Page:Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society V.djvu/188

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Navaho Legends.

452. Some years passed before the next accession was made. This was another party of Zuñi Indians, and they were admitted into the gens of the Thá'paha. Soon after them came the Zuñi People, who were at last formed into a separate gens,—that of Nanastĕ'zin. This is the Navaho name for all the Zunians, and means Black Horizontal Stripe Aliens.198 All these people deserted the Zuñi villages on account of scarcity of food.

453. A new people, with painted faces, came from the west about the same time as those who formed the gens of Zuñi, or a little later. They are supposed to have been a part of the tribe now called Mohaves on the banks of the Colorado. They bore the name of Dildzéhi, and their descendants now form a gens of that name among the Navahoes. At first they affiliated with Nanas'zin; but to-day they are better friends with Thá'tsini than with Nanas'zin.

454. A war-party, consisting of members of different gentes, was now organized among the Navahoes to attack a pueblo called Saíbehogan, House Made of Sand. At that place they captured two girls and brought them home as slaves. There was a salt lake near their old home, and the girls belonged to a gens of Salt People there. So their numerous descendants now among the Navahoes form the gens of Ásihi, or Salt. The captives were taken by members of the Tse'dzĭnkĭ'ni, hence Ásihi and Tse'dzĭnkĭ'ni are now affiliated.

455. Then a war party was gotten up to attack the people of Jemez pueblo. On this raid one of the Tlastsíni captured a Jemez girl, but sold her to one of the Tse'dzĭnkĭ'ni. She was the progenitor of the gens of Maidĕski'zni, People of Wolf Pass (i.e., Jemez), which is now affiliated with Tse'dzĭnkĭ'ni.

456. After the Navahoes attacked Saíbehogan there was a famine there, and some of the people abandoned their homes and joined the Navahoes. They said that in their pueblo there was a gens of Thá'paha, and hearing there was such a gens among the Navahoes they came to join it. Therefore they sought Thá'paha till they found it and became a part of it.

457. There came once a party of seven people from a place called Tse'yanató'ni, Horizontal Water under Cliffs, to pay a short visit to the Navahoes; but from time to time they delayed their departure, and at last stayed forever with the Navahoes. They formed the gens of Tse'yanató'ni, which is now extinct.

458. The people whom Estsaánatlehi created from the skin under her right arm, and to whom she gave the wand of white shell, was called, after they came among the Navahoes, Kin'ni, High Stone House People; not because they built or dwelt in such a house, but because they lived near one.199