Ceremonial of Hasjelti Dailjis & Mythical Sand Paintings of the Navajo Indians

Description

Author: Stevenson, James (1840-1888)

Publisher: Smithsonian Institution

Pub Date: 1891

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Fair to Good.  Binding tight.   No marks, tears, bends or folds.  This copy is from a BAE report that was falling apart and I excised this report and had it rebound in hardcover.  There’s some bubbling to the new front and rear boards.  Foxing to the text body.  Includes 8 single page color reproductions of Navajo ceremonial sandpaintings and 3 color gatefolds of sand paintings.

Notes: Rebind of an excised BAE report.  Stevenson was a geologist by training, and prepared geological surveys of Utah, Colorado, Idaho and Wyoming.  He was the husband of Matilda Coxe Stevenson (see https://joethebookguy.com/shop/indian/the-sia/ ), and both were anthropologists in their own right.  Stevenson kind of stumbled into this ceremony–Hasjelti Dailjis (in Navajo “The Dance of Hasjelti”), perhaps the chief of the Navajo gods.  The ceremony lasts for 9 days.  Unusually, “It (the ceremony) clearly offers a bribe or proposes the terms of a bargain to the divinities, and has its parallel in the archaic prayers of many other languages….In addition to his exhaustive account of the Hasjelti Dailjis and of the curious dry-sand painting which the Navajo in common with the Pueblo tribes make a prominent feature of their mysteries, and of which illustrations are furnished, Mr. Stevenson presents translations of six of the Navajo myths, some of which elucidate parts of the ceremony forming the main title of his papers.”  (From the Accompanying Papers).