Author Description

In this collection of reminiscences Father Berard Haile relates his experiences as a missionary to the Navajo Indians. Posted to St. Michaels Mission in 1900, Haile devoted the next half century to the study of Navajo language and culture and considered the understanding of indigenous peoples at least as important as proselytizing. In these stories Haile recalls bear hunting, baseball, Navajo and Hopi ceremonialism, the first car on the reservation, St. Michaels Press, traders, Chinle and Lukachukai, and other people, places, and events on the reservation. Eight appendices reprint hard-to-find articles on the Navajos by Haile and other Franciscans. Bodo's transcriptions retain the color and flavor of the oral accounts, and his introduction discusses Haile as a missionary and anthropologist.