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"Image"
"...Each little piece of it grew from day to day..."

"You might as well kill me, I promised my wife I would bring her these melons, and if she doesn't get them I shudder to think what she will do to me anyway in her anger!"
   "Well," answered the Navajo, "I know how these women are. I'll just take the melons and let you go. Now see how quick you can get up that trail to your wife!"
   The Navajo language has many descriptive words and phrases which are applied to birds and animals. The names of many birds reflect the sound or call made by them, such as the dove, crow, jay, and many others. Even the turkey comes in for his share of such description, and more. From legendary antiquity comes the Navajo story of the Flood and the Big Canoe, much the same, basically, as the white man's version. 
    One change is that the water from the flood was not fit to drink and held strange properties. The turkey, being lazy as well as a gossip, came off the Big Canoe, too lazy to hold his tail feathers up out of the water. That is why he  has the white color in his tail feathers, due to dropping them in the water as he stepped from the Big Canoe to dry land. 
    Descriptive words and phrases are also applied to people. Men and women are named for some descriptive characteristic and may have no other name throughout life. But the Navajo believes that names should be used to identify, not to embarrass. Custom dictates that no man is to be called by his name in his presence, or that of a close relative. This custom is still adhered to by all those who do not have an American name. It applies only to a "name in Navajo" and it used to be customary for the one embarrassed by hearing his name to take any part of the wearing apparel of the one who called him by name.
    Some names stem from some joke or funny saying on the part of the one named. One Navajo near Leupp was known far and wide by the name of "Mr. Very-Very Good" because he had a habit of repeating the Navajo equivalent, "Yat-ta-hay," over and over during any and every conversation. 
    One of the early jokes about women is perhaps typical of many today. During ancient times when the lesser Gods often dwelled on earth with "the people" there was a Navajo called Hosteen Good Man. But even he had his troubles. He complained bitterly to the Family God, "I cannot keep a wife at all, and I do not understand it. I do everything for them, give them everything, and I never speak or do an unkind thing. Far and wide I am known as Mr. Good Man."
    The Family God smiled a little sadly, but wisely. "You expect too much from any woman," he answered. "You don't beat her so she can feel sorry for herself; you don't starve her so she can get sympathy from others; you don't insult her so her family can get angry with you; you don't steal or lie so she can reform you; you don't run off with other women so she can talk about you. Now, you tell me how you expect to keep any woman happy that way?"
    They have an old saying, "He is so bad that only a woman will put up with him." But the worst that they can say of a man is, "When he died he lost the only friend he ever had."
    Human nature is much the same the world over, and there is no wide gulf between white man and Indian. But you can't set any individual up on a pedestal in pre-conceieved sculptured form, and then expect him to come to life and behave like an actor whose lines you have written for him. It reminds me so much of another story which ought to be funny.
    A dude was riding down a very steep trail and about half-way down he came upon a Navajo woman with a baby strapped on her back, leading a horse. One the horse, lolling at ease, was a big, husky Navajo man. The dude paused in some consternation and demanded in a heated tone, "Why don't you either let your wife ride, or you carry the baby?"
    The Navajo gave the white man a placid stare, and having gone to school for a short time in his younger days, he then replied in his best English, "Not my baby, not my squaw, not my horse. I just ride."
    And perhaps there is a moral to this story. A very old Navajo used to come to my post almost every day and spend several hours sleeping and snoring loudly over in one corner. Then one day six young Navajos, each in a jesting mood, took something from him while he was sleeping so soundly; one his muffler, one his knife, one his beads, one his tobacco, one his hat, and one his blanket from underneath his head. Still he snored on, waking only after perhaps half an hour.
    Perceiving that his possessions were missing, he asked each in turn: "Did you take any of my things?" And each one replied just as gravely, "No, Grandfather, I did not." Whereupon the old man rose to his feet, came over to me, and remarked a little sadly, "There are only six Navajos in this room besides me, and yet there are twelve people, six thieves and six liars!"