Go to: The Wanderings - Navaho Index

After the bow and arrows of lightning were returned to the Sun, Hasjelti and Hasjohon came to First Man and First Woman and asked them what they thought about all that had happened. "What will take place now will be your plan," they said. "Yes," answered First Man and First Woman, "Now it must be our plan. We will think about it."

The Sun brought a turquoise man fetish and gave it to Yol gai esdzan, the White Bead Woman. She ground white beads into a powder and made a paste with which she molded a fetish like the one the Sun had given her, but it was a woman. When it was finished they laid the two side by side. Then they took the white corn which was brought up from the Dark World where the First Man was formed and they laid it beside the turquoise man fetish. And the yellow corn from the Dark World, which was formed with First Woman, was laid by the side of the White Bead Woman fetish.

Here the chanting begins. It covers the two fetishes and the two ears of corn and the four clouds and the four vapors. There are many chants sung here. They were sung before the fetishes could move. Then the two fetishes, the Turquoise Man and the White Bead Woman, and also, the two ears of corn, white and yellow, moved.

When they began to move the Coyote came. He jumped on the bodies and put something first up one nostril and then up the other nostril. He said to the first nostril: "You shall be saved by this." To the second nostril he said: "This shall be your shield." The first turned out to be the trickery of men; the second, the lies that they tell. But once in a while they are saved by their own lies. That was what the Coyote had in mind.

The fetishes and the ears of corn moved but they were not able to rise. So word was sent to all the Holy Beings and to the Upper World where the Five Chiefs of the Wind dwelt. Gifts were offered to the Winds and they accepted them, They sent the Little Breeze down, and it entered the bodies of the two fetishes and the two ears of corn. Little, fine hairs appeared over the bodies, for it is through these that air comes out of the body. It was after that, that the four, the two fetishes and the two ears of corn, became human beings.

Go to: The Wanderings - Navaho Index