Two unlikely players emerge as the heroes of this narrative: Geronimo Martin, a blind Navajo Indian, and Faye Edgerton, a little white woman in poor health. Gifted and determined, from two different cultures, they prayed and persevered, and finally produced the Navajo New Testament in 1956. At a time when English was used in churches and schools, the Book was on trial. But within a few months, the edition was sold out, and six more printings followed as Navajos welcomed God's Word in a language they understood.

From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Lost City of the Monkey God comes an entrancing, eloquent, and entertaining account of the author’s adventurous journey on horseback through the Southwest in the heart of Navajo desert country. In 1992 author Douglas Preston and his wife and daughter rode horseback across 400 miles of desert in Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. They were retracing the route of a Navajo deity, the Slayer of Alien Gods, on his quest to restore beauty and balance to the Earth. More than a travelogue, Preston’s account of their “one tough journey, luminously remembered” (Kirkus Reviews) is a tale of two cultures meeting in a sacred land and is “like traveling across unknown territory with Lewis and Clark to the Pacific” (Dee Brown, author of Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee).

The definitive guide to the richly imaginative folk art of the Navajo. Witty polka-dotted chickens. Purple pickup trucks sculpted out of mud. A Navajo grandma riding an orange cardboard giraffe. For more than two decades, Chuck and Jan Rosenak have been avid collectors of unique pieces of Navajo folk art like this. Their collection, research, and writing have helped to define and illustrate an art form that ranges from wooden carvings of eerie three-headed skinwalkers to vibrant pictures painted on old bed sheets. This new edition of the Rosenaks' groundbreakingNavajo Folk Artis the essential guide to a comic, intensely creative, truly American art.

In response to a recent surge of interest in Native American history, culture, and lore, Hippocrene brings you a concise and straightforward dictionary of the Navajo tongue. The dictionary is designed to aid Navajos learning English as well as English speakers interested in acquiring knowledge of Navajo. The largest of all the Native American tribes, the Navajo number about 125,000 and live mostly on reservations in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Over 9,000 entries; A detailed section on Navajo pronunciation; A comprehensive, modern vocabulary; Useful, everyday expressions.

The first and only memoir by one of the original Navajo code talkers of WWII. His name wasn’t Chester Nez. That was the English name he was assigned in kindergarten. And in boarding school at Fort Defiance, he was punished for speaking his native language, as the teachers sought to rid him of his culture and traditions. But discrimination didn’t stop Chester from answering the call to defend his country after Pearl Harbor, for the Navajo have always been warriors, and his upbringing on a New Mexico reservation gave him the strength—both physical and mental—to excel as a marine. During World War II, the Japanese had managed to crack every code the United States used. But when the Marines turned to its Navajo recruits to develop and implement a secret military language, they created the only unbroken code in modern warfare—and helped assure victory for the United States over Japan in the South Pacific. INCLUDES THE ACTUAL NAVAJO CODE AND RARE PICTURES

This is the most complete version of the Navajo creation story to appear in English since Washington Matthews' Navajo Legends of 1847. Zolbrod's new translation renders the power and delicacy of the oral storytelling performance on the page through a poetic idiom appropriate to the Navajo oral tradition. Zolbrod's book offers the general reader a vivid introduction to Navajo culture. For students of literature this book proposes a new way of looking at our literary heritage.

Originally published in 1956, this classic volume presents the essence of the Navajo Way, its stories and traditions. The stories are complemented by Navajo artist Andy Tsihnajinnie's line drawings, Dr. Joseph Henderson's psychological commentary, and Linle's first-hand observations of Navajo ceremonial life.