The Hero Twins
At a Glance
- Central figures: Monster Slayer (Naayéé’ Neizghání) and Born for Water (Tó Bájísh Chíní), the twin sons of Changing Woman and the Sun; the Holy People who helped them along the way, including Spider Woman.
- Setting: Diné (Navajo) tradition; the world after the People emerged from the lower worlds, when monsters born of transgression roamed the land and devoured the People.
- The turn: The twins travel to the house of their father, the Sun, to obtain weapons powerful enough to kill the monsters that are destroying the Diné.
- The outcome: Armed with lightning bolts, the twins slay the greatest of the monsters - Big God (Yé’iitsoh) - and then hunt down the remaining creatures, making the land safe for the People.
- The legacy: The landmarks of the Diné homeland - volcanic plugs, lava flows, dried blood-red rock - are identified as the remains of the slain monsters, binding the Hero Twins’ victory permanently into the geography of the Four Corners region.
Changing Woman raised her sons alone near Gobernador Knob, and she raised them fast. The boys grew in days what ordinary children grew in years. By the time they could run, they were asking questions she did not want to answer. Who is our father? She told them nothing. She told them to stay close to the hogan. She told them the world outside was full of things that ate people.
They did not stay close to the hogan.
The Monsters on the Land
The earth in those days was overrun. The People who had climbed up through the four worlds - through the Black World, the Blue World, the Yellow World, and into the Glittering World - found it already occupied by creatures they had no power against. Big God, Yé’iitsoh, was the worst: enormous, armored, feeding on human beings. He drank whole lakes to wash them down. But he was not alone. There were the Horned Monster, the Monster Eagle who carried people to its young on a high rock, the Monster That Kicked People Off Cliffs, the Eyes That Kill. These beings had been born from the transgressions of women in the lower worlds - from improper acts, from desire gone wrong - and now they walked the surface of the earth as punishment made flesh.
The People were being eaten. They hid in canyon walls and under rock ledges. They were fewer every season.
Monster Slayer and Born for Water knew none of this at first. They knew only that their mother would not tell them who their father was. They asked the wind. They asked the animals. Eventually an informant - some versions say it was the wind itself whispering in their ears - told them: your father is Jóhonaa’éí, the Sun. He crosses the sky every day. His house is in the east.
Spider Woman’s Advice
They set out. The journey was not a walk across open land. The path to the Sun’s house was lined with dangers that existed specifically to prevent anyone from reaching it - knife-sharp reeds that cut travelers apart, crushing rocks that slammed together, boiling sands, and fields of cactus that moved.
Spider Woman found them before the worst of it. She was small. She lived in a hole in the ground. She gave each twin a feather from the Monster Eagle - or in some tellings, a life feather and a hoop - and she told them the words to say at each obstacle. Put the feather before you. Say: make way for me. The boys did as she said. The reeds parted. The rocks held still. The sands cooled under their feet.
She warned them about their father. The Sun did not acknowledge children easily. He would test them before he would believe they were his.
The Sun’s House
The Sun’s house was made of turquoise. His wife was there. She was not happy to see two boys claiming to be her husband’s sons. She hid them - wrapped them in bundles of cloud and sky - before the Sun came home.
The Sun entered carrying the sky on his back. He hung it on the wall. He knew the boys were there. He said nothing at first. Then he tested them.
He put them in a sweat lodge that was heated to killing temperature. The twins survived. He offered them poison food. They ate it and lived. He threw them against walls of obsidian. They bounced back. In every account, the tests are physical and absolute. The Sun was not being cruel for cruelty’s sake - he needed to know if these were truly his sons, because what they were asking for could not be given to ordinary people.
When the tests were done, the Sun acknowledged them. He gave Monster Slayer the lightning bolt that strikes crooked and the lightning bolt that strikes straight. He gave them flint armor. He gave them instruction: kill the monsters. Start with Big God.
The Death of Big God
They found Yé’iitsoh at a lake - Tó Sido, the hot spring near Mount Taylor. He was drinking. He was so large his head was at one end of the lake and his feet at the other.
Monster Slayer did not wait. He threw the first lightning bolt. It struck Yé’iitsoh and staggered him. The monster turned, saw the twins, and threw his own weapons - four bolts of his own, each a different color. The twins dodged. The bolts hit the ground and left scars in the rock.
Monster Slayer threw the second lightning bolt. It hit Yé’iitsoh in the chest. The giant fell. His blood ran down the valley in a great dark river, and it began to flow toward the place where it could bring him back to life. Born for Water cut the flow with a stone knife, drawing a line across the earth. The blood stopped and hardened.
The dark lava flow south of Mount Taylor - the Diné say that is Yé’iitsoh’s blood, still there, still black and sharp.
They cut off Big God’s head. Monster Slayer carried it.
The Remaining Kills
The twins moved through the land methodically. The Horned Monster they found in its lair. The Monster Eagle they climbed to on a high rock and killed the adult, then dealt with the young - turning them into the eagle and the owl, so that something of use would remain from the destruction. The Monster That Kicked People Off Cliffs they threw off the cliff itself.
Born for Water’s role in these killings is quieter in most tellings. He guarded, he watched, he held the line while Monster Slayer struck. The two of them were not interchangeable. Monster Slayer was the weapon. Born for Water was the one who made sure the weapon had a home to come back to.
Not every monster was killed. When the twins came to Old Age, Cold, Hunger, and Poverty, these beings argued for their own lives. If you kill me, Old Age said, the people will never make room for their children. The twins let them live. Death and want remained in the world - not as failures of the mission, but as necessities the twins recognized they could not remove.
The Cleared Earth
They returned to Changing Woman. The land was different. The People came out of their hiding places. They could plant. They could walk between the four sacred mountains without being eaten.
The volcanic plugs and lava fields of the Diné homeland held the proof - Shiprock standing alone on the plain, the black rock at McCarty’s Flow, the strange formations around Mount Taylor. The monsters were dead, and the earth kept their shapes.