Note 181.1 — The Evolution of Religion

Of still more value for the light it throws on the attitude of the Indian’s mind to the powers of the unseen world, is the so-called prayer of a Navajo Shaman belonging to the district of Arizona, recently published in the American Anthropologist;181.1 and to understand it the circumstances must be briefly stated. The Shaman had been telling the American inquirer the story of his tribe’s descent through the lower world and their re-emergence: after the narrative he fears that speaking about the lower regions may have caused his own spiritual or astral part to have left his body and departed thither; and he therefore proceeds to recite a long so-called prayer intended to deliver his soul from the witchcraft that may be detaining it below. We should not strictly call it a prayer at all, but a narrative in the indicative mood stating that the war-gods of the tribe are actually doing what he specially wants them to do, namely, to go down and rescue his soul from the woman-chieftain, “the underground witch.” Every step of their way there and back is carefully recounted several times over, so that they cannot go wrong; and when they are supposed to have brought back his soul, the recital ends with the joyful refrain, “The world before me is restored in beauty: my voice is restored in beauty,” each phrase repeated five times. It is really a spell-narrative about the gods, having the same effect as prayer, and is a twofold illustration of the primitive idea that talking about a thing makes it happen; an idea not wholly extinct among ourselves, and possibly underlying some of the liturgies of higher religions.