Medicine man conducts purification ritual at park
Copyright © 1998 The Durango Herald. All rights reserved.
Hovenweep Herald/Nancy Richmond
A SIGN at Hovenweep National Monument is covered with a temporarily closed sign Tuesday at Road BB, north of Cortez.

June 10, 1998

The Associated Press

HOVENWEEP NATIONAL MONUMENT, Utah – Days after three men killed a Colorado police officer and then drove to this ancient Anasazi settlement, a Navajo medicine man drove from his Arizona home to perform a purification ceremony here.

The journey took him across the San Juan River, which Navajos believe protects them from marauders.

The Navajos first arrived in the San Juan River basin about 700 years ago. When traditional Navajos cross the San Juan River today, they sprinkle corn pollen, a gesture to the river gods who in return ensure safe passage into alien lands.

"It is considered bad luck to cross the river without prayer," Bill George, 27, a Navajo from Bluff, told The Salt Lake Tribune. "That these outlaws would use the river to escape, to kill near here and hide here worries us. It is bad luck for everyone."

Three men fired on a National Park Service employee in Hovenweep on May 29, after fatally shooting Cortez policeman Dale Claxton and wounding two Montezuma County sheriff’s deputies.

"The people are pretty fearful, looking for reassurance that things will turn out well," says George Joe, a spokesman for the Navajo Nation at Window Rock, Ariz. "In a spiritual way, Navajo people believe that something this bad affects them all. They would naturally use ceremonies to begin the healing."

"That these people are hiding out in this country and the police can’t find them just brings up a lot of unanswered questions," said Art Hutchinson, an archaeologist with the National Park Service stationed at Hovenweep. "The Navajo look for guidance, like any culture would. And there are just certain people who have more powers, star gazers or medicine men."

A week ago, the Navajo families whose homes surround Hovenweep received permission from Hutchinson to perform a purification ceremony on the pink mesa overlooking a cluster of pueblos built by the Anasazi.

"These people are out in the middle of nowhere. Their lives have been disrupted; their routines changed," Hutchinson told The Tribune. "They don’t feel safe anymore. Neither do we."

Last Tuesday, a Navajo medicine man drove from Arizona to Hovenweep, where he was careful to avoid the structures, built around 1200 A.D. by the Anasazi, ancestors of the Hopi, Zuni and other Pueblo tribes.

"We are not allowed to go to these ruins because the Anasazi disappeared from there. There is great power, but also death," Joe said. "The Navajo don’t talk bad about the dead. You don’t name people who have passed away. Traditional Navajos don’t go to a funeral; dead people are a bad omen."

So inside a park ranger’s cabin, the medicine man set branches of cedar ablaze, and for the next six hours waved smoke and ash into a room of about a dozen Navajos and Park Service employees. He used an eagle staff to push the white cloud into the clothing and faces of all 12, including Hutchinson.

"He sent off some special medicine to protect the monuments and the Navajo families from harm’s way," Hutchinson said.

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