The Night Chant : a Navaho ceremony / by Washington Matthews.

  • Washington Matthews
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Night Chant : a Navaho ceremony / by Washington Matthews. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    75/372 (page 55)
    MASKS. 260. —The majority of masks worn during the ceremony may be called permanent masks. They are the property of the chanter, are easily portable, are stored in a bag. One set of them may last the priest through his professional career. 261. —There are two masks of an ephemeral character, made for the occasion of a particular act, and destroyed as soon as they have served their purpose. Such masks are best considered in connection with the acts to which they belong (pars. 357-36i). 262. —As the chanters are comparatively few in number, the work of making- permanent masks and the ceremonies connected therewith rarely occur. The writer has never witnessed them and gives the following information on the authority of several shamans. 263. —The unwounded buckskin and all other material for the manufacture must be provided in advance by the shaman and he must cause the construction of the special lodge in which the work is done. Pollen vitalized by a bird called nikeni, is used. This bird, would seem, from the description to be a species of owl. The reason it is used for the masks is that its face looks somewhat like a human face. With pollen in which the whole bird has been immersed they mark off the pattern of the mask on the buckskin ; with pollen which has been applied to the eyes of the bird they mark the location of the eyes on the mask, and with pollen which has been applied to the mouth of the bird they mark the position of the mouth. 264. —A full set of twenty masks must all be made in one day and a sufficient number of men must be assembled to accomplish this. The masks thus made are : one for Nayenezgani, one for To'badAstnni, one for 7o‘nemli, one for //astreyal/i, one for //astre/tn, one for //astreAmi, one for DsaharTold^a, one for GazzaskizA, six for the other yebaka and six for the yebaad or goddesses. Seven bunches of owl feathers and the wreaths of hair to adorn the masks are also then prepared and so are the fourteen fox-skins used as collars to these masks. The spruce collars are not made on this occasion. The shaman begins to sing when work begins. When the masks are all done they have a ceremonious vigil of the masks much like that which now occurs in the ordinary night chant, on the fourth night (pars. 454 et seqi). In this they sing, with occasional rests, all night. 265. —It is allowable to make two sets, or forty masks in one day. In this case two contiguous lodges are built and occupied simultaneously, and a separate set is made in each lodge. The singers in both lodges do not sing at the same time ; when the song is taken up in one lodge there is silence in the other, and vice versa. Thus they sing alternately in one lodge or the other during the night. 266. —Fourteen of the masks, those representing males, are caps of buckskin that completely cover the head and face ; each is made of two pieces of skin shaped like an inverted U. These are sewed together with 12 interrupted sutures, six