Code Talker (29 page)

“I will select a fine singer to perform your ceremony,” Father told me. The hand-trembler had diagnosed my problem, but the singer, or medicine man, was the one tasked with fixing it.

The four-day ceremony chosen for me was one of the “Bad Way” ceremonies, one that would rid me of an evil presence.
⁴³
The hand-trembler had determined that the cause of my problem was evil, not good. It involved ghosts,
chindí,
left behind when the Japanese who were haunting me had died. Every person has at least some kernel of evil, and the
chindí
is composed of everything that was evil in the dead person. The specific ceremony chosen, called a sing, like the ceremony my father was attending when I arrived home from the war, was one often performed for children returning from boarding school or men returning from war, the “Enemy Way.”

Originally the Enemy Way ceremony was created to destroy the ghosts of the monsters which had plagued the early
Diné,
monsters which had been vanquished by Changing Woman's twin sons. In more modern times, the Enemy Way is used to destroy the ghosts of
any
enemy or outsider, consequently restoring balance and allowing a return to the Right Way, the Good Life.

We Navajos see ourselves as composed of two bodies, the physical and the spiritual. The two are inseparable, and life according to the Good Way requires that they be in sync, and that we be in sync with our world. Traditionally we worry more about living life according to the Good Way while we are on this earth than we do about an afterlife. I can't remember any mention of an afterlife in the Navajo Good Way, other than references to the
chindí
left behind by the dead. When someone died, their
chindí
could stay behind in the form of a coyote, or could simply remain in the place where the death occurred.

The diagnosis of the hand-trembler had told me what I would need for the ceremony. The sing would require something personal from a Japanese person. This was called the “scalp” but could be a few hairs from a Japanese head or a scrap of clothing worn by a Japanese person. That kind of thing wasn't easy to find on the reservation, but we were lucky that some of the Navajo soldiers, as I mentioned earlier, had cut hair and clothing from the dead Japanese and sent the items home to be used in ceremonies. The items were purchased by medicine men who utilized them as “scalps” in the Enemy Way ceremonies.

Father asked for advice from friends and neighbors, eventually choosing a medicine man to perform the Enemy Way. Traditional Navajo ceremonies, with their accompanying historical stories, chants, and sand-paintings, are complex. To perform a chant that might last from four to as many as nine nights, a singer must memorize prodigious amounts of material.
⁴⁴
Although a medicine man or singer might study and learn several ceremonies, many specialized in a specific one. Thus, a specific “sing” or “way” often had a limited number of preferred singers.

It was the medicine man's job to help me figure out why the enemy continued to plague me. Knowing the “why” became the first step to overcoming the problem. Then my body and mind could be cleansed, leaving me free of my Japanese tormentors and bringing me back to the “Good Life.”

Father talked to the medicine man at length, telling him about my problems. The medicine man gave Father questions to ask me, and Father relayed the answers back to the medicine man. He told him how my visions grew stronger at night, until they veiled the rest of my world.

In preparation for the ceremony, my family butchered a goat and several sheep. They would feed the people who came to the sing. Wood was chopped, and the ingredients to make mounds of fry bread and tortillas were purchased. The family hosting or “putting up” a sing never knew how many people would attend. Traditionally, Navajos were supposed to take part in at least four sings during their lifetime, so often people heard of a sing and traveled to find it.
⁴⁵
Of course, people close to the family came. But many others, even people my family didn't know, heard about me—the returned Navajo Marine—and came to lend support and help me reenter the Good Life. Everyone brought food and news to share. And they brought
hozoji:
kindness, compassion, and goodwill.

On the first night, the ceremony was performed near the home of the medicine man. The last night it was held at Grandma's home, and on the intervening nights at a location between the two. The young woman who led the Squaw Dance portion of the sing rode on horseback, carrying the prayer stick—or rattle stick—from one location to another. Several men and boys, also on horseback, accompanied her.

Squaw Dances, part of the Enemy Way sing, are so named because the young women who participate in the dance pick male partners from the audience. After each dance, the male bargains with the female, arranging a price he must pay to be released from the dancing. The price—always minimal—is paid, and the young woman chooses another partner. The dance is very popular.

At Grandmother's home, a large fire in a shack provided a place for cooking. My female relatives prepared the food, and everyone who attended was welcome to eat. At night, most of my female relatives slept in the cook shack, and the men in the hogan. Other families camped on the ground overnight, sleeping on sheepskins and blankets. No conjugal relations were allowed during the days of the ceremony.
⁴⁶
Everyone was supposed to concentrate on the purpose of the sing.

The pot drum, an integral part of the sing, was made of pottery and filled with water. Taut buckskin, stretched over the pot, was punched with eye- and mouth-holes. The drum-with-a-face represented the ghosts, who were beaten into the ground as the drum was played for the Squaw Dance songs.

Dry paintings, or sandpaintings, were created on a skin placed on the floor of Grandma's hogan.
⁴⁷
Several men, over a period of hours, painstakingly created these paintings from various finely ground colored sands, charcoal, and corn pollen. The
hataathlii
supervised their creation. Every line had to be correctly placed.

Each painting was used in a ceremony involving me, then destroyed afterward. The medicine man told me things I needed to know in order to recover from my bad visions. These things were secret, just between him and me, so I can't talk about them here.

