ABSTRACT
Once upon a time in the middle of the twentieth century, a folklorist called J. Barre Toelken stayed with a Navaho family who lived far from any roads in Montezuma Canyon, Utah. They spent the evenings of a severe winter sitting in the large hogaan around the fire, listening to the head of the family, Little Wagon, tell tales, legends and yarns. One night, a family travelling on horseback stopped with them. It was snowing outside, and one of the travellers’ children asked why it snows. Little Wagon told a long story about an ancestor who found a piece of beautiful burning material and guarded it for several months. When some spirits came to claim it, the man asked whether he could keep a piece. They refused, but agreed to do something for him. He had to perform several complicated tasks which tested his endurance. In recognition of his merit, the spirits promised that each year, when cleaning their house, they would throw the ashes from their fireplace down into Montezuma Canyon. Sometimes they forgot, sometimes they threw too much, but overall they turned their attention regularly towards the inhabitants of Montezuma Canyon ever since. After a moment of respectful silence, the boy pointed out that it was snowing also in Blanding, and asked why that was. Little Wagon replied at once, ‘You’ll have to make up your own story for that.’ After they left, the old man reflected sadly that the boy did not understand stories, and blamed the ‘deadly influences of white schooling’ for that (Toelken 1969: 213).
