The Navajo Nation

Paper Summary:

The paper describes how the book "Navajo" by James F. Downs offers a history of the Navajo nation and considers many aspects of the Navajo culture and social order. The paper relates that the book gives much attention to the society the Navajo had when the first Europeans arrived in North America and to the complexities of the Navajo civilization. The paper discusses how Downs notes the forces that have brought change even as Navajo culture itself persists in some communities. The paper concludes that this book is a good introduction to the Navajo people and their traditions.

From the Paper:

"Downs first considers the development of the Navajo as a separate entity, beginning however with the original Nadene people from Siberia from which all the rest of the Native American population would spring. What is known of the Nadene people shows that they probably brought "the hard-soled moccasin and the strong, complex bow" (Downs 6). These people divided over time into various groups from Alaska down the coast into the rest of North America. One such groups was the Athapaskans, hunters rather than gatherers, and they entered the Southwest, formed different groups with different languages and styles of life, and interacted in some way with the Pueblo people of the Southwest, in time becoming known by a new name, the Apache. Around the start of the seventeenth century, the Apaches were a wild, hunting people, while the Navajo Apaches were the "apaches of the big fields" (Downs 10)."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Downs, James F. The Navajo. Prospect Heights, Illinois: Waveland Press, 1984.
• Kessell, John L. "General Sherman and the Navajo Treaty of 1868: A Basic and Expedient Misunderstanding." Western Historical Quarterly (July 1981), 251-272.
• Mails, T.E. The Pueblo Children of the Earth Mother. Volume I. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, 1983.
• Matlock, G. Enemy Ancestors: The Anasazi World with a Guide to Sites. Flagstaff: Northland Press, 1988.

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• Article Review # 131810 : "Navajo" - A Book Review"

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