Sandpaintings of the Navaho Shootingway and The Walcott Collection

Abstract

A brief account of the Navaho and their ceremonial system ("religion") and practice of ritual, with its sanctioning mythology, provides background for the discussion of the sandpaintings of the Shootingway chantway, its Mountain-Shootingway phase, and its Evilway ritual. A short section on the mythology of the male and female branches of Shootingway relates its major mythic motifs to the following account of the symbols and designs of its sandpaintings. Special attention is given to the rarely performed Sun's House phase of male Shootingway and the double sandpainting, Sky-reaching Rock, the most elaborate of all sandpainting designs, which is especially associated with this phase. Finally, there is a detailed descriptive catalog of the 28 reproductions of Navaho sandpaintings in the Mrs. Charles D. Walcott Collection, now in the United States National Museum.