22
Fort Sumner
Will awoke in the afternoon in the little Indian Agent cabin he’d come to call home, surprisingly alert and rested. He felt he’d received some sort of healing himself last night in those ceremonies—both in his relations with the Diné and in his relations with his own past. He felt like he was still tingling all over.
A few days before, he had been despairing of ever being able to establish any significant communication with the Indians. Now he’d discovered intimate details of the Indians’ lives and been invited to participate in ceremonies which he thought he might be the first white man to have ever seen. Then he recalled Dezba’s story of John Blewer, the tutor who helped the Diné to speak English. He must have been included in ceremonies like this; he’d been a friend of the Diné. And because of his friendship, Dezba seems willing to include me in her confidence.
As he headed over to the mess hall, Will gave thanks to John Blewer. How would I have ever managed to communicate with the Diné if it hadn’t been for him? I wonder if Jesse McDonald and the Office of Indian Affairs back in Washington had known about Blewer? That missionary Pastor Benedict had said only an old lady was interested in learning English. That must have been Dezba. But then how had McDonald expected me to work with the Indians if he didn’t know they spoke English and certainly must have known I couldn’t speak Navajo?
Here was another question for the list. This one didn’t seem as sinister. Nonetheless, it seemed that it was he who should have to learn to speak Diné, not the Indians who should have to learn English. After all, this was their country. When an emissary went to see the leader of another nation, like Benjamin Franklin going to the court of France, it was the emissary’s responsibility to learn the language, wasn’t it?
What had Mr. McDonald thought I was going to accomplish out here with no training?
In the mess hall, Will found a pot of coffee, a couple of pieces of bread and some meat that had been left from lunch. He was famished, having eaten nothing since yesterday. Several soldiers drank coffee in the mess hall, but they ignored him. That was fine with him. He sat in a corner facing the back wall so he wouldn’t be disturbed.
After eating, he headed back to the Diné settlement. He saw Gen. Carleton in the distance observing him from the porch of his headquarters, but he pretended not to notice. He thought the general ought to be pleased with his effort to learn the Diné ways, but suspected instead that he probably disapproved of his spending so much time with the Indians. Will reminded himself that as an emissary between the Hairy Faces and the Diné, he had to spend some time with his own side as well.
Carleton had offered to teach him about managing the Indians; he ought to at least talk with the man, let him know what he was learning through his own investigations. He’d observed that the general didn’t pay much attention to the actual conditions of the Indians’ lives; perhaps he didn’t know how really oppressed they were by the conditions on the reservation. Perhaps I can help him see and get him to do something to alleviate the hardships.
As he neared the settlement, Will saw Hasbaá. She seemed to be preoccupied and did not notice his approach. She was carrying the bundle of feathered prayersticks from last night’s ceremony. He watched her, trying to remain inconspicuous, as she held one of the prayersticks up to the sky and then deposited it at the base of a scrub tree. She then went to another location and repeated the ritual.
Will couldn’t help his eyes following her every movement. He wished she’d be distracted and notice him. He wanted her to feel a similar fascination with him. But that seemed so selfish. Here she is, trying to save and heal her people and I’m wishing she were thinking about me. Well, I hope at least she’s including me in her prayers to help the people. Maybe I can help them, too, and earn her attention and affection.
Will watched as she moved from one place to another, each time reverently placing a prayerstick before some natural object—a rock, a dead tree limb, a gulley, a bush, perhaps each the home of a spirit to whom she appealed for aid. When Hasbaá had placed all of the prayersticks, she went into the central hogan—Dezba had called it the medicine lodge. Will could see the old woman was seated near the entrance working at some project.
When Will approached, Dezba looked up and greeted him warmly. She was grinding different colors of corn with a stone pestle to make the pulverized materials that went into the sandpainting.
“Hasbaá is creating another ceremony for Baaneez for tomorrow. Barboncito is feeling much better after last night’s ceremony. Baaneez is even weaker. Hasbaá distributed prayersticks to invite the spirits from all over the area to attend the ceremony.”
