446 THE MOUNTAIN CHANT. 
year to year and from generation to generation. That such is strictly 
the case I cannot believe. There are no standard pictures on hand 
anywhere. No permanent design for reference is ever in existence, 
and there is, so far as I can learn, no final authority in the tribe to settle 
any disputes that may arise. Few of these great ceremonies can be 
performed in the summer months. Most ef the’ figures are therefore 
carried over from winter to winter in the memories of falliblemen. But 
this much I do credit, that any innovations which may creep into their 
work are unintentional and that if changes occur they are wrought 
very slowly. The shamans and their faithfal followers believe, or pro- 
fess to believe, that the direst vengeance of the gods would visit them 
if these rites were varied in the least in picture, prayer, song, or cere- 
monial. The mere fact that there are different schools among the 
medicine men may be regarded as an evidence that changes have oc- 
curred, ; 
160. First Picture. The picture of the first day (Plate XV) is 
said to represent the visit of Dsilyi‘ Neyani to the home of the snakes 
at Qo¢estso. (Paragraph 53.) 
161. In the center of the picture was a circular concavity, about six 
inches in diameter, intended to represent water, presumably the house 
of water mentioned in the myth. In all the other pictures where water 
was represented a sinall bow] was ictually sunk in the ground and 
filled with water, which water was afterwards sprinkled with powdered 
charcoal to give the impression of a flat, dry surface. Why the bowl 
of water was omitted in this picture Ido not know, but a medicine 
man of a different fraternity from that of the one who drew the pict- 
ure informed me that with men of his school the bow] filled with water 
was used in the snake picture as weil asin the others. Closely sur- 
rounding this central depression are four parallelograms about four 
inches by ten inches in the original pictures. The half nearer the center 
is red; the outer half is blue; they are bordered with narrow lines of 
white. The same figures are repeated in other paintings. They appear 
in this drawing, and frequently in others, as something on which the 
gods seem to stand. They are the ca‘bitlol, or rafts of sunbeam, the 
favorite vessels on which the divine ones navigate the upper deep. In 
the Navajo nyths, when a god has a particularly long and speedy 
journey to make, he takes two sunbeams and, placing them side by side, 
is borne off in a twinkling whither he wills. Red is the color proper 
to sunlight in their symbolism, but the red and blué together represent 
sunbeams in the morning and evening skies when they show an alter- 
nation of blue and red. It will be seen later that the sunbeam shafts, 
the halo, and the rainbow are represented by the same colors. In form, 
however, the halo is cireular, and the rainbow is distinguished by its 
curvature, and it is usually anthropomorphic, while the sunbeam and 
the halo are not. External to these sunbeam rafts, and represented as 
standing on them, are the figures of eight serpents, two white ones in 

