From a Letter to James A. Wright
Fall, 1978
But sometimes what we call “memory” and what we call “imagination” are not so easily distinguished.
I know Aunt Susuie and Aunt Alice would tell me stories they had told me before but with changes in details or descriptions. The story was the important thing and little changes here and there were really part of the story. There were even stories about the different versions of stories and how they imagined these differing versions came to be.
I’ve heard tellers begin “The way I heard it was….” and then proceed with another story purportedly a version of a story just told but the story they would tell was a wholly separate story, a new story with an integrity of its own, an offspring, a part of the continuing which storytelling must be. Grandma Lillie was talking recently about years ago when she went out to milk my Great-grandpa Marmon’s cow and the mean old rooster attacked her so she took a big rock and hit it and killed it. I told her that I thought I remembered her saying that the rooster was only stunned, not dead. “No,” she said, “He jumped out of the dark with his claws right at me. Scared me so bad I picked up a big rock and hit him on the head and killed him. I was afraid to tell Grandpa Marmon, poor thing, he was such a nice old man.” The coyotes finally got Rooster too. They’d been prowling near the house for a long time—it must have taken four of them—one to lure away the old black hound and the pup, and the other three to grab the chickens. There was almost no trace that the two little white hens had ever been at the ranch. I had to search a long time before I found even one white feather. But Rooster had put up a terrible fight and four piles of his dark green and black feathers were in front of the house. Coyotes waste nothing. There were no traces of blood, no remains at all, just the feathers. Later that afternoon the wind blew dust and a few drops of rain. The feathers scattered down the hillside catching in weeds under the creosote bushes and palo verde trees. There was nothing to bury; it was as if Rooster had just disappeared.
There have been other times when he disappeared and I searched everywhere for him—under the big jojoba bush he liked, on the screened porch and around by the windmill. One afternoon I even searched for him on horseback because I was certain he was nowhere near the house. Much later that day he simply reappeared. Last summer I was in the kitchen talking with Denny when suddenly I felt we were not alone—a strange feeling for the ranch which is miles from town. We checked the front door and the other rooms. Finally I went to the kitchen window. The rooster was standing motionless below the window screen listening to us. I saw by the fierceness of his little yellow eyes it was deliberate.
It’s been weeks now, but this morning I went out and there was a single feather by the door. It is glossy and lies smooth; its colors are vivid—emerald green flecked with gold.
Coyotes and the Stro’ro’ka Dancers
Long ago
near the Acoma mesa
there was another mesa
with very precipitous walls.
A lone coyote appeared
on the mesa top.
Down below in the valley
there was a group
of ceremonial dancers
the Stro’ro’ka Ka’tsinas
who were holding a dance.
And he was thrilled
with the sight
and he said
“My! Look down below!
Those dancers have beautiful costumes
they have brought wonderful things
to eat—
melons and squashes!”
Things that the Lagunas,
the Keres people,
have always had as food
from way back traditional
in the traditional state
and
“How could one get
all that food?”
So he said
“I think I’ll call
my clanspeople
the Coyote Clan.”
So he got to the very edge
and he gave this cry,
this signal:
“Ama doo roo a roo!”
Which in coyote language
meant “to come”
and one coyote appeared
and he says
to this one
“Look down below
and see the wonder!
Look at all that food
the Stro’ro’kas have brought
to give away
if one could only get at them.”
So the first coyote
was thrilled
and he says
“How can we get down there?
The cliff is high and precipitous.”
So he said
“We’ll call some others.”
So the first one
again made a call:
“Ama doo roo a roo!”
and two more came.
And he said
to the two
who had just arrived
“Look down below!
Look what a sight there is!
All the food
the Stro’ro’ka dancers
have brought!
And how can we get
down there?”
So he said
“I believe I’ll call—
give another call.”
And so he did.
He said
“Ama doo roo a roo!”
and a whole bunch of them
came—of coyotes.
