Monster Slayer and the Monsters

Before reading

This episode continues the Hero Twins' story, summarised here from Matthews's Navaho Legends (1897) and other published sources. It is connected with ceremonies not described on this site, and many Diné families teach that it is told in winter.

The brothers divide their work

After Yéʼiitsoh is killed, the brothers' paths divide in many tellings. Born for Water stays at home to protect their mothers, watching a sign that will show whether his brother is in danger. Monster Slayer goes out, one monster after another, to free the land.

The horned monster

Déélgééd is a great horned beast that lives on an open plain, where no one can approach it unseen. Gopher offers help: he digs a tunnel beneath the monster, and in Matthews's version gnaws away the hair over its heart. Monster Slayer crawls through the tunnel and shoots a lightning arrow into the beast's heart. It tears at the tunnels with its horns, but dies. Gopher asks for its hide, and wears it still; in some tellings Ground Squirrel paints its face with the monster's blood, and has stripes to this day.

The monster eagles

On Tsé Bitʼaʼí, the rock with wings (Shiprock, in what is now northwest New Mexico), live the Tsé Nináhálééh, monstrous birds who carry people off to feed their young. Monster Slayer lets himself be carried to their nest, protected by the feather Spider Woman gave him, and kills the adult birds when they return. He spares the young, turning them into the eagle and the owl, to be useful to the people. The feathers of the monster birds become the smaller birds of the world.

Others

Monster Slayer goes on to overcome many others, among them a monster that kicks travellers off a cliff, the Eye Killers, and a Traveling Rock. Each defeat leaves a mark on the land or gives something to the people.

Those who were spared

At last Monster Slayer seeks out the last of the beings that make people suffer. He finds Old Age, a bent old woman, and prepares to kill her; she tells him that without old age people would not die and give way to the young, and the world would stand still. He spares her. He finds Cold, a shivering woman on a high mountain; she tells him that without her there would be no snow, and without snow no water. He spares her. He finds Poverty, and is told that without it clothes would never wear out and people would never make new things. He finds Hunger, and is told that without hunger people would take no pleasure in food and would not work to grow and hunt it. He spares them all. In Matthews's version Sleep and Louse also make their case.

Meaning

The story does not end with a world freed of every hardship, but with one in balance. The monsters that destroyed life are gone; the hardships that belong to life remain, because each has its place. The story is often cited as an expression of hózhó: not the absence of difficulty, but right relationship among all things.