Wanderings, Part XIV

WANDERINGS, PART XIV

A long time passed after this until again they had trouble. Some people did not approve of this dramatization and quarrels started. Some of the relatives of those killed left the tribe. Some of the people said they were not happy at this place, so they decided to leave for the south, remembering that they were to look for Haako further south. So Country Chief notified the people that they were to move, and all was made ready. The people were told to take the masks and altars along and leave nothing sacred behind. So they left with the same ceremonies as before, going on south. It is not known how far they went, but finally they stopped at a place where they went through the ceremony of forgetting. It is not known how far they went when they symbolically crossed the four mountains and left their sickness and trouble behind.

They traveled for many moons and came to a place called Ashthinahawaisha, Tule Lake. The people were tired and asked if they could not stop there and build another village. So they made camp there, until they finally built better and better houses and forgot about moving on and settled down. Here they lived happily a long time. They had forgotten their quarrels and troubles. Here they had their ceremonies and full village life as before. Many other societies of medicine men were introduced, and there were two or three altars of the Fire Chaianyi and three of the Flint society and three or four more, Giant society altars. (At White House some of the chaianyi had been killed by the katsina; the real katsina did the killing.)

At Tule Lake the people found many ant hills. When they built their houses they destroyed many of the ant homes. The people did not think very much of the ants and they stepped on them and killed them. There came a time when the people become sick with an unknown disease. ⁶⁸ The sick ones had sores all over their bodies and it seemed as if ants were always running to them as they do to their homes. The medicine men did all they could to cure the people but they failed. In villages which they left behind [? passed by] people had different clan names and one clan was named Ant clan. The chaianyi thought about the Ant clan and decided to make another Society of medicine men. They selected a man to be the first Ant

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medicine man and gave him an altar; they named him Si·'i chaianyi. He was to have power to cure disease brought on by ants. He had to know the prayers of the ants and how to move them from one place to another, so they would not be destroyed. (There are no Ant chaianyi in Acoma now, ⁶⁹ but other medicine men have their prayers.) The Ant altar is quite small. There are no sticks. There are one honani and two eagle feathers (the longest on each wing) and the two hands of a horned toad. These were given because the horned toad eats ants. The sand painting represents a horned toad or a lizard (pl. 10, fig. 2, b). A patient is seated on top of the painting. The chaianyi then brushes off the disease with a grass broom. ⁷⁰ After the patient is brushed off, he is painted with red paint. The gravel ⁷¹ that has been swept off the patient is gathered up in a corn husk and buried. Nowadays when a house is being built one of the chaianyi is called to remove the ants. He takes some and the owner digs out the rest. In the tradition it was not necessary for the first Ant chaianyi to do more than brush each patient once to effect a cure. Thus every one got well.

At this time the first chaianyi, the Fire chaianyi, was killed (by the katsina at the katsina war). His altar was lost, as he had plastered it in the wall to hide it. When they moved, his wife located it and brought it along. In the meantime duplicate altars were made at Tule Lake. The people did not know this woman had the original altar in her possession. At Tule Lake there came a famine and the people were starving, there was no rain. Country Chief and Antelope Man tried to bring rain, through the other chaianyi. They failed. So they called a meeting and Country Chief asked if anyone knew where the original altar was. The chaianyi remembered that the altar had disappeared at the time of the katsina attack; they thought that maybe the katsina had stolen it. Masewi and Oyoyewi were at the meeting, and Country Chief asked if they would help seek it. They said, "Yes, we will get it back."

So they went home and put on their magic clothes. They went first to Wenimats. They were gone for many days. They went to the different mountains [of the directions], and they went into the sacred places. They stirred things up in their search. They asked the katsina if they had stolen it. The katsina said no, but the Twins rudely went on searching. In the meantime the woman who had the altar sought Country Chief and brought the altar and asked, "Is this what you have lost?"

Footnotes

75:67 Informant's note: The name of this ceremony was kaiyapaitsaneetya, "come to club"; but it is now called kauwastheetya "attacking" (Cf. White, 1932, pp. 77, 88.)

75:68 Ants cause sores on the body and sore throat according to general Keresan belief. (See White, 1930, pp. 607-608.)

76:69 No Ant medicine society has been reported from Acoma, though "there used to be an Ant society" there (White, 1932, p. 107). There were Ant societies at Sia (Stevenson, 1894, pp. 69, 104) and at Laguna (Parsons, 1920, p. 109, Ito. 3). An Ant shaman from Zuñi lived in Santo Domingo for many years; he died in 1932. He practiced curing, not only in Santo Domingo, but in Santa Ana, Sia, San Felipe, Cochiti, and perhaps in some Tewa pueblos (White, 1935, pp. 67-68; 1932 a, p. 40; Parsons, 1923 a, p. 492).

76:70 See Stevenson, 1894, p. 100, for the extraction of ants from the body of a sick Sia boy. But it was the Giant society that did this, not the Ant.

76:71 (2) The "ants" which Stevenson saw extracted at Sia were "tiny pebbles."