Navajo Indian Legends

Witches and Witchcraft













In the emergence legend Navajo Indians speak of a

"Witchery Way" technique is that mentioned in the

emergence legend. A preparation (usually called 'poison' by

English-speaking informants) is made of the flesh of corpses.



The flesh of children and especially of twin children is preferred, and the

bones at the back of the head and skin whorls are the prized ingredients.

When this 'corpse poison' is ground into powder it 'looks like pollen.'



It may be dropped into an Indian hogan from the smoke-hole, placed in the

nose or mouth of a sleeping victim or blown from furrowed sticks into the

face of someone in a large crowd. 'Corpse poison' is occasionally stated to

have been administered in a cigarette.



Fainting, lockjaw, a tongue black and swollen, immediate unconsciousness or

some similar dramatic symptom is usually said to result promptly. Sometimes,

however, the effects are less obvious. The victim gradually wastes away, and

the usual ceremonial treatments are unavailing."



Sorcery is one aspect of those activities that the Navajo refer to by the

stem of an idzin plant. Sorcery, called idzin, is essentially an enchantment by

spell. Most informants regard it as a branch of witchery way, but unlike

witchery way, the sorcerer need not personally encounter his victim.



Instead, the sorcerer obtains a personal item from the intended victim such

as a piece of clothing, a fingernail, or a lock of hair. This is "buried with

flesh or other material from a grave or buried in a grave or under a

lightning-struck tree."



The sorcerer then recites the proper incantation, which consists of a prayer,

a song, or both. There are also rare instances of sorcerers making images of

their victims from clay or carving them from wood and then killing or

torturing the victims by sticking pins into the effigies or shooting projectiles

into them.



Wizardry refers to those practices that the Navajo Indians call adagash.

"The central concept here is that of injecting a foreign particle (stone, bone,

quill, ashes, charcoal) into the victim. The projectiles are often described as

'arrows.' English-speaking Navajos will occasionally refer to this kind of

witchcraft as 'bean-shooting,' but the majority of informants stated that

actual beans were never used.... The shooting was apparently believed by a

few informants to be carried out through a tube, but the majority opinion

was that the objects were placed in a special sort of red basket or on a

cloth or buckskin and made to rise through the air by incantation. According

to some informants, shooters removed their clothes and rubbed ashes on their

body before shooting".



Frenzy witchcraft refers to one of several classes of behavior that the

Navaho designate as ajile. It is associated with azite, the Prostitutionway

chant. Information on this chant is extremely hard to come by due to the

Navajo Indian's great reluctance to discuss anything about it. However, it

includes the use of certain plants, gathered in a prescribed manner, for "love

medicine" and luck in trading and gambling. Also, divination by ingesting

Datura (Jimson weed) is a form of frenzy witchcraft. Such divinations are

used mainly to locate stolen goods and trace thieves rather than to diagnose

illness. These practitioners reportedly never behave as were animals. Father

Bernard Haile held the opinion that frenzy witchcraft was originally a

technique for obtaining foreign women.

