The Navajo and His Land

THE NAVAJO IS PART OF HIS LAND AND ONLY HERE IS HE TRULY HAPPY. THOSE WHO GO AWAY REMEMBER THE LAND SO IT IS WITH THEM ALWAYS, AND LONGING FOR THEIR LAND THEY ALWAYS RETURN.

THE Navajo will never leave his land for he can never be happy elsewhere. And when the destinies that entwine all human beings take the Navajo from his reservation, he will always remember it and always long for it and if nothing else, in the end, will try to return to his land to die. It It isn't a pretty land as lands go. It is harsh and bare, lacking in shade and water, merci lessly exposed to the cold winds that beat across it in winter, the victim of an unrelenting sun that deep summer brings.

is a sandy land, full of mesas and canyons and cliffs, fit only for the Navajo and his sheep. It stretches in loneliness mile after mile and is heavy with silence.

But it is a big land, where time stops and distance begins. Portrayed in these pages is Monument Valley only a small corner of the larger land. It is so large that no man in a liftime can know all of it and if you only know well your small corner you are content. Majestic color is part of the land and with the sharpness of its cliffs, its distances, its deep canyons comprises the beauty and solemnity that one never forgets.

The Navajo is like the land itself, and he of

all people seems to fit in its pattern. He likes the room he has and the loneliness and the miles and miles of panorama, over which he alone holds sway. Once you have seen his land you'll know then why the Navajo can never leave it, or why, when he does, he longs always to return.

The land isn't generous, a lavish, green corner where life is easy and where there is an abundance of wealth and things that make living easy. You can travel for miles and see nothing green, even the tough grass seeming lifeless and wearied of the struggle to exist. Water is hard to find over most of the reservation and when water is found it is a precious commodity, carefully preserved and carefully used. The thoughtless traveler, unwise in the ways of the Navajo, will drive through this country and exclaim at the barrenness and wonder how even the Navajo can survive. Yet the Navajo, as a race, thrives in the country and in recent decades has made population gains so that he is no longer the vanishing, but the unvanishing Indian. Greener pastures could be found for the Navajo but he isn't looking for greener pastures. The Indian Service has proposed to move many to rich farm lands along the Colorado River, but the Navajos are satisfied.

They are content with the land of their fathers, content with the land ruled by their fierce Navajo gods, content with the wind and the sun and the sand that has meant the full life to generations before them and to generations that will follow... R. C.