We lighted fires that night and had a gathering. The Long Knives left us alone, but we could see them watching us from the trees while we chanted our songs and our prayers. Little Rainbow came and we sat together in the grass, playing with the children. She took the girl with her when she went off to sleep, but in the morning gave her back to me.
Sometime in the night, Tall Boy slipped into our camp and lay down by the fire. We found him there in the morning, his clothes torn and his feet bare and bleeding. He ate the mush I brought to him but would not talk. He had the same shamed look about him that I had seen when he fled from the Long Knives, his lance lying broken upon the ground.
The trail led south and eastward across rough country and we went slowly because of the old people. We had two wagons with good horses but they were not enough to carry all those who needed help. We made scarcely a league during the whole morning.
At noon two large bands of Navahos overtook us. They were mostly men, some of them wounded in a fight with the Long Knives. They went by us with their eyes on the ground, silent and weaponless.
That afternoon we saw many bands of Navahos. They came from all directions, from the high country and from the valleys. It was like a storm when water trickles from everywhere and flows into the river and the river flows full. This was the way the trail looked as night fell, like a dark-flowing river.
Little Rainbow did not come for her child when we camped that night and I asked my mother what I should do.
"There is nothing to do," she said.
My sister said, "You were foolish to take the child. You have enough to carry without her."
"We will find the girl tomorrow," my mother said, "or she will find us. In the meantime she knows that her child is safe."
We did not find her the next day. Tall Boy went out looking at sunrise, but soon returned, saying that a soldier had threatened him. The soldier told him to go back to his clan and not to wander around or someone would shoot him.
All day as we trudged eastward I looked for Little Rainbow. I asked people I did not know if they had seen her. Everyone shook their heads. In a way I was glad that I did not find her. I was carrying three rolled-up blankets and a jar filled with cornmeal. It was a heavy burden even without the little girl. But she was good all the time, making happy sounds as the two of us went along.
As on the day before, Navahos by the hundreds came out of the mountains and forests to join us.
The river flowed slower now and many old people began to falter. At first, the Long Knives rode back and forth, urging them on if they lay down beside the trail. But so many fell that afternoon when the cold wind blew from the north that the soldiers did not take notice anymore, except to jeer at them.
The march went on until dusk. Fires were lighted and people gathered around them. Our clan said little to each other. We were unhappy and afraid, not knowing where we were driven.
"The soldiers tell me that it is a place of running water and deep grass," my father said. "But it lies a long walk to the east."
He said this every night as we huddled around the fire. I think he believed it. He wanted us to believe it, too.
"Cast your eyes around," he said. "You will see many people sitting beside their fires. They are hungry but not starving. They are cold but they do not freeze. They are unhappy. Yet they are alive."
"We are walking to our deaths," my mother said. "The old die now. The young die later. But we all die."
Tall Boy stared at the fire, saying nothing. He had said little since that day when he tried to throw his iron-tipped lance and had failed. The Navahos, his people, were captives of the Long Knives and there was nothing he could do to free them. Once he had been haughty, his wide shoulders held straight, his black eyes looking coldly at everyone. I wished, as I sat there beside him, that he would act haughty once more.
My sister took the little girl from my lap, where she was sleeping. "She is heavy," Lapana said.
"No wonder," my mother answered. "She eats a lot, as much as I do almost. And food is scarce. Every day there will be less until there is none."
I took the child back and wrapped her in a blanket and lay down with her in my arms.
The fire died away and I could see the stars. I wondered what the little girl's name was. She was like a flower, like a flower in a spring meadow. I gave her that name—Meadow Flower—as she lay beside me.
The north wind was cold and far off among the trees the horses of the Long Knives were restless.
18
A NEW MOON showed in the west and grew full and waned and still we moved on.
The hills and the piñón country fell behind. There were few streams anymore. When we came to water we drank deeply and filled our jars to the brim. The land was covered with gray brush and rolled away so far that it hurt the eyes to look.
By this time there were thousands of Navahos on the march. We spread out along the trail for miles, each clan keeping to itself by command of the soldiers, who rode at the head of the column and at the rear. At night the Long Knives posted guards near all the Indian fires.
We now had six wagons, each drawn by two horses. At first they carried only water and flour and blankets, but as old people grew lame or sick the supplies were taken out of the wagons to make room for them.
For those who died, we scooped out shallow holes in the frozen earth and laid them there, putting rocks on the graves to keep the wild animals away.
My grandmother was the second old woman to die. Somehow she got herself out of the wagon where she had been riding and stumbled off into the brush. She lay down and pulled a blanket over her head. She wanted to die and drove us away when we tried to help her.
Food grew scarce. The soldiers sent some of the young Navahos out to kill deer and buffalo, but hunting was not good.
People began to eat their pets and from then on I never let my black dog out of sight. Before I went to sleep at night I put a leather rope around his neck and tied it to my wrist, as I had at the crone's hut.
