The True Tale of the Diné and The Churro

With a Recipe for Lamb  Stew and Green Chile

By Bill Robinson

SKIP TO RECIPE…

Throughout the world, the development of “culture” in a group of people is inexorably tied to the food they eat.  The Diné (Navajo People) of the American Southwest are no exception. Without question, lamb is the favorite meat of the Diné, an absolutely unique preference. Of all the Native American communities in North America, no other group shares the love of lamb to this extent.  So, in honor of Diné uniqueness, here is a circa 1950s recipe for Navajo lamb and green chile stew.  But first, there is a short story about how that uniqueness came to pass. 

Many of us, especially those of us with a mostly European heritage, probably don’t think of the Navajo as an agricultural people. Weavers, silversmiths, artists, or perhaps sheepherders seem to be the popular images. However, through most of the early 1800s, using the waters of the San Juan River, the Colorado River, and the Little Colorado River, plus numerous containments, and divergences of intermittent streams, the Diné built a solid economic base of edible crops and livestock. They supplemented the results of their hunting and gathering by raiding their Puebloan neighbors, and with agriculture consisting mostly of maize, beans, and squash.  Then, with the arrival of the Spanish in the late 1500s and early 1600s, everything changed.  When Columbus landed in the Caribbean on his second voyage to the New World, his fleet of ships brought a veritable storehouse of seeds, plants, and animals that were unknown in the Western Hemisphere (Wm. W. Dunmire, Gardens of New Spain, 2004, pp. 126-129).  Over the following century, this biological dribble became a torrent. Now known as the Columbian Exchange, the great Spanish fleet flooded both North and South America with fruits, vegetables, grains, and livestock from Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.

In the remote land of the Diné, the Iberian onslaught didn’t have much material effect until the last decade of the 1500’s. Then in 1598 the Basque Conquistador, Juan de Oñate, led a small group of colonists up the Rio Grande and established the first Spanish colony in what is now Northern New Mexico. His supply caravan carried the seeds of an agricultural revolution (Dunmire 2004, pp. 164-176). Among the crops and animals introduced to the Southwest by Oñate were the ancestors of the Crazy Chile Farm’s own Chimayó/Campo Dorado chiles, as well as an abundance of other fruits, grains, and vegetables (including barley, garbanzos, wheat, peaches, lettuce, onions, radishes, cucumbers, and carrots).  He also brought livestock, including a herd of over 1000 sheep, specifically the Raza de Churra, or “Churros” of Andalusia.  Not only were these sheep bred and harvested by Oñate’s colonists, but they were also used as trade items to establish relationships with local Native Pueblos. Some of them were even used by the Franciscan Friars accompanying the expedition as bargaining chips to introduce Spanish Catholicism. The Diné encountered Churros during periodic contact with the Pueblos and the Spanish. By a combination of “trading and raiding,” they acquired enough of them in the 1600’s to develop sizeable herds.     

The Churro came to the New World as a result of a trade dispute over wool between England and Spain.  In those times, the famously fluffy Spanish Merinos were coveted by the English weaving industry.  To protect their own burgeoning weaving industry, the Spanish Crown prohibited the export of Merinos under the penalty of death. So when Columbus wanted to bring sheep to the Western Hemisphere on his second voyage, he had to settle for the supposedly less desirable Churro. When the Diné obtained Churros from the Spanish, they embraced the breed enthusiastically.  Unlike Merinos, Churros were able to thrive in the arid Navajo homelands on forage alone.  Their wool is straight with higher tensile strength than Marino wool, making it perfect (and ultimately essential) for the traditional Navajo-style weaving of belts, bridles, and blankets.  Churro wool is lower in lanolin, so it is easy to clean and readily receives vegetal dyes.  The Churro’s lower legs and muzzles are free of wool, which means they pick up fewer burrs than other breeds.  Finally, as Andalusian cooks have known for centuries, Churro fat, unlike the fat in other sheep, is concentrated around the organs. The meat, therefore, is lean, exceptionally mild, and tender, with none of the musky or “muttony” taste that most sheep develop at about 15 months of age.  Thus the symbiotic relationship between the Diné and the Churro developed and deepened for almost 250 years.  Churros became a source of income from weaving, a source of food from meat, and, ultimately, became part of the culture and legends of the Diné. 

However, beginning in 1846 this relationship was very nearly destroyed. At first the Mexican Government, and then, after 1848, the US Government, embarked on a series of policies and actions to systematically destroy the Diné and their culture. In addition to bullets, the Government arsenal included crop destruction, forced, long-term relocation, and livestock reduction. 

Navajo food came mostly from agriculture, not hunting and gathering. But in 1863, at the height of the Civil War, that base was destroyed. When most Navajo family clans refused to accept confinement on reservations, Union Army Colonel Kit Carson was ordered to wage a brutal, punitive assault against them. In three campaigns that year Carson terrorized the people—burning crops, destroying villages, and slaughtering livestock. The extent of the devastation was staggering. Carson’s own account reveals the cruelty of those events. But that account also reveals (quite unintentionally, I’m sure) the sheer volume of how much food the Diné were producing for themselves:

The following year, in 1864, Carson rounded up over 8,000 Navajo survivors of his attacks and marched them 300 miles across New Mexico, where they were confined in a concentration camp at Bosque Redondo—the infamous “Long Walk”. There they remained for the duration of the Civil War. The Churros, however, suffered only minor reductions.

