INDIANS: The Dead Baby

Navajo Indians are in demand as workers in the sugar-beet fields of the West, for, unlike braceros (from Mexico), they are not protected by treaty regulations. Navajos are cheap; they keep their mouths shut and they do as they are told. When the season ended at Burley, Idaho, a Navajo beet picker named Kee Chee dumbly obeyed orders to get his family on a chartered bus for the long ride home to New Mexico—even though it meant taking his sick, seven-month-old daughter out of a hospital at nearby Bear River City, Utah.

The bus was cold. Kee’s pretty, 25-year-old wife, Mary, covered the baby with blankets. But before the bus reached Salt Lake City the child was dead. The Chees stared at the little corpse, not only with grief, but—like all the other passengers in the jolting vehicle—with terror. Navajos believe that a chindi, or evil spirit, inhabits the bodies of the dead; if the living stay near the dead the chindi may enter their bodies too.

After the baby had been pronounced dead of pneumonia in an informal inquest at the bus station in Salt Lake City, the fearful Navajos pleaded that it be sent home by other means. That, they were told, was impossible. To Navajos the mysterious word “Washin-tone” stands for all Government officialdom. “Washin-tone,” they cried. “Will they not take care of it?” But impatient cops ordered, “Back on the bus. Back on the bus. Take the baby with you.” One of them added: “Just put it in the baggage rack.”

“Put it in the baggage rack,” Mary Chee repeated, weeping. “It make me feel bad all over again in my heart and in my head. But what can I do? I am a Navajo.” The busload of Indians followed the police and the doctor who had performed the inquest out into the street when they left. But finally they got back into the bus. Kee Chee sat stiffly with the baby on the seat beside him.

Thus they rode, for 16 hours more. At Gallup, N.Mex., a new ordeal awaited the Chees. Without rest or food from 10 o’clock in the morning until 4 in the afternoon, they sat on stiff-backed chairs in the sheriff’s office while an autopsy was performed on the baby. Finally they were released to return to their hogans at Manuelito, 13 miles away. But three more days passed before papers arrived from “Washin-tone” (i.e., Salt Lake City) which allowed them to bury their child.

This week, many of the Navajos who had ridden on the bus were quietly going through cleansing rites with medicine men to counteract the influence of the chindi. “Washin-tone”—and all white officialdom —seemed more remote and unfriendly than ever.