Navajo Land, Navajo Culture.

• Author: Kreyche, Gerald F.
• Position: Book Review

BY ROBERT S. MCPHERSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS 2003, 301 PAGES, $19.95

The Navajo Nation dominates Southwest Indian culture and is the largest of Native American tribes. How they fared and changed in the 20th century is the subject of Robert McPherson's well-researched volume. It begins with a brief history of the Navajo peoples, who largely occupy the Four Corners area of the Colorado Plateau, the only place in the U.S. where four states converge (Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona). McPherson briefly treats their myths and beliefs, among which are Creation stories, Grandmother Spider, Changing Woman, etc. The coyote, or "God's dog" as it often is called, was given the task of arranging the stars in the universe, but in a fit of mischief scattered them about, forcing humans to order them. Thus, the Big Dipper and other constellations were conceived of.

The thrust of the book is to resolve the tensions existing between traditional tribal mythic guides for living and their unforeseen conflict with current economic necessities. Clearly, some ancient beliefs have to be modified or dropped to stay connected with the modern world.

McPherson also shows how differing interpretations of a culture, such as given by archaeologists and anthropologists, need reconciliation. He gives the lie to romantic claims that the American Indian was a great ecologist. In 1886, for example, the Utes, a neighboring tribe and hereditary enemy of the Navajo, killed several thousand deer (including fawns and does) in order to sell their hides to whites. Navajos resented this, for they hunted the animals for food. Deer became increasingly scarce, but, through various rituals and incantations, the Navajo and Utes asked "Talking God" to sanction their hunting. They believed that, with such rituals, the creature's spirit would be released to unite with another body to repopulate the deer world in perpetuity.

Although...