Not too long ago in the center of Blanding, Utah, there stood the “half-a-house.” Located just east of the post office, the wooden frame structure, covered with a veneer of gray stucco cement, sat as the only Navajo home in the midst of a white community. A woodpile next to the east-facing door, a few windows that peered out on manicured lawns to the north and the backside of businesses to the south, and a high-pitched roof far more pointed than those surrounding it all seemed out of place. However, the home’s most distinctive feature, setting it far apart from...

I was born at Dennehotso,¹ near a red, round rock.² The winter was over, and it was the beginning of summer. My father was of the Bit’ahnii [the Within His Cover People] clan, but I never knew him and do not know his name because he passed away when I was very small.³ As time went on, my maternal grandmother, ’Asdzą́ą́ déé’ dį́į́’ [Woman with the Four Horns];⁴ my mother, ’Asdzą́ą́ hasbídí [Mourning Dove Woman];⁵ and the rest of the family roamed the Dennehotso area.⁶ My mother used to live near Comb Ridge, and there was a small box canyon...

Click. The tape recorder fell silent, ending the last part of the interview. Chronologically, Oshley’s life history so far had covered up to the early-to-mid-1940s (an estimate based on internal evidence). He spent the next fifteen to twenty years involved in the livestock industry and another twenty-five years in retirement, yet there is only a faint written record of anything specific that he did. Oral accounts of friends, family, and business associates remain the primary glue to cement together the anecdotal fragments of his later life.

These last years of Oshley’s employment as a herder were apparently busy ones. The...

When Navajo Oshley retired from the livestock industry and took up residence on the outskirts of Blanding, he began a new lifestyle. The Westwater community remained a haven for poorer Navajos, who depended on work in a town that was slow to accept them. The Utes, on the other hand, who had enjoyed some of the better campsites near wood and water in the same area, moved eleven miles to the south in 1953. Their recently constructed government housing enticed them to new horizons, opening up Navajo expansion into previously denied living areas along the western rim of Westwater.¹

But...

The core of any person’s existence lies in the values that are carried through life. Good or bad, the sum total of an individual’s identity is dependent upon the way those values come into play during times of stress and ease. This was particularly true during the last years of Navajo Oshley’s life. His religious values, formed by his experiences as a young boy and built upon through maturity, laid the foundation for his final days in Blanding. He continued to believe in the existence of the gods and their involvement in his daily activities, the power of witchcraft as...