Code Talker

by Chester Nez

  The baby goat who’d been attacked by the coyote ran up to me and rubbed his head against me. He wanted to play. A good sign. The kids and lambs had sweet personalities, and they recognized me as a friend. I rubbed the little goat’s head. Then I gently pushed him back toward the herd.

  I stowed my car and leaned against the trunk of a piñon, thinking. Like always, I tried to picture Mother’s face. Mother, Shimá in Navajo, had died a couple of years before, when I was young, too small to remember her. And there were no pictures to show me what she had looked like. But I felt sure she had been very beautiful.

  Father, Shizhé’é, who had some training as a medicine man, had cared for Mother when she was dying. He built a lean-to for her about a mile and a half from our home. My younger sister, Dora, and I could not visit. Father didn’t want us to be upset. And if death came, our absence kept us from following the dead person into the next world. This danger—that the deceased’s ghost or chindí might lead the living away—led to the tradition of moving the seriously ill away from their primary home and, especially, the children. Even so, I knew that something was very wrong.

  Only a few weeks after Father built the lean-to, my mother died. And after her death, one-year-old Dora, our older brothers, and I were not allowed to attend the burial.

  According to tradition, the grave was dug by the oldest males in the family. Adult female relatives stayed with the dying person and prepared the body, but did not go to the grave. And while my father and grandfather dug the grave, tradition forbade them to speak to each other. Grandfather, the oldest male relative, stripped to just a breechclout and placed my mother into the ground. Afterward, they told no one where the grave was. My family observed the customary four days of mourning, during which no one left home or received visitors.

  Father combined his livestock with Grandma’s animals. In the Navajo matriarchal society, motherless children always stayed with their maternal grandmother. Father stayed, too.

  Grandma ran the everyday living, making it all look so easy.

  We lived on Grandmother’s land, in a “summerhouse” made from juniper and oak branches. Today called the Checkerboard Area, our land butted up against spreads owned by both Navajos and non-Navajos, creating a diversified patchwork. It sat near the Navajo Nation, or the Navajo Reservation, that overlapped the border between Arizona and New Mexico. The sections belonging to Navajos, although separate from the Navajo Nation proper, were considered “allotments” held in trust for the families that lived there.

  The Navajo name for my home was Chichiltah, “Among the Oak Trees.” Between Gallup and Zuni, New Mexico, Grandma’s house sat among red rock cliffs in a box canyon with a ravine in the bottom and a well just off center, near the ravine. Oak trees provided shade in summer. The sheep and goats loved the plentiful acorns.

  Everyone worked hard, and no one spoke about Mother’s last days or her death. But my family frequently talked about her life. The Navajo language has no word for actual death. They use the word ádin, which, roughly translated, means “no longer available.” So Grandma and Father talked about how Mother had helped out with the sheep or tended a sick goat. We talked about her as though she was still there, just “unavailable.”

  “Betoli.”Coolidge’s whisper pulled me from my thoughts about Shimá. My older brother placed a finger across his lips. Quiet. Then he pointed by raising his chin and twitching his lips toward a tree limb above my head.

  I squinted. The dark, sleeping form of a porcupine lay draped in a crook of the limb. My pulse raced. Porcupine meat was delicious.

  “Take that branch,” said Coolidge, pointing with his thumb to a fallen bough, “and try to kill it quick.”

  Coolidge climbed the tree, placing each foot carefully. I bent to grab the broken limb from the ground. Coolidge shook the branch where the porcupine lay, and the startled animal fell. One quick club with the limb killed the prickly critter. I silently thanked the spirit of the porcupine for allowing us to catch him so easily.

  Coolidge singed the quills from the furry body over Old Auntie’s cook fire and dug a pit. He cut a few branches from a dead piñon, broke them into small pieces, and placed them in the pit, stuffing small juniper twigs and dry leaves in as kindling. The dry branches burned readily, requiring only one match. While waiting for them to burn down to coals, Coolidge dressed the porcupine, removing the entrails and splitting the breastbone to fold the animal neatly open. Meanwhile, I collected more branches, placing them over the hot coals already in the pit.

