Then the giant said,
“What else do you have
to give me?”
And Kochininako said,
“All I have left
are my bow and arrows
and my hadti,”
which was her flint knife
and the Estrucuyu said,
“Well you better give them to me,”
and so she handed over
her arrows and bows and her flint knife.
And about this time
Kochininako started to get scared
because whenever she gave the giant anything
he just took it
and he still didn’t go away
he just asked for more.
“What else do you have to give me,”
he said.
“All I have left are my clothes.”
“Well give them to me,”
he said.
Kochininako saw this sand rock cave nearby—
it was only one of those shallow caves—
but she saw it was her only chance
so she said,
“All right, you can have my clothes
but first I must go inside that cave over there
while I take them off.”
The Estrucuyu wasn’t very smart
and he didn’t see right away
that his big head
would not fit through
the cave opening.
So he let her go
and Kochininako ran into the cave
and she got back as far as she could
in the cave
and she started taking off her clothes.
First she took off
her buckskin leggings
and threw them out of the cave
then she took off her moccasins
and threw them out the entrance to the cave.
She untied her belt
and threw it out to the giant.
Finally
all she had left
was her manta dress
and a short cotton smock underneath.
She took off her manta
and threw it out
to the Estrucuyu
and she told him
she didn’t have anything more.
That was when
the Estrucuyu
started after her
poking his giant hand
into the cave
trying to grab hold of her
Kochininako moved fast
and kept getting away
but she knew
sooner or later
that old Estrucuyu would reach her.
So she started calling
for the Twin Brothers,
the Hero brothers,
Ma’see’wi and Ou’yu’ye’wi
who were always out
helping people who were in danger.
The Twin brothers
were fast runners
and she called them
and in no time
they were there.
Ma’see’wi and Ou’yu’ye’wi carry bows and arrows
and they each carry a flint knife
a “hadti”
like the one Kochininako carried for hunting.
When they got there
the Estrucuyu was scratching around
the entrance to the cave
trying to get Kochininako.
So the Twin brothers
each threw their hadti
their flint knives,
at the old Estrucuyu
and cut off his head—
that’s how they killed him—
and they split open his stomach
and pulled out his heart
and they threw it
as far as they could throw—
they threw Estrucuyu’s heart
clear across—
those things could happen
in those days—
and it landed right over here
near the river
between Laguna and Paguate
where the road turns to go
by the railroad tracks
right around
from John Paisano’s place—
that big rock there
looks just like a heart,
and so his heart rested there
and that’s why
it is called
Yash’ka
which means “heart.”
Grandpa Stagner had a wagon and team and water drilling rig.
He traveled all over New Mexico drilling wells and putting up
or fixing windmills. In Los Lunas he had married
my great-grandmother, a granddaughter of the Romero family.
We called her Grandma Helen but even as a very young child
I sensed she did not like children much and so I remember her
from a distance, a tiny woman dressed in black, rolling her own
cigarettes in brown wheat papers. Grandma Lillie tells me
she spoke English but I remember Grandma Helen
speaking only Spanish when I was around her.
It was old Juana who had been like a mother to them.
It was old Juana who raised Grandma Lillie and her sisters
and brothers while Grandma Helen was in bed
either recovering from a birth or preparing for another one
in the genteel tradition of the Romero family.
Juana was already old when she came to work for them
and she lived with them until she died.
But when she had been just a little girl
Juana had been kidnapped by slavehunters
who attacked her family as they were traveling near Cubero.
Slavery of Navajo people went on in territorial New Mexico
until 1900.
The details are sketchy but by the time the territorial governor
made one of his half-hearted crackdowns on Indian slavery
Juana was an adult.
She spoke only Spanish
and no trace of her family remained.
So she continued with the work she knew
and years later Grandpa Stagner hired her
to help with the children.
On Memorial Day when I was a girl
Grandma Lillie and I always took flowers
to Juana’s grave in the old graveyard behind the village.
The markers in the old graveyard are small flat sandstones
and many of them have been broken or covered with sand
and Grandma Lillie was never quite sure if we had found her grave
but we left the jar of roses and lilacs we had cut anyway.
His wife had caught them together before
and probably she had been hearing rumors again
the way people talk.
It was early August
after the corn was tall
and it was so hot in the afternoon
everyone just rested after lunch
or took naps
waiting for evening when it cools off
and you can go back to weeding
and working in the fields again.
That’s what they were counting on—
this man and that woman—
they were going to wait
until everybody else went
back up to the village for lunch
then they were going to get together
down there in the corn fields.
That other woman was married too
but her husband was working in California.
This man’s wife was always
watching him real close at night
so afternoon was
the only chance they had.
So anyway
they got together there
on the sandy ground between the rows of corn
where it’s shady and cool
and the wind rattles the big corn stalks.
The
y were deep into those places where people go
when this man’s wife showed up.
She suspected she would find them together
so she brought her two sisters along.
The two of them jumped up
and started putting their clothes back on
while his wife and his sisters-in-law
were standing there
saying all kinds of things
the way they do
how everyone in the village knows
and that’s the worst thing.
So that other woman left
and it was just this poor man alone
with his wife and his sisters-in-law
and his wife would cry a little
and her sisters would say
“Don’t cry, sister, don’t cry,”
and then they would start talking again
about how good their family had treated him
and how lucky he was.
He couldn’t look at them
so he looked at the sky
and then over at the hills behind the village.
They were talking now
what a fool he was
because that woman had a younger boyfriend
and it was only afternoons that she had any use
for an old man.
So pretty soon he started hoeing weeds again
because they were ignoring him
like he didn’t matter anyway
now that
that woman was gone.
