with horsemen coming singly and in groups.
Great crowds gather at the contests given half a mile from the hogan,
where horse-races, foot-races, groups of gamblers, and throngs of Indians
riding wildly from race-track to hogan fill the day with hilarity and
incidents memorable to all. Toward the end of the day preparation is made
for the closing part of the nine-day rite. Great quantities of fuel have
been brought from the distant plateau, and placed in many small piles at
each side of the smooth dance ground to the east of the hogan. As soon as
it is dark the fuel is ignited, making two long lines of camp-fires,
furnishing both light to see the dancers and warmth to the spectators, for
the Yebichai cannot be held until the autumn frosts begin, when the nights
have the sharp, keen air of the high altitudes.

[Illustration: _Zahadolzha_ - Navaho]

_Zahadolzha_ - Navaho

_From Copyright Photograph 1907 by E.S. Curtis_

This is the last of the dry-paintings used in the Night Chant, being
destroyed on the night of the eighth day's ceremonies. It takes its name
from the fact that the principal characters represented in it, the dark
figures, are all Zahadolzha, Fringe-mouth Gods. According to the myth
underlying the rite these gods made the first paintings of this sort used
among the spirit people, and were the ones who furnished succor to the
patients on the eighth day of the nine days' healing ceremony. The light
figures are female deities--haschebaad. In the centre is the cornstalk, a
life-giving symbol, and partially encircling the whole is the personified
light-giving rainbow, a female personage.

During the ceremony a man masked as a Zahadolzha places his hands first
upon a part of his likeness pictured in colored earths and then on the
corresponding part of the patient, as head, body, and limbs. Later the
colored earths or sands are carried away in a blanket and placed under
brush or trees toward the north.

With the gathering darkness the human tide flows toward the medicine
hogan, illuminated in the dusk by the long lines of camp-fires. All gather
about and close around the dance square, having to be kept back by those
in charge. Men, women, and children sit on the ground near the fires. Many
on horseback have ridden up, and form a veritable phalanx back of the
sitting spectators. The dance does not be