  “A big one.” Coolidge’s eyes shone. Porcupines sometimes grew to the size of a small sheepdog. He placed the porcupine carefully, split side down, on the branches, then covered it with more branches. When the fire burned down, he threw dirt over the coals and built a final fire on top.

  As the aroma of porcupine fat whetted our appetites, the sun set, splashing orange and pink across the western sky. Sheep bunched up for the night, some lying down and others grazing close by. The moon would be full. A full moon encouraged the flock to wander. I spread my blankets close to the sheep. After dinner, the first watch would be mine.

  I smiled to myself. Like my uncle, who was a grown man, I cared for the sheep. Some days I sensed that my siblings and I were a burden to Old Auntie and Grandmother. But, as a sheepherder, I was able to help. That made me proud. Auntie called us all to dinner, and we ate thick tortillas with goat cheese. The porcupine would cook all night, with Coolidge waking to restart the fire two or three times. But, meantime, the soft, white goat cheese had a wonderful flavor, sharp and clean. I ate every bit of mine, then licked my fingers.

  Auntie tapped me on the shoulder. “Where’s that goat the coyote tried to kill?” she asked.

  I separated the kid from the other animals in the herd, pulling it toward Auntie. The mother goat followed.

  “Here he is.” I peered down at the little goat’s back leg, where it had been bitten. “It’s not bleeding anymore.”

  Auntie stroked the kid’s back and examined its leg in the fading light. “I’ll make a poultice while the fire is still burning,” she said. “Get me some sage.”

  Younger Auntie went for sage, returning with an armful of the silvery-leafed plant. Old Auntie pounded the sage with a rock, poured a bit of water into a can, added the sage, and heated it over the fire. She let it cool a bit, then applied the mush to the goat’s leg, wrapping it with strips of cloth to hold it in place. “By morning he’ll be much better,” she said.

  I fell asleep that night to the aroma of roasting porcupine. In the morning we’d have a delicious breakfast, with meat that tasted much like pork. Old Auntie would be in a fine mood, after the hearty breakfast.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Great Stories

  Mid to Late 1920s

  I sat by a snapping winter fire, surrounded by family. Moving in closer to the blaze, I turned my back to the heat for just a moment. Then I turned forward again, my eyes focused on Father. My eyelids wanted to close after a long day of work, but excitement kept them open. It was story time.

  Before dark, we had talked with the Holy People about crops, livestock and the need for rain. Now stars blinked in the black sky above us. I waited, eager. In Navajo life, everything has a story, narratives that are significant both in ceremonies and in everyday life.

  “The Diné roved over the land to find food for their sheep,” Father said quietly.

  “The four sacred mountains protected them, outlining a huge hogan that the Holy People had made safe for the Diné.”

  Any Navajo who left those familiar boundaries had to prepare himself with prayers and blessings. Mount Blanca, the White Shell Mountain, represented the east and marked the northeastern corner of the safe area. It stood near Alamosa, Colorado. Mount Taylor, the Turquoise Mountain, at Grants, New Mexico, represented the south and marked the southeastern corner. The San Francisco Peaks, also called Abalone Shell Mountain, near Flagstaff, Arizona, represented the west and marked the southwestern corner
. And Mount Hesperus, Obsidian Mountain, in southwest Colorado represented the north and marked the northwestern corner.

  Father grew silent, and Grandmother, after waiting politely to see whether Father would continue, took up the thread of the story. “The Navajo language played an important role in the creation of the world. At the dawn of creation, four Navajo words were spoken.”

  I knew the words by heart: ’adinídíín (light), nahasdzáán (earth), tó (water), and niŧch’l (air).

  “As these words were spoken,” Grandma continued, “the sun, the earth, the oceans, and the air that we breathe appeared.” She took a deep breath. “The spoken Navajo words could not be separated from the physical sun, the actual earth, the oceans and air. Speaking our language created the world, and the creation of the world made our language.”

