MODULE 8

THE NAVAJO

Key Concepts:
Dine
Athapaskan
Enemyway
sing (chant)
singer (chanter)
hozho
Changing Woman
Monster Slayer
Born-for-Water
The Long Walk
Bosque Redondo (Fort Sumner)
Stock Reduction
hogan
kinaalda
handtrembler
stargazer
crystalgazer
listener
Native American Church
Navajo Codetalkers
Dine College (Navajo Community College)

Reading Assignment, Text: Chapter 9, "The Navajo," pp. 304-359

The Navajo and various Apache tribes are known as the Southern Athapaskans, for their languages belong to the Athapaskan language family, which is divided into three geographic divisions, the Pacific Coast, Northern, and Southern. Scholars agree that the nucleus of Athapaskan speakers is located in the Mackenzie Basin of Canada, and various Athapaskan-speaking groups spread out from this region. Athapaskan-speakers live in Alaska and northern California as well as Canada and the American Southwest. Until about A.D. 1300, the Southern Athapaskans were a single group or several closely related groups; they arrived in the Southwest at least by A.D. 1400.

They left Canada as hunter-gatherers adapted to a cold climate: the men hunted big game with bows and arrows, and fished in rivers and lakes, while the women gathered berries, processed hides, and made buckskin clothing decorated with porcupine quillwork, and wove baskets rather than made pottery. The Southern Athapaskans arrived in the Southwest in small bands of undifferentiated migratory peoples who had had to adapt to many ecological niches on their southward journey from Canada. Resilient and resourceful, they had had to adapt to many ecological niches on their southward journey. These same traits enabled them to learn quickly from their new neighbors, Puebloan and Plains peoples, incorporating many of their traits and reworking them to fit into their own unique cultural beliefs and practices.

Most Apaches were more influenced by the peoples of the Great Plains, especially the Kiowa-Apache who joined the Plains-dwelling Kiowa. Other groups, such as the Navajo (and, to a lesser extent, the Western Apache), borrowed many Pueblo traits, which they reworked into what became distinctly Navajo culture. Moving into the relatively unoccupied spaces of the region, the Navajo spread into the Four Corners area until they were encircled on every side, except to the north, by Puebloan peoples. As smaller groups of hunters and gatherers, the Navajo were able to live off country that would not support the agricultural villages of the Pueblos. Over time, the Navajo transformed their nomadic foraging existence into a more agriculturally based way of life. They took to farming more readily than any other Southern Athapaskan group, becoming known as nava hu ("place of large cultivated fields") in the language of the Tewa-speaking Pueblos. (The Navajo call themselves Dine, "The People.")

Around 1700, the Navajo acquired Spanish livestock and by the late 1700s and early 1800s, began to shift their economic dependence to herding in addition to intensive farming, hunting, gathering, and raiding. Once acquired, sheep and goats quickly became a marker of status as well as cultural identity. The Navajo emphasis on movement and change is the foundation of their world view. Navajo mythic heroes travel restlessly from place to place in their search for sacred knowledge. The Navajo consider life itself to be a journey, and the structure of the Navajo language requires the detailed description of movement, much more so than the English language. Thus, pastoralism-with its daily demands of herding the flock from place to place and its seasonal requirements for fresh pasturage-is in keeping with the cultural values of a nomadic heritage. The Navajo became accustomed to having two homes, a summer home near their fields, and then a winter place, where they went after they had harvested their crops.

As their economy shifted toward pastoralism in the period between 1800 and 1850, the Navajo intensified their raiding of herds owned by European American settlers, which led the settlers to retaliate. The Spanish, Mexicans, and Pueblos captured Navajo women and children to become slaves, and, by 1860, as many as 5,000 to 6,000 Navajo slaves (over half the Navajo population) were estimated to be living with families in New Mexican villages. When the United States acquired much of the Southwest from Mexico in 1848, government officials promised settlers protection from Navajo and Apache raiders, and, in 1862, Kit Carson was appointed to lead troops against the Mescalero Apache and then the Navajo. Using a scorched-earth policy, Carson destroyed hogans (circular Navajo homes made of earth and logs), fields, crops, animals, and people. A brutal winter and the destruction of their resources brought defeat to the Navajo, who were forced to go on the Long Walk, a 250-mile death march to Fort Sumner, also known as Bosque Redondo, in New Mexico. Confined to what was basically a concentration camp, even more Navajos died when they had to endure drought, starvation, overcrowded conditions, land too poor for farming, epidemics, and raids by other tribes. Finally, the federal government decided to make a treaty with the Navajo that would allow them to return to a portion of their homeland. Today, the Long Walk continues to be a powerful component of Navajo identity.

Unfortunately, the U.S. government continued to treat Native Americans as wards of the government during the crucial 60 to 70 years after the establishment of each tribe's reservation, missing the crucial formative period. Instead of viewing the situation as transitional, the government created a situation of permanent dependency. While their traditional political institutions were weakened and lost as a result of increased dependency, the Navajo were also losing an opportunity to gain experience in self-government that could have integrated their government into the national system. The system that administered the Navajo was responsible to the federal bureaucracy and not to the Navajo themselves.

