1885.] Mythic Dry-Paintings of the Navajos. 933 
limits the artist may give his god as handsome a pouch as he 
wishes. On the other hand, some parts are measured by palms 
and spans, and not a line of the sacred design can be varied in 
them; straight and parallel lines are drawn on a tightened cord. 
The pigments are five in number: they are black made of char- 
coal; white, of white sandstone; yellow, of yellow sandstone; 
red, of red sandstone, and “ blue,” of the black and white mixed 
in proper proportions; all ground into fine powder between two 
stones. The so-called blue is, of course, gray, but it is the only 
inexpensive representative of the cerulean tint they can obtain, 
and, combined with the other colors on the sandy floor, it looks 
like a real blue. These colored powders are kept on improvised 
trays of pine bark ; to apply them, the artist grasps a little in his 
hand and allows it to flow out between the thumb and the op- 
posed fingers. When he makes a mistake he does not brush 
away the color, he obliterates it by pouring sand on it and then 
draws the corrected design on the new surface. 
The naked forms of the mythical figures are first drawn, and 
then the clothing is put on. Even in the representations of the 
Bitses-ninez, or long bodies, which are nine feet in length, the 
naked body of each is first made in its appropriate color—white 
for the east, blue for the south, yellow for the west, black for the 
north—and then the four shirts are painted on as shown in the 
picture (Plate xxx) from thigh to axilla. 
It is the task of the shaman, when the work of painting is 
completed, to put the corn-pollen, emblem of fecundity, on the 
lips and breast of each divine form, and to set up the bounding 
plume-sticks around the picture. Then the one who gives the 
feast enters and is placed sitting on the form that belongs to the 
east—the white form—and looking eastward. Here the colored 
dust from various parts of the divine figures is taken and applied 
to corresponding parts of the patient, and many other ceremonies 
are performed, which it is not my purpose to relate here. When 
the patient has departed many of the spectators pick up the corn- 
Pollen, now rendered doubly sacred, and put it in their medicine- 
bags. Some take dust from the figures on their moistened palms 
and apply it to their own bodies. If the devotee has disease in 
i his legs, he takes powder from the legs of the figures; if in his 
head, he takes powder from the head, and so on. 
By the time they are all done the picture is pretty badly 
