Code Talker (6 page)

“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 shelter
¹⁶
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

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, nicknamed “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.

I knew English was a language that involved reading and writing. Not like Navajo. The Navajo word for school meant both “to count” and “to read.” I liked the idea of learning to read and write. That desire drew me toward the mysterious concept of school. I decided I had to at least give it a fair shot.

The day came. We left in the month of “Small Wind”—October—that year. Dora and I climbed into the back of the local missionary's Model T Ford truck. The missionary had agreed to drive us to kindergarten in Tohatchi, New Mexico. I scooted over close to my little sister in the truck bed, making room for several other children. Their shoulders pressed against mine. I sensed their fear.

Piñons and junipers whipped by. I heard my sister murmur softly, “Dora.”

The missionary had just assigned us “English” names.

I smiled at Dora. “Chesssster,” I said, the sibilance of the unfamiliar name hissing between my teeth.

We arrived at the Tohatchi boarding school well after midnight. The school, made of rough stone, nestled into the foothills of the Chuska Mountains. There were four dormitories, one for the older boys, one for the older girls, and one each for the younger boys and girls. The school was a single large building. The dark hid the shabbiness of the school that first night.

Instead of using the name of our clan, the missionary told the school administrators that “Nez” was Dora's and my last name.
Nez
meant “very long” or “very tall” in Navajo. It came from Father, D'ent Nez, who was a very tall man.
D'ent
meant “the man,” so
D'ent Nez
meant “the tall man.” The name had been given to him when he registered on the reservation.

It was odd that the school preferred to use Father's name, not the familiar maternal clan names used by us Navajos.

We were fed milk and one thick cracker, about the size of a small woman's palm. Not much of a meal after the daylong journey. I yearned for some mutton or tortillas, or for corn cooked over the campfire.

“I'm still hungry,” I said, pushing my empty plate away.

Dora quickly swallowed the last of her cracker.

“Time for bed.” The matron, speaking English, pulled me by the arm.

We received no more food that night.

And the food got no better and no more plentiful. Dora and I ate every scrap on our plates, licking our fingers and pressing them onto stray crumbs to pick them up. We arrived at each meal hungry, and left still hungry. We looked for food in the trash pile out back of the school, sometimes finding crumbs or things like spoiled fruit. We wolfed anything that was remotely edible, spoiled or not. Both of us were slim when we arrived at school, but we grew skinny. We felt hungry, always. And we missed our family.

The lack of food took its toll. When Dora and I went home for a visit, we told older brother Coolidge about how hungry we were. One look at our skinny frames and sunken cheeks told our brother and the rest of our family that we weren't getting enough to eat.

“You're not going back there.” Coolidge's eyes flashed. “You'll come to Fort Defiance with me.”

Grandmother and Father agreed, and we two youngest Nez children returned with Coolidge to the all-Navajo school in Fort Defiance, Arizona.

En route to Fort Defiance, we again bumped along in the missionary's Model T truck. Deeply rutted wagon and horse trails served as roads. I gripped a flour sack tightly in one fist. There was no place to stop for food along the route, so we carried lunch in the sack—fried bread, some mutton, tortillas. I wondered whether it would be the last good food we ate before finishing out the year at boarding school.

The missionary stopped his truck. “Time for a break.”

He gave each of us a few sips of water from a canvas water bag that hung over the grille of the vehicle.

Dora looked at me with round eyes. The air-cooled drinking water was thrillingly cold, almost like ice water.

“I hope the food will be better at this school,” I said quietly.

Dora nodded.

We climbed back into the truck.
Is it the right thing, going off to another school?
Uncertainties chased around in my brain, but I knew that Father and Grandmother expected me to do my best.

Around midnight, we arrived at Fort Defiance. Cloaked in dark, the dormitories and school building loomed foreign, forbidding. Dora gripped my arm.

I smiled down at her. “It will be okay.” My doubts had given way to a calm determination to succeed in this alien place.

 

 

Colonel Sumner, a Union commander in the Civil War, had built Fort Defiance in the early 1850s. The outpost was designed as a stronghold for United States soldiers stationed in the western territories. From Fort Defiance they were ordered to quash Navajo uprisings. It was at Fort Defiance that Kit Carson gathered the
Diné
for one of the darkest episodes in their history, the Long Walk to Fort Sumner.

Years later it became a government school for Navajo children, one designed to rid them of the “burden” of their culture and traditions.

Looking back from today's perspective, many former students feel the fort was a bad place for a school. They had bad dreams because of the many deaths and the bodies buried there.

 

 

On my first day at school, I lined up with the other boys. Tears streamed down many faces. The first order of business: a mandatory haircut.

Hair fell in piles. I awaited my turn, hands squeezed into fists as I watched the shearing. I figured there must be some mistake. We Navajos believe in witchcraft. Cut hair and fingernail clippings should be gathered and hidden or burned. Such things could be used to invoke bad medicine against their owner. People should not leave parts of themselves scattered around to be picked up by someone else. Even the smallest children knew that.

I looked around. Stern people herded boys into the shearing room. They spoke only English, and I spoke only Navajo. How could I make them understand?

Hair continued to fall, the strands all mingling together. My hair was shoulder length, black as a raven's wing. I was pushed toward the chair, and I climbed up, gritted my teeth, and closed my eyes as the barber worked. When I opened them I was shaved nearly bald. Not even the best of medicine men could separate my hair from the black piles growing around me.

Dour Indian matrons—non-Navajos, but still Indian—watched. Their hawklike eyes stabbed fear into the heart of any child who contemplated protest. I shuddered, looked around at all the baldy kids.
What will happen now?
Who could guess at the consequences of this total disregard for safe hygiene?

Each child was treated for lice. Then medical exams were performed. The doctor poked and prodded at us as though we were sheep.

The school issued uniforms—one-piece, navy-blue suits that buttoned or zipped up the front. I had brought my own clothes with me, but the matrons confiscated them. This, too, worried me. Like any personal object, clothes could be used in a manner similar to hair, as a device for placing a curse on someone.

I looked down at the new uniform. I didn't feel like myself. I looked around at the others. Everyone looked the same. A little boy near me struggled to fasten the unfamiliar uniform buttons. I bent down and helped him.