a person—they were more like a large blanket that covered the wall! One afternoon, I was washing dishes and I heard a strange voice. Because I was in the kitchen, I had the television volume in the living room turned up high, so that I could listen to the show. I thought that perhaps the voice was coming from the television. I stopped washing the dishes because I had a very strong feeling that someone was in the kitchen with me. I turned around to look behind me. I saw this huge black shadow—it covered the whole wall! It moved slowly, and then quickly darted across the room and into the hallway. It couldn’t have been the shadow of a passing car because the kitchen is located in the rear of the house. And it couldn’t have been a passing plane, because I would have heard it flying so low. No, I knew this was something that had to do with the spiritual world.
Even though I was a bit shaken, I walked into the hallway and looked in the bathroom, closets, and the bedrooms. As soon as I entered the last bedroom, the familiar cold feeling came over me. My instincts told me I had to get out of there, fast! I closed the door behind me and left it closed until the following week, when a handyman paid me a visit. I had ordered a pair of new closet doors that were delivered by a Nogales contractor who carried them off his truck and into the bedroom. Everything was going fine.
I was in the living room watching television as the loud noise of his electric drill started up. I remember walking to the bedroom and asking the contractor if he wanted some coffee. He said no and I left him alone to finish the installation. Just a few minutes later I suddenly heard him yell, and as I began to get off my chair, he came flying down the hallway and out the front door! I thought he had hurt himself, so I raced out the door to meet him at his truck that was parked in the street. He was pale. He told me that “something” had taken hold of his arm. When he turned around he saw a very large man with angry eyes, grabbing hold of his upper left arm. It took all the strength he had to free himself from the ghost’s strong grip. The contractor did not know anything about the bedroom, or about the woman who owned the house before I did. His experience left him shaken and I was very concerned about spending any more nights or days in the house with that “thing” walking around. I volunteered to go back into the house and return with his tools. I softly prayed to myself as I walked into the bedroom, and I guess God helped me, because I didn’t see El Coyote.
After the contractor drove away, I walked back to the bedroom and placed a crucifix on the door and closed it shut, just as the woman before me had done. I decided to tell my cousin, whom lives in the town just south of Arivaca, about what had happened. She asked, “If there is an angry spirit in the bedroom, it must be protecting something. Why wouldn’t it want people in the bedroom?” That weekend my cousin, her husband Pablo, and a friend came to my house to investigate.
We entered the bedroom and searched the closet, and tapped on the walls. As we walked about the room, we all took turns walking over one particular spot on the floor that was colder than the rest of the room. “That’s it, it’s here!” my cousin said. “Whatever this ghost is protecting, it is under this area of the floor.” Pablo went outside and located a small door that led to a crawl space under the house. He returned to tell us to get flashlights. The two men opened the door and they both entered the crawl space, as my cousin and I watched. Soon we heard Pablo yell to us to come outside. The men had found something. As we all gathered in the yard, they showed us a small Indian pottery bowl and some old stone beads. No money, no bones—just a bowl and beads. We placed the bowl into a cardboard box with crumbled-up newspaper, as packing material.
I didn’t want these things in my house and I decided to take them to the nearby San Javier Del Bac mission at the Pima reservation. After driving up the mission’s driveway, I waited in my parked car for a moment, just to think things over. I wasn’t sure if giving these Indian things to a priest would be the best thing to do. Instead, I decided to take a short drive to the reservation office and speak with someone. I met an office worker and explained to her that I needed to know if there was a person who could help me. After telling her my story, she gave me directions to the house of a woman who heals people on the reservation.”
As I was parking the car on the dirt street, the woman and her son were driving up to the house. I introduced myself and quickly told her about what I had in the cardboard box. She seemed uneasy, but said she would take care of it. My meeting with her only took about 15 minutes. I know that I must have appeared very nervous, because I remember speaking to her very quickly. I opened the car’s trunk, took out the cardboard box with the pot and left it on her porch.
As I drove away, I began to feel very comfortable and relaxed. Somehow I knew that I had done the right thing. A feeling of relief came over me. Since that night I have not had another experience with El Coyote in my house. Today, I use the bedroom as a workshop for ceramic figurines that I paint. I paint several different figurines of people, animals and flowers, but if you look closely you’ll notice I don’t have one single painted pot. I guess you can tell why I stay away from keeping pots in that bedroom!
Navajo
(Din-neh’)
The name by which the Navajo are known is not so much the name of a people as the name of a place. The neighboring Pueblo people referred to the area of the southwest that the Din-neh’ occupied as Navajo. The Spanish who later arrived referred to the Din-neh’ as Apaches de Navajo. This label was in time shortened to simply Navajo. Given all this excess phraseology, the Navajo have always referred to themselves as Din-neh’, which means “the people,” and their homeland as Dinetah’. Current usage of either two nouns is acceptable. However, it is best to use the name that the Din-neh’ have chosen for centuries.
Today the Din-neh’ are the largest Indian nation in the United States. Presently they account for fifteen percent of the Native American population as reported in the 1990 U.S. census. Their tribal numbers are in excess of 250,000 members. Occupying a vast area of the southwest, spreading across parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah, Din-neh’ land encompasses an area larger than the states of Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Jersey combined. Chinle, near the geographic center of the Navajo Indian Reservation in northeastern Arizona, is at the entrance to Canyon de Chelly National Monument. Chinle became a center for population growth and trade after 1868 when the United States signed a treaty with the Navajos. The first trading post was established in 1882, the first mission in 1904, and the first government school in 1910.
Today the community, at an altitude of 5,082 feet, has been designated one of the major “growth centers” on the Navajo Reservation by the tribal government. It is an important trade, administrative, and educational center within the Chinle Chapter (a local government unit) and is headquarters for the Chinle Agency, one of five Bureau of Indian Affairs administrative jurisdictions on the reservation.
Josie Yellow Gourd’s (Navajo) Story
I interviewed Josie on the Navajo Reservation not far from the town of Chinle, which is located in the northeast quadrant of the state. Josie is a 41-year-old widow and mother of twin daughters’ aged 16. Our interview took place inside their mobile home, which is situated on deep red, rusty-colored desert land with wispy juniper trees growing in contorted shapes. Overhead is the endless vastness of turquoise blue sky.
Within such beauty, this location would be complete if not for the reality of poverty that lingered all around. As with some Native Americans, Josie daily endures such inconveniences as living without modern plumbing, electricity or heating. The interview was conducted in Josie’s kitchen. On the table were various small plastic tubes and glass jars containing a rainbow of assorted tiny, brightly colored glass beads. Josie and her daughters sew these beads onto leather and make hatbands, necklaces, earrings and bracelets. Once completed, they take these articles to local stores in town and either sell
