The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony

The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony - Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1883-84, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1887, pages 379-468

If any of these characters do not display properlyin particular, if a diacritic does not appear directly above its letteror if the quotation marks in this paragraph appear as garbage, you may have an incompatible browser or unavailable fonts. First, make sure that the browsers character set or file encoding is set to Unicode (UTF-8). You may also need to change your browsers default font. c= ch in chin; = th in this; = th in think; j= z in azure; q= German ch in machen; shows that a vowel is aspirated; the vowels have the continental sounds; ai is the only diphthong, and is like i in line; l is usually aspirated; the other letters have the ordinary English pronunciation. 1. The ceremony of dsilydje qal, or mountain chantliterally, chant towards (aplace) within the mountainsis one of a large number practiced by the shamans, or medicine men, of the Navajo tribe. Ihave selected it as the first of those to be described, because I have witnessed it the most frequently, because it is the most interesting to the Caucasian spectator, and because it is the best known to the whites who visit and reside in and around the Navajo country. Its chief interest to the stranger lies in the various public performances of the last night. Like other great rites of the shamans, it has its secret ceremonies of many days duration in the medicine lodge; but, unlike the others, it ends with a varied show in the open air, which all are invited to witness. Another ceremony which I have attended, and which the whites usually call the Yabichy Dance (Ybitcai), has a final public exhibition which occupies the whole night, but it is unvaried. Few Europeans can be found who have remained awake later than midnight to watch it. Such is not the case with the rite now to be described. Here the white man is rarely the first to leave at dawn. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 20839
Author: Matthews, Washington
Release Date: Mar 17, 2007
Format: eBook
Language: English