The following was taken from
Native American News (Wotanging Ikche), VOLUME 08, ISSUE 001
Date: Mon, 6 Sep 1999 02:56:24 -0700 (MST)
From: chris@U.ARIZONA.edu
Subj: Navajo sheepherding: Returning to the flock: Family separated
by
time, joined by tradition (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 05 Sep 1999 13:00:08 -0700
http://www.azcentral.com/news/reid/sheepherding.shtml
Betty Reid, a reporter for 'The Arizona Republic,' was born
in Tuba City
in 1958 and grew up on the Navajo Reservation in a traditional
family of
sheepherders. Where Tradition Meets Today starts an occasional
series of
essays about how the echoes of her native culture often clash
with modern
America.
Returning to the flock
Family separated by time, joined by tradition
By Betty Reid
The Arizona Republic
May 9, 1999
BODAWAY - My view is breathtaking. Outside my window, red buttes
and deep
purple mesas sweep skyward to the sapphire heavens.
The Kaibab mountains snake across the horizon before ducking
into the
Grand Canyon. Behind me salmon-colored Echo Cliffs perch on high
desert.
The silent land is interrupted only by a meadowlark's song.
Vacation? Nope, this is Navajo sheepherding - urban style.
My view is from the seat of my 4X4 truck, parked on a hill near
Bodaway,
80 miles north of Flagstaff. I'm overlooking a gully that empties
into the
Little Colorado River. My mother and Aunt Jeanette's tiny herd
of 17 goats
and three sheep, graze below.
It tickles my non-Navajo friends in Phoenix to think I tend
sheep some
weekends. What they don't know, and I can't describe for them,
is how much
the sheep are still part of me and have been the focus of Navajo
life for
generations.
My journey to sheep camp usually begins on a Saturday morning
from the
big city. I fill up the truck with gas and leave behind the Valley
- the
screaming ambulances, churning dishwasher, chattering newscasts
and people
in a hurry.
When I reach my mother Dorothy's home in Tuba City four hours
later,
life has gotten slower, quieter.
The community of 10,000 in northern Arizona is a mini version
of city
life - with schools, hospitals, tourist joints, government buildings,
fast
food and neighborhoods. But it has two traffic lights and fewer
than a
dozen stop signs.
My two daughters and I check in with my mother, who usually
has our
schedule for Sunday mapped out. While we tend their herd, the
women, both
in their 70s, take care of chores such as trips to the laundry
or the
grocery store.
My mother and aunt divide their time between Tuba City and sheep
camps
in Bodaway, 31 miles west.
Leaving sheep behind
They are armed with an oral legacy of how the Reeds, of the
Bitter Water
and Many Goats clans, ran sheep on sprawling land east of the
roaring
Colorado River.
Their story is changing with my generation of Navajos.
We attended school and learned modern ways. Our lives quickly
changed in
the 1970s and '80s and continue changing today.
Our jobs took us away from the sheep. Asphalt, air pollution
and the
American Dream replaced the wide views, sage-scented air and nomadic
ways.
Herds of sheep and goats still criss-cross the range but are
fewer
because of tribal livestock restrictions or simply the age of
their owners.
Where large herds once gathered, stone corrals stand empty.
The hardend
green dung dotting the dirt hints at their former use.
Some elderly Navajos, physically unable to tend their animals,
have sold
flocks that once would have gone to the next generation.
Some of their children and grandchildren now live different
lives, both
on the reservation and off, and rely on a wage economy.
I am one of the Navajo children who joined the mainstream.
Sadness overwhelms me when my mother says, in Navajo, "I
imagine my life
and that of the sheep will end soon."
"Ha'atishdoo ya ahal yaa'doo?" "Who will take
care of the sheep?"
She could be speaking for Navajos everywhere who worry about
the
vanishing tradition.
Will it disappear along with my mother's generation?
Sheep are life to the women. Each morning the language of their
prayers
to the Holy People is laced with homages to the flock.
"We take care of sheep, they take care of us," is
their motto. The women
own the sheep and goat herds, which were gifts from their mothers
before
starting a family of their own.
They can trade a sheep for a truckload of wood for the winter.
Or they
can donate a sheep or goat to a relative for a curing ceremony.
And when my mother has a ceremony of her own, those relatives
return the
favor by bringing their own sheep for food.
