White Bluffs spokesman. [volume] (White Bluffs, Wash.) 1907-1938, 1928-10-19
LEGEND EXPLAINS A
PETRlFIED FOREST
Navahos Call Stone Trees
Bones of Monsters.

Tucson, Arizo.-The Navajo Indians
or the southwest have a TRANCE ant
fantastic legend to account for the
great stone tree trunks whose broker
Columns strew he desert in the region
OF the famous petrified forest.
In the early days Of the world, the
Indians say, the sun did not ride
tranquil and undimmed through the
sky as he does now. At that time
there was a black monster that was
continually contrasting his supremacy,
His name was Yietso, and many were
the battles that he and the sun fought.
Lived in a Cave.
This Yietso lived in a cave in the
big mountains, and from there he
would sally forth and contend with
the sun. He had long and strongly
muscled arms and powerfully clawed
hands. And his bones were of stone.
When he stood erect he could reach
the at any place in the sky.
When he was defeated in his fights
he would have to rest many days and
often even many months before he
was able to renew the attack, but he
was never vanquished. Also at times
during those terrible bouts he would
get a finger, hand or limb so broken
that he would have to discard it, but
he possessed the power to grow a
new part in the place of the disabled
one. The bones of these disabled,
discarded parts, which were of stone,
he threw out from the cave over a
ridge from time to time ms they got
in his way, and thus for years and
ages the stone-wood accumulated.
At that time a boy by the name
of Kee lived in a grass-tied feather
home with his mother, Shemah, and
his sister, Connie. One winter it got
very cold. Finally, as they had no
fuel, Kee went to the mountains for
pitch wood. AS the sun set before he
reached the forest he slept out where
he was. Then on the next day he
went into the mountains and found
what he supposed was pitch wood, a
quantity of which he chopped.
Bones Instead of Wood.
When he reached his home it was
growing dark the second night. So
he slept outdoors in front of his
hogan, where Connie found him still
sleeping when she came home in the
morning. She also noticed the wood,
just Is their grandmother came out
of the house. And instead of pitch
wood he had brought bones of Yietso;
whereupon his grandmother scolded
away.
In time Kee grew to be a great
man. Time and again he visited the
mountain where he had obtained the
bone-wood, and there he prayed to
his god and made sacrifice. Then n
day he discovered the cave where the
monster lived, and at the rising of
the sun on the following morning he
told him, through prayer, of the
beasts abode.
just as he was telling the sun the
news he saw the great black thing
leaping above the mountains to the
attack. Quickly Kee called the men
of his tribe together and they all
prayed for the powers of good to
aid the sun in this battle against
darkness.
Right against the face Of the sun
leaped the monster. 1t stretched its
fierce arms and clawing hands to-
ward the suns rim. Then the battle
began in earnest. The sun attacked
him with his millions and millions of
rays, and, aided by the prayers of
the then good people of earth, he
finally overcame it.
In this battle of all battles the
suns rays pierced Yietso's body, and
his blood, IN reaching the earth, was
CONCEALED in lava flows. Finally he
fell back to the earth dead, and the
sun mounted triumphantly in the
heavens, as he. spread his invigorat-
ing and cheering light owe land and
sea. And the Plateau region is still
Incredibly covered with its bones,
called by the Navahos Yietsobitsin,
the bones of Yietso.