Laughing Boy: A Navajo Love Story

Oliver La Farge’s 1929 novel, Laughing Boy: A Navajo Love Story, takes place in 1915 on the Navajo reservation lands of the American Southwest. A Harvard-educated anthropologist, La Farge lived with the Navajo for a time and advocated for Native American rights as president of the National Association on Indian Affairs (1933-1937). While his novel follows the romance of a young Navajo man, Laughing Boy, and a spirited woman, Slim Girl, La Farge draws these characters together to explore the damaging effects of “white,” European incursions on Native American identities.

Laughing Boy, a talented silversmith who also has a knack with horses and gambling, lives in the Northern region of the Navajo reservation. When the novel opens, he is in the Southern lands, attending a ceremony aimed at relieving the people who live there from the bad luck they are experiencing. The ceremony involves dancing and singing, and following those curative rituals, the men entertain themselves with wrestling matches and horse racing.

During the ceremony, Laughing Boy catches sight of a beautiful woman and is captivated by her. Slim Girl is intrigued by him, as well, particularly after he wins a wrestling match against Red Man, who also fancies her. Laughing Boy and Slim Girl dance together, and later, he retreats to a quiet spot to write a love song for her. After she seeks him out and coaxes him to sing his song, Slim Girl agrees to marry Laughing Boy.



This rather hasty courtship is followed by an unhurried discussion between Laughing Boy and his uncle, Wounded Face, which Laughing Boy initiates to secure approval for his marriage plans. They sit together and smoke quietly for some time before Laughing Boy speaks of his intentions. Wounded Face expresses misgivings, noting that Slim Girl grew up in an “American” boarding school. When Laughing Boy presses him to elaborate on this concern, Wounded Face says, “She is not one of the People anymore,” adding that she “does bad things.”

Rumor has it that Slim Girl has succumbed to “American badness,” but she alone knows how bad her life has been. As a young girl, she was taken from her Navajo family and placed in an American school where she suffered abuse and the loss of her Navajo identity. Her education in American ways left her with an ambition for wealth, but when her schooling ended, she found she had limited means to support herself. An ill-fated relationship with an American man left her pregnant. After a miscarriage, Slim Girl turned to prostitution, eventually attracting the attention of a wealthy rancher, George Hartshorn. She continues to exploit his desire for her not only to get his money but, by toying with his feelings, to get revenge against all the Americans who wronged her.

Alienated from both American and Navajo societies, Slim Girl wants to reintegrate with her native people and regards Laughing Boy as a means to that end. Laughing Boy is so love-struck that he ignores his uncle’s warnings and marries Slim Girl. They settle in her house outside Los Palos, a southern border town.



Slim Girl’s scheme is to make a lot of money. She reasons that Laughing Boy’s clan will admire them once they’re prosperous and will welcome them back into the family fold up North, where the Americans are scarce. For this purpose, Slim Girl goes into town several days a week to work. She tells Laughing Boy she is earning money doing odd jobs for a missionary’s wife, but in fact, she is meeting her lover, Hartshorn, who pays her well. With Hartshorn’s money, she buys the silver that Laughing Boy crafts into jewelry to sell to Americans.

To exercise control over Laughing Boy and safeguard his attachment to her, Slim Girl introduces him to whiskey, but only allows him one drink each evening. She also discourages him from going into town, so he spends his days alone taming wild horses, which he then sells. Between his silver and horse trades, Laughing Boy starts making good money, and Slim Girl, despite herself, starts falling in love with him.

When Laughing Boy learns his clan is hosting a dance, he and Slim Girl travel north to attend. His family petitions him to abandon Slim Girl, but he refuses. The couple then returns to their home in the South, where Slim Girl prevails upon Laughing Boy to teach her the traditional Navajo household arts. To be a respectable wife, she must master these skills that her American upbringing omitted. She learns to cook the Navajo way and excels at blanket weaving.



Laughing Boy and Slim Girl are very happy together. As their wealth increases, they discuss moving back to the North. Slim Girl insists they wait until their financial success is great enough to eclipse any further concerns about their marriage. Wary of thwarting her own strategy to return to the Navajos, Slim Girl thinks, “None of the bad things must happen; I must make no mistakes. I am not Navajo, nor am I an American, but the Navajos are my people.”

“Bad things” do happen, however, when Laughing Boy catches Slim Girl with George Hartshorn. He shoots an arrow into Hartshorn’s arm as the man flees and then pierces Slim Girl’s arm, as well, before he storms off in a rage. When he arrives home, Slim Girl is there. She finally divulges the painful details of her past and professes that she feels no affection for Hartshorn but only capitalized on his desires to profit their marriage. Laughing Boy forgives her but insists that they pack up and move north.

Unbeknownst to the couple, Red Man, Slim Girl’s slighted suitor, catches sight of them as they travel north. He vengefully shoots at Laughing Boy, but misses his mark and kills Slim Girl. Grief-stricken, Laughing Boy buries her and, according to Navajo custom, chants and prays by her grave for four days. He then returns home, comforted by his conviction that the love he shared with Slim Girl enriches his life.



Laughing Boy received the Pulitzer Prize in 1930. By the late twentieth century, however, Native American writers were protesting the cultural appropriation occurring in non-native authored narratives claiming a native perspective. Referring to Laughing Boy, the Laguna Pueblo writer Leslie Marmon Silko wrote, “It is a lie because La Farge passes off the consciousness and feelings of Laughing Boy as those of Navajo sensibility.”