Oral history interview with Leroy Sakiestewa

Little Thunder: This is Julie Pearson-Little Thunder with the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program at Oklahoma State University. I am here on the Chilocco campus grounds interviewing Mr. Sakiestewa, LeRoy Sakiestewa, who is Hopi, class of '48 to '52 at Chilocco, and also a veteran who served in the 82nd Airborne [Division] from 1952 to 1955, the Army branch. LeRoy, after you left Chilocco, I understand you worked for many years for the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] as a facility manager at Tuba City. I'm going to be talking with you about your 1:00Chilocco experiences, your veteran experiences, and just a little bit of what happened after you left Chilocco. Where were you born, and where did you grow up?

Sakiestewa: I was born and raised in Tuba City, Arizona. That's where I grew up. Tuba City is a government boarding school. [This is the (BIA)] Western [Navajo] Agency [Headquarters].

Little Thunder: Did you go to school, a boarding school, before Chilocco?

Sakiestewa: No. At Tuba City, they had a public school that went to the eighth grade. After the eighth grade, there was no high schools on the reservation, so all of us had to go off the reservation.

Little Thunder: What did your mother and father do for a living?

Sakiestewa: My father was a plumber. He went to school in Sherman Indian School 2:00in Riverside, California. He married my mother [Ramona Poleeson], who also attended Sherman. As they come through the years, he was working over in Winslow, [at the Santa Fe] Railroad, what they called the roundhouse, and eventually ended up in Tuba City. That's where he established his career there and worked as a plumber and retired from there.

Little Thunder: Brothers or sisters?

Sakiestewa: I have a lot of brothers and sisters. There was twelve of us in the family. Today there's four of us remaining. My oldest brother, [Victor H. Sakiestewa: , Jr.], he's eighty-nine years old.

Little Thunder: That's wonderful. Not a lot of Hopi people living in Tuba City, 3:00correct, were there?

Sakiestewa: Tuba City, there's a Highway 160, runs through there on up [through] Tuba [to] the Four Corners [with Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico]. On the north side is a Navajo reservation. On the southern side is Hopi; on this southern side there is Moencopi. That's where I lived. That's a Hopi village establishment. The only reason I say I lived in Tuba City is because Tuba City has the post office. There's only one post office that serves both the Hopi and the Navajo tribes there. When they say, "Where are you from," and I say, "Tuba City," it's because that's where the post office is--

Little Thunder: I see. (Laughter)

Sakiestewa: --where I'd get my mail, yeah.

Little Thunder: So you grew up around your Hopi language and culture?

Sakiestewa: No, I grew up at Tuba City, and--. I don't regret it. Mother and Father, they talked fluent Hopi, but they only talked Hopi when they didn't want the kids to know what they were talking about. We missed out, unfortunately, but 4:00when I got out of the [Armed] Services and got married, I started picking up the language. That's when I got involved in the Hopi religion and the Hopi culture, after I married a Hopi girl.

Little Thunder: You explained that you went to public school in Tuba City through the eighth grade. Did you have a choice about coming to Chilocco, or was that just where most of the students from Tuba City went?

Sakiestewa: First of all, there was only one little public school in Tuba City. It was a two-classroom. There was first grade through the fourth grade with a folding door on one side, and another classroom was for the fifth grade through the eighth grade. They only had two teachers: one for the lower grades and one for the upper level. That's what I grew up with--

Little Thunder: It was tiny!

Sakiestewa: --as far as getting my education. I think when I graduated, there was about four of us that graduated. There was no high schools on the 5:00reservation, so I elected to come to Chilocco because all of my older brothers and sisters had gone to Ganado Mission. I told my father that I didn't want to go to Ganado Mission, that I wanted to go to somewhere where I could learn a trade. Somehow he heard about Chilocco, and that's where I ended up when I graduated. I ended up here in Chilocco to get my trade education.

Little Thunder: That's pretty young to be thinking--. Were you already thinking about a certain trade, or were you just open to whatever trade you might--.

Sakiestewa: It was just open because at that time I didn't really even know until I got to Chilocco. Then I learned what different [trades] there were. I 6:00wanted to be a mechanic to start out with, but then I changed to plumbing. That's where I stayed, with plumbing for three years, and that's where I graduated, as a plumber.

