February 8, 2010

Not much going on around here, so my posts may be less frequent until something interesting happens.

Let's see, the team we were rooting for won the SuperBowl and we laughed ourselves silly at the commercials, especially the one with Oprah, Letterman and Leno. Our SuperBowl party was even worse than theirs, we only had two people there--us. We actually didn't get that one, because we don't watch any of those people. I had to learn on MSN today that Leno and Letterman are feuding. The ones that really got me laughing were Betty White getting tackled in the mud, the Doritos one with the guy catching it in the neck, and of course the bridge of people that rescued the stranded Bud Light truck.

This morning I caught a walk with Debbie and her dog Meggie, and the stray that half the housing area residents are feeding went along. I had to laugh when I found a handful of kibble on the chair on the porch of the bunkhouse. Even the temps are feeding him. I was going to throw him the hunk of salt pork I flavored some red beans with the other night and Budd stopped me. Don't know what difference it would make, the neighbors on both sides of us are feeding him, and he hangs around our door all the time anyway.

I'm reading one of the novels Tess brought over, wonderful story about Edward Curtis, the famous photographer of Indians and western landscapes from the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of twentieth. It's a novel within a novel, very intriguing. Almost finished, then it's back to less literary fare.

Literally nothing else going on, so I'll be back when something interesting happens.

February 6, 2010

Budd and I briefly discussed a day-trip to Farmington today, and then rejected the idea for different reasons. I mentioned that it was supposed to storm, and Budd declared he had cancelled that order. Must have worked, because we have sun today.

I wanted to finish my observations on the Long Walk book that I summarized yesterday. It was interesting to me that there seemed to be some formulas that the stories followed, and I'd love to know how that came to pass. Won't ever know, I'm sure, because the stories were collected almost 40 years ago from people who were elderly then. And I don't intend to become a scholar of Native Americana, although I'll always have some interest.

There were three or four of the stories that concerned women being taken by other tribes or Mexicans as slaves and then escaping, and one concerning a woman who set out on her own after escaping from Ft. Sumner. In every one of these stories, but none that I remember about men, a wild bird or animal was said to have guided the women back to their families. Owls, coyotes, and in one case a bear, caught the attention of each woman, who followed until they were in familiar territory. Once near home, the women who had been slaves had to undergo a purification ceremony before being allowed back into the dwellings.

The majority of the storytellers explained that their ancestors had brought the disaster on themselves because of their raiding, stealing and killing. A few said they weren't thieves, and were indignant that the entire tribe was punished for the transgressions of a few. The same storyteller might say at a different time that the government in Washington had decided that the tribe should be saved and not be wiped out, and that's why they were taken to Ft. Sumner to protect them from their enemies. There was, however, an overwhelming sense that their memories were of poverty, near starvation, and being beset by enemies on all sides.

I had to keep remembering that the values of present-day civilized society were not necessarily shared even by our own ancestors, much less by a people whose mere survival depended on being able to get food wherever they found it, by whatever means necessary. Some of the storytellers told matter-of-factly about raiding parties obtaining sheep, cattle and horses. Others said that their ancestors traded wool and woven blankets for their livestock. Still, the livestock that they were dependent upon weren't native to this land, so they had to get the original stock somehow. Due to their poverty, that almost certainly came from raiding.

One story has really stuck in my mind, possibly because the original party set out to trade far north, all the way to Salt Lake City. They had passed through an area that had a few houses made of wood and some fields nearly ready for harvest. There was also a stone house, evidently abandoned, where they took shelter on the way north. Arriving back at the same place on their way home, they noticed that only the stone house was still standing, the others had been burned to the ground. The storyteller, somewhat disingenuously said that the trading party wondered if their carelessness with their fire had caused this, and that they were wary lest other Whites in the area blame them for it. Apparently they did, because the house was attacked, and four of the trading party killed there. The others, one by one, made attempts to leave the house and escape on horses, including one 'fat white' one that belonged to the attacking Whites.

