In Navajo Land, Navajo Culture, Robert S. McPherson presents an intimate history of the Diné, or Navajo people, of southeastern Utah. Moving beyond standard history by incorporating Native voices, the author shows how the Dine's culture and economy have both persisted and changed during the twentieth century. As the dominant white culture increasingly affected their worldview, these Navajos adjusted to change, took what they perceived as beneficial, and shaped or filtered outside influences to preserve traditional values. With guidance from Navajo elders, McPherson describes varied experiences ranging from traditional deer hunting to livestock reduction, from bartering at a trading post to acting in John Ford movies, and from the coming of the automobile to the burgeoning of the tourist industry. Clearly written and richly detailed, this book offers new perspectives on a people who have adapted to new conditions while shaping their own destiny.

Navajo Land, Navajo Culture: The Utah Experience in the Twentieth Century

History

McPherson, Robert S.

Americas

University of Oklahoma Press

Born in 1919, Holiday is a practicing traditional Navajo medicine man living in Monument Valley, Utah. Drawing on extensive interviews with Holiday, McPherson (College of Eastern Utah) presents a detailed account of Holiday's life, from his early training with his grandfather and other family members living in the high country desert of the Colorado Plateau, through years of interactions with whites in the early film making industry, in the Civilian Conservation Corps and the military during the 1930s, and as a miner on the Navajo Reservation during the 1950s. The second half of the book features tribal and family teachings passed down from generation to generation, and other lessons from contemporary society. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

A Navajo Legacy: The Life and Teachings of John Holiday

Biographies & Memoirs

Holiday, John

Community & Culture

Univ of Oklahoma Pr

For almost ninety years, Navajo medicine man John Holiday has watched the sun rise over the rock formations of his home in Monument Valley. Author and scholar Robert S. McPherson interviewed Holiday extensively and in A Navajo Legacy records his full and fascinating life. In the first part of this book, Holiday describes how, at an early age, he began an apprenticeship with his grandfather to learn the Blessingway ceremony. As a youth, Holiday traveled over the desert with family members to find forage for the animals and plants for healing practices. He experienced the invasion of Monument Valley by whites and later participated in the early filmmaking industry. Holiday was employed in the 1930s with the Civilian Conservation Corps and then served a brief stint in the military. During the 1950s he mined in one of the two largest uranium deposits on the Navajo Reservation. He also worked on the railroad in Utah. But he always returned to eke out a living with his livestock and agriculture. In the second part of the book, Holiday details family and tribal teachings. All of Holiday’s experiences and teachings reflect the thoughts of a traditional practitioner who has found in life both beauty and lessons for future generations.

A Navajo Legacy: The Life and Teachings of John Holiday (The Civilization of the American Indian Series)

Viewing the Ancestors: Perceptions of the Anaasází, Mokwic, and Hisatsinom (Volume 9) (New Directions in Native American Studies Series)

The Anaasází people left behind marvelous structures, the ruins of which are preserved at Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, and Canyon de Chelly. But what do we know about these people, and how do they relate to Native nations living in the Southwest today? Archaeologists have long studied the American Southwest, but as historian Robert McPherson shows in Viewing the Ancestors, their findings may not tell the whole story. McPherson maintains that combining archaeology with knowledge derived from the oral traditions of the Navajo, Ute, Paiute, and Hopi peoples yields a more complete history. McPherson’s approach to oral tradition reveals evidence that, contrary to the archaeological consensus that these groups did not coexist, the Navajos interacted with their Anaasází neighbors. In addition to examining archaeological literature, McPherson has studied traditional teachings and interviewed Native people to obtain accounts of their history and of the relations between the Anaasází and Athapaskan ancestors of today’s Hopi, Pueblo, and Navajo peoples. Oral history, McPherson points out, tells why things happened. For example, archaeological findings indicate that the Hopi are descended from the Anaasází, but Hopi oral tradition better explains why the ancient Puebloans may have left the Four Corners region: the drought that may have driven the Anaasází away was a symptom of what had gone wrong within the society―a point that few archaeologists could derive from what is found in the ground. An important text for non-Native scholars as well as Native people committed to retaining traditional knowledge, Viewing the Ancestors exemplifies collaboration between the sciences and oral traditions rather than a contest between the two.

Community building in the Four Corners area of southeastern Utah required specialized knowledge and a good bit of determination on the part of settlers who wrested a livelihood from the Colorado Plateau. Robert S. McPherson, the region’s leading historian, draws on oral history and personal archives to write about cowboys and homesteaders, loggers and sawmill operators, law enforcement officers and bootleggers, miners and midwives, trappers and builders. In Life in a Corner, he shapes their stories into a fascinating mosaic of cultural and environmental history unique to this region. McPherson demonstrates that, above all, settlers worked hard in order to succeed in this often forbidding land. A first-person account of erecting a Latter-day Saint tabernacle tells of volunteers using only what was under their feet or came from a nearby mountain. Other chapters give an insider’s perspective on cowboying in canyon country, bringing law and order to a virtually lawless land, waging war against wolves and coyotes, and homesteading on some of the last large desert tracts in the continental United States. But the most gripping stories center on the ingenuity of those who lived these personal experiences. Only a veteran trapper would think of burying an alarm clock to attract a coyote. Only a determined bootlegger would devise a saddle made of leather-covered copper equipped with a spigot to dispense moonshine by the cup. Only committed, or desperate, miners would sail with a one-way “ticket” to a gold field in a hidden desert chasm. What were midwives being taught at the turn of the century, and how did their practice involve equal parts religious doctrine and medical procedure? What was a qualifying examination like for the first forest rangers? And how did small close-knit communities handle “slackers” during World War I? Life in a Corner answers these and many other questions while offering fresh perspectives on past events and current controversies.

