Where the Two Came to Their Father: A Navaho War Ceremonial, given by Jeff King (Text and Paintings Recorded by Maud Oakes, Commentary by Joseph Campbell)

‘Where the Two Came to Their Father’ tells the story of two young heroes who go to the hogan of their father, the Sun, and return with the power to destroy the monsters that are plaguing their people. The two-day ceremony, which included songs and elaborate sand paintings, was meant to keep the young men's souls healthy as they went off to fight, away from their land and their people.

Jeff King (Hashkeh-yilth-e- yah; 1865-1964) lived on the Pinedale Navaho Reservation. He was a scout for the US Army 1891-1911. He performed this ritual on the occasion of the departure of Navaho men to serve in the US Army during WWII. King was also known to perform two of the other great Navajo ceremonies: the Hózhǫ́ǫ́jí (Blessing Way) and Anaaʼjí (Enemy Way). King died and was buried in January 1964. He was the first Navajo interred at Arlington National Cemetery, near Washington, D.C.

Artist and ethnologist Maud Oakes (1903-1990), who was then living on the reservation, was allowed to record the two day ceremony, and kept a record of the elaborate sand paintings that are integral to the ritual. She published the text and her paintings, with commentary by mythologist Joseph Campbell, as ‘Where the Two Came to Their Father: A Navaho War Ceremonial.’ It is one of the most complete recordings of a Diné /Navajo ritual.

The Bollingen Series, published under the auspices of the Bollingen Foundation with the support of Paul Mellon and his first wife, Mary, has to be reckoned one of the most ambitious and significant publishing enterprises of the 20th century. And it was highly appropriate that it was inaugurated by this beautiful production incorporating commentary by Joseph Campbell, who was long associated with the Series as author and editor.

18 Navajo War Ceremonial pochoir prints in folio, accompanied by book ‘Where the Two Came to Their Father: A Navajo War Ceremonial’ by Maud Oakes and Joseph Campbell, published by Bollingen Series, Old Dominion Foundation, Richmond, VA, in 1943. The work provides a commentary on the pochoir prints; each print is 18 in. x 23 in., the book 12 in. x 9 in. I have also included a recent browsing publishing of the book (3rd Edition, 1991) in order to protect the original.

Condition: Toning to prints, foxing to folio cover, and wear to edges of book.

References were gathered online and are credited to the following:

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1944/02/27/issue.html

Pochoir stenciled prints:

Pochoir is a stencil-based printing technique popular from the late 19th century through the 1930’s, with its center of activity in Paris. It was primarily used by illustrators and designers to create patterns and architectural design prints. Was used during the Art Nouveau and Art Deco periods and at the peak of its popularity in the early 20th century, there were as many as thirty graphic design studios in France using this technique, each employing up to 600 workers.

The manual aspect of pochoir has been both one of its most valuable attributes and one of its greatest failures as a printing medium. It is both labor and time consuming, making it an expensive and slow process of printmaking. As a result, techniques such as lithography and serigraphy, mechanized in nature, replaced pochoir as a method of reproduction.

Pochoir technique begins with the analysis of the composition, including color tones and densities, of a colored image. A craftsman known as a découpeur would cut stencils with a straight-edged knife. Numerous stencils were designed as a means of reproducing an image. The stencils were originally made of aluminum, copper, or zinc but eventually the material of choice was either celluloid or plastic. The stencils created by the découpeur would be passed on to the coloristes. Along with the transition of stencil materials, there was a shift away from the use of watercolor towards the broad, soft, opaque layers of gouache. The technique was further refined in an effort to create the most vivid, accurately colored reproductions. The coloristes applied the pigments using a variety of different brushes and methods of paint application to create the finished pochoir print.

This exhibition features stencil prints from a 1943 portfolio by Maud Oakes (1903-1990), an artist and ethnologist who recorded the Diné (Navajo) ceremony called Where the Two Came to Their Father. Essential to the performance of Diné ceremonies are temporary images, popularly labeled “sand paintings.” Oakes made her original watercolors, and wrote down the narrative of the ceremony under the direction of Jeff King, a Hataalii (medicine man or singer). Having come to trust Oakes, King related or “gave” the ceremony to her over several meetings in 1942 and 1943. The prints are exhibited here, with excerpts from the story King gave for each image.

The texts and paintings were published in 1943 as a book and a set of prints, as Bollingen Series No. 1 by Princeton University. The publication was and still is the most complete first-hand account of a Diné ceremony available and its commentary by noted mythologist Joseph Campbell placed them in a larger global context. A browsing copy of Where the Two Came to Their Father (Bollingen Series I, 3rd Edition, 1991) is available in the museum's Olive Anna Tezla Library.

Lent to the museum for exhibition, the portfolio was collected by the Oberholtzer Foundation, named for Ernest C. Oberholtzer (1884-1977). An early caretaker of what is now the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, Oberholtzer was also a student of American Indian lifeways. The exhibition of these prints offers an opportunity to better understand the complexity of Diné ceremony and the function of visual images within it.

18 Navajo War Ceremonial pochoir prints in folio, accompanied by book ‘Where the Two Came to Their Father: A Navajo War Ceremonial’ by Maud Oakes and Joseph Campbell, published by Bollingen Series, Old Dominion Foundation, Richmond, VA, in 1943. The work provides a commentary on the pochoir prints; each print 18 in. x 23 in., book 12 in. x 9 in.

Condition:Toning to prints, foxing to folio cover, and wear to edges of book.