Dinetah: An Early History of the Navajo People (Oxford Series in Optical and Imaging)

Here, in a highly readable style, is a lively chronicle of the Navajo people from prehistory to 1868. It is a sympathetic history of a great people who depended on their tenacity and creative adaptability to survive troubled times. The hardships and rewards of early band life, encounters with the Pueblos that revolutionized Navajo culture, the adversity of Spanish colonization, the expansion of Navajo land, the tragic cycle of peace and war with the Spanish, Mexican, and American forces, the Navajo leaders' long quest to keep their people secure, the disaster of imprisonment at Fort Sumner--all combine to express the relevancy of Navajo history to their people today. This book with its extensive archival illustrations and photographs weaves a complex but understandable story in which Navajos changed the future of the Southwestern United States.