Hastiin Goodluck was born in 1866 and gained fame and notoriety as a skilled and master silversmith and was active with his craft from the 1890's to the 1930's.
As a silversmith, Hastiin Goodluck worked for C.G. Wallace in the Allentown and Houck, Arizona area, where Wallace or another trader first called him Hastiin Goodluck because of the valued marketability of his fine work.
Hastiin Goodluck was also known as Hastiin Nídíshchíí' Ch'ín t'ii' (Stand of pine trees unraveling or flowing forth) or Atsídí ts'ósí (Slender Silversmith) to the locals.
In the early 1900s, Hastiin Goodluck traveled extensively throughout New Mexico and Colorado and as far east as Chicago and New York. Photograph of Hastiin Goodluck taken between 1903 and 1911, (Courtesy Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago). More specifically, Larry Frank published this photo in "Indian Silver Jewelry of the Southwest, 1868-1930".
His son Frank Goodluck related stories that Hastiin Goodluck was born in Fort Sumner, New Mexico during the Diné period of internment at Bosque Redondo (Hwéeldi), near the banks of the Pecos River. Beginning in 1863, the Navajo were forcibly removed from their traditional homelands in the western territories of Arizona and New Mexico.
Known as the Long Walk, around 8,000 Navajos were marched an arduous 350 mile journey on foot to eastern New Mexico. The imprisonment came to an end in 1868 with the signing of the Treaty of 1868 (Naaltsoos Sání), which allowed Navajo survivors to return to their traditional homelands.
Young Hastiin Goodluck relocated with his family to the area known as Ńdíshchííʼ ńtʼééʼ (Stand of pine trees unraveling on the slope). Located two miles north of the intersection of Interstate 40 and Navajo Route 12, this area is within present-day Lupton, Arizona. Hastiin Goodluck died March 26, 1937 at the age of 72.
