Arizona Humor

DINÉTAH: IF I FORGET YOU

From Dinétah, the rituals for curing were not possible.

"The mourning of our wom-en makes the tears roll down into my mustache," Barboncito said. "I can only think of Diné-tah. I am just like a woman, sorry like a woman in trouble. I want to go and see my own country. If we are taken back to our own country, we will call you our mother and our father. If you should only tie a goat there, we would all live off of it, all of the same opin-ion. I am speaking for all of the people, for their animals from the horse to the dog, also for the unborn."

Barboncito was indeed speak-ing for all The People. A vote taken among the Navajos the next day was unanimous. The treaty was signed on the spot and The People immediately began the return half of their historic Long Walk.

Etcitty made his own Long Walk when he was a much younger man. He had gone to a technical school in Phoenix and was hired as a transit man on a surveying crew. During his first winter on the job, his wife's uncle and her brother were killed within a month in unrelated traffic accidents. The widow of the uncle became ill, and the Hand Trembler called in to diagnose the problem said an Enemy Way was needed to restore all concerned to health and beauty. The Enemy Way ritual requires eight days. Without leave time, Etcitty faced a choice between keeping his job and family responsibilities. He made the Navajo choice and came back to live "among The People."

The dilemma faced by Etcitty is far from unusual. Fairchild Semiconductor's big Shiprock plant cut its employee turnover rate drastically when it made provision for ritual leaves during the fall-winter ceremonial season. On this particular August night, the errand which has brought us to the Kayenta motel is an effort to find a "listener."

I write mystery novels set on the Navajo reservation, and Etcitty accuses me of using him as the model for my hero - a Navajo tribal policeman. Therefore, since a listener is one of the characters in the book-in-progress, Etcitty wants me to talk to one of these shamans and learn for myself how they diagnose the cause of illness. Our hunt is for a cousin of his who practices this science. It had taken us from Moenkopi to Goldtooth, and hence to Coalmine Mesa, and from there to Ganado, and then northward to Many Farms. We had driven through a landscape as empty as any in America. The scenery has put Etcitty into a talkative mood.

He talked of family ties, of values that reverse materialism, of the magnetic pull of ceremonialism, and of how a Navajo content on the lonely landscape of Dinétah learns the meaning of loneliness in the crowds of Phoenix. While he talks, we top a hill On Indian Route 8. Etcitty pulls the car to the shoulder and gestures through the windshield. Spread below us is the immense sink that drains the southwest slopes of the Chuska Mountains. It is a wilderness of sunbaked stone, gray caliche, wind-cut clay red as barn paint, great bluish out-croppings of shale, the pock-marked dingy white of old volcanic ash, and the cracked expanse of salt flats where the mud formed by the "male rains" of summer tastes as bitter as alum.

This is the ultimate in how erosion can ravage a land. Everything is cut and worn and tortured. It is axiomatic that the desert teems with life. But there is no life here. Not even creosote bush or cactus grow. It is a landscape totally without hospitality, offering neither food, nor shade, nor water. The white mapmaker would call it Desolation Flats.

"Our name for this," says Etcitty, "is Beautiful Valley."

RANGE CALICO

The early West was a man's country. Until it became more settled, "range calico" was as scarce as sunflowers on a Christmas tree. This scarcity of woman made her kinda awe-some to the cowboy an' he looked upon her as bein' some-thin' holy an' plumb precious. No other breed of men onEarth respects women more'n the range man. He's apt to be pretty techy in protectin' her character. He feels that a man's pretty low that'll bring a woman into contact with dirt or allow her to touch it of her own accord. He places her on a high fence because he wants to look up to her. He wanther feminine an' fluffs all over. Because he's shy as a pup with his first porcupine, she-stuff shore makes him git his spurs tangled up. In her presence, he's as polite as a tin-horn gambler on payday. He don't jes' tip his hat like the city man, but uncovers his head completely, even if he does feel half naked with his hat off. Most of his natural talk's half-soled with cuss words, an' he might let one slip now an' then in her presence, but he'll never use a word that's vulgary if a woman's around. In fact, when he first meets her he's too shy to do much talkin'. A feller might be as full of verbal