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.

This 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.

My 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.

Soon 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.

In 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.

We 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.