Wisdom Sits in Places, Chapter 1 "Quoting the Ancestors"
WISDOM
LANDSCAPE
AND LANGUAGE
AMONG THE
SITS IN
WESTERN APACHE
PLACES KEITH H. BASSO
University of New Mexico Press
Albuquerque
For the grandchildren efCibecue,
© 1996 by the University of New Mexico Press
and Gayle
All rights reserved.
PRINTED lN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
YEAR PRJNTTNG
XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX
ISBN-13: XXXXXXXXXX
ISBN-10: XXXXXXXXXX
Winner of the 2001 J. I. Sealey Prize from the School of American Research.
This book has won the 1996 Western States Book Award for Creative
Nonfiction. The Western Scates Book Awards are a project of the Western
States Arcs Federation. The awards are supported by the National
Endowment for the Arts and by Crane Duplicating Services.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Basso, Keith H., 1940-
Wisdom sits in places: landscape and language among
the W estem Apache/Keith H. Basso.
P· cm.
Includes bibliographical reference (p. 161) and index.
ISBN XXXXXXXXXXpa)
1. Western Apache language-Etymology-Names.
2. Western Apache language-Discourse analysis.
3. Names, Geographical-Arizona.
4. Names, Apache.
5. Apache philosophy.
6. Human geography-Arizona-Philosophy.
I. Title.
PM2583.B37 1996
59/ .2-dc XXXXXXXXXX
CIP
8 9 Keith H. Basso
Water Lies With Mud In An Open Container
Early morning, late May 1979, the night's redemptive chill rapidly
eceding before the rising sun. Silence deep and full, a blanket upon the
land. I am standing with Charles Henry and one of his cousins, Morley
Cromwell, at the edge of a circular swale some forty feet across. Ringed
y willows and filled with luxuriant grass, it lies near a spring-fed creek
which flows southeast to the gardens and cornfields of Cibecue. The
earth at our feet is marked with the tracks of deer, and from high in a
cottonwood tree comes the liquid call of a raven. A chipmunk creeps to
the swale, secures a nervous drink, and darts away behind a rotting log
covered with patches of green and orange moss. The air is heavy and
moist. A small white butterfly dances in place in a shaft of golden sunlight.
Charles and Morley have
ought me here at the outset of a long
ange project in Western Apache cultural geography. Authorized and
endorsed by the White Mountain Apache Tribal Council, the project's
main objective is to record on topographic maps the approximate loca
tion of each and every place that bears an Apache name within a twenty-
Wisdom Sits in Places
-·--· --·---_;,--·--·----1
I
I
I
I•
Flagstaff
Prescotf
.Tucson
'----....,_
'---...
...________
------·-· -· _J
.
Figure 1 LJJcation of the community efCibewe on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation,
Arizona.
mile radius of the Cibecue community. Residents of the community
have never known maps they considered their own (those in their pos
session show but a handful of places with extraneous names in English
and Spanish), and the work we have started, which is intended to lay the
foundation for a local Apache atlas, is regarded by some as long overdue.
A couple of weeks ago, before the work began, the three of us agreed
-
Morley, put off by my incompetence, may now decide they have
10
11
Keith H. Basso
on a simple division of labor. Charles, who is in charge, will guide us
from place to place, supply each place's proper name, and comment as he
chooses on its past and present significance. Morley will translate as
necessary (Charles speaks English reluctantly, and my own Apache is
stiff and uneven at best) and offer additional insights. My job is to
drive the Jeep, provide plenty of coffee and Reese's Peanut Butter
Cups (Morley has a serious weakness for them), and try to get every
thing down on paper and audiotapes. It seems like a sensible plan,
alanced and loosely efficient, and all of us believe it will serve our
purpose well.
But already, on only our second day in the country together, a prob
lem has come up. For the third time in as many tries, I have mispro
nounced the Apache name of the boggy swale before us, and Charles,
who is weary of repeating it, has a guarded look in his eyes. After botch
ing the name a fourth time, I acknowledge defeat and attempt to apolo
gize for my flawed linguistic performance. "I'm so
y, Charles, I can't
get it. I'll work on it later, it's in the machine. It doesn't matter."
