American Indian Culture and Research Journal

By 1930, Navajo studies were ready to enter a new era. The first generation of scholars, beginning in 1880 with Washington Matthews, had laid the foundation to the Navajo world. That generation had conducted field work, recorded myths and vocabulary and published some of its findings. Building on that foundation, the second generation, which included four university scholars (Sapir, Reichard, Kluckhohn and Wyman), a trader’s wife (New-comb), a philanthropist (Wheelwright), a novelist-anthropologist (La Farge), and finally, a priest (Haile), discovered the edifice of Navajo culture as we know it today. Much of the work of these scholars has not been placed in perspective, and awaits the assessment of historians. Although these Navajo students communicated with each other, they did so with an uncommon myopic vision, not only in their views of their colleagues, but also in their appreciation of their own place in the history of things. The time has come to assess their significance and the contributions they have made to Navajo scholarship. The most remarkable of these discoverers was Father Berard Haile, whose long career actually spanned the first and second generations, and whose contact with the Navajo world grew so intimate and profound that he became for all the others a great fount of knowledge and wisdom. We need to know the extent of his writings, the fields in which he specialized, the limitations of his scholarship, his academic alliances, his academic controversies, the degree of acceptance of his publications-in short, the significance of Father Berard to Navajo scholarly studies.