Wahoo

Wahoo

“It is important for you to go to school.”


The young man followed his father out the door and waited to hear the
talk he had heard so many times before when he was growing up.


"I know", he said.


The old man kept talking as if he didn't hear him. They were on the
way to the trading post to check the mail and to drop by his aunt's
place to see what she wanted from them. They had left the small house
where they lived and walked along a well-worn path into the cedar and
pinon pines. They walked west toward the trading post, where it sat
against the mountain.


His father was an older man, with lines on his face, a Navajo who was
raised right here in this place all his life. As they got to a small
rise, the old man pointed to ridge to the North, where the new
boarding school was built.


"We come from that place right there, we used to live there a long
time ago until Washingdon (the U.S.Goverment Indian Service) took it
away. My grandma used to weave under the trees, that was their camp.
My mother was born along a place there by the ridge. I was born
somewhere in those trees not too far from there." He pointed it out as
they walked along the sandy path strewn with small rocks. An old black
dog followed them a little ways off.


He stopped and made a sweeping motion to cover the whole valley.
"Washingdon took all the young people to school at Shiprock. My mother
was forced to go to school. They spent all the time there they
didn’t come home. They used to make them wear uniforms like
soldiers. That was in the old days. It was in 19 ought 6 (1906) when
she went there. Me, I never had the chance to go to school. Take care
of the sheep. If it was hot, it was cold I had to do it. My father
used to chase me out with a stick to go out with the sheep so they
could eat. Sheep were too important, even more than going to school.
My brothers and sisters..." he pointed to where my aunt lived, "She
went to school, but I couldn't go. They learned to talk English, I
didn't know how."


There was a clearing in the trees and he stopped. He turned to his son
and looked him square in the eyes and said, "You have to do good in
school, learn all you can, be somebody, not like me, uneducated." When
someone talks to you like that you remember their face. the
seriousness of their voice, the lines around their eyes, the look of
their face. You remember the look in their eyes and the wrinkles on
their face. You know each line. Each one got there, day by day, month
by month, each leaving a path of a life lived. It is their experience
that speaks to you.


"They used to make fun of me. I understood a few words of broken
English. In those days, no one spoke English; we just talked our own
language. It’s not like that anymore. That is why you have to go
to school and make something of yourself. Me, I had no school"


As they walked on an old Navajo man came down the path toward them
with a gunny sack strung over his back, he always wore a piece of
brilliant blue turquoise stone on his ear tied with a small piece of
string. You would see the blue stone before you could make out his
face. "That man is a devil" his father said quietly, "Let him pass."


The man passed and didn't say anything. He didn't look left or right
but just kept going. The young man turned and looked at him as he
disappeared down the trail. "You have to leave those kind alone, they
will take something from you and sacrifice you."


"Why is he a devil?"


"Don't worry about him, just remember to learn all what to study hard
at school. It is his (White Men) world, you have to understand them.
They are different; when they talk they don't really tell you what
they want. You have to figure it out what they are really saying,
because they don't say it straight out. You can be cheated, or
misunderstand them. They will be mad or laugh at you because of it."


As they walked the young man squinted his eyes and pictured the place
back then.
It was a different time and place. It was a place of dirt roads, horse
drawn wagons up against the Chuska Mountains. He could see a his
father as a young man, a Navajo taking the sheep out to graze each day
across sagebrush covered lands that offered some shade under the
occasional juniper and cedar tree.


EshKee Tso, he was called by his brothers and sisters cuz he was
chubby and that is what it means. In the community where he lived
there was a trading post, a small Christianed Reformed Church and a
few people lived there, mainly all Navajo. The traders were not.


EshKee didn't speak English and went only to the Third Grade. He knew
allot about horses, working and finally getting a matched pair of
white draft horses for hauling and heavy work. He was proud of those
horses. The trader took his picture and it was on the wall at home. He
was young then, standing in front of them, those white horses. He cut
wood and worked for the Indian Civilian Conservation Corps on work
projects, fixing springs, a community building and building a narrow
road to the top of the mountain. It was hard work and he was good with
his hands. He cut some juniper, which is like steel; it is hard to cut
and doesn't rot in the ground. He stripped them, hauled them down the
mountain and set up corner posts for fences, anchored by big rocks
that are still there today, just as strong as when the day they were
put in.


