GA.TSCIIET — KAS. I.EG. CO.MMEVTARY. [65] 33 



character: '■'■here they also found four herbs or roots^ xvhich 

 SANG and disclosed their virtues." This circumstance fully en- 

 titles us to explain the above colors of the fires by conjurers' rules 

 similar to the ones mentioned above, in which the "sacred" num- 

 ber four plays a prominent part. 



But, before arriving at a decision, let us quote some of the 

 more prominent Indian myths and mythic ideas which distinctly 

 associate colors with the points of the horizon. 



The relation of the points of the horizon to certain colors is 

 clearly defined in the Navajo creation-myth as published by Dr. 

 W. Matthews.* The following extracts embody the most import- 

 ant features of this instructive myth : 



In the second world, to which the primitive people had ascended from 

 the first, there was light'.: in the east there was a great darkness; it was 

 not a cloud, but it was like a cloud. In the south there was a blue li^ht, in 

 the west a yellow light, and in the north a white light. At times the dark- 

 ness would rise in the east until it overspread the whole sky and made the 

 night. Then the darkness would sink down, the blue light would rise 

 gradually in the south, the yellow light in the west, and the white light 



in the north, until they met in the zenith and made the day Now 



there dwelt beyond the earth, in its four corners, four other persons : one 

 was he of the darkness, in the east; another was he of the blueness, in 

 the south ; another was he of the yellowness, of the west ; and the last was 

 he of the whiteness, of the north. And the five that dwelt in the center of 

 the world (First Man, First Woman, bun, Mojn, and Coyote) called these 

 four into council, and they decided that the second world was too 



small for all to live upon in peace, and that they should ascend to the 

 third world This they found to be a land bounded by four moun- 

 tains; there was one mountain on the east like San Mateo, one on the 

 south like etc. ; and they found a great water at each of these four points. 

 Then the Coyotef stole two of the children of the ocean monster 

 Ti-eholts6di ; but the monster took revenge by causing the waters that 

 were in the east, the south, the west, and the north, to rise and flow over 

 the land Then the people ascended into the fourth world by inclos- 

 ing themselves into the joints of a reed which grew miraculously fast. 

 There they had still the darkness of the east, and the three great lights, 

 as in the second world. On the north shore of a river, which intersected 



* Rev. St. D. Feet's "American Antiquarian," Chicago, vol. v. .207-224, (July, 1SS3) : "A 

 part of the Navajo's Mythology." The Navajo Indians are of Tinnii lineage, and occupy a 

 reservation extending through parts of Northern New Mexico and Arizona. 



t Coyote, or the prairie-wolf, Cam's latrans,i% an Aztec term, '-the burrower," which 

 is used throughout the west of the United States. 



v. — I— 5 



