CHAPTER ONE
NAVAJO ROOTS
From her earliest childhood, Julie Nist was aware of her Navajo heritage and that she was special. As a young child she talked to animals and always had a deep, instinctual love of nature that would remain until the end of her life.
While her father, John Scully, a north Philadelphia beat cop, worked nights, her mother, Julia, would tell her children stories about their tribal roots and heritage. Each night Julia would recite the same Navajo folklore she had learned from her mother growing up on the Four Corners Reservation in New Mexico; magical stories that had been passed down through the generations.
One special favorite of Julie and her little brother was the legend of the good witch Spider Woman. When the ancient Navajo stepped out of the third World into our present fourth one, Spider Woman, who possessed strange, supernatural powers, used her magic to help them fight evil monsters.
Julie and John loved to hear how Spider Woman gave special powers to Monster-Slayer and his sister Child-Born-of-Water, to help them in their quest to find their long-lost father, Sun-God. Then when the family was triumphantly reunited, Sun-God showed his children how to destroy all the evil monsters forever, so the Navajo could live in peace and harmony.
Unfortunately Julia and her daughter would never be able to quell their own demons and find peace.
Julia Scully was born in Twin Lakes on February 12, 1943, the youngest child of Miriam and Sam Bowman. She grew up with her three brothers and two sisters in the spectacular red-rock, deep-canyoned New Mexico side of the twenty-four-thousand-square-mile reservation, bordering the states of Utah, Colorado and Arizona.
The two-hundred-thousand-strong Navajo people is the largest Indian nation in the United States and had suffered greatly since the Spanish first colonized their lands in the 15th century. It was a tortured history drenched in blood, leaving an indelible mark on each member of the tribe to this day.
The white invaders introduced sheep and horses to the Navajo, who soon used the animals for their nomadic way of life. They became excellent horsemen and began raiding the Spanish settlements in revenge.
But once the United States defeated Spain and assumed control of the vast tribal lands, the army used extreme brutality to tame the Navajo. It was a dark time for the Navajo nation as they were systematically robbed of their lands by the legendary Kit Carson, who burned their villages, slaughtering hundreds of men, women and children.
By 1864 most of the Navajo nation had been defeatedand the United States government decided to forcibly move the tribe from the Four Sacred Mountains to Fort Sumner, three hundred miles east. During what has become known as the "Long Walk," more than two hundred Navajos perished from starvation and the inhuman conditions they encountered during their compulsory exodus through the burning desert.
The survivors were imprisoned in Fort Sumner, where they were herded into the barren land, which was unable to support their cattle and crops. Any Navajo who tried to escape back to their homeland were hunted down and ruthlessly killed by the army.
After four torturous years, which saw hundreds of Navajo die from starvation, the Federal Government signed a new treaty in 1868. This allowed the tribe to return to their beloved Four Sacred Mountains, where they remain to this day. For the last one hundred and thirty years the proud tribe has eked out a living, raising sheep and selling its unique crafts, including rugs, jewelry and silverwork.
Julia's father Sam Bowman was born in 1895 on the reservation near Shiprock, New Mexico. He had married and had four children before his wife died as a young woman.
In the early 1930s during a visit to Twin Lakes, New Mexico, Sam met a beautiful young woman named Miriam, who was fifteen years younger than him. They soon fell in love and after marrying in a traditional ceremony, Sam remained in Twin Lakes to live near Miriam's family.
Sam began raising goats and sheep to support his new wife, who used the wool to weave intricate rugs in the traditional Navajo style for sale to tourists. During the summer they grew fruit and vegetables, and were self-sufficient.Sam Bowman's entire family, consisting of grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins all lived in the same village in traditional Navajo houses, called hogans, within a few yards of each other.
Over the years, Sam and Miriam had six children and it was often a struggle to survive, but the children never went hungry and were always well-clothed. Times were hard as the twentieth-century Navajos slowly assimilated into the American system, still retaining their ancient traditions and way of life.
There were few jobs on the reservation and Sam Bowman's cattle business was highly precarious, given frequent droughts and extremes in temperatures. The long summers were brutally hot, bringing dust storms, and in the winter the temperatures plunged to freezing and often brought snow.
To protect his family and his cattle, Sam and his brother used their own hands to dig a simple shelter in a nearby hill to protect them from the cold. One of Julia's earliest memories is of lying in the dug-out with the cattle to keep warm on the long winter nights, listening to her mother's stories of the ancient Navajo folklore.
"But in the summertime, no matter how hot it was, it was always cool in there," remembers Julia.
Life was tough on the reservation in the 1950s with no electricity or running water. Alcoholism was a major problem as more and more Navajo turned to drink in order to escape the growing pressures of modern life. The environment Julia grew up in, and her father's strict discipline, would have a lasting effect on the young girl after she made her own way in the world.
When she was twelve, Julia, who spoke fluent Navajo, was sent away to an Indian boarding school inBrigham City, Utah, to learn to read and write in English.
"I hadn't realized that there was a world outside," says Julia. "It was the first time I had ever left the reservation."
Always headstrong and independent, the pretty, dark-haired Julia hated the rules and restrictions that were imposed on her. And after a couple of years at the boarding school, she told her parents she wasn't going back.
Sam and Miriam were sympathetic and arranged for her to go to another boarding school for American Indian children near Carson City, Nevada. But the adventurous girl longed to see more of the world outside the reservation.
So when she was sixteen, she took a three-month summer job in Sacramento, California, caring for two little boys as a mother's helper. When her new employers flew to New York to celebrate their wedding anniversary, Julia took the boys to stay with their grandparents in San Francisco.
It was the first time Julia had ever been in a big city, with its modern skyscrapers and frenetic way of life. She found it a revelation and, with a mixture of excitement and fear, timidly explored her new surroundings, resolving to leave the reservation at the earliest possible opportunity.
"They lived on the seventeenth floor," she recalls, "and they had a patio but I was so scared I wouldn't even go out."
Every day, when the boys were napping, Julia timidly ventured out of the building to walk to the street corner. There she would stand entranced for hours, watching the non-stop stream of traffic and pedestrians, dreaming ofliving in such a wondrous place where anything seemed possible.
The following year she took another summer...
