Straight Rainbow
People are pictured in a few sandpaintings of Mountainway Shooting Branch, Nightway,
Big Godway, and Upward-reachingway. They do not differ from representations of
People in general, except that they have red and blue bodies. Bent, curved, or
Whirling Rainbow People are found in sandpaintings for Beautyway, male Shootingway,
Nightway, Mountainway, and male Plumeway. This last one shows four Rainbow People
with their bodies curved not quite to a right angle, something like the eight
slightly curved Rainbow People of Beautyway. They hold the ends of long arcs of
rainbow rope, "with which they helped the hero to lower the floating log
into the water." The Rainbow People of the paintings for the other three
chants, however, have very long bodies which, like those of the Windway paintings,
curve so much that they partly or completely encircle the center, so that their
heads appear in the next, the second next, or the third sunwise cardinal space,
or even further, In the Mountainway painting the bodies of the four Rainbows completely
encircle their skirts and legs. The sandpainting for Nightway with its eight Rainbow
People, two at each cardinal point, is almost identical with Speech Man's painting
for Navaho Windway in H Coll. In both the People curve so that their heads are
in the second next cardinal space. They carry baskets and spruce branches. The
center of the Windway painting is the pool at the Place-of-the-walking-flag-plants
where the hero encountered the Rainbow People and was carried up to the Sky Land,
riding on the rainbows they had given him. The Whirling Rainbow painting in the
Dendahl collection commemorates, according to the informant, the rescue of the
stolen baby from the bottom of a whirlpool by the Rainbow People. They carry fir
branches and gourd rattles, and their heads are round with brown faces, and unusual
feature for this supernatural. The discovery of the curved rainbow man among the
wall paintings in the prehistoric kivas at Pottery Mound, near Los Lunas, New
Mexico, structures dating from the fourteenth of fifteenth century, gives us a
possible clue to the origin of the curved Rainbow People in Navaho art. The figure
is extraordinarily like those in sandpaintings. Pgs. 304, 305
The Windways
of the Navajo; 1962, Leland C. Wyman.
The rainbow
is frequently represented in colored sand paintings and ceremonial paraphernalia,
and on the shield. The "trails" of the divinities are usually represented
as made of various kinds of rainbow. Pg. 46
An Ethnologic
Dictionary of the Navaho Language; 1910, The Franciscan Fathers
Rainbow
(na'tsi'lid) has numerous functions, all interrelated. It serves as an encircling
guardian of the sandpainting: when it has only bunches of feathers at the ends
it may be a garland, or it may be female instead of male (tla'h); when it has
a head and feet it represents the goddess. According to Matthews, the rainbow
has five colors-presumably red, yellow, green, blue, and white-each representing
a goddess. Rainbows are covered with feathers, which give them their colors.
The design consisting of red and blue stripes separated by and outlined with
white (sometimes incorrectly called 'sun-dog') differs from 'sunray' (cabitlo'l),
which is red and blue without white. Small rainbow designs are often painted
at the ankle and wrist joints of supernaturals; they symbolize lightness and
ease in moving and handling things Such designs are especially important for
the left side, since it is 'naturally' stiff and awkward and needs more protection
than the right.
Rainbows on a metate stand for the power of the hands in grinding. Rainbows
in a sandpainting are a prayer. They are protective; gods often stand on them
and they may be given to a hero to keep him safe.
Some rainbows are short or stubby; the one Talking God gave The Twins to keep
was only a fingerlength long. An arched or bent rainbow about eight paces long
was their means of travel for long distances; it could be folded and carried
in a pouch or blanket fold, but through supernatural power became long enough
for any purpose.
Coyote lassoed Water Monster's children with a rainbow. The gods helping the
Visionary to transport his garden produce wrapped it in clouds and bound the
parcels with rainbows.
"It is unlucky to point at a rainbow with any digit except the thumb. If
you point with a finger you will get a felon" (Matthews 1887, pp. 399,
446, 449; 1902, pp. 194-S, 231, 246, 309, 60n; Reichard, Endurance Chant ms.;
1939, Pl. XV-XX, XXII-XXIV; Newcomb-Reichard, Pl. IV, VII-IX, XVIII, XX, XXIV-V,
XXXI-XXXIII; Goddard, p. 130; Wheelwright 1942, Set II, 6).
Navajo
Religion, Vol II; Gladys A. Reichard, 1950
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