Black Fog. These came
and spread out over the skins four times each, lifting and settling each
time. When Fog lifted the last time it took up with it the skin with the
turquoise and abalone and began to expand, spreading wider and wider until
a blue film covered all, in the form of the sky. As the turquoise skin
expanded, so also did the white-shell skin, broadening the earth as it
grew. During this period of transition the people all travelled eastward,
and being Holy People, covered great distances each day. At the end of the
fourth day they stopped. Then also the sky and the earth ceased widening,
having reached their present dimensions. Since the two skins had been
placed with their heads toward the east, the heads of the sky and the
earth are now in that direction.

[Illustration: _Hasche{~COMBINING BREVE~}lti_ - Navaho]

_Hasche{~COMBINING BREVE~}lti_ - Navaho

_From Copyright Photograph 1904 by E.S. Curtis_

This, the Talking God, is the chief character in Navaho mythology. In the
rites in which personated deities minister to a suffering patient this
character invariably leads, carrying a four-piece folding wand, _balil_,
and uttering a peculiar cry.

As yet there was neither sun nor moon to shed light, only dawn, circling
the horizon in the four colors--white in the east, blue in the south,
yellow in the west, and black in the north. Deeming it necessary that they
should have light to brighten the world, and warmth for the corn and the
grass, on their return to the earth's centre one of the chiefs made a
speech advocating the creation of a sun and a moon.

First Man and First Woman placed two sacred deerskins on the ground as
before. On the buckskin a shell of abalone was placed, on the doeskin a
bowl made of pearl. The shell contained a piece of clear quartz crystal,
and the bowl a moss agate. The objects were dressed respectively in
garments of white, blue, yellow, and black wind, and were carried to the
end of the land in the east by First Man and First Woman. With their
spirit power Astse Hastin and Astse Estsan sent both the shell and the
bowl far out over the ocean, giving life to the crystal and the agate as
they did so, directing that the one who would be known as Chehonaai, the
Sun, should journey homeward through the sky by day, shedding light and
warmth as he passed; the other, Klehonaai, the Moon, must travel the