“I saw him,” Will said. Dezba did not seem to notice he’d used a masculine pronoun. Maybe they were interchangeable.
“Go inside and watch Hasbaá work on the sandpainting. The energy you put in while you watch can help the outcome.”
As casually as he could manage, Will bent down and went in through the low opening. It was shadowed inside, though light came in through a smoke hole in the ceiling. His eyes took a moment to adjust.
He crouched down and watched silently while Hasbaá lay out the first elements of the design. As she completed a line that divided the painting into four quadrants, she looked up at him with a faint smile. She said nothing, but Will could feel something he valued almost as much as affection: inclusion. He felt like a participant and not an observer. He let his mind calm as he watched Hasbaá’s delicate movements, though there was an undercurrent of excitement just from being in the same room with the mysteriously attractive Indian. He could remember how Hasbaá had looked in the sweat lodge without the women’s clothes. And he kept thinking about Segundo. Will consciously exerted effort in his attention to add to the power of the sandpainting.
After a while, he got up and went outside. Dezba was still working with her pestle. She gestured to him to come sit with her.
“So many of our people have died. Hasbaá tries to save them. Sometimes she succeeds. But we are far from our homelands, and the spirits here are weak. Hasbaá tries so hard. It is because she did not have any chance to save her own husband, Segundo.”
Seeing an opportunity to raise the question he’d been afraid to bring up last night, Will asked, “Is it acceptable to the Diné for Hasbaá to have married a man?”
“Acceptable?” she looked at him curiously.
“You know, morally right?”
Will did not know how to ask his question. He realized that how a question is phrased can already determine the answer.
“Yes. Would it be otherwise?”
“Well,” he continued cautiously, “can you explain why Hasbaá dresses as a woman, when his body is that of a man?”
“She is a person with two spirits.” Dezba looked down at her work. She carefully moved the pulverized corn from the stone she was working on to a small basket, then took a handful of reddish kernels and laid them on the stone. As she began to crush them, she said, “Our peoples are so different. You do not know the ways of the Diné.”
He nodded agreement.
“I will tell you another story.” Her voice changed tone as she began to recount the legend. “A long time ago, before my grandmother and before her grandmother, before the Diné even existed in our homeland, our ancestors lived in a different world. There were four worlds before this one that we are in now. In one of those worlds, there lived one of the first people, known as Turquoise Boy. The mother of Turquoise Boy was Changing Woman herself.
“You see, Changing Woman had flown up into the sky and had fallen in love with the Sun. His brightness dazzled her, and his rays warmed her body. Changing Woman became pregnant from her intercourse with the Sun. But Changing Woman was very independent, not the kind to settle down into a marriage, even with the magnificent Sun.
“After returning to the world, Changing Woman could not decide whether she wanted to have a son or a daughter. So she decided to have the best of both. The result was that Turquoise Boy was born as a combined person, a special sacred being, not either a man or a woman, but both.
“There have always been such persons, born into every generation, ever since then. It is part of the reality of the universe. We Diné believe some people are bestowed by Changing Woman with both the man’s and the woman’s spirits. This makes them superior to the regular man or woman who has only one spirit.
“These people are of great value. When Turquoise Boy was about twelve winters old, there was a great flood. All the people and all the animals ran to the top of the highest mountain. Still the waters kept rising.
“Back then, the animals and the people were friendly and tried to help each other. Eagle volunteered to carry everyone to safety, but it was raining so hard even powerful Eagle could not fly. Coyote gave up in despair, and cried out that they were all going to drown. But Turquoise Boy had an idea. He found a great reed which went high into the sky, higher even than the rainclouds. Turquoise Boy got Woodpecker to chop a hole in the base of the reed and Gopher to burrow a tunnel upward inside.
“Then, one by one, all the people and all the animals climbed up through the hollowed reed and came out on top. They saw they had gone far above the rainclouds, and the reed had planted roots at its crown into the dirt of another world. That is the world of our Mother Earth which we now walk on. And so that is how the Diné came into this world.
