The Nightway Questions American Literature

In 1987 a graduate student came to me with what seemed to be an ingenious excuse for avoiding a reading assignment. She explained that she came from a rural background and was raised in a superstitious family. After reading John Bierhorst's introduction to Washington Matthews's translation of parts of the Dine or Navajo Nightway,1 she was afraid to read the text. She called my attention to Bierhorst's comment about Navajo who believed that Matthews's deafness and paralysis were related to the reversed healing powers of the ceremony that could have caused his illness (288-89). I tried to reassure her by indicating that my class and Bierhorst's greatly condensed version of Matthews's book The Night Chant (1902) certainly made no pretense of teaching the ceremonial (or chantway or sing) itself. That would take years, even if we all knew Navajo. Furthermore, such an endeavor would be blasphemous, since only a select group of highly trained Navajo chanters (hataaiii) could lead a Nightway. We would only be examining English translations of some of the songs and chants and would treat those parts of the ceremonial with the same degree of respect we would accord the ritual dramas and liturgies of other great world religions. The student left my office ready to read and satisfied with my explanation. I thought that I too was satisfied with my response until I walked into our next class meeting and overheard several other students admitting

American literature · Art · Literature · American Literature and Culture · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · History · Latin American and Latino Studies

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