The Navajo and Apache also have directional color associations for certain stones and shells, which, because of the religious significance attached to them, play important roles in their mythologies, ceremonies, customs, and beliefs.
These stones and shells are also commonly associated with the cardinal horses, as the above myth illustrates in its references to the horses of white shell and turquoise. .the first white horse was made of white shell, the first iron-gray horse of turquoise, the first black horse of cannel coal (jet), the first piebald horse of haliotis shell, and the first red (sorrel) horse of red stone (carnelian). Thus, horses, according to their colors, are called after the different substances of which the Navajo believe the cardinal horses were made. For that reason, the Navajo speak of turquoise or gray horses as dolizi lin, red stone or sorrel horses as bastsili lin, cannel coal or black horses as baszini lin, and haliotis or spotted horses as yolkai lin.
Navajo mythology expresses this same regard for the white horse and often describes the sun and moon deities riding about on their elegant, milk-white steeds.
In the foregoing myth, it will be noted that the white horse occupies the east, his most common cardinal position in Navajo mythology, for the Navajo frequently associate white with the color of dawn or early morning light, which banishes the shadows and mysteries of night. Because of this association, it is said that a Navajo who owns a white horse feels himself fortunate and believes he will have no bad luck when he rides it. Sun's dawn horse plays a prominent role in a version of the myth concerning the Twin War Gods' visit to their father's house, at the beginning of time the Navajo's first holy beings chose this white horse for the young sun deity to mount each morning as he carried his burden of light into the sky. He told too of how the Twins, at a much later time, saw this horse at the deity's home in the other world and of how they met their previously unknown sister Sun's daughter who helped their father catch his horse every day. "Each morning," she would shake "a rattle to call the white horse for Sun to ride," he explained. Implying a change of its color with a change of its cardinal position, King also said that Sun's horse "moves around as it faces the four directions."
Navajo Horse Legend
quoted and inspired by Where the Two Came to their Father . A Navaho War Ceremonial given by Jeff King by Maud Oakes