Don't Let the Sun Step Over You: Stories Told by Eva Watt, an Apache

Eva Tulene Watt (1913-2009) was the first Apache to get actively involved in preserving her people's history. Prior to 2002, when her book was published, white historians tried their best to do right by the Apaches, but, as you might imagine, those accounts left a lot to be desired.

Don't Let the Sun Step Over You contains many, many stories, and they are Mrs. Watt's personal stories, stories about her family. Although each story can pretty much stand by itself, as you read more and more, you start to get a fuller picture of what it was like to be an Apache between the years 1860 and 1975.

Mrs. Watt collaborated with Keith Basso, an anthropologist and decided that the book should be printed in English because, unfortunately, not many young Apaches were fluent in their native language. However, since English was not Mrs. Watt's first language, the book is not what it could have been if we could understand Apache.

Anyway, I'm going to try to give you one of Eva Watts' stories. Here goes:

William Gashoney, I think some kind of a great uncle of Mrs. Watt (although she called him her grandpa), was a medicine man, and was once stuck by lightning. He believed that he "became a lightning myself"(page 26), which seems to have given him some power towards making it rain in Arizona. But it seems that he also had to have people with him and they had to sing a rain song (26-28). It might have taken a few nights of singing, but eventually there was a lot of rain (28).

On page 29, Mrs. Watt begins another story in this thread. She says

They had no rain for a long time. The people were worried. The rivers were drying up. The springs in the mountains were drying up too (29).

So the traders and the storekeeper got a lot of groceries and brought them out to William Gashoney. And he started to sing.

It was dry! Hot! He sang four songs. Then some people were just mean to my grandpa. "I don't think he knows what he's doing," they said. "The way he's going, I don't think it's ever going to rain." He knew right away what the people were saying about him. so after four songs, he stood up. He told the people "Nobody must talk against me. Nobody must say, 'he can't do it' or 'he's not praying right,' or anything like that. I don't want no part of that, not here. You can say it far away, if you want to, but not right here." Then he said, "I'm not doing this for myself. I'm doing it for everything - our land, our horses, our farms, our deer, our birds." He mentioned everything. Then he said, "If you don't believe, go away from here." That's what he said.

He started singing again, him and the mens [sic] that were helping him. Close to midnight, the wind started blowing. It started blowing this way real hard! There's lots and lots of dust! Pretty soon it started blowing. It started blowing backwards the other way. Then the wind stopped blowing and the dust storm went away. He stopped singing again and the fourth song he was singing is when it started dropping water. Then the thunder started, and pretty soon it started raining hard! That's when everybody got too excited. They were yelling their heads off! They were dancing in there! They were really dancing!(30-31).

That was maybe the climax, but not the end of that particular story. Maybe enough to give you an idea of what this unique book is about.