' The shell, carefully scraped and
dried, was made into a dance-rattle, and, covered by a piece of
buckskin, it still hangs from the smoke-stained rafters of my
brother's house. Once a Navajo tried to buy it for a ladle; loaded
with indignant reproaches, he was turned cut of the house. Were any
one to venture the suggestion that the turtle no longer lived, his
remark would cause a flood of tears, and he would be reminded that
it had only 'changed houses and gone to live for ever in the home of
"our lost others."'"
In this custom we find expressed in the clearest way a belief in the
transmigration of human souls into the bodies of turtles. The theory
of transmigration is held by the Moqui Indians, who belong to the
same race as the Zunis. The Moquis are divided into totem clans--the
Bear clan, Deer clan, Wolf clan, Hare clan, and so on; they believe
that the ancestors of the clans were bears, deer, wolves, hares, and
so forth; and that at death the members of each clan become bears,
deer, and so on according to the particular clan to which they
belonged.
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