Then, as recently as the 1930’s, the Department of Interior under the authority of the 1934 Taylor Grazing Act (H.R. 6462, 1934), attempted to write the final chapter on the Churro. Using exceptionally bad science, cultural ignorance, and racial cruelty, the Department claimed that the Churro contributed to the Dust Bowl by over-grazing.  Their solution was “stock reduction.” Teams of gunners were sent throughout the Diné lands to kill the Navajo sheep and heritage Spanish goats. The teams were successful, and the resulting slaughter left only a handful of Churros on the 27,000 square miles of the Navajo Nation. The remaining sheep were then subjected to 30 years of forced interbreeding with other European breeds which lacked the characteristics most favored by the Diné—strong wool, good meat, and the ability to thrive on desert forage. Then, according to Diné Councilwoman Cherilyn Yazzie, the US Congress tried to deliver a fatal blow to Navajo livestock by passing the Navajo/Hopi Land Settlement Act of 1974, legislation that prohibited both tribes from grazing stock on each other’s tribal lands on land that had been held in common for over 100 years. Quality weaving, and its resulting income, was greatly diminished. Poverty and starvation prevailed, and The People became virtual wards of the state.  

Echoes of those terrible days persist today in ways that would take a whole book to chronicle.  But in the 1970s, when only an estimated 500 of the genetically pure Churro remained, a major program to bring them back was initiated. In her 2004 dissertation at Colorado State University, Susan Strawn, then a graduate student, discusses that program: 

The restoration process has been agonizingly slow, but it has enjoyed moderate success. Buyers of Navajo weaving are once again willing to pay top dollar for blankets and rugs made from Churro wool and, more importantly, buyers are once again able to find such weavings. Churro meat is also in high demand. By 2005 a grassroots Diné group, called the Navajo-Churro Sheep Association, had registered more than 5000 sheep. Knowledgeable chefs and butchers in Los Angeles, Santa Fe, Denver, Tucson, Phoenix, and Albuquerque now actively compete for the limited supplies.  

Diné  Lamb Shanks  Stew with Green Chile 

The following recipe is from Dolores Begay, a Diné from Many Farms, who was a friend of my father’s, a retired food technologist from CPC, Int’l. My Dad collected this recipe back in the 1980s when he was working on a Cooperative Extension project to restore traditional Diné maize farming methods that had been lost in the aftermath of the US Army’s destruction of Navajo fields and orchards, and the 1930s sheep genocide.  

Depending on your location, a web search might yield a local source of Churro meat.  However, if nothing shows up, take heart. This recipe is wonderful when made with easily available lamb neckpieces or shanks. Lamb does not develop a “muttony” taste until the lamb is around 15 months old. At that ripe old age, the meat takes on a gamey and disagreeable flavor and is no longer classified as lamb, rather it is now called Mutton. So, if it says “lamb” on the package at a reputable store, it’s probably lamb. Among the vegetable ingredients, summer squash is specified here, but cubes of peeled winter squash work equally well.  The stews of many different Native peoples contain squash. As you can clearly see, this stew is a fusion dish…despite the seemingly isolated locations where it came into being. The lamb, chicken broth, carrots, onions, and rosemary were introduced to this hemisphere by the colonists from Europe and the Mediterranean. But Mexican oregano, chiles, squash, and potatoes are strictly of New World origin and dominate the flavor profile.  

INGREDIENTS

3 cups water plus 1 cup chicken broth
4 lamb shanks
One tsp of salt or to taste
4 cloves pressed garlic 
2 large potatoes cut into ¾” cubes
1 large onion, cubed
2 carrots cut into ½” discs
2 summer squash, cubed
6-8 green chiles, medium hot to hot, roasted, peeled, and diced. 
 If the chiles are from your garden, late-season harvests will be hotter.
1 teaspoon green or red chile powder
1 tablespoon Mexican oregano
One 6-inch sprig of Juniper leaves from the tip of a branch 
One 6-inch sprig of fresh rosemary 

DIRECTIONS

1. Pour the water and broth into a slow cooker with a tsp of salt. Add the lamb shanks and cook on low for eight hours or overnight. Diné have an affinity for salt and use considerably more than a tsp.

2. In the morning remove the meat from the bones, return the meat to the pot, and add all other ingredients to the cooker. Cook on low heat for 8-10 hours. 

3. Remove the Juniper sprig during the last ½ hour of cooking. 

Note: The Diné prefer this stew hot (as in piquant!) If only mild green chiles are available, add one or two serranos or jalapeños, roasted and peeled, or an extra teaspoon of chile powder. However, if you prefer a milder stew, leave out the teaspoon of chile powder and use only mild green chiles.