Page:String Figures and How to Make Them.djvu/267

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STRING FIGURES

and turn the palms away from you (Fig. 519). The figure becomes extended between the index fingers and the middle fingers closed on the palms.

There is not much to this figure. The final pattern is almost exactly like the "Two Diamonds" of the Osage Indians, if that figure be formed with a single string

loop. The Fourth movement is a characteristic Navaho method, which, as we shall see, forms the most important part of the "Storm Clouds."

A LIZARD

This figure also was shown to me by the same two Navaho girls, at the St. Louis Exposition, in November, 1904 An example of the finished pattern collected by Mr. Culin at St. Michael's Mission, Arizona, and preserved in the Philadelphia

Free Museum of Science and Art (No. 22721 ) is labelled Nashoi-dichizhi = a Lizard. At Grand Canyon, Arizona, I saw a Navaho Indian form the "Lizard"; he secured the results of the First movement, however, by simply exchanging the index loops after the "Bow" Opening.

First: This movement is a slight modification of the opening movement in "The Bow." Hold the