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Yenaldlooshi: The Shape-Shifter Beliefs of the Navajos
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11052 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1993 |
2,720 Words |
| Author
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James Burbank
James Burbank is a freelance writer based in Albuquerque. |
I live in rural New Mexico just outside of Albuquerque. Last summer I was stringing corral fence; a Navajo friend, Tom Bill, visiting while he attended a powwow in Albuquerque, watched as I hammered away at a corner post. The horses began to spook.
"What's got them stirred up?" he asked. I told him that every night coyotes ran down our road, making the dogs bark and the horses go crazy.
Then Tom told me a story. "One night last April, about 2:00 A.M.," he said, "I was driving along the Crownpoint road in my truck, when I heard a noise. Seemed at first to be coming from the engine, a strange sound, like a dog panting. 'I got car trouble,' I thought.
"Then I heard a footfall behind me, back over my right shoulder. I looked down at the speedometer, and I was traveling about fifty-five or sixty miles an hour. I glanced into my rearview mirror, and the hair stood up on the back of my neck. There was some guy I'd never seen, a Navajo, and he was running just in back of the tailgate. I couldn't see his face, just his torso lit by my taillights, his arms and legs flying up and down incredibly fast.
"I sped up to around seventy-five and looked back. He had disappeared, but I heard a breathing sound right by my left ear. I looked out the window, and there he was, running along, keeping pace with me. As I was looking at him out the window, he veered off toward Crownpoint. I knew he was no ordinary man, because he was traveling so fast. Just before he disappeared into the brush, he had changed into a wolf. So, you better watch out. Those coyotes spooking your horses may not be coyotes."
This story typifies Navajo beliefs about therioanthropy, the belief that humans can take shape as animals. The elliptical narrative implies an association between coyotes and wolves, because the shifty coyote is considered the patron of witchcraft and the wolf is the most common animal into which a witch may transform. Navajos call the coyote Little Trotter. The wolf is called Big Trotter. The great speed of both animals, their ability to cover a lot of territory without effort and then disappear, indicates their supernatural agency and power. The statement that coyotes may not be what they seem is an indirect warning to beware of witchcraft. To name the thing may evoke unwanted attention or the very powers one seeks to avoid. For Navajos, witchery and weranimals have always been part of the tribal belief system, but discussion of these matters is generally
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