Misunderstood, maligned, abused, despised, the Navaho has never stood high in the estimation of those whites who did not know him. Yet he is industrious, moral, honest, trustworthy, fairly truthful, religious, and good to his wife and children. Not a weak list of virtues, even though one has to detract from it by accusing him of ingratitude. There are noble exceptions, of course, to this charge, but from what I know and have seen, I am inclined to believe that many, if not most, Navahoes have no sense of moral responsibility for favors and benefits received.
Though, perhaps, not as interesting to study as the Hopis, there is still a wonderful field open for the student who is willing to go and live with the Navaho, learn his language, gain his confidence, participate in all his ceremonies, and enter into his social and domestic life.
No one has done this as much as Dr. Washington Matthews, whose "Navaho Legends" is a revelation to those people who have hitherto held the general ideas (propagated, too, by a scientific observer) so prevalent about this long-suffering people.
That the Navaho was reserved with the white man in the early days of American occupancy there can be no doubt, and the difficulty experienced in penetrating that reserve is well exemplified by reference to the letter of Dr. Joseph Letherman, who lived for three years among the tribe at Fort Defiance. Aided by Major Kendrick, who had long commanded at this post, he wrote a letter which appears in the Smithsonian Report for 1855. In this he says, among many good things: "Nothing can be learned of the origin of these people from themselves. At one time they say they came out of the ground; and at another, that they know nothing whatever of their origin; the latter, no doubt, being the truth." Again: "Of their religion little or nothing is known, as, indeed, all inquiries tend to show that they have none; and even have not, we are informed, any word to express the idea of a Supreme Being. We have not been able to learn that any observances of a religious character exist among them; and the general impression of those who have the means of knowing them is, that, in this respect, they are steeped in the deepest degradation." Once more: "They have frequent gatherings for dancing." And a little further on: "Their singing is but a succession of grunts, and is anything but agreeable."
One has but to read what Dr. Matthews has written and gathered from the Navahoes to see how misleading and erroneous the conclusions of Dr. Letherman were. To quote: "He [Dr. Matthews] had not been many weeks in New Mexico when he discovered that the dances to which the doctor refers were religious ceremonials, and later he found that these ceremonials might vie in allegory, symbolism, and intricacy of ritual with the ceremonies of any people, ancient or modern. He found, ere long, that these heathens, pronounced godless and legendless, possessed lengthy myths and traditions—so numerous that one can never hope to collect them all, a pantheon as well stocked with gods and heroes as that of the ancient Greeks, and prayers which, for length and vain repetition, might put a Pharisee to blush."
Wonderful songs also were found, full of poetic imagery, and suitable for every conceivable occasion, songs that have been handed down for generations. Of the sacred songs Dr. Matthews makes the astounding statement that, "sometimes, pertaining to a single rite, there are two hundred songs or more which may not be sung at other rites." Further: "The songs must be known to the priest of the rite and his assistants in a most exact manner, for an error made in singing a song may be fatal to the efficacy of a ceremony. In no case is an important mistake tolerated, and in some cases the error of a single syllable works an irreparable injury."
Popular conceptions of the Navaho are very crude and inaccurate. They are largely the result of two "floods of information" which deluged the country at two epochs in their history, and neither of them had much truth in the flood. The first of these epochs was at the discovery of the important cliff dwellings located on their reservation,—those of the Tsegi Canyon (the so-called Canyon de Chelly), Monument Canyon, Chaco Canyon, etc. Writers who visited the region wrote the most wild and outrageously conceived nonsense about this people and the dwellings they were supposed to look upon with superstitious veneration. Then later, a lot of unscrupulous whites, fired with similar zeal to that which led the old conquistadors across the deserts of northern Mexico and through the inhospitable wilds of Arizona and New Mexico,—the zeal for gold or silver,—which was doubtless fed by the fact that the Navahoes did possess thousands of dollars' worth of silver ornaments, started out to prospect the interior recesses of the Navaho reservation. Knowing by painful experience what this meant,—for their "white brothers" had stolen their springs and arable land from them on the Moenkopi, on the Little Colorado, at Willow Spring, and a score of other places,—the warlike and courageous Navahoes resented the presence of these men. They begged them to retire, and when the white men refused, fought and whipped them. This naturally excited the cupidity of the silver hunters more than ever. "Why should the blanked Indians fight if not to protect their silver mines?"—this was the kind of question asked, and the natural and legitimate resentment of the Navahoes was described all over the country as "another Indian uprising," and led to the second "flood of knowledge," which the newspapers always have forthcoming when public interest and curiosity are aroused.
Navaho Silver Necklace and Belt.