As a Hopi, Soloho Salawa belongs to one of the tribes that form the backbone of the Navajo Nation. He was born in Phoenix, in the old state of Arizona, and lived both on and off Native lands during his early years. Fascinated with mechanized flight, he scratched out a living in air shows, which he called "dust-lot equivalents of the ones described these days in Air Action Weekly."

During this time he took the name Soloho, Hopi for "the sound made by a bird's wing during flight." A simpler translation, from the Salawa perspective, is "whistling arrow."

Soloho moved back to Native lands when the Navajo Nation formed, trading off his crop-duster-turned-stunt-plane for a beat-up Lightning. As the Navajo Nation clamped down on outside efforts to "subjugate or destroy the People with its poisoning drink" (the standard party-line of the Navajo Nation), Soloho led the defense along the southwest border against Mexican smugglers and pirate bands. He learned to hate Los Dos Muertos (the Two Deaths) for their strikes into Native lands, claiming many kills against those who flew with them, but never nailing either of them personally. The Mexican pirates' move further along the border, from which they now strike into Texas, has left Soloho somewhat frustrated professionally.

More recently, in the Plateau Wars of 1936, Soloho Salawa commanded his squadron out of Durango, forming the Navajo Nation's second line of defense against the coordinated waves of Free Colorado pirate incursions intent on "opening up" the plateau for unrestricted movement. Ranging into the San Juan Mountains, the Hopi ace personally claimed seventeen kills in the tight confines of the canyons and valleys, including the single-handed defeat of a blockade-runner zeppelin. The Navajo Nation commended him for shutting down the smuggler routes through the San Juans, and soon thereafter handed him the treacherous De Chelly area as his personal responsibility.

Salawa is a deeply-committed warrior, taking his responsibilities as a protector of his people very seriously. In combat, Salawa combines the fatalism of the Navajo warrior with the grace, calm and style of a Hollywood Knight. According to a quote in Air Action Weekly (from a pirate who claimed to have fought Salawa): "He's like ice. I blew through his port wing with magnesium rounds. He darned near blew my wing off. When other pilots would panic or bail out, he just turns around and dishes out twice as much punishment. I'm never gonna try and raid in Navajo territory again. Period."