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the Navajo, and learn, if possible, what the Indian's life was like. What
would a day of his natural life be?
In the gray of dawn, when the hush of the desert night still lay deep over
the land, the Navajo stirred in his blanket and began to chant to the morning
light. It began very soft and low, a strange, broken murmur, like the music of
a brook, and as it swelled that weird and mournful tone was slowly lost in one
of hope and joy. The Indian's soul was coming out of night, blackness, the
sleep that resembled death, into the day, the light that was life.
Then he stood in the door of his hogan, his blanket around him, and faced the
east.
Night was lifting out of the clefts and ravines; the rolling cedar ridges and
the sage flats were softly gray, with thin veils like smoke mysteriously
rising and vanishing; the colorless rocks were changing. A long, horizon-wide
gleam of light, rosiest in the center, lay low down in the east and
momentarily brightened. One by one the stars in the deep-blue sky paled and
went out and the blue dome changed and lightened. Night had vanished on
invisible wings and silence broke to the music of a mockingbird. The rose in
the east deepened; a wisp of cloud turned gold; dim distant mountains showed
dark against the red; and low down in a notch a rim of fire appeared. Over the
soft ridges and valleys crept a wondrous transfiguration. It was as if every
blade of grass, every leaf of sage, every twig of cedar, the flowers, the
trees, the rocks came to life at sight of the sun. The red disk rose, and a
golden fire burned over the glowing face of that lonely waste.
The Navajo, dark, stately, inscrutable, faced the sun his god. This was his
Great Spirit. The desert was his mother, but the sun was his life. To the
keeper of the winds and rains, to the master of light, to the maker of fire,
to the giver of life the Navajo sent up his prayer:
Of all the good things of the Earth let me always have plenty.
Of all the beautiful things of the Earth let me always have plenty.
Peacefully let my horses go and peacefully let my sheep go.
God of the Heavens, give me many sheep and horses.
God of the Heavens, help me to talk straight.
Goddess of the Earth, my Mother, let me walk straight.
Now all is well, now all is well, now all is well, now all is well.
Hope and faith were his.
A chief would be born to save the vanishing tribe of Navajos. A bride would
rise from a wind kiss of the lilies in the moonlight.
He drank from the clear, cold spring bubbling from under mossy rocks. He went
into the cedars, and the tracks in the trails told him of the visitors of
night. His mustangs whistled to him from the ridge-tops, standing clear with
heads up and manes flying, and then trooped down through the sage. The
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shepherd-dogs, guardians of the flocks, barked him a welcome, and the sheep
bleated and the lambs pattered round him.
In the hogan by the warm, red fire his women baked his bread and cooked his
meat. And he satisfied his hunger. Then he took choice meat to the hogan of a
sick relative, and joined in the song and the dance and the prayer that drove
away the evil spirit of illness. Down in the valley, in a sandy, sunny place,
was his corn-field, and here he turned in the water from the ditch, and worked
awhile, and went his contented way.
He loved his people, his women, and his children. To his son he said: "Be
bold and brave. Grow like the pine. Work and ride and play that you may be
strong. Talk straight. Love your brother. Give half to your friend. Honor your
mother that you may honor your wife. Pray and listen to your gods."
Then with his gun and his mustang he climbed the slope of the mountain. He
loved the solitude, but he was never alone. There were voices on the wind and
steps on his trail. The lofty pine, the lichened rock, the tiny bluebell, the
seared crag all whispered their secrets. For him their spirits spoke. In the
morning light Old Stone Face, the mountain, was a red god calling him to the
chase. He was a brother of the eagle, at home on the heights where the winds
swept and the earth lay revealed below.
In the golden afternoon, with the warm sun on his back and the blue canyon at
his feet, he knew the joy of doing nothing. He did not need rest, for he was
never tired. The sage-sweet breath of the open was thick in his nostrils, the
silence that had so many whisperings was all about him, the loneliness of the
wild was his. His falcon eye saw mustang and sheep, the puff of dust down on
the cedar level, the Indian riding on a distant ridge, the gray walls, and the
blue clefts. Here was home, still free, still wild, still untainted. He saw
with the eyes of his ancestors. He felt them around him. They had gone into
the elements from which their voices came on the wind. They were the watchers
on his trails.
At sunset he faced the west, and this was his prayer:
Great Spirit, God of my Fathers,
Keep my horses in the night.
Keep my sheep in the night.
Keep my family in the night.
Let me wake to the day.
Let me be worthy of the light.
Now all is well, now all is well,
Now all is well, now all is well.
And he watched the sun go down and the gold sink from the peaks and the red
die out of the west and the gray shadows creep out of the canyon to meet the
twilight and the slow, silent, mysterious approach of night with its gift of
stars.
Night fell. The white stars blinked. The wind sighed in the cedars. The sheep
bleated. The shepherd-dogs bayed the mourning coyotes. And the Indian lay down
in his blankets with his dark face tranquil in the starlight. All was well in
his lonely world. Phantoms hovered, illness lingered, injury and pain and
death were there, the shadow of a strange white hand flitted across the face
of the moon but now all was well the Navajo had prayed to the god of his
Fathers. Now all was well!
. . . . . . . . . . .
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