RIGHTS OF THE NAVAJO WOMAN
Female rights among the Navajo Indians

RIGHTS OF THE NAVAJO WOMAN

"Rights of the Navajo Woman" is a short story from The Bucks County Gazette published in November 1902. The Navajo woman, who has made her tribe the most famous of all living Indian races by means of her great and excellent invention, the Navajo blanket, occupies a social position of great independence. Her property rights are carefully respected. She owns much of the wealth of the tribe, and her children belong to her alone. A woman may have hundreds of sheep when she marries, and not one becomes the property of her husband. Descent is traced through the female line. It is a survival of the primitive matriarchate. The Navajo woman has no permanent home. The progress of the tribe has been greatly impeded by its dark superstition that every death is caused by Chinde, the devil, and that evil spirits linger about the dead body. The house is never occupied again. The corpse is buried in the floor and the house pulled down over it, and a Navajo would freeze before he would make a fire upon the logs of one of these deserted heaps. So the Navajo "hogan" is a poor, temporary affair, a mere circular hut of logs and stones, with a hole in the roof for the smoke and a blanket for the door. In the summer the Navajo woman loves to move into a brush wickiup, made of greaswood boughs. There she sets up her loom in the shadow of the rocks and lives in the open air all summer. From The Bucks County Gazette, Nov 1902 The Navajo code talkers The Long Walk of the Navajo Word of Honor of the Navajo Navajo Indians at the marketplace in New Mexico Kit Carson's Expedition against the Navajo Navajo Outrages in New Mexico and Utah Navajo War against White Settlers Proof that Navajos Came from Alaska Navajos in Arms Navajos Outlawed Navajos in their new reservation Navajo Indians starving because of drought Retaliation campaign against the Apache Rights of the Navajo Woman The White Chief of the Navajoes