When the railroad reached western New Mexico in 1881, trading posts sprang up along its route. Traders extended credit when Indians left items as security as well as exchanging goods through bartering, and traders were quick to recognize the beauty of Navajo jewelry and blankets to non-Indians. Soon traders began to encourage women to weave rugs and men to create jewelry as the railroad brought an increasing number of tourists eager for a glimpse of this once isolated region.

The Navajo established its tribal council in 1923, primarily as a response to pressure from mineral companies that were interested in drilling on Navajo land. Modeled after Anglo-American institutions, rather than on Navajo institutions, the tribal council was the Navajos' first centralized political organization. The size of the reservation made the council ill equipped to deal with issues specific to local areas, so in 1927, the reservation was divided into local units, known as chapters, to deal with more localized problems. The people in each chapter elected officers who represented them in the Navajo Tribal Council.

When the Depression began in 1929, the Navajo population had outgrown its resource base, and severe overgrazing had destroyed groundcover, leading to wind and water erosion. In 1933, officials from the U.S. government asked the Navajo to reduce their stock. The New Deal, an effort to overcome the widespread suffering of the Depression with economic growth, led to the construction of such projects as Boulder Dam, now known as Hoover Dam. Supposed to protect California's Imperial Valley from floods and make possible an improved irrigation system for the valley as well as a secure water supply to southern California, this dam was thought to be threatened by silt released into the Colorado River from Navajo overgrazing. This misperception led the U.S. government to pressure the Navajo Tribal Council to enforce drastic stock reduction. Until this time, most Navajos has ignored the existence of the tribal council because its actions did not affect their lives in any major way. However, the inhumane methods used to enforce Stock Reduction and the lack of sensitivity surrounding this policy-the Navajo considered their animals to be gifts from the Holy People-created a sense of permanent bitterness for the Navajo. Second only to the Long Walk, Stock Reduction became another marker of Navajo identity.

Furthermore, until this time, their herds had enabled the Navajo to retain relative economic independence, and after Stock Reduction, the Navajo economy shifted to wage and welfare. The Native American Church, also known as the peyote religion, spread among the Navajo during this time, gaining so many adherents that between the 1930s and the 1950s, the Navajo became the largest single tribal element in the Native American Church.

Participation in World War II exposed Navajo veterans to a wider world. Of the 3,600 Navajos who enlisted, a select few became the famed Navajo Codetalkers, who developed and used a code derived the Navajo language, playing a crucial role in winning the war in the Pacific. Many veterans had the Enemyway ceremony, used for returning warriors, performed for them to cleanse and purify themselves after contact with enemy dead and to realign themselves with their people. The large-scale exposure to Anglo-American culture led Navajos to demand better schools that would prepare them to compete in the national job market. Many veterans attended college through the G.I. Bill, while others moved to nearby off-reservation towns or distant cities.

Although many Navajo belong to Christian churches and the Native American Church, many also continue to practice their traditional ceremonialism. Many also participate in all three spiritual practices. The essence of Navajo philosophy lies in the word hozho, which is a way of balanced, harmonious living that embodies the sacredness of life. Spirituality, health, harmony, and beauty, all ideals celebrated in the kinaalda, the girls' puberty ceremony, are completely intertwined. This rite of passage embodies and affirms the woman's role in the balance of the universe. Held at the time of her first menses, this 4-day ceremony identifies the girls with Changing Woman, the benevolent Holy Person who embodies the changing seasons of the earth: in the spring, she is a young girl, comes of age in the summer, is a mature woman in the autumn, and in the winter is an old woman. She regenerates herself each spring to become a young girl once more.

The Holy People are a class of beings who possess supernatural powers. They include such well-known deities as the Sun, Changing Woman, the Hero Twins (Monster Slayer and Born-for-Water, First Man, and First Woman. Each ceremonial is related to a particular group of Holy People and the related myth tells how the ancestors of the Navajo acquired the ritual procedures from the Holy People.

Illness results when a person violates the teachings of the Holy People, and most ceremonies are focused toward the healing of illness. First, a diagnostician is consulted who might be a handtrembler, a stargazer, a crystalgazer, or, less commonly today, a listener. This person goes into a trance and diagnoses the cause of the illness and the proper ceremony that is needed to restore balance and health. Then the patient seeks a singer (also known as a chanter) to conduct the specific ceremonial, known as a sing (or chant) that will heal him or her. The ceremonial may last two nights, five nights, or nine nights. (Occasionally, one-night ceremonies are conducted.) Rites such as the consecration of the hogan, the setting out of prayersticks, the ritual washing of the patient's hair, and sandpainting rituals comprise the ceremonial. The patient is then restored to a state of harmony in all realms of life; as inner balance is restored, outer, physical healing occurs.

Today, the Navajo thrive as their population soars. They were the first Native American nation to open its own college, Navajo Community College, today known as Dine College. As described in the textbook, their ceremonial practices and beliefs are vitally alive today. At the same time, Navajo culture-as well as other Native American cultures-has embraced technology, and many Navajos are scientists as well as scholars.