Little Thunder: Right. What was one of the hardest adjustments you had when you got to Chilocco? What was the most different thing?

Sakiestewa: Really nothing. I wasn't lonesome. I just kind of fell in with the crowd. My roommates were four boys. We roomed together for the first year, and then we split up in two and two. There's one person that was a freshman up there in our room, Don Freeman, and him and I roomed together for four years. So no, there was no adjustment. I don't know why that I didn't feel lonesome for home or not, but I didn't have no feeling for that. I just felt right at home when I 7:00got here.

Little Thunder: It was also a really intertribal experience. That was a new intertribal experience for you.

Sakiestewa: Yes it was because, like I said, I was not raised in the Hopi tradition in my younger years. I guess you might say I grew up as an Anglo, so when I got up here there wasn't a big transition until I got married. That's when I got involved into the Hopi tradition and religion.

Little Thunder: You had different details while you were here, right, at school? What was one that you liked or didn't like and why?

Sakiestewa: Really, I didn't have no dislikes. I understood that I had to clean my room, and I had to have my turn to go and take care of the restrooms and 8:00showers. I really didn't have no choice because it rotated. To me, it was just doing what I was supposed to do when my time come.

Little Thunder: What do you remember about the meals here?

Sakiestewa: The meals were okay. They weren't the greatest, but they were okay. I guess the things that I remember the most was the fruit, the bananas. I'd never had bananas before, so the bananas was always one of the favorite fruits that I had here. The other thing that I never had very much of was cobbler. We always had cobblers here. That was another one I enjoyed. Overall, all the food, it was satisfactory to me. I didn't have any dislike of any of it. Some people said they don't like broccoli. We didn't have any broccoli, so there was none of 9:00the food that I didn't like. It was all good.

Little Thunder: How about memories of dances?

Sakiestewa: Dancing? Oh, yeah, I became a jitterbug king, I guess you might say. (Laughter) I liked jitterbug, and all the girls would dance with me because I was a pretty good jitterbugger. (Laughter) That was one of my favorites, jitterbugging.

Little Thunder: Did you play in a band or participate in athletics?

Sakiestewa: (Laughs) Let me tell you about my band experience. I wanted to be in band, learn how to play an instrument. My father's a musician. He played about five or six different instruments when he went to school in Sherman. I took up band. I get there early. Instead of going and finding my place where I'm 10:00supposed to sit when class starts, I go up there, and I start playing with all of these instruments. The teacher looked at me one day, early, and he says, "LeRoy, you ain't going to learn how to play nothing. You just want to mess around. I suggest that you find something else." That was my career in learning how to play an instrument. (Laughter) That's why I say that's a funny thing that happened. I never did learn how to play an instrument.

All of my brothers and sisters played instruments, and my dad did play a few. What was the other question? Oh, and sports. That's where I got my recognition from everybody that knows me now. I was a short little Hopi Indian, and I was in basketball. I made varsity as a substitute in my freshman year. In my junior and 11:00senior year, I was captain of the basketball team. I played football. I didn't shine in there, but I played football. I played baseball, and I ran track. I ran the mile and the two mile. Those are the sports that I participated in, all of those. Basketball was my big thing. Everybody through the four years that seen me play basketball, that's what they remember me by. "Oh, yeah, you were that little short Hopi, and a good basketball player." (Laughter)

Little Thunder: That moves fast. (Laughs) How about teachers or administrators from Chilocco that stood out for you in a good or a bad way?

Sakiestewa: I didn't have any bad teachers. They were all good. The teacher that I really admired was Kay Ahrnken. She was my English teacher. I always talk 12:00about her. That was my favorite teacher. The other teachers were good teachers. I got along fine with all of my teachers. The only one I think I took advantage of when they were a new teacher and they just came aboard was one of the teachers. She was--typing. I was in that class there and I kind of took advantage of her, I think. I'd make an excuse--. I'd ask her if she needed the wastebasket emptied. I'd take it out, empty it, and stay a few minutes late, then come back. I look at that as I might have took a little advantage of her, but she was nice and kind. She never got on my case about that.