  I had carried water to the shelter that day from Grandma’s spring. Grandma coughed. Her throat sometimes became parched in the dry winters. She stood to get some water from her shack or “summerhouse,” and Father continued.

  “The first Diné emerged into our world—called the ‘glittering fourth world’—from three underworlds,” he said. “They used a reed to travel between worlds. Gods set the four sacred mountains in place. Coyote, the trickster, helped First Man and First Woman to fling the stars into the heavens.”

  I held my breath, knowing what came next.

  “But soon, monsters began to roam the earth, killing the Diné.”

  We all listened, eyes round.

  “Then, Changing Woman, who grew up in New Mexico, married the Sun.”

  “Did she grow up near here?” asked Dora.

  “Not too far,” said Father. He cleared his throat. “The Navajo people prayed to the Gods, asking them to slay the monsters. The Gods at first replied that the monsters were also their children. But, after marrying the Sun, Changing Woman had twin boys. The twin sons of Changing Woman visited their father, the Sun. He gave them lightning bolts—the bow and arrow—as weapons against the monsters. The twins slew each monster, and the corpses turned to stone. The stone formations created by the dead bodies of the monsters can still be seen. They lie along the area bounded by our sacred mountains.”

  I loved this story, and listened carefully every time to be sure that the Diné were properly saved from the monsters. The weapons used had been the first bows and arrows. My elders told this story only during winter, hunting season. Since the bow and arrow were associated with thunder and lightning, you didn’t talk about them in summer, the season of thunderstorms.

  I listened carefully as Grandfather took up the Diné’s more recent history. The arrival of first the Spanish, then other Europeans, shrunk the native lands, pushing the Diné and other tribes into smaller and smaller territories. Now most lived on the reservation.

  When Grandfather was silent, I waited, then looked at Grandmother. Her coughing had subsided. “Will you tell us about the Long Walk?” I asked.

  “Ah. That is my mother’s story. Yes, I will tell you.”

  She wrapped her blanket around broad shoulders and sat up straight. My great-grandmother had been very brave. I sat absolutely silent, not wanting to miss a word. A branch snapped somewhere nearby in the cold.

  Grandma looked up at the sky, its stars gloriously visible in spite of the blazing campfire. After several moments, she spoke. “The Diné fought against the white settlers, trying to keep the land that had always been ours. This land had been given to us by the Holy People. Since the very beginning of time, our people had lived within the land bounded by the four sacred mountains.

  “But soldiers pulled our ancestors from their land. A famous white man, Kit Carson, burned Navajo crops, uprooted our trees, killed our livestock, and warned all Navajos to surrender and gather together at Fort Defiance, Arizona. Anyone who did not go to Fort Defiance would be hunted down and captured or killed.” She sighed. “My mother, with the others, was forced to march three hundred fifty miles from Fort Defiance to Fort Sumner in New Mexico.”14 Grandma ran a heavily veined hand over her hair and continued. “My mother has told me this. The old, the sick, women, children. All had to go.”

  Grandma again pulled her blanket more closely around her, as though insulating herself from the story she told. The golden light from the fire played over her face.

  “The walk took twenty days, and along the way, hundreds died. If someone got sick, they were killed by the soldiers. If a pregnant woman stopped to have her baby, she was killed. Anyone who tried to help her was also killed. If someone collapsed from thirst or hunger, he was killed.

  “More than eight thousand Diné eventually made it to Fort Sumner. My mother was lucky. She was young and healthy.15 But many of her friends and family died at the fort. The Diné were held near Fort Sumner in a place called the Bosque Redondo. A large number of Apaches were held with the Diné. There were too many people. The soil was not good for crops, not like the soil in our homeland of the four sacred mountains. And the water was bad. It made the people and the animals sick. There were no herbs for healing. There were not enough trees for firewood. The white man could not provide enough food or enough shelter16 for all of the people they had imprisoned.”

