University of Virginia Library

IX. NAVAHO NOTES FROM CHACO CANYON

Chaco Canyon and its ruins are well known throughout the Navaho
reservation. Many fascinating tales have been told of those ruins and
the people who built them; of the canyon and its surroundings. At
Kayenta, in northeastern Arizona, for example, I heard descriptions
from Navaho who had seen neither canyon nor ruins. There and elsewhere
interest and curiosity were awakened whenever it became
known that I lived at Tsĕ'bíya hanĭ ă'hi, "where the cliff is braced up
from beneath."

From the very beginning of our explorations we were desirous of
learning what changes, if any, the "old timers" had noticed since early
days in Chaco Canyon. But there were few old timers left! The Carlisle
Cattle Company and the LC's, both of whom ranged thousands
of cattle between Hosta Butte and the Rio San Juan in 1879 and
later,[1] were gone and forgotten. The series of stone buildings under
the cliff north of Peñasco Blanco, Chaco headquarters for the LC
outfit, had been preempted by Old Wello before 1895. Wello is now
about 80, by my calculations. (He died in December 1926.) Padilla
(pl. 3, left), who lives on the opposite side of the Chaco and about a
mile farther downstream, is perhaps 70 or 75. Joe Hosteen Yazi is
younger but will not talk. Tomascito will talk but cannot be believed.

Superintendent S. F. Stacher, of the Crownpoint Agency, and
others had urged me to seek out Hosteen Beyal who lived near the old
McCoy ranch on the lower Kinbiniyol. He was described as the oldest
Navaho on the eastern part of the reservation, totally blind, but possessed
of an unusually keen memory. Five years passed before I succeeded
in meeting Beyal and then quite by chance. He had been to a
"squaw dance" out north of the Chaco; 30 miles seated on the floor of
a springless wagon had wearied flesh and bones; he was glad to rest
for the night on his way home.

Fatigue, a good supper, and a low fire in the crowded hogan nearly
defeated my purpose. But the old man came to life again about 9
o'clock and we talked until after midnight. His son, Frank Beal, aged
38, generously acted as interpreter. Our meeting occurred October 30,
1927.

According to his son, Hosteen Beyal (pl. 3, right) is about 95 years
old. He says he was born near The Bear's Ears, at the head of Grand
Gulch in San Juan County, Utah; that when he was a boy of 9 or 10,
his parents moved to Chaco Canyon and lived for a time in the valley
west of Peñasco Blanco. The family had moved at least once a year,
sometimes more frequently, depending upon the abundance of game
and grazing.

Hosteen Beyal remembers cottonwoods and willows growing in
some abundance in Chaco Canyon below Pueblo Bonito and nearer
Peñasco Blanco; he recalls none immediately south of Pueblo Bonito.
There were more cottonwoods in the valley west of Peñasco Blanco
than in the portion above. Many yellow pines were to be seen in Mockingbird
Canyon and at the head of Chaco Canyon. Beyal at first recalled
only a few pines growing in Wirito's Rincon, southeast of
Pueblo Bonito, but next morning (October 31) corrected himself by
saying there were "quite a number" of pines in the rincon in question.
Cedar and pinyon were much more plentiful in his youth than today;
both varieties even occurred in the valley, at the foot of the mesas.

Beyal insists there was more rain in the Chaco country when he was
a boy; that there was better grass and more wood; that the Navaho
had very few livestock at that time. In his youth there was no arroyo,
whatever, in that portion of Chaco Canyon above the mouth of the
Escavada. Rather, the valley was covered with high grass among
which were shallow basins or pools that caught rainwater and held it
through most of the year. Pockets in the sandstone on top the cliffs
held water longer than they do today.

According to our informant, there were no springs near Pueblo
Bonito. The nearest he recalls is that now used by Dan Cly in the Rincon
del Camino, a mile northwest of Pueblo Bonito. This spring is still
known to the Navaho as Tsé-ya-toh'-gi.

