Marietta Wetherill: Reflections on Life with the Navajo in Chaco Canyon

A year before her death in 1953, Wetherill recorded lengthy interviews about her life among the Navajos of Chao Canyon in New Mexico at the turn of the century. Gabriel ( Roads to Center Place ) has edited and annotated the material to offer an illuminating glimpse of an unusual woman and her study of Navajo customs and crafts. In 1897 Marietta and her husband, Richard, who discovered the ruins of Mesa Verde, settled at Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico, where he worked on excavations and she ran a trading post. She was adopted into the tribe, which probably saved her life when Richard was killed by a Navajo in 1910. Marietta recalls taking 16 Navajos to the World's Fair in St. Louis in 1904 to demonstrate their crafts. Her closest friend in the tribe was a singer, Nosteen Bi'al, who took her to medicine dances and to one ritual execution. Hers is a remarkable story of a woman on the frontier. Photos. (Aug.)