Code Talker: Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

A worried six-year old Ned hears his mother calling his name. Dragging his feet, he emerges from behind the family’s hogan to see his beautiful mother dressed in her finest clothes and jewelry. She is also carrying a bundle of his clothes. She gestures Ned inside, where he says goodbye to his great-grandfather, who is frail and shrunken. Great-grandfather embraces Ned and tells him to be strong, calling him Kii Yázhí, “Little Boy.”

Outside, Ned’s parents embrace him sadly. His father lifts him into the seat of Ned’s uncle’s waiting wagon. His uncle drives off, and Ned waves until the wagon goes behind a hill and he can no longer see his family. Ned’s uncle, his mother’s brother, is the only member of their family who has attended the white man’s school. He convinced Ned’s mother to send Ned to the mission school, too, in Gallup.

Ned’s uncle, sensing that Ned is looking for courage, tells him to look ahead, not backward. He tells Ned that Ned is not going to school for himself. He is doing it for his family. It’s a good thing for Ned to learn the ways of the white people, or bilagáanaa, because the laws the Navajo must live by are in English. Ned tries to understand. Earlier generations had not gone away to school—they had learned everything from their families and from tribal elders.

After a thoughtful silence, Ned’s uncle talks about the family’s history. He explains that when Great-grandfather was Ned’s age, the Americans, led by “Red Shirt,” or Kit Carson, waged their last war against the Navajos. This war happened, he says, because the Americans did not know the Navajos, and they did not understand about the Mexicans. Ned knows that, for a long time, Mexicans had raided Navajo camps and enslaved their people. In turn, Navajos raided Mexican villages to rescue their people. Because the Mexicans could communicate with the Americans better than the Navajo could, the Americans believed the Mexican account of the Navajos’ actions, and they made war on those Navajo bands that refused to stop raiding the Mexican villages. Then they drove the Navajo people into exile, on what is called the Long Walk.

Ned has heard a lot about the Long Walk from his great-grandfather. The people were forced to journey hundreds of miles to a place called Fort Sumner. Hundreds died along the way and after they arrived. Their corn crops couldn’t thrive there, and they were attacked by other tribes. They called Fort Sumner “the place where only the wind could live.” Ned “knew this history as well as [his] own name.”

Ned’s uncle says that although it was hard for their people to be so far away from home, they persevered, remembering their homeland, praying, and doing a special ceremony. At that point, the white men permitted the Navajos to return home. But the Navajo people would have to learn the white men’s ways and abide by their laws. That’s why some Navajo children now attend white schools—so that they can “speak to them, tell them who we really are, reassure them that we will always be friends of the United States.” That is why Ned himself must go to the mission school—for the sake of his family, his people, and his land. Ned promises his uncle that he will do his best.