An Anthropologist's Arrival: A Memoir

The Fruit of the Saguaro

180 The Fruit of the Saguaro With the o’odham, I stayed two weeks in the house of Crooked Lightning. In these days of social reform I have heard people rail against the horrors of a house without plumbing. “It is,” they say, “an insult to human dignity. And as for a dirt floor! We should abolish such things from our civilized country.” Those critics could never have gone camping. It was fortunate for me that I had camped since girlhood and that I had gotten used to employing the face of nature as a substitute for indoor plumbing. I had spent nights in mountain lodges lying on the dirt floor and paid for the privilege. Moreover, in those mountain lodges men and women had stretched out on separate sides of the room without a thought of impropriety. We stretched out in that way in Lightning’s house. The arrangement was that the father and mother lay side by side in the center of the room. Next to the father were the males of the family, the smallest first and the oldest near the wall. On the mother’s side were the females, and here it was my place to be next to the wall. I had a sleeping bag in my car, but since no one in the Lightning family used such a thing, I felt it would be pretentious, so I lay on my rubber ground sheet, which wrinkled. Later I followed the example of the O’odham, who each had a huge sheet of cotton. In old days this was all woven. It served as bedding at night, sheets during the day, a raincoat or cloak when needed. The lack of plumbing means, of course, that there is no water for a bath. The O’odham tell, with smiles, about how the clouds can be “pulled down” in midsummer before planting begins, but in June, when I lived with the Lightnings, there had been almost no rain since the previous October. Crooked Lightning, once a week, took his horses and cart (for this was before the days of pickups) and brought a barrel of water from a tank set up by the government two miles away. The Fruit of the Saguaro 181 We all rushed out when we heard the wagon coming. The barrel stood in it as a permanent fixture, with a spigot toward the bottom, which let water out into a pot. The big earthen pot was of the ancient O’odham style, red clay and not watertight. It was stood up under shade outside the house in the crotch of a small tree; breezes blowing across it as it slowly leaked kept the water cool, and the sign of hospitality was to give a friend a drink. Anyone arriving picked up the gourd that hung beside the pot and helped himself to a drink as a sign that he knew he was trusted. We had to be careful of that. The hostess brought out a fry pan that was filled with water to a height of about two inches. I, as the guest, was given first wash, though in later days I refused such honor. Then the family washed in order. Old Chona first, as the elder, then father, mother, and each child. It was all in the same fry pan, which of course became pretty full of sediment, but there did not seem to be many germs in O’odham country. That year I never had any trouble. Of course, going without a bath at first seems a little strange, and I remember at a luncheon of the Women’s Faculty Club Figure 25. An elegantly simple structure used by the O’odham for domestic tasks, circa 1931–1935. Becoming an anthroPologist 182 later I sent myself almost through the roof by explaining that I had gone without a bath for three months. The gasps of horror were so amusing that I did not tell them one can rub oneself with sand and that, combined with perspiration, makes a pretty good cleanser. I stayed two weeks this time with the Lightning family and had a beautiful time. We ate dried squash, cooked over an open fire in a saucepan from Woolworth’s. Squash, I learned, was one of the ancient O’odham foods, which grew luxuriantly after the midsummer rain. When the yellow crooknecks were ripe, they were peeled like an...