Читать книгу The Mythology of Cherokee, Iroquois, Navajo, Siouan and Zuñi - James Mooney - Страница 71

The use of fetishes in hunting among the Zuñi is extremely curious and involved in its nature. The hunter goes to the house of the Deer Medicine, where the vessel containing the fetish is brought out and placed before him. He sprinkles meal over the sacred vessel in the direction in which he intends to hunt, chooses a fetish from it, and presses it to his lips with an inspiration. He then places the fetish in a buckskin bag over his heart. Proceeding to the hunt, he deposits a spider-knot of yucca leaves where an animal has rested, imitates its cry, and is supposed by this means to confine its movements within a narrow circle. He then inspires deeply from the nostrils of the fetish, as though inhaling the magic breath of the god of prey, and then puffs the breath long and loudly in the direction whence the beast's tracks trend, in the belief that the breath he has borrowed from the prey-god will stiffen the limbs of the animal he hunts. When the beast is caught and killed he inhales its suspiring breath, which he breathes into the nostrils of the fetish. He then dips the fetish in the blood of the slain quarry, sips the blood himself, and devours the liver, in order that he may partake of the animal's qualities. The fetish is then placed in the sun to dry, and lastly replaced in the buckskin pouch with a blessing, afterward being duly returned to the Keeper of the Deer Medicine.