Diné (Navajo) TraditionCreature
Déélgééd
- gores with enormous horns
- sees anyone approaching across open ground
The horned monster, a great beast of the open plain whom Monster Slayer killed with a lightning arrow through the heart after Gopher dug a tunnel beneath it.
About Déélgééd
The horned monster
Déélgééd (Matthews's Téelget) is one of the naayééʼ, a huge horned creature that lives on an open plain, killing anyone who comes near. Because the plain offers no cover, no one can approach it unseen.
Gopher's help
In Matthews's version, Gopher offers Monster Slayer help: he digs a tunnel beneath the monster and gnaws away the hair over its heart. Monster Slayer crawls through the tunnel and shoots a lightning arrow into the monster's heart, then takes refuge in side tunnels as the dying beast tears at the ground with its horns. When it is dead, Gopher asks for the hide and wears it still.
Marks in the world
The story explains features of animals: the gopher's coat, and in some tellings the stripes on the ground squirrel's face, painted with the monster's blood in celebration. Monster Slayer takes parts of the monster as trophies. Many Diné families teach that this part of the origin story is told in winter.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Washington Matthews, Navaho Legends
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
The danger rating is an editorial shorthand for how the myths portray the creature, not a claim made by the sources.