"It's matter," Charles says softly to me in English. And then, turning
to speak to Morley, he addresses him in Western Apache:
What he's doing isn't right. It's not good. He seems to be in a
hu
y. Why is he in a hu
y? It's disrespectful. Our ancestors
made this name. They made it just as it is. They made it for a
eason. They spoke it first, a long time ago! He's repeating the
speech of our ancestors. He doesn't know that. Tell him he's
epeating the speech of our ancestors!
Charles's admonition, which Morley proceeds to translate without
dulling its critical edge, leaves me unsettled and silent. That Charles
has taken me for someone in a hu
y comes as a surprise. Neither had
I foreseen that my failure to pronounce the stu
orn Apache place
name would be interpreted by him as displaying a lack of respect.
And never had I suspected that using Apache place-names might be
heard by those who use them as repeating ve
atim-actually quot
ing-the speech of their early ancestors. This is a fair amount to take
in at once, and as the quiet of the morning asserts itself again, I fear
that my actions, which were wholly unwitting but patently offensive,
may have placed in jeopardy the future of our project. Charles and
Wisdom Sits in Places
etter things to do. Dammit!
But then, unexpectedly, in one of those courteous turnabouts that
Apache people employ to assuage emba
assment and salvage damaged
feelings, Charles himself comes to the rescue. With a quick co
obora
tive grin, he announces he is missing several teeth and that rny problem
with the place-name may be attributable to his lack of dental equip
ment. Sometimes, he says, he is hard to understand-his nephew Jason
ecently told him that and he knows he tends to speak softly. Maybe
the combination of too few teeth and too little volume accounts for
my falling short. Morley, on the other hand, is not so encumbered.
Though shy a tooth or two, he retains the good ones for talking, and
ecause he is not afraid to speak up-except, as everyone knows, in
the presence of ga
ulous women-no one has trouble hearing what
he says. Maybe if Morley repeated the place-name again, slowly and
with ample force, I would get it right. It's worth a try. Cousin?
"GOSHTL'ISH TU BIL SIK/2.NE!" Rising to the spirit of Charles's
playful teasing, Morley booms out the place-name, word by constituent
word, with such exuberance as to startle into flight a pair of resident
obins. All of us laugh as the birds wheel away, but for me the tide has
turned. Instantly, the form of the name and its meaning assume coherent
shape, and I know that at last I've got it: Goshtl'ish Tu Bil Sik�ne, or
Water Lies With Mud In An Open Container. Relieved and pleased, I
pronounce the name slowly, then a bit more rapidly, and again as it
might be spoken in normal conversation. 5 Charles listens and nods his
head in approval. "Yes," he says in Apache. "That is how our ancestors
made it a long time ago, just as it is to name this place." And then,
keeping to his own language and speaking at times like an observer on
the scene, he fashions a place-world in which the making and naming
occu
ed.
They came to this country long ago, our ancestors did.
They hadn't seen it before, they knew nothing about it.
Everything was unfamiliar to them.
They were very poor. They had few possessions and
surviving was difficult for them. They were looking for a
good place to settle, a safe place without enemies. They were
https:
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12
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Keith H. Basso
searching. They were traveling all over, stopping here and
there, noticing everything, looking at the land. They knew
nothing about it and didn't know what they would find.
None of these places had names then, none of them did, and
as the people went about they thought about this. "How shall
we speak about this land?" they said. "How shall we speak about
where we have been and where we want to go?"
Now they are coming! They are walking upstream from down
elow. Now they are a
iving here, looking all about them,
noticing everything about this place. It looked to them then as it
looks to us now. We know that from its name--its name gives a
picture of it, just as it was a long time ago.
Now they are happy. "This looks like a good place," they are
saying to each other. Now they are noticing the plants that live
around here. "Some of these plants are unknown to us. Maybe
they are good for something. Maybe they are useful as
medicines." Now they are saying, "This is a good place for
hunting. Deer and turkey come here to eat and drink. We can
wait for them here, hidden close by." They are saying that. They
are noticing everything and talking about it together. They like
what they see about this place. They are excited!
Now their leader is thinking, "This place may help us