Navajo Historical Selections

Collects stories and articles by Navajos, originally published in Adahoonitigii, the Navajo language monthly newspaper, recording Navajo attitudes and reactions to important events in the history of the Navajo nation.

The selected articles were published in Navajo in a monthly newspaper: Ádahoonílígíí. The newspaper was printed on a single folded sheet of newsprint and distributed from 1943 to 1957 throughout the Reservation and was a predecessor of the contemporary Navajo Times. Ádahoonílígíí was published by the Navajo Agency of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Window Rock, Arizona and contributed to the standardization of Navajo orthography. The only widely available texts intended for a Navajo audience up to that point had been religious publications and parts of Diyin God Bizaad – the Bible. The paper was edited by Robert W. Young and William Morgan, Sr. whose task it was to create a simplified Navajo alphabet with Roman letters found on an English typewriter keyboard.They write in the introduction: “We have endeavored to select the best of these historical accounts, to publish them bilingually in the present volume, and it is our hope that they may be of interest to all persons and students of Navajo history.” We find stories about the traditional Navajo country–about the Four Sacred Mountains and how the clans were created, as well as a story about Navajo scouts on the trail of Geronimo. Articles about the livestock reduction period and the resulting economic and social disaster and the long range 10 year rehabilitation program after World War II are also included.

According to the Navajo Origin Myth, the Genesis of Navajo Religion, the Navajos were created by the Holy People, and were taught by them all of the details of living. Like the Jews of the Old Testament, the Navajo are the Chosen People, Nahasdzaan Bijei the Heart of the World. Their world, the sun, the moon and the stars were created for them, and their way of life was taught to them by Changing Woman, White Shell Woman, and others of the Holy People.

The most complete and current history of the largest American Indian nation in the U.S., based on extensive new archival research, traditional histories, interviews, and personal observation.

A chronicle of the Navajo people describing the hardships and rewards of early band life, and how they dealt with the influences of Spanish, Mexican and American forces.

Will Evans's writings should find a special niche in the small but significant body of literature from and about traders to the Navajos. Evans was the proprietor of the Shiprock Trading Company. Probably more than most of his fellow traders, he had a strong interest in Navajo culture. The effort he made to record and share what he learned certainly was unusual. He published in the Farmington and New Mexico newspapers and other periodicals, compiling many of his pieces into a book manuscript. His subjects were Navajos he knew and traded with, their stories of historic events such as the Long Walk, and descriptions of their culture as he, an outsider without academic training, understood it. Evans's writings were colored by his fondness for, uncommon access to, and friendships with Navajos, and by who he was: a trader, folk artist, and Mormon. He accurately portrayed the operations of a trading post and knew both the material and artistic value of Navajo crafts. His art was mainly inspired by Navajo sandpainting. He appropriated and, no doubt, sometimes misappropriated that sacred art to paint surfaces and objects of all kinds. As a Mormon, he had particular views of who the Navajos were and what they believed and was representative of a large class of often-overlooked traders. Much of the Navajo trade in the Four Corners region and farther west was operated by Mormons. They had a significant historical role as intermediaries, or brokers, between Native and European American peoples in this part of the West. Well connected at the center of that world, Evans was a good spokesperson.