Code Talker

Rain streamed down the dormitory windows, showing no signs of letting up. The weather had warmed a bit, and plants had begun to grow, but we probably wouldn’t get to go outside all day.

Pretending disinterest, I watched the two older boys who’d been called to the dorm to babysit. The matrons always left for the weekend. When it rained and we couldn’t go outside, we smaller boys were at the mercy of our older schoolmates. Despite the strict discipline at school, or perhaps because of it, many bullies had sprung up among the school population. The teachers and administration usually ignored them, apparently preferring to stay out of their way in a safe classroom or office.

The empty middle of the room seemed huge. Tall Boy grinned at his friend. He tossed him a baseball, keeping one for himself. “Cross over,” he said quietly.

We raced, protecting our heads with our arms. The very smallest cried as they stumbled across the room. Both big boys fired baseballs at us, cheering when they hit their targets.

I dodged and aimed a stare, sharp as a blade of yucca, at one of the boys. I’d never been hit. I hated to see the smaller children cry, but I didn’t dare help them. We’d played this game before, and the bullies attacked anyone who tried to help.

I stood under the steady flow of the shower, the matron watching to be sure I got clean. Water puddled at my feet. I remembered carrying water by bucket at home in Chichiltah. A waste. All this water.

Standing under the warm flow, I yawned, although the five-thirty wake-up was no problem for me. At home I often got up earlier than that. While the matrons were waking any stragglers I’d made my bed. At home I slept on the ground. Life at school, if you only considered the amenities, was much softer than life on the Checkerboard.

As I pulled on my uniform, I hoped there wouldn’t be a fight in the cafeteria that morning. The normal breakfast—oatmeal and prunes—wasn’t bad. But leaving the cafeteria . . . That was another story entirely.

The older boy and girl sitting at the ends of the rectangular table-for-eight finished their oatmeal. Before they could reach for my bowl, I wolfed the remnants of my cereal and placed dish and spoon on the table. The three younger girls sitting across from me did the same. But one of the two boys on my side of the table didn’t finish soon enough. The big girl glanced to be sure the dining room attendants weren’t watching and grabbed his last prune.

A male monitor at the side of the room gave a hand signal, and we put our utensils down and stood, leaving dishes and trays on the table. Another signal told us to exit the cafeteria. I, along with the other boys my age, lined up quickly at the boys’ door. But not quickly enough. The eleven- to eighteen-year-old boys were already there, and the eleven- to eighteen-year-old girls were at the girls’ door. They’d all smuggled out dishes and leftover oatmeal, flinging them at one another as they exited. Soon we smaller kids became targets, with dishes, utensils, and coffeepots flying through the air. We ducked while matrons and administrators ran into the kitchen, leaving us on our own. Bullies barged into the bakery and stole bread, but the cooks didn’t dare intervene.

Later that day, at lunchtime, I lined up single file with the other kids. As we approached the cafeteria, older boys whispered to us behind their hands. “There’s meat today. And bread. Make a sandwich and bring it to me.”

I smiled and ducked into my place at the table. I ate the mutton and bread that day, leaving none. Normally lunch was pinto beans cooked with a little bacon, so mutton was a real treat.

Coolidge wasn’t always there to intervene, however, and I knew that next time I might leave the cafeteria hungry, hiding a sandwich in the kangaroo pocket of my uniform and handing it over to some bigger boy.

From the dorm, we were called to afternoon classes. I waited while the fourth, third, second, and first graders lined up and marched to class. Finally it was my turn—kindergarten. Both Dora and I had done kindergarten at Tohatchi, but we’d been told that we had to repeat it there at Fort Defiance.

In class I dove immediately into my assigned seat. No one spoke except the teacher. “Sit up straight, arms crossed in front of you,” she said, demonstrating the proper posture.

That was usually the way we were told to sit, and everyone in class complied. I glanced over at the kids on the other side of the room. They sat stiff as statues, all trying not to move.

Picture books and pictures taped to the walls helped in the learning process. We children listened, desperately trying to pull some meaning from what the teacher said. I clamped my lips together. As on other days, I volunteered no answers. Anyone who answered incorrectly was punished. It was safer not to volunteer, not to stand out.

