Black God

Black God, Haashchʼééshzhiní, the 'Black Yéʼii', is the Diné god of fire and the maker of the stars. He is remembered as the inventor of the fire-drill and the first being to generate fire, and as the deity who, carrying the Pleiades on his body, sets the orderly constellations in their fixed places in the night sky. When he enters the hogan of the Holy People with the Pleiades clinging to his ankle, he stamps and the stars leap up his leg to his temple, after which he is granted the task of placing the remaining constellations, until Coyote impatiently scatters the rest. His mask is blackened with sacred charcoal and painted with a crescent moon on the forehead, a full moon for a mouth, and the Pleiades at the temple. Unlike the heroic Holy People, he is often depicted as old, slow and outwardly poor, a humble and sometimes wry figure whose modest appearance belies his cosmic office.

Domains

• fire
• celestial order

Powers

• to make fire with the fire-drill
• to place the stars into orderly constellations

Epithets

• Haashchʼééshzhiní

Relations

• companion: Talking God

Sources

• Gladys A. Reichard, Navaho Religion: A Study of Symbolism, Bollingen / Pantheon Books, 1950.
• Washington Matthews, The Night Chant, a Navaho Ceremony, Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History, 1902.
• Trudy Griffin-Pierce, Earth Is My Mother, Sky Is My Father: Space, Time, and Astronomy in Navajo Sandpainting, University of New Mexico Press, 1992.