Blackhorse Mitchell interview
Interviewer
Blackhorse let's talk about the Long Walk. Did you have ancestors who were on the Long Walk, and did they talk about the treatment and what happened?
Blackhorse
Well my grandmother use to tell me about her first grandmother named "Lady Blue Gap" who went there to Fort Sumner and came back.
Interviewer
What was that story?
Blackhorse
The story was that she went through hard times. Like she said she had to be careful; they had to walk with her relatives because there were other people like Mexicans and other tribes wanted to get hold of these Navajo girls and steal them, and that's why she had to walk real carefully right in the middle of all of those women. That's what she tells me.
Interviewer
And how did the soldiers on the Long Walk treat them?
Blackhorse
The way they were treated is a lot of these soldiers hadn't had much experience with women, and they said women have to stay in the group even if they have to go out and do the bladder emptying. They just have to be in a group because these soldiers would just get them there and molest them, and that's what my grandmother told me in her oral history.
Interviewer
You were telling me about the story of the pregnant woman getting shot. Tell me that story.
Blackhorse
The story is that the pregnant woman was a slave, or has been kept somewhere in Las Vegas—New Mexico at the time—and she was a servant girl, and one of the Mexicans I guess liked her and she got pregnant for him and then ran away and then came back to her country. But it just so happened that it was 1863 when the Navajos got round up, and she was going back to cross the Rio Grande River when she was being discovered by the guy that she got pregnant for and for some reason, the Mexicans liked her as being the house servant, but this guy recognizes that it was something that the guy gave to the girl; it was a crucifix, and she had that so when soldiers take these pregnant ladies over the hill, when they get so tired, he said they would just kill them, shoot them. And when that happened; it just so happened that one of the Mexicans decided to take the girl over the hill and shoot her because one of the privates wouldn't shoot her, because it was against his will and that's how he discovers it was one of his relatives girlfriend, and so he just saves her and then he didn't shoot the girl. That's the oral history that my grandmother always talked about. It's just that I was so young and when all of the women get together—and my grandma and the ladies would just be telling stories about Hweeldi (Fort Sumner, the Long Walk)—they'd be talking about whose grandparents went and who came back. That's what they'd be talking about. Now it seems likes it's more valuable to me than when I was a young kid listening to these ladies talk about all of those experiences that their great grandmothers had—those experiences on the Long Walk.
Interviewer
What did they find at Fort Sumner when they got there? What kind of stories did they tell?
Blackhorse
What they tell me was that the place was a barren place. It didn't have much except this river and they had to dig a hole and live down in there, and what the soldiers did is they gave them straws for bedding and they just kind of like lived in the hole and then some places they had to cover them with either canvas and they said it was a terrible experience. Some people died in there. Starvation and they didn't know how to cook; they didn't know what flour was; they didn't know what coffee was, and I remember my grandmother saying that some Navajos boiled coffee beans for days and it wouldn't turn into beans. Every time they boil it, it just doesn't soften up. And some of them tried to eat it like that—and it killed them.
Interviewer
What do you think of your grandmother and other relatives who made the Long Walk? What kind of emotions do you have?
Blackhorse
I don't regret it in some ways, but I know to me I'm always thinking about today is a different life. Today is like 2007 and it's kind of my life is just moving on. And I would feel that that was what the government meant to educate a lot of us Navajos today, and it seems like my life is to just do my best and live with the kind of life I'm having. And that's the way I see it. But looking back I know it was a hard time because I would think the Spaniards failed to educate the Navajos to begin with. They were here first. And certainly we'd think that Navajos would be good speakers of Spanish if they were well provided with school. It seems like Americans kind of broke the ice by teaching us Navajos how to speak good English.
Interviewer
Tell me about the boarding schools. When you went to school how did that happen and how did you feel about leaving your family?
