From top to bottom through Tsoodzil in the south they ran a great stone knife to fasten it to the firmament. Then they adorned it with turquoise. They adorned it with dark mist. They adorned it with many different animals. They adorned it with the heavy mist that brings the slow, gentle female rain.
On the peak of Tsoodzil in the south they placed a large bowl of turquoise. In that bowl they put two eggs of the Dolii the Bluebird, for they also wanted feathers on that mountain. They next covered those eggs with a sacred buckskin to make them hatch. Which explains why so many bluebirds dwell there to this very day.
All that they had placed on Tsoodzil in the south they now covered with blue sky. And from a portion of substance which they had brought with them from the world below they fashioned Dootl’izhii nayoo’ali ashkii, the Boy Who Is Bringing Back Turquoise. And they fashioned Naada’a’la’i nayoo’ali at’e’e’d’, the Girl Who Is Bringing Back Many Ears of Corn. These two they stationed there to dwell forever as the male god and as the female god of Tsoodzil, or Mount Taylor as it is called in the language that Bilagaana speaks.
~ Dine Bahane, The Navajo Creation Story; 1984, Paul G. Zolbrod
photo: Mt. Taylor, San Mateo Range, NM
