Ceremonial of Hasjelti Dailjis and Mythical Sand Painting of the Navajo Indians

In Short

James Stevenson’s ethnographic account records the nine-day Hasjelti Dailjis healing ceremonial witnessed on the Navajo Reservation near Keam's Canyon in 1885. The text documents the construction of sweat houses, the fashioning of sacred prayer reeds, the gathering of hundreds of spectators, and the creation of detailed sand paintings. Alongside the day-by-day ritual sequence, Stevenson sets down foundational Navajo creation myths. The work remains an early landmark in Southwestern ethnology, capturing the visual patterns, songs, and divine personations that constitute a traditional Navajo healing rite.

The Story

The narrative opens on an extensive plateau near Keam's Canyon, Arizona, where some twelve hundred Navajos assemble in the summer of 1885. Stevenson establishes the physical setting and immediately transitions into a chronological record of the nine-day ceremonial conducted by a lead song-priest or theurgist.

The initial days center on architectural and ceremonial preparation. At dawn on consecutive mornings, workers construct four cardinal sweat houses framing the central medicine lodge. Attendants flay deer killed without blood loss, prepare masks, and fashion sacred reeds and prayer sticks. These objects are cut with stone knives, polished, painted in prescribed blue, black, white, and yellow hues, filled with feathers and native tobacco, and offered to the gods.

As the middle days unfold, the interior of the lodge becomes the site of precise diagnostic and cleansing rites. Attendants prepare yucca suds to wash the invalid, who sits stripped of ordinary clothing while personators of deities—including Hasjelti, Hostjoghon, and the Etsethle—enter the lodge wearing elaborate masks and silver ornaments. Through ritual gestures, the application of pine boughs, and the inhalation of herbal fumes over live coals, the priests transfer the fever and illness from the sufferer into the sacred masks and offerings.

By the sixth and seventh days, the ceremonial reaches its visual climax in the creation of large, intricate sand paintings laid directly upon the lodge floor. Four artists work outward from the center using pulverized charcoal, sandstone, and kaolin. They trace sacred figures, sunbeams, and cross-logs, encircling the compositions with the rainbow goddess Nattsilit. Outside the lodge, the surrounding mesa fills with activity as spectators gamble, race horses, and share meals. The invalid is seated directly upon the sand paintings to absorb their restorative power, receiving consecrated drafts from a medicine gourd.

The final days bring the ritual to its conclusion with public outdoor performances and nocturnal dances. Personators of the deities Naiyenesgony, Tobaidischinni, and Ahsonnutli process down an avenue of spectators at sunset. The song-priest leads the assembled singers in long prayers and chants, after which the invalid sprinkles meal over the dancers. The ceremonial culminates in an all-night dance where masked figures cross and recross before fires until dawn. Stevenson appends to this observational record a series of ancestral myths, tracing the creation of the sun, the floating logs, and the origins of the Navajo world.

How It Unfolds

Setting the mesa stage Stevenson arrives at Keam's Canyon in the summer of 1885 just prior to a nine-day healing ceremonial. Over a thousand Navajos gather on the plateau, establishing a central medicine lodge surrounded by temporary shelters and horse races.

Erecting the sweat houses At dawn on four consecutive days, workers build four conical sweat houses at the cardinal points facing east. Attendants adorn the structures with buckskins from smothered deer and paint rainbow motifs over the eastern and western entrances.

Fashoning sacred offerings The song-priest and his helpers rub hollow reeds against polishing stones, cutting them with stone knives to precise hand measurements. They paint the tubes in symbolic colors, pack them with hummingbird feathers and native tobacco, and light them with a crystal to invoke rain.

Invoking the masked gods Personators clothe themselves in silver belts and sacred masks, entering the medicine lodge with pine boughs and hoots. They place the masks over the invalid's head and pass herbs across live coals, drawing out the fever into the ceremonial gear.

Drawing on the earth Artists spread colored sands upon the lodge floor, working outward from a central cross to depict deities sitting on floating pine logs. The song-priest plants feather wands around the border and seats the invalid upon the finished design to drink sacred herbal water.

The night of songs and dances Spectators form a vast circle on the mesa as masked dancers proceed down an avenue at sunset. The song-priest recites the long prayer to the Etsethle, leading an all-night dance that continues until the morning light.

The People

• The Song-Priest (Theurgist): The ritual leader who directs every stage of the nine-day ceremonial. He oversees the cutting of reeds, checks the accuracy of sand paintings, leads the choir in sacred chants, and administers pollen and prayers over the invalid.
• The Invalid: The patient for whom the entire assembly gathers. He sits nude during cleansing rites, inhales herbal smoke, wears divine masks to draw out fever, and is seated upon the sand paintings to receive drafts of medicine water.
• Hasjelti: The chief god of the ceremony and creator of game. Personated by a dancer in red scarfs and silver belts, he carries a sacred fawn-skin pouch filled with corn pollen and leads the divine processions.
• Hostjoghon: A companion deity who appears alongside Hasjelti during the lodge ceremonies. His body is painted white, and he wears a red loin scarf while assisting in the purification of the patient.
• Ahsonnutli: A central deity within Navajo mythology, identified as a turquoise hermaphrodite. She plays a pivotal role in the creation of the sun by placing white-shell beads and turquoise upon darkness and invoking light.

In Its Own Voice

"Whenever a pinch of the dry paint was taken from the pieces of bark which served as paint cups, the artist breathed upon the hand before sprinkling the paint."

— Stevenson describing the delicate mechanics of applying colored sand to decorate a sweat house.

"The deer is run down and secured by ropes or otherwise. Corn pollen is then put into the mouth of the deer and the hands are held over the mouth and nostrils until life is extinct."

— Stevenson explaining the required method for obtaining buckskin used over sweat-house entrances and in mask-making.

"People, you come to see us; you have a house in the heart of the rocks; you are the chief of them; you are beautiful. Come inside of our houses."

— From the formal Prayer to the Etsethle recited by the song-priest and repeated by the invalid on the ninth day.

What It's Really About

Stevenson’s monograph is an investigation into how sacred order is reconstructed to restore individual health. In the Navajo worldview recorded here, illness is not merely a bodily malfunction but a disruption in the sufferer's alignment with the cosmos. Healing requires an exact, painstaking reproduction of primordial patterns—re-enacting the creation of the sun, re-drawing the sacred cross-logs, and re-invoking the gods through precise songs and sand pigments. The text demonstrates how art, architecture, music, and myth function together as a unified system of medicine, where every pinch of corn pollen, cut reed, and painted line carries cosmic significance.

Why Read It Today

This text appeals to readers of Native American history, Southwestern anthropology, and historical religion. Stevenson writes as a direct, non-judgmental observer, avoiding speculative theory in favor of clear, concrete detail. He lists exact measurements, describes pigment sources, and records the social atmosphere of the mesa with field-notebook clarity.

Reading the text requires navigating the formal style of nineteenth-century ethnography. Stevenson uses archaic terminology—referring to the song-priest as a "theurgist" and the patient as the "invalid"—and presents long, unadorned lists of procedural steps that demand patient reading. Yet this very density gives the monograph its lasting power. Readers interested in traditional Navajo art will find an irreplaceable eyewitness record of late-nineteenth-century sand painting and ceremonial practice, captured before modern influence altered the physical landscape of the Southwest.