Blackhorse
Well I hear a lot of older people talk about boarding school life; that some of them are being taken off from the home or policemen came around and took them there or they've been taken away while they were herding sheep and they didn't know whereabouts they were going and the parents didn't even know they were missing. For me it was experience where I didn't know anything about English or the white man where I grew up. My grandmother went to school but she never spoke English in front of me until she met this trader's son, who was leading a team of mules on the mesa, and I was sitting in the juniper tree looking down at them exchanging conversation in English, and the one word that I didn't want to forget was "hello"— not knowing that it was a word of greeting. And since then I've made it enter a song called "hello," and sang that to my sheep while I was growing up because I didn't want to forget the word. But when I went to boarding school I didn't just went, or I didn't get stolen or struggled to get to boarding school. But when my grandmother discovered that my cousin's sister had enrolled me in the boarding school in Ignacio, and she talked to me not in a nice way, but she said, "If you ever miss sheep, you go to one of these white man's coral you find the sheep and hide that sheep, but never think about my sheep." So she says, "If you ever go there, don't even think about home because that's what you wanted. If they want to spank you, that's what it costs to learn that powerful tool, English." And I believed that. And that's how I went to school. I don't regret going to a boarding school—they taught me a lot of good things, and for that reason, I felt that I made it this far. I made it this far for myself and for my little family and, therefore, I produced a book. I'm an artist; I'm an author. I'm also a recording artist. That's what it made me. I felt like without that I wouldn't have made it; I would have been a sheepherder with a lot of lice in my hair today, and it just kind of changed my outlook. Now I teach Navajo language full-time and I'm glad that I can read and write Navajo language and teach it to new generations today.
Interviewer
So if you spoke Navajo or practiced your religion at the schools, what happened to you? Did they punish you?
Blackhorse
To me I've enjoyed the assignment that my first account was to go to Catholic Church—and I loved the little grape juice wine; that was one of the best... I wasn't listening to whatever they were talking about—it was the wine and the bread. And then my friends told me to go to a Presbyterian church. They serve you chicken if you go there, and so I changed to be a Presbyterian and then one of my friends said, "no, go to the Baptist church, they send you good present." And that's the best part. And to me I didn't know I was suppose to be serious about religion; it's just that I was enjoying whatever it is that they introduced to me, even English. I've been trying to speak good English since then and I'm still studying it.
Interviewer
What do you think the Long Walk did to the Navajo identity? How do people feel about that today?
Blackhorse
I think it changed a number of things, but I get to thinking that like all the things— like fry bread and fried potatoes and all of these things—I'm beginning to see that it was Spanish. I understand my great grandma; she says that Navajos didn't do all of that. It was the Mexicans who taught them how to make a lot of things that we do today, like making fry bread. And here on the reservation we always ate blue cornmeal or yellow-white cornmeal, and it was always that and it had nothing to do with deep fried stuff today.
Interviewer
Were you ever punished at boarding school for anything?
Blackhorse
I have, and like I said, my grandma said to expect it and that's what it takes if you're learning English, and that's how I took it. Everything came in English. If I got punished, that was my own mistake and I always think that where I went to the boarding school was one of the best boarding schools that I can think of. I hear about other boarding schools and how they treat kids, but the place I went, Ignacio Boarding School, was set in the southern Ute reservation, and I think they did well worth job because all of the students that I went to school with they're well to do today. Some of them became good artists and I still see them and they have made it cheap, and I felt that if that boarding school didn't do a good job, I wouldn't have seen this today.
Interviewer
When you think about the land here and home, what does it mean to you?
Blackhorse
It's precious and I know the land is getting small. People are building homes and this is about the last place that I grew up on, and that's where my hogan is sitting, my house, and I still have sheep and I still have the family ranch called "Popping Rock Ranch" and we still ranch there, we go there. There is plenty of water. We mean to keep it that way. That's where my grandmother raised me and that's where my grandfather was, and before my grandfather, the great lady named "Lady Saltwater" found the place, "Pomer Mesa," and that's where I'm from, actually.
Interviewer
What kind of woman was your grandmother? Tell me a little bit about her.
Blackhorse
My grandmother? She was kind of mean in her own way, and I understand she took that after "Lady Blue Gap"—her name is (ah sah twa das tan). She went to Fort Sumner. I guess her story was that she had fought with the Utes before she went to Fort Sumner and she was a lady that knew how to handle men and she was raised by "Lady Blue Gap" My great grandmother was raised by her until she married my grandfather on the Pomer Mesa, and she was, I would say, a great lady. I understand she was a great diagnostician too—my grandmother was. She was a very strict woman and I think she raised me right even though she spanked me now and then, and I always felt that this comes with discipline because of my own doing.
