My history is off, or Laura Adams Armer whitewashed--pun deliberate--it in Waterless Mountain. I didn't know Big Man was white, since he was given a Navajo name, until he drove a car. And I'm not sure when it was set: there are cars and planes, but no missionaries and no reservations.It was a lovely story about a boy growing up and becoming a medicine man, but "medicine man," even in a 1932 book for children, rankles my 21st-century sensibilities. Big Man took the Younger Brother and his family by train to the California coast, where Mother wove at a museum without quite becoming Ishi, and legends were related hinting that the Navajo are descendants of Karana's people. Or not, since they all died as soon as they were brought to shore, but from a Channel Island people.
Up a Road Slowly is my favorite Irene Hunt. I read and reread No Promises in the Wind possibly for years without associating it with the two books Kate's parents give her when they won't let her have Inky, and I liked Across Five Aprils just fine, but Up a Road Slowly is by far the best. Yet I'm glad I didn't read it until now. It's so solemn and detached that I think I would not have liked it as a teenager; now I can recognize its voice as just right.