A spring in a cove in the east side of Mockingbird Canyon is recalled
by Beyal as still flowing a small stream in 1907. Frank Beal
added that he, too, remembered this spring. It has now been dry for
some years.

At the north foot of the Peñasco Blanco mesa, where Old Wello
lived, is Toh'-el-ah', apparently the most famous spring in this section
during Beyal's youth. The spring is only a small one today. Beyal
says a fine series of pecked steps formerly led to this spring from
Peñasco Blanco (Talla-kin) but that they caved off several years ago.

The Navaho name for Meyers Canyon, on the north side of the
Chaco a few miles below the Escavada, is Teés-e-chiʼn, "many cottonwoods."
Beyal's statement that numerous cottonwoods grew in

Meyers Canyon during his youth is confirmed by Padilla who adds that
wild roses were also abundant although they have since been wiped out
by Navaho who used the bushes for medicine.

Beyal remembers having seen on top of the north Chaco cliff many
places where the Chacoans quarried laminate sandstone, a stone that
impressed our informant very much. He described at some length its
superior qualities, its fine grain, its thinness and even cleavage. He
says none of this stone remains today, the old people used it all. The
skill of the Chacoans as masons is what Hosteen Beyal remembers
most vividly about the ruins. He says no one today could build walls
like those; that we have not the patience now to use such small stones;
that we are in too much of a hurry today and use large blocks that do
not look so well or last so long.

The old man describes Peñasco Blanco as having been in very good
condition when he first saw it. The ruin was then three stories high
and most of its rooms were still roofed. Many of the rooms were in
excellent shape, with hair brushes hanging from the walls and squash
blossoms (not squash stems), strung on yucca cord, suspended like
chilis from the walls. Sticks used for stirring mush had been stuck in
wall joints; pots and bowls still stood upon the floors. The general
appearance was that the inhabitants had but recently disappeared. Old
Wello and other Navahos excavated a number of rooms at Peñasco
Blanco while in the employ of Richard Wetherill; a white man, not
named, was in charge of the work. Our informant states that these
diggers found two boxes of turquoise, and indicated a wooden carton
for two dozen No. 2 cans of peaches as the size of the boxes. (Other
informants on other occasions were doubtless more nearly correct in
describing the finds as two cigar boxes full.)

When questioned with particular reference to the early condition of
Pueblo Bonito, Beyal replied that his parents had warned him that a
large snake lived inside the ruin and that, in consequence, he was never
to enter it. He had looked around the outside but would give no detailed
information. His recollection of the details of construction under
the braced-up cliff is correct except that he remembers the props
as of oak, not pine.

The Navaho know a lot about the ruins as they stand today but
nothing at all of the people who built them. These latter had gone long
before the Navaho came.

A ditch for the conveyance of water led from the head of Chaco
Canyon, according to our informant, along the south side of the valley
past Pueblo Bonito. There was a smaller ditch along the south side of

the Escavada, another near Kinbiniyol, yet another back of Kin-yai,
near Crownpoint.

When asked about the so-called "roads" on both the north and south
cliffs, Beyal remarked that they were not really roads, although they
looked like them. He says they were built by the Chaco people. One
road led from Pueblo Pintado to Pueblo Bonito and on to Peñasco
Blanco. Another led from Pueblo Bonito to Kin-yai; a third, from
Kinbiniyol to Kin-yai; still another, from Kinbiniyol to, or through,
Coyote Canyon and on to a point near Fort Defiance. On each of
these "roads" one could see, until recently, cuts where the road passed
through small hills.

In his youth, according to Beyal, the Navaho had very few sheep
and horses. They were not as well off as they are today. For example,
when his parents moved to Chaco Canyon they had no more than half
a dozen sheep. Beyal remembers because he and a younger sister drove
them all the way from Elk Mountain. There were many antelope and
deer in the Chaco country at that time; as they changed grazing
ground, the Navaho followed. Besides game, the Navaho depended
upon the seeds of diverse grasses and weeds; they often had very
little to eat.

