The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony | Page 6

not traveled far when he saw a herd of deer and shot one of the number. He skinned it, cut it up, took the backbone, hide, and tallow, and hung the rest in a tree. As he drew near the house, he saw his younger brother approaching from a different direction with the hide and meat of a doe. When they entered the hut, the old man asked which of the two deer was shot first. The elder brother answered: "I think mine was, for I killed it early this morning, soon after I left the house."
"Well," said the father, "this skin of the first slain is mine; go and stretch it and dry it for me with care." After this they went out hunting every day for twelve days, but fortune seemed to have deserted them; they killed no more game; and at the end of that time their supply of meat was exhausted. Then the old man said: "It always takes four trials before you succeed. Go out once more, and if you kill a deer do not dress it, but leave it as it is."
18. On the following day they left the lodge together and did not take separate trails. Soon they killed a deer, and the younger brother said: "What shall we now do with it, since our father has told us not to skin it and not to cut it up?" The elder brother said: "I know not. Return to the lodge and ask our father what we must do." Then the younger brother returned to his father and the latter instructed him thus: "Cut the skin around the neck; then carefully take the skin from the head, so as to remove the horns, ears, and all other parts, without tearing the skin anywhere. Leave such an amount of flesh with the nose and lips that they will not shrivel and lose their shape when they dry. Then take the skin from the body, which skin will again be mine. One of you must take out the pluck and carry that in the hide to me; the other will bring the skin of the head and the meat. Let him who bears the pluck come in advance, and stop not till he comes directly to me, and he must hand it to me and to no one else." The younger brother went back and told all this to the elder. They dressed the deer as they were bidden; the younger put the pluck in the skin and went in advance, and the elder followed with the venison and the skin of the head. When they reached the hog??n, the father said: "Where is the atcai?" (pluck) and the younger said: "It is in the skin." "Take it out," said the old man, "and hang it on yonder mountain mahogany." The young man did as he was bidden. The father advanced with his bow and arrow and handed them to the elder brother, who placed the arrow on the string and held the bow. The old man put his hands on top of those of his son and together they drew the bow. The former took careful aim at the pluck and let the arrow fly. It struck the object and penetrated both heart and lungs so far that the point protruded on the opposite side. Then the old man told his son to seize the arrow by the point and draw it completely through, which was done. Next he made his son stand close to the pluck, looking towards it, and while his son was in this position he blew on him in the direction of the pluck. "Now," said the father, "whenever you want to kill a buck, even if there is neither track nor sign of deer in sight, you have only to shoot into the tse`is?§??zi (mountain mahogany, Cercocarpus parvifolius) and you will find a dead deer where your arrow strikes; while if you wish to kill a female deer you will shoot your arrow into the aw?¨tsal (cliff rose, Cowania mexicana) and you will find a doe there." When all this was done they prepared the skin of the head, under the old man's directions. To keep the skin of the neck open they put into it a wooden hoop.
They sewed up the mouth, left the eyeholes open, stuffed the skin with hay, and hung it in a tree to dry, where it would not get smoky or dusty. They cut places in the neck through which the hunter might see. The skin of the doe which the younger brother had killed some time before, and which had been tanned in the mean time, they painted red and gray, to make it look like the skin of an antelope. They prepared