The Little Navajo Herder

IN AUTUMN

Reading edition

Illustration from The Little Navajo Herder

IN AUTUMN

Page

Home Land 3

The Hogan 4

Night Corral 5

The Cornfield 6

My Mother 7

My Father 8

Possessions 9

The Horses 10

The Sheep 11

The Goats 12

The Lambs 13

The Trading Post 14

Selling 15

The Silversmith 17

Turquoise 18

It Is Dry 19

Sorting the Wool 20

Cleaning the Wool 21

Carding the Wool 22

Spinning 23

Autumn 25

Dyeing 27

Weaving 29

Learning To Weave 30

Flood 32

Sun 33

Herding 34

HOME LAND

The land around my mother's hogan

is big.

It is still.

It has walls of red rocks.

And way, far off

the sky comes down

to touch the sands.

Blue sky is above me.

Yellow sand is beneath me.

The sheep are around me.

My mother's hogan is near.

THE HOGAN

My mother's hogan is round

and earth-color.

Its floor is smooth and hard.

It has a friendly fire

and an open door.

It is my home.

I live happily

in my mother's hogan.

NIGHT CORRAL

The night corral is fenced

with poles.

It is the home for the sheep

and the goats

when darkness comes

to my mother's land.

THE CORNFIELD

The cornfield is fenced with poles.

My mother works in the cornfield.

My father works in the cornfield.

While they are working

I walk among the corn plants.

I sing to the tall tasseled corn.

In the middle

of all these known things

stands my mother's hogan

with its open door.

MY MOTHER

My mother is sun browned color.

Her eyes are dark.

Her hair shines black.

My mother is good to look at,

but I like her hands the best.

They are beautiful.

They are strong and quick

at working,

but when they touch my hands

they are slow moving

and gentle.

MY FATHER

My father is tall.

He is strong.

He is brave.

He hunts and he rides

and he sings.

He coaxes the corn

and the squash plants

to grow

out of the sand-dry earth.

My father has magic

in his finger tips.

He can turn

flat pieces of silver

into things of beauty.

Sometimes

I hide in the wide folds

of my mother's skirts

and look out at my father.

POSSESSIONS

I have black hair.

I have white teeth.

My hands are brown

with many fingers.

My feet are brown

with many toes.

My arms are brown

and strong.

My legs are brown

and swift.

I have two eyes.

They show me how things look.

I have two ears.

They bring sounds

to stay with me

for a little while.

I have two names,

a War Name

for just me to know

but not to use,

and a nickname

for everyone to use

for every day.

But with all these things

I still am only

one little girl.

Isn't it strange?

THE HORSES

I see my father's horses

running in the wind.

I feel little

standing here

when the wind

and the horses

run by.

THE SHEEP

Of all the kinds of sheep,

Navaho sheep

give the best wool

for weaving.

My mother says

that is why

they are Navaho sheep,

because they know best

the needs of The People.

THE GOATS

Goats have long whiskers.

They have long faces.

They have long legs.

Goats are funny, I think.

THE LAMBS

Now that it is autumn,

the lambs

that were babies in the spring,

have grown.

They are almost as tall

as their mothers.

My father takes the lambs

in his wagon

to the trading post.

He takes them to sell

to the trader.

THE TRADING POST

Hosteen White Man

has the trading post.

He has hard things on the shelf.

He has soft things on the wall.

And in a jar

he has red stick candy

that he keeps just for me.

Hosteen White Man

at the trading post

is such a good man.

Sometimes, I forget he is not

one of The People.

SELLING

In his wagon

my father drives

to the trading post.

He takes the lambs

and he takes me, too.

He wants me to know

about selling.

He tells me that sometimes

he trades the lambs,

and sometimes

he gives them in payment

for a debt.

16This time

he will sell them

to the trader.

When we get to the trading post

the trader looks at the lambs.

Then he tells my father

how much he will pay.

I wonder if the lambs

like to have my father

sell them to the trader.

My father sells the lambs

for hard round money

to Hosteen White Man

at the trading post.

Then he chooses cans of food

to put into his wagon,

and he gives Hosteen White Man

some of the round hard money

back again.

My father calls this selling,

but I think

it is a game

they play together,

Hosteen White Man and

my father at the trading post.

My father likes this game of selling.

He did not tell me, but, someway,

I know that he likes it.

THE SILVERSMITH

My father sits before his forge

melting bars of silver

and turning them

into silver raindrops

and silver cloud designs.

Somehow,

my father has caught the wind

within his bellows

and when he lets it go

its breath

turns the silver

to red earth color.

Its breath cools the silver

until it is hard

like something made

of gray water

and then turned to stone.

Today my father sang

as he worked

at making a bracelet

for my arm.

His song

flowed into the silver circle

making it a circle of song.

TURQUOISE

Turquoise is sky.

Turquoise is still water.

Turquoise is color-blue

and color-green

that someone

somewhere

has caught

and turned to stone.

Sometimes, turquoise

is trapped in silver,

and sometimes, in small beads

running along a white string

like beauty following

a straight trail.

IT IS DRY

My father says

over and over,

"It is dry.

It is too dry."

My father means

there has been no rain

to fill the rain pools

for the thirsty sheep.

SORTING THE WOOL

I am helping my mother

sort the wool.

This pile we will keep

to spin into yarn for weaving

because its strands

are long and unbroken.

This pile we will sell

to the trader.

Its strands are broken and short.

The trader will buy it,

but he will not pay as much

as if it were all long.

I wish that all our wool

was of long, unbroken strands.

I like to sort the wool.

It is good to feel its softness,

like making words for something

my heart has always known.