“The animals and the humans were saved, all because of Turquoise Boy. Diné feel gratitude for those with the spirits of both a man and a woman. People who are different are a special gift to us all—to help us with their talents, to open our eyes to different ways of seeing things.
“We tell many stories about Turquoise Boy: how he brought the men and women together when they’d been quarreling, how he taught us to raise sheep and goats and how to turn their hair into clothing. We tell these stories to show us about the Two-Spirit Persons in our family.
“Two-Spirit People are very creative. If Turquoise Boy had not come up with that creative idea, all the people and animals would have drowned. Even the animals respect Two-Spirit Persons like Hasbaá. She can communicate with animals, you know. Our family is very lucky to have Hasbaá with her special powers and her closeness to Changing Woman. This is how she helps the sick.”
Will wondered what his father would have thought about that.
“In Diné we call people like her nadleehí, which means ‘Those-Who-Change.’ For she has had a great experience and discovered she possesses two spirits, like Turquoise Boy. The familiar name we all call her by, Hasbaá, means ‘She-Comes-Out-in-Power.’”
Will thought the meaning of Hasbaá’s name surprisingly appropriate. It reminded him of Michael’s saying “there’s a wide world out there.” It was a good idea, he thought, for himself to come out into this wider world in power. But how?
“Two-Spirit Persons can see things from the point of view of both men and women. They see what others do not notice because most people see only as a man or as a woman.
“This word “Two-Spirit” we learned from a nadleehí of the Ojibway people who live far to the north. They are a great tribe. When Hasbaá was young, an Ojibway holy person was staying in our homelands through the winter. We called him Wandering Falcon because he said whenever he saw birds flying overhead, it made him want to join their migration. His vision quest had led him far from home. He told us stories about the many different peoples he visited. We learned much from him. He was very wise. When it was time for Hasbaá to undergo the Ceremony of the Bow and the Basket, Wandering Falcon explained how the Ojibway people understand the role of the nadleehí. He told us about the title Two-Spirit. Even as a child, Hasbaá loved these words, and we have used them ever since in this outfit.”
“Ceremony of the Bow and the Basket?” Will asked quizzically.
“Two-Spirits are sometimes born into the body of a male and sometimes into the body of a female. If they are male-bodied they are called nadleehí, if they are female-bodied they are called dilbaá, which means protector,” Dezba said. “But as they grow up, their character shows them to be two-spirited. If their family thinks they might be so created, then a ceremony is performed. The child is presented with the bows and arrows of a hunter and, also, with the baskets of a wife for gathering food. The spirit that Changing Woman or some other Holy Person has placed in them will show itself in their choosing which utensils to take for their own.
If a female child has been given an aggressive masculine personality, that one will likely choose the bow. Then we understand that that child is truly a dilbaá and will grow up to be a hunter and a warrior and a strong person in the family. If a male child has been given a nurturing feminine personality and chooses the baskets, as Hasbaá did, we say she is nadleehí. We Diné believe a person’s spirit is more important in defining them than their physical body, so we accept them for the way they are in spirit.
“Sometimes you hear warriors tease Two-Spirit Persons, especially the nadleehí. You know, men are often very proud of their manliness; they think it is funny that some males are not so manly. But their teasing is only to honor the difference of the Two-Spirit. It is never done disrespectfully.
“We teach our children always to respect Two-Spirit Persons. They are sacred and holy. They are central to our whole way of life. Whenever there are no more Two-Spirit children born, that is the day there will be no more Diné. The Diné, the animals, the plants, and the beauty of our homeland would all disappear.”
The approach of a soldier broke Will’s rapt concentration on Dezba’s words. She fell silent and looked down at her work as though to block out the presence of the Hairy Face intruder.
“Mr. Lee, General Carleton wants to see you. Immediately.”
Will didn’t want to leave. Not when he was just getting answers to the most important questions. But he knew he couldn’t put Gen. Carleton off, especially since he’d sent a messenger to get him.
He apologized to Dezba, then jumped up and walked back to the fort with the soldier leading the way. He remembered the last time he was led to Carleton’s office. But that had been before he’d discovered the self-confidence that came with learning the new perspective of the Diné.