Berard Haile

Origin Legend of the Navaho Flintway Berard Haile

Father Berard has made an indispensable bilingual volume available to the student of Navajo culture and language. Together with his Origin Legend of the Navaho Enemy Way it is the largest accumu-lation of recorded Navaho texts in existence, and the richest source of combined linguistic and ethnological data ever to be published.

The Navajo text and translation contains a complete record of the songs and prayers of Flintway, the first to be published for any Navajo ceremonial. They are preceded by an extensive introduction and numerous ethnological notes not only pertaining to Flintway, but contain enough material to give the reader a fair idea of Navajo ceremonialism as a whole.

The legend itself concerns the adventures of a young hunter who, having had adulter-ous relations with the wife of White Thunder, was shattered by the latter. Gila Monster Man was employed to restore him; and the detailed description of this process makes up the Flintway ceremonial complex used to treat internal injuries and their effects.