444 ISLETA , NEW MEXICO [eth. ann. 47 



waited so long. The ants have a home now in your body." The 

 Ant Father placed his Mother (keide) and stone point on the sheep- 

 skin he had asked for, the hide uppermost. Juan had to remove his 

 clothes and put on a breechclout. "Pray to Wapide," he said to us. 

 He was chewing his root. He looked all around and said, "I see that 

 those ants are not living outside, but in your body. I see you are 

 going to get well and going to make a trip to Mescallero, where you 

 were thinking of going before you got sick. You are going to meet 

 an old man with a dog and he is going to trj' to sell you the dog. If 

 you buy the dog you will be lucky, if not, you will be unlucky." 



The Father went and spat of the root in each corner of the house 

 and then on Juan. He asked for some ashes from the fireplace. (He 

 would not take them from the stove, so we had to build a fire in the 

 fireplace to get the ashes.) He rubbed the ashes on Juan's body. 

 Then he made a circle of ashes on the sheepskin, singing all the time. 

 With his feathers he brushed the ground outside of the ash circle, and 

 tapped one feather against the other, the feathers at right angles to 

 each other. Three times he did this. This rite of brushing he 

 repeated on each side of Juan, the third time turning away from him 

 to tap the feathers. Grasping the feathers by tips and butts he 

 breathed from them, turned toward the east and forcibly breathed 

 out. Now he wiped Juan down with cotton, and as he brushed him 

 with the feathers, the ants fell from Juan's bodj' into the circle 

 of ashes on the sheepskin Juan was standing on. The Father told 

 Juan to step oft", cover himself with a blanket and sit down. Then 

 the Father sprinkled ashes on the ants, then pollen, then meal, then 

 bread crumbs, feeding them.^' 



Now the Father went up to Juan, held him by the head and sucked 

 something from it. As he did this he fell down, as if faint. Juan was 

 frightened, he bent and rubbed the Father and stood him up. The 

 Father tottered. Then he spat out of his mouth all the pebbles and 

 sand he had sucked from Juan's head. The room was full of dust. 

 Three times the father spewed these out from his mouth. Then he 

 gargled with warm water, washing out his mouth. He brushed 

 up the pebbles, sweeping them on to the sheepskin where the ants 

 remained, unable to leave the circle of ashes. The Father asked for 

 some tobacco which he carried out together with the sheepskin of 

 ants and pebbles, beyond the village. On his return he told Juan to 

 dress. Five times he waved liis feathers in front of Juan and then 

 up and down, giving him breath. (It is down and up when you take 

 breath out.) 



Four nights this ceremony was performed. Juan got well, but as 

 his eyes had been eaten by the ants, he can not see clearly. He did 



" Lucinda referred to "getting ants" and to sprinkling bread crumbs (or the ants, as she had learned to 

 do from Laguna parents-in-law. 



