The Herald - The Herald Magazine
On the cowboy trail
Travelling through the land of the Navajo
DO you ever get tired of that view?” I asked, sitting in the cafe of the visitor centre. “How could I?” said the young Navajo waitress, “John Ford said Monument Valley was the place where God put the West. He was right.”
She is from a nation living in an area roughly the size of Scotland, and with a population of 300,000, which you will search hard for on the map – though you will possibly have been there in your celluloid fantasies. In that nation lies Monument Valley, scene of John Wayne and his director John Ford’s films, such as Stagecoach and The Seekers, and of many other westerns. There is even a John Ford Point, a favourite film location of the director. But it is in reality far from being the home of cowboys.
On the contrary, this area stretching through much of northern Arizona, northern New Mexico and southern
Utah in the American south-west, with its world-famous scenery, is part of the Native American Navajo Nation. It’s a selfgoverning territory, with its own education, legal system and police force. Size and devolved political powers may be similar to Scotland’s, but the similarities end there.
On arrival, to get some background, visit the excellent museum at the visitor centre in the Monument Valley Tribal Park, which gives information on both Navajo history and on movie-making. Sure to surprise is the nation’s proudest achievement. In World War Two, the US military, seeking a code the Japanese could not break, used the Navajo language and Navajo code-talkers. It is ironic to think that, while they made this contribution to victory, the Navajo were denied civil rights in the US. These only came in the 1950s.
The environs of Monument Valley, with such icons as the Mitten Butes, constitute the Navajo Tribal Park, administered by the Navajo Nation – or the Dine, the People, as the Navajo proudly designate themselves. Traversing what must be some of the most astounding scenery on the planet, you can take a scenic drive on a (pretty rough!) road through the most majestic sandstone formations in the valley.
People still live and farm here year-round; many sites are sacred and off-bounds, unless accompanied by a guide. I drove with my guide firstly to his farm and hoghan (a ceremonial sweat-lodge, still in almost universal use with the Navajo) and there we picked up our horses, exploring into a pinnacled wonderland. He was like a character in the movies: dignified, impassive and impressive. But when I asked why all the Navajo lived in separate, scattered houses, the impassive face broke into a deep smile: “Because we don’t like Injuns.” The Navajo are great jokers and garrulous conversationalists, much less reserved, more confidently outgoing than many other Native Americans
Canyon de Chelley was once the impenetrable heartland of the Navajo people until the white man, suspecting that gold lay here, laid siege to the canyon. Under the leadership of all-American hero Kit Carson they eventually forced the Navajo, about 10,000 of them, to surrender and start on a several-hundred-mile walk, resettling them in the arid desert of New Mexico. Many starved or died from disease during and after The Long Walk, as the Navajo call this experience. In 1868 they were allowed back to their ancestral lands, where their homes had been burned. They fell to the ground, cried, then started over.
At Canon de Chelley there is a designated and quite demanding hike from the canyon rim to the valley floor, where people still farm corn and raise cattle. (Other than this walk, you must enter the canyon with a Navajo guide). Back at the canyon rim car park I met Creighton Begay, a Navajo jewellery maker who was having a lean day with his wares, and he asked me for a lift back down the canyon. He was surprised that I knew about The Long Walk and the Navajo suffering, adding, “American’s don’t know about it. We need to keep teaching our own young people about The Long Walk. But though we should never forget, we should forgive. Hatred is self-destructive.”
Creighton was expressing the central tenet of Navajo morality, summed up in the notion of hozho, which means cultivating an attitude of being in balance with yourself, forgiving hurt, and not being consumed by vengeance. The Navajo people even have a traditional curing ceremony for those whose souls are out of hozho.
The Navajo are eternal learners and survivors. Originally nomadic, they learned agriculture from settled peoples they found
living in the south-west, learned to keep sheep from the Spaniards, learned silversmithing from the Hispanics.
Today they weave carpets as fine as those from Persia, and often as expensive. One can take a year’s work for a woman. They make jewellery (largely a man’s job) – silver and turquoise wear , they make fine pottery articles. In the more visited areas of Dinetah you will find stands by the roadside, manned by the Dine selling their artisan production at half or less the price you will pay in the towns outside the Nation.
IN the remoter parts, there are still Trading Posts where the Navajo come to exchange their products against goods, or deposit them for sale, and these are great fun to seek out. Though, in the more visitor-frequented areas, Trading Post can mean an upmarket tourist hotel. Goulding’s Lodge and Trading Post in Monument Valley is not really a trading post any more, but a comfortable hotel, once patronised by John Wayne, and splendidly situated. Goulding’s is a good base for exploring in and around Monument Valley
The empty landscape of Dinetah allows fine opportunities for back-road driving along almost deserted roads. Roadside sellers thin out but still there will be the occasional jewellery stand or a van selling that irresistable and calorific Navajo delicacy: fry bread and honey. But back country restaurants are almost non-existent and B&Bs – never mind hotels – likewise. Lodging options are limited to the few small towns, like Window Rock or Tuba City, but these places, put tactfully, lack much charm.
A good base for the eastern part of the Nation and Canon de Chelley is the town of Gallup and the El Rancho Hotel, located on Route 66. Technically, just, outside the nation, Gallup is the self-proclaimed Indian Capital of the World, with a majority Native American population. El Rancho was used by generations of film stars and the walls of this classically kitchy joint are decorated with their signed images and draped with Navajo rugs. Double rooms come in about $100 a night.
The Navajo have their problems; diabetes rates are very high. Alcoholism (despite prohibition of the sale of alcohol) is widespread amongst males, and underemployment is the rule rather than the exception. Cancer rates reach dizzy heights, in part due to the past practice and present residues of uranium mining. Waste dumps litter the Nation, often polluting the water table. At the quaintly named clachan of Mexican Hat, across the San Juan River in Utah, I stopped at a diner. The staff were Navajo – some 100,000 live outside the Nation, working on its fringes. I asked the server what the huge heap of waste I had seen a few miles back was. Uranium waste. He told me that his father and two elder brothers had worked in that uranium mine, and all had died of cancer.
“The white workers were given protective clothing. The Dine were not and we were not told about the dangers.”
There are positive developments in the Navajo Nation. Poverty previously prevented them dosing their cows and sheep with antibiotics but now they have craftily managed to market their meat as grass-fed and organic. The possibilities of replacing coal and gas extraction by solar and wind energy production in the Nation are being opened up.
A people treated badly over history have managed to maintain much of their culture and traditional values. You will fall victim to the magic of the unique and stunning scenery of Dinetah, and to the fascination of its people. And may the hozho be with you.