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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Core Source on the 1878 Purge
Blue, Martha. The Witch Purge of 1878: Oral and Documentary History in the Early Navajo Reservation Years. Navajo Oral History Monograph Series, No. 1. Tsaile, Arizona: Navajo Community College Press, 1988.
This is the single most important source for the episode. Blue combines documentary records from 1878 with later Diné oral histories and specifically investigates the Ganado-area killings, Hastiin Biwosi, Ganado Mucho, American intervention, accusations against medicine men, and the larger early-reservation crisis. The book is 35 pages and was published by Navajo Community College Press.
Blue also reproduces or discusses several near-contemporary sources that we relied upon through her work, including Charles Hubbell’s May 31, 1878 correspondence, Indian Agent John E. Pyle’s diary, Lieutenant McGunnigle’s 1878 military report, Fort Wingate correspondence connected with Lieutenant Colonel P. T. Swaine, and later Diné oral histories including the 1970 Amos Johnson interview. I would cite these through Blue unless we obtain the original archival documents themselves, rather than pretending we consulted originals we did not.
Diné Witchcraft and Accusation
Kluckhohn, Clyde. Navaho Witchcraft. Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Vol. 22, No. 2. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum, 1944.
This is the major source behind our discussion of different categories of harmful supernatural practice, accusations involving ceremonial specialists, supernatural projectiles, personal materials, confession, interrogation, punishment, jealousy, reputation, and the later memory of the post–Fort Sumner period as one of heightened witchcraft accusations. Harvard’s Peabody Museum confirms the original 1944 publication details.
Important production note: Kluckhohn was researching decades after 1878, so in the script his material should continue to be introduced as later ethnographic evidence about the wider Diné belief system, not as eyewitness testimony from the purge.
Diné History and the Early Reservation Years
Iverson, Peter. Diné: A History of the Navajos. Photographs by Monty Roessel. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002.
Extremely useful for placing the purge inside the larger history of the return from Bosque Redondo, economic hardship, early reservation life, accusations of harmful witchcraft, and the later recovery of stability. University of New Mexico Press describes the book as drawing from archival research, traditional accounts, interviews, and historical material.
Spicer, Edward H. Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico, and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1533–1960. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1962.
Used particularly for the larger political interpretation involving Manuelito, Ganado Mucho, raiding, livestock theft, early reservation governance, and efforts to suppress renewed depredations. Spicer is useful precisely because his interpretation does not always line up perfectly with Blue or Kluckhohn, allowing us to show that historians have disagreed about exactly how political the purge was.
Witch Hunts in the Wider American Context
Davies, Owen. America Bewitched: The Story of Witchcraft After Salem. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Useful for comparing the Navajo purge with the broader persistence of witchcraft accusations and witch killings in the United States after Salem, including cases where Indigenous people came into conflict with American courts and authorities over killings motivated by beliefs in harmful supernatural practices.
PRIMARY AND INSTITUTIONAL SOURCES
“Treaty with the Navaho, 1868.” Fort Sumner, New Mexico, June 1, 1868. 15 Stat. 667. Ratified July 25, 1868; proclaimed August 12, 1868.
This is the actual treaty allowing the Diné to return home following Bosque Redondo and is essential for the political background of the episode.
Navajo Nation. Navajo Treaty of 1868 / Naaltsoos Sání.
This gives us the Diné institutional perspective on the treaty, the Long Walk, imprisonment at Fort Sumner, the return home, sovereignty, and the meaning of the 1868 agreement. The Navajo Nation specifically describes the treaty as ending the Diné exile and allowing their return to their ancestral homeland.
National Park Service. Canyon de Chelly National Monument: Administrative History.
This is the institutional source supporting one of the most important facts in our opening: Hastiin Biwosi was a resident of Canyon del Muerto, a signer of the Treaty of 1868, and was killed near Ganado in 1878 after being accused of witchcraft.
National Park Service. Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site: History & Culture.
Useful for the history of Ganado/Pueblo Colorado, John Lorenzo Hubbell, the expanding trading-post economy, the Long Walk background, and the transformation of Diné economic life during the exact period in which the purge occurred.
Bosque Redondo Memorial at Fort Sumner Historic Site, New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs.
Used for the Long Walk, Hwéeldi/Bosque Redondo, forced confinement, disease, hunger, death, and the disastrous conditions preceding the Diné return home in 1868.
Additional Historical Source
Yurth, Cindy. “At the Crossroads of Health and Commerce.” Navajo Times, April 11, 2013.
Used as supporting evidence for the commonly repeated estimate that as many as forty people in the Ganado area were accused and killed during the 1878 purge. This figure should remain an estimate rather than be presented as a complete documented victim count.
Source Note
The surviving record of the Witch Purge of 1878 is incomplete and sometimes contradictory. No complete list of victims or formal trial record survives, and estimates of roughly forty deaths should therefore be treated as historical estimates rather than an exact confirmed body count. Accounts of the purge come from contemporary Anglo-American correspondence and military records, later historical scholarship, and Diné oral histories recorded generations afterward. Where those sources disagree, the episode preserves the disagreement rather than presenting one reconstruction as certain.
ADDITIONAL HISTORICAL SOURCE
Yurth, Cindy. “At the Crossroads of Health and Commerce.” Navajo Times, April 11, 2013.
This local Diné-area newspaper history of Ganado specifically discusses the 1878 Navajo Witch Purge and reports that as many as forty people around Ganado were accused and killed, including one person killed at the doorway of Charlie Hubbell’s trading post. I would use this as supporting evidence for the traditional “up to forty” estimate rather than treating forty as a completely documented body count.
SOURCE NOTE FOR THE EPISODE
I would also put this little note beneath the bibliography because it protects the episode academically:
A Note on Sources:
The surviving record of the Witch Purge of 1878 is incomplete and sometimes contradictory. No complete list of victims or formal trial record survives, and estimates of approximately forty deaths should therefore be treated as historical estimates rather than an exact confirmed body count. Accounts of the purge come from a combination of contemporary Anglo-American correspondence and military records, later historical scholarship, and Diné oral histories recorded generations afterward. Where these sources disagree, this episode has attempted to preserve those disagreements rather than presenting one reconstruction as certain.
That last paragraph is worth keeping, bro. It gives us cover for almost every difficult issue in this episode: the forty-person estimate, Manuelito's exact involvement, conflicting dates, oral history versus American records, and the fact that we simply do not know every victim's name.
And Martha Blue should absolutely be the first source listed. That book is basically the backbone of this entire fucking episode.
Also want to remind people about the website, if you're into reading we have tons of information by multiple contributors, and we got t-shirts up on the site if you're interested. Fun fact, the art is all based on the eyeball.
