846 Some Deities and Demons of the Navajos. (October, 
than this. But why is she the goddess of the west? Let it be 
remembered that the Navajo land lies to the west of the conti- 
nental divide, and slopes toward the setting sun. The Pacific, not 
the Atlantic, is the reservoir from which it draws its scanty mois- 
ture. From the west, not from the east, come the storm-clouds 
of the summer and the soft thawing breezes of the spring. Hence 
naturally this beneficent goddess, who loves her Navajo children 
so well, dwells in the western ocean, and from there dispenses her 
bounty. While she still lived in the Navajo land, and long before 
she journeyed to the west, she was blessed with a child whose 
father was the sun, at the same time her sister bore a child whose 
father was a water-fall, or, as some versions make it, a rain-storm. 
These boys were Nagaynezgani and Thédbadjischeni. One vet- 
sion of the myth says they were both children of Zs¢sanatlehi 
and the sun. They are called brothers throughout the myth; 
but according to the Indian system of relationship their mothers 
being sisters constitutes them brethren as well if they were chil- 
dren of one mother. 
These are the sacred brothers, the Dioscuri, who figure in the 
myths and legends of so many races not only of this continent 
but of the old world as well. Comparative mythologists usually 
regard the sacred brothers as myths of night and day, of light 
and darkness. Max Miiller regards this as the proper interpre- 
tation of the Asvinau of India, but Mr. Talboys Wheeler, in his 
History of India, says they are “apparently a personification of 
light and moisture,” and this I believe to be the true explanation 
of the Navajo myth, for the name Thobajischeni signifies Kins- 
man of the Waters, and the portion of the myth which refers " 
his paternity strengthens this theory. : 
Both of the brothers receive homage as gods of battle, but 
Nagaynezgani is regarded as the more potent of the two. It is 
to these that men offer their sacrifices and prayers when they are 
-~ about to go on the war-path. The sacrifices may be offered any n 
where, but their special shrine is at Tho-yet'-li, a place at the pa 
tion of two rivers in the valley of the San Juan, somewhere 1n 
__what is now the Territory of Utah. Hither it is said they went 
__ to dwell when their mission on’this earth was done, when my 
_ had slain all the more powerful demons and left man with vast 
worse enemy in the world than his own kind. Here it 1s | 
ey still dwell, and here their reflection is still to be seen on the . 
