Navajo Storytelling

NAVAJO CULTURE STORIES GRANDMOTHER TOLD

Several times out in Navajo country, people had told me fragments of traditional tales, the sort you read in books, about Coyote, Monster Slayer, and Changing Woman. But I'd never attended a family storytelling session, that quiet time when a Navajo grandmother sits in her hogan and passes on cultural lore to her grandchildren.

Then one morning the telephone rang. It was a Navajo acquaintance inviting me to a storytelling session with his aunt, a medicine woman in her 70s.

"I'd love to come," I said. "What kind of stories do you think she'll tell?"

He hesitated. It was the sort of pause that, I've learned, means I'm seeing something one way, and the Navajo I'm talking to is seeing it another.

"My aunt said it's okay for you to be there," he answered. "But I just want you to know, I'm really glad it's not wintertime any more."

It was early February, but by the Navajo calendar, spring had already arrived. That happened when thunder awakened from its winter sleep and rolled across the sky."Winter stories are too sacred," he continued. "People write about Coyote, Monster Slayer, and all the others. But it's not good. It takes something from the Navajos."

I assured him I didn't want to do that, and he said he'd call when his aunt was ready.

A week went by. Then two. Then three. I called him.

"Not yet," he said. "Soon."

Finally one morning in April, I headed north on U.S. 191 through the heart of Navajo country. The highway rose and fell with the juniper-covered hills. It dropped into a broad plain, passed rust-colored clay erosions and hidden canyons, then wound north through red sandstone. A stark black mesa appeared in the west, disappeared behind hills, reappeared.

South of Round Rock, an unmarked road made a steep turn down from the highway. I crept along the hardpan until the track twisted upward and arrived at a cluster of buildings. An eight-sided plywood hogan, an outhouse, a ramada, and a pen for sheep and goats surrounded a small frame house which had no electricity or running water.

The animals bleated. Invisible behind the pen's high wooden walls, they marked the wind with a thick odor.

A girl who looked about 14 but turned out to be 11 was showing her sister, three, how to use a plastic slingshot. Other children played catch and climbed a horse trailer as if it were a jungle gym.

"Time for storytelling," their father, and the man who had invited me there, called out. They disappeared into the hogan.

He pointed westward toward the mesa I'd glimpsed from the highway. Columns of falling snow

connected the Earth to the sky. "That's the sacred Black Mesa. It's a female mountain. And that" - a red and black mountain to the east - "is the sacred Lukachukai. It's male. On the other side, they call it the Chuskas."

"What makes them male and female?" I asked.

He hesitated. "They're alive, just like us." His aunt was busy, he said. His mother would tell the stories.

Inside the hogan, the only light came from a translucent window in the door and the smoke hole, an open space about two feet square at the center of the ceiling. Near the walls, sheepskins lay across the sand floor, leaving an inner circle of sand. A row of 10 corncobs strung together with string like a miniature ladder hung near a bag of loose cobs on the unplaned boards by the door. Sheets covered other walls, slowing the migration of sand. The children sat quietly near the door with their mother.

The storyteller, a woman with graying hair and dark, solemn eyes, looked up but did not rise. A medicine woman herself, she had spent the past week presiding over a healing ceremony in this hogan.

Since my last visit to the reservation, I had learned more about Navajo etiquette. An outsider, coming in, owes a gift, something practical, not fancy. I'd selected a smoked ham that didn't need refrigeration. I handed it to her.

She patted the ham in acknowledgment, then turned to her son. "Go see your mother. She's shearing sheep."

"Isn't this your mother?" I whispered, confused.

"That's how we talk in Navajo. My mother's sisters are my mothers, too." He said something in Navajo, and his mother laughed.

When he returned, his mother, now in the role of the storyteller, moved to the hogan's place of honor, the wall opposite the door. The children came forward and sprawled on sheepskins in front of her. I settled a little way back, on the bare floor beside the stove.

The storyteller's son lifted the corn ladder and the sack of cobs from the wall and took them to her.

"Navajo stories don't have a beginning, a middle, and an end," he whispered to me. "They're a circle, like a hogan, like the Earth, with a lot of different things inside."

The storyteller adjusted her dark cotton skirt around her. Another skirt, worn for warmth, peeked out beneath it.

She motioned toward the sheepskins, and her turquoise and silver bracelets glowed against her purple velveteen blouse. "That's where we slept last night, my sister and me," she told the children. She spoke in a musical voice that turned English into a tonal language like Navajo. Her glottal stops added a staccato beat. "It used to be, when I was growing up, we lived in hogans all the time. Just one room, like this, with a dirt floor. No water. No electricity. Everyone sleeping in the same room. Everybody talking Navajo."

One child still held a baseball mitt, another a baseball, a third a soft drink, but their faces had turned earnest with attention and expectation.

"This morning a Navajo woman from Scottsdale came to me in this hogan. She is from Black Mesa, the most traditional place of all, but her mother, her grandmother, they didn't teach her right. She said, 'I'm having trouble with my job. I want you to pray for me. But I don't know anything about Navajo ways.' "

The storyteller looked each child in the eye. "That's why you have to know your culture. You have to say, 'Nálí [Grand-mother], tell me the story about corn. Nálí, tell me the story about mountains. Nálí, tell me the story about rocks.' These are powerful things. These are to protect you."

The wind rattled the top of the stovepipe against the guy wires that held it in place in the center of the smoke hole.

The storyteller continued, "It's spring-time. So today we're going to have a story about the corn, like the stories my mother told when I was a little girl. Okay?"

The children looked at her.

"Say Aoo'," their father prodded.

"Aoo'. Aoo'. Aoo'. Aoo'. Aoo'." Five soft voices said "yes" in Navajo.