In the beginning I fed the little girl first, which did not please my mother or my sister. When food ran low I fed her from my share so they could not complain. My back got very sore from the sling I carried her in. Tall Boy fashioned a carrying board from brush and pieces of cloth. This made my load seem lighter.
The country changed during the next moon. The flatlands rolled up into hills and we crossed many draws where water ran. Grass was springing everywhere, which helped us feed our starving horses. Every afternoon rain fell and our clothes never dried out from one day to the next.
It was about this time that the little girl became ill. We had a chant for her one night. Then the medicine man went over her from head to foot with his gentle hands. He drove away some of the evil spirits so that she smiled and was better.
A large band of Navahos came straggling down upon us. They were ragged and hungry and many were sick. Many, they said, had died on the trail. They came from the rim rock country far to the west. Now the line of people struggling along stretched from one horizon to the other. In the daytime flocks of buzzards followed us and at dusk coyotes sat on the hills and howled.
Spring came overnight, with fleecy clouds and larks soaring from the grass. It made us happy to know that winter was behind us. Then there was word that we were only two suns march from the end of the trail, from a place near Fort Sumner.
The place was called Bosque Redondo and we reached it at noon of the third day. It was in a bend of a big looping river, flat bottomland covered with brush.
We were on a small rise when we looked down upon it first. My mother had not cried since we left our canyon. But she cried now as she stood there and looked down upon this gray country that was to be our home.
I planned to go out in search of the little girl's mother the next morning after we reached Bosque Redondo. But the child woke me before dawn with her cries, so I minded her all day and sent Running Bird to look for her mother. She came back about dark, not having found
her. That night the medicine man came and touched the little girl and we had a sing.
The night was half over and I was sitting beside the fire with the little girl in my arms. She held one of my fingers tight in her small fist and I was singing a song to her about a bird in a pine tree. I sang another song to her and another before I was aware that she was no longer listening, that she had died quietly in my arms.
In the morning I went out to search for her mother. I went to hundreds of lean-tos and fires and when night came I lay down in the brush and went to sleep, wondering what I could say when I found her.
In the morning I started out again. A young man told me that he had seen the girl I described to him and she was living on the bank of the river near a tree, which he pointed out. It was far away and it took me until noon to make my way through the hundreds of people working to make shelters for themselves.
I saw her before I reached the river and she saw me. We ran toward each other through the thick brush.
There was an open place covered with pale grass and we both stopped as we came to it and looked at each other.
It was a short time that we stood there yet it seemed long. Then I went over to her and put my hand in hers. I could not think of anything to say, but I did not need to. She had been crying and I knew that her other child had died too. We put our arms around each other and stood together in the spring sun without speaking.
19
THE GRAY FLATLAND between the banks of the river was divided among the clans. Everyone shared alike and each family built some sort of a shelter—a cave in the earth, a brush lean-to, or a hut of whatever things could be gathered.
Our hut was made of driftwood we found along the river and strips of old canvas. It kept out the sun but not the winds and it was hard to walk around in without bumping your head on something.
Food was soon gone, so the Long Knives passed out parcels of flour to all the families. There were few among us who did not get sick, for the flour was made of wheat, which we were not used to eating. And the water from the muddy river was bitter.
There were several hundred Indians already living at Bosque Redondo. They were Apaches who had been driven out of their country and were being held prisoners by the Long Knives.
The Apaches are smaller than we are, but thick and very strong. They are also quarrelsome. They want their way about everything and if they do not get it they fight. They fought with us as soon as we came, saying that the land belonged to them and that we were stealing it.
My father and two other headmen from the clans told them that the Navahos did not like Bosque Redondo. If the Apaches wanted it they could have it. All we wanted was to live on it until the Long Knives found us a better place. These words did not please the Apaches and they tried to hurt us whenever they could.
When every family had shelter and food the Long Knives sent all the men who were able to work with a hoe to break up the earth and plant it with corn and with wheat, which we did not like. Then they set them to digging ditches to carry water from the river into the fields.
Thus summer began at Bosque Redondo, our new home. My mother and sister and I, like all the other women, had little to do. There was no corn to grind. Wagons came filled with flour. White soldiers stood in it up to their knees and passed it out to us on big wooden shovels. There were no sheep to tend or wool to shear and weave into blankets. There were no hunters to bring in hides to scrape and stretch and make into leggings. We were idle most of the time.
It was the same with Tall Boy. He would come over every morning after breakfast and sit around in front of our hut until the sun was well up. Then he would wander down to the river and lie in the sun some more. He liked to show the other young Navahos the big white scar on his shoulder, where the Spaniard's bullet had struck him. Only he told them it was one of the Long Knives who had given him the scar.