At this point, the story began to sound almost like the three little pigs, as the last person to leave the house (the storyteller's grandfather--who could have been any male member of his clan from that generation) took the white horse and, though wounded in the back, overtook the previous three. As he came to each one, the other person was near death, and begged the escapee on the white horse to kill the other's horse so as to deny it to the pursuing whites. Three times this happened, and then the last escapee lost consciousness, only to be found by members of his family who had come to look for him.

In retaliation, once he was recovered, the sole survivor took a band of three or four men to go back and kill the attacking whites. Coming upon a house with two men, two women and three children, they killed all of the occupants and decided that this was enough retaliation for the seven Navajo who had been killed. It's hard to know whether to take this story literally, when it sounds almost like a Brothers Grimm formula. If we are to do so, though, it's the height of irony that the innocent family was killed in place of the attackers and in the next few minutes the storyteller was complaining of the treatment of the Navajos in rounding up the whole tribe for the crimes of a few.

Last observation: the sequence of events and even the flow of time in these stories is very confusing. Whether it is true of the members of the tribe today or not, these Navajo storytellers were not at all concerned about those details, but were very precise as to the location where the events took place. This entire region is crisscrossed by the trails of memory in these stories. I'm looking forward to the ground drying out a little so we can walk where they walked.

February 5, 2010

Happy birthday to my sister-in-law, Jeanie. We don't have as many February birthdays in the family as January ones, but Jeanie starts a pattern of a birthday every couple of weeks now through mid-June.

Last night I finished the book I've been reading, Navajo stories of the Long Walk. It's been an interesting read, because all the stories were passed down to the tellers who contributed to the book by relatives who had either endured or escaped the ordeal, with few exceptions. When the stories were collected, in 1973, the tellers were mostly elderly, ranging from 70 to 100. A couple of them who were younger had heard the tales from their parents who had been born after the tribe returned to their homeland. After twenty or more stories, they began to take on the characteristics of modern-day urban legend, with some very unlikely happenings mixed in with those that were no doubt as true as memory could make them.

Admittedly, the reading of one book doesn't make anyone an expert on the true happenings of the time, so the following observations are simply what came to mind as I read. I found myself wondering what life had been like for the tribe prior to the traumatic events of the early part of the 1860s. From the stories, it appears that this time so disrupted the normal life of the Dineh that they have little memory of how it was before. One storyteller did mention that at the time of the happenings he was telling, it had been about 200 years by his estimate since the Dineh had known peace.

I found a university article stating that the tribe had consisted of a population of about 12,000 at the beginning of these events. They evidently did not live in large villages or groups, but were semi-nomadic, with extended families assisting each other in farming, hunting, and gathering during the warm seasons, and subsistence during the winters. Earlier in the century, encroachments into the territory the Dineh considered their lands of origin by Mexican and American settlers created pressures that resulted in Navajo raiders taking livestock and occasionally killing the people. Soldiers were dispatched to the territory to try to negotiate peace between the various factions, but according to the article, events escalated until in 1864 when a force of some 1000 Navajo attacked Ft. Defiance, a US Army post about 30 miles from Canyon de Chelly as the crow flies. In other accounts, I have read that the US Army at the time believed the Navajo would not have been defeated as easily as they were if they had been a centrally-governed tribe, with a strong chief or council to direct the fighting. From the Navajo stories, it seemed that the raiding bands were never more than a handful of men, sometimes characterized by the storytellers as 'bad' Navajo.

The famous Kit Carson was ordered to suppress the fighting and did so by waging a brutal war of economics in addition to killing. The Navajo found their corn crops destroyed and their livestock killed or rounded up and herded away. The Dinah who weren't killed were told to report to Ft. Defiance to be given food and shelter. In the winter of 1864, some 8000 who had either reported voluntarily or been forced to Ft. Defiance were then forced to walk approximately 300 miles to Ft. Sumner, in present-day New Mexico, and were interned there for the next four years.

