Sun’s House, plate V from "Where the Two Came to Their Father"

Maud Oakes

At the time that Maud Oakes created this image, the United States had been fighting in the Second World War for nearly two years. Oakes was living on the Navajo/Diné reservation conducting enthological research, and as young Navajo men were drafted into battle, Oakes was invited to observe a war ceremony performed for them by the hataatii (medicine man) Jeff King, known in his indigenous language as Hashkeh-yilth-e-yah. This ceremony, intended to keep the souls of warriors healthy and protected, was called "Where the two came to their father".

As part of the ceremony, sand paintings were created to illustrate the story of the two Navajo warriors, Monster Slayer and Child Born of Water, who traveled to the House of the Sun to prepare for battle with the evil spirits plaguing their people. Oakes carefully reproduced the paintings using gouache on deer hide, images which were then reproduced as pochoirs, published in a large folio. Titled "Where the Two Came to Their Father: A Navaho War Ceremonial Given by Jeff King," it included 18 color pochoirs, Oakes' retelling of the story, and additional text by writer and folklorist Joseph Campbell. It was published by the Bollingen Series I, Pantheon Books, New York, 1943.

The original paintings were executed in sand, pollen, corn meal, and ground flowers. These pochoirs were based on Oakes' paintings on deerhides of the sand paintings, which were destroyed as part of the ritual.

Maud Van Cortlandt Oakes, ethnologist, writer, and artist, was born on 25 May 1903 in Seattle, Washington and grew up in Manhattan, New York. Beginning as a painter, Oakes developed an interest in ethnology while vacationing on Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound in Washington state. She chronicled the cultures of indigenous tribes in the American Southwest and the Mam of Guatemala.

"Where the Two Came to Their Father: A Navaho War Ceremonial," is a collaborative work based upon the ceremonial sand paintings of the medicine man, Jeff King, was published in 1943 by Pantheon Books, New York. Oakes spent three years on the Navaho Reservation through the support of a grant from the Old Dominion Foundation. She replicated in gouache on deer hide the ceremonial paintings executed in sand, pollen, corn meal, or ground flowers.

Oakes spent seventeen months from late 1945 to early 1947 as the only outsider living in Todos Santos, a remote village in the Guatemalan highlands, where she studied the pre-Columbian roots of the indigenous population. In 1951 she published two books about her findings, ''Beyond the Windy Place,'' about life among the Mam, and ''The Two Crosses of Todos Santos,'' detailing the survival of Mayan religious ritual.

She also authored ''The Stone Speaks: The Memoir of a Personal Transformation,'' published in 1987. An honorary member of the C. G Jung Institute of San Francisco, Oakes became a student of Jungian psychology, and collaborated with Joseph L. Henderson on "The Wisdom of the Serpent: the Myths of Death Rebirth and Resurrection," published in 1990.

Maud Van Cortlandt Oakes died in Carmel, California on June 10, 1990.