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Canyon de Chelly

By Bernice Notenboom, Moki Treks, Inc.

My Navajo host Winnie Many horses put her hand on my shoulder and said, "Behave as you would in your white man's church". Involvement in a sweat lodge is not something to be taken casually. It is a hot June afternoon and I have come here to celebrate the arrival of summer with Winnie and her relatives in Canyon de Chelly in Arizona.

The sweat lodge stood a few hundred yards beyond the Hogan. It resembled a giant beehive--a split cedar frame sunk two feet into the ground and arching four feet high, covered with dark Arizona earth.

Six of us will crawl in there, no place to be claustrophobic.

A log fire blazed a few feet away. Winnie’s granddaughters tossed in a dozen or so volcanic rocks brought from the nearby Chuska mountains. When they glowed red, Winnie was satisfied and signaled me to take the pitchfork and lay them carefully in the northern corner of the lodge where they would ward off the malevolent north wind, carrier of colds and more sinister illnesses. Winnie spoke only in her melodic Navajo tongue, and graciously invited me to join her in the sweat lodge. She stripped off her clothes and crawled in. She sat alone for a few minutes until the temperature was right, and then called us in.

Sweating is a common tradition found throughout the world - whether it be the Finnish sauna, the Islamic hammam, the Russian bania, the Mayan temascal or the Native American inipi, which has been used for spiritual purification for thousands of years. The aim of the ceremony is to purify one's mind, body, spirit and heart. Sweat lodge essentially translates into returning to the womb and the innocence of childhood. The Sweat Lodge is a place of spiritual refuge and mental and physical healing, a place to get answers and guidance by asking the Creator and Mother Earth for the needed wisdom and power.

I was the last to enter in the clockwise direction that puts me right next to the fire. Winnie called back to her granddaughters outside to drop the blanket door. In the sudden blackness, I couldn't see my own hands, only the dull, glowing rocks. Vision gone, my other senses sharpened--I keenly felt heat from the radiant rocks baking my skin, and the sweaty shoulders of the other Navajo women pressed against me. The lodge is dark, moist, hot and safe. Mingling sweat streamed from our skins as we sat absorbed in dark silence.

Winny began her first chant. The relatives joined and after a while I was able to hum with the melody of the songs. The spirits of Earth, Air and Water and heat were being summoned to weave our bodies and souls with the elements. I was told of the distant time when the Navajo rose from the Underworld and gathered in a tq'ache (sweat lodge) to create chants and hymns to be associated with various stages in life.

When the chant ended Winnie explained that each session is an honoring of the four elements and is usually done in four "rounds" corresponding to the four directions - four times stones are added, making the lodge progressively hotter with a recess outside after each.

A few minutes of silence was suddenly broken by a loud crack as she poured a brew of water, cedar and pinon needles on the red rocks. This created a nearly unbearable rush of hot vapor that left as quickly as it came, leaving the pleasant lingering odor of burned needles. "It cures," Winnie said. "Inhale it, drink it--it makes you well." A bowl was pressed to my lips and I sipped the resinous brew as Winnie chanting again filled the darkness. She called on Greater Powers to bring strength and luck to all of her us in the Sweat Lodge.

Winnie gathered her strength for the last chant of this session. After a long silence, each of us with our own thoughts, she blessed all of us traveling home that no harm would fall. The blanket, like an eyelid, flapped up and we crawled out, blinking and dripping, into the hot bright air 

Winnie took refuge under a shady pinion tree. We all followed suit. The hot July sun felt dry and hostile and like lizards we began to regulate our breathing. I rubbed sage all over my body. It felt delicious.

In this land of little rain there is no better way to become clean than with the fragrance of desert vegetation. We burrowed back into the sweat lodge a while later for the second session. The ritual was similar to the first—Winnie recited four chants and poured the healing potion on the sputtering rocks. At the end of this session, however, she remained behind. "She is singing a prayer of thanks to the spirits of the sweat lodge," explained the granddaughter. This Blessing Way Song is also an apology for any errors in song, prayer or protocol made during the ceremony. We had another rubdown with sage, dressed and strolled as sisters back to the Hogan.