Beyal said there were formerly moose and reindeer in the Black
Mountains to the westward and in the mountains near Gallup. He
himself had never seen them but other people had told him of them.
He described the various animals, their characteristics and methods of
locomotion, so accurately I suspect, in this instance at least, he unconsciously
introduced into his narrative geography lessons learned from
grandchildren, home from school.

The old man was tired and wanted to sleep. When I remarked that
southeastern Utah was generally considered Ute country, Beyal replied
that the Utes and Navaho were friends when his parents lived
near The Bear's Ears; they lived together like brothers. Later, after
the family moved to the Chaco country, the two tribes became enemies.[2]
They fought each other and stole each other's children and
women, selling the captives to Mexicans. Beyal says the Utes burned
the old ruins in the belief Navaho were hiding in them. He insists
with some emphasis that the Mexicans never fought the Navaho in the
Chaco country; they came here to trade, bringing goods on pack horses

and in mule-drawn carts. These carts had wheels made of boards and
bodies of upright sticks. The trouble between the Mexicans and Navahos
started, according to Hosteen Beyal, when four Mexican traders,
watering their horses near a hogan, were playfully attacked by several
Navahos. These latter were bad Indians, according to our informant;
they braided their hair and dressed like Utes with the intention merely
of frightening the Mexicans. During the prank one of the traders
was accidentally killed. The others escaped and carried word of the
attack. The Navaho-Mexican war resulted.

Gentle, kindly Padilla was pressed with questions when Hosteen
Beyal wearied of them. Frank Beal, again volunteering as interpreter,
guessed Padilla's age as 68 or 70—about five years less than my own
guess of 3 years before. Padilla was not an uninhibited informant; he
confirmed many of Beyal's recollections but gave a bare minimum in
addition. He said there was more rain throughout the Chaco country
when he was a young man, less wind and fewer sandstorms. Grass
was abundant, the entire valley was greener than today. Opposite
Pueblo Bonito the arroyo was about 5 feet deep, as Padilla remembers
it from boyhood. (Assuming an age of 70, he would have been 20
years old in 1877 when Jackson measured the arroyo depth at 16 feet.)
The change in the topography of the canyon, according to Padilla, has
been brought about because so many men live crooked lives today.
They steal and drink whiskey and fail to follow the advice of the older
men. Of recent years, each summer has witnessed the death by lightning
of one or more Navahos; each summer, some Indian's horses are
killed by lightning. Lightning never killed men or horses during his
youth, according to Padilla.

When asked concerning the "roads" mentioned by Hosteen Beyal
as having been made and used by the ancient Chacoans, Padilla said he
has seen very few of them because they have been washed out or
covered over by sand and silt. Their locations are indicated, however,
by cuts through low knolls. As one rides across country, one notices
a succession of these cuts.

He says he has heard of many ancient ditches in the upper Chaco
but has never seen them. Ditches are still present, however, on the
south side of Escavada valley, from Pueblo Pintado westward. Slablined
ditches are still visible in Chaco Canyon just below his hogan
or approximately 1 mile below the mouth of Escavada Wash.
(Through sheer carelessness I never investigated this latter report.
Padilla's hogan stood on the north side of the Chaco and I suspect the
slab-lined ditches to which he refers are on the south side and a continuation
of the one which formerly rounded the point below Peñasco

Blanco and continued thence to the westward, partially concealed by
current sand dunes in Wello's cornfield, and on downvalley.)

North of Padilla's hogan is a small rincon called Dé-chel'-ha-lon
(wild cherry). In this rincon Padilla tried to develop a small seep
some years ago. He failed to get enough water, but found a number of
turquoise beads while clearing away the sand. Two years ago there
was a shallow pool, perhaps 2 feet across.

Under the red cliff west of Peñasco Blanco, where a large sand dune
now spreads, Padilla remembers several cottonwood trees as growing
during his early manhood. No surface water was visible at the place.

