Roxana Robinson, an O'Keeffe biographer, told me about a woman tourist who'd walked into a trading post on the rez and tried to start a conversation with a black-haired Navajo woman holding a redheaded baby. Was the father red-haired? the tourist asked "I don't know," the mother retorted "He never took off his hat."

"For us, every day is a thanksgiving day, a prayer in the cycle of life," Tom observed one time "But for you whites, every day is a slogan 'Give me liberty or give me death.' 'The Unco!a' 'I've just begun to fight.' "

Tom had built his hogan with the help of his cousin brothers It was the six-sided "male" hogan with adobe-chinked log walls, a dome-shaped roof of cribbed, mud-smothered logs, and a hole in the center for smoke to exit The door must face east, so you can greet the rising Father Sun.  The woman is the keeper of the hogan. She tends a fire for her family If a person dies in the hogan, or if the hogan is struck by lightning, it is abandoned Navajo traditionally live in extended-family compounds known as outfits These days the hogans are mixed with trailers, shacks, and prefab ranch houses. The sheep corrals -of which there are many -are circles of entwined pinons that look like giant crowns of thorn. 

THE CONVERGING Canyons de Chelly and Del Muerto are the spiritual heart of Dinetah. According to Navajo legend, they were made by hippopotamus-like creatures wallowing in the mud of what was then a vast quagmire. After the creatures had gouged out the canyons, they sent Hummingbird, who was monument-sized, to see if the walls were dry, which explains why some of them are scored with stuttering parenthetical gashes that look like the imprint of huge wings. The canyons have been inhabited for more than 2,000 years The ruins of long-departed Anasazi are still preserved in scalloped alcoves under the 600-foot-high walls, which are decorated with hundreds of pictographs On one sand stone panel is the masterpiece of some unknown Navajo Michelangelo, a mural portraying a cavalcade of Spanish soldiers in cloaks and flatbrimmed hats, with muskets held aloft -the Narbona expedition of 1805, sent to take care of "the Navajo problem "Ninety Navajo men and 25 women were gunned down by these "caballeros" as they huddled in a cave on the rim of what would become known as the "canyon of death."

The canyons were a focus of resistance in 1863, when General James H Carleton launched a campaign to round up the Navajo Most of the men were killed outright; the women were marched 300 miles to an internment camp at Bosque Redondo, in southeastern New Mexico. Many died on the Long Walk, and many more during the four years they spent in the Place of Confinement Carleton's idea was that if you took the Navajo "away from their haunts and hills and hiding places" to a reorientation center and "teach their children how to read and write; teach them the arts of peace; teach them the truths of Christianity," they would become model citizens "Fair Carletonia," as the camp was called, fell tragically short of its utopian mandate In fact, it became a model for Hitler's concentration camps.  

The leader of the 1863 Navajo campaign was 53-year-old Kit Carson, the renowned Indian fighter This was his last hurrah The Navajos called him "Rope Thrower" because he lassoed them and marched them into captivity By the winter of '63, Rope Thrower's tactics had left the People starving. Entering Canyon de Chelly with a detachment of bluecoats, he met fierce resistance from a cult founded by Hashkenneniinii, the Angry One, who thought he could enlist the supernatural being Monster Slayer The Navajo taunted Carson Occasionally they would attack and then scamper up the cliffs using secret handholds Peach orchards were torched; a wrinkled grandmother was shot in the head as she chanted a witchcraft song Finally, the People realized they had to submit The few thousand survivors were released from the Place of Confinement in 1867, including Tom and Sally's then-12-year-old great-grandfather, Old Gold Tooth From them the People rebounded Now they're the largest Native American nation in the country.

A lot of the reason for the Navajo's extraordinary regeneration has to do with their capacity for adaptation, with their cultural fluidity "The Navajo are the beggarly nomads, the sponges of American Indian culture," a University of Arizona anthropologist told me. "If they saw something good in another culture, they took it They took sheep from the Spaniards and became the greatest sheepherders in the world They took silversmithing and carried it to new artistic levels They took horses and became the preeminent cowboys of the Southwest."

They also took the rifle and the pickup, the junk food, the TV, and the booze of Anglo culture While juggling these cosmologies, they continued to adhere to the Navajo Way, but many of them stumbled, and stumble. At this point it is no longer accurate to say there is one Navajo culture. There are born-again Navajo, peyote "roadmen," dope-smoking hippies, gung-ho vets who listen religiously to Rush Limbaugh, heavymetal freaks, even Satanists. Teenage drinking, fetal alcohol syndrome, domestic violence, and infant-mortality rates are all elevated on the rez Five hundred Indians freeze to death or are hit by cars in New Mexico every year. Most of them are drunk, and most of them are Navajo. Somehave been seduced by Anglo values, by what Tom calls "the almighty dollar and the ownership thing."  

Two years ago, I played golf with Albert Hale, then the chairman of the Navajo Nation, who was in Dutch for allegedly taking his secretary to Paris on the tribe's tab and for playing in a pro-am in Albuquerque He showed up with a large entourage at Pinon Hills, a municipal course in Farmington, Just off the rez Hale was a progressive who had as much in common with Tom as Donald T rump has with the Dalai Lama "The council accused me of wasting Navajo money," he complained "Our people are very traditional They don't understand that golf courses are where a lot of business is done and that I was schmoozing corporate types." He was hoping to get Chi Chi Rodriguez to help build a course at Window Rock, the tribal headquarters. "We need to get everybody to see we are introducing a new game," he argued "All they know is basketball and rodeo; they see golf as not useful.”

But golf teaches honesty, discipline, and good ethics It teaches a code."

I observed that the state of mind you need to be in to play optimal golf, the state of harmony with yourself and your surroundings, is not unlike hozho, walking in beauty. Hale told me the Navajo used to play a game where they slapped around a feather-stuffed rawhide ball with a crooked stick. Hale had good hand-eye coordination. He played golf with zest, spitting on his palms and letting her rip. A few days later, I played with Notah Begay, the top Native American golfer, whose father is Navajo. Notah was Tiger Woods's teammate at Stanford. This past summer he shot an almost-inconceivable 59 on the Nike tour. He told me that his religion is an important part of his game.

On the back nine we were alone in the vastness of the desert steppe.

Only the occasional jack rabbit would hop out of the brush and sit motionless along the fairway, frozen with nervous attentiveness From the thirteenth tee, Notah smacked a drive that went forever. The wind took it 380 yards, and as we were walking to it he remarked, "It's so silent out here it hurts your ears."