266 Field Columbian Museum — Anthropology, Vol. VIII. 



where they were then taken care of. Some of the wounded Hopi 

 later on also died, while a great many of them recovered.^ 



108. A HOPI RAID ON A NAVAHO DANCE.^ 



Aliksai! At a certain place the Navaho were living. They were 

 going to have a dance at some place towards the north, so they gath- 

 ered together their ponies and early in the morning they dressed up. 

 The women did not have calico dresses, but wore blue dresses with 

 red borders and silver belts. So when they were all dressed up they 

 mounted their ponies and went to the dance. There were a great 

 many of them. A very heavy dust rose from all their ponies as they 

 traveled on. They went to a place in the large canyon, somewhat 

 north of where Fort Defiance now stands. Towards evening they 

 arrived at the place where the dance was to be. It was in a very 

 deep canyon. They had to go down a steep, dangerous, zigzag trail. 

 The Navaho lived well there; they had good homes and near by 

 some peach orchards. During the night they had their dance. They 

 had prepared a great deal of food of different kinds of meat, and thus 

 they were eating, and during the night they had their Katcina dance. 

 There were a great many Katcinas that had masks on. The people 

 were camped in a circle and had camp-fires, and in the center of the 

 circle was the dance. When they were performing the fifth dance a 

 light was seen in the distance and a big star was rising that came 

 down and fell down near the line of dancers, right in front of the 

 head dancer. 



The Navaho are very much afraid of something happening, so when 

 his star fell down they all jumped on their ponies and began to scatter. 

 Hereupon a great noise was heard west of the camp. The Oraibi had 

 arrived to make a raid on the Navaho, but not the Oraibi from the 

 present village. They then lived a little farther west, where there 

 are some ruins now (the name of which the narrator cannot give). 

 A great battle then ensued, but the Navaho were driven back out of 

 the canyon, because they tried to protect their wives and children. 



• The Navaho, it seems, had used poisoned arrows. The Hopi say that the way the 

 Navaho prepared these arrows was as follows: They would suspend a rattlesnake and place 

 a vessel under it, into which the putrid matter from the decaying rattlesnake dropped. They 

 would mix with this matter poison that they had extracted from the fangs of the rattlesnakes, 

 and with this stuff they would poison their arrows. But the Hopi say that in that battle it 

 often happened that the Hopi would procure the bows and arrows of slain Navaho, and thus 

 shoot their enemies with those poisoned arrows, so that the Navaho were paid back in their own 

 coin, and the Hopi repeat in this connection that a great many Navaho died from these poisoned 

 arrows because their bodies were entirely unprotected, while the bodies of the Hopi were well 

 wrapped with buckskins, which furnished a good protection against the arrows. 



2 Told by Kiihkuima (Shupaiilavi). 