Little Thunder: You didn't like typing?

Sakiestewa: I liked typing. I liked having it because that's what I started out. When I got home and I started my career, well, I started as a laborer, and then 13:00I got a position as a clerk typist. That's where my typing skills came into play, yeah, so I did use that for a little bit.

Little Thunder: It was good that you had it. So you knew the National Guard center was on campus. When did you get interested in enlisting?

Sakiestewa: I wasn't able to enlist. I tried to enlist in 1950. I think it was '50 or '51, but I was too young. I think I was sixteen, so I wasn't old enough. I wasn't able then to join the Guard. That was my career as far as trying to join the National Guard, but I knew about it. I knew a lot of the boys that was in there.

Little Thunder: Then when you finished at Chilocco, you enlisted in the service 14:00in the Army. Can you tell me a little bit about how that happened?

Sakiestewa: Yeah, when I graduated, I did a little presentation [at the Lions Club in Arkansas City]. One of the little businesses, a water softening business, he hired me right after I graduated. I went to work for him there for about a month--

Little Thunder: In plumbing?

Sakiestewa: --in plumbing, yeah. We serviced water softeners, regenerated them. I did that for a month, and then I decided I was going to go home and not come back. I went home for about a month. Then I decided to come back. I told the man that I wasn't going to come back, so I didn't expect to have my job when I came back. I came back, and there was no work around here to be had. I stayed with a friend that had graduated a couple years before I did that I knew. I stayed there, and I couldn't get a job. Then me and a friend, another friend, we 15:00decided to go down to see the recruiter. We went down there. We went down to join the Navy. There was a post office downstairs in the basement, and as we was coming up, there was a big sign there that says, (the Navy recruiter's office was closed) the big sign says, "Join the Army. Be a paratrooper."

I told my friend, I said, "I don't want to get in the Army. I don't want to be a paratrooper." He said, "Oh, we'll just go in there and talk to him." He talked me into it, and we went up. It was upstairs, the next level. We went up there, and when we came walking out we had already enlisted. We had enlisted when we came out the door. (Laughter) We were both out of a job, and it was hard, so we enlisted. That's how I got into the service, because it came to that point. I'd 16:00been staying with people a couple weeks, and there was no jobs. I had my applications in at the unemployment office there and didn't get no response until I got in the service. Then I got all kind of responses. "Come in for an interview." "Too late. I'm in the Army."

Little Thunder: Where did you do your basic training?

Sakiestewa: Fort Riley, Kansas. I was up there for sixteen weeks at Fort Riley, Kansas.

Little Thunder: What was the hardest thing about being in basic training?

Sakiestewa: I guess--really it was the discipline. It's a little bit more stricter than when we were here. I guess that was a thing that I had to get used to. Other than that, it was no problem. I learned how to fix my bed here. I 17:00learned how to clean around my area here. When I was younger on the reservation, I used to go hunting with my .22, so a rifle was nothing new to me. The bed fixing, no problem there. People didn't even know how to fix a bed, and that was surprising to me. That was the only thing; I guess it was the discipline that I had to learn. Other than that, I guess it must've kind of snapped because I had learned all of that stuff in boarding school.

Little Thunder: What happened after Fort Riley? Where did you go?

Sakiestewa: I went to jump school in Fort Benning, Georgia, because I had signed up to be a paratrooper. The only reason I joined up to be a paratrooper was because they were paying them, like, fifty bucks a jump. We had to jump about 18:00every three months in order to qualify for that fifty bucks extra. That was the only reason that I--. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: What was your first jump like?

Sakiestewa: It wasn't bad. Before that, when I was going through training, there was a twenty-foot jump that they teach you how to jump and position yourself while you're coming out of the plane. That to me, just twenty foot up in the air, was scarier than jumping out of the airplane.

Little Thunder: Wow!

Sakiestewa: When I was jumping out of the airplane, it was just noisy. Then as soon as you get out, everything is quiet, and you come floating down by yourself. You could see people. The airplane, it was done past you. It wasn't scary as far as jumping out of the plane. It was scary when I was training, twenty foot up. I looked down, and, "Oh, that's a long ways down!"

