A Rainbow in Paradise

by Susan Aylworth

  "I always thought so."

  For a while they traveled in silence. Then Eden shivered and pulled her sweatshirt up around her, exposing the university logo. "You went to ASU?" Logan asked her.

  "Um-hm." She pointed at the mascot. "Just call me a Sun Devil."

  "Me, too," he said.

  "No kidding? When were you there?"

  The conversation turned then to their memories of their college alma mater. Although Logan was a few months younger and had gone to the school in Tempe sometime after Eden had completed most of her general coursework, they had shared most of the same experiences, including the same professor for their introductory geology course, and one spectacular football win against rival University of Arizona that they'd both attended in the Sun Devils' stadium during Eden's last year and Logan's third.

  "That's when I first started rooming with Chris," Logan told her. "He insisted on taking me to that game. I'd pretty much avoided the football stadium before then."

  "Just too much studying?" Eden asked.

  "That, too. Mostly I couldn't imagine being in the same place with sixty-five thousand other people, all at the same time."

  Eden chuckled. "I guess that would be something of a change."

  "Compared to this?" Logan gestured around them. They had passed onto the reservation shortly after leaving Rainbow Rock, and they'd hardly seen another human being since then. There wasn't another human in sight as Eden looked, following Logan's gesture.

  "You're right," she said. "It is a big change."

  "Call it culture shock."

  "But you managed."

  He shrugged. "A lot of good people helped me. Most of the time I just wanted to duck my head and run—back to the rez, to my grandmother's hogan, to the life I'd known as a boy."

  "So why didn't you?"

  Logan shrugged. "I'm not always sure. Sometimes I tell myself I just didn't want to disappoint all the people who were counting on me, but when I'm most honest with myself, I think maybe I'm the one I didn't want to disappoint. Somehow I always knew my life and work would need to accommodate the larger world, the world outside the reservation. Many of us—that is, people in my generation and yours, and younger people, too—know we must reach out to that world if the people are going to have a place in the future."

  "You feel a very great loyalty to your people, don't you?"

  "The greatest," he answered, and the look he gave Eden shook her, making her think suddenly of his commitments that couldn't be spoken.

  * * * * *

  "They're adorable, Logan. Hey, stop it, you!" Eden laughed and pulled her shirttail away from the little black-and-white doe that suckled it as if she expected it to feed her. "Stop that!" she ordered, pushing the baby away, but bending to rub her head. "Oh, aren't you a sweetheart?"

  For the past few minutes, Eden had been playing in the small paddock that housed the goat kids from the last two births—all seven of them, the eldest only five days old. The kids, their heads only slightly higher than Eden's knees, had quickly captivated her with their antics. Logan had been content to sit watching, amused at her childlike wonder, amazed at her apparently unlimited capacity for joy. She laughed again as he watched, turning in a circle to shake away the young buck that was now chewing at the back of her shirt. Her tangle of black curls rippled like a banner on the wind and her laughter flowed over him like water from a desert spring. He felt that laughter clutching at a place near his heart, and knew he was in trouble.

  "If you were a Navajo child, I would have to scold you," he said softly, his heart not in the mood for scolding.

  "Me? Why?" she asked, her face bright with innocent delight.

  "Navajo children always play with the young animals," he answered, "but they're always admonished to remember these goats are food."

  He saw the shuttered look that came over her eyes as she took the shirt from the little goat's mouth and pushed out through the gate, closing it tightly behind her. “I guess I let myself forget," she said. "I'm sorry."

  "No, I'm sorry," he answered, feeling like a heel for disrupting her moment of starry-eyed delight.

  "Are you going to eat them all?"

  "Well, probably not me personally, but that's why they're here."

  Her color darkened. "I didn't mean you personally," she said. "I meant, won't you save any of these for breeding purposes?''

  "Actually, yes, we will. Most of the little does, if they have the good characteristics we're looking for in the breed, will be bred back to one of the other lines, not those of their father or mother. That necessitates keeping excellent records on all these births, of course."