An unnamed spring at the foot of a large cedar tree, in a south rincon
of Escavada valley, west of the present Pueblo Bonito-Farmington
road, was formerly well known but has been dry these many years.
This spring bubbled forth and each day brought to the surface a small
turquoise bead or fragment of matrix. But someone felled the cedar
and shortly afterward the spring went dry. Padilla never saw the
spring actually flowing but remembers the cedar stump as pointed out
by his grandfather, who told him the story. (Hosteen Beyal called
from his blanket at this moment to say he had heard the same tale
during his residence in Chaco Canyon.)

Three years earlier, on August 27, 1924, Padilla had been more
communicative. Or perhaps he felt too deeply obligated. In 1923 his
daughter, a well educated young woman with two small children, had
died while on a visit to her father's hogan and Padilla had come, with
tears in his eyes, to beg that I bury her in the little white cemetery at
Pueblo Bonito. He didn't want her "buried in the rocks like a
Navaho." In any case, on the afternoon of August 27, 1924, we sat
down under the awning in front of my tent prepared to talk of many
things. I guessed his age at about 75.

When our conversation finally led to the appearance of Chaco Canyon
as he first remembered it, Padilla hesitated and said he could not
talk of such things except in winter. He might be struck by lightning
or be bitten by a snake.

When he was about 35 years old, Padilla said, cottonwoods grew
along the middle of the valley in front of Pueblo Bonito. He recalls
no willows but other old Navaho do. At that time the arroyo was about
5 feet deep. Cedar and pinyon then grew sparsely on both the north
and south mesas but the Navaho have since cut most of them for hogans.
He remembers no pines except those now growing in the gorge
of the upper Chaco, 10 or 12 miles east of Pueblo Bonito. He recalls
no living spring, or evidence of one, except that developed and still
utilized by Dan Cly in Rincon del Camino. There was a small seep,

about like Dan's, at the head of the rincon near Rafael's hogan (a mile
west of Pueblo Bonito, on the south side).

Every fall, with the first cold weather, deer and antelope came down
from the north, perhaps from Mesa Verde. There was more grass in
the Chaco country at that time and more rainfall. Since white men
moved in, the rains have become less and less year after year.

Unlike other elders with whom I had talked, Padilla insists the
ancient people had gone long before the Navaho came to Chaco Canyon.
Many stories are told about the Anasazi, however, and the medicine
men know a great deal. Some people believe the Bonitians moved
south but he, himself, doesn't know where they went.

On the afternoon of October 3, 1925, while we were busily packing
away our equipment at season's end, Padilla rode up to say goodby.
As we were talking our own blend of English, Spanish, and Navaho,
Old Wello happened past and was invited to stop for a last cigarette.
One of our Navaho workmen was called in to serve as interpreter.

An autumn chill was in the air and our conversation naturally led to
game animals and hunting. Padilla admitted he was never much of a
hunter but Wello was. Every fall "about this time of year," lots of
antelope and deer moved into the Chaco country. Wello was a great
hunter; he went hunting every day. And Old Wello nodded and smiled
in happy confirmation.

At that time there was lots of grass everywhere; it rained more
often. There were more trees of all kinds. Cottonwoods and willows
were growing throughout Chaco Canyon, down the middle. There was
no arroyo. You could dig anywhere and find water in a couple of feet.
And Old Wello interrupted to say "the whole country has gone to pot
since white men came."

Padilla remembers no yellow pine in Chaco Canyon but says Mexican
sheep herders burned many pine stumps on the bordering mesas.
He does not know who cut those trees. There used to be three pines
west of Peñasco Blanco and one of them, just beyond Tsaya (on the
north side of the Chaco below Escavada Wash) stood about 10 feet
high 15 years ago. It has since died because Navaho cut off the bark
for medicine.

