Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 - Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to - the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1895-1896, - Government Printing Office, Washington, 1898 by Cosmos Mindeleff
page 8 of 75 (10%)
page 8 of 75 (10%)
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Å represents the nasalized form of _n_.
Ä¡ represents the Arabic _ghain_. In other respects the alphabet of the Bureau is followed. DESCRIPTION OF THE COUNTRY The Navaho reservation comprises an extensive area in the extreme northeastern part of Arizona and the northwestern corner of New Mexico (plate LXXXII). The total area is over 11,000 square miles, of which about 650 square miles are in New Mexico; but it would be difficult to find a region of equal size and with an equal population where so large a proportion of the land is so nearly worthless. This condition has had an important effect on the people and their arts, and especially on their houses. The region may be roughly characterized as a vast sandy plain, arid in the extreme; or rather as two such plains, separated by a chain of mountains running northwest and southeast. In the southern part of the reservation this mountain range is known as the Choiskai mountains, and here the top is flat and mesa-like in character, dotted with little lakes and covered with giant pines, which in the summer give it a park-like aspect. The general elevation of this plateau is a little less than 9,000 feet above the sea and about 3,000 feet above the valleys or plains east and west of it. The continuation of the range to the northwest, separated from the Choiskai only by a high pass, closed in winter by deep snow, is known as |
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