Head hanging, I walked slowly to the front of the class. While the other students sat silent the teacher whacked me across the shoulders with the ruler. It doesn’t hurt that much, I told myself, squeezing my eyes closed. But I knew it was wrong, trying to humiliate a person in front of his peers. Father would never do such a thing. The other students sat unmoving, knowing their turn at punishment would come soon enough.

None of the teachers spoke Navajo, and paying attention to the meaningless English was not easy. We’d been warned not to speak to the other children during meals or in class, so we couldn’t help each other out with the teacher’s questions. Even during free time, in the dormitory or outdoors, English was the only language allowed. Since almost none of the new students knew English, this was an impossible mandate.

In class, if a child dared, he raised his hand for permission to go to the bathroom. Of course, he had to ask in English, so most tried to hold it until after class. We weren’t allowed to fidget or to look around at each other. Eyes stared straight ahead. Feet were planted firmly on the floor. Hands and heads remained motionless.

But in order to avoid being hit, we had to learn. Eventually we students began to get the gist—if not the finer meaning—of what was said. And one thing became alarmingly clear: the school planned to erase everything we’d been taught at home.

After the last class of the day, I was ready to vent some pent-up energy. We returned to the dormitory to play inside. We had no indoor toys, so we invented games or played things like hide-and-seek.

Then we marched to a supper of rice or corned beef with cabbage grown on the school’s farmland. After eating and escaping the older kids at the cafeteria, we younger boys returned to our dorm. Bedtime was seven-thirty or eight o’clock.

After we tired of hide-and-seek, we meandered in a cluster to the trading post. It was down the sidewalk from the small kids’ school, just outside the Fort Defiance grounds. We boys had a few coins from doing odd jobs. The same two-story building that housed the older children’s school also provided office space for a host of government workers. Coal furnaces heated the building. The other boys and I broke up coal and received ten cents per bucket. Government workers also hired students to chop wood, and when the plumbing broke, we were paid to haul quantities of water to the offices.

Outside, one of the guys drew a circle in the dirt with a stick. We all shot marbles, trying to make them land inside the circle while hitting someone else’s marble out. After the game, our pockets bulged, and at night, kids crawled around under the dormitory beds looking for dropped marbles.

After Dora and I completed our first year or two, the school began to send a truck at the beginning of the school year to collect us kids from the Gallup area. We met the truck at the Two Wells Trading Post in Gallup, thirteen or fourteen miles from my home in Chichiltah. On those back-to-school days, Father loaded me, Dora, and any other local school-bound children into his horse-drawn wagon. Older brother Coolidge always returned to school early, so he wasn’t with us. Father brought cold food—roasted mutton or goat, fried bread, and tortillas. At the trading post he fed us, and any other children who arrived, while we waited for the Fort Defiance truck.

When the truck arrived, we labored up into its bed, then turned back to watch the trading post and Father disappear in the distance. Tears washed tracks down dusty cheeks. We dreaded the long time away from our families, and those of us who were returning students felt a mounting anxiety. As each slow mile unwound, we drew closer to the hated discipline at school.

To add insult to injury, before I grew older, the bigger boys who rode with us in the truck bed stole the big bags of food our parents had packed for Dora and me.

My friend Robert Walley took matters into his own hands, deciding one winter that he’d had enough of school. He ran away with a couple other boys. They headed southeast, traveling through Arizona into New Mexico.

I kept up with my studies, but I missed Robert. We usually studied together. And other boys had begun to join us. Our group of boys played together on weekends. Without runaway Robert, and several others in the gang who’d escaped with him, weekends dragged.

I walked over to the trading post. The dimes and nickels in my pocket jiggled against each other. I liked having my own odd-job money. For a long while I stood in front of the candy display. It all looked good. Then—as usual—I chose red licorice. I selected a few marbles, paid for everything, and headed back to the dorm.

That night I paid a dime for a movie, finding a seat between two friends who hadn’t run away with Robert. Some school movies were free, but the good ones cost ten cents. This one was a Tom Mix story. Pretty much all the movies were about cowboys defeating Indians. I liked Tom Mix. I also liked Buck Jones and Hopalong Cassidy, both popular movie choices at the school. After watching those movies, some of the little kids planned to be cowboys when they grew up.

