Matthews, Washington - Navaho Legends - 1897

One of the earliest collections of Navajo oral traditions

Matthews, Washington
Navaho Legends
New York: Houghton & Mifflin, 1897 [First Edition], Limited (Nr 81 of 500)

4to (25x16 cm); viii, 299 pp., 6 (American Folk-Lore Society information), with 7 plates (3 in color), double-page map of the Navaho country, and 42 figures (portraits, diagrams, photos). Hardback, bound in publisher’s burgundy cloth.

Condition: Good minus. Has been part of a private library, some markings inside, cover rubbed and discoloured. Gilt on spine faded. Spine ends restored. Inner hinges strengthened. Inside with some paper repairs. All pages clean and illustrations in very good condition.

Navaho Legends is one of the earliest collections of Navajo oral traditions in English, and still the best. This book contains an extensive version of the Origin Legend plus two other tales. Washington Matthews (1843-1905) was a surgeon in the United States Army, ethnographer, and linguist known for his studies of Native American peoples and the Navajo in particular. An 1896 summary of an American Folk-Lore Society meeting reports that "Dr. Matthews discovered that [the Navajo] had a multitude of legends, so numerous that he never hoped to collect them all: an elaborate religion, with symbolism and allegory, which might vie with that of the Greeks; numerous and formulated prayers and songs, not only multitudinous, but relating to all subjects, and composed for every circumstance of life. The songs are as full of poetic images and figures of speech as occur in English, and are handed down from father to son, from generation to generation.". This book is regarded one of the most complete sources of Navajo cultural, ritual, and ceremonial information.