Or they can sell a sheep for $60 to $70 to Navajos with a mutton
craving.
The money can be stretched a month or more, buying groceries,
gas or truck
repairs.
Two decades ago, when we had more sheep, my Aunt Jeanette used
the wool
to weave pretty rugs. Now she buys her wool at Tuba City Trading
Post.
Armed with instructions
Sheep placed the extended family on a seasonal schedule.
In the spring, lambs and kids were born. My family came together
for
shearing in late spring and sold burlap sacks of wool at the now-defunct
Cedar Ridge Trading Post.
In late summer, lambs were sold to the traders. In the cold
winters,
baby animals often froze to death.
It turned into a survival of the fittest. My mother believes
that lambs
born in the dead of winter are more adaptable, healthier and sold
for more
at the trading post.
She and my aunt still rely on the help of their family to run
their
sheep.
Sometimes they hire sheepherders for $10 a day. Or they enlist
my
brother William, a biology instructor at Tuba City High, on the
weekends
and holidays to help with the herd.
When my daughters, Jaylene, 16, and Ninabah, 4, and I visit,
my mother
volunteers us to care for her flock.
Before she dispatches us, she issues orders:
Take the sheep south where there is plenty of greasewood on
the sunny
side of the gray butte. Then take the flock to the earthen dam
east of Red
Butte.
Make sure the straggler goat (the one with the cow bell) stays
with the
herd.
Feed the two cats and three dogs and be sure the food is divided
evenly
among them. Watch the red dog; he's a pig.
Before we leave for sheep camp, we stop at Tuba City Bashas'
grocery
store for bottled water, bagels, cheddar cheese, crackers, Lunchables,
granola bars, apples, chips and soda. We also stop for gas, as
this will
be an expedition into territory far from any services.
Although five electric transmission lines snake through the
reservation
to major cities around the West, the homes near Bodaway lack electricity
and running water.
Outhouses, cast-iron stoves, kerosene lamps and flashlights
are everyday
necessities. The only signs of progress are pickup trucks and
framed
hogans.
Unlike yesteryear, when my family and I guided sheep on foot,
my
daughters and I tend sheep city-slicker style. On this cold December
Sunday, we pile into my red Toyota (that has an air conditioner
and
heater).
We have goosedown jackets, wool socks, thick sweaters, sunglasses,
fleece-lined jeans, caps, gloves, Nike hiking boots, sun block,
lip balm
and a CD player with headphones. Tracy Chapman, Violent Femmes,
Grateful
Dead, Fleetwood Mac and Sharon Burch are ready to entertain us.
My teenage daughter brings along "Gone With the Wind,"
and my toddler
lugs a bag of coloring books and paper for doodling. Winnie the
Pooh, a
snoring Ernie and a bear named "Sniff" climb in with
her.
My mother notices the load and jokes, "Moving somewhere?"
Changing times
When I was a young girl, a sheepherder wore a thin shirt, a
jacket,
canvas sneakers, jeans and a simple scarf. They carried a rusty
can loaded
with pebbles attached to bailing wire. The noisy container came
in handy
when sheep or goats turned stubborn and refused to follow the
main herd.
Rusty old cans now dot the landscape.
And yesterday's sheepherder took one slice of day-old ash bread
or cold
frybread to nibble on. I recall many times my then-young brothers
and
cousins survived on two meals a day as their little legs carried
them far
away from the main camp.
And when the sheep and dogs drank the muddy water behind the
earthen dam,
we also quenched our thirst from cupped hands.
My late grandmother Edith would throw a fit when she caught
her
grandsons and sheep dogs taking a dip together in the sheep's
water.
I drank from behind the dam for the last time as a teenager.
We were
camped at Missing Tooth Hill in north Bodaway.
I knelt by the water under a cloudless summer day. Sweating
from the
day's work, I drank from a clear spot on the water's edge. At
least I did
until I noticed movement to my left and watched a black-and-yellow
snake
skinny-dipping an arm's length away. I never forgot my canteen
after that.
In the 1960s and '70s, my mother and aunt had 400 head of sheep.
Even a
decade ago their flock numbered 250.
In the warmer months, they roamed the remote land around Bodaway
near
Twin Hills, The Place Where The Mesas Come Together, Pillow Hill,
The
Place Where the Light Earthen Dam Is, or The Watering Hole Where
the
Horses Go In Reverse.
