Beauty in front of me,
Behind me,
Below me,
All around me.
I speak through beauty.
Annie Kahn, Navajo
There have always been people who have pointed out the beauty, meaning, and importance of the culture they belong to. Such was Hosteen Klah, an artist and healer who, among other things, was responsible for preserving some of the knowledge, teachings, rituals, symbols, and ceremonies of the Native American Indians, despite the changes over time.
Hosteen was a Navajo Indian, a medicine man, a sand painter, and a weaver of tapestries who revealed to the world the magical beauty of Navajo ceremonial art steeped in the spirit of ancient times.
He was born in 1867 on Bear Mountain, near Fort Wingate in New Mexico. The first part of his name, Hosteen, is a sign of respect, like “mister,” while Klah translates from Navajo as “Left-Handed.” His great-grandfather Narbona was a war chief when the Navajo Indians were at the height of their glory, which speaks to his noble heritage. It was discovered very early on that Nadleeh was an individual who possessed both female and male characteristics, which held special significance in their tradition as, according to mythology, it was believed that such individuals had extraordinary abilities.
In the Navajo Indian tradition, activities were divided by gender roles. Medicine men and ceremony leaders were men, while women wove and made rugs, clothing, and tapestries.
Nadleeh received instruction within their family and tribe. His mother and sister taught him the art of weaving, in which he excelled over time. As a young weaver, he was chosen to participate in the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.
In addition to weaving, Klah showed a keen interest in ceremonies from a young age. After an injury from falling off a horse, his uncle, a healer, performed the Wind Song for his recovery. The performance lasted for five days, followed by a Fire ceremony. Enthralled by the traditional methods of healing and rituals, he wished to learn them himself. he continued to teach him. Uncle began teaching him the art of singing chants and creating sacred sand drawings, which were part of the training to become a hataalii, a shaman or healer. The memory and transmission of knowledge and experience from teacher to student were crucial for preserving the most authentic expression and complete understanding of the ceremonies. This required great seriousness, responsibility, and dedication to this ancient calling. Regarding the connection between learning, work, and influence on the community, which permeated the traditional way of life of Native Americans, John Collier says in his book Indians of the Americas: “They had and have a way of life that our modern world has lost – as a worldview and self-view, as a tradition and institution, as a practical philosophy that dominates their societies, and as the highest art form among all arts.”
His training as a shaman lasted a full twenty-four years, until 1917 when he independently performed a nine-day ceremony called the Night Way using chants and symbols. he has become recognized as an official healer.
Ceremony of the Night’s Path
The ritual usually lasted for nine days and was considered extremely powerful, holy, and demanding to perform. At the beginning of the ritual, the healer and the person playing the role of Hasteyaltia, the supreme god, lead the dancers along a path marked with sacrificial offerings of food. Dancers with various masks represent other deities, of which there could be up to twenty-four in this ceremony. After that, the sick person would join them, offering their gifts to the gods from a basket. The healer would then start singing a ceremonial song, repeating a certain expression four times. At the same time, four dancers and Hasteyaltia would dance, moving in gentle rhythmic motions, giving a blessing at the end of each prayer. The dance and the song had a hypnotic and calming effect on the listeners.
one ritual, up to six of them were chosen, four large ones and two smaller ones, with participation in the selection process The sick person would be accompanied by their family. Certain images would be accompanied by specific songs, prayers, dances, and other ceremonial rituals. The sick person would sit or sleep on them and thus connect with the forces contained in the symbolic representations. The shaman would later apply sand, drawn with symbols and drawings, to painful parts of the body to promote healing. He was particularly skilled in ceremonial songs. It was common to learn two or three of them, as they were poems of several hundred verses in length. He mastered at least eight of them, including: Path of Greeting, Path of Night, Path of Wind... He was considered the main shaman of his time, but also the first to combine the art of sand painting and tapestry weaving. Skill and authenticity were valued in tapestry making, with each weaver contributing their own development to the art. Motifs and techniques that were part of tradition were passed down through teaching, but each person was allowed to incorporate their own imagination into their work. Osteen marked a milestone in the creation of Navajo tapestries. As a healer, he was aware of the sanctity of creating ceremonial sand paintings. Gradually, he started using them as motifs in his tapestry making, which was unusual for their worldview. Sand paintings were a crucial element of healing ceremonies. The Navajo term for them was "iikaah," meaning "the place where the gods come and go." The drawings were made on the floor inside a hogan, a traditional Navajo dwelling where ceremonies took place, representing the central location of the ritual or a temporary altar where the encounter between divine forces (Holy People) and participants of the sacred event occurred. After the ceremony, the drawings were always removed by scattering the remaining sand outside the hogan. It was believed that only certain individuals could safely use the drawings, and as they held a sacred meaning, they were not used for profane purposes. Therefore, there was disapproval when Osteen began weaving them as motifs on his tapestries. It was his attempt to preserve tradition and ancient teachings, as there were not many people left willing to devote themselves to long training, memorizing chants and diverse motifs, and their responsible and dedicated performance. His only disciple, Beaal Begay, died suddenly in 1931, leaving Klaha without a successor. Before he started imprinting sacred symbols into tapestries, he sought advice and approval from his family. Gradually, he included two nieces in his work. His first known work is considered the large ceremonial cover with a vortex motif - the swastika from the song Path of the Night, which he created in 1916. Over time, he used more and more details of the ceremonial life of the Navajo Indians and sand paintings in his work. Together with his nieces, he created around seventy woven pictures - symbolic representations in sand that were part of five songs. The majority of the works, forty-nine of them, depict motifs from songs related to the ceremony Path of the Night. Nine of them are from the Path of Greetings, ten from the Path of Exclusion, and one each from the Path of the Mountain and the Path of the Eagle. Frances Johnson Newcombe had a significant influence on his work, as well as on the preservation of Navajo tradition. They met in 1912 when she came with her husband, a merchant, and began teaching at the local school. Participating in the Night Way ceremony to which Hosteen invited her, she became interested in the sand drawings of powerful symbolism. Their acquaintance inspired her to write a book that tells the story of two hundred significant years of Navajo history through the life of this intriguing Indian and his family. During his lifetime, he developed another close friendship that proved to be significant for his attempt to preserve Navajo tradition. In collaboration with Mary Cabot Wheelwright and with her financial assistance, the Museum of Navajo Ceremonial Art was founded, initially called the Navajo House of Prayer and House of Navajo Religion. Later it was renamed the Wheelwright Museum, a name it still bears. Even today, he is located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and contains Klah's most significant works. It documents a part of history for future generations to gain insight into a forgotten world whose sources resonate vividly in the displayed artworks.
His last weaving, depicting the sky from the Expulsion Way, was not completed during his lifetime. It was finished by his nieces.
He died in February 1937. The works he left behind tell us about an ancient tradition that possessed deep knowledge of the unseen and incomprehensible to us today, for which the researcher Joseph Epes Brown said: The natural world was their temple, and within that sanctuary, they expressed great respect for every form of life, role, and power. Hosteen Klah sought to rescue and interweave this sacred relationship, developed through rituals and ceremonies, into his tapestries, thus preserving it from oblivion.