Slike strani
PDF
ePub

tions are made in the lodge by covering the floor with a coating of sand about three inches in thickness. A black pigment is then prepared from charcoal for the black, yellow sandstone for the yellow, red sandstone for the red, and white sandstone for the white. A kind of blue is made by mixing the black with the yellow.

"Before beginning the painting, the surface of the sand is carefully smoothed with a broad oaken batten. Young men usually do the painting under the careful and ever watchful eye of the shaman. There is a set rule which must be followed in each of the four great paintings. The Navaho shaman believes that to depart from the fixed order as handed down from father to son through many generations, would be to invite the enmity of the gods. The true design must be followed, although within certain limits the artist must display his skill.

"In order to understand these sand paintings it is necessary to know thoroughly the myths upon which they are based. Perhaps no white man has ever yet been able fully to understand and appreciate their symbolism. Since the Navajos do not preserve any patterns to go by, it is wonderful how they are enabled to preserve all the details of these elaborate paintings. Yet they claim not to have varied in any essential detail in all these hundreds of years.

[ocr errors]
[graphic][merged small]

CHAPTER V.

THE HAVASUPAI.

LOCATION-EARLY NAME "COSNINOS"-HABITS,
HISTORY, AND LEGENDS-CHIEFS-MEDICINE

MEN-AGRICULTURISTS-ENGINEERING SKILL
-HOSPITALITY FUNERAL

[ocr errors]

CEREMONIES

LANGUAGE-WORSHIP-LEGEND OF ORIGIN. HAVASUPAI ("blue or green water people"). A small isolated tribe of the Yuman stock (the nucleus of which is believed to have descended from the Wallapai) who occupy Cataract Canyon of the Rio Colorado in northwestern Arizona. Whipple (Pac. R. R. Rep., III pt. I, 82, 1856) was informed in 1850 that the "Cosninos" roamed from the Sierra Mogollon to the San Francisco mountains, and along the valley of the Colorado Chiquito. The tribe is a peculiarly interesting one, since of all the Yuman tribes it is the only one which has developed or borrowed a culture similar to, though less advanced, than that of the Pueblo peoples; indeed, according to tradition, the Havasupai (or more probably a Pueblo clan or tribe that became incorporated with them) formerly built and occupied villages of a permanent character on the Colorado Chiquito east of the San Francisco mountains, where ruins were pointed out to Powell by a Havasupai chief as the former homes of his people. As the result of the war with tribes farther east, they abandoned these villages and took refuge in the San Francisco mountains, subsequently leaving these these for

their present abode. In this connection it is of interest to note that the Cosnino caves on the upper Rio Verde, near the northern edge of Tonto basin, central Arizona, were named for this tribe, because of their supposed early occupancy by them. Their present village, composed of temporary cabins or shelters of wattled canes and branches and earth in summer, and of the natural caves and crevices in winter, is situated 115 miles north of Prescott and seven miles south of the Grand Canyon. The Havasupai are well formed, though of medium stature. They are skilled in the manufacture and use of implements, and especially in preparing raw material, like buckskin. The men are expert hunters, the women adept in the manufacture of baskets which, when lined with clay, serve also as cooking utensils. Like the other Yuman tribes, until affected by white influences during recent years, their clothing consisted chiefly of deerskin and, for the sake of ornament, both men and women painted their faces with a thick, smooth coating of fine red ocher or blue paint prepared from wild indigo; tattooing and scarification for ornament were also sometimes practiced. In summer they subsist chiefly upon corn, calabashes, sunflower seeds, melons, peaches, and apricots, which they cultivate by means of irrigation, and also the wild datila and mescal; in winter principally upon the flesh of game, which they hunt in the surrounding uplands and mountains. While a strictly sedentary people, they are unskilled in the manufacture of earthenware and obtain their more modern implements and utensils, except basketry, by

« PrejšnjaNaprej »