The traditional scalp shooter was hired. He fired at the Japanese items—the “scalp”—that the medicine man had provided for the ceremony, using a sling similar to the one I had played with as a boy, except that this sling was made from rubber and buckskin instead of string and the tongue of a shoe.
⁴⁸

The sing was a success.
Hozoji
was exhibited toward all who attended the ceremony, just as tradition mandated. I reentered the trail of beauty. For a long time afterward, my dreams and visions of the Japanese subsided.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Singing, Boxing, and the Korean War

I looked to the east, across the long stretch of box canyon. The last couple years with my family, herding sheep, had been peaceful, but I realized I didn't want to stay on the Checkerboard forever. It was time to get down to the serious business of living.

I had signed up for the Marines before finishing high school, so getting my diploma was goal number one. Like many young men who returned from war, I would go back to school.

But which school? I thought back to Fort Defiance. There was one teacher who stood out, Freddie Richard. I had liked and respected him. Freddie, an eighth-grade teacher at my old school, had grown up in Oklahoma. He was part Native American. The students called him
Hachi Yázha,
the little man. He loved music, and on many nights the notes of Freddie's saxophone had soared out over the grounds of the boarding school like the voice of a mournful bird.

The bus pulled up to the stop where I waited. I boarded, thinking about the many daylong treks I had made to boarding school in the back of a flatbed truck.

“How long to Fort Defiance?” I asked the driver.

“About two and a half hours.”

The driver was right. In less than three hours, I arrived at Fort Defiance, where I found my old teacher.

“I liked Haskell,” Freddie told me. “It's in Kansas. Far away, but farm country, so not so different. Greener than New Mexico and Arizona.”

Freddie's alma mater, the Haskell Institute, was an all-Indian high school in Lawrence, Kansas. With Freddie's help, I applied there.

I arrived at Haskell during the second semester, with the school year already in full swing. I had some catching up to do, but after fighting in the war, school didn't seem so scary.

I found jobs working on several different farms. The wages helped pay for my room and board. Farm families picked me up from the dorm on weekends and returned me in the evenings. I stayed at school all year long to make up for lost time, attending summer classes.

Before long, Haskell High School, which later became Haskell Indian Nations University, felt like home. Members of 179 different Indian tribes attended the school. I made many friends, notably several young Sioux and Cherokee men. But my closest friends were fellow Navajos. Robert Yazzie was an old friend from Fort Defiance. Then there were Lawrence Padaock, Jack Nez, and Ned Hataathlii, whose surname meant “the singer,” like a medicine man. Ned was a Navy man, and Jack Nez was a Marine buddy, one of the original code talkers, so I had more than just childhood background and school in common with them.

I dived into school, work, and athletics. I played running back on a veterans' football team. The beautiful uniforms, complete with pads, cleats, and helmets, sported yellow numbers on a gold field. When I slipped the well-made jersey over my head, I had to grin. Things had sure changed since my days at Fort Defiance.

Another sports uniform hung in my closet—basketball. My friends and I played on a veterans' team, again with all the requisite equipment.

It was a whole different world.

One day a bunch of buddies and I piled into a car owned by a friend from Fort Defiance. I had the entire weekend off—no farmwork. Since the bars in Lawrence did not serve Native Americans, an Anglo friend had bought beer. We loaded a good quantity of beer into the car, stuffing bottles between and under us. We headed out to fish in one of the many good fishing spots on the lakes surrounding Lawrence, armed with homemade fishing rods consisting of a long stick with a string and hook attached. We actually caught a good quantity of fish with those rods.

My group of friends kept things interesting. Depending on the season, we might go to basketball or football games, or watch boxing matches. Sometimes we drove to Kansas City, Missouri, the largest nearby city, to hang out. Some of the bars there served Native Americans.

I had boxed a little at Fort Defiance as a 112-pounder. In the Marines, I took up the gloves occasionally. At Haskell, I played basketball, football, golf, and soccer for fun, but took boxing seriously. My buddies and I watched professional boxing with an eye to improving our own style. Joe Louis, the “Brown Bomber,” was a special favorite. He had won the Golden Gloves tournament before becoming a professional boxer.

Haskell's team, a group of twelve or fourteen men, had five Navajo members. The rest were from other Native American tribes. We traveled to meets in places like Topeka, Kansas; Oklahoma City; and Kansas City, Missouri. Other meets were held at home in Lawrence.

 

 

Six teammates crowded into the station wagon. I had a good feeling about this meet. And I was looking forward to three or four days in a hotel paid for by the school. Luxurious living. I boxed in the 126-pound weight class, and I was en route to Kansas City for the semifinals in the Golden Gloves tournament, where kids from many different schools competed.

Before the meet, I taped my fingers to protect them from breakage. My hands were steady as I wrapped my bunched fingers. The wrap had to be tight enough so I couldn't bend the fingers into a complete fist, but not so tight that it impeded circulation. I wrapped my wrist and thumb. Then I donned the twelve-ounce gloves. I'd practiced a lot, with small punching bags and heavy body bags. And I'd skipped rope until I could box for hours without feeling exhausted. I wanted to be ready.

In the semifinals of the tournament, an African American kid, a really fine boxer, beat me on a decision.

Once during my boxing career I got knocked out. It happened in Topeka, during another Golden Gloves tournament. It was the third of three rounds when I took a hit to the head. I woke up lying on the mat. Again in Topeka, I had my nose broken, and could never again breathe through my right nostril. After that break, I stayed in the hospital for two weeks, with my face all bruised, and my eyes blackened and swollen nearly shut. That was the worst of my injuries.