The Turquoise Ledge Read Online Free

particular clans and the women didn’t sing the songs of other clans.
    It was a grinding song that caused Coyote’s disastrous plunge from a high cliff of yellow sandstone. Coyote wanted to learn the grinding song the cedarbirds sang while they were grinding cedar berries.
    The cedarbirds dared not refuse Coyote’s demand to grind with them and learn the song, but as soon as they could, the cedarbirds planned their escape. They told Coyote they had to fly to the top of the high sandstone mesa to drink from a water hole. Coyote demanded to go along so the cedarbirds each donated a feather and they glued the feathers to Coyote’s legs with pine pitch. By flapping his legs very hard Coyote was able to fly in low circles that gradually took him higher, while the birds flew off to the mesa top.
    The birds were finished drinking when Coyote finally managed to fly up to the mesa top. While Coyote was drinking he noticed the heat of the sun had made the pitch soft and the feathers were falling off his legs. He realized he wouldn’t be able to fly and would be stranded on top of the cliff. He tried to threaten the cedarbirds to force them to help him, but they flew away.
    Old Spider Woman heard Coyote’s cries for help and came to his rescue. She told him to get into her magic basket and she would lower him down from the mesa top. There was only one thing he must not do while she was lowering him: he must not look up. But Coyote could not resist taking a peek and the basket he was riding in plunged to the ground far below and Coyote was smashed to pieces on the rocks. All this because Coyote wanted to learn the cedarbird ladies’ grinding song.
    The coarse blue corn flour ground between lava grinding stones made a thick tortilla with amazing flavor—far better than the thin tortillas from machine-ground blue corn. Our neighbors used to take orders from everyone in Laguna and the following day they delivered the most delicious big red chili enchiladas made with these stone-ground blue corn tortillas.
    Aunt Susie told me about the special sandstone griddles required to make the delicacy called piki bread. The cook has to work fast; she pours a corn meal batter onto the hot griddle all the while quickly smearing the batter with her bare hand into a film over the griddle so it forms continuous paper-thin sheets that fold around one another.
    If the griddle stone is too coarse, the batter sticks and the flaky sheets of corn batter are ruined. So the rectangular slabs of hard fine-grained sandstone were essential for making the piki. Griddles made with other stone would not do, and the people at Paguate village where my great grandmother came from possessed the best source of griddle stones. During droughts or other hard times, the people used to carry the griddle stones in backpacks and walk for four or five days to reach Jemez Pueblo where they traded them for beans and corn to take back to Paguate.
    The Anasazi, the ancient Pueblo people, were haunted by memories of terrible famines when the weather or other conditions failed them. Even now the Western Pueblos and the Hopi tell stories about droughts and famines that struck their villages, and forced the people to take refuge at other pueblos to avoid starvation. Sometimes small children and infants were adopted by childless people in other pueblos so the babies might survive.
    On the high desert plateau of north central New Mexico, the Anasazi had to pursue food sources relentlessly, gathering seeds, roots, berries and birds’ eggs, hunting small rodents and snaring birds. Hunters stalked deer and elk in the mountains and the antelope and bison on the grassy plains that stretched away to the south and to the east.
    Below the mesa and hilltop villages, in the sandy soil at the mouths of arroyos and other small drainages, the people carried on dry farming of corn, beans, melons, amaranth and greens. The deep layers of fine sand trapped and held the