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Navaho Legends.

it, tapped the visitor on the knee to attract his attention, and said: "I long for a smoke. Fill your pipe216 with tobacco and let me smoke it." The Navaho answered: "I am poor. I have nothing." Four times this request was made and this reply given. On the fourth occasion the Navaho added: "I belong to the Ninokádĭne' (the People up on the Earth),217 and I have nothing." "I thought the Ninokádĭne' had plenty of tobacco," said the old man. The young man now drew from his pouch, which was adorned with pictures of the sun and moon, a mixture of native wild tobacco with four other plants.218 His pipe was made of clay, collected from a place where a wood-rat had been tearing the ground. He filled the pipe with the mixture, lighted it with the sun,219 sucked it four times till it was well kindled, and handed it to the old man to smoke. When the latter had finished the pipe and laid it down he began to perspire violently and soon fell into a swoon. The young woman thought her father was dead or dying, and ran to the other lodge to tell her mother. The mother gave the young woman a quantity of goods and said: "Give these to my son-in-law and tell him they shall all be his if he restores your father to life." When the daughter returned to the lodge where her father lay, she said to the Navaho: "Here are goods for you. Treat my father. You must surely know what will cure him." They laid the old man out on his side, in the middle of the floor, with his head to the north and his face to the east. The Navaho had in his pouch a medicine called ke'tlo, or atsósi ké'tlo,220 consisting of many different ingredients. Where he got the ingredients we know not; but the medicine men now collect them around the headwaters of the San Juan. He put some of this medicine into a pipe, lighted it with the sunbeams, puffed the smoke to the earth, to the sky, to the earth, and to the sky again; puffed it at the patient from the east, the south, the west, and the north. When this fumigation was done, the patient began to show signs of life, his eyelids twitched, his limbs jerked, his body shook. Natĭ'nĕsthani directed the young woman to put some of the medicine, with water, to soak in an earthen bowl,—no other kind of bowl is now used in making this infusion,—and when it was soaked enough he rubbed it on the body of the patient.

503. "Sadáni, sĭtá (My son-in-law, my nephew)," said the old man, when he came to his senses once more, "fill the pipe for me again. I like your tobacco." The Navaho refused and the old man begged again. Four times did the old man beg and thrice the young man refused him; but when the fourth request was made the young man filled the pipe, lit it as before, and handed it to the old man. The latter smoked, knocked out the ashes, laid down the pipe, began to perspire, and fell again into a deathly swoon. As on