Kneel Down Bread

Grinding fresh corn

 Kneel Down Bread


Grinding corn kernels. This was done with a
rock in a bowl originally.  Modern tools make
the job easier.

 When the corn is ready they pick all of the ears from ripe to almost ripe.  The cut the kernels off with a knife into a large bowl as seen above.  Then the corn kernels are ground into a paste.  The paste is then replaced back into the corn husks as seen below.  The husks with the corn paste are then placed in a fire pit lined with hot rocks.  The husks are then covered with hot rocks and sand and cooked for 2 hours. 


Lucille Begay is Loading husks with the corn paste.

The husks are removed from the fire.  The husks removed and the result is a small loaf of bread.  That is corn bread in the original form.
The taste is very bland.  They also bake the husks in the oven.  You can freeze the cooked bread.  They cut up the bread and put it in soup.


Preparing husks for baking.  Husks are baked
for 2 hours.  Has a mild corn taste.

Trailer house people

 

Sloan Family

This family lives across the road fro the chapel. The Kidmans in branch, who are one of the Anglo couples that help, bought these clothes for the kids so they
could go to school. We check on them often  because there are 9 people that live in the trailer. The mattress is put on the porch and it becomes a bed.  We checked on them when school started and the girl agaist the door was not in school.  When we asked her why she replied "I do not have any clothes"

Sloan Family trailer

We try to take them vegetables from our garden.  They have no running water and there is no electricity to the house.  They use a gas powered generator to provide lights and the cooking stove is a BBQ outside the porch you see here.  We are working on getting them to come to church.  They are just a short way away from Grandma Haskie's house that is up the hill to the right of this place. 

Archeological evidence shows that lpeople have lived here in these canyons for nearly 5,000 years.  Longer than anyone has lived unterrupted on the Colorado Plateau.  The first residence built no permanent homes, but remains of their campsites and images etched or painted on canyon walls tell us their stories.  They lived in small groups, hunted game, grew corn, beans and weaved baskets.  These are ancestors of today's Pueblo and Hopi indians and are often call Anasazi: a Navajo word meaning ancient ones.
The Puebloan people built the multi-storied villages, small household compounds and kivas with decorated walls.

You can see the ruins against the rock wall

People still live in the canyon in order to retain the spirit of their ancestors. Traditional beliefs are reflected in the everyday life. How the Navajo care for their families, live stock and their Homes and how plants are collected for ceremonial, medicinal and traditional uses. They feel that it is important that they retain their cultural ties while attempting to adapt to the new physical demands of the world around them. The walls of the canyon start at 30 feet outside of Chinle to over 1000 feet at the Spider Rock.  This an explanation of the small ruins above.

information board.

Spider Rock.  They believe that this God has taught them
to weave and make baskets.

Right column of the Spider Rock

Overlooking the left column of the Spider web.  There are two large columns.  We are about 1,000 feet above the surface.  A cute German lady and her daughter took our picture.  The hsband did not like heights.  Sounds like Mom!  The road going along the ridge is about 17 miles long.  The people in this canyon have had many periods of famine, weather and in 1863 by Kit Carson who systematically attempted to destroy the people in the canyon.  It was not until 1925 that the people were allowed to return to the canyon and rebuild their homes.  They then were allowed to draw from food distribution centers and scarce food supplies. 

This is the Historic Hubble Trading Post.  It was built in 1876.  Hubbell purchased this property from William Leonard and started a trading post.  The part of the building in the picture is the original building.  It has a wood burning stove in the middle of the floor used to heat the buildings.