The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1893-03-08


| LOOKING INTO THE OTHER WORLD.
iexasperated by the want of rChristiani-
! Ity, as exhibited too often in the lives
( of those set to teach at the frontier.
! Among the cold snow-touched sum-
mits Of the San Juan mountains, where
the peaks spread their white wells for
! ever TO the sky, there lies with up
turned eye lake, bounded by precip-
itous walls. At the center of this lake
there is an island with hole in it. 1t
is an extinct crater. Something has
been left by the stone carving ages
sticking up, slant height perpendicular
! like the top OF ladder, out of this hola.
The superstitious Navaios never ap-
'proach near to 1t, but stand on high
submits all around it and view from
.Rfar their natal waters, and reverently
chant their songs ON solemn birthdays
to the spot through which their ances-
tors emerged from out the fourth
world
The myth that lies below this huge
rock hole is this:
this world the sun arose, climbed to the
zenith and stopped The day grew
hot. They longed for the night to
come, but the sun moved not. Then
the wise coyote said: The sun stops
because he has not been paid for his
work; he demands human life for
every day that he labors; he will not
move again till somebody dies" At
length woman, the wife of great
chief ceased to breathe and grew cold,
and, while they all drew around in
wonder, the sun was observed to move
again, and he travelled down the sky,
and went behind the mountains. And
now he never stops and we know that
every day some one must die
They laid the dead body to rest among
the rocks and all wondered where the
living part had gone; and they searched
every whittier, but found her not, till
one, drawer than all the rest, ventured
to look down into the hole through
which she had fed from the lower
world. There he saw her seated bv the
side of the river, combing her hair.
Seeing that SHADOW was thrown from
above she looked up, saw the Indian
peeping through the hole and invited
him to come down. but he feared to do
so. Then she said to him: "Hither
have I come and hither all our people
must come when they die" He re-
turned and told what he had seen and
heard. Soon he fell sick.
That night the moon stopped in the
zenith as the sun had dene daring the
day. The wise coyote told the people
that the moon also demanded pay and
would not move until it was given. He
had scarcely spoken when the man who
had seen the departed woman in the
neither world died. Then the moon
with a satisfied smile moved to the
west. Thus it is that some one must
die every night or the moon would not
move across the sky. And because he
who gazed upon the death met death SO
soon after, it is not well to look upon
the body after it has been buried, and
so with strange mortal dread no Navajo
has ever dared to look down into the
hole through which they came to this
world.
Thus spoke Le-len-cha- the old singer
Of Navajo songs and teller of stories
This old Indian Is upward Of one hun
dred years of age, but he still remem-
bers all the unwritten lore of his legend
AIRY race.
The Indian mythology has no great
first cause. They begin their cosmogony
with an already existing world in the
dim twilight of time and go on with it
TO the thilher shore of time. Zoolatry
is at the bottom of it all. 1t climbs up
into authromorphic forms and persona
ties its gods in living. breathing
prophets in the religious dances. All
the creatures in the first world are able
20 fly away on wings from the rising
waters of the food; in the third and
fourth world they seek protection in
the hollow of great reed which grows
higher as fast as the rising flood ad-
vances and bears the fugitives upward
and out of danger. Arrived on this,
the fifth world, men multiplied, races
formed and wars arose. Tribes de-
voured each other over and over again.
Then came the great hero god Nagen-
ezgani and killed the demons After
the earth.
The Navajo has no faith in Monogen-
esis. He believes in special creations
The gods made men in the old times by
a singular process They took two ears
of corn. one yellow and one white.
From the yellow they made the female
and from the white the male To this
day among the Navajos yellow corn is
called female corn and white corn male |
corn The gods laid these two yellow /
and white ears OF corn on large dish /!
of pure turquoise and covered them with !
embroidered blankets of brilliant coll |
ors and with sacred bucksl1in taken
from deer not slain but smothered. i
These ears were laid with their points /
toward the east. But before they were
laid down they were handed round from I
one god To another. and aAeh nod tnrnAd !