Come winter, the flock moved west to The Place Among The Sage
Brush,
closer to the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers.
Not so simple
Today, on the dirt road to Red Butte, my daughter Ninabah is
entertained
by the dust snaking behind the truck. She complains when the bouncing
truck ruins a straight line in her coloring book.
We reach sheep camp just below Red Butte where the goats and
sheep are
penned in a haphazard fence of wire and wooden boards. The dogs
meet us
with their barks and the goats perk up their ears.
On this trip it's just the three of us and the herd.
I detangle the rusted bed spring that serves as a corral gate.
The goats
rush for the entrance and I turn them south toward the giant gully.
Some of my non-Navajo friends guess that herding sheep is like
taking a
great hike. You walk and check out the landscape.
It's not quite that simple. Once the sheepherder decides where
to go,
the next chore is to make sure the wooly creatures stay together
and move
in a similar path.
As usual, a few pesky goats decide where they will graze and
move to
places you don't want them to.
As a youngster herding sheep near the Grand Canyon rim, I recall
goats
would wander near the sheer walled areas. My mother warned me
to stay away
from the edge because the Wind People lived there and might pull
me into
the canyon.
Running a smaller herd on flat rolling land is easier. And with
a
vehicle, a sheepherder can park on top of the tallest nearby butte
and
keep tabs on the herd.
And it's on top of a butte overlooking a snarling gully that
we park the
Toyota. Jaylene pulls out the headphones and begins to tap the
window.
Ninabah whines, "Let's go home and watch TV. I miss my
cartoons."
Slowly grazing
In the distance, my mother's tiny herd moves slowly as they
graze. That
means there's plenty to eat. When vegetation is sparse, the herd
moves
quickly.
It's quiet out here and occasionally a jet will tow a contrail
across
the sky.
Sometimes I hear a sheep's bleating or the clang of the cow
bell as that
slow goat moves. Or dog barks at a jackrabbit hiding beneath a
boulder.
At noon, we drop the tailgate and break out the cheese, crackers
and
Lunchables.
At day's end, the goats and sheep wander back to Red Butte.
They stop to
drink behind the earthen dam before reaching the corral.
When we drive into camp after them, my mother waits by the corral.
Jeanette had dropped her off so she could check on the herd.
The last task of the day is Jaylene's, who pairs the mother
goats to the
kids, with the help of colored strings identifying the pairs.
While Jaylene does that, another goat gives birth to twins.
My mother
tenderly picks up one bleating kid goat, soaked in yellowish birth
fluid.
This one we take back to Tuba City. Its mother has already abandoned
it,
licking and nuzzling its sibling.
My mother places the goat inside an empty cardboard box lined
with rags.
Back in the truck, we head to Tuba City. She sits with the box
on her
lap and asks me to turn up the heater.
Jaylene wants a bath to wash off the dust. Ninabah demands a
Happy Meal
at McDonald's.
In Tuba City, my mother buys a Gerber baby bottle and fixes
warm milk in
Jeanette's hogan to feed the kid goat.
"Ya'di'ladinii?" ("What are you saying?")
she asks the goat softly as
though speaking to an irritated infant.
She gently places it on a rag in her lap and props up its wobbly
head.
Her arthritic hand holds the bottle.
She pries open its mouth, inserts the bottle's nipple and gently
presses
down on the little goat's nostrils. She repeats the gesture until
the
animal tastes the milk and begins to suck.
"Yucky!" shouts my niece Veronica Yellowhair, watching
sticky stuff
slide off the goat's hide.
"It's stinky, huh?" chimes in my 4-year-old. "It
needs a tissue to wipe
its nose."
Little Veronica lives in Salt Lake City, and my daughter lives
with me
in the Valley.
I translate their words for my mother, who chuckles and looks
at me.
"They don't understand my lifestyle, do they?"
Then she asks me a favor.
"Would you explain to the little sanis (women) here that
sheep and goats
have always been and will be a part of my life during my time
on earth?
"And add that their parents were raised caring for sheep
and goats until
they ran off to the big cities?"
I'll tell them.
Betty Reid can be reached via e-mail at betty.reid@pni.com
or by phone at (602) 444-8885.