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Two Spirits: A Story of Life With the Navajo

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Set in the New Mexican Territory in the Civil War era, TWO SPIRITS focuses on a little known and shameful fact of American history. Thousands of Navajo Indians, who refer to themselves as Diné, were held in US Government sanctioned concentration camp-like captivity, at Fort Sumner, from 1864 to 1868. Walter L. Williams, Ph.D. and Toby Johnson, Ph.D. combined their knowledge and talent to pen a historically accurate fictional account of the Diné's incarceration.

TWO SPIRITS' factual story line centers around the callous treatment the Diné suffered under the supervision of the righteous Union General James Carlton. Carlton, an Indian fighter, devised a plan to relocate almost twelve thousand "savages" from their fertile homeland at Canyon de Chelly (now northeast Arizona), to the Bosque Redondo outside Fort Sumner. The Diné were forced to walk a distance of 325 miles, in winter, with insufficient wagons to carry the young, old, and infirm. More than three thousand people died en route to the desert area. Carlton's Indian "experiment" had the support of officials in Washington who wished the Indians pacified. The officials saw to it that sufficient funds for food and housing for the Diné were regularly sent to Fort Sumner. The funds, unfortunately, made General James Carlton a wealthy man. During the Diné's four years of captivity without government subsidies, and unable to grow crops in the arid soil, another quarter of their population died. The vulnerable Diné were also victims of raids by the New Mexicans. General Carlton never ordered the soldiers to defend his charges against these attacks.

Adding appeal and fast pace to TWO SPIRITS' plot, Williams and Johnson developed a beautiful love story between a young Virginian, William Lee, and a high ranked Diné, Hasbaá. Will had been shunned by his fundamentalist preacher father after being found in a barn with another young man. With the advice and help of an influential townsperson, Will went to Washington, D.C. and was fortunate to be hired as an apprentice Indian Agent. Assigned to Fort Sumner, Will realized immediately that the Indians were poorly treated, then learned the previous agent was dead. Feeling fully responsible for the Indian's welfare, Will conscientiously wrote reports to his superiors in Washington requesting additional aid for the starving Diné. Will was not yet aware of Carlton's duplicity.

Will frequently visited the Diné camp and after proving himself worthy was accepted into their talk circle. He became captivated with the spiritual person, Hasbaá. A two spirit person, Hasbaá was honored and respected by the people. According to Diné lore, people possessing two spirits were blessed with twice the spiritual gifts, both male and female, and thus had special powers to oversee healing rituals and other sacred ceremonies. Hasbaá and Will grew close and fell in love. The Diné celebrated their union, as was their custom.

Will discovered Carlton's treachery so with the help of Hasbaá and other Diné, set out to prove Carlton's unworthiness as leader. Some of Williams and Johnson's characters, such as General James Carlton, were actual people who played significant roles in the circumstances surrounding the Navajo's incarceration. In TWO SPIRITS' pages, the authors show how spirituality, wisdom, and true understanding of human nature existed among the native people of our continent for thousands of years before European settlers arrived. Williams and Johnson's TWO SPIRITS is a very important work with far reaching social significance.

Although I am not a stranger to the writing of either Walter Williams or Toby Johnson, their collaboration on this historical novel has yielded an outstanding novel. I do not consider myself an avid fan of historical fiction, but was totally captivated by this story. I am even more impressed that, though the details/characters of the story are fictional, the account so closely follows the historical facts. How great it would be if everyone in the United States could read this to gain insight into how abusive the non-native immigrants to this country were toward the native people.

William Lee, a young Virginian, is exiled from his home by his fundamentalist preacher father after being caught having sex in the barn with another youth. It's 1867, and Will is only 21 years old, but he needs to make a life for himself, even though he can never go back to his family. Disgraced, Will manages to get a job as an Indian Agent, and he makes the long journey to Fort Sumner in the New Mexico Territory where he begins to get to know the Navaho - the Dine, which means The People, as they call themselves.

