934 Mythic Dry-Paintings of the Navajos. [October, 
marred. Then it becomes the duty of the shaman to completely’ 
obliterate it; this he does with a slender wand, while he sings the 
song appropriate to this part of the ceremony. He begins with 
the figure belonging to the east, the white figure, and proceeds in 
the same order as was observed in making the picture, 2. e., in 
accordance with the apparent daily course of the sun, The fig- 
ures at the margin are erased last, and when this is being done 
the bounding plume-sticks are knocked down. When no sem- 
blance of the picture is left the assistants gather the sand in their 
blankets, carry it to a little distance from the lodge and throw it 
away. Thusin half an hour after the completion of a large pic- 
ture, ten or twelve feet in diameter, which has taken a dozen men, 
or more, eight or ten hours to construct, not a trace of it is left. 
I have learned of seventeen great ceremonies of the Navajos, 
in which pictures of this character are drawn, and I have heard 
that there are, on an average, about four pictures to each dance. 
This would give us about sixty-eight such designs known to the 
medicine men of the tribe. But I learn that there are different 
schools or guilds among the medicine men who draw the pictures 
differently in some of the details, and that besides these seventeen 
great ceremonies there are many minor rites, with their appro- 
priate pictures; so the number of designs in the possession of 
the tribe is probably much greater than that which I give. 
The medicine-men aver that these pictures are transmitted from 
teacher to pupil, in each guild and for each ceremony, unaltered 
from year to year and from generation to generation. That such 
is strictly the case I cannot believe. No permanent design is pre- 
served for reference, and there is no final authority in the tribe, 
The majority of the ceremonies can be performed only during the 
months when the snakes are dormant. The pictures are there- 
fore carried over, from winter to winter, in the fallible memories 
of men. But I think it probable that innovations are uninten- 
tional, and that any changes which may occur are wrought 
slowly. 
__. Out of this possible number of sixty-eight or more pictures I 
_ have seen seven, colored copies of which will, I hope, appear in 
some future report of the Bureau of Ethnology. The majority 
are too intricate to be reproduced in a satisfactory manner from a 
-wood-cut on a page of this size, I therefore present illustrations 
f as two, and these of the simplest, 
