PARSONS] TALES OF PERSONAL EXPERIENCE 449 



be the seventh day after he did that (after his broken taboo). On the 

 fourth day he did not die. He went to Sandia and danced hard all 

 day. At the end of the dance there came a lizard ^^ and went round 

 him five times (anticlockwise), and then went off in the direction it 

 came from. Then he knew he was going to die. The people saw it. 

 They followed the lizard. It went to the graveyard and into the 

 earth. . . . Agostin called a council and told what he had done. 

 He advised them if ever they became medicine men to keep their four 

 days. . . . He went back to Isleta and then openly went to the 

 house of his sweetheart. Her husband was there. He asked him for 

 some tobacco (sacred tobacco). The woman told her husband to go 

 and get it for Agostin. Her husband went and returned and said that 

 they did not have any more. "Why do you want it? " Agostin said, 

 "I finished my ceremony. I did not wait the four days. I went to 

 my sweetheart. She did not coimsel me properly. She was as hungry 

 as I was. From now on she will be sick until she dies. In four days 

 I will die." Then on the ninth day they heard he had a heartache, on 

 the tenth day a headache, on the eleventh day he called a council of 

 all the men and of all the boys old enough to go into the ceremony. 

 He said to them, "I had finished my ceremony. I did not wait four 

 days, but went to see my sweetheart. To-morrow I die. Even if my 

 wife kill me to-night, I wiU tell you all about it." By sundown on 

 the twelfth day he was dead. His wife did not ciy for him. She shed 

 not one tear. If that was the kind of man he was, she said, she would 

 not crj' for him. His sweetheart was sick for two years with hic- 

 coughs. Three years ago she also died.^^ 



42. How I Recovered My Stolen Goods 



About a year ago I had stolen from me some silver necklaces and 

 bracelets, a gold ring, some turquoise, and a rifle. I told my friend 

 who is the Indian policeman. "Why don't you ask the birka'ade 

 (Laguna Father) to come and tell you who it is?" he asked. So I did, 

 and the birka'ade came. He spread out a buckskin, sprinJded it with 

 pollen, and on it he placed a stone point. He made a Hghtning mark 

 with pollen on the back of his outstretched left hand. In his right 

 hand was his gourd rattle. After he ate some hfiew'a'^ (the power- 



3J 'Napapuride. blood spit animal. It is greenish with two stripes on its back. 



" This story suggested to the narrator the familiar Keresan-Zufii-Tewa story of the mask which stuck, 

 which she had heard from one Tomas' of Zia. Tomas' had told her how 25 years ago, when he was 15, he 

 was in the same dance with the man who broke his rule. On the last day of the dance he visited his sweet- 

 heart. The ("lowns came after him. His mask had gone into his face; tears were running down the mask. 

 Uis armlets went into his flesh, also his moccasins; his belt was so tight they could not untie it. The 

 medicine men (toyin) began at once to tai.e their days; but they could not do anything. On the fourth out- 

 side day ffourth day after the dance), everybody in Zia went with him to the spring. . . . With prayer- 

 feathers he went in. His mother wept. . . . (" I said to Tomas', ' Better that he become a powerful man 

 for his people than be burning in hell as a siimer. She should not have cried.' Tomas' answered, 

 * Our Virgin Mother cried over her son.' ") 



^ Xavaho root medicine? Navaho, telieb. 