From the Navajo point of view, it seems that many Dineh were unaware of why they were being hunted and killed, but they accepted the reasons they were given. The storytellers speak of extreme poverty and a bare subsistence lifestyle for the majority. They talk about the hopelessness of defending themselves when they had only bows and arrows or ancient muzzle loaders that didn't work very well, compared to the Army's rifles. They also believed that their traditional enemies, the Apaches, Comanches, Utes and eventually Hopi, were issued horses and rifles by the US government to help annihilate them. And, almost all of the storytellers say that it was because of some bad Navajos who were raiding, stealing and killing thereby bringing this catastrophe upon them.

Whether through well-intentioned ignorance or some other motivation, the food that the Army supplied to the Navajo both during their brief stay at Ft. Defiance and on the Long Walk was unfamiliar to the Navajo and caused serious illness. The stories speak of not knowing how to cook it, so that they attempted to make something like cornmeal mush out of flour, boiling bacon as they would mutton or trying to eat unground coffee beans. Dysentery and dehydration caused many deaths, as did the extreme cold.

There are stories of people who could not keep up with the march being shot and left where they dropped--old people, women with babies or who needed to stop in order to give birth. Sometimes the stories become formulaic, which is why they began to seem like urban legend to me. Perhaps one woman who was in labor was shot, and became a 'relative' in the stories of countless others. Or perhaps the brutality was more widespread. Whatever the case, it is ingrained in the memories of these people as an injustice that they didn't deserve.

Upon arrival at Ft. Sumner, the hardship didn't cease. The little available water was bitter and caused illness, the food was still a problem and there was little firewood to sustain the people through the winter, much less for the next four years. And the Army proved incapable of preventing raids on the Navajo by the local Comanches and vice versa. It is estimated that 25% of the tribe perished during this time. Whether that number pertained to the 8000 who started for Ft. Sumner or the entire tribe, I don't know. Many had been killed in the fighting, and some hid in the canyons in this area and north of Navajo Mountain.

Particularly interesting to me because of our sojourn here at Canyon de Chelly, or Tseyi in the Navajo language, were the many stories of those who fled here to resist the roundup by hiding in this rough country. Although Col. Carson did pursue them into the canyons and kill many (also destroying crops and livestock here as elsewhere) a few escaped and continued to hide, never making the trip to Ft. Defiance or Ft. Sumner. Others surrendered after clan members were sent to tell them they would be safe if they reported to the encampment at Chinle. The stories are interesting as they speak of numbers; often they said 'everyone was killed except two'. Yet, in recounting what happened with those survivors, there were often families of 3 or more mentioned. I came to the conclusion that these were again formulaic aspects of the stories; that the numbers weren't to be taken literally but to indicate severe losses.

In 1868, treaties were finally established, and the defeated Navajo survivors were allowed to return to their homelands. Some of the stories have to do with the hardships endured on the return trip also.

Next time I post, I want to talk about the story formulas and another interesting aspect of how they are told.

February 4, 2010

The big news today is that I didn't break my hip. As I was walking over next door with a load of laundry, I stepped on what looked like bare sidewalk, and boom! Even though I was wearing snow boots with a tread, the ice was so slick that both my feet went out from under me--I have the vague impression they actually flew over my head--and I landed hard. My first thought was, 'what happened'? Taking inventory and realizing I wasn't hurt, I picked up the dirty laundry that had flown out of the basket and then picked up myself. Oddly enough, there isn't even a visible bruise, though I can feel some soreness where I landed, and I'm a little stiff. I think one thing that saved me from serious injury, aside from being well-padded where I landed, was that the point of impact was somewhere between my tailbone and my hip, right on good old gluteous maximus, maximus being the operative word. As I thought about the consequences if I had broken something, I was very grateful for strong bones and good padding.

