The River of Separation is one of the many versions of the Navajo creation story detailing how the people first came up from below the earth, learned to live on its surface and, just as importantly, learned to live with each other. Versions of the story, with the same title, are told by many of the Pueblo peoples.
The title of the piece refers to the river that comes to separate men from women, in the early days of the world, after First Man and First Woman argue over whether one could survive without the other. The first part of the story emphasizes the harmony that comes from people working and learning from each other; the second focuses on how people suffer when that kind of balance is lost.
Navajo Beliefs & Importance of Balance
The name Navajo was applied to the people of the regions of modern-day Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and surrounding areas of the present Southwestern United States by the Spanish in the 17th century. The Navajo knew themselves by the name Dine (Dene, pronounced DEE-nay), "the People", the term they still identify themselves by today. They learned farming from the Pueblo peoples and the "Kisani" referenced in the story below are understood as Puebloans. Scholars Alice Marriott and Carol K. Rachlin comment on the culture and history of the Navajo:
To many non-Indians, the Navajo are what their own name for themselves, Dene, implies – they are The People. Isolated in the desert regions of the Southwest, the Navajo have survived draught and famine, the white man's diseases, and his government's boarding schools, to become the largest single ethnic unit of North American Indians and a synonym for haughty independence.
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Today, many Navajo live on reservations, though they may live wherever they like and in any kind of dwelling. Historically, the Navajo lived in homes known as hogans, which were constructed of logs and mud-lathe and could be conical, rectangular, or square (for men and families), while an 8-sided (octagonal) hogan was specifically built for women. The home was understood as sacred because it had been given to First Man and First Woman by the divine in the early days of the world, and so, even today, a hogan is regarded as a holy place. This understanding is especially important in the following story as the argument between First Man and First Woman disrupts the harmony of their hogan, and that imbalance then affects all the other homes in the village.
The importance of balance is also suggested by the characters of the Twins in the story, who are "half men and half women" and define the roles of the sexes early on. As they are neither male nor female, they are also able to act as mediators once the rift occurs between the men and the women: they are the only ones able to cross the River of Separation. As such, they stand as representatives of the Holy People – those of the Above who serve the will of Johanoai, god of the sun – who expect the Earth People (the Navajo) to work with them in maintaining balance. The Twins never choose a side in The River of Separation but allow the people to work out their conflict on their own and so learn a lesson they will not soon forget.
The story develops themes and characters featured in the Dine Bahane (Navajo Creation Story) but is only one of many variations of such tales. As such, it is referred to as a Navajo creation story, but not the Navajo Creation Story. As noted, Navajo spiritual beliefs focus on the importance of balance in one's life and encouraging that same harmony throughout the earth. First, one centers and balances oneself; then one is better able to help others find their own as well as encourage balance in the wider world. Since the concept of balance is central to The River of Separation, it is easy to see why the story remains so popular in Navajo communities.
The serious themes of the tale aside, the story serves as entertainment, and the comical motif of a married couple's argument spiraling out of all proportion has been featured in stories around the world for thousands of years. This Navajo version of the "battle of the sexes" motif plays off the same arguments as the many others in world literature and is as popular among the Navajo today as, presumably, it was in the distant past.
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The following is taken from American Indian Mythology by Alice Marriott and Carol K. Rachlin. According to Marriott and Rachlin, the story first appeared in English in Matthews, Washington, Navajo Legends, Memoirs of the American Folklore Society, V. Boston and New York, 1897.
The people went through four worlds before they walked up a reed from the bottom of the Lake of Changing Waters into the present world, whose color is white. First Man and First Woman led the others, and with them came their two first children, the Changing Twins, who were half men and half women, and who could have no children ever.
On the surface of the earth, the people found a world unlike any they had seen before. There were mountains and plains, streams and trees, stones and growing plants. At first, the people did not know how to live in this new world, but the Twins soon found out. One of them took some clay from the stream bed and held it in his hand, and it shaped itself into a food bowl. Then the clay he held formed a water jar, and again a dipper, and finally a pipe.
At the same time, the other Twin found reeds growing at the end of the stream, and with them he shaped a water basket, and a storage basket, and other kinds of mats and baskets. The Twins showed one another what they had made. "These shall be the women's work," they said to one another.
"What shall the men's work be?" the Twins asked each other. They looked around and saw stones lying on the ground. As the Twins picked up the stones, the pieces became axes and hammers, knives and spear points in their hands, and the men had weapons.
Last of all, the Twins shaped digging sticks from branches of mountain mahogany, and hoes from deer shoulder blades. Then the men had tools. They found the Kisani, a stranger people, living in the mountains and growing gardens in the valleys, and the people traded their tools and baskets and bowls and weapons for seeds to plant in their own places along the rivers. They learned how to build dams and spread the water on the dry ground where it was needed. The people were very happy, learning all their new skills.
Looking happily about them, the people saw four mountains standing at the Four Corners of the World, with a fifth mountain in their center. First Man, the chief of the people, named the mountain of the east the Dark Horizontal Mountain and, because people found pieces of white shell and white stones on its slopes, he gave it the color white. In the south was the Great Mountain, where there were pieces of turquoise to be found, so First Man called it the blue mountain. On Cloud Water Mountain, in the west, there was abalone shell, so it became the yellow mountain.