Will works hard to be accepted by the Navajo, and before long he has made friends with Hasbaa, a Two Spirit person. He also discovers that the US government, led by the real-life character General James Carlton, had relocated the twelve thousand Navajos to Fort Sumner, effectively kidnapping them from their native area in Canyon de Chelly. Many of the tribe had died after being forced to walk over three hundred miles to Fort Sumner. Then to make matters worse, instead of giving to the Navajo the food and supplies earmarked for them, Carlton appropriated the resources to enrich himself. Will is thrust into this environment of politics, greed, and corruption, and before long, he begins to try to help his new friends. This puts him and others at great risk. Can he help the Navajo and Hasbaa, with whom he is falling in love?

Judy Grahn's groundbreaking book, ANOTHER MOTHER TONGUE: GAY WORDS, GAY WORLDS first introduced me to the concept of the Two Spirit person in native culture and mythology, but this is the first work of fiction I've read that speaks about the world of the "berdache" with such clarity, depth, and soulfulness. The novel draws much of its historical fact and information from Walter L. Williams' nonfiction book, THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH: SEXUAL DIVERSITY IN AMERICAN INDIAN CULTURE, but despite its historical base, the book never feels dry. Instead, this is a lively, entertaining, and fascinating look at a time gone by when two people from completely different cultures came together as friends, lovers, and trusted allies to prevail over an enemy that seemed impossible to defeat. Highly recommended. ~Lori L. Lake, Midwest Book Review

TWO SPIRITS: A Story of Life With the Navajos
Walter L. Williams & Toby Johnson
Lethe Press
1-59021-060-3

I've always enjoyed historical works, both fiction and non-fiction. And I enjoy well-written stories with gay characters. I don't very often find both between the covers of one book.

Two Spirits is excellent history and also a captivating love story with a difference.

Will Lee is a young, confused and naive Southerner sent west at the end of the Civil War to work as an Indian Agent-in-Training. Unfortunately, untrained and knowing nothing about the situation or his charges, he winds up being the Agent because, so he is told, the Navajo murdered the former agent. Though apprehensive at first, he gradually he comes to know the Diné (Navajo)people, learns their ways and their spirituality. And he falls he in love for the first time in his life with a beautiful Navajo, Hasbaá.

Hasbaá is a healer, a spiritual leader who communicates with Changing Woman. Though young, Hasbaá is wise and as courageous as any warrior and risks her life more than once to help her people. Will is more confused than ever when he discovers she has the body of a man. He has never heard of Two Spirit people, never imagined that such persons existed.

That's just the first of many life-changing discoveries for Will as he takes a journey of self-understanding both physical and spiritual. He grimly undertakes another journey that could cost him his life as he seeks to uncover the rottenness, greed, hatred, and corruption behind the treatment of the Diné (Navajo) people under his care on the Bosque Redondo Reservation.

Guided by the visions sent by Changing Woman, Will and Hasbaá lead the fight against the slow death of the Diné people and work to return them to their homeland.

The characters are unforgettable. The images and depictions of Diné ceremonies and legends are vividly enchanting. The passion the authors have for their subject is apparent.

Though this is a novel it is based on real people and real history. The way of life and spirituality that it portrays has nearly vanished and will soon be gone entirely, available to us only in words and pictures. Yet it is part of the American past, not only the past of those who have a Native American heritage.