I promised to talk about the Hubbell House today, and I've been looking forward to it. Some of the people I know are reading this won't know that I used to work as a historical research assistant at Colonial Williamsburg, but that is why I'm interested in old structures and the cultural context. When the Hubbell family sold the trading post, home, historic belongings and land to the NPS in 1965, it was a treasure-trove of hundreds of thousands of business records, artifacts and John Lorenzo Hubbell's personal library. All of this has been preserved and is available for researchers.

JL Hubbell purchased the business from a previous trader in 1878, just ten years after the Navajo were released from internment at Ft. Sumner, NM. It has been in continuous operation ever since, even today under NPS ownership. He began building the house shortly afterward, and I do wish I had taken notes on my tour, because I seem to remember that the guide said it took several years to finish. That may have been because at the time, people built for current needs and added on as required.

Today the house consists of a great hall, one large room that served as parlor, dining area and gathering place, flanked by two large bedrooms on the east and three slightly smaller ones on the west. I believe it would be approximately 27 feet square, and faces north. There is a veranda-style porch on the north side, complete with porch swing that may have been a later addition.

As we stepped into the porch, my guide lifted the seat of a wooden bench and handed me some shoe coverings, warning me not to absent-mindedly wipe my feet on the doormats and inadvertently tear the coverings. Then we stepped inside onto a Navajo rug. Now, having just seen prices for even small rugs in the thousands of dollars, I was horrified to be walking on one, even with shoe coverings. I mentioned to the guide that I couldn't believe people were allowed to walk on them. She replied that it was a reproduction, which made me feel better for a few seconds, until she added that it was forty years old! It was in amazing condition, as was the second one further toward the back of the main room, which had been reproduced at the same time. Understand, these reproductions were woven by Navajo rug-weavers in the traditional way, with the original hung behind the loom to serve as a pattern. We aren't talking about made in China, here.

All of the bedrooms were roped off, but the simple furnishings were easy to see and marvel over. The 'master' bedroom had a large brass bed in one corner, and a smaller one in another. It didn't look like a bed that one would place a baby in, so I asked about it. The answer was that the two boys of the family had been expected to give up their bedrooms to guests (one of whom, I later learned, was Theodore Roosevelt) and they slept in the smaller bed more often than in their own rooms for that reason.

One of the rooms had originally been the kitchen, a room of about 8 or 9 feet square, and had served up to 200 people a day as the family hosted many Indian travellers when they came to trade. At some point, it was decided that it could be a fire hazard, so a separate kitchen was built in back. I wasn't able to tour that as the snow was drifted quite deep and hadn't been cleared. Although the park is open, it is the slow season. In fact, I was the only person on this particular tour.

One of the remarkable things I noticed, first in the trading post and then in the home, was that there are hundreds of Indian baskets hung upside down on the ceiling. For some reason, it seemed wrong to me, but it wasn't until I mentioned that to the guide that the reason came out. Navajos, and I presume other tribes, don't hang baskets upside down for the same reason we don't hang horseshoes that way. Superstitiously, something that was meant to hold food and other good things shouldn't be allowed to hang in such a way that all the good things, including luck, would fall out. These turned out to be JL's personal collection that his daughters decided on a whim and in his absence to get off the walls so they could hang pictures and paintings instead. Collectors would be aghast, as they actually nailed these delicate woven baskets up. When the property was sold to the Park Service, it was with the stipulation that nothing be changed in the house. Of course, over the years, gravity would have taken its toll on the baskets also, so NPS did surround each basket edge with clear plastic clips to preserve them as much as possible.

Other artifacts in the house that I noticed were an old Singer treadle sewing machine, similar to the one my grandmother owned and one that I later purchased and sewed my own clothes on. No, I'm not so old that I couldn't have had an electric machine, I just liked the treadle. On a lovely old upright piano was a picture of Hubbell's daughters. They were beautiful, in the Gibson Girl style. I wondered aloud if people used to have thicker hair than we do now, and the guide laughed at me, saying there was padding under those rolls of hair. Funny what they thought should be padded versus what we think should be. Colorful quilts and woven Indian blankets of course were spread or folded on every bed, and one was hung in the doorway between the 'master' bedroom and the girls' room on the east side of the house.