Interviewer
Are there any other stories that she told you about the Long Walk?
Blackhorse
She told me all kinds of stories where there are mini-house. She was married to a mini-house clan that, she always said, that the first mini-house clan was Otaywa, who, I guess was killed by Don Diego, who killed all of the Pueblo men. But it was a lady and a couple others; they went to Orie-vee in those days—how long ago that was—but she was talking about it and so when Orie-vee got invaded by the Spaniards again, a lot of years after, she's the one who escaped through Navajo country who became mini-house clan. That's what she tells me.
Interviewer
We were just talking about English being such a powerful tool on the Long Walk... tell me that story.
Blackhorse
As I was saying, English is a very powerful tool and I believe it because if you have a good grammar skill, you got a good English skills and you can almost to the point say whatever it is you want to say, and I've always been told—even when I went to the University—to never use too many ah's; never to stutter. It's best to use your English grammar fully. And it's a good source and it's very powerful, and I believe that.
Interviewer
Tell that story one more time about the Long Walk and the pregnant girl. How did that happen?
Blackhorse
The pregnant girl was not the only... the girl that I described wasn't the only girl that was pregnant. There was a lot of others, and in the story, some of them were left. The ladies did bring kids into the world—they just said they left them wrapped under a tree. That's what they did, and some of them when they'd pass by these Pueblo communities, they just gave it away and some Mexicans took the babies, and they don't know what happened. More likely it's the Pueblo that raised these kids that did come back, but not for the Spanish, because I was reading about it too in the Catholic records of New Mexico. It says that the Catholics did keep good records, but some of these kids that grew up only knowing Spanish citizenship, like how to... the words that they spoke was mostly Spanish and they made it initially, even the girls and the boys said, "I can't go back because I can't speak the language. I've lost the tradition." And they didn't want to hamper any Navajos to say I can't speak Navajo anymore, so actually they stayed, and I can see that. A lot of years, when I went to the University of New Mexico, I met this Spanish guy; he was my classmate. I asked him one day how come he don't want to talk about his past. And so one day we were sitting in a bar, and after him drinking a number of margaritas, he was more open about it. And he said that in the attic of his old grandmother, he found a diary that said that her great great grandma was a Navajo, and so he told me that he must be a Navajo, but don't know which clan he belongs to, and that's why he don't talk about his Spanish background. That's what he tells me. So I gather that there are a lot of Navajos out there that have become Mexicans, and, have become Spanish citizens.
Interviewer
What did your grandmother tell you about the Long Walk home when they came back from Fort Sumner?
Blackhorse
They said it was kind of like a ruin. But she was telling me when they were coming back, she sang me some songs that had become songs... some Navajo, some day, when they saw Mount Taylor for the first time on the wagon they made a song about it. And we still have those songs called, “The Wagon Song,” and she sang those songs for me, and that's how I know about some of the songs that were made that way. They said it was a ?trail return although there was hardly anything. My grandmother said that my great grandmother had to rebuild, and then she was telling me that her great grandmother, "The Lady Saltwater," went to, I guess, Toy aut. Evidently she knew this Ute and I guess that's where she got some sheep and some horses and that's how it was a restart, but my first grandmother, my grandfather's side of my grandma, she was taken to Colorado at the age of three. She was born in 1860 and her hogan, the fort hogan that she spent four years, and it still sits on the Colorado—the only hogan you will find still sitting there in a hidden place on the Colorado.
Interviewer
What did she tell you when they first saw Mount Taylor?
Blackhorse
They said that it was overwhelming; that some of them cried. Some of them just made new songs, and they said that's how they felt. They said their heart felt really strong when they saw the mountain. That's what she tells me. They said it was really thrilling—it was overwhelming. They said a lot of people saw that, and what they did, is they kneeled down and kissed the earth that they were going home. That's what she tells me.
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