Monday, December 2, 2024

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Treaty unveiled at Navajo Nation museum

Treaty unveiled at Navajo Nation museum

WINDOW ROCK

It was a Navajo woman whose name she never learned who convinced C.P. “Kitty” Weaver to donate her copy of the Treaty of 1868 to the Navajo Nation Museum.

Weaver, the great-grandniece of Col. Samuel F. Tappan, one of the negotiators of the treaty, had been at the ceremony at the Bosque Redondo Memorial last year marking the 150th anniversary of the treaty’s signing and had brought the treaty she had inherited — one of only two known surviving copies — to be displayed.

After the festivities, “It was dark one evening, and a number of us were gathered around the treaty,” Weaver recounted at a press conference Wednesday welcoming the Naaltsoos Sání to its new home. “A Navajo woman broke away from the group and quietly, reverently walked up to the treaty,” she said.

“She put something there. Then she asked who was the woman who had brought the treaty from Massachusetts. I said, ‘That would be me.’” The two women grasped hands and hugged, “and then the tears started,” Weaver said. “That was the significant moment when the treaty became not only a historical document. It became a living being.”


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About The Author

Cindy Yurth

Cindy Yurth was the Tséyi' Bureau reporter, covering the Central Agency of the Navajo Nation, until her retirement on May 31, 2021. Her other beats included agriculture and Arizona state politics. She holds a bachelor’s degree in technical journalism from Colorado State University with a cognate in geology. She has been in the news business since 1980 and with the Navajo Times since 2005, and is the author of “Exploring the Navajo Nation Chapter by Chapter.”

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