INTRODUCTION.
PREFATORY REMARKS.
1. The legends contained in this book are those of the Navaho[1] Indians, a tribe living in the southwestern portion of the United States; mostly in the Territories of New Mexico and Arizona, but partly in the States of Colorado and Utah. A definite reservation of over 12,000 square miles has been set apart for them; but in every direction, beyond the borders of this reservation, isolated families and small bands may be found dwelling, either temporarily or permanently, in localities where there are springs, streams, pools, or artificial reservoirs of water. Some have taken up homesteads—or have otherwise acquired a legal title to lands beyond the borders of the reservation; others are merely squatters. A brief description of these Indians—their arts, religion, ceremonies, etc.—is included in this introduction, in the belief that, if the reader possesses some knowledge of the Navaho before he begins to read the tales, he may have a better understanding of the latter. But much more information, of interest to the ethnographer, will be found in notes. Some items in the introduction could not properly have appeared in the notes, as there was nothing in the tales to suggest them. Other items might perhaps as well have been transferred to the notes; the decision to put them in the introduction was often arbitrary.
2. Title of Book.—In selecting a title for this book, the word Legends was chosen, rather than Myths, for the reason that the tales contained herein, though mostly mythical, are not altogether such. In the Origin Legend, the last chapter, “The Growth of the Navaho Nation,” is in part traditional or historical, and it is even approximately correct in many of its dates, as has been shown by Frederick Webb Hodge in his paper on the “Early Navaho and Apache.”[301]
HOME OF THE NAVAHOES.
3. The land which the Navahoes occupy is arid, though not an absolute desert. The precipitation at an altitude of 7,000 feet amounts on an average to only 14.10 inches during the year (at lower altitudes it is less, at higher altitudes greater), and this is generally confined to two short seasons of moisture separated from one another by months of absolute drought, which, except in specially favored localities, would destroy any of our ordinary field-crops. But there are small spots, far apart, where irrigation can be practised, and there are other places, apparently deserts, which no white man would think of cultivating, but where Indians raise meagre crops of corn, squashes, and melons.
4. Soil.—He who stands on the brow of the mesa at the Indian pueblo of Walpi, in Arizona, may unravel one secret of Indian agriculture in the arid region, and learn why ancient ruins may be found in the most desolate parts. Six hundred feet below him stretches a sandy plain which at most seasons of the year seems almost an absolute desert; yet in summer it is green with rows of dwarf corn. Little rain falls on it and there is no irrigation; yet the corn grows and furnishes a return which repays an Indian, at least, for his labor. Through the plain runs a gully which at certain seasons drains the water from a high table-land beyond. The water does not all flow off, but in part settles under the sandy surface, and keeps the subsoil moist throughout the year. By planting deep, the Indian farmers reach this moist subsoil, and place their seeds where the long drought cannot destroy them. On the side of the mesa, peach-trees flourish, with hidden moisture that comes out between the rocky strata at the mesa’s edge. Localities similar to those described are found in the Navaho land, and similarly used by the Navaho for farms and peach orchards. The myths make frequent allusions to such farms or gardens.
5. A few fields have recently been made by white men in the high meadows of the Zuñi Mountains at altitudes above 8,000 feet, where potatoes, oats, barley, and garden vegetables are raised without irrigation; but farming at such altitudes was never tried by the Navahoes, and they knew nothing of cultivating the crops named above. Beside their aboriginal crops, they have for a long time raised a little wheat. Potatoes grow wild in the Navaho country.