By OBBM Network Editorial Staff

Derived from an episode of The Buried Archive.

What if the world beneath our feet held entire realms of beings, colors, and sacred mountains, as described by Navajo informants to a 19th‑century Army surgeon? Washington Matthews’ painstaking field notes from Fort Wingate expose a four‑world cosmology that challenges early government dismissals of Navajo culture and offers fresh insight into indigenous knowledge systems.

From Surgeon to Linguist: Matthews’ Unlikely Mission

In 1880 the Smithsonian Institution dispatched military surgeon Washington Matthews to Fort Wingate, New Mexico Territory, ostensibly to serve as the garrison’s physician. The quiet recommendation of John Wesley Powell set the stage for an unofficial, fourteen‑year quest: to learn the Navajo language directly from speakers, without interpreters. Matthews sat with families, catalogued vocabulary, and even invented a notation system for sounds that had no Latin‑alphabet equivalent. “He wrote in his notes that a Navajo singer required more years of training than a Western physician,” the host notes, underscoring the depth of indigenous expertise.

Matthews’ immersion yielded a flood of material—hundreds of pages of field notes, monographs, ceremony transcriptions, and mythological records—that would overturn contemporary government assumptions about Navajo intellectual and spiritual capacity.

A Four‑World Cosmology: Layers of Existence

The first revelation Matthews recorded was that the world had not always been the one humans now inhabit. The Navajo described a vertical sequence of worlds: the Black World (first), the Blue World (second), the Yellow World (third), and the White or Glittering World (fourth), which is the present. Each realm was physically structured, navigable, and assigned specific colors, sacred materials, and spiritual functions.

Inhabitants of the first world resembled insects—beetles, ants, dragonflies—living in total darkness on an island surrounded by four colored seas. The second world introduced bird‑human hybrids, while the third world featured grasshopper‑like beings and the emergence of First Man and First Woman, described not as biblical progenitors but as “first pattern holders” capable of ordering reality through ceremony.

The Great Flood and the Hollow Reed

Matthews documented a catastrophic transition from the third to the fourth world—a flood that rose from below, submerging the third world and forcing its inhabitants upward. Unlike typical flood myths, the Navajo did not build a boat; they planted a hollow reed that grew through the sky of the third world into the floor of the fourth, creating a narrow vertical passage. The people climbed this reed in darkness, emerging at a lake near present‑day Pagosa Springs, Colorado. One informant bitterly noted that “white people had put a wire fence around the sacred lake,” highlighting ongoing tensions over sacred sites.

This specific detail—a hollow reed as a conduit between worlds—parallels Maya emergence narratives that describe ascent through a narrow, water‑filled cave. Both traditions locate the emergence point at a visitable geographic site, suggesting a shared symbolic framework across cultures.

Sacred Mountains and Their Symbolic Bindings

Matthews also recorded precise assignments of sacred mountains to cardinal directions, each bound with a distinct gemstone and color: Blanca Peak (east, white lightning, white shell), Mount Taylor (south, stone knife, turquoise), the San Francisco Peaks (west, sunbeam, abalone), and Hesperus Peak (north, rainbow, black jet). These peaks are not random; they delineate a territorial matrix that intertwines geology with cosmology.

Such specificity underscores how Navajo cosmology integrates geography, astronomy, medicine, and history into a single, unified worldview—an approach that contrasts sharply with the compartmentalized Western scientific paradigm.

Why Matthews’ Records Matter Today

More than a century later, scholars continue to grapple with the implications of Matthews’ work. His meticulous recordings challenge the early government narrative that dismissed Navajo songs as mere “grunts” and reveal a sophisticated, multi‑layered cosmology that aligns with archaeological patterns across the continent.

Understanding this indigenous framework enriches contemporary discussions about cultural preservation, land rights, and the interpretation of sacred sites—issues that remain deeply relevant as federal and state agencies negotiate access to places like the Pagosa Springs lake. Moreover, Matthews’ linguistic innovations remind us of the value of immersive, respectful engagement with native languages, a lesson that resonates in today’s efforts to revitalize endangered tongues.

In revisiting Matthews’ field notes, we are invited to reconsider not only how we view Navajo spirituality but also how we approach the broader tapestry of American cultural heritage. The layered worlds he documented serve as a reminder that beneath the surface of any nation lie deeper stories waiting to be heard.

The full episode of The Buried Archive is available on OBBM Network TV.