The other men were also idle most of the time, once the fields were planted and the water ditches dug. Like Tall Boy they enjoyed talking about the days before they came to Bosque Redondo. They sat around and bragged about things they had done. They made threats against the Long Knives, but the threats were weak and spoken quietly. They gossiped worse than the women. The heart had gone out of them. The spirit had left their bodies.
It was a bad summer in Bosque Redondo. There were ghosts and witches everywhere and many people sickened and died. Then the first crop failed. There was little rain and our men had trouble leading water up from the river. Some of the fields were planted again, but winds blew the seeds away and fall came without a harvest.
There was much talk after that about the Long Knives who lived in the gray-walled fort in the midst of our fields. Hardly a day went by that some new story did not spread from hut to hut about them. The wheat flour would run out before winter came. The flour was cursed and if we went on eating it we would all die. The Long Knives wanted us to die and so we would, in some way or another.
One story came to use from three different men, who had been in a place fifteen days' journey to the north. Each man brought the same story, so it was surely true. The place was called Sand Creek and it was near a town which was in the mountains. They said that a village of Cheyennes and Arapahos were asleep in their lodges. There was a white preacher and he rode out from the town with some men and when they came to the sleeping village he gave an order: "Kill and scalp all Indians, big and little," he shouted, "since nits make lice."
Without warning, every Indian was killed. After ward scalps were taken and shown to the people in the town.
This story was told many times and everyone feared that the same thing would happen to us. The Long Knives would steal out from their fort and kill us all while we slept. Yet our men did nothing. They sat and shook their heads, but made no plans to defend themselves or their families should the Long Knives come. Even Tall Boy did nothing but talk about the soldiers and how they wanted to see us die.
One day I asked him, "What are you going to do if the Long Knives fall upon us in the night? Will you cover your head and wait to be slain?"
He looked at me and bit his lip. "The gods will tell us what to do," he said. "Now they punish us. When the time comes they will speak and we will hear them."
My father talked this way, too, and many of the other men at Bosque Redondo when summer was ending.
20
BEFORE SNOW CAME, when the first north wind blew, my mother and I and my sister started to work, strengthening our hut.
Tall Boy's father knew one of the Long Knives. I think that he gave the soldier a valuable belt of silver and turquoise. Whatever it was, the white man gave him a speckled horse, too old for the soldiers to ride any longer that they were going to kill. We borrowed this horse and went across the river and cut willow poles, which we used to buttress the thick walls and the sagging roof.
Tall Boy, besides getting the horse for us to use, helped put the poles in place and heap up the earth against them. This pleased my mother. She began to say a word to him now and then and even smiled a little when he was around.
Therefore I was not surprised that Tall Boy's father came over one evening after we finished working on the hut and talked to my father. Then the next day Tall Boy's two uncles came over and talked. The talks went on every day until the new moon and then they made a good marriage bargain, though my mother did not get the old speckled horse, which she wanted.
Relatives came to the wedding. There were so many that all of them could not get inside the hut. Tall Boy went in first, then my father and me. Tall Boy and I sat on a blanket in front of a basket of corn gruel and a jar of water with a ladle. My father crouched nearby. Relatives filed in and sat on both sides of us. Then my father made a cross with white corn pollen over the gruel and a circle around the cross.
First I dipped water with the ladle and poured it over Tall Boy's hands and he did the same to me. Then he dipped a finger into the basket toward the east and ate a pinch of the gruel and I ate a pinch also. We ate pinch
es from all the different directions. Then the wedding was over and everyone came forward and began to feast.
The elders, as they feasted, gave me advice about being married. One aunt told me not to scold. My unmarried aunt told me to be patient. Two others told me the same thing. My cousin told me to be polite to everyone, even to strangers. There was advice until the relatives left at sundown but I was so excited that I did not hear much of it.
Our hut was too small before Tall Boy moved in with us. Now there was no room, so we made a lean-to of willow poles and earth nearby. It was really more of a cave and in it we stored the things we did not use every day and food if we had more than we needed, which was not often.
Snow came early that year and melted and then a freeze came with a cold wind and the earth was as hard as stone. The white soldiers drove their wagons through the village every week and ladled out flour. But the ladles were smaller than they had been in the summer. Flour always ran low before the wagons came again and people began to go hungry. All but the Apaches, who were fed first.
Once more there was talk that the Long Knives wanted us to die. Before winter was over all the Navahos would starve to death, the old men said.
Snow fell and the wind piled it up around our hut so we had to dig a tunnel to go out. People fell sick and died. Scarcely a day went by that you did not hear a chant for the dead, the wind blowing and the voices singing. Often times it was hard to tell one from the other. It was then, at the time the big snow melted when so many were dying, that I made up my mind.
My husband and I had gone down to the river, using the old speckled horse to gather firewood. After the wood was cut and loaded on the horse, we stood on the bank for a while to get our breath. The gray walls of the fort were the color of the sky and the sky was the color of the land stretching away in the sunless morning. Some soldiers marched up and down, beating on drums and blowing horns.