Little Thunder: Because you could see the ground. (Laughs)

Sakiestewa: Yeah.

Little Thunder: That must have been an amazing experience, to make your first jump.

Sakiestewa: Yeah, it was. They talk about Friday the thirteenth. I made my fifth qualifying jump on Friday the thirteenth. Thursday, the [twelfth], we were supposed to make our fifth jump. That would qualify us, and then we had a graduation on Friday. Because it was windy, we had to wait until Friday morning and jump Friday the thirteenth, jump, then go back and get on our uniforms, and then go to our graduation.

Little Thunder: Were you a little nervous because it was Friday the thirteenth?

Sakiestewa: I wasn't real nervous, but I guess I thought about it, Friday the thirteenth, yeah.

Little Thunder: The other guys were probably teasing.

Sakiestewa: No, nobody said anything about it. I'd heard about Friday the thirteenth, but I never did really know or see about anybody really having any 20:00kind of catastrophe on Friday the thirteenth. That didn't really sink in. I wondered if something would happen on Friday the thirteenth. As I had gone through the training and getting ready to get on the plane, that was all gone by the time I was getting ready to jump out of the plane.

Little Thunder: Right. What happened then after you've gotten your certification and you're certified to--.

Sakiestewa: When we graduated and we were being shipped out to our permanent bases, we got up early in the morning. It must have been about three or four o'clock in the morning, raining and Thunder: ing. They had a roster, and they were calling out names. "Okay, this group is going to Fort Bragg." My name didn't come up. "This group is going to Korea." I'm sitting there, waiting for 21:00my name. They called the list, and it wasn't on there. They went by several different ones, and some was staying at Fort Benning. Then they had the list, says, "Okay, this is going to Fort Bragg to this unit." My name popped up on there. I loaded on a bus, and they took us up to Fort Bragg to where I was stationed until I got out of service. I didn't get sent overseas. I stayed there in Fort Bragg and got rank. I got out as a sergeant.

Little Thunder: Did you work in a specialized area at all or just as a sergeant?

Sakiestewa: We had our little gun platoons there, so I worked up my way. They started as gunners. I worked my way to the leader of that gun group.

Little Thunder: Were there very many other Native soldiers in your division?

Sakiestewa: Yeah, I think there was one, but he was in a different--. We had A, B, C Batteries. He was in a different battery, but we was all in the same location. He had gone--I knew him here at school. We went to school together. Then there was two other guys that were up there in the 82nd, but they were on the boxing team. They were up there just training for boxing. So there was those three classmates of mine that were up there at Bragg that I had gone to school with.

Little Thunder: I knew some people would play softball or basketball for the Armed Forces, but I didn't realize that boxing--that you could just box and 23:00tour. Wow! Anyway, Chilocco was with you still.

Sakiestewa: Yeah, I tried out for basketball, but back then they were drafting. They had drafted some college students, so the competition was a little bit more than I could handle. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Did you go off base? What was that like, being in the South at Fort Benning? What was that like?

Sakiestewa: I went off base quite a bit. The nearest town to us was Fayetteville, so that's where I spent just about all my weekends. As the years went on, I went a little further south to a little town called Pembroke. That 24:00was an Indian community, and they had a little small college there. I got to know the mayor down there. I used to go down there and visit him and spend the weekend down there with him. Him and I became good friends. Also, there was no, what I say, Indians around, Native Americans around the area. I told my buddy, the one that I had gone to school with and we ran around together, I said, "Let's go to Cherokee, North Carolina. I heard there's a lot of Indians over there. Maybe we could find us a Indian girl over there." We hitchhiked over there to Cherokee, North Carolina, and sure enough, we met a couple girls there. They had gone to school at Haskell. We became friends. I went up there and 25:00visited them a couple times, but we just became good friends and nothing other than that. That's where I learned about--in Arizona where I'm at in the desert, they have these salamanders that they fish with. That's where I learned what a salamander was, in Cherokee, North Carolina.

Little Thunder: What happened after you did your military service?

