Long winter nights and the seclusion of the reservation has brought about most of the customs and activities used by the People to entertain and amuse themselves.
Ceremonies
The Navaho life is particularly rich in ceremony and ritual, second only to some of the Pueblo groups.Note is made of nine of their great nine-day ceremonies for the treatment of ills, mental and physical.
There are also many less important ceremonies occupying four days, two days, and one day in their performance.
In these ceremonies many dry-paintings, or "sand altars," are made, depicting the characters and incidents of myths.
Almost every act of their life—the building of the hogán, the planting of crops, etc.—is ceremonial in nature, each being attended with songs and prayers.
Navajo men at Yebichai sweatThe Navaho life is particularly rich in ceremony and ritual, second only to some of the Pueblo groups. Note is made of nine of their great nine-day ceremonies for the treatment of ills, mental and physical.
There are also many less important ceremonies occupying four days, two days, and one day in their performance. In these ceremonies many dry-paintings, or "sand altars," are made, depicting the characters and incidents of myths.
Almost every act of their life—the building of the hogán, the planting of crops, etc.—is ceremonial in nature, each being attended with songs and prayers.
Kinaalda – Celebrating maturity of girls among the Navajo
The ceremony celebrating maturity of girls among the Navajo is held generally on the fourth night after the first evidence of the maiden’s entrance into womanhood. On the first morning following the moment of this change in life the girl bathes and dresses in her finest clothes.
Kinaalda - Maturity ceremony for Navajo Girls
Her arms and legs are straightened, her joints smoothed, and muscles pressed to make her truly shapely. After that the most industrious and energetic of the comely women in the immediate neighborhood is called in to dress the girl’s hair in a particular form of knot and wrap it with deerskin strings, called ts?klólh.
Should there be any babies or little tots about the home, the girl goes to them, and, placing a hand under each ear, successively lifts them by the neck, to make them grow faster. Then she darts off toward the east, running out for about a quarter of a mile and back. This she does each morning until after the public ceremony. By so doing she is assured of continuing strong, lithe, and active throughout womanhood.
The four days preceding the night of the ceremony are days of abstinence; only such foods as mush and bread made from corn-meal may be eaten, nor may they contain any salt. To indulge in viands of a richer nature would be to invite laziness and an ugly form at a comparatively early age. The girl must also refrain from scratching her head or body, for marks made by her nails during this period would surely become ill-looking scars.
All the women folk in the hogán begin grinding corn on the first day and continue at irregular intervals until the night of the third, when the meal is mixed into batter for a large corn-cake, which the mother bakes in a sort of bean-hole outside the hogán.
The ceremony proper consists of little more than songs. A medicine-man is called upon to take charge, being compensated for his services with blankets, robes, grain, or other articles of value. Friends and neighbors having been notified, they assemble at the girl’s hogán fairly early in the evening.
When dusk has settled, the medicine-man begins his songs, singing first the twelve “hogán songs” of the Bahózhonchi. After he has finished, anyone present who so desires may sing songs taken from the ritual of the same order. This motley singing and hilarity continue until well toward sunrise, when the mother brings in a bowl of yucca suds and washes the girl’s hair.
Her head and hair are dried with corn-meal, after which the girl takes her last run toward the east, this time followed by many young children, symbolically attesting that she will be a kind mother, whom her children will always follow.
The hatál?, or medicine singer, during her absence sings eight songs, generally termed the Racing songs. On her return the great corn-cake is brought in, cut, and divided among the assemblage, when all disperse, and the girl may once more loosen her hair and partake of any food she pleases.
Navajo Squash blosson necklace
