Navaho Indian Myths

In the late 1920s, an elderly Navaho leader, anxious to preserve the myths of his people before they were lost in the tide of modern civilization, asked Aileen O'Bryan to record the tales he told her and to publish them in a book. The storyteller was Sandoval, Hastin Tlo'tsi hee (or Old Man Buffalo Grass), the first of the four chiefs of the Navaho People. Ms. O'Bryan, then living in Mesa Verde National Park, wrote down the old man's stories — as well as many chants — for the most part just...