Sakiestewa: I was going to reenlist into the military, and then I came home on Christmas. That's when I met this Hopi girl in Moencopi, Tuba City. That's when I met her, so the love bug bit. (Laughter) There went my military career. I 26:00decided to get out. I came home, and then we got married. She lived down in Moencopi all her life. She was born and raised in Moencopi. She grew up with the traditional Indian religion of the Hopis, so when I got married, that's when she taught me. I got involved in our Hopi--. If I hadn't married her and married, maybe, another Indian tribe or a non-Indian, I probably never would have known about our Hopi religion, even though I'm a full-blooded Hopi. I'm thankful that that turned out that way because all of my kids, all my grandkids, we've taught them the Hopi tradition and the religion.

Little Thunder: That's wonderful. Once you get married, how is what you learned at Chilocco and also in the military, how is that impacting your career?

Sakiestewa: I guess how it helped me is when I got married, it was just like any other place. It was hard to find a job. That's why I said I started as a laborer. Then I finally got my foot in the door, and this is all with the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs]. Then I got to working as a plumber's helper because I had told him I took plumbing when I was--. After that, I worked myself into a plumbing position. That helped me, my plumbing education here in Chilocco, that I went through the steps and finally became a plumber. From there, I kept moving up, and then I became a supervisor. Like I said, when I retired, the last 28:00fifteen or twenty years of my career, I was a manager, facility manager. That's when I retired, as a facility manager.

Little Thunder: What you were primarily--you were facility manager for the on-reservation boarding schools in the area. How did you compare your experiences? You're not going to school there, but you're coming into contact with--. You're making decisions about facilities and things. What kinds of differences did you see, maybe, with Chilocco?

Sakiestewa: The difference was that, as a facility manager, we only took care of the maintenance and operations of the school. The education, they had principals and all, so they took care of the education part. We had groups at the schools 29:00that took care of the boarding schools, the bigger boarding schools, and they took care of all of maintenance and operations for the schools. That was everything. We took care of the wells when we went down. Our budget included purchasing fuel, oil for the boilers, and LP gas for the houses, heaters and everything like that. That was what the facilities portion, we did there. I guess the little bit of experience that I did have, I'm really proud of.

When I was going through, coming up through the ladder, I had a chance to go to a little school called Kaibito, which was fifty miles from Tuba City, which is headquarters. I went up there as a work center foreman, and my wife was over 30:00there. She was in the dorm as the dorm manager, working. When I was up there for ten years, that's when I got involved in coaching these girls' basketball teams. We had a lot of winning teams, and we used to compete with all the other boarding schools, the girls' teams. Each year, we would go down to Phoenix and play in the state basketball. That was a good experience that I really cherish, when I was still working in those days.

Little Thunder: That is neat. What made Chilocco unique in your mind from your other school experience, which was with that very small school?

Sakiestewa: That very small school, I don't remember a whole lot about it because I was so young there. The only thing I really remember about it is that 31:00you knew everybody because it was just a small community. We ran around with everybody. Other than that, that was that from Chilocco. When I came to Chilocco, it was a large group of kids that I was associating with. Like I said, that wasn't hard to get used to. I didn't have no problem with that. You might say the big difference when I was there in the public school in Tuba, our basketball court was just ground, just a piece of earth and a goal on each end. That's what I learned how to play basketball. When I got up here and we started playing in the gym over here, shoot, I was in another world with that hard wood 32:00floor! (Laughter)

Little Thunder: That's great. What is important to you about coming to the Chilocco reunions?

Sakiestewa: I guess it's just hoping that I would be able to see more of my classmates. For the last three, four years, there's only been two of us: Claudine [Williford] King and Paul Reed and myself. Those are the only three class of '52s that have been here in the last two, three years. I was hoping that somebody from our class, one or two, would be here, but that didn't happen. The other thing that I was hoping but it's been disappointing is that the younger ones that had graduated in, say, the '60s and the '70s, there is maybe 33:00one or two now and then, but there's not that many people. There are not that many. The ones that were in the '50s, that to me seems like, has supported the reunion every year.

Little Thunder: Carrying it forward. Are you a member of the southwest chapter for Chilocco? Do you ever go to their functions?

