Code Talker

Father led our horse, the odd-looking, stripped-down wagon frame bumping along behind. I trotted beside him. “Look!” I pulled at Father’s sleeve and pointed at a tall, straight piñon with my thumb. “That one. Look how straight.”

I felt good being out with the men and not, for once, facing the disapproval of Auntie. Father and Uncle lifted the long two-handled saw from the wagon frame. They lined up on either side of the tree.

Uncle gripped one end of the saw and Father the other. Within five minutes, the twelve-foot tree crashed to the ground. I helped remove the small branches with an ax, and they lashed the long log to the wagon frame. Father had removed the wagon box that morning, so the logs for Grandma’s hogan could be carried on the frame.

I could sense Grandma’s pleasure. A hogan was a real home. Grandfather and Grandmother had lived in a rough shelter made from tree branches and logs since before I was born. They stayed in that shelter through all seasons, not moving from pasture to pasture with the sheep and the younger family members. Their home was cold in winter, hot in summer, but Grandmother did not complain. No one had life easy on the Checkerboard.

Nevertheless, Grandfather, Father, and Uncle had decided it was time for Grandma to have a permanent home, a hogan. She chose the site for the traditional one-room dwelling, a slight rise, backed up to the western side of the box canyon where we lived. The project carried an energy with it that made me hum while we worked.

“The straight sides will each be the length of a log and will come about this high.” Father held his arm out at shoulder level. “Then we will cut the logs shorter and shorter so they step in, making a rounded roof.”

We labored for several days. Each log had to be notched so it would fit and hold tightly to adjacent logs. At the center of the roof dome, a hole was left open for smoke. This was the only opening in the new dwelling, other than the door. I dug dirt to fill the chinks between logs and to keep out the cold in winter, heat in summer. More dirt, shoveled onto the roof, provided additional insulation. The doorway, as always, faced east. Wooden hunting bows were hung over the door on the inside and the outside for protection. When everything else was finished, Grandmother hung a blanket—one of traditional design, that she had woven herself—to cover the door opening.

Before Grandma and Grandpa entered the hogan, they sent someone to fetch a medicine man from his home. The family watched as he performed a traditional blessing. I noticed that Father, who had trained for a while as a medicine man before Mother’s death, watched with an intent, serious expression.

The man entered the door and moved clockwise around the dwelling, blessing each of the four directions with corn pollen. Then he stepped outside, walking clockwise from the east to the south, west, then north. At each compass point, he again blessed the hogan. Last, he blessed the door.

Grandma continued to bless her snug home before sunrise each morning. I watched her many times as she walked outside, took a few pinches of corn pollen from a pouch, and made her blessing to the east, south, west, and north, always moving clockwise. The four directions were very important in Navajo belief. East (ha’a’aah) was where life began, the sunrise. South (shádi’ááh) was where you got warmth. West (e’e’aah) had to do with the way you spent your day, what was ahead and behind, also where the sun was carried away at sunset. North (náhokos) was where everything was put to rest.

The pollen used in Grandma’s blessing was collected at harvesttime, in September. The women in my family harvested the corn and saved the pollen. They shook the corn tassels into a pan or used a rag to remove the pollen. Then they sorted out any impurities—like corn silk. The pure pollen was stored in a jar or a flour sack and, usually, blessed by a medicine man. Medicine men went from house to house in the summer, blessing corn pollen. Only blessed pollen could be used in a medicine bag.

Most families had lots of pollen on hand, but several times I saw Grandma use ash when she ran out. She put a pinch on her shoes, not her tongue. Then she made the blessing. Ash helped Dora and me when we couldn’t sleep. It got rid of nightmares. Grandma put ashes from the fire on our arms or our forehead.

In the new hogan, Grandma’s cook fire, built right on the dirt floor in the center of the room, was no longer threatened by wind or rain. Eventually, Father hauled a large oil can, with no bottom, from the trading post. The can had a fireplacelike opening. It did double duty as stove and fireplace, sitting in the middle of the hogan. In its lid was a hole, into which Grandpa inserted a pipe. The metal pipe stuck up through the roof, letting smoke exit the room.

