CEREMONIAL OF HASJELTI DAILJIS AND MYTHICAL SAND 
PAINTING OF THE NAVAJO INDIANS. 
By JAMES STEVENSON. 
INTRODUCTION. 
During my visit to the Southwest, in the summer of 1885, it was my 
good fortune to arrive at the Navajo Reservation a few days before the 
commencement of a Navajo healing ceremonial. Learning of the prep- 
aration for this, I decided to remain and observe the ceremony, which 
was to continue nine days and nights. The occasion drew to the place 
some 1,200 Navajos. The scene of the assemblage was an extensive 
platean near the margin of Keam’s Canyon, Arizona. 
A variety of singular and interesting occurrences attended this great 
event—mythologic rites, gambling, horse and foot racing, general mer- 
riment, and curing the sick, the latter being the prime cause of the 
gathering. A man of distinction in the tribe was threatened with loss 
of vision from inflammation of the eyes, having looked upon certain 
masks with an irreligious heart. Hewas rich and had many wealthy rela- 
tions, hence the elaborateness of the ceremony of healing. A celebra- 
ted theurgist was solicited to officiate, but much anxiety was felt when 
it was learned that his wife was pregnant. A superstition prevails 
among the Navajo that a man must not look upon a sand painting when 
his wife is in a state of gestation, as it would result in the loss of the 
life of the child. This medicine man, however, came, feeling that he 
possessed ample power within himself to avert such calamity by admin- 
istering to the child immediately after its birth a mixture in water of 
all the sands used in the painting. As I have given but little time to 
the study of Navajo mythology, I can but briefly mention such events 
as I witnessed, and record the myths only so far as I was able to col- 
lect them hastily. I will first describe the ceremony of Yebitchai and 
give then the myths (some complete and others incomplete) explanatory 
of the gods and genii figuring in the Hasjelti Dailjis (dance of Hasjelti) 
and in the nine days’ ceremonial, and then others independent of these. 
The ceremony is familiarly called among the tribe, ‘ Yebitchai,” the word 
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