He was 24 in 1942, when the minister came to visit and told his family
that EshKee had to report to Totah, the place where the waters meet.
He didn't talk English. He was fluent in his own tongue and everyone
was Navajo where he lived, very few people talked English. There
wasn't much need to speak the White man's language. EshKee always
wondered why his father had taken him out of school, when his brothers
and sisters went. Since he was the eldest he cared for the sheep, and
cutting wood and tended to the field of corn across the wash. In the
fall he would sleep in a patch of trees, an orchard to keep people
from stealing the apricots, peaches, plums and apples that grew there.


This all changed with the war, he was drafted and went to Farmington
with the trader's son, who taught him to write his name on the way
there. He was put on a train and sent to boot camp in Michigan with
the Army.


He was quiet on the train and just followed the crowd when they got
there. It was beautiful country he said, green with fields everywhere.
When he got to boot camp, they soon learned they had an Indian who
couldn't talk English.


It is a time he didn't like to talk about. He was yelled at, kicked
and beaten by the Army sergeants who trained them. He was singled out.
He spoke about having a Springfield rifle put to his shoulder and
firing it, hitting the wrong target, and the drill instructor kicked
him in the shoulder. The imprint of the boot was still there a faint
scar.


He learned to speak English, slowly, peeling potatoes, while working
in the laundry. They gave him the name of "Wahoo" and called him
"Chief". He never cared to be called Chief by anyone and hated that
cartoon from the old days and that crazy character he was named after.


He spoke about, a Nakai {Mexican} who didn't talk English either, they
were paired together. His name was Jesus, and the drill instructors
were mad when they wanted to cuss him out, but felt funny cussing out
Jesus. He used to laugh about that.


He spoke about a time where he and Jesus pulled guard duty, protecting
bombers headed for Europe. It was the middle of winter, and so cold
and the place was freezing. They were put out at the end of runway for
twelve hours and walked back and forth. When it came time to go no one
came for them, they walked and walked to keep from freezing looking
for someone to come. They stayed there throughout the day and into the
next night; 36 hours went by when someone remembered they were out
there. He nearly froze but kept his post.


The Army didn't know what to do with him, so they sent him to the Army
Air Corps and made him a tailgunner. He was sent to England. He was
able to fit in the back of the tail easily. He was not assigned to one
crew when a crew was short he filled in. It was a hard time for him,
but he learned to talk English and to read with the help of fellow
soldiers who took the time to teach him from basic grammar books.


He spoke of the places he saw, the beautiful country and always
wonders why White People left there to come to our country where there
isn't much except sagebrush. It was during a time when they were in
the air when fighters attacked them; he was the tailgunner and firing
off his guns. He was not sure what happened, either his gun blew up or
he was hit. He was wounded and made blind.


He was sent to the Bushnell Army Hospital in Brigham City, Utah. It
later became the Intermountain Boarding School for Indians. In time he
got his sight back and met a woman, a Navajo woman working as a baby
sitter in Ogden and married her.


He never liked the word “Wahoo” and “Chief”,
but moreso always told his children to go to school and to learn all
that they could so they wouldn't go through what he did.


As they got to the trading post, the Old Man and his son stopped and
he said, "Shi Yahzh.{My son} this is your home, it is where we come
from. You know this place, but way beyond the horizon there is another
world. I have seen it, it is green, beautiful and there are rough
people who will mistreat you and use you, but it is also a place where
there are good people too. You will learn this as you get older, but
you have to do good in school to understand it."


"Do you understand this?"


"Yes, but why is that old man a witch?"


"That is for another time, let's see whose inside the trading post.
Check the mail, while I talk with the trader