Sakiestewa: Yes, I'm one of the (what do they call it) originators that started it up.

Little Thunder: Oh, neat!

Sakiestewa: Yeah, I was part of that group when Betty Deer and George England and some of those--but Betty Deer is passed on now. Some of the others that started it up are gone, but I'm one of the original chapter members. I'm presently serving, and I have been serving, as the vice president of the southwest chapter, and I'm the vice president now today. Those that originally 34:00started it, they're not really there. There's one or two still living, but the others have passed on. Now we have a new president, and I'm still the vice president. It seems like right now, it's primarily--we have a lot of members throughout the Southwest, Oklahoma, even Idaho and California. As far as their presence there, they're not there, but they're on paper, on our roster. The ones that attend our meetings is primarily the Navajo students that were here. That's carrying the Great Southwest [chapter].

Little Thunder: From the big program, Navajo program, that they had.

Sakiestewa: They started out in that Navajo program way back in the '50s. I think '47 it started. It was that five-year Navajo program. I don't know when it ended, but now, after that, the Navajo students came here as high school 35:00students. We have a few of those who came here as freshmen in high school. We also have those older ones, my age, that were here doing the five-year program. We're still well and living, and we've grown a little bit since the last couple years. Our attendance has gone up a little bit, so that's good.

Little Thunder: That's great. That is good. What else would you like people to know or remember about Chilocco?

Sakiestewa: I would like for them to remember that Chilocco was, (and this is the only boarding school I attended) this is the greatest boarding school I've ever attended. I've learned a lot. I learned how to take care of myself, and I learned how to get along with other tribes and individuals. Never had a fight 36:00with anybody while I was here my four years. I've heard a lot of horror stories after I graduated about people that were talking. I don't know if they went to boarding school, but they must have read a little bit of history. They were talking about how the boarding school was demeaning and downgrading. That's not what happened here at Chilocco. It made me a better person and a bigger person. Like I said, the food was fine; the kids were great. I know I had heard after I left that there was some hardship that did take place here that I can't realize because when I was there, we was all very good friends and knew everybody. We were just like family. Even some of the girls in my class, we were so close I 37:00just considered them as my sisters. That's the kind of relation that we had. It wasn't like the boyfriend-girlfriend thing. It was just like--sisters and brothers.

Same with the guys that I grew up with and in the dorm. They were just like my brothers. That was the experience that I got. The first year you had to take agriculture. I learned a lot about aggie, and then I learned my trade in plumbing. When I got out, I was in the cattle business earlier in my years. I raised cattle until the drought put me out of business. I'm no longer in the cattle business, but I learned how to deal with the animals because that was the first year that we had to take that course. We took agriculture first in the 38:00morning, go to school in the afternoon, take a trade. Then go to school the next morning, then ag. That's how the schedule was staggered. Those are the things that I remember. I don't know. I think that, looking back, it's made me a better person, looking at today's kids. We were disciplined but not with a big stick. I was just talking to a couple of my classmates how we used to have, I guess you might say, law and order here. They had the Lettermen's Club, that whenever a student got in trouble they had to go before the Lettermen's Club. The Lettermen's ruled with a paddle.

Little Thunder: So it was fellow students, other students?

Sakiestewa: Yeah. Depending on what the situation was, they would get so many 39:00hits with a paddle by all of the lettermen that were present. That made us behave pretty good, pretty much. We only did it once. ... I knew about it, so I didn't get in any trouble. I did letter, so I was a Letterman. I went through the initiation. Back then, I got my paddlings, and nowadays, you can't even touch the kids. That's the difference as it was when I--. We went through this initiation into the different organizations that we had. That was one of the, I guess, the harshest one that I went through was the Lettermen's because we had to go through the paddling. Then we had to dress up in girl's clothing. For a whole week, we had that initiation going. (Laughter) We didn't think nothing about it back then. It was all part of going to school, I guess. I enjoyed it.