On the west side, the bedroom furthest north was given at one point to the schoolteacher that Hubbell brought to teach the local children. I understand she later married the youngest Hubbell son. The last two rooms of course belonged to the boys, but were often given up to visitors. Every inch of the walls was covered with family photos or paintings, the most prominent being of an adorable 4 or 5 year-old in a beautiful white lace dress. The guide told me that this young lady, a granddaughter of JL Hubbell, was not as sweet and demure as the painting depicted, as the dress was destroyed by being worn into a mud puddle shortly afterwards. That was when I learned that Teddy Roosevelt had been a vistor, also, as he was a great admirer of the little girl. He purportedly told her to hurry and grow up so she could marry his son, a young man of about 20 at that time.

Another intriguing structure that is connected to the house by a rock walkway is a small stone building in the shape of a hogan, which appears to be furnished. I say in the shape of, because this one has glazed windows, and I haven't noticed windows in any of the hogans we've seen. The supervisor of this park had mentioned to Budd that there was a little guest hogan he could use if he wanted to stay for a week to work on their computers rather than travelling back and forth, so I wonder if that was it. If so, I may want to accompany him on this side trip, just for the novelty of staying there. I'd love to see Ruby's rug in progress, too.

Februaru 3, 2010

Just a quick entry today as I'm running back and forth to the bunkhouse to do laundry. On Sunday we took note that someone had come to stay there, but got word today that he didn't mind my going in to use the washer and dryer. I'll have to bake him some cookies or something.

Budd has mentioned several times, but I never thought to include it here, that there is some archaeological excavation going on behind the Thunderbird Lodge cafeteria. Our temporary neighbor is here to help with that. Now I'm curious, because Budd says the dig is not even as large as our kitchen, and it's been going on for quite some time. Maybe I'll wander over on a sunny day and see if they will let me take pictures.

Talking about that made me think it might be interesting for people to know what goes on behind the scenes in the NPS. Not that I'm an expert, by any means. I can only talk about what I've observed and Budd has mentioned. I do know that there is a crew here that's called the 'watershed' crew. Their main function is to identify and uproot vegetation, especially large trees, within park boundaries that aren't native to the area. I don't know whether the cottonwoods that surround the housing and camping areas are native, but apparently they are exempt if not. It's in the floor of the canyon that the watershed crew works. Our neighbor Tess is part of this crew.

There are also at least two archaeologists that seem to be here on a permanent basis. I'm assuming that they don't excavate all the time, as this is an area that has been studied for quite some time. On the other hand, there are numerous 'unimportant' ruins, i.e., small, not in good condition, and remote. If I have occasion to talk with either of them, I'll ask.

Of course, there are the rangers, and these are essentially law enforcement personnel. This is an unusual site in that it is populated by Navajo, not set aside as wilderness like many of the other parks and monuments. There are dwellings and what is considered private land right up to the canyon rim, and even in the canyon floor. The area is also under the jurisdiction of the Navajo police, I assume. I guess the rangers' main duty is to keep the tourists under control.

Then there are maintenance personnel, who take care of the physical plant for the administrative and housing areas, and possibly garbage duty within the park. And finally administrative personnel, which is Budd's bailiwick. While I haven't observed the interps and others working at this site, I did get a chance to peek into the administrative office at Hubbell. The interps were working on a new brochure there.

Budd often has amusing anecdotes about his workday. The one I remember best is the day that he encountered Tom, the supervisor, and told him that he (Budd) was going to have to replace his beard-trimmer to keep looking like Tom. Tom laughed and said it was good that they looked alike, because now everyone thought he was everywhere and he thought they were working harder.

My first load of laundry should be ready for the dryer now, so I'm off. More about Hubbell Trading Post and the Hubbell home tomorrow.

