Navajo History

Since the first contact between natives and settlers, tribes like the Sioux, Cherokee, and Navajo have both fascinated and perplexed outsiders with their history, language, and culture. In Charles River Editors' Native American Tribes series, readers can get caught up to speed on the history and culture of North America's most famous native tribes in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known.

Reservation "bad boy" Thomas Begay is found dead drunk under the La Plata Bridge, which is not unusual for him. What is unusual, however, is that beautiful BIA investigator Patsy Greyhorse is found lying beside him, not drunk or even a Navajo but very dead nonetheless. Charlie Yazzie, fresh from law school, risks his career and even his life to help his old friend. The answer seems to lie with the Yeenaaldiooshii...should one choose to believe in such things.

Charlie and Thomas Begay find themselves caught up in a dangerous, intrigue-filled adventure involving one of the canyon lands' oldest riddles. Dark secrets are revealed in this fast-paced mystery of a forgotten people.

In this thrilling story of intellectual and archaeological discovery, David Roberts recounts his last 20 years of far-flung exploits in search of spectacular prehistoric ruins and rock art panels known to very few modern travelers. His adventures range across Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and southwestern Colorado, and illuminate the mysteries of the Ancestral Puebloans and their contemporary neighbors the Mogollon and Fremont, as well as of the more recent Navajo and Comanche.

His name wasn’t Chester Nez. That was the English name he was assigned in kindergarten. And in boarding school at Fort Defiance, he was punished for speaking his native language, as the teachers sought to rid him of his culture and traditions. But discrimination didn’t stop Chester from answering the call to defend his country after Pearl Harbor, for the Navajo have always been warriors, and his upbringing on a New Mexico reservation gave him the strength to excel as a marine. This is the first and only memoir by one of the original Navajo code talkers of WWII.

Just before starting second grade, Jim Kristofic moved from Pittsburgh across the country to Ganado, Arizona, when his mother took a job at a hospital on the Navajo Reservation. Navajos Wear Nikes reveals the complexity of modern life on the Navajo Reservation, a world where Anglo and Navajo coexisted in a tenuous truce. After the births of his Navajo half-siblings, Jim and his family moved off the Reservation to an Arizona border town where they struggled to readapt to an Anglo world that no longer felt like home.

Bryce Quinlan and Hunt Athalar are trying to get back to normal - they may have saved Crescent City, but with so much upheaval in their lives lately, they mostly want a chance to relax. Slow down. Figure out what the future holds.

Although the mission school bans all that is Navajo, Ned secretly clings to his native language and culture. Proudly joining the U.S. Marines in 1943, he becomes a top-secret Navajo Code Talker. During bloody battles for Japanese islands, Ned and his brave band of code-talking brothers save thousands of lives using Navajo encryption the enemy never cracks.

Use your mind's natural rhythm to learn a language with Rhythms Easy Navajo from EuroTalk. It's naturally easier to learn something when it's set to rhythmic music, so that is exactly what we've done. Rhythms puts your mind painlessly to work: you don't even need to focus! Simple words and phrases are set to a varied pattern of rhythms and music designed to help you learn and to keep you engaged so that you won't just switch off after five minutes.

Navajo myths are among the most poetic in the world, full of dazzling word imagery. For the Navajo, who call themselves the Dine (literally, "the People"), the story of emergence—their creation myth—lies at the heart of their beliefs. In it, all the world is created together, both gods and human beings, embodying the idea that change comes from within rather than without. Poet and author Gerald Hausman collects this and other stories with meditations that together capture the essence of the Navajo people's way of life and their understanding of the world.

In the summer of 1846, the Army of the West marched through Santa Fe, en route to invade and occupy the Western territories claimed by Mexico. Fueled by the new ideology of “Manifest Destiny,” this land grab would lead to a decades-long battle between the United States and the Navajos, the fiercely resistant rulers of a huge swath of mountainous desert wilderness.

During World War II, U.S. forces had to keep battle plans and other top secret information out of the enemy's hands. Coded messages were often used, but secret codes could be broken. To solve this problem, the U.S. military turned to an unexpected source to create an unbreakable code. The Navajo people spoke a complex language that few outsiders knew how to speak. Several Navajo soldiers were recruited to develop a code based on the Navajo language.

Empire of the Summer Moon spans two astonishing stories. The first traces the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history. The second entails one of the most remarkable narratives ever to come out of the Old West: the epic saga of the pioneer woman Cynthia Ann Parker and her mixed-blood son, Quanah, who became the last and greatest chief of the Comanches.

Who is Alexei Navalny? Poisoned in August 2020 and transported to Germany for treatment, the politician returned to Russia in January 2021 in the full glare of the world media. His immediate detention at passport control set the stage for an explosive showdown with Vladimir Putin. But Navalny means very different things to different people. To some, he is a democratic hero. To others, he is betraying the Motherland. To others still, he is a dangerous nationalist. Navalny explores the many dimensions of his political life.

As a Native American with parents of both Navajo and Cherokee descent, Stanley Milford Jr. grew up in a world where the supernatural was both expected and taboo, where shapeshifters roamed, witchcraft was a thing to be feared, and children were taught not to whistle at night. In his youth, Milford never went looking for the paranormal, but it always seemed to find him. When he joined the fabled Navajo Rangers—a law enforcement branch of the Navajo Nation who are equal parts police officers, archeological conservationists, and historians—the paranormal became part of his job.

One of World War II's most crucial struggles happened in the realm of the unseen, inside the human mind, and amid the invisible flow of radio waves. Every war is a battle of wits as intelligence-gathering, tactics, and strategies clash, from the level of individual action up to the grand, overarching schemes of generals and statesmen. Intelligence took on a freshly urgent aspect in World War II, however, as the fate of nations came to hang on the struggle to decrypt vital enemy communications.

O Império Romano está no centro das atenções há séculos. Foi estudado, pesquisado e ensinado em escolas de todo o mundo. Invenções, palavras, vocabulário e filosofia foram derivados dessas importantes transições na história da humanidade. Os romanos eram cruéis em alguns aspectos, mas civilizados em outros. Eles eram um povo peculiar que fazia as coisas de maneira diferente daquelas que chamavam de bárbaros. Sua guerra, seus hábitos, sua visão do futuro...tudo isso fez do império o que se tornou.

In the summer of 1846, the Army of the West marched through Santa Fe, en route to invade and occupy the Western territories claimed by Mexico. Fueled by the new ideology of “Manifest Destiny,” this land grab would lead to a decades-long battle between the United States and the Navajos, the fiercely resistant rulers of a huge swath of mountainous desert wilderness.

In the powerful and haunting lands of the Southwest, rainbows grow unexpectedly from the sky, mountain lions roam the desert, and summer storms roll over the Colorado River. As a park ranger, Kristofic explores the Ganado valley, traces the paths of the Anasazi, and finds mythic experiences on sacred mountains that explain the pain and loss promised for every person who decides to love. After reconnecting with his Navajo sister and brother, Kristofic must confront his own nightmares of the Anglo society and the future it has created.

After the Indian wars, many Americans still believed that the only good Indian was a dead Indian. But at Ganado Mission in the Navajo country of Northern Arizona, a group of missionaries and doctors - who cared less about saving souls and more about saving lives - chose a different way and persuaded the local parents and medicine men to allow them to educate their daughters as nurses. In this detailed history, Jim Kristofic traces the story of Ganado Mission on the Navajo Indian Reservation.