A long time ago several small pines were growing on the mesa at
the head of Wirito's Rincon (1½ miles southeast of Pueblo Bonito).
There, too, three stumps marked pines cut by Wello to roof his house.
(Wello says he cut only two of the three.) This must have been 30
or 40 years ago, reasons Padilla, because Wello brought from Fort
Defiance the first steel ax, wagon, and scraper owned locally. In old

times the Navaho had no axes except Anasazi stone axes which were
used whenever they could find one.

Many Navaho believe the Bonitians had a turquoise mine concealed
by a rockfall, near Dan's hogan in Rincon del Camino. Padilla doubts
this because all the rock thereabout is sandstone and turquoise does not
come in sandstone.

The Utes used to come down and fight the Navaho in Chaco Canyon.
Perhaps the Utes burned Pueblo Bonito. Navaho and Mexicans
fought here too. The old men remember when American and Mexican
soldiers went through the Chaco country to fight the Navaho at Canyon
de Chelly (see Simpson, 1850).

On the west side of Peñasco Blanco, high up on the cliff, there was
a fine spring many years ago. It flowed a good stream and every day
a piece of turquoise came out. In those times it rained more in Chaco
Canyon. The Navaho tell a story of a big pond at the mouth of Escavada
Wash and everyone was afraid of it. Something in the water
pulled you in if you got too close.

As for irrigation ditches, Padilla remembers best the one just below
Wello's place. It was lined with slabstones and began at a rock dam
on the west side of the Chaco a little above where Escavada Wash
comes in. The dam washed out about 15 years ago but the ditch is
still there, or part of it, under the sand in Wello's cornfield. (At or
near the dam site, a single ditch slab still remained in place when I
first passed by, July 20, 1920.)

Another ditch is to be seen near Joe Hosteen Yazi's hogan on the
south side of Escavada Wash just east of the Farmington road. Our
interpreter added a personal observation to the effect that this ditch is
6 miles long. Padilla says it was well marked when he was a youth but
is largely filled with blown sand at present. In addition there is a small
ditch on the east side of the rincon back of Rafael's hogan.

Beyond Tomascito's place, at the south end of The Gap, is a cut that
some Navaho call a canal but it looks more like a wagon road to our
informant. (It is, in fact, part of a "ceremonial highway," a type of
construction to be described in a future publication.)

Pepper (1920, pp. 25-26) tells of an elderly Navaho who visited the
Hyde Expedition camp in 1896 and remarked that his ancestors had
been in touch with the Chaco people; that the latter had cultivated all
the land in the canyon, from wall to wall, relying upon rainwater both
for farming and for domestic use. There were no irrigation ditches at
that time and no arroyo. The big pine beams in the ruins came from
the side canyons, the rincons, and were hauled to the pueblos on little
wagons whose wheels were cross sections of other logs. The Navaho,

according to this elder, believe the Chacoans left the country on account
of water shortage. Pueblo Alto was the "chief's house," richest in the
region, and here the ancestral Navaho were accustomed to barter game
for corn and other produce.

This fiction of a "chief's house" is dominant in Navaho stories of
Chaco Canyon. The myth of Noqoìlpi, the Gambler, is that most frequently
told. Pueblo Alto is usually, Bonito sometimes, identified as
his place of residence. The story has numerous variations but, in essence,
recites the succession of events by which our legendary hero
gradually won the possessions and then the population at each village.
In most versions, Noqoìlpi comes from one of the southern pueblos—
Zuñi, Acoma, or Laguna—and is an independent worker. However,
in that recited by an old Navaho at Kin-yai, near Crownpoint, the
Gambler had as wife a Jemez woman who always dressed in white.
She conspired against Noqoìlpi secretly and, following his downfall,
returned in triumph to Jemez. In a Kayenta variant reported by Lulu
Wade Wetherill and Byron Cummings (1922), the inhabitants of the
Chaco towns are recognized as ancestors of the Salt clan of the
Navaho.