February 2, 2010

I guess the groundhog saw his shadow. We are still in the weird (for here) pattern of 2 sunny or partly-cloudy days, followed by 2 or 3 days of rain, snow or mostly cloudy. It does seem to be gradually warming up a bit though. Our forecast is for low 40s in the upcoming few days, and almost 50 for the weekend. That will feel downright balmy with the sun out. \

Aside from a quick walk with my neighbor and her dog and another win for the Jazz, not much exciting going on around here. So I'll continue with some tidbits I learned at Hubbell Trading Post.

I mentioned watching Ruby, the rug-weaving demonstrator, at her loom for part of Friday, and the visitor loom that I tried out. A little more about that may be interesting. I've posted a picture of the NPS herd of Churro sheep to show where the wool comes from. These sheep were brought back to a pure or nearly-pure breed with effort by locating the descendants of the ones given to the Long Walk survivors upon their release to return to their ancestral lands. Many had been interbred with other breeds, but a few pockets of pure-bred Churros existed in the back country. The original name was Churra, but that was bastardized to Churro by white ranchers at some point.

Churro is a Spanish breed, valued for the long, strong fibers in their wool that can be spun into a very fine but extra strong yarn. The yarn that Ruby was using was commercially spun and dyed, but I was surprised that the loft was about the thickness of baby yarn or fingering yarn (for the crafters' info). This is very fine, or thin, and it takes rows and rows to create an inch of rug.

Ruby had just begun what the interp told me was considered an average-size rug, I'd say 4 ft. by 6 ft. or thereabouts. He told me it would take about 3 months to complete if Ruby worked 40 hours a week on it. More if she used a more complex pattern. During much of Friday, she was bent over a notebook drawing and erasing patterns, saying she couldn't decide what to do with it. I've seen a poster that indicated there are several patterns that originated and are distinctive of certain regions. There is a Chinle pattern, for example, and one called Ganado Red. Also Two Grey Hills, which originates between Ganado and Ft. Defiance, and many others. Ruby told me that in the old days, women didn't draw out their patterns, they just knew what to do. This goes along with what a sidewalk vendor had told us about Spider Woman, who taught the Dineh how to weave and gave them patterns.

The rug on the visitor's loom was much smaller, and nearly finished. Weaving it had become very difficult, because the tool, called a batten, that separated the alternate warp (vertical) threads from front to back, was too large for the remaining length of those threads. The result was that as I was weaving, the batten would suddenly flip 90 degrees and the threads wouldn't be separated far enough to get the weft thread (the horizontal yarn) through.

The loom itself, though made of crude materials, was a masterpiece of engineering. I looked at the chart of all the parts, comparing closely to the real object, then tried to follow the step-by-step example, and was completely defeated. The interp had to come and show me. There is a horizontal piece attached by what look like slipknots to every other warp thread and used to pull some forward when the weft goes in one direction and let them slip to the back for the alternating row. Each time, the batten is slipped through the resulting gap and turned to increase the gap, and it allows the weaver to simply pull the weft through, rather than weaving back and forth. The batten is almost as long as the rug is wide, carved from wood and polished by years of use. It is perhaps 3/8 of an inch thick, about an inch wide, and the ends are tapered and rounded. Ruby later told me that it was too big for the end of the rug, and that a smaller one was needed--one maybe a half-inch wide wouldn't have flipped on me like this one did, from the tension in the warp threads. Someone had made a 'needle' out of what looked like coat-hanger wire, to help with pulling the weft through, but I was told it wasn't traditional, so of course I couldn't use it.

One of the several very important things to do was to not pull too hard on the weft yarn, which results in a rug shape like this: ) ( Of course, with various visitors including children weaving a few rows each, this rug looked like that already. Another thing to do is use a fork-like comb to pack the weft down hard enough for it to obscure the warp threads, so you don't have white string-like vertical stripes. I re-wove my two or three rows several times before I was satisfied with the result. Ruby made it look very fluid and never took out a row. By the end of three rows, my back was aching across the shoulder blades as if I had been actually rowing a canoe.

