A mythic tale of the Isleta Indians, New Mexico : the race of the antelope and the hawk around the horizon / by Albert S. Gatschet.

  • Gatschet, Albert S. (Albert Samuel), 1832-1907.
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A mythic tale of the Isleta Indians, New Mexico : the race of the antelope and the hawk around the horizon / by Albert S. Gatschet. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    12/12 (page 218)
    kaibiin), the southern by the Laguna medicine-men, who are called so for having acquired their art in Laguna, a Quera pueblo. The differences in the ceremonial of both sections, each of which has a separate medicine house, are slight, and during the ceremonies the two “schools” of medicine-men supplement each other. They are subject to the watchful care of the captains of war, of whom there are four or five in each of the two sections. There are four annual periods of ceremonial sun worship in their pueblos, and every one of them is followed by a dance. The first of these festival periods occurs in September, the second in December, the third in February, because wheat is planted in the month after ; the fourth, less important, a short time after the third. They last four days, not including the dance, and are evidently instituted for the purpose of influencing the sun deity in favor of granting a bountiful crop to the Indians. Both medicine houses are long-shaped, running from west to east, where the entrance is. The fire burns not in the middle, but at the eastern end, the chimney being to the left of the entrance. In the roof a square opening is left for the sunlight to penetrate. Women are admitted to the house, but everything that is non-Indian is excluded ; none of the white man’s dress or shoes are admitted ; the participants have to enter without moccasins and to wear the hair long. The ceremony takes place at night, and begins with the following act of worship to the sun (tu'iide) ; each medicine-man carries a short buck¬ skin bag filled with half-ground cornmeal; he is strewing the contents on the floor before the public, while an allocution is held to the sun, moon and stars. The Indians grasp the meal from the ground, and breathe upon it to blow off any disease from their bodies, for it is thought the meal will absorb or “ burn ” any disease invisibly present. Then the medicine-men throw the rest of the cornmeal in a line or “road,” while “sowing ” it on the ground to the sun. When all the meal is spent, they blow again upon their hands and breathe up health from them. This is done during four consecutive nights, during which the medicine-men abstain entirely from eating, drinking and sleeping, but are allowed to smoke. The calumet or reed-pipe, which is presented during the above act, is lighted and the smoke puffed first to the east, then to the north, west, south, then to the sky and to the centre of the earth. No moon worship exists among these Indians. On the fifth day commence the dances, which are held under a large concourse of people and last from eight p.m. to four o’clock in the morning. The medicine-house holds about three hundred people, and nobody is allowed to leave before the above-mentioned hour, when the conjurers allow the people to breathe fresh air. ,[In each word of the Isleta text, the emphasized syllable is marked by an acute accent standing after the vowel. ]