Badger

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One day soon thereafter, while the elders were having a ceremony for a boy and a girl who had both come of age, the people saw the sky swooping down. It seemed to want to embrace the earth. And they saw the earth likewise looming up as if to meet the sky. For a moment they came in contact. The sky touched the earth and the earth touched the sky. And just then, at exactly the spot where the sky and the earth had met, Ma'ii the Coyote sprung out of the ground. And Nahashch'id the Badger sprung out of the ground. It is our belief that Ma'ii the Coyote and Nahashch'id the Badger are children of the sky. Coyote came forth first, which leads us to suppose that he is Badger's older brother. Nahashch'id the Badger began sniffing around the top of the hole that led down to the lower world. He finally disappeared into it and was not seen again for a long time. Ma'ii the Coyote chose to stay among the Surface People.

From Din`e bahane`: The Navajo Creation Story; By Paul G. Zolbrod Other references also include The book of the Navajo; By Raymond Friday Locke, Pg. 67

After the water sank there appeared another person. They did not know him, and they asked him where he had come from. He told them that he was the badger, nahash' id, and that he had been formed where the Yellow Cloud had touched the Earth. Afterward this Yellow Cloud turned out to be a sunbeam. Pgs. 10,11

The Dine': Origin Myths of the Navajo Indians, 1956; Aileen O'Bryan.

They threw away their old teeth towards the east and it is said that all teeth are thus thrown away are given to the Badger, Tabasteen. Pg. 78

Navajo Creation Myth, The Story of the Emergence; 1942, Mary C. Wheelwright.

Badger (na'actcidi') (H), not very exactly delineated, is represented as possessing unusually strong power. Since he sprang from the contact of Earth and Sky when the people were in the fourth world, he is a child of Sky. He went back into the hole at the Place-of-emergence.
Badger went among the women when they were separated from the men and made them mad with sexual desire.
Badger is a 'friend' of Wolf, Mountain Lion, Wildcat, and Bobcat (JS).
Badger's eardrum enables seers to divine by listening (Ch. 6, "Diagnosis"; Matthews 1897, pp.71, 75-6; Stephen 1930, p.99; Reichard 1939, p. 16, PI. VI, VII).

Navajo Religion, Vol II; Gladys A. Reichard, 1950

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