  "Of course. And the little bucks?" She reached inside the pen to rub the ears of the one little buck that had tried to eat her shirttail.

  "Only the very biggest and best of those will be saved," Logan answered, "and probably none from this batch."

  "Oh." Eden drew her hand away from the hungry little one.

  "So, would you like to see the rest of the operation?"

  "Sure," she answered, following him away from the baby goats.

  Eden found the goat project a combination of hodgepodge makeshift, largely in the building materials, and meticulous crafting, particularly with regard to the way breeding records were kept on each of the animals. Every goat was marked with a tag in its right ear, the number on that tag corresponding to its place on an elaborate pedigree chart kept both on paper, in manual form, and on a computer hard drive belonging to the Navajo nation and assigned to this project.

  "We keep the manual backup system because we can never guarantee a steady power supply," Logan explained as Eden examined the records. "Then, every time the data in the pedigree files are altered, we send data files to the mainframe computer at the nation's headquarters in Window Rock, so there's another backup copy."

  "I'm impressed," Eden responded as she examined the pedigree files. "You have complete data on every goat in the project: when it was born and where, its parents and their parents and theirs. It looks like you have the ancestry on most of these goats back at least four generations."

  "Four is the minimum we'll accept here," Logan answered. “We have data back for eight generations on some of the younger goats, those in the lines that have been here longer."

  "Wow," Eden answered. "Most humans don't know as much about their ancestry as you know about these goats' ancestors."

  Logan shrugged. “Most humans are choosing their mates from an enormous gene pool. We have to be more careful with these goats, since we're breeding them back a couple of times a year, and we're working with only five bloodlines."

  "Still, I think most people would be amazed if they knew this much about their own pedigrees."

  "Among the belagaana, perhaps," Logan answered with a twinkle. "We Dineh have always prided ourselves on knowing where we come from."

  "I've heard that," Eden answered. "It's what my anthropologist prof at ASU called your consanguinity laws."

  "Right," Logan said, "our way of knowing who is distantly or closely related to whom. In practice, it doesn't seem to mean much except when you are thinking about getting married and you need to consult the tribal elders to be sure the clans aren't too closely related. Or"—his eyes danced with mischief—"if you suddenly come into money and the People around you want to know whether they can claim blood relationship or not."

  "So tell me about your people," Eden asked, fully aware that she was treading on unsteady ground should the subject of his mother come up.

  “Among the Dineh, every individual is identified by his name and his parents’ clans. I am Logan Redhorse, born to the Tall House People, born for the Salt People."

  "So those are your clans," she said, trying hard to remember what she knew of Navajo kinship laws, and the few clans she had heard of before.

  "Yes," he said, "but only because my grandmother adopted me as her own son, giving me the same kinship as my father has—more like his brother than his child. You see, the Din
eh inherit their clan affiliation through their mothers, and my natural mother was—"

  "—belagaana," Eden finished for him. "Sarah told me.

  He nodded. "I am born to the Tall House People, my grandmother's clan, because she claims me as her child. I am born for the Salt Clan—"

  "—That would be your grandfather's family..."

  "Yes, but again, it is borrowed inheritance, since I can't claim any right of inheritance from my mother, as other Dineh do. My grandmother has often told me that my mother was of the Surface-of-the-Earth people, those who walk upon the face of their Mother without ever knowing her or belonging to her, as the People do."

  "You are very close to your grandmother, aren't you?"

  Again Logan shrugged. "Close or far, she's the one person who has always been in my life. I owe her a great deal."

  Eden felt her throat tightening, but refused to give in too much. "I hope she appreciates what a fine man you've become," she said simply.

  "She thinks I've become too like the belagaana I live among," he answered. "Well, how about a picnic? Would you like to see some of Canyon de Chelly?"

  "I'd love to," Eden answered, ready to let the conversation take a different turn.