"What does April mean in Navajo?" their grandmother asked.

"Spring," said one of the youngsters.

"Daan-ch'il," she replied. She held her hands up, palms together, then opened them, palms outward. "When something opens like this, we call it Daan-ch'il. That's what spring is, the time when the plants open."

The children repeated the Navajo word.

Then she said, "There are plants outside. Haza'aleeh, like parsley. And there are other plants called wild onions. You take the coat off. There's another coat inside. You take that coat off, there's another coat inside. Navajos tease each other. They say, 'Don't be like onions, wearing too many coats.' "

The storyteller led the children outside.

Near the blue water barrel beside the ho-gan, she stooped and pulled a flat, lacy plant from the sand. Her skirts grazed the Earth. "Haza'aleeh," she said. "Who plants it? We don't. Mother Nature does. The first plants you see in the springtime, you bless yourself with them. How many Navajos do that today?"

The children followed her back into the hogan. "This is our own Navajo food, native food," she said, holding the haza'aleeh out for them to see. "My sister and I were gathering some the other day. We put it in the ashes. Then we dry it. Then we go like this."

Her fingers made a crumbling motion. "Then we roast the corn and grind it with a grinding stone, and then we cook the cornmeal with haza'aleeh in it. Then we serve it to kids."

The children watched their grandmother as intently as if she were an adventure movie. Only the three year old looked around.

The storyteller picked up the ladder ofcorn. “What makes a Navajo woman to be proud and happy is to see her corn growing,” she said. “My sister can’t live without her cornfield. Today nobody talks about this kind of stuff to young kids like you. You got to understand these things. These plants. Why we have cornfield. Why plants grow. What Mother Nature has for you.” corn. “What makes a Navajo woman to be proud and happy is to see her corn growing,” she said. “My sister can’t live without her cornfield. Today nobody talks about this kind of stuff to young kids like you. You got to understand these things. These plants. Why we have cornfield. Why plants grow. What Mother Nature has for you.” She stopped for a moment, then said forcefully, “You are plants. You are nanise’, meaning something grow. You grow. You’re just like those plants.” Robin, the three year old, picked up handfuls of sand and tossed them into the air. The others ignored her.

“This is what your greatgreat cheii [grandfather] and your great-great nálí do,” the storyteller continued. “They fix the field. Your great-great cheii planted the corn, four seeds at a time, and your great-great nálí walked behind him and patted the corn in place with her feet.” She closed her eyes. “It takes all day. You get thirsty. Keep on. Keep on going. Keep on going. Can’t stop to eat or drink until the field is all planted.” She looked at the children. “I think that’s what my mom used to say. I don’t remember.” She formed her hands into a square. “The Navajo people plant two kinds of cornfields. One is square kind. That’s male. One is round kind.

That’s female. You are male and female. White corn, that’s boys and men. Yellow corn, that’s female.” Holding up the cobs, she taught the children the Navajo words for white corn, yellow corn, blue corn, and red corn. “This red corn, this naadá’álchíí, is very important. You always have to plant four kernels of naadá’álchíí in each field. It brings the rain to the cornfield. That’s the way I was taught.” The storyteller ran her hand gently along a colored cob of corn. “Corn is the Holy People. That’s why you don’t laugh at corn. That’s why you don’t throw corn away. Corns have feelings just like you.” The storyteller paused. Her son knelt beside the homemade barrel stove and shoved in another stick of wood. The fragrance of burning cedar filled the hogan.

Softly the storyteller began, “Once upon a time, this man picked a perfect ear of corn. The others in the field weren’t so perfect. He said, ‘This one is no good. That one is no good.’ So he left all the others. But as he left, he heard someone crying.” Her Kinaaldá, a ceremony honoring her transition to womanhood.

“The plants talk to you, but you don’t know it,” she said. “The plants won’t say ‘Jaclyn.’ They won’t say ‘Robin.’ They use your spirit name, your real name. Will say, ‘There’s so and so walking.’ When you grow up and think you’re alone, you’re not alone. The plants say, ‘There goes my grandson. There goes my kids.’ “That’s why your nálí always has corn around. That’s why you don’t ever pass corn. You pick it. You eat it. You put it on yourself. You take it home and plant it. The corn is Holy People.” I leaned forward. This was the sort of ancient tale I’d been hoping for.

“The man returned to the field and found that the corns were sitting there crying. ‘No one wants us. We’re ugly,’ they said.

“So the man picked one. Then another.

He talked to them. He picked them all,every one.

“That’s how the Holy People said to the Navajo, ‘Respect the corn.’ You can’t just pick the perfect one. You have to pick every piece. You have to pick even the smallest piece. Even the ugliest. It was the Holy People who told them to pick all the corn.” The storyteller smiled at her oldest grandchild, Jaclyn, 11, who had just celebrated She folded her hands.

“Okay, you understand?”

Five soft voices said,

“Aoo.” “Whatever little I told you right here gets into your spirit, gets into your thoughts. You are all plants. You are all growing.” She stopped talking, and the children left.

For the first time, the storyteller looked my way.

“Everybody says, ‘Oh, that’s just mythology,” she said. “But it is not mythology. These stories come from the Holy People. They’re sacred.” I nodded. “Is it all right to write the names of the Holy People?” She shook her head.

“No.” “So the story came from the Holy People, but the corn is the Holy People, too?”

She nodded. “All the plants are Holy People.”

The storyteller’s son hung the ladder of corn on the wall. The storyteller dozed on the sheepskins. A few grains of reddish sand rained in through the smoke hole. The children played outside the hogan’s door.

The storyteller stood up. It was time for me to go.