The northern mountain was the Home of the Big-Horned Sheep, for there were many of those animals on it. The color of this mountain was black, for both jet and cannel coal were to be found there.
The Mountain at the Center of the Earth was round and covered with many-colored jewels. On each mountain there was a pair of spirit-guardians, male and female, and on each mountain, there were birds the same color as the mountain.
All the world went forward in beauty.
First Man and First Woman built their house near their cornfield and, every day, First Man went hunting while First Woman worked in her garden. They had a great many good things to eat, and they enjoyed eating. First Woman began to get fat and, as time went on, and she ate the fine fat meats her husband brought home, she grew bigger and bigger.
One evening, after they had eaten venison stew thickened with corn meal, and roasted pumpkin, First Woman leaned back happily against the wall. She belched loudly, and then she pulled up her skirt and patted herself between the legs, and said out loud, "Thank you, my womanhood."
First Man looked up, so startled that he didn't believe what he had heard. "Did you say something?" he asked his wife.
"Yes," First Woman answered, "I said, 'Thank you, my womanhood'."
"That is not a nice thing to say," her husband protested. "That's a dirty way to talk."
"You don't always think it's dirty," First Woman sneered.
"Besides," First Man argued, "you know it isn't true. I'm the one who does the hunting and brings home the good food. It's me you ought to be thanking, not that old thing in between your legs."
"You wouldn't bring home all that good food if you didn't get something in return," his wife retorted. "That's why men go hunting – they have something to come home for."
"Oh!" shouted First Man, jumping up, "You think that's all a man cares about, do you?"
"Well, what else?" First Woman demanded.
"Lots of things," First Man said, stamping with rage.
"Name four," snapped his wife.
"I suppose you women think you could live without men," yelled First Man.
"I know we could," First Woman shot back. "I don't think the men could live without women, though."
They quarreled back and forth until they were both worn out, and then they lay down on opposite sides of the house. First Woman went right to sleep and snored away the rest of the night, but First Man lay awake, getting madder and madder, partly because of what his wife said and partly because this night she had turned her back on him. By daylight, First Man was so angry that he got up and stormed out of the house.
"Come and listen to me, all you men," he shouted. "I want to see the men here, but the women can stay at home. I don't want to look any women, the dirty things!"
Remove AdsAdvertisement"What has happened?" the other men asked as they came running up.
"Let me tell you what my wife said," First Man shouted, and he did.
All the other men were shocked, and their feelings were hurt, because First Woman had said such an awful thing.
"I'm not going to stand for it," First Man wound up. "I'm going across the river and live on the other bank. Now it's a quiet stream but, when the men and women live apart, it will become the River of Separation, and grow strong and fierce so that no one can ever cross it."
"We will go with you," the men said. "If the women think they can get along without us, let them try. They'll find out."
So, First Man waded into the river, and the other men followed him. When they had crossed and stood on the opposite bank, a great wall of water came down the river, like an arroyo in flood time, and cut the men off from the women.
The men built shelters on the north bank for themselves, and the women stayed in their old homes on the south bank. For a while, everything went well. Children were born in the women's village and, when the baby was a boy, his grandmother would go down to the bank of the river and call out. Then one of the man-woman Twins, who were the only people who could cross the river, would paddle over on a raft made of reeds, and take the boy baby back to his father. The girl babies stayed with their mothers, and the fathers never saw them at all. But, within a year, of course, no more babies were born.
Remove AdsAdvertisementIn the spring, the women planted their gardens and corn fields beside the river, singing love songs as they worked. Once in a while, one of the women would call across, "How are you getting along?" and if the answer came back, "All right. We're all fine," she would call back, "Isn't there something you miss?" And there was, but no matter how much the men missed that thing their wives gave them, they would not admit it.
The second year, the women's gardens didn't do as well as they had the first and the harvest was smaller. The women began to get thin and poor because they had no meat, while the men were growing stronger and fatter – they had meat and gardens both. But not matter how they starved, the women would not give in and cross the river.
At last, a night came when First Man couldn't stand it any longer. His food had no taste when he cooked it himself. He missed his wife's good venison stews. He slept poorly alone in his blanket. The sun was not as bright as it used to be, and he sat alone by his fire with water of homesickness gathering in his eyes.
First Man got up and went out and called the other men together.
"We have punished them enough, I think," he said. "We ought to go back and take care of them."
One of the men nodded. "I can't stand to eat my own food when I know my wife is hungry," he said.
"They must have learned their lesson by now," said a third man.
"We can forgive them now, I think," said the fourth. "They are starving with hunger, poor things."
First Man went down to the bank of the river and called across to First Woman, "Have you learned your lesson by now?"
First Woman, very tired and weak and thin, answered him, "We know we cannot live without our husbands."
"Will you say dirty things to me again?" First Man asked.
"Never! Never!" First Woman cried, weeping.
Then First Man called the man-woman Twins, and they came, bringing their raft, and ferried the men back across the river to their wives and their homes. The bathed themselves, and dried their bodies with sacred corn meal, and then they went into their houses to their wives like bridegrooms.
From then on, the River of Separation was a quiet stream again. When men and women crossed it, they crossed it together. For neither could get along without the other, and both had learned their lesson.