The first one
said to them
“Look down below!
Look what a beautiful sight!
All the food
the Stro’ro’kas
and their ceremonial dance
have brought.”
and
“How shall we get down there?
So he said
“I think I have an idea.
We know that the cliff
is high
and there’s no other way
to get down there,
so I have
an idea.”
He says
“I think
if we just hang down
some way—”
He says
“If we just bite
one another’s tail
and in that way
we’ll go down
in a long string.”
So the first one said
“All right
if you’ll just bite my tail
I’ll lead.”
And so the second one
bit the leader’s tail
and he hung over the cliff.
Do you see the picture?
Yes, they hung over the cliff
and so the third one
bit the second one’s tail
and the string got
a little bit longer
and it was over the cliff now
and so on
until there was
a whole group
of the coyotes now
hung down the cliff
until one—
the middle one—
the one in the middle said
“Oh! I smell a bad odor
from some source,”
he said.
And he opened his mouth
and the rest said
“So do I!”
They let one another go
and the whole bunch
flopped down
in a big heap
in the valley below.
And the Stro’ro’ka dancers
down below
stopped dancing
and ran to the heap
of dead coyotes
glad because
they wanted the skins
of the coyotes
to wear around their necks.
And they all grabbed—
the Stro’ro’ka dancers grabbed
the dead coyotes
&nbs
p; and said
“This one is going to be mine!”
and “This is going to be
my neck piece.”
And they gathered
the coyotes
and took them.
And tradition says that they—
the Stro’ro’ka Dancers
the mesita people
are the only ones
who dance that now
they wear that costume—
the coyote skin neckpiece—
because of long ago.
When the Indian Public Health Service
laid sewer line in the village
the outhouses started disappearing
from the hill next to the church
and from down below by the corrals.
Everyone is happy to quit hauling water in buckets
and everyone enjoys taking showers
so no one discusses this openly.
But I think people are beginning to realize now
the advantages the old outdoor toilets had
especially when pipes freeze in the winter
or the sewer clogs up.
With the outside toilets
you could get away by yourself
for an hour or so
at night you could tell everyone
you were going out to the toilet
and have an hour or two that way.
Many interesting things used to develop.
There are only a few outhouses remaining now
but last year at Laguna Feast
a girl from Encinal was slightly injured.
She had locked herself in one of the old wooden toilets
down by Scotts’ pigpen
and she was arguing through the door
with five or six of her boyfriends.
Finally they pushed the toilet down the hill
with her still inside.
The Laguna guys claim it was the Navajos
and the Navajos claim it was the Lagunas who did it.
The girl received a slight scalp wound
as the toilet rolled over.
“Well she should have held onto the hole!”
Sandy said when she heard the story,
“She should have held onto the edge of that hole real tight.”
Toe’osh: A Laguna Coyote Story
for Simon Ortiz, July 1973
In the wintertime
at night
we tell coyote stories
and drink Spañada by the stove.
How coyote got his
ratty old fur coat
bits of old fur
the sparrows stuck on him
with dabs of pitch.
That was after he lost his proud original one in a poker game.
anyhow, things like that
are always happening to him,
that’s what he said, anyway.
And it happened to him at Laguna
and Chinle
and Lukachukai too, because coyote got too smart for his own good.
But the Navajos say he won a contest once.
It was to see who could sleep out in a
snowstorm the longest
and coyote waited until chipmunk badger and skunk were all
curled up under the snow
and then he uncovered himself and slept all night
inside
and before morning he got up and went out again
and waited until the others got up before he came
in to take the prize.
Some white men came to Acoma and Laguna a hundred years ago
and they fought over Acoma land and Laguna women, and even now
some of their descendants are howling in
the hills southeast of Laguna.
Charlie Coyote wanted to be governor
and he said that when he got elected
he would run the other men off
the reservation
and keep all the women for himself.
One year
the politicians got fancy
at Laguna.
