The country of the Navahos lies south and west of the Rocky Mountains on a great tableland lifted up into the sky. It is a country of canyons and deserts, mountains and wild pasture lands arched over by the bluest sky in all the world. The sun there seems bigger than our northern sun, and he treads the sky each day like a proud Indian god in a feather headdress of gold and fire.
When a Navaho falls ill, or has recovered from an illness, his friends and the friends of his friends meet together by night to dance the sacred fire dance. In the open land by some lonely settlement in the ancient hills, they kindle great fires under the starry sky, and dance the sacred dance round and about the flames. The old men sing, the drums resound, and the tread of the dancers shakes the earth till the fires sink and die in the glow of the mountain dawn.
The song which the old men sing at the dance is very beautiful and very old. It is called the Song of Healing. This is the story the Navahos tell about the song. Once upon a time, say the Navahos, an Indian people lived in a cliff dwelling in the south wall of the Canyon de Chelly. The huge, arched-over hollow in which their town was built was more than halfway up the side of the reddish-pink canyon wall, and to get to it, the people had to climb ladders and follow narrow paths cut in the stone. Looking from the canyon up to the cliff, one could see the little square houses nestling under the huge arch, a watch tower, and a granary. At one end of the arch, a ribbon of water, gliding down the cliff, marked the overflow of a fine spring which never failed.
The people of the cliff village lived by farming. A river flowed through the canyon, and along its banks were peach orchards, and meadows, and fields of melons, squashes, beans and tasselled corn. All day long, as they went back and forth between their fields and the town, the Indians could be seen climbing up and down the cliff.
At night, the ladders were pulled up so that no enemy or climbing animal could reach the town. Then the great arch filled with stars, little cooking fires began to twinkle in front of the houses, and the barking of coyotes was to be heard, now near, now ever so faint and far away.
The silversmith of the town was named Pesh-li-kai, which, in the Navaho tongue, means the Silver Man. He had a little forge, a bellows of goat skin, and an anvil which he held between his knees. Now Pesh-li-kai, so the Navahos say, had a daughter, and she was quite the handsomest of all the Indian girls. So gracefully and prettily did she move that the people called her Kai, which is The Willow.
One spring morning, Kai went down the ladders to weed in the young corn. Suddenly she heard a pleasant voice call her by name.
The maiden dropped her weeding stick, rose to her feet, and looked about. No one was near, and no one answered her when she called.
A few days later the girl again went down to weed in the corn. A little breeze was blowing thin clouds down the canyon sky, and brought to the girl’s ears the faint voices of other villagers working along the valley. Suddenly Kai heard, from near at hand, the pleasant voice again calling her by name.
