A Navajo Saga by Kay and Russ Bennett (review)

78 Western American Literature O’Connor has written a biography which is stimulating, and for this he should be commended. His work on Bret Harte is far from definitive, and many questions might be raised as to over-all accuracy, but the book is lively and exiting, a worthy addition to any library. Ken Perim an, Fort Lewis College A Navajo Saga. By Kay and Russ Bennett. (San Antonio: The Naylor Company, 1969. 234 pages, $6.95.) The Navajo Indians of the Tunicha mountains of Arizona were tradition­ ally nomadic people who cultivated their fields and herded their sheep and goats at peace with their land and their gods. Kay Bennett, in this story of her great-grandmother’s family, gives us an intimate picture of these strong and beautiful people. She tells of the religious ceremonies which bound them together, the warmth and consideration they felt for each other, and the simple and natural way in which they lived between valley and mountain, as the seasons ordained. But, inevitably, westward expansion began to press the Navajo people. In the 1860’s, urged by land-hungry newcomers and Spanish ranch owners, the U.S. Army was used to hunt them down; burn their fields, drive off their sheep, and remove the survivors to a reservation in New Mexico on the Pecos River. The starving people were promised new fields, homes and flocks and the good things they had admired in the trading posts. The long terrible exodus from their homeland to the Bosque Redondo, four hundred miles away, is history; but the nobility, courage and fortitude of these wasted, freezing and dying people is certainly not in our histories. In her story, Kay Bennett never descends to bitterness in describing the torturous Long Walk to New Mexico, the disease and death that awaited the survivors, the crop failures, pestilence, and broken promises that brought such misery to her people. What we have here is a story of men, women, and children with superlative courage who walked back to their mountains after the four-year failure of the resettlement plan. Again they took up their lives with almost nothing but their indomitable faith in themselves, their gods, and the land that had always given them life. This is essentially a first-hand narrative of the family of Kay Bennett, aerself a Navajo, known for her recordings of Navajo songs and her Navajo dress designs. To it her Missouri-born husband has contributed research on the activities of the non-Indians presented. Told with a childlike simplicity that has the charm and clarity of Navajo poetry, the book is recommended for the general reader. A nn M errill, Taos, New Mexico ...