The Million Dollar Play House: The Office of Indian Affairs and the Pueblo Revival in the Navajo Capital

For centuries, Diné ("The People" or Navajos) have inhabited the lands that are now called the "Four Corners" region of the Colorado Plateau, and today the Navajo Nation is twenty-five thousand square miles—an area often likened to the size of the state of West Virginia—spanning across the borders of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. This reservation space, as defined by the federal government, is only a portion of Diné Bikéyah ("The People's Land"), the Navajos' homeland. The story of the People's creation explains how, after many struggles, they finally emerged into this homeland, which is defined by six mountains and is known to be the fourth, Glittering World.¹ Within the embrace of these mountains, Diné have learned from the teachings of their ancestors, the Holy People—from First Man and First Woman, from Changing Woman and her twin sons Born for Water and Monster Slayer, and from Spider Woman—and they have tried to live properly, maintaining hózhó, or a sense of harmony and balance.² They have created cultural meaning and constructed a sense of identity in their surroundings, receiving guidance and strength through ritual practice inextricably linked to these landscapes.³

It is said that the Holy People built the first hogan ("home-place," a traditional one-room dwelling) in this Glittering World: Talking God directed its construction, and First Man and First Woman blessed the hogan with white and yellow cornmeal, with pollen, and with powder from prayer sticks. Diné tradition views the universe as a giant hogan, and the universe is created in microcosm in every hogan that is built. The space within every hogan is defined by its relationship to the rising sun and to the sacred mountains that encircle the People's Land. The door to a hogan is always oriented toward the east, and movement within a hogan is prescribed in a clockwise direction, following the sun's path in the sky. Smoke from the centrally located fire or stove is directed out of the hogan through a hole in the roof, as are songs and prayers.⁴

In the first four decades of the twentieth century, most of the People continued to live in hogans, usually at distances great enough to allow families to graze their sheep and goats and to plant fields of corn. For Diné living throughout their reservation, these were years of great struggle with the federal government over issues of land use and the location of power. Following the discovery of oil on the reservation in 1922, the Office of Indian Affairs (OIA) appointed three Navajo men to form the first tribal business council, with the objective to obtain official Diné approval for private, corporate mineral leases on Navajo lands.⁵ The OIA reconfigured this council in the following year to include twenty-four men, led by a chairman, to represent a population of about 42,000 Navajos—the largest of any native nation at that time.⁶ During the "Navajo New Deal," which began in 1933, these council members discussed with great passion their concerns for their land and lifeways, but often they were subject to coercion from federal authorities, especially regarding the issue of mandatory livestock reduction. The selling or killing of the People's sheep, goats, and horses was the most contentious component of federal erosion control programs implemented throughout the reservation to ensure the success and longevity of the still-unfinished Boulder Dam.⁷ To administer the soil conservation programs, OIA Commissioner John Collier established what he called a "Land Use Institute" and "Navajo Capital" at Window Rock, Arizona, in 1934.⁸ This new town would serve as a symbolic center for the sprawling reservation and streamline federal authority from six field offices into one central location.

Figure 1.

A polygonal or female hogan with a modern window and door, location unrecorded, circa 1940. Photographer not credited, RG-75 CP -NA V-101. National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.