The last thing I learned about Navajo rug-making is that the patterns aren't necessarily worked row by row. Each color change requires a new piece of yarn, no matter how small, and that entire part of the pattern is worked independently of the rest of the horizontal rows. That's how the front and back look virtually the same, with no dangling yarn or joinings. In a book that I looked through while there, I saw a photograph of how the reproduction rugs for the Hubbell home had been made, with the original hung behind the loom, and the weaver simply matching the pattern like you would trace a picture with a lightbox. More about those reproductions another time.

February 1, 2010

I had a very lazy day of tv and cross-stitch yesterday, so thought I'd take today to talk a little more about Navajo culture and history.

But first, the ongoing saga of the electricity. I plugged my cell phone charger into an outlet in the kitchen early this morning, and believe it or not, it tripped the breaker. Didn't know at first what had happened, as the only evidence I saw was that the clock on the stove had gone dark. But then the stove wouldn't light, as it is an electronic-ignition gas stove. Fortunately, my neighbor had returned home for a minute and I was able to borrow some matches. Still thinking it was just the stove, I opened the refrigerator to get eggs and discovered I had a worse problem--that was out, too.

So I had to call Budd to come and rescue me, AGAIN. Didn't want to wait until lunchtime because if it had been more than just the breaker, we stood to lose all the food. Budd came home and went out to the breaker box, which is on the neighbor's side of the building, and couldn't find any breakers tripped, so he came in and shut down all the electronics so he could turn off everything. Except when he came back, nothing had turned off. The boxes were mislabelled, or the A and B sides have switched since they were labelled. We had turned off all of Tess' stuff instead of ours. When we finally got everything straight, just had to reset the ground on one of the outlets and everything was back to normal. Now I'm afraid we'll have an electrical fire at some point because of all the electronics we have plugged in. Maybe that's why there are two huge fire extinguishers here. That haven't been tested since 2008 according to the 'monthly' test log. Seriously, who lives like this?

OK, ready for Navajo genealogy? As I mentioned yesterday, it's a matriarchal society, meaning that the children trace their clan lineage through their mother. The mother's sisters are also considered mothers to her children, and their children are brothers and sisters to them. Grandmothers and great-aunts are all considered grandmothers, and so on. The mother's father is a 'true' grandfather, as are all of the grandmother's brothers. The children are born 'into' the mother's clan.

However, because family is so important, the father's relatives aren't left out. His children are born 'for' the father's clan. The father's brothers and sisters are uncles and aunts, and their children are cousins. This was the source of Ruby-the-rug-weaver's confusion when I at first told her I had met her cousin. The woman I met (Ruby's mother's sister's daughter) is considered a sister, not a cousin. When the sister said "That's how close we are," she was emphasising that this was an extended family relationship, not a less-important clan relationship that would still use the same words.

Clan members may never have met each other and bear no strong blood relationship, but they are all considered relatives. When anyone in the clan, the extended family or the immediate family needs help, everyone should chip in. My informant, Paul, said that this doesn't happen as much any more. He also said that it's getting more rare for a man to leave his family home and join that of his wife. He himself lives on his mother's land, for example. He didn't, though, until his mother and father divorced and his mother returned home to her mother's people with the children. It was also when he learned to speak Navajo, because his grandmother didn't speak much English.

I learned a little more as I was reading a book called 'Stories of the Long Walk', which is a Dineh University Press publication of stories that were collected, translated, and published by Navajo researchers. At the time of its publication (1973) it was the first scholarly work to be published about Navajos by Navajos. It was here I learned that The People (Dineh, sometimes spelled Dine, with an accent over the e) trace all of their clan relationships back at least two generations. This is far too complicated to relate here, but it does go to show how important family and family connections are to these people.