Once the hogan was built, I savored the days like today, when the sheep grazed close to home, and we returned at night for dinner. Eating with Grandmother and Grandfather was much better than cooking meager fare over a campfire. As I approached the hogan, I was hit by the full, rich aroma of roasting mutton, Grandma’s home-cooked meal.

When I entered, a litter of prairie dogs slept curled up inside, near the cook fire. It was a cool day, topping out somewhere around seventy. Not like the ninety-plus-degree days we’d often endured in summer.

I picked up a prairie dog, stroking its soft back. The little “dog” burrowed against my chest. I offered it some goat’s milk, which had been strained through a flour bag and boiled for human consumption. It sucked it from my finger, eating hungrily.

I put the little rodent down and stepped outside. The prairie dog followed, standing with his front paws up, like a little man. When I went back inside, the prairie dog barked bravely at the outside world. Then a real dog barked somewhere off in the distance, and it scampered back inside.

I helped Grandma spread flour sacks that had been ripped open and sewn together in a circular shape. They made a table on the dirt floor. The mutton sizzled over the fire, fat spitting onto the open flames. I could hardly wait to wrap it up in a tortilla and eat it like a sandwich.

When it was finally time for dinner, everyone sat on the dirt floor, with the bowls of food placed on the flour sacks. I looked around at my family, raising my brows at my sister, Dora. She smiled and nodded at me. Everything about the hogan felt luxurious after the makeshift shelters on the trail. There were no books, no electricity, and no plumbing, but we were snug and secure. I reached for a tortilla and rolled some mutton inside.

Oil lamps cast wavering shadows across the single room. Outside, the relaxed nasal bleat of a lamb and the higher cry of a goat let us know that all was well. A puppy’s bark, a litter from one of the sheepdogs, rose above the soft whisper of wind in the evergreens. And inside, the almost magical fragrance of burning juniper lulled the family after a hearty meal.

A cricket chirped just outside. Grandma looked up at the ceiling, then down at the empty dishes sitting on her burlap table. She turned her gaze to me. “When I was only a girl . . .”

Grandma told us about her childhood. My eyes drifted closed. It had been a long day. In less than a month, school would resume for me, Coolidge, and Dora. I wished that I could stay home and spend the winter with my family. As I drifted to sleep, I pictured snow, deep around the hogan. When I was very young, sometimes my brothers and I stripped naked in the snow, and Father rolled us in a snowbank. This Navajo tradition toughened us children against winter cold. Afterward, we rushed to sit by the fire and warm up. The laughter of my brothers still chimes in my head.

I woke when it was still dark, the remnants of a dream tugging me back toward sleep. With my eyes closed, I reconstructed the dream. It was autumn. Neighbors, aunts, uncles, and cousins had come to stay for several days, maybe even a week or two, bringing blankets and food—fresh and dried meat and canned goods. There would be feasting and storytelling around the fire.

I loved spending days with the sheep and goats, but I also looked forward to the social gatherings. There, stories I knew and loved were told for the hundredth time. With everyone squatting around a big fire outdoors, tales of current events were spun, things like new hogans being built, or animals being sold or traded. We children listened as adults traded stories about weather and crops. The Diné had no electricity and no radios. News was spread at these gatherings—things like births and deaths, the price of wool, the amount being offered at trading posts for our Navajo-design blankets and rugs. It was exciting just to think about it.

But I would be back in school by then. A feeling of dread lodged in my stomach. I wouldn’t be there when winter came, when the range of the sheep would be limited and they’d stay in the big box canyon surrounding Grandma’s home. I wouldn’t be there when Father boiled the unhusked corn to feed the animals, and sometimes the Diné, too. When snow covered the grass, the livestock would also eat juniper and piñon branches. Along the road to Chichiltah, the trees were bare up as high as the sheep and goats could reach. And herders cut branches for their livestock when the animals couldn’t reach them on their own.

I turned over, thinking about how snug Grandma’s hogan felt. I liked that it backed up to the west side of the canyon, only a hundred yards or so from the steep red rock cliffs that formed the canyon’s rim. The cliffs provided the back wall for a sheep corral and also gave shelter to Grandma’s home. They helped protect animals and people from frigid winter winds.

Early 1930s