Washington Matthews and later ethnographers transcribe the Navajo (Diné) Blessingway (Hózhǫ́ǫ́giin), a 12-night ritual poem cycle sung to restore hózhǫ (beauty/harmony). The chants embed creation myths (First Man, First Woman), animal covenant folklore, pollen path imagery, and sacred directions, using paired lines with ceremonial vocables. The texts preserve pre-reservation oral medicine traditions.

Blessingway transcriptions directly influenced Native American poets (Luci Tapahonso, Sherwin Bitsui), who adapted Diné chants' repetition cycles, hózhǫ cosmology, and sandpainting imagery into contemporary Navajo-English poetry. The chants' ceremonial 'beautyway' structures—moving from chaos to harmony through formulaic verse—provided models for Joy Harjo's and Laura Tohe's ritual poetics. The collection demonstrates how medical-chant folklore, despite colonial ethnographic framing, generates alternative wellness poetics beyond Western therapy discourse.