Full AspenCat Catalog

When two Navajo women pray for help for their cold and hungry people, Spider Woman teaches them how to weave.

In this bilingual Navajo tale, Horned Toad rescues Turkey from Gray Giant by lending Turkey his helmet, the one thing Gray Giant fears.

A retelling of the Navaho legend that explains the patterns of the stars in the sky.

Twelve-year-old twins use their weapons, lightning arrows and magic feathers, to defend their village from the Monster Birds.

When a great wall of water threatens to destroy them, the animals band together to save themselves, but it is the turkey who remembers to save the seeds they will need to rebuild their lives.

"Navaho Legends is one of the earliest collections of Navajo oral traditions in English, and still the best." "Originally published in 1897, this sensitive translation by Washington Matthews (1843-1905) contains an extensive version of the Origin Legend plus two other tales. These richly detailed legends remain among the most complete sources of Navajo cultural, ritual, and ceremonial information." "This edition is fully faithful to the original,...

"No Native American groups placed more emphasis on the horse in their lives than did the Navajo and Apache of the Southwest. They Sang for Horses examines how storytellers, singers, medicine men, and painters created the animal's evolving symbolic significance by adapting existing folklore and cultural symbols. Exploring the horse's importance in ceremonies, songs, prayers, customers, and beliefs, Clark investigates the period of the horse's most...

A retelling of the Indian legend which explains why the Navajo always plant a scattering of zinnia flowers among their food crops and respect every spider.

This unusual book is an introduction to Navajo culture by a storyteller. Steeped in the lore of the Navajo reservation, where she worked as a teacher, the author came to see Navajo legend and ritual as touchstones for evaluating her own experience. She presents them here as a means for all people to locate their own history, traditions, and sense of how to live well.