  * * * * *

  "All these years I lived within two hours' drive of this, and I never even knew it was here." Eden shook her head in wonder, amazed by everything she saw in the mystical reaches of Canyon de Chelly. She and Logan had passed through Chinle a little after 11:30. Now it was barely noon and already they were moving into a deep and widening gorge that dwarfed them with its sheer magnificence.

  "Impressed?" Logan asked, apparently pleased.

  "Astounded." Eden leaned down to get an angle on the truck's windshield. "How high are these walls, anyway?"

  "I'm told they average about a thousand feet although there clearly are exceptions. In one place, the walls extend more than seventeen hundred feet above the canyon floor." He drove toward them.

  "Amazing," Eden said again, staring in wonder. "Walls" was the right name for the carved sides of this steep chasm. They appeared to have been chiseled from red and dun sandstone and polished smooth. Striped with color, like the painted hills that had given Rainbow Rock and the Painted Desert their names, the layers of sandstone lay hundreds of feet thick, natural monuments that towered above the canyon's tiny occupants. "I can imagine how the old ones saw this place."

  "It was the ancient heart of Dinehtah," Logan answered, using the Navajos' name for their traditional homeland.

  Eden saw the look on his face and understood more than Logan was telling her in words; much of his own heart was here as well. "It's mystical," she answered. "In a place like this, one could almost believe in magic."

  "Or faith, perhaps." Logan drove the truck off-road, heading toward one of the sheer rock walls that marked the canyon's boundary. "This canyon is considered sacred to the People, and within it, many places have specific meaning."

  "I'm not surprised," Eden answered, trying to sense the place's spirit. The canyon had a sacred feeling, like a giant natural cathedral, its ceiling open to the sky. "There's a reverent feeling here, like in a holy place."

  "It has always been that," Logan agreed. "It's also been a formidable fortress. In the history of the Dineh, I expect this canyon has served one purpose at least as much as the other."

  "A fortress," Eden said thoughtfully, then looking about at the faces of sheer, forbidding rock, she nodded. "I can see that, too. People who holed up within these walls could easily defend themselves against anyone trying to enter from Chinle."

  "It was actually much simpler than that," Logan said. He stopped the truck a few hundred yards from one looming stone wall, turned off the engine, then turned to speak, one arm on the back of the truck's seat. As his hand touched her shoulder, the inevitable power flowed between them, enlivening the small space within the pickup's cab. "Often during the Navajo Wars, the people hid in the nooks and crannies along the canyon floor while warriors gathered on the heights, raining down stones and arrows on anyone who attempted to follow their innocent ones to their hiding places."

  Eden nodded. Encouraged, Logan toyed with a tendril of her dark hair, the touch sending little shivers across her skin as he went on with his story. "It's said that in the spring of 1858, the Army's ongoing troubles with the Dineh heated up. There were some raids against the People, who responded by raiding one of Major Brooks's hay camps. It wasn't much of a raid, though an Army dog was killed with an arrow.

  "It was probably just intended as a warning to get away, but Brooks retaliated by rounding up and slaughtering more than sixty head of cattle and horses owned by Navajo head man Manuelito, who was technically at peace with the Army. He'd been grazing them on his own traditional pasturelands, which the soldiers now told him were theirs, and they wanted the slaughter to serve as a warning to others who thought they could use the Army's land. He sent a group of warriors to the fort to protest the action." Logan paused to gauge her interest.

  "Um-hm," Eden said, hoping he'd continue touching her, trying to stay focused on the story in spite of the sensations coursing through her.

  "There was an incident," Logan went on, "and a young boy, a slave Major Brooks had brought from the East, was killed by an arrow. The soldiers sent troops to demand that the Dineh give up the murderer of the slave named Jim." He paused again, watching the distress on her face. For the first time, the story had become more compelling than the touch. "That incident escalated into full-scale warfare and the people holed up here. In early September, just about this time of year, Colonel Miles wrote out a formal declaration of war and ordered the Army to march into the canyon."

