ultation. They circled the lodge, but in the dimness of the
light could discern no guiding footprint to tell the direction in which
their young wives had gone. Returning to the camp, they filled their
sacred pipes, and in silence sat and smoked. Soon a thin curl of smoke was
seen drifting southward, winding in and out among the pinons; then another
on the north side. These they followed, bearing eastward, smoking as they
went, and as the sun began to tint the higher hills and mountain crests
with yellow, bathing all else in purple shadows, they came upon their
wives in a little rocky canon screened by thickly growing cedar and pinon.
The smoke foretold the women of their doom, so they were not taken by
surprise.

Seeing no way to escape, the girls resigned themselves to fate, and meekly
followed the old men back to camp, whence they journeyed with them to the
west.

At their home the brothers had wives and children, so they did not herald
their new consorts as such, but wedded them at once to their eldest sons.
This prospect pleased the two young women, and they entered into the
spirit of the new life with zest. They learned the songs and chants of the
rites of the Snake and the Bear people--the clans to which these younger
husbands belonged--and taught them to a young brother who came to visit
them. When the brother returned to the Navaho people, he told them that
his sisters were quite happy, and with the songs he had learned from them
he originated the Hozhoni Hatal, Happiness Chant.

LEGEND OF THE NIGHT CHANT

Long years ago three brothers--the eldest rich, the second a wayward,
roving gambler, and the youngest a mere boy--lived together among their
kind, the Dine{~COMBINING BREVE~} people. Their only sister was married, living apart with
her husband. The gambler often took property belonging to his brothers,
going to distant corners of the land to stake it on games of chance. On
returning, he never failed to relate a story of wonders he had seen--the
Holy People whom he had met, and who revealed many things to him. His
brothers never believed him, calling him Bilh Ahati{~COMBINING BREVE~}ni, The Dreamer.

[Illustration: _Ga__n__ askidi. Zahadolzha. Hasche{~COMBINING BREVE~}lti_ - Navaho]

_Ga__n__ askidi. Zahadolzha. Hasche{~COMBINING BREVE~}lti_ - Navaho

_From Copyright Photograph 1904 by E.S. Curtis_

The personated deities pictured in this plate appear together in act