The boys in my age group were sitting at lunch when—despite the ban on talking—a buzz went around the cafeteria. Navajo police had captured the runaways at their homes, returning them to Fort Defiance. Tired of studying by myself in my dorm room and spending weekends without my good friend, I felt relieved to hear the news.

A hush blanketed the room. No clink of silverware. No sounds of chewing. I looked up from my beans. Robert and the other escapees filed into the cafeteria dressed as girls. They stood against one wall, their heads hanging, for what seemed like forever. Everyone stared.

I sat like the others, mesmerized by the girls’ clothing. And when I went to get Robert that night to study, I was told that the runaways were not allowed to associate with the other students for a month.

Robert hadn’t told me about his plans to run away. It was all very secretive. But I would not have joined them, anyway. I’d already seen too many kids humiliated after making a dash for freedom. And I didn’t want to leave Dora.

I traipsed through the trees in the school yard, keeping an eye out for the right kind of stick. The day before, I’d shattered my old stick. There! The fallen branch was straight, with a curve at the end.

That afternoon my friends—now ten years old—gathered at a vacant field to play hockey. I swung the new stick a few times, getting used to its balance. When twelve boys had arrived at the field, we chose up sides, two teams of six.

We buried a ball in the dirt. Everyone raced in, using their sticks to unearth the buried ball. Each team fought to hit the ball into its opponents’ net to earn a goal.

After about an hour of play, a younger boy ran up. “The football pants are here!” he said. Everyone abandoned the game and ran down to the classroom that was used as a locker room. Sure enough, a few new football pants lay spread out on a desk. There was never enough money for full uniforms, so we wore the pants with T-shirts.

Most of the boys at school loved football. We made our own cleats, fastening a kind of tack to the bottom of our everyday shoes. Our helmets, made from a canvaslike material, tied under our chins. The flat devices offered very little protection and were nicknamed “fried bread” helmets. If we got lucky, we made it to the locker room before a game in time to get a set of upper-body protective pads. There weren’t enough pads to go around, and we often played pickup games of football without protection.

“Too bad we can’t just take them back to the dorm with us,” Robert said, looking at the new pants. But rules had to be obeyed, and the first boys to get to the locker room before a game got the gear.

It was a Thursday. Cold. The two-and-a-half-mile trek to church was going to be chilly. And the weather was supposed to get worse. It would be colder by Sunday, when we’d again take that same walk. Church. Thursday and Sunday. Without fail.

Another Robert, Robert Adams, and I arrived at church early and changed into altar-boy vestments. It was my fourth year as an altar boy. I could dress in the vestments, reciting the correct prayers with each item of clothing, in my sleep.

“And what about our creation, speaking the Navajo word for ‘light,’ and then the sun appeared. In the Bible, God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and the sun appeared. Same thing.”

The government school at Fort Defiance believed we students should all be Christian, specifically Catholic. I’ve always loved to sing. I sang in the Catholic church choir for three years while attending boarding school. I served as an altar boy for four years.

Boarding school taught me about Christmas, the birth of Jesus. On the big day, each student received a bag of candy and fruit in celebration. And Fort Defiance erected a Christmas tree, a beautiful thing, covered with lights and ornaments. None of us had ever seen one before attending school.

The priests and nuns taught us about Catholicism: the Trinity, saints, and sacraments. The new religion presented new ideas, differing in disquieting ways from the religion we had learned at home. The Navajo Right Way stressed the importance of a life in balance, a respect for all things as part of nature, even rocks and blades of grass. The Catholic Church stood in awe of God’s creation of the world, but did not feel the same kinship with nature that we Navajo children had been taught.

The new religious teachings caused many of us to question where we really belonged—in the white man’s church or on the reservation with our own sacred beliefs. Torn between two cultures, we were unable to fully embrace either one. We didn’t know where we fit. Navajo ceremonies were seen by the nuns and priests as pagan, and the Navajo Holy People were looked down upon. The white clerics had no misgivings about voicing their disdain for the cultural heritage we had brought from home.

The new teachings caused confusion. We students were taught only the white man’s way at school and only the Navajo way at home. And each culture saw the other as wrong.

Late 1920s, Early 1930s