Two versions of the Noqoìlpi myth heard at our Pueblo Bonito
camp are briefed here for their contrast as much as for the story itself.
The first was told by old Hosteen Beyal on the night of October 30,
1927, with his son, Frank Beal, again translating. The story, Beyal
says, is as he learned it from his grandfather. It was considerably abbreviated
in translation and has been further shortened for our present
purpose.

Noqoìlpi lived in Pueblo Alto on the cliff north of Pueblo Bonito.
He was head man over all the other pueblo villages in this vicinity and
was a great gambler. In rude watchtowers placed at intervals along the
canyon rim, watchmen were stationed night and day. When strangers
were seen approaching, these watchmen passed word from one to the
other and thence to Noqoìlpi who immediately made preparations for
gambling.

The people who lived in the several towns had come from all directions;
they belonged to different tribes and spoke different languages.
They had arrived at Chaco Canyon singly or in groups; Noqoìlpi had
gambled with them, won all their possessions and finally their very
lives. Thus, he forced them to remain and work for him as slaves.

Noqoìlpi was a master gambler. He played nine different games:
(1) The basket game, in which six dice, white on one side and black
on the other, were used. When the dice all fell white side up, the
thrower won. (2) The post-pushing game, an exhibition of strength

in which the player sought to push over a post set upright in the
ground. (3) The ring game; (4) a card game; (5) shinny; (6) broad
jump; (7) a foot race; (8) stick dice; and (9) a foot race in which a
stick was kicked by each runner.

One day an old woman, a Navaho, came from the north (from a
place somewhere near "Shorty" Widow's store, about 11 miles north
of Pueblo Bonito). The Bonitians would not take her in. They gave
her no place to sleep; nothing to eat except scraps left from their own
meals. They gave her nothing to wear, so she went about naked except
for a short grass apron. They gave her no ornaments except a few
turquoise and bone beads; no necklaces, bracelets or rings. The small
boys of the village made fun of the old woman, following her around
and throwing stones and otherwise annoying her.

Subjected to daily treatment of this sort, the old woman grew angry
after a time. She climbed the steps to the north cliff and from that
elevation shouted to the Bonitians below a detailed account of the indignities
that had been heaped upon her. She reminded them of their
failure to give her a bed, food to eat, clothes or ornaments to wear; she
enumerated all the indignities of the boys and said that now, as she
was leaving the village, she would give the people a lesson they would
not forget, so when other strangers came among them they would be
more considerate. Then she took the turquoise and bone beads the
Bonitians had given her and threw them on the cliff. This caused the
cliff to break open, and a large portion started to fall upon the village.
(If Beyal told, the translator did not relate, why the cliff failed completely
to fall and this point was unintentionally overlooked when the
story was reviewed next morning. The blind old man knows with surprising
accuracy the detailed construction under the braced-up cliff.)

Two years after her departure from Pueblo Bonito, the old woman
gave birth to a baby boy. When old enough to talk, the boy asked who
his father was. The old woman said she did not know, but the boy
persisted until the old woman pointed to a prickly pear cactus and said
"Maybe that is your father." One of the old men made a bow and
some arrows for the boy and taught him to hunt. He became a great
hunter and a great favorite in the village.

One day the boy ran away from home and his mother looked for
him several days. Of each one he met, the boy inquired as to the
identity of his father. Finally a man said, "I am your father." This
man tried four different times to kill him and failed each time. Then
the man said, "Since I cannot kill you, you must be my son."

When he was 4 years old, the boy told his mother that he was going
down to the big village to kill Noqoìlpi. But his mother told him not

to do this since Noqoìlpi was his brother and he should not kill him.
But in secret the boy learned all kinds of gambling games and one day,
taking a young woman from each of the 12 tribal clans, he set forth
for the village of Noqoìlpi. The boy caused strong winds to blow,
causing sandstorms so dense he and his 12 companions passed the
sentinels unseen and thus surprised Noqoìlpi before the latter had time
to prepare for gambling.

