Documenting the multisensory and ephemeral: Navajo Chantway singers and the troubles of a “science” of ceremonialism

Even as American ethnology in the late‐nineteenth century continued to accumulate data about indigenous groups for comparative study, the surgeon‐turned‐ethnographer Washington Matthews found standardized documentary methods constricting, unable to reflect the complexity of a community's spiritual practices. Through studies of Navajo Indians in the 1880s and 90s, Matthews experimented with documentation techniques to capture the multisensorial and ephemeral elements of Navajo healing ceremonialism, such as the design of sandpaintings that were later destroyed as the rites concluded. Investigating his ethnographic strategies and his relationships with Navajo knowledge stewards, this article charts Matthews’ emerging conviction in social immersion and bonding with indigenous informants, tenets that predated the rise of cultural relativism in anthropology. The article argues that his experience among and tutelage from Navajo medicine “singers” reshaped Matthews’ documentary practices to emphasize the irreducibility of cultural facets to tabular columns, raising doubts about then‐dominant theories of social evolution.