Life in a Corner: Cultural Episodes in Southeastern Utah, 1880–1950

In 1875, a team of cartographers, geologists, and scientists under the direction of Ferdinand V. Hayden entered the Four Corners area for what they thought would be a calm summer’s work completing a previous survey. Their accomplishments would go down in history as one of the great American surveying expeditions of the nineteenth century. By skillfully weaving the surveyors’ diary entries, field notes, and correspondence with newspaper accounts, historians Robert S. McPherson and Susan Rhoades Neel bring the Hayden Survey to life. Mapping the Four Corners provides an entertaining, engaging narrative of the team’s experiences, contextualized with a thoughtful introduction and conclusion. Accompanied by the great photographer William Henry Jackson, Hayden’s team quickly found their trip to be more challenging than expected. The travelers describe wrangling half-wild pack mules, trying to sleep in rain-soaked blankets, and making tea from muddy, alkaline water. Along the way, they encountered diverse peoples, evidence of prehistoric civilizations, and spectacular scenery—Hispanic villages in Colorado and New Mexico; Mesa Verde, Hovenweep, and other Anasazi sites; and the Hopi mesas. Not everyone they met was glad to see them: in southeastern Utah surveyors fought and escaped a band of Utes and Paiutes who recognized that the survey meant dispossession from their homeland. Hayden saw his expedition as a scientific endeavor focused on geology, geographic description, cartographic accuracy, and even ethnography, but the search for economic potential was a significant underlying motive. As this book shows, these pragmatic scientists were on the lookout for gold beneath every rock, grazing lands in every valley, and economic opportunity around each bend in the trail. The Hayden Survey ultimately shaped the American imagination in contradictory ways, solidifying the idea of “progress”—and government funding of its pursuit—while also revealing, via Jackson’s photographs, a landscape with a beauty hitherto unknown and unimagined.

Mapping the Four Corners: Narrating the Hayden Survey of 1875 (Volume 83) (American Exploration and Travel Series)

Neel, Susan Rhoades

Between 1880 and 1940, Navajo and Ute families and westward-trending Anglos met in the “bullpens” of southwestern trading posts to barter for material goods. As the products of the livestock economy of Navajo culture were exchanged for the merchandise of an industrialized nation, a wealth of cultural knowledge also changed hands. In Both Sides of the Bullpen, Robert S. McPherson reveals the ways that Navajo tradition fundamentally reshaped and defined trading practices in the Four Corners area of southeastern Utah and southwestern Colorado. Drawing on oral histories of Native peoples and traders collected over thirty years of research, McPherson explores these interactions from both perspectives, as wool, blankets, and silver crossed the counter in exchange for flour, coffee, and hardware. To succeed, traders had to meet the needs and expectations of their customers, often interpreted through Navajo cultural standards. From the organization of the post building to gift giving, health care and burial services, and a credit system tailored to the Navajo calendar, every feature of the trading post served trader and customer alike. Over time, these posts evolved from ad hoc business ventures or profitable cooperative stores into institutions with a clearly defined set of expectations that followed Navajo traditional practices. Traders spent their days evaluating craft work, learning the financial circumstances of each Native family, following economic trends in the wool and livestock industry back east, and avoiding conflict. In detail and depth, the many voices woven throughout Both Sides of the Bullpen restore an underappreciated era to the history of the American Southwest. They show us that for American Indians and white traders alike in the Four Corners region during the late 1800s and early 1900s, barter was as much a cultural expression as it was an economic necessity.

Both Sides of the Bullpen: Navajo Trade and Posts

Business & Money

Economics

<div> The Anaasází people left behind marvelous structures, the ruins of which are preserved at Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, and Canyon de Chelly. But what do we know about these people, and how do they relate to Native nations living in the Southwest today? Archaeologists have long studied the American Southwest, but as historian Robert McPherson shows in Viewing the Ancestors, their findings may not tell the whole story. McPherson maintains that combining archaeology with knowledge derived from the oral traditions of the Navajo, Ute, Paiute, and Hopi peoples yields a more complete history. McPherson?s approach to oral tradition reveals evidence that, contrary to the archaeological consensus that these groups did not coexist, the Navajos interacted with their Anaasází neighbors. In addition to examining archaeological literature, McPherson has studied traditional teachings and interviewed Native people to obtain accounts of their history and of the relations between the Anaasází and Athapaskan ancestors of today?s Hopi, Pueblo, and Navajo peoples. Oral history, McPherson points out, tells why things happened. For example, archaeological findings indicate that the Hopi are descended from the Anaasází, but Hopi oral tradition better explains why the ancient Puebloans may have left the Four Corners region: the drought that may have driven the Anaasází away was a symptom of what had gone wrong within the society?a point that few archaeologists could derive from what is found in the ground. An important text for non-Native scholars as well as Native people committed to retaining traditional knowledge, Viewing the Ancestors exemplifies collaboration between the sciences and oral traditions rather than a contest between the two. </div>

