onial,
which lasts for nine days, is familiarly called among the tribe
"Yebitchai," which means "the giant's uncle," this term being used to
awe the youthful candidates for initiation.

The ceremony witnessed by Mr. Stevenson was performed to cure a wealthy
member of the tribe of an inflammation of the eyes. Twelve hundred
Navajo Indians were present, chiefly as spectators, but that exhibition
of their interest may partly be accounted for by the fact that they
lived while on their visit at the expense of the invalid and occupied
most of the time in gambling and horse racing. The very numerous active
participants in the ceremonies, who might be called the mystery company,
in reference to the early form of our drama, were not directly paid for
their services, but acted because they were the immediate relatives of
the invalid for whose benefit the performance was given. The tribesman
who combined the offices of manager, theurgist, song priest, or master
of ceremonies was paid exorbitantly for his professional services. The
personation of the various gods and their attendants and the acted drama
of their mythical adventures and displayed powers exhibit features of
peculiar interest, while the details of the action day after day show
all imaginable and generally incomprehensible changes and multiplication
of costume and motions and postures and manipulations of feathers and
meal and sticks and paint and water and sand and innumerable other stage
properties in astounding complexity and seeming confusion. Yet, from
what is known of isolated and fragmentary parts of the dramatized myths,
it is to be inferred that every one of the strictly regulated and
prescribed actions has or has had a special significance, and it is
obvious that they are all maintained with strict religious scrupulosity,
indeed with constant dread of fatal consequences which would result from
the slightest divergence. In connection with this ritualistic form of
punctilio, which is noticed in the religious practices of other peoples
and lands, the established formal invocation of and prayer to the
divinity may be mentioned. It clearly offers a bribe or proposes the
terms of a bargain to the divinities, and has its parallel in the
archaic prayers of many other languages. Translated from the Navajo, it
is given as follows:

People of the mountains and roots [i.e., the gods, as shown by the
context], I hear you wish to be paid. I give to you food of corn