Noqoìlpi asked the boy what he wanted and the boy said he wanted
to gamble. But Noqoìlpi said he never gambled with children. Four
times the boy asked Noqoìlpi to play the basket game, but each time
Noqoìlpi refused. Then he said he would play and four times the boy
asked him to begin. After Noqoìlpi refused four times to start, the
play began. The boy wagered the 12 young women against 12 men
selected by Noqoìlpi. After they had played for a time, the six dice
all fell white side up and the boy won the 12 men. Then Noqoìlpi said:
"Let us play a different game."

The boy wagered the 12 young women and the 12 men he had won,
against 12 men and 12 women Noqoìlpi chose from his people. Again
the boy won, and again Noqoìlpi said: "Let us play a different game."
So they played 12 different times, each time doubling the amount of
their wager until the boy won all the people controlled by Noqoìlpi.
(Beyal could not explain the fact that although Noqoìlpi had only 9,
he and the boy played 12 different games.)

After the boy had won all the people, Noqoìlpi rose like a bird and
disappeared into the sky, never to be seen again. The boy gave the
people their freedom and they were all happy to be free again and
scattered to the four directions, whence they came.

My old friend, Padilla, who had heard Hosteen Beyal's rendition,
volunteered his own version three days later. A neighbor from Crownpoint,
James E. Matchin, kindly interpreted for us. Padilla learned the
story from his uncle, Manuelito, the famous chief. It differs from
Beyal's recital, Padilla says, only in details; actually the two tales are
the same. Manuelito may have been no more of a moralizer than the
average uncle but, as his version of the story was recounted for us, it
is the Gambler that always loses. When the various tribes came to
play games with him, one by one they stripped him of all his possessions
and even his clothes.

All the various tribes, including the Navaho, the Mescalero-Apache,
the Utes, and the Laguna, came to play with Noqoìlpi. Each tribe
played in succession; in a single day they won all his possessions and
all his money. Of the nine games played at that time, the Navaho received
five, the other four going to the remaining tribes. Padilla does

not remember the other four games but describes those inherited by
the Navaho as:

1. Foot race (a straight race in which no kicked stick was used).

2. The stick game (two marked sticks bounced from a rock).

3. Shinny, in which a crooked stick and a buckskin or rawhide ball
3 to 4 inches in diameter are used.

4. The basket game (seven or nine wooden dice colored red, black,
or white, are thrown from, and caught in, a basket. The game is
played by two men, each of whom, in turn, calls the number of dice
of a certain color he expects to fall.)

5. Pole and ring game. (As played by the Navaho, the ring is of
rawhide, wrapped with buckskin; the pole, about 8 feet long, consists
of two 5-foot pieces bound together. Two pendent cords, each with
five tassels, hang from the middle of each pole. Two players, each
with his own pole, use a single ring. The disk is rolled forward and
the poles are thrown after it. The winner is he whose pole falls under
the ring; the count is the same should the disk fall on any of the pendent
strings. Padilla supposes Noqoìlpi used a ring made entirely of
buckskin or rawhide.)

According to Padilla, the Gambler lost his last possession with the
pole and ring game. Thereafter he returned naked to his father, the
Sun. On the other hand, in one of the variants recorded at Kayenta
by Mrs. John Wetherill (personal communication), having lost, Noqoìlpi
was banished to Tiz-na-zinde, "where the cranes stand up" (referring
to birds pictured on the rocks 18 miles west of Pueblo Bonito),
died and was buried there.

Because Pueblo Alto is today commonly pointed out as the home of
the Gambler, it is of interest to note that in 1877, when Jackson asked
his Jemez guide the name of the ruin, old Hosta replied that it was
called El Capitan or El Jugador (Jackson, 1878, p. 447). Hosta, be
it remembered, was one of the guides for Colonel Washington's military
reconnaissance in 1848.

From these several versions of the Noqoìlpi tale, it is obvious a good
deal of the narrator goes into each rendering. And it seems equally
certain, after listening to various reminiscences of boyhood days in
Chaco Canyon, that the average Navaho memory is no more reliable
than memories elsewhere.