MOTHER EARTH

Hosteen Sagnetyazza said quietly in Navajo from where he sat on a sheep pelt, "As the sun comes up tomorrow I will go to Mother Earth."

The old medicine man did not mean to commit suicide. Sagnetyazza stated a fact: he knew the hour of his death. His statement did not startle me, for I knew aged Navajos sometimes predicted the day they would pass on. Very few whites can believe this possible. But, incredible as it appears, it always happened just like they said. His statement only gave me sorrow that at last the law of the way of all flesh must be obeyed.

No one knew his age, but it could have been anywhere from 100 to 110. He had been a paternal friend all my life, that of my father and uncles before me, and of a great uncle who first came to trade among the western Navajos of Arizona in the 1870's. Most of them were gone, and here, too, this August day of 1941, the last of an era this patriarch represented must also cease to be.

"I am dividing my property," Sagnetyazza continued in the same gentle voice. "What will you have, my grandson?"

This was the ancient custom of the Navajo, giving their property to members of the family before death stilled their voices and closed their eyes forever. That I would also share as an "adopted" grandson didn't enter my mind while he waited patiently for an answer. His one surviving son, nearly eighty years old, his grandchildren and great-grandchildren sat in silence inside the hogan below the mesa rim.

He was married and had two children when the great roundup of the Navajos began in 1864. Most of them were imprisoned at Bosque Redondo in New Mexico. The old people related horrible tales of the Long Walk, The Trail of Tears, into captivity, as they described it. But not my old friend. His was one of seven families at Navajo Mountain never captured. A detachment of Colonel Kit Carson's NewMexico Volunteers plunged all the way across the Navajo country to Navajo Mountain. They established a heliograph station on its heights to guide fast-riding troopers in pursuit of detected Indians. Those seven families found refuge in the deepest, impenetrable canyons entering the Colorado River. There they remained until the captive people were permitted to return to the old bikaya in 1868.

Sagnetyazza learned the endah rite from an uncle. It is the one called "squaw dance" by the white man. He practiced it all his life, the combating of evil spirits afflicting those suffering from sickness caused by a dead enemy.

He was respected and loved by his people. Well he might be, for he was most wise in many things. When there were those who posed as witches in order to steal from others, he talked against it with enlightenment. He also assumed physical action when necessary. Almost single handed, he stamped out child marriages. "The young should not be married until they are matured enough to assume the responsibility of raising a family," he declared.

Best of all, he stopped the marriage of little girls, eight to twelve years old, to old men. He ended this form of child prostitution by logical persuasion and citing shameful examples.

His knowledge of sheep, cattle, horses and farming in the semidesert country was unequalled. His advice and counsel guided his people into thrift and industry. Whenever misfortune struck a family he provided help to re-establish themselves. All these things he had done, a man who spoke not one word of English, but who recognized and advocated the value of the White man's education. Amazingly brilliant in native intuition and logic, he could reason shrewdly through any labyrinth of difficulties.

He was neither a savage nor superstitious, as people often think of pagan Indians. Sagnetyazza believed in prophets and wise men, just as the White man's Bible teaches. Above all he placed his trust in Mother Earth, living a life without sin lest she be offended. I remember the afternoon in 1928 when the gentle old man rode his pony near to watch me and seven Navajos completing stone walls for the new Inscription House trading post on Red Mesa for my father, beside the Navajo Mountain road twenty-five miles from Tonalea. Previously the store was operated in a wooden building. After observing us awhile he said, "Rocks in the walls come from the ground. The mortar and plaster is clay. Timbers over the doors and windows are cedar. The window glass, metal on the roof and the sawed lumber also once came from the ground. All that issues from Mother Earth pleases Mother Earth It is well and good. This building will long endure. Inside these walls will be a place of happiness." For the twenty-three years longer that my family lived there, it was a place of happiness and security.

All Navajos are religious, but his creed was a forthright simple one. He believed in golden rules as the White man, even though expressed differently in another language. You did not lie to or rob your neighbor, but treated him as a brother. Help was given when needed, for others might do the same for you. You helped the poor, the lame and blind, and took care of the widows and orphans. Always he believed and practiced justice, faith, hope and charity. As the most honored and respected patriarch in his district, he was often called upon to act as a judge (more nearly an arbitrator) in disputes between litigants. Through the mass of wearily extended explanations he worked skillfully to factual conclusions. He seemed to know instinctively the just decision acceptable to all, and made it. Usually his court was the shade of a tree, and I never heard him hand down a ruling that was ever disputed or resented. Always his advice on future conduct was accepted and followed.

In the matter of justice, morality and religion he believed all men were brothers, the sons of Mother Earth. He never favored a Navajo claimant because he was such, against Paiute or Hopi Indian, or against tourists in the far country beyond White man's law, or against white traders. He said they also were from Mother Earth, who loved all her children, and all possessed equal rights in her benign presence.

