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A Navajo HistoryLORDS OF THE EARTH: A History of the Navajo indians. By Jules Loh. Crowell-Collier Press. $4-95.The Kavajos. the Dtneh, the People. Spawned by First Man and First Woman in a land cruel and beautiful and woven into the fiber of The People. It is the land that has helped fash' ion the Navajo, and even when he leaves to seek fortune in the while man s world, it is the land lhat brings him back. He lives in a hexagonal one*room home built of logs and mud. The Ant People told him how to build it. He lives by the Sun* and the wife of the Sun called Changing Woman, who marks the seasons. The. Sun and Changing Woman bore the Hero Twinswho slew all the evils harmful to The People except four: Hunger, Old Age. Poverty and Dirt, For these were useful, and helped mold the people.So vivid and gentle is author Loh’s understanding of the Navajo that the reader finds himself in envy of the Navajo's world, a splendid, simple island in the confused tides and cur-rents of the white man's sea.This book is more than a history of a people, a special people; it is somehow a chronicle of a way of life with its own Genesis, its own Exodus, its own priestly law and its own la w of the people or Deuteronomy. Illustrated with the fine noble faces of The People, Lords of the Earth should give the reader pause to wonder whether the Navajo should not be the teacher, the white man the ward and pupil.Loh tells us that when the Navajo speaks, the words are active and direct. It is not “I am hungry. but Hunger is hurting me. It is not “My friend drowned. “ but Water killed my friend.” Loh has made the Navajo's. world his own. and in this fine book the reader may for a moment know what it is to be born into the harsh land and to die there with n Navajo pray or:‘*Now you go on your way alone.What . you are now, we know not.To what elan you now belong, we. know not.From now on, you are not of this earth.”John Barbour Associated Press
Newspaper Details
Kalispell Daily Inter Lake
Kalispell, Montana, US
Fri, Jan 07, 1972
Page 10
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
NA, 30 Aug 2024
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