For travelers passing through northern Navajo country, the desert landscape appears desolate. The few remaining Navajo trading posts, once famous for their bustling commerce, seem unimpressive. Yet a closer look at the economic and creative activity in this region, which straddles northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southeastern Utah, belies a far more interesting picture. In Traders, Agents, and Weavers, Robert S. McPherson unveils the fascinating--and at times surprising--history of the merging of cultures and artistic innovation across this land. McPherson, the author of numerous books on Navajo and southwestern history, narrates here the story of Navajo economic and cultural development through the testimonies of traders, government agents, tribal leaders, and accomplished weavers. For the first half of the twentieth century, trading posts dominated the Navajo economy in northwestern New Mexico. McPherson highlights the Two Grey Hills post and its sister posts Toadlena and Newcomb, which encouraged excellence among weavers and sold high-quality rugs and blankets. Parallel to the success of the trading industry was the establishment of the Northern Navajo or Shiprock Agency and Boarding School. The author explains the pivotal influence on the area of the agency's stern and controversial founder, William T. Shelton, known by Navajos as Tall Leader. Through cooperation with government agents, American settlers, and traders, Navajo weavers not only succeeded financially but also developed their own artistic crafts. Shunning the use of brightly dyed yarn and opting for the natural colors of sheep's wool, these weavers, primarily women, developed an intricate style that has few rivals. Eventually, economic shifts, including oil drilling and livestock reduction, eroded the traditional Navajo way of life and led to the collapse of the trading post system. Nonetheless, as McPherson emphasizes, Navajo weavers have maintained their distinctive style and method of production to this day. &nbsp;

Traders, Agents, and Weavers: Developing the Northern Navajo Region

For travelers passing through northern Navajo country, the desert landscape appears desolate. The few remaining Navajo trading posts, once famous for their bustling commerce, seem unimpressive. Yet a closer look at the economic and creative activity in this region, which straddles northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southeastern Utah, belies a far more interesting picture. In Traders, Agents, and Weavers, Robert S. McPherson unveils the fascinating—and at times surprising—history of the merging of cultures and artistic innovation across this land.\nMcPherson, the author of numerous books on Navajo and southwestern history, narrates here the story of Navajo economic and cultural development through the testimonies of traders, government agents, tribal leaders, and accomplished weavers. For the first half of the twentieth century, trading posts dominated the Navajo economy in northwestern New Mexico. McPherson highlights the Two Grey Hills post and its sister posts Toadlena and Newcomb, which encouraged excellence among weavers and sold high-quality rugs and blankets. Parallel to the success of the trading industry was the establishment of the Northern Navajo or Shiprock Agency and Boarding School. The author explains the pivotal influence on the area of the agency’s stern and controversial founder, William T. Shelton, known by Navajos as Tall Leader.\nThrough cooperation with government agents, American settlers, and traders, Navajo weavers not only succeeded financially but also developed their own artistic crafts. Shunning the use of brightly dyed yarn and opting for the natural colors of sheep’s wool, these weavers, primarily women, developed an intricate style that has few rivals. Eventually, economic shifts, including oil drilling and livestock reduction, eroded the traditional Navajo way of life and led to the collapse of the trading post system. Nonetheless, as McPherson emphasizes, Navajo weavers have maintained their distinctive style and method of production to this day.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by McPherson, Robert S.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by McPherson, Robert S.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by McPherson, Robert S.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Navajo Land, Navajo Culture: The Utah Experience in the Twentieth Century

A Navajo Legacy: The Life and Teachings of John Holiday

A Navajo Legacy: The Life and Teachings of John Holiday (The Civilization of the American Indian Series)

Viewing the Ancestors: Perceptions of the Anaasází, Mokwic, and Hisatsinom (Volume 9) (New Directions in Native American Studies Series)

Life in a Corner: Cultural Episodes in Southeastern Utah, 1880–1950

Mapping the Four Corners: Narrating the Hayden Survey of 1875 (Volume 83) (American Exploration and Travel Series)

Both Sides of the Bullpen: Navajo Trade and Posts

Viewing the Ancestors: Perceptions of the Anaasází, Mokwic, and Hisatsinom (Volume 9) (New Directions in Native American Studies Series)

Traders, Agents, and Weavers: Developing the Northern Navajo Region

Traders, Agents, and Weavers: Developing the Northern Navajo Region