Luci Tapahonso's "In 1864"

An experiment for HUM 221 --

We'll read "In 1864" by Navajo (Dine) poet Luci Tapahonso in class Wednesday. To take full advantage of the internet, you'll want to open two or three windows. First, click here to open the poem. Since the poem is about the "Long Walk" of the Navajo or Dine people, i.e. their forced removal by the U.S. Army from their homeland -- the Dinetah -- you'll want to open a Yahoo! map of New Mexico, too. (Scroll down to New Mexico and open the JPEG file.) The Dinetah is in the northwest corner of the state and stretches far into northeastern Arizona as well. Look for Farmington and Shiprock on the map, and the Chuska Mountains along the state line north of Window Rock, Ariz.

The historical background goes like this. In 1864 the Navajo were rounded up by troops under command of Gen. Kit Carson and marched southeast to Fort Sumner in eastern New Mexico, on the edge of the Great Plains. (You can see a label for part of the Great Plains. Look for the Llano Estacado in Texas, to the east of Fort Sumner. Part of the label has been cropped out.) There they tried to farm. But the country was very different from the high desert of the Dinetah, the weather was too dry to raise a decent crop and many people starved. After a few years, they were allow to return to the Dinetah.

Luci Tapahonso's poem is a story within a story. As it begins, she and her daughter are driving along a freeway -- I think it's Interstate 40 east of Albuquerque, but I'm not sure, and the exact route number doesn't matter anyway -- and they pass the turnoff to Fort Sumner. That reminds Tapahonso of a friend, a Navajo electrician, who took a job near where his people had suffered so much in the 1800s. But he couldn't stand it there, so he quit and returned to the high desert country of the Dinetah. To be among family and friends, he said. But also to get away from the spirits of the people who had died in the eastern plains. After Tapahonso tells her daughter this first story, they stop for a Coke. Then she tells the story of the Long Walk as they drive along. I think the poem ends on a note of optimism and celebration, as Tapahonso talks about the jewelry and cherished foods like frybread they learned to make in those times of sadness. But I don't want to force my interpretation on anybody else.

Some words you may not be familiar with:

arroyo a dry gully or gulch in the desert.
bilagaana Navajo word for white people.
Kit Carson A fur trapper, "mountain man" and U.S. military leader, hated by the Navajo.
Redshirt A name the Navajo used for Carson.
Canyon de Chelly Pronounced "canyon d'SHAY." An ancient center of Navajo civilization near Chinle in eastern Arizona.
Hwééldi A Navajo word meaning "fortress," applied to Fort Sumter.
Bosque Redondo The countryside around Fort Sumner. An article by the local Chamber of Commerce tells of the plans to teach the Navajo how to farm like white people went tragically wrong.

A fascinating article by a Navajo elementary school teacher named Sara Begay in Canku Ota: An Online Newsletter Celebrating Native America, discusses a school trip through "Navajoland" (the Dinetah), the Long Walk and many points of Navajo history, language and culture. I recommend it highly.