The American Century: Literature since 1945 785begins with a Navajo Indian called Benally telling the tale of the departure of Abel
from the city. Abel and Benally, it turns out, have become friends; and Benally has
told Abel about the songs and chants associated with the Navajo healing ceremonies,
the Beautyway and the Night Chant. “I used to tell him about those old ways,”
Benally recalls. He also sings about the house made of dawn: making a gift of the
words that will help Abel find the right language to express himself, and a sense of
an identity that is continuous, coextensive with the land.
The final section of the book, “The Dawn Runner,” turns the wheel of the narrative
full circle. Abel awakes at dawn, only a week after his return from Los Angeles, to
find his grandfather dead. “The old man had spoken six times in the dawn,” we are
told, “and the voice of his memory was whole and clear and growing like the dawn.”
What “the voice of his memory” has declared is a lesson in language and in living.
The grandfather has taught his grandson about the land, its rhythms and rituals, he
has acted as a guide, an initiator into the mysteries of sex and death. He has also, over
the years and over the night, helped to give Abel the right words, pointed a way for
him to articulate and celebrate his being. Abel now prepares the body of his
grandfather in the ritual fashion. He then hurries off to run after the men who have
set off in the ceremonial race. “All of his being was concentrated in the sheer motion
of running on,” the reader learns, “and he was past caring about pain.” Abel runs to
the point where “he could see at last without having to think.” What he sees are “the
canyon and the mountains and the sky,” “the rain and river and the fields beyond,”
and “the dark hills at dawn.” Entering body and soul into a holistic harmony with
the land that from time immemorial has sustained his people, Abel begins to sing
“under his breath.” “There was no sound, and he had no voice,” the book concludes,
“he had only the words of a song. And he went on running on the rise of the song.
House made of pollen, house made of dawn. Qtsedaba.” Abel has at last found the right
words: the words of the Night Chant that restore him to earth and to community.
The Walatowa term Qtsedaba, indicating that the story is over, seals the healing
process, an experience of restoration of being that is also a restoration in saying and
seeing. It is a defining moment in contemporary Native American writing, not least
because, in responding to the ancient rhythms and rituals, the novel itself has entered
into a new language along with its protagonist. In wedding the forms of American
fiction to the songs and storytelling of the Native American oral tradition, Momaday
has fashioned a voice, the right voice for himself, just as his hero Abel has done.
Like Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko has a mixed ancestry. The family of her
father was a mixture of Laguna and white; her mother came from a Plains tribe; and
she also has some Mexican ancestors. As the title of her first book, Laguna Woman
(1974), a collection of poems, indicates, however, it is the traditions and territory of
the Laguna that have meant most to her. Many cultures have influenced the Laguna.
Hopi, Zuni, and Jemez people had married into the pueblo before it was established
at its present site in New Mexico five hundred years ago. Later, Navajos, Spanish, and
other European settlers also intermarried with the Lagunas. Those who joined the
pueblo brought with them their own rituals and myths, that were then incorporated
into Laguna culture. “Things which don’t shift and grow are dead things,” says aGGray_c05.indd 785ray_c 05 .indd 785 8 8/1/2011 7:31:45 PM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 31 : 45 PM