Pre-Owned West of the Thirties: Discoveries Among the Navajo and Hopi (Paperback) 0385424221 9780385424226

From 1933 to 1937, the great American??anthropologist Edward T. Hall lived and worked on??reservations in the Southwest, a frontier where four??cultures--Navajo, Hopi, Hispanic, and Anglo--clashed.??Re-creating that stark and haunting landscape, Hall??pieces together a firsthand account of two proud??worlds--the frugal, Pueblo-dwelling Hopi with their??isolated villages high on the mesa tops and their??deeply felt religious faith and the Navajos, whose??rhythm and ceremonious forms of respect Hall??learned as he worked with them. In these early??experiences, as Hall discovered the deeply human logic of??these tribes, he began to recognize how culture??itself, not only theirs but his own, was at work in??each person's behavior. The respect he felt and??diplayed won him a friendly Navajo nickname--Chiz??Chili, meaning Slim Curly Hair--and a mentor, the??great Indian trader, Lorenzo Hubbell. Set under the??vast arch of sky in a place of unforgettable??beauty, West Of The Thirties is??about the Navajos and Hopis as one receptive young??white man perceived them, but it is also about the??core of being human, which Hall would later develop??into a theory of implicit culture. In these??pages, we see theory in the flesh, taking a hundred??different human forms and engaging us in a lost??world, the West of the??thirties.