Navajo Art Blog

This is a difficult subject on which to get information, as the medicine-men are very reluctant to explain, but the primary purpose of a sand-painting is to summon the spirits of the gods. If a sick man dreams more than once about seeing a snake or a bear or a Yeibitchai, he goes to a hatali and has him make sand-paintings of these deities and pray to them for him. They sprinkle white corn meal over the pictures for men and yellow meal for women, as an offering, and beg the gods to forgive them and help them.
The spirits come down and look at the sand-painting to see if it is made exactly right, and if so they are pleased and remain. If a mistake has been made, they are offended and go away, and the patient does not get well. When the perfect picture is finished, the patient is seated in the middle of it and the hatali invokes the spirits of the gods there present to forgive the sick man and stop troubling him. Then he touches the feet of the deity in the painting with his eagle-plume wand and applies it to the feet of the patient; and so on up his body, wiping out each part in the picture as he goes.
Then, as the devils are driven out at the patient’s mouth and he rises up and goes outside, the sand of the painting is gathered up hastily and taken east and poured out carefully to the north. Removing the painting of the deities who have afflicted the sick man removes the sickness, and the cause of the sickness. That is why sand-paintings are made and destroyed.
MAKING THE PICTURE
In the chants which have more than four sand-paintings, the pictures are divided into groups known as Summer and Winter pictures. When treating a patient the hatali gives him his choice of two groups of summer pictures if it is summer, or two groups of winter pictures if it is winter. If a summer treatment has helped the patient and he can afford another sing that winter, he is given his choice of the two winter groups. A third treatment would require the second group of summer pictures and a fourth the second group of winter pictures. But this division applies only for the individual, and other people may have different groups.
Sand-paintings vary in size from the solid-blue Sun picture of the Female Shooting Arrow Chant, which is less than two inches across, to the enormous group-pictures of the Night Chant and Mountain Chant, which are often twelve feet in diameter. Most paintings are composed on a plan of four or eight figures, arranged about a common center and enclosed on three sides by a rainbow, the opening being always to the east. This gateway in turn is guarded by two snakes or insects or other natural deities, generally placed in a field of yellow sand.
Alternating between the four or eight human figures, which are generally standing on short rainbows or sun-dogs, there are almost always four plants growing out from the center and touching the four corners of the picture. Then, besides these symmetrical groupings, there are other paintings where dancers, animals, or deities are shown standing side by side. Still others, like the Eagles’ Nest reproduced at page 222, are primarily illustrations, intended to tell a story, and conform to no hard-and-fast law.
The actual work of making a sand-painting may be performed by any one present — man, woman, or child — under the eye, of course, of the medicine-man. In the one- and twoday sings so commonly given, a relatively small picture is made, as the accompanying illustration shows. Here the old medicine-man, Long Mustache, was treating a woman for bad dreams about lightning, using the Female Shooting Arrow Ceremony. The picture represents the Sun and Moon, Black Wind and Yellow Wind, all in circles and all with horns.
First a blanketful of the natural yellow sand was brought in and spread on the floor to the west of the fireplace, for the foundation. It was leveled off and made smooth in the middle by the use of polished weaving-battens and in the center, without ceremony, four sun-dogs were laid off to mark the four directions. The prepared colors were brought wrapped up in pieces of buckskin, but before beginning his work Long Mustache ground up some more yellow and black on a flat piece of sandstone.
On the east side the medicine-man made a circle in blue for the Sun, filling it in and making a white line around it. He put horns on it and two plumes on each horn, pushing the white sand out over his first finger by little shoves of his thumb to make the thin lines on the feathers. Every time he took a fresh pinch of color, he blew on his hand to get rid of any falling particles and he worked with one elbow supported by his knee, or held his wrist with the other hand, to steady it.
Meanwhile, the husband of the sick woman was looking on and on the north side he began a circle in yellow to represent Yellow Wind. Then as a young girl came in, she was pressed into service with much banter, and laughingly began work on the Moon, in white. She even was allowed to make the thin lines of the feathers, which she traced out quite expertly. The mother of the family sat by and watched, nursing her baby and fanning away the flies, but no other Indians were present, the patient being outside the hohrahn. It was all very different from the pomp and ceremony of the Mountain Chant; yet all over the Reservation, in little hohrahns like this, such paintings are being made.

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