I’m sitting with my nali Thora as my cousin fixes her hair up into a tsiiyééł. It was a hot Friday and the first night of the “Enemy Way” ceremony.  All our relatives and I were in the shade house preparing food for the horsemen and women who were arriving soon with the tsints’osi’ sodizin (prayer stick).

We were all sweating, cooking, laughing, and cleaning.   Two fires were going, which was almost unbearable for me, but after an hour, I gave up the fight in trying to dry the sweat off my face.

After an hour, my clothes were drenched and I sat down and slowly ate a bowl of hot mutton stew with frybread and warm water.

Another hour went by and a group of men and women arrived on horseback with the prayer stick.  I counted eighteen of them.  They stopped in front of the hogan where the ceremony took place and gave the prayer stick to my little cousin, and she went into the hogan.  My cousin was 9 years old and dressed up in a gold Navajo traditional outfit.  Soon after, I heard singing in the hogan, and that went on for about half an hour.

As they sang, my mother, aunts, and cousins quickly served food to the men and women on horseback.  I sat and watched outside beside my mother’s van until the sundown. 

All night all our kin played card games as they waited for the real singing and dancing to begin.

My mother was excited to hear the first four songs because they were older and more traditional and only the elderly men knew those songs.

This event was the first of three nights of the Enemy Way ceremony for the Towering House clan of Dennehotso and Rock Point, AZ.  The clans that attended: Bitter Water, Water’s Edge, and One Who Walks Around.