Page:Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society V.djvu/175

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The Navaho Origin Legend.
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400. Soon after the departure of the Utes the Navahoes were joined by a group of people who, when they came to tell their story, were found to have come from Thá'paha-halkaí, and to have made wanderings similar to those of the people who first came from that place. The new people spoke, also, the same language as the Thá'paha. For these reasons they were not formed into a new gens, but were joined to the gens of Thá'paha.

401. Some years later a large band came from the south to the settlement on the San Juan. It consisted of Apaches, who told the Navahoes that they had left their old tribe forever and desired to become Navahoes. They had not come to visit, they said, but to stay. They all belonged to one gens among the Apaches,—the gens of Tse'zĭndiaí (Trap-dyke),186 and they were admitted into the tribe as a new gens with their old name. From the beginning they showed a desire to associate with Thá'paha, and now they are closely related to the latter and must not marry with them. An other band of Apaches, which came a little later, was added to the same gens.

402. About this time there was a great famine in Zuñi, and some people from this pueblo came to the San Juan to dwell with the Navahoes. They came first to the Thá'paha, and, although they had women in the party, they were not formed into a new gens, but added to Thá'paha. The gens of Zuñi was formed later.

403. The famine prevailed also at other pueblos, and some starving people came to the Navahoes from an old pueblo named Klógi, which was near where the pueblo of Jemez now stands. These formed the gens of Klógi, and made special friends of the Thá'paha.

404. The next accession was a family of seven adults, who came from a place called Tó'hani (Near the Water). They first visited the Dsĭltlá'ni and remained, forming the gens of Tó'hani, affiliated now with Dsĭltlá'ni.

405. The people who joined the Navahoes next after the Tó'hani came from a place called Tha'tsí, Among the Red (Waters or Banks), which was west of the San Juan settlement. From their traditions it appeared that they were not a newly created people; they had escaped in some way from the alien gods, and were for these reasons regarded as dĭné' dĭgíni, or holy people. They were divided into two gentes, Thá'tsini and Kaídĭne', or Willow People, and for a while they formed two gentes among the Navahoes; but in these days all traces of this division have been lost, and all their descendants are now called, without distinction, sometimes Thá'tsini and sometimes Kai or Kaídĭne'.

406. Before this time the Navahoes had been a weak and peaceable tribe; but now they found themselves becoming a numerous