NEWCOMB, Franc Johnson

Born 30 March 1887, Jacksonville, Wisconsin; died 25 July 1970, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Daughter of Frank L. and Priscilla Woodward Johnson; married Arthur J. Newcomb, 1914 (divorced); children: two daughters

Franc Johnson Newcomb was the daughter of an architect and a teacher who both died before her teens. After graduating from Tomah High School in Jacksonville, Wisconsin, in 1904, Newcomb taught locally for five years, studying summers to complete her education degree in 1913. Joining the Indian Service in 1911, Newcomb taught Menominees until her health demanded a transfer from Wisconsin.

In 1912 Newcomb taught Navajos at the Fort Defiance, Arizona, boarding school, where she met her husband, a trader. They established a trading post in a remote Navajo community in northwestern New Mexico. After Newcomb moved to Albuquerque in 1935 to educate her two daughters, she wrote and worked to establish a visiting nurse service and day nursery there and the Museum of Navaho Ceremonial Art in Santa Fe.

When fire destroyed their trading post in 1936, her husband's alcoholism became acute, straining Newcomb to the breaking point. After their divorce in 1946, she resumed writing. Her first book, Sandpaintings of the Navajo Shooting Chant (1937), discusses the origin myth and action; a friendly medicine man, Hosteen Klah, allowed Newcomb to reproduce 44 of the 600 sandpaintings. Newcomb's section of A Study of Navajo Symbolism (1956) explains the meanings of materials she saw used in Navajo rituals.

Respect for Navajo lifeways dominates Newcomb's descriptions of the hogan in two of many articles published in New Mexico magazine (Nov. 1934 and Jan. 1940). In Navajo Omens and Taboos (1940), Newcomb explains both the ritual reasoning and pragmatic logic behind over 200 Navajo customs governing all phases of life, from sex roles to luck signs.

Newcomb's collections of Navajo folklore include histories of Navajo emergence into their "Fifth World" (Navajo Folk Tales, 1967); myths recounting the gods' gifts of ceremonies ("Origin Legend of the Navajo Eagle Chant," Journal of American Folklore, Jan.-March 1940); and tales explaining animal traits (Navajo Bird Tales, 1970). Her composite versions gathered from several storytellers have limited value for folklorists, but general readers appreciate the graceful language.

In her poetry based on Navajo materials, Newcomb uses formal meter and rhyme, producing an odd effect of cultural contrast between structure and content. For example, "Nilth-Chizzie" (New Mexico magazine, Oct. 1936) relates Navajo beliefs concerning the ghostliness of the little whirlwind in the form of a sonnet.

Newcomb's best work is her nonfiction prose blending history, autobiography, and folklore. In "The Price of a Horse" (New Mexico Quarterly Review, May 1943), she lets readers connect a diary entry about discovering a mass burial, a government report of a military incident, and Grandma Klah's story of an Army massacre of 58 Navajos suspected of stealing a horse. In her biography, Hosteen Klah (1964), Newcomb fuses these sources, producing a personalized history of changing Navajo culture through compelling portraits of Klah, his mother, and his great-grandfather, Chief Narbona.

Navaho Neighbors (1966) is a collection of reservation memories. The power of Navajo women in their matrilineal society emerges as Newcomb humorously describes a woman divorcing her fat husband by narrowing her hogan door, and poignantly tells of a niece bearing a child to give her aunt, whose children had died. Lack of chronological order reinforces Newcomb's emphasis upon the continuity of personal ties and tradition in this isolated community.

Although some historians and anthropologists resented Newcomb as an amateur, N. Scott Momaday applauded her realistic portrayals of Navajo life. To Newcomb, Navajos were people, not objects for study. This basic assumption permeates Newcomb's works, enhancing their value as a record of the personal dimension of intercultural communication. The papers of Franc Johnson Newcomb, including an unpublished paper, "Autobiography of Franc Johnson Newcomb," are at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

Bibliography:

American Association of University Women, Albuquerque Branch, Women in New Mexico (1976).

Other references:

American Anthropologist (Dec. 1957, April 1965, Dec. 1967, Feb. 1969). El Palacio (5-12 Jan. 1938). Journal of American History (Dec. 1967). New Mexico Quarterly Review (Aug. 1940). NYTBR (8 Jan. 1967). Sante Fe New Mexican (31 Mar. 1968).

—HELEN M. BANNAN