Some books have veils over them. That means you cannot read them until you are ready for the message contained therein. This was such a book for me. I bought it immediately after it was published, but it sat on my shelf for almost a year before the veil was lifted and I could enter the world the authors created and described.
Perhaps the barrier that prevented me from plunging into this novel of American frontier life in the 1860s was the harsh and accurate description of the injustices suffered by the Native Americans at that time. I found the situation too painful to contemplate and refused to do so. When the veil was finally lifted, I was surprised and delighted to find a plot that veered from comedy to horror and back with an underlying message of hope, triumph and redemption. At one point I was moved to tears by the magnificence of the characters and the skillful manner in which they were portrayed. That, the shedding of a joyful tear evoked by artistic talent, is the surest sign for me that the authors have succeeded in their mission.
This book reminded me once again of the power of fiction to reflect and affect the so-called "real world." Toby Johnson literally wrote the book on gay spirituality (Toby Johnson, Gay Spirituality, Lethe Press, New Jersey, 2004, 296 pages). Here, with co-author Walter Williams, he delivers a message about the beauty, power and glory of gay shamans in the guise of historical fiction. The book has several levels: it is a story about the love between two men from radically different worlds, about the differences between those worlds and, ultimately, about the reconciliation of those worlds. The plot hinges on historical characters, situations and places, but incorporates a variety of elements, including magical realism, that make the story memorable, interesting and exciting.
The word "Navajo" is the Spanish name of a Native American tribe that calls itself Dine which means "the people." In the 1860s, the Dine suffered a devastation comparable that experienced by the Jews in Nazi Germany. They were forcibly deported from their homeland and relocated to a barren track of land outside of Fort Sumner in what is currently New Mexico. Their violent resistance to this deportation provided the excuse for further oppression. With little food, water or shelter, people died by the thousands. Eventually, the Dine made a treaty with the U.S. government that allowed them to return to their homeland from the brink of extinction.
Certain heroic and decent personalities among both the Dine and U.S. government facilitated this fortuitous conclusion. In this fictionalized version of the story, Williams and Johnson posit a love affair between a young Indian Agent from Virginia named William Lee and a Dine nadleehi (gay shaman) named Hasbaá. While the plot contains the heart-pounding twists and turns of an exciting movie, the underlying message of the book is William Lee's discovery, understanding and acceptance of Dine holistic and humane cosmology in contrast to the cosmology of his own tribe of rapacious and callous Americans. The love between Lee and Hasbaá served as a bridge between two utterly diverse and hostile cultures. This love allowed healing, growth and understanding to develop in an atmosphere in which only violence, oppression and cruelty flourished.
Love exists on four levels: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. It was the spiritual bond between the white American and the red Native American that drew them together and allowed them to foster reconciliation between their antagonistic societies. William Lee's curiosity and fascination with Dine culture and religion in general and with Hasbaá's exalted position as a religious figure in that culture in particular opened a window onto a world which was closed to most white Americans. The reader is privileged to gaze over Lee's shoulder as he peers into the forbidden and foreign world that most of Lee's compatriots considered savage and barbaric. One wonders who is the savage and who is the barbarian when the truth is known about the values and behaviors of each society.
One message of Toby Johnson's considerable literary output is that the homosexual perspective makes a valuable and necessary contribution to the evolution of human consciousness. This book presents the same idea in an entertaining, interesting and enlightening way. After finishing the book, I bought three copies of it as gifts for friends who would appreciate the concept of same-sex love as a vehicle for intercultural understanding.

TWO SPIRITS
Walter L. Williams & Toby Johnson
Publisher: Lethe Press
Award winning novel: Prize for Historical Fiction/Arch & Bruce Brown Foundation

Two Spirits combines a moving love story with a dark part of American history. Most American know, and choose to ignore, the historic treatment of the peoples who "were here first," the broken treaties, the broken promises, the broken hearts and lives. It would be silly to pretend that the Indians (if I may use that non-p.c. term) didn't war among themselves because they did. But they didn't have machine guns and railroad trains and the belief that God gave them all the land from coast to coast, a.k.a. "manifest destiny." Two Spirits is about one small group caught on the dark side of that manifest destiny: the people Americans called Navajo, but who called themselves Diné.

In 1864 the Diné were forced to walk 325 miles in winter from their green, fertile homeland in what we call Northeast Arizona, Canyon de Chelly, to what was actually a concentration camp at Bosque Redondo near Fort Sumner. At least 3,000 of their number died on the way. This was General James Carlton's version of "pacifying" the natives. Carlton, by the way, was a real person. The U.S. Government allocated what probably was sufficient money for the displaced Diné to feed, clothe, and house them, but the money found its way into Carlton's private coffers. Not only were the Diné starving and unable to grow crops in the inhospitable land, living in substandard shacks, and dying from illnesses, Mexican bandits regularly struck from what became New Mexico, carrying the Diné children to be sold into slavery. Carlton did nothing to protect his charges.

Into this living hell comes a shy, uncertain and untrained Indian Agent named William Lee from Virginia, a young man kicked out by his father for loving another man. Young Will is truly tested by many fires--both from within and without. He's puzzled why he's fascinated and attracted to the beautiful healer and wise woman, Hasbaá, a loved and revered member of the tribe. A near-tragedy reveals Hasbaá's physical strength and Will soon learns that the beautiful, spiritual, strong woman is really a man--a two-spirit. Far from being shunned, as she would have been in white society, Hasbaá is considered blessed. Will and Hasbaá fall deeply in love and are joined in a union by the customs of the tribe.

