The Mountain Chant

The Mountain Chant is a foundational ethnographic study of a major Navajo ceremonial complex, recording its myths, songs, prayers, sand paintings, ritual movements, masks, and healing purposes with unusual precision for its era. Washington Matthews presents the ceremony not as picturesque folklore but as an integrated religious, poetic, and medical system, where narrative, performance, and symbolic art restore harmony between the patient and the cosmos. Its style combines nineteenth-century scientific description with attentive literary transcription, placing it within early American anthropology while preserving elements of Diné oral tradition. Matthews, an Irish-born American army surgeon and pioneering ethnologist, spent years among Native communities in the American Southwest, especially the Navajo. His medical training sharpened his interest in healing rites, while his linguistic competence and sustained field observation enabled him to document ceremonial language and practice in detail. The book reflects both the strengths and limits of its historical moment: a serious effort at cultural understanding shaped by the assumptions of late nineteenth-century scholarship. This volume is recommended for readers interested in Native American religion, oral literature, ritual studies, and the history of anthropology. Though best read critically and respectfully, it remains an indispensable record of Navajo ceremonial thought and a landmark in the study of Indigenous expressive culture.