Hosteen Klah - Navaho Medicine Man and Sand Painter

Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1975. Third Printing . Trade Paperback. Fine. 5 1/2" x 8. 227 Pages Indexed. No defects noted. Interior text pages are flawless. Navaho medicine man and sand painter Hosteen Klah bridged the long span from the old days of tribal greatness and warfare to the new days of tribal greatness. Thus the story of Klah told here is also the story of his prominent family and reflects nearly two hundred important years of Navaho history. Klahs great-grandfather, Narbona, was war chief of the Navahos during their heyday. His mother made the Long Walk to the Bosque Redondo (Fort Sumner). After Klah was born in 1867, one year before the treaty establishing the Navaho Reservation, his family moved back to their ancestral land and slowly regained their former wealth. The most influential medicine man on the Reservation, Klah also became an expert weaver. Many of his sand-painting designs were woven on tapestries and so preserved, for he and no successor. The Museum of Navajo Ceremonial Art at Santa Fe has as its nucleus Klahs tapestries, ceremonial effects, and drawings of his sand paintings. This book, like the museum, reflects and preserves the flavor and symbolism of a vanishing way of life. Contents in Three Parts: Chief Narbona, Grandma Klah, and Hosteen Klah. Eighteen Chapters: Narbona Becomes Chief, Defensive Strategy, Lords of the Soil, The Death of Narbona, Girlhood, Bosque Redondo The Long Walk, Home and Family, Boyhood as Nee-yai-tsya, Life with an Apache Uncle, The Education of a Medicine Man, Weaver and Medicine, Man Klah's Graduation Ceremony, Flu and a Ceremony, Ceremonial Rugs and a Crown Prince, An Easteren Vacation, Chicago and a Miracle, The Rainbow Trail, and The Museum. Plus Bibliography.