Religion: Yazzie & the Navahos

Nestled at the foot of towering bluffs of red sandstone at Window Rock, Ariz. is the great, octagonal Council House of the Navahos. One day last week it was jampacked with impassive Indians—new-style Indians with white man's haircuts and business suits, old-style Indians, longhaired and loaded with jewelry to show their wealth. There were many medicine men among them, and they shifted their silver-studded medicine bags on their shoulders as they waited for Yazzie.

"Yazzie" is Navaho for "Shorty," the affectionate nickname of Franciscan Father Berard Haile (rhymes with wryly), who has spent 53 of his close to 80 years laboring to bring Navahos to Christianity and Christians to an understanding of the Navahos. It was in the latter role that the little white-haired priest came before the Council last week to speak for an hour and a half in his deep, booming voice.

Bit by bit during his years among them, he explained, he had learned from their medicine men what no white man had known before him: the whole of the "Blessing Way"—a sacred, secret collection of ceremonies covering the whole religious life of the Navaho people. He had written it all down, he told them, making sure to search out its purest, uncorrupted form; now he wanted to get it printed for a record of the Navahos among the peoples of the world. And it was not only permission he wanted—he needed money to publish the manuscript and he was turning for it to the tribe.

For ten hours the Navahos talked it over. This was too important a matter for the Council to decide, said one; the whole people should vote on it. It was sinful to give away the holy things, said another; they should never be written at all but handed down from father to son. But when the vote came at last, the pride of the tribe (and perhaps a hope that the book would help establish a pending land claim against the Government) made it 50 to 18 for giving Father Haile permission to go ahead with his 1,203-page manuscript and giving him $30,000 to pay for it. Yazzie beamed. "I am one of you," he said. But one of the councilors put it another way: "You came to make Christians of the Navahos, but the Navahos have made a Navaho of you."