  "Ooh." Eden winced, fully caught up in the tale. "I can imagine how those troops felt, marching into this."

  "Apparently they started with a great deal of confidence," Logan continued. "They had a Zuni guide who showed them a path that led down from the battlements up there..." He pointed. "...to the valley floor, somewhere over there." He indicated a slight break in the wall. "They came in from the top, hoping to break up the People and scatter them in both directions."

  "And did it work?" Eden asked.

  "They planned to reach the canyon floor early in the afternoon, and then sweep all the way to Chinle before nightfall, but it took the soldiers so long to negotiate the hazardous footpath down the canyon side, that they had to set up camp in a cornfield here at the bottom almost as soon as they got here."

  He grinned, his eyes twinkling. "It's said that as they were setting up camp, they watched a Navajo signal fire begin to burn on the escarpments above them, then another, and another. By the time it was dark, the cliffs were alive with hundreds of signal fires. The next morning, the troops were up at first light, packing up the whole camp and hightailing it back to Forth Defiance as fast as they could go."

  Eden was enthralled by both the story and Logan's knowledge in telling it. But she knew the ultimate end of the tale had not been happy for Logan's people. "How long did the wars go on?"

  "Pretty much forever," he said casually, then, to show her he wasn't being flippant, he added, "As the Dineh tell it, they'd been at war first with the Spanish, then with New Mexican irregulars and slave traders for a good two hundred or two hundred fifty years before the American military got involved."

  Eden felt overwhelmed by such numbers. "Two hundred fifty years?"

  "Um-hm."

  "That's a long time to fight."

  “For the People, it soon ceased to be a war and became a way of life. Many generations lived and died without ever knowing a period of more than a few short years one could call peace." He spoke for a while longer about the tragic events.

  Eden had never heard any of these facts in her basic history classes. "I had no idea."

  "Most people don't." Logan seemed ready to drop the subject.

  Eden wasn't quite ready to drop it yet. "Logan, you spoke about raids against the rancherias. Are you referring to places like this one?
"

  They had climbed out of the riverbed and were looking up now at a small outpost silhouetted against the dun rock wall a half-mile beyond. It was a simple place with an eight-sided hogan of logs and earth at its center, a couple of corrals made of stacked and wired branches, and an outbuilding that probably served as an animal shelter or corn crib. Eden shuddered to think of how a family might withstand the assault of armed cavalry, with nothing more than this to protect them.

  Logan stopped the truck. "Much like this," he said, "though in the earlier days, there were ricos, or rich men—like Manuelito or Ganado Mucho—who had much pastureland and great herds."

  "Ganado Mucho. Doesn't that mean Many Cattle in Spanish?''

  "You speak Spanish?" He seemed surprised—and pleased.

  She smiled. “Asi-asi,'' she answered, tipping her hand back and forth in the expression that means "so-so."

  "Well, you got his name right, anyway," Logan responded. "It does mean Many Cattle. Many of the early Navajos had Spanish names because of their long dealings with the Spanish, and as I said, many of them were quite wealthy, including most of the head men—"

  "Is that like a chief?"

  "Somewhat," he answered, "although the Dineh followed those whom they trusted, depending on the situation, and most didn't do much following at all. In fact, that's the point I was just making. The People tended to live scattered abroad in small family groups, with little contact with others except during ceremonial times. Their traditional way of life contributed toward making them easy targets of the slave raiders." He shrugged. "Then again, it made it tougher for an outside power to conquer them," he said, gesturing at the canyon around them. "When's the last time you saw a Navajo city?"

  Eden considered. "Chinle?" she asked tentatively. If this was a trick question, she hoped her answer was at least close.

  "Nope. That city, like most of those on the rez, was created by the European men who came later as a way of organizing governmental activities and trading areas."

  "Okay, I'll bite. Which Navajo cities are traditional?"