Ceremonial Colors Of The Navajos

        The five ceremonial colors of the Navajos are blue, white, yellow, black, and red. They are found in nearly all sandpaintings and sandpainting blankets. Red, which is used less often than the other colors, represents rainbows and sun rays. White symbolizes Early Dawn, yellow the Yellow Twilight, blue the Blue Twilight, and black the Darkness of the North. These colors are also associated with certain sacred things: red for the sun, white for white shell, yellow for abalone shell, black for cannel coal, and blue for turquoise.
       The turquoise is especially sacred to the Navajos because it is associated with the story of their origin. The Navajos say that their clans were created by Turquoise Woman after she became the bride of the Sun and went to live with him in the Western Ocean. He laid a rainbow across a sunbeam and took her through the sky to her new home. Turquoise Woman was lonesome there and so she created people, who became the founders of the various Navajo clans and tribes.
       There never was a time that the Navajos did not have white shells (clam shells), abalone shells, turquoise beads, and cannel coal, they say. These objects were used in all tribal ceremonies and were offered to the gods as sacrifices. They were brought up from the Underworld at the time of creation, Navajo legends tell us.
       The Navajos taught that after their people came to this world, they found turquoise and coal in the ground. When this tribe lived near the Big Waters of the West, they also had white shells and yellow abalone shells. After they moved to the desert country they traded the shells from Jemez, where they had been resettled by the early Spaniards from the western coast of Mexico. Today the Navajos obtain the shells through the wholesale market but they used to trade for these. They find the cannel coal on La Plata Mountain and elsewhere in their land.
       The Navajos get their turquoise in many ways. A mine at Los Cerillos, near Santa Fe, is one of the sources. Formerly the mine was worked by the Pueblos, who sold the turquoise to the Navajos. The mine was taken away from the Pueblos by the Spaniards long ago, but even today the Pueblos still are able to obtain turquoise there in some way and they still find a ready market for it among the Navajos.
       Near the Los Cerillos mine there is a hot-spring geyser, called by the Navajos "Bead Spring." When the Navajos visit Bead Spring, they drop small chips of turquoise into it and then pray to their gods. The natives of the past believed that this would bring good luck in their trading.
       The making of silver and turquoise jewelry provided the Navajos with a good income in the past. Formerly the stones were used unmounted for religious purposes. The silversmith's art had its beginnings around the middle of the nineteenth century when the natives began to learn how to work metal from the Mexican silversmiths who lived along the upper Rio Grande valley. Their first sources of silver probably were Mexican pesos and United States silver coins but they now use bar silver. Some of the young Navajo people today still work in silver and make many beautiful pieces of jewelry in which they also set turquoise stones. Caldwell.

The meaning of the color turquoise from 

Museum of Indian Arts and Culture.