They went door to door with hams and turkeys
and they gave them to anyone who promised
to vote for them.
On election day all the people
stayed home and ate turkey
and laughed.
The Trans-Western pipeline vice president came
to discuss right-of-way.
The Lagunas let him wait all day long
because he is a busy and important man.
And late in the afternoon they told him
to come back again tomorrow.
They were after the picnic food
that the special dancers left
down below the cliff.
And Toe’osh and his cousins hung themselves
down over the cliff
holding each other’s tail in their mouth making a coyote chain
until someone in the middle farted
and the guy behind him opened his
mouth to say “What stinks?” and they
all went tumbling down, like that.
Howling and roaring
Toe’osh scattered white people
out of bars all over Wisconsin.
He bumped into them at the door
until they said
“Excuse me”
And the way Simon meant it
was for 300 or maybe 400 years.
Around Laguna Fiesta time
tribal police from everywhere show up: Isleta, Acoma, Zuni,
Navajo Police and of course the Laguna Police invite the
State Police and the B.I.A. Police.
I even saw a few county sheriffs this year.
Anyway, this accounts for all the sirens.
It happened at the trashpile
over by the wooden bridge across the river
where you can’t be seen from the road.
Some Navajo guys had planned it very carefully.
They hid their liquor supply in the trash pile
and then went up to the village
for the dances and food stands and carnival.
They would sneak back down to the trash pile for a drink
whenever they wanted.
They were having a wonderful time
until someone noticed them going back and forth
always coming back happier than they went down.
Nobody comes to Laguna Feast
without a six pack and a bottle
but liquor here is still illegal.
Nobody ever pays any attention to the law.
You just pay attention to not getting caught.
They don’t usually arrest you
but they take the cold beer away from you
and the worst part is
you know they’ll drink it.
So when the guys saw all these tribal police cars—
it seemed like every tribe sent a police car—
these guys knew Fiesta was coming to an end for them.
But part of the fiesta spirit
has always been
if not for wine at the trash pile
then for a fight with the cops.
It was a shoving and pushing fight:
the guys shoving the cops away from their liquor
the cops pushing the guys into the paddy wagons.
But carefully
because the tribal police know what the people are saying:
It is all these police
that have ruined Laguna Feast—
not the State Fair going on at the same time.
It is because of these police
the Navajos don’t show up anymore
like they once did
covering the foothills east and north of Laguna
with their campfires.
Skeleton Fixer
What happened here?
she asked
Some kind of accident?
Words like bone
s
scattered all over the place….
Old Man Badger traveled
from place to place
searching for skeleton bones.
There was something
only he could do with them.
On the smooth sand
Old Man Badger started laying out the bones.
It was a great puzzle for him.
He started with the toes
He loved their curve
like a new moon,
like a white whisker hair.
Without thinking
he knew their direction,
laying each toe bone
to walk east.
“I know,
it must have been this way.
Yes,”
he talked to himself as he worked.
He strung the spine bones
as beautiful as any shell necklace.
The leg bones were running
so fast
dust from the ankle joints
surrounded the wind.
“Oh poor dear one who left your bones here
I wonder who you are?”
Old Skeleton Fixer spoke to the bones
Because things don’t die
they fall to pieces maybe,
get scattered or separate,
but Old Badger Man can tell
how they once fit together.
Though he didn’t recognize the bones
he could not stop;
he loved them anyway.
He took great care with the ribs
marveling at the structure
which had contained the lungs and heart.
Skeleton Fixer had never heard of
such things as souls.
He was certain
only of bones.
But where a heart once beat
there was only sand.
“Oh I will find you one—
somewhere around here!”
And a yellow butterfly
flew up from the grass at his feet.
“Ah! I know how your breath left you—
Like butterflies over an edge,
not falling but fluttering
their wings rainbow colors—
Wherever they are
your heart will be.”
He worked all day
He was so careful with this one—
it felt like the most special of all.
Old Man Badger didn’t stop
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