This They Believe

'MEDICINE MAN,' A NAVAJO STUDY BY D. CLIFFORD BOND This They Believe

This they believe, these Navajo people. The White Man doctor at Kayenta or Tuba City or Fort Defiance, they believe in too, because they have healed their eyes, red and burning with trachoma. They have healed legs that have been broken. Brought health to sick bodies.

But they believe in their own Medicine Man also, for such is the way of their people, and it has been this way longer than the oldest man can remember. It has been this way since the very beginning of the world when the hills themselves were made. This they believe, they do not question. One does not question one's gods or the wisdom of one's fathers.

Their Medicine Man, now that there are no longer chiefs as in the old days, is their most respected man. They are Chanters and Singers, learned in the dark mystery of Navajo religion and Navajo healing. Of perhaps twenty-five major chants, the Medicine Man in all his life might learn one and parts of others. The sick hire his services and he must perform his duties well for should he make a single mistake in the ceremony, he cannot cure and he himself may feel the anger of the gods he has offended. Sickness, he believes, is caused by evil spirits in the body and when those spirits are expelled the body is well.

the ceremony, he cannot cure and he himself may feel the anger of the gods he has offended. Sickness, he believes, is caused by evil spirits in the body and when those spirits are expelled the body is well.

A scholar and a kindly man who for long years lived among the Navajos and studied their ceremonies divides the great chants into six parts: sacrifice, sand painting, masquerade, dance, prayer and song. The sand painting is the essential part of all chants, and in some chants there may be as many as 47 sand paintings, all delicately made, of traditionalsymbolism. The sand painting represents the gods involved and is, apart from its religious significance, a work of art.

There are various ceremonies performed after the painting is finished. The patient is brought into the Medicine Man's hogan, receives the ministrations of the healer, after which the painting is destroyed as carefully as it was created. The sand, made from the colored rocks of their land, is then thrown away to lose itself and its color in the wind... R. C.