Pete Price, Navajo Medicineman (1868-1951)

The published literature puts Price's birth in 1865 or 1866 at Ft. Defiance, Arizona (Hill 1938b:48-49). This is an odd combination of place and date, because in 1864 most Navajos had been deported to Ft. Summer, New Mexico, where they were interned on the Bosque Redondo Reservation following a definitive military defeat by the U.S. Army; they were not to return from exile until 1868 (Kelly 1970; Trafzer 1982; Bailey 1964). Price's granddaughter Dorothy Goodluck cleared up this point when I interviewed her one windy evening at her pleasant hilltop house north of Ft. Defiance (perhaps appropriate to our delving into the past the electricity failed, and we proceeded to talk by lamplight). Dorothy's recollection of family tradition was that her great-grandmother had been pregnant with Pete when she had returned from the Long Walk to Ft. Summer in her late teens. So, Pete Price was probably born in the latter part of 1868 or early in 1869 (Goodluck 1983; Price 1985). Census records kept by the Franciscan Fathers at St. Michael's Mission give 1868 as the birth year, and 'Asdz4* Ts'6sf (Slim Woman) as his mother's sobriquet. His father was Tsede'at ni Biye, and Pete, whose census number was 26204, was apparently also sometimes referred to as Tse de at [n]i. His mother's clan, and therefore his own, was T6tsohnii (Big Water People). His father's clan was the 'Ash~hfi or Salt People. His grandson Joe claimed that Pete was an only child (Price 1985; Wauneka 1983),' but he apparently had a sister (see below). Price's birthplace was 'Abe' or T6 Zigaal (Milk or White Water Spring), near a ridge about half a mile east of Tsdelbdf (Gray Rock), later his place of residence (Price 1990). This small, gray hill is a short distance north of Ft. Defiance (McNitt 1962:236),2 a government community which functioned as headquarters for the Navajo Agency (Frink 1968). Pete eventually built a rectangular house of gray

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