We sit back and laugh about it and tell good stories about that. That was my experience. I wish that somehow we, the Alumni Association, was able to work with the tribes and keep these buildings halfway standing instead of letting them deteriorate. I even look back now and wish that the tribes and the Association had got together and made this strictly a trade school. They have those on the reservation. Navajos has them a couple places on the reservation. You still need to train people for trade. Not all of them are not like they thought they were going to do. They were going to educate them so they could all 41:00go to college. It's not like that. We have a lot of them on the reservation that need the trade skills. That's what I wish, that that could've happened here, but that's water under the bridge.

Little Thunder: I do hope that there can still be things that happen. Those are good thoughts. Thank you very much for your time today, LeRoy.

Sakiestewa: Thank you. I enjoyed talking to you.

Little Thunder: Okay, we're doing a little post script to LeRoy Sakiestewa: 's interview, and it's right here.

Sakiestewa: What I wanted to tell, this story here, because I even want to write a little book about it, is how I got here. When I graduated from the eighth grade at Tuba City, we had to go off the reservation to go to high school. My 42:00father somehow heard about Chilocco. He got with the BIA school superintendent, education department, and he got me in this group to transport me up here. They had buses come out to Tuba City and load us up, take us to Flagstaff. We boarded a train at Flagstaff. Back then, the trains had those wooden seats. They didn't have no soft, padded seats. They were all wood. We rode the train. We got in late in the afternoon. We rode it all night when we come up here, up here by the highway there, where the existing railroad is now. I was thinking about that: How long has that railroad been there?

It was out there when I came in '48. There's a little train--station used to be there where they dropped off the mail and stuff like that. They stopped there. That's where we deboarded the train, all of us. There must have been at least 43:00three hundred, four hundred Navajo students. I was right in the middle, only Hopi in the middle. (Laughter) They threw all of our baggage on the back of a truck, a stake body truck, no buses to haul us down there. "Okay, get in. Throw the baggage in." Then we got in and rode from there, from the railroad station on the highway into the school in the back of a truck.

Little Thunder: (Laughs) That's a great story.

Sakiestewa: The first thing I remember, coming down through the alley was the--what do you call them? They sound like crickets.

Little Thunder: Oh, cicadas? Do they fly?

Sakiestewa: Yeah, they fly.

Little Thunder: Locusts.

Sakiestewa: Locusts, yeah. There was a few locusts out in Tuba there, but there's thousands out here. (Laughter) That's what I remember, coming down 44:00there. I heard those locusts singing as I came down here. We got down here, and they took us to Dorm 6 back there, the boys' dorm. That's where they get in there, start sorting us out, where to go and what dorm we were going to be assigned to, where to live. When I got here, there was a person that I knew. He had gone to school at the boarding school at Tuba City. I knew him. He was a Navajo, and he had been up here the year before. When I come walking in the door, he says, "What are you doing over here, LeRoy? We don't want no Hopis up here." (Laughter) I said, "I'm sorry, but you got one now!" This was all in fun because I knew him when we were kids in Tuba.

That was my experience when I got here. I got here, and they assigned me--because I didn't know anything about where I was supposed to be or what, except coming here to high school. I was assigned a room with three other Navajo 45:00boys over in Dorm 1. I got there, stayed there. I think we got here maybe on a Saturday or something like that. I stayed here a couple nights. Then Monday they said, "Okay, this group, you go over here to the Navajo program," which is on one end of the campus, and the high school is on the other end. I followed them up there, and I was wandering around, where to go. Everybody, they must know where to go because they all went up there and I was out there still wandering around. One of the teacher aides come out, he asks, "Can I help you?" I said, "I need some help. I'm over here to go to high school." He says, "Okay."

He asked me my name. I told him. He says, "The high school is over there across 46:00the campus," and he pointed over here. I said, "Okay." I came out of there, and I went over there. That's when I went over there and told him I was over here for the high school. That's when they, "Okay, he's high school." I kind of went backwards, and I went over there. They reassigned me. They took me out of there where I was staying with the Navajo boys, and they put me into a room where they was the freshmen boys. That's my experience getting here to Chilocco. I want to write a little story about that, how I got up there, because people ask me, "How did you get up there?" It's not that--I knew where I was going. I was just wandering around there, and that's how I found my way around.

Little Thunder: That's great. Thank you for that story.

Sakiestewa: Okay.

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