INTRODUCTION, XXXV 
The ceremony witnessed by Mr. Stevenson was performed 
to cure a wealthy member of the tribe of an inflammation of the 
eyes. ‘Twelve hundred Navajo Indians were present, chiefly 
as spectators, but that exhibition of their interest may partly 
be accounted for by the fact that they lived while on their 
visit at the expense of the invalid and occupied most of the 
time in gambling and horse racing. The very numerous active 
participants in the ceremonies, who might be called the mys- 
tery company, in reference to the early form of our drama, 
were not directly paid for their services, but acted because 
they were the immediate relatives of the invalid for whose 
benefit the performance was given. The tribesman who com- 
bined the offices of manager, theurgist, song priest, or master 
of ceremonies was paid exorbitantly for his professional serv- 
ices. The personation of the various gods and their attend- 
ants and the acted drama of their mythical adventures and 
displayed powers exhibit features of peculiar interest, while the 
details of the action day after day show all imaginable and 
generally incomprehensible changes and multiplication of cos- 
tume and motions and postures and manipulations of feathers 
and meal and sticks and paint and water and sand and innu- 
merable other stage properties in astounding complexity and 
seeming confusion. Yet, from what is known of isolated and 
fragmentary parts of the dramatized myths, it is to be inferred 
that every one of the strictly regulated and prescribed actions 
has or has had a special significance, and it is obvious that they 
are all maintained with strict religious scrupulosity, indeed with 
constant dread of fatal consequences which would result from 
the slightest divergence. In connection with this ritualistic 
form of punctilio, which is noticed in the religious practices of 
other peoples and lands, the established formal invocation of 
and prayer to the divinity may be mentioned. It clearly offers 
a bribe or proposes the terms of a bargain to the divinities, and 
has its parallel in the archaic prayers of many other languages. 
Translated from the Navajo, it is given as follows: 
People of the mountains and rocks [i. e., the gods, as shown by the 
context], I hear you wish to be paid. I give to you food of corn pollen 
and humming-bird feathers,and I send to you precious stones, and 
