Ten minutes to sundown. The sky glowed golden in the west and purple in the east; shadows blanketed the valley. With the exception of the occasional goat ambling along the dusty, unpaved road, the only life for miles around appeared to be me, Daphne, and Blue Bertha (our beloved 1981 Honda Civic hatchback). We had grown accustomed to driving through such remote landscapes, but as the sun disappeared behind a cliff of craggy rock, I started to worry. Night would soon fall over the vast Navajo Nation, as would the temperature. We were searching for Chilchinbito, a village so tiny it wasn’t even on our map. We had been told that a family by the name of Cowboy might let us sleep on their floor there—but they had neither an address nor a telephone. And so, we were relying on faith—blind faith. Faith that the Cowboys would be home; faith they would share their homes and hearth with a couple of weary, unwashed trekkers. If not, we would be stuck in the middle of the Arizona desert with only the goats, Bertha, and each other for company.
At last, we spotted a small community of half a dozen mobile homes and some traditional Navajo settlements called hogans, which were constructed of logs and packed dirt. The soothing sound of a single wooden flute drifted out of the open window of one of the mobile homes. We parked beside it. A woman wearing a turquoise shirt decorated with Indian motifs curiously peeked out the doorway. After a quick round of introductions, we asked about the Cowboys. Anita didn’t know where they lived, but when she learned we needed a place to stay for the night, she immediately offered her own living room floor. Overjoyed, we followed her inside. There, an eighty-year-old woman sat behind a loom, weaving a beautiful saddlebag patterned with black and white diamonds, and a forty-year-old man called Jimmy played the flute. For the rest of the evening, this family shared their stories with us and asked for a few of our own. They seemed as pleased to have us in their home as we were to be there. I marveled at the opportunity to catch a quick but intimate glimpse of Navajo family life. Who would have thought it possible, given our tragic history?
In the mid-1800s, U.S. Cavalry troops burned Navajo villages, destroyed their crops and orchards, and drove them into the canyons until they either surrendered or starved to death. Thousands of Indians were then forced to march to Fort Sumner in the infamous “Long Walk” in which hundreds of Navajos perished. As far as Anita, Jimmy, and their mother were concerned, I was a descendent of the white settlers who pushed them off their ancestral lands and corralled them onto reservations. Yet they accepted me with open arms.
