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LORDS OF THE EARTH, by Jules Loh. Crowell - Collier Press, $4,95,Not since Ruth Underhill’s careful and extended studies of The People has anything like this book been published. It Is a delight to read the simple facts of N avajo history presented in such a readable manner, beginning with the earliest records and continuing to the present.It Is a relief to find that Loh does not repeat the worn - out cliche that the Navajo first appear in history as raiders. Orginially hunters and farmers, he says, The People had become by the early seventeenth century , . ,a well - established pastoral society, How I should like to make the pseudo - historians read this sentence a hundred times! Writers who copy each other’s fallacies, making little attempt to research, have repeated theraid-er error time and again. But read Loh’s statements of fact and learn what lay behind the raids of' Spanish times, and why thepast-oral society became a warlike one. He tells It as history shows it.I am impressed by Loh’s comparison of the people with the land itself, explaining how it is that they never give up, never let go of the strange, beautiful, wild country between the Sacred Mountains, they so strongly resemble. He sees them with far more than the usual alien eye; something of their culture has penetrated deep into his consciousness, No one but a Navajo can truly and thoroughly know the Nava Jos, but Loh has achieved more than almost every othernon-Navajo has been able to do, A feature writer, he yet tells the story without embellishment, expecting the reader to understand what he is saying without appeal to sentiment. Yet I defy any careful reader to follow this history of The People all the way through without emotion. As a reviewer, I have read the histories of a good many Indian tribes, and as ! have pointed out more than om o, these histories parallel each other in the main details. But no history of any tribe has moved me to such appreciation as this one, told truly and expertly. ,This dependable book shmildbe read by everyone who lives or has lived on the Navajo reservation. Non - Nava Jos will gain a better understanding of The People than they realise would be possible. I recommend it also to the Nav-ajos themselves - to the young trying tlt;j find themselves, because they will see what genes went into their making, and to the old, who will lift their heads in pride, Edith a L. Watson,
Newspaper Details
Navajo Times
Window Rock, Arizona, US
Thu, Feb 03, 1972
Page 15
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
NA, 30 Aug 2024
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