Part 1

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

Oscar L. Chapman, Secretary

UNITED STATES INDIAN SERVICE

Dillon S. Myer, Commissioner

EDUCATION DIVISION

Willard W. Beatty, Chief

Authorized by Congress

Printing Department Haskell Institute

Price .25

September, 1951—5M

LITTLE NAVAJO HERDER

ANN CLARK

Illustrated by HOKE DENETSOSIE

UNITED STATES INDIAN SERVICE

HASKELL INSTITUTE—LAWRENCE, KANSAS

LITTLE NAVAJO HERDER

In Little Navajo Herder, we have brought together in one volume the pictured story of a year in the life of a little Navajo girl, which originally appeared in four separate books. In the first edition, which was prepared for classroom use in Federal Indian schools, the stories appeared in both English and Navajo. However, the popularity of Little Herder was not limited to the child readers of her own tribe. She has found her way into the hearts of Indian children throughout the nation. The universality of her appeal is indicated by increasing interest in her story by non-Indian children in home and school. Selections from her books have found their way into dozens of anthologies. This popularity with those who read only English has dictated this single volume edition in English. Again the delightful drawings by Hoke Denetsosie, a full-blood Navajo artist, are used.

Little Navajo Herder bids fair to find a permanent place in children's literature, as has Mrs. Clark's earlier volume on Pueblo life—"In My Mother's House." This book is illustrated by a Pueblo artist, Velerio Herrera, and is published by Viking Press.

Other Indian stories by Mrs. Clark have been published by the Indian Service for use in Indian schools. A complete list may be obtained from Haskell Institute, Lawrence, Kansas.

IN AUTUMN

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.

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.

And 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.

IN WINTER

IN WINTER

Page

Snow 39

There Is No Food 41

The Dogs Are Hungry 43

Melting Snow Water 44

Night 47

Story Telling 48

It-Is-Twisted 50

Pawn 51

Morning 53

Shoveling the Snow 54

Cat's Cradles 55

Father Comes Back 56

Supper 58

Sleep 59

Morning Sun 60

Going to the Sing 61

The Sing 63

The Betting 66

The Race 68

Going Home 70

SNOW

My mother's land is white with snow.

The sandwash and the waterhole, the dry grass patches and the cornfield hide away under the white blanket, under the snow blanket that covers the land.

The air is filled with falling snow, thick snow, soft snow falling, falling.