Case file · Non-fiction & research literature
Navaho Witchcraft (Kluckhohn, 1944)
Anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn's study of Navajo witchcraft beliefs, first published in 1944 and reissued by Beacon Press.
1944 CE · 35.67, -109.06 · status: account
The account
It remains a standard academic source on Navajo ideas of witches, including the skin-walker, and is a main reference for the Wikipedia article on the subject.
The sceptical view
It is an outsider's ethnography of a subject many Diné prefer not to share; it is best read alongside Navajo voices.
Connections in the atlas
- 'Some Kind of Power' (Brady, 1984)
- Skinwalker (yee naaldlooshii)
- The Navajo witch purge of 1878
- Yee naaldlooshii (Diné tradition)