Navajo Medicine Bundles or Jish: Acquisition, Transmission, and Disposition in the Past and Present [Hardcover]

Charlotte Johnson Frisbie (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1987

There are far too many ceremonies for any one medicine man to know all of them. Most medicine men specialize in one to six or seven ceremonies, and rarely will a medicine man specialize in more than eight. Everything has to be learned by memory. It takes years to learn the songs or chants, the myths and origins of each song, each ceremonial ritual, and the design and interpretation of sand paintings--if they are used. Learning is accomplished through apprenticeship to noted medicine men. After their education, medicine men have to be ceremonially ordained for each ceremony they perform. During his training, each medicine man must acquire his own medicine bundle. This can be done by the ritualistic gathering of a bundle from an aging medicine man or by making up a new bundle. The type of ceremony that the medicine man knows will determine the kind and size of the medicine bundle. Collection of a new medicine bundle is time-consuming and includes herbs, pollens, feathers, sacred mountain dirt, stones, scrub oak branches, juniper bark, cattail flags, wild rice grass, rock sage, bear grass, plants with pods, and many other grasses and tree branches. The medicine man, further, must be able to identify exactly every herb, plant, and other necessary object required in particular ceremonies. Like a medical doctor, he is on call at all times but goes to the patient's hogan to perform the necessary ceremony. The Navajo people usually know which medicine man in their area specializes in each ceremony. The chants are followed by serving food to the spectators, and, with the medicine man's fee, the expense can be large.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 603 pages
• Publisher: Univ of New Mexico Pr (December 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826309208
• ISBN-13: 978-0826309204
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,981,825 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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