pairs, one for the male and the other for the female. Celibacy is not practised by the Navaho gods; every deity has its mate, and she must be propitiated as well as he. The female is distinguished in some way from the male, and this is usually done by cutting a small facet at the tip end of the female stick (see fig. 23), to represent the square mask worn by one who masquerades as a goddess in the ceremonies. He who appears as a god wears a round cap-like mask (fig. 27), and the round cut end of the stick sufficiently represents this.

96. Often the feathers of different kinds of birds are sacrificed