  She turned and looked from me to Dora and to the other children. Her dark brown eyes were solemn.

  “Every Navajo knows of these injustices. Many suffered and many died along the way to Fort Sumner. We remember this time as the ‘Long Walk.’”

  The Long Walk became a pivotal part of our oral tradition, and it is still discussed today as one of the great tragedies of Navajo history.

  But the Long Walk gave us Navajos a sense of shared history and a feeling of kinship that we might not otherwise have developed. It contributed to our feeling of being one people—the Diné—the Navajo Nation.17

  After returning from Fort Sumner in 1868, some families moved back to what is now the reservation proper, but others found plots of land near the reservation, building dwellings and raising sheep and goats. My family was among these latter settlers. The plots, geographically separated from the reservation, became the Checkerboard Area.

  The Long Walk was history that I learned of but would never see. I would personally witness the second great Navajo tragedy, the Great Livestock Massacre.

  But first, I had a private battle to fight—boarding school.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Shipped Off to Boarding School

  Late 1920s

  I slashed at chamisa bushes with a juniper stick. In the ninety-degree heat, sweat dripped into my eyes, but I wiped at it with the back of my free hand, hardly noticing. There were bigger problems to ponder. Dora and I were going to boarding school.

  I picked up my pace, trotting. Now that I was in my eighth summer, I never really thought about the constant motion, following the sheep. I just kept up with the herd like any adult, without noticing the miles that disappeared under my feet.

  A wad of sap clung to a tall piñon. I slowed to pull the sticky mass free.

  Turning to Young Auntie, I held it out to her. “Here. Take some.”

  She took a portion of the sap, grinned, and popped it into her mouth, chewing it like gum. I chewed the remainder. The sap was already softened from the heat, and it tasted fresh. Will they have piñons at school? I looked off into the distant purple-red mesas, and squinted at the blazing sun. Not a cloud in the sky. Not a fence to be seen. Sheep and goat bells jingled softly. And I knew Father and Grandma waited for us. How could we leave them?

  “The government wants Navajo children to learn English,” Father had said.

  But what about herding the sheep? The livestock assured our family’s survival. People on Navajo land needed little money, but the animals were important. Grandfather and Grandmother got almost anything the family needed by trading rugs, mutton, and wool. Few adults had jobs that paid wages.

  Father, however, worked full-time for the Mexican man who owned the local trading post, a place for business and for social gatherings. The man, ni
cknamed “The Thundering Mexican” because of the way he galloped around on his horse, was good to us Navajos. He grew wheat, corn, and other vegetables, and gave nice perks to my family. He helped Father, who already owned horses, to buy a wagon. And Father had come home with treats from the trading post—huge wheels of cow cheese, not as sharp as goat cheese but still tasty, and old inner tubes for making slingshots and other toys.

  The Thundering Mexican became a trusted acquaintance. He suggested to Father, who had kept Dora and me, his youngest children, at home, that we should attend school. Government pressure was inevitable, said the Thundering Mexican, if we weren’t sent voluntarily.

  “Wouldn’t you like to go to school? Learn English?” Father had asked us.

  Sitting just outside Grandma’s summerhouse, we looked at each other. I wondered whether Dora could see the same dread in my eyes that I saw in hers. My brother Coolidge already attended school. And Coolidge was surviving.

  I spoke up first. “If you think we should.”

  “Good. It’s settled, then.” We knew that Grandmother must have already agreed, or Father wouldn’t have broached the subject. So, a verdict had been reached. After the corn was harvested, we would go.

  Every night, before falling asleep, I thought about leaving home. In Chichiltah, I had a sense of belonging, of being where I should be. School was part of the white man’s world. I tried, but couldn’t begin to picture what it would be like. As the month of “big harvest” drew to a close, I dreaded being separated from my family.

  But a thought slipped quietly into my head, then grew noisy: I need to learn English. What if I want—or need—to leave Navajo land someday? Knowledge of English would be crucial.