Bred in the land of matchless deep canyons, the mesas and red valleys, he had served his people faithfully and well in the far reaches of their Turquoise Empire. He had been their headman, a leader and a guide to better ways of life. In any other tribe he would have been a renowned leading chief. His integrity, honesty and righteousness among any people would have been acclaimed. It grieved me to realize the inevitable, the immutable process that youth led to hoary old age and death. He wasn't sick now, nor had he been for years. A few age infirmities plagued him, of which he never complained, yet nothing more. A small, weazened man, he wore a purple neckerchief tied around sparse gray hair above an ageless wrinkled face. He was still strong and able to ride his pony. But I never doubted his matter-of-fact statement, knowing from past experience living among the Navajos it would be so.

That morning a grandson appeared at the trading post. When he reported that Sagnetyazza wanted to see me I asked in quick concern if the old man could be ill. "No," the elderly grandson replied. "He just wants to talk to you." So I had come. The immediate family, who had already heard him predict his death, were silent all the while, their faces a little harsh because of the grief bottled up inside them. Sagnetyazza interrupted my reverie by listing his property already apportioned to descendants. There yet remained some, and again he asked what I wanted. While he talked unhurriedly my eyes strayed across the hogan beyond his head. On a log peg hung his medicine bow, used in all ceremonies he ever conducted. The bow case and quiver of mountain lion skin and the arrows were hardly ten years old. But the bow came from a war bow that had been carried against the Spaniards three centuries before. The story I knew well, as handed down in his clan history. The old Navajo war bows were at least six feet long, so hard to pull and cumbersome to other Indians they could not use them. When this bow ended its usability to some remote ancestor it had been cut into three pieces. Each became a symbol, a medicine bow of great religious power because it had slain enemies in battle. Sagnetyazza inherited it from his uncle who taught him the endah rite.

In the distant past the wood had finally lost its elasticity with age, and had been repaired and reinforced in two places. It would shoot arrows only a few yards, which was all that symbolism required anyway. When I glanced away from the bow and case Sagnetyazza said, "So it will be. I have no nephew to carry on my work after me. You shall have the bow.

While I protested mildly that the gift was too much, it was just as well that I accept. According to ancient tribal law it should have passed into the hands of a nephew. But that was impossible, for he had outlived them all. Sons were not eligible to receive a father's medicinal paraphernalia. Also it would be the least thing of value to give away, thereby not depriving some of his numerous descendants of subsistence property. A few were not too well off in sheep and cattle. Dismissing the matter, Sagnetyazza began fondly reminiscing the past. He mentioned his first meeting with my great uncle, whom Navajos called "Chi Inchongey," or No-Good Hat, because he wore an old one. Then he drifted to incidents and episodes of his long and close friendship with my father and two uncles; next, to the days when he first knew me.

He seemed content, even happy to be going out of this world. A tired old man, long past an allotted four score and ten, certainly his work on earth had at last been concluded.

Once he chuckled, asking, "Do you remember the time long ago when you came home from Kinthlonda (Flagstaff, Arizona)? I asked you, coming in out of the rain and cold, if you had something for your grandfather's weary bones.

"You gave me a flask of brandy. Each night before going to bed I took one small swallow of this medicine, so that in the morning the aches would be gone when I faced the rising sun to pray."

Talking on a few moments longer, he said to everyone in general, "I wish to be alone now. I want to sing once more the Blessing Way Chant, so that I can go to Mother Earth in the dawning when beautiful dolii (bluebird) sings."

So I held his gnarled hand for the last time, trying not to let him discover the brightness of my eyes. The staunch old man would have been shocked at a man's displayed grief. As I turned away one verse of the Blessing Way Chant seemed to sing in my mind: "With beauty before me, I walk. With beauty behind me, I walk. With beauty all around me, I walk. In beauty I walk. In beauty it is finished."

That verse was most appropriate, the sum and substance of all his being, a fitting requiem for a frugal man who had done nothing but good. In beauty his life was finished.

In the early morning when I opened the trading post door the son walked in, face marked with black charcoal of mourning. Opening the robe carried in his arms, he wordlessly presented the medicine bow and case. This was the inheritance from my Navajo grandfather, which today hangs in my office.

It is not only a symbol of remembrance, but the token of a man who lived true to his conscience and for his people.

That afternoon we buried him in a plain pinewood box as requested, in a concealed grave. He rests forever in the enfolding arms of his beloved Mother Earth, an honored old man who will be long remembered.

AUGUST

The Hopis gather the snakes, It is long past time for rain.

High on the mesa dancing will begin.

Out of the kiva ancient mystery comes.

The masks are on. The chanting, high and thin,Starts, and the thumping feet turn into drums.

Far on the desert rim the thunder breaks And white clouds turn to steel above the plain.

Now it will rain.