CLEANING THE WOOL

I go with my mother

to beat the wool.

We get the little sticks

and burrs out of it.

We put the wool

on a flat rock.

We beat the wool

with yucca sticks.

I have a little yucca stick

like my mother's big one.

It takes my mother and me

a long time to clean the wool.

CARDING THE WOOL

I sit with my mother

under the juniper tree.

I watch her card wool

with her towcards.

My mother's towcards

are flat pieces of wood

with strong handles

and with wire teeth.

My mother buys her towcards

from the trader

at the trading post.

With her towcards

she pulls the wool thin.

She stretches it in white sheets

like snow mist in winter.

She bunches it in soft rolls

like white clouds in summer.

Under my mother's towcards

the gray wool turns white.

The matted wool turns fluffy

and soft,

and light as baby eagle down.

I like to sit with my mother

under the juniper tree.

I like to watch her card the wool

with her towcards.

SPINNING

My mother's spindle

is a slender stick

on a hardwood whorl.

Under her fingers

it spins like a dancer,

winding itself

in twisted yarn.

Under her fingers

it twists the wool

into straight beauty

like a trail of pollen,

like a trail of song.

24My hands are not strong enough

to card, very well.

My fingers are not swift enough

to spin, very well.

But my heart knows perfectly

how it is done.

AUTUMN

Now that autumn is here,

the flowers and the plants

give themselves to us

for winter will not need them.

The pumpkins are rusty color

with brown and green patches.

They are ripe.

Ripe is such a good word.

I like to say it.

All the plants are ripe

and beautiful with color

now that autumn is here.

26Soon my mother will go

to the mountains

to gather plants for dyes,

and plants for food,

and plants for medicine.

If I were bigger

she would take me with her.

She does take me

when we go

to places near the hogan.

After heavy frost

my father will go

to the mountains

to gather the pinyons.

This year he will go without us.

He will go with some other men

in a truck

that belongs to the trader.

My mother does not like this.

She thinks

my father should take us

with him

when he goes for pinyons.

DYEING

With flower plants

and bark and roots

and minerals and water

and fire,

my mother changes

the colors of her yarns.

My mother puts the dye plants

into the dye kettle

over the fire.

Slowly the water

in the kettle

changes its color.

My mother puts white yarn

into this dye water.

She boils it over the fire.

She stirs it with a stick.

It bubbles and bubbles.

It gives a good smell

like plants after rain.

For a little time

my mother boils the yarn

in the dye water,

and then she takes it out again.

It is no longer white.

It has changed color.

28In this way

my mother changes the colors

of her yarns

to look like

brown earth in morning

or yellow sand at mid-day.

She changes the colors

of her yarns

to look like

black cliffs at sunset,

or black like the night,

and black like the dark clouds

of male rain.

I help to gather the flowers

and the bark and the roots

and the minerals.

I help to carry the water

from the rain pool

by the red rocks.

I help to make the fire

with little twigs.

I look and look.

I see the water and the plants.

I see the yarn in the water

but I do not see

the magic

that I think

my mother must use

to change her yarns

to colors.

When I tell this

to my mother,

she laughs at me.

She says she has no magic

in her dye kettle.

She says the plants

in her dye kettle

are the things

which give colors

to her yarns.

So now,

I have learned a new thing.

WEAVING

When my mother sits

on her sheepskin,

weaving a blanket on her loom

I think it is like a song.

The warp threads

are the drum beats,

strong sounds

underneath.

The colored yarns

are the singing words

weaving through

the drum beats.

When the blanket is finished

it is like a finished song.

The warp

and the drum beats,

the colored wools

and the singing words

are forgotten.

Only

the pattern

of color

and of sound

is left.

LEARNING TO WEAVE

My mother took me in her arms.

We sat together at her loom.

She took my hands

to guide them

along the weaving way.

She showed them how to weave.

We did not weave

straight across the loom.

That is not our way.

31We wove with one color

for a little way up.

And then with another color

for a little way up.

We kept the edges straight.

We wove not too tight

and not too loose

and pounded it down,

pounded it down,

pounded it.

But when I told my father,

"See, I wove this blanket,"

my mother spoke sharply.

"We do not say

things that are not true,"

she told me.

I hid my face away

from the sharp words of

my mother,

but soon my mother's hand

came gently

to touch my hair.

FLOOD

Rain comes hard and black.

It fills the arroyos

with yellow water

running in anger.

Great pieces of sand bank

on the sides of the arroyos

slide into the water

with little tired noises

and are lost for always.

The rain pools fill with water,

rain water,

fresh and clean and cold.

SUN

Sun comes now

to comfort the land

that the rain has frightened.

My father says,

"Sun takes the rain water

from the thirsty land

back to the sky too soon."

But my mother and I,

we are glad the sun comes soon.

Sun does not mean

to rob the land of water.

Sun means only to warm it again.

HERDING

Today I go with my mother.

I go with her to drive the sheep

for I must learn to tend

the flock.

It is my work.

The way is long.

The sand is hot.

The arroyos are deep.

It takes many steps

to keep up with my mother.

It takes many steps

to keep up with the sheep.

My mother waits for me.

My mother takes my hand.

She calls me

Little Herder of the Sheep.

35And so we walk

across the sand.

We walk

till the day is done,

till the sun goes

and the stars

are almost ready

to come.

We walk across the sand.

We walk to the water hole

when day is at the middle.

We walk to the night corral

when day is at the close,

the sheep,

my mother

and my mother's Little Herder.

Before the hogan fire,

when night has come,

my father sings,

my mother whispers,

"Come sit beside me

Little Herder."

I like that name.

From now till always

I want to be

my mother's Little Herder.