MythicNavajo Holy People (Dine'é Diyini), the superhuman teachers who established the Diné way
UBThe corporeal staff of one hundred, teachers of civilization
The corporeal staff of one hundred, teachers of civilization = Navajo Holy People (Dine'é Diyini), the superhuman teachers who established the Diné way
The Connection
Navajo cosmology centers on the Holy People, superhuman beings who emerged from the lower worlds, established the mountains of the four directions, taught agriculture, weaving, ceremony, and moral law, and then withdrew to their own realm, leaving the Diné with the instructions for right living. The pattern (superhuman teachers who arrive, establish cardinal geography and civilizational knowledge, and withdraw into invisibility) matches the UB account of the Prince's staff establishing Dalamatia and its ten councils of civilization.
UB Citation
UB 66:2-5, 66:5.1-14
Academic Source
Reichard, Navaho Religion (1950); Zolbrod, Diné bahane': The Navajo Creation Story (1984)
Historical Evidence(Moderate evidence)
Gladys Reichard's Navaho Religion documented the Diyin Diné as a distinct category of being, neither gods nor ancestors but superhuman teachers responsible for the original Blessingway. Paul Zolbrod's Diné bahane' preserves the creation narrative in which the Holy People emerge, establish the four sacred mountains, teach the human twins, and withdraw. The four-mountain cardinal structure and the organized teaching of specific civilizational domains (ceremony, weaving, agriculture) mirror the UB's ten councils of the corporeal staff governing ten discrete civilizational domains.
Related Mappings
Onamonalonton, spiritual leader of the red race (~65,000 BC)
= The "Great Spirit" tradition (Gitchi Manitou, Wakan Tanka)
Fandors, giant passenger birds (last died ~30,000 years ago)
= Thunderbird, giant supernatural bird
Midwayers, invisible planetary ministers who interact with the mortal realm
= Hopi Kachinas, ancestor-spirits who mediate between gods and humans
Red race migration from Asia to the Americas across the Bering land bridge
= Pan-Indigenous origin traditions: emergence from the north, the sea-crossing ancestors