St. Michael's Mission | |
 St. Michael's Mission | |
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| Location | Window Rock, Arizona |
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| Coordinates | 35°38′44″N109°05′53″W / 35.64556°N 109.09806°W |
| Area | 640 acres (260 ha) |
| NRHP reference No. | 75000335 [1] |
| Added to NRHP | May 29, 1975 |
St. Michael's Mission, the first permanent Catholic mission to the Navajo, was established in 1898. A school was opened in 1902.
In 1895, a ranch known as "Cienega" was purchased by the Catholic Church from a local rancher by Katharine Drexel, at the prompting of Father Stephan of the Catholic Indian Bureau. It included a building which had been built by Billy Meadows as an intended trading post, but which had never been utilized as such. Three years later the building was remodeled in order to be used by Catholic missionaries as a mission. [2] [3] The land was located six miles outside of Fort Defiance, and about one mile outside the boundaries of the Navajo Reservation. There was initial difficulty in finding personnel willing to staff the mission, but Sister Katharine visited the Cincinnati province of Franciscans in 1897, and they agreed to provide the manpower. [3] The mission became operational in 1898, the first permanent Catholic mission to the Navajo people. Part of the new mission contained a chapel, where the first Mass was said in October 1898. In the spring of 1899 a nearby log cabin was turned into a boarding school. A second school was opened in 1902, it originally had 56 students. [2] Concurrently with the school, twelve sisters from the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament arrived in late October 1902, housed in a separate building. [3] The mission, led by Fathers Anselm Weber and Berard Haile published numerous papers on the Navajo language, including dictionaries and grammars. [4] The site is owned by the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, and now consists of 640 acres (260 ha). [2] In addition to the still active mission church, there is a museum on site, displaying Navajo artifacts, as well as items from the early Franciscan presence on the site. [5] In 2023, the Franciscans announced that they would transfer the mission to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Gallup. [6]
The mission is approximately 27 x 60 feet, with the length running east to west, and has a gabled shingle roof. There are three doors and three windows on the north side, while the south side there are no doors and four windows; both the east and west sides have a single window. The interior walls were plastered, and the original single room was split into six rooms. It contained four bedrooms, three of which you had to pass through to reach the chapel, which was the largest room, and situated on the west side of the building. In the chapel there were wooden stations of the cross, measuring four inches by two inches, as well as four plain wood kneelers. The chapel was heated by a small wood stove, and there was a small organ in the room next to the chapel, which provided music. There was another larger room on the east end which served as a combination kitchen-dining-living room, as well as a reception area. [2]
Some of the books written by Weber and Haile include Vocabulary of the Navajo Language (1912); Manual of Navaho Grammar (1929); Learning Navajo, a four-volume work penned between 1942 and 1949; and A Stem Vocabulary of the Navaho Language (1951). [7]
St. Michaels is a chapter of the Navajo Nation and a census-designated place (CDP) in Apache County, Arizona, United States. The Navajo Nation Government Campus is located within the chapter at Window Rock.
Window Rock, known in Navajo as Tségháhoodzání, is a census-designated place (CDP) that serves as the seat of government and capital of the Navajo Nation, the largest territory in North America of a sovereign Native American nation. The capital lies within the boundaries of the St. Michaels Chapter, adjacent to the Arizona and New Mexico state line. Window Rock is the site of the Navajo Nation governmental campus, which contains the Navajo Nation Council, Navajo Nation Supreme Court, the offices of the Navajo Nation President and Vice President, and many Navajo government buildings.
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Father Berard Haile (1874–1961), O.F.M., was a Franciscan priest and one of the foremost authorities on Navajo anthropology. He entered the Franciscan Order in 1891 and was ordained a priest on June 29, 1898. He served at St. Michael's Mission, a Franciscan mission to the Navajo at St. Michaels, Arizona, and at other missions in the Southwest, from 1901 to 1954, where he developed an interest in Navajo language and culture. He helped devise a written alphabet of the Navajo language and published a four volume work on learning Navajo. In 1929 Haile attended the Catholic University of America and obtained a master's degree. He then accepted the position of Research Associate in Anthropology at the University of Chicago. He made a field trip with Edward Sapir through Navajo land that was sponsored by the Laboratory of Anthropology at Santa Fe, New Mexico. Haile devised a new Navajo alphabet containing over sixty characters. His other major work dealt with the creation story of the Navajo, Diné Bahaneʼ.
The Chinle Franciscan Mission Historic District is located in Chinle, Arizona, one of the population centers on the Navajo Nation. It is on the west side of the main east–west route through Chinle, Indian Service Route 7. The 2.92-acre site is approximately 2 miles west of Canyon de Chelly National Monument, and is the core of a larger 160-acre parcel which is in held in trust by the U.S. Federal Government for the Navajos. It was originally set aside for the Franciscan Friars in 1903, and is now leased by the Roman Catholic Church, through the Diocese of Gallup, New Mexico. It includes the Our Lady of Fatima Church. The entirety of the historic district is defined by three historic buildings, one historic object and one historic site. The buildings were constructed between 1905 and 1925 and are the Friary, the Annunciation Mission Church, and the Workshop/Garage; the object is the church bell, which was cast in 1914; and the site is the church's cemetery, which was active between 1907 and 1935. The district is made up of two discontiguous parcels. The first parcel is 2.2 acres and contains the Friary, Church, Garage and Bell, while the second parcel is .72 acres and contains the cemetery.
Father Anselm Weber (1862–1921), O.F.M., was an American Franciscan priest and missionary. He was one of the first friars to arrive at St. Michael's Mission in Navajo territory and acted as the longest-serving Father Superior of the mission from 1900 until his death in 1921.
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