"What made this earth red?
These rocks red?
Was it the light from earth and sky
to remind us at day's end, the color of our births?
Is it all the trails we took upon ourselves or that were
forced upon us, begun with our blood trails taken to Hwéeldi
and back?
Our fragile lives, tentative, brave,
wavering through all the worlds we've traveled.
And each time we arrived, the quickening of our hearts."
I should give a preface to this poem.
The Canyon has also a lot of history there.
In 1864, around that era, the Diné people were removed--
forcibly removed by the Cavalry, and taken to Fort Sumner.
And our word for Fort Sumner is Hwéeldi.
So the people were removed from the Canyon,
their food supply was either burned or killed.
Some of the people took refuge at this place called Fortress
Rock, and they hid up above, and the soldiers
were down below trying to get everyone round and out
and removed.
So there's that history, more recent history there.
But previous to that, some of the stories that I know of,
say that the Anasazi people lived in that Canyon
at one time, and they left their drawings
on the rocks, which are now beginning to fade.
The Anasazi people were called the swallow people by the Diné
people, and it's from them-- that they say--
that we became agricultural, because the Anasazi knew
agriculture, and they built their homes in the side
of these rocks.
So after that contact in Navajo peoples, society changed.
So there's a lot of history, and I've written some of that
into this manuscript.