Then there was the night
old man George was going
down the hill to the toilet
and he heard strange sounds
coming from one of the old barns
below.
So he thought he better
check on things
just in case some poor animal
was trapped inside—
maybe somebody’s cat.
So he shined his flashlight inside
and there was Frank—
so respectable and hard-working
and hardly ever drunk—
well there he was
naked with that Garcia girl—
you know,
the big fat one.
And here it was
the middle of winter
without their clothes on!
Poor old man George
he didn’t know what to say
so he just closed the door again
and walked back home—
he even forgot where he was going
in the first place.
Grandma A’mooh had a worn-out little book that had lost its cover.
She used to read the book to me and my sisters
and later on I found out she’d read it to my uncles and my father.
We all remember Brownie the Bear
and she read the book to us again and again
and still we wanted to hear it.
Maybe it was because
she always read the story with such animation and expression
changing her tone of voice and inflection
each time one of the bears spoke—
the way a storyteller would have told it.
Storytelling
You should understand
the way it was
back then,
because it is the same
even now.
Long ago it happened
that her husband left
to hunt deer
before dawn
And then she got up
and went to get water.
Early in the morning
she walked to the river
when the sun came over
the long red mesa.
He was waiting for her
that morning
in the tamarack and willow
beside the river.
Buffalo Man
in buffalo leggings.
“Are you here already?”
“Yes,” he said.
He was smiling.
“Because I came for you.”
She looked into the
shallow clear water.
“But where shall I put my water jar?”
“Upside down, right here,” he told her,
“on the river bank.”
“You better have a damn good story,”
her husband said,
“about where you been for the past
ten months and how you explain these
twin baby boys.”
“No! That gossip isn’t true.
She didn’t elope
She was kidnapped by
that Mexican
at Seama feast.
You know
my daughter
isn’t
that kind of girl.”
It was
in the summer
of 1967.
T.V. news reported
a kidnapping.
Four Laguna women
and three Navajo men
headed north along
the Rio Puerco river
in a red ’56 Ford
and the F.B.I. and
state police were
hot on their trail
of wine bottles and
size 42 panties
hanging in bushes and trees
all along the road.
“We couldn’t escape them,” he told police later.
“We tried, but there were four of them and
only three of us.”
Seems like
it’s always happening to me.
Outside the dance hall door
late Friday night
in the summertime,
and those
brown-eyed men from Cubero,
smiling.
They usually ask me
“Have you seen the way stars shine
up there in the sand hills?”
And I usually say “No. Will you show me?”
It was
that Navajo
from Alamo,
you know,
the tall
good-looking
one.
He told me
he’d kill me
if I didn’t
go with him
And then it
rained so much
got muddy.
That’s why
it took me
so long
to get back home.
My husband
left
after he heard the story
and moved back in with his mother.
It was my fault and
I don’t blame him either.
I could have told
the story
better than I did.
In Laguna Village looking south toward the Chersposy house.
The Two Sisters
Ahsti-ey and Hait-ti-eh were two girls,
pueblo girls who lived in Hani-a.
Hani-a was supposed to be
traditionally, Cienega,
you know where Cienega is
the place between Albuquerque and Santa Fe.
They called it “Hania”
that means, interpreted,
“the East Country.”
It is east from here.
It means the “East Country,” yes.
The two sisters
they were Hait-ti-eh
and Ahsti-ey—
those were their names.
They were interested in a young man
by the name of Estoy-eh-muut.
“Muut” means “youth.”
“Estoyeh” means that he was a great hunter.
And they were both interested in this young man
and they were trying to see
who would finally win him over
on her side.
Ahsti-ey was beautiful.
So was Hait-ti-eh.
Hai
t-ti-eh had beautiful hair,
beautiful hair, the sister did.
And Estoy-eh-muut would come to visit them.
As he came
he would bring venison.
You know that is the original food, venison is.
The pueblo people have always depended upon it
depended on the deer for food.
So Estoy-eh-muut came quite often
and he would bring meat
from the deer he hunted.
Finally Ahsti-ey suspected something—
that Estoy-eh-muut thought more of her sister, Hait-ti-eh,
the one who had beautiful long hair.
So there was jealousy right away
it developed in Ahsti-ey
and she was just wondering how
she could ward off
Estoy-eh-muut’s devotion to her sister, Hait-ti-eh
which was much more than he gave to her.
So now anything can take place
in the story.….
So one evening
the girls went to bed
and she thought of trickery
that she would play on Hait-ti-eh,
the one who had beautiful hair.
So Ahsti-ey called mice in
that evening
and had the mice eat
all of Hait-ti-eh’s hair
and that spoiled her looks,
of course.
And so when Estoy-eh-muut, the young hunter, came,
he saw that Hait-ti-eh’s beautiful hair was gone,
but still
that didn’t deter him
from thinking much of her, Hait-ti-eh.
So he kept coming.
The story is told in a song.
Many of these stories
sometimes end up in songs.
This story is found in one of the grinding songs.
The grinding song belonged
to the Ka-shalee clan,
and so the story is related in this song
and it tells that something tragic
took place in those far-off days.
The tragedy was
that Hait-ti-eh’s hair was all gone.
The end of the song goes like this:
Long ago
in the East Country
called Tse’dihania
this took place
something tragic took place.
So the people migrated from there.
The people of Ahsti-ey and Hait-ti-eh
came to Laguna
and settled here
because something tragic took place.
Out of the Works No Good Comes From
Possession
It will come to you
late one night
distinctly
while your wife
waits in bed.
You will reach into pockets
for something you feel is missing