There is plenty of action and danger in this book, as Will, the Diné, and Hasbaá face persecution and annihilation when Will uncovers Carlton's corruption and evil. He commits himself completely to the life and spirituality of the Diné and his beloved Hasbaá.

As an incurable reader of forewords, afterwords, and footnotes, I especially appreciated the commentaries at the end. "About the Historical Accuracy of This Novel" is as interesting as the book itself, explaining as it does about, among other things, the use of peyote, some of the mystical references, and the acceptance of two-spirit people. This is followed by "A Commentary" by Wesley K. Thomas, a member of the Diné. These brief extras are the cherry on top of the sundae.

Ruth Sims

This is one of those books you just can't put down. Although it's catagorized as fiction, there are historically based non-fiction accounts blended in. I highly recommend this book for all ages.

I found Two Spirits to be a delightful and entertaining book bringing together compelling history, culture, romance, and spirituality. The authors vividly tell the story of the historical plight of the Navajo (Dine) tribe forced to languish in an extremely hostile environment far away from their homeland in an experiment in Indian management" by the U.S. military following the Civil War.

The writing is lucid and the characters are exceptionally well-developed. I readily experienced the hardships and the profound spirituality of the tribe as I entered their world and joined the journey. The tribal ways, rituals, and governing are rich in detail. I became aware that under the horrendous hardships the tribe managed to maintain an enduring sense of human hope, trust, and love. Tribal members displayed this love and trust for each other and their spiritual leader. The eventual acceptance of the "hairy face" (as the Native Americans referred to white men) into the tribe's midst is a lesson of tolerance and acceptance, especially when contrasted by the ugliness of discrimination practiced by the tribe's so-called 'protectors'.

Two Spirits is a must read for anyone who seeks to understand an aspect of Native American culture that has been denied far too long.

When I was a teen I was deeply fascinated by the Native American culture. Two of my favorite books were Dee Brown's Buy My Heart at Wounded Knee (that I searched for a bit since when I was young the Italian version of that book was out of stock) and a book who tried to tell from a different point of view the spanish "Conquest", and for this reason the title was 2941 (1492 on the other verse). Unfortunately they were never light books, since it's not easy to write of the Native Americans and be light, there is so little joy in that period for them. More when you think that most of the tribes were peaceful like the Dinè (Navajo). For this reason I like this book, since it didn't take with lightness the matter, but it gave also hope to the story of the two main characters.

William Lee, ex southern son of a preacher, left his home in disgrace after that his father found him in a barn with a young male friend... and it was obvious that they were not only friends. With some luck from his side (or maybe not after he realized in what he ended up), he became apprentice for the Indian Agent at Fort Summer, only to find out that the previous Agent is vanished and he is now the new Agent. But this is not the only surprise for William: he went in the Indian reserve believing to find almost a lost paradise, where the Native Americans are leaving in peace and prosperity, thanks to the unselfish help of the white men. And instead the reserve is more or less a detention field, and the Navajos there are slowly dying from starvation, since there is no way for them to farm the land or the herd the sheep. And if they are not dying from natural causes, they are killed from the soldiers who instead of take them safe, are using them as personal play things.

Probably William didn't arrive at the reserve with noble idea of being a saviour, even if a bit of his father's lessons probably still are inside him, but now that he is there, he can't help to feel sympathy for this people, even more since among them he meets Hasbaa, a Two-Spirits, a man who has inside him also the spirit of a woman. Hasbaa considers himself a widow, since he lost his warrior's lover and to show his grief he chose to wear only as a woman and to renounce to all the physical joy that he can find with another man. Since no one among the Native Americans treats him in a different way or looks at him in a strange way since he dresses like a woman, no one outside the reserve knows that Hasbaa is a man. William is deeply surprised, but also fascinated, to see that there is a way for him to love a man, and live happy. I don't know if William decides to help the Native Americans to have a chance with Hasbaa or if he really wants to help them, but in a way or another, William makes his the right of his new people.

As I said, I like this book, because, even if faithful to the story, it's not a sad book. It was really an easy ready that will make happy the history lover as well as the romantic reader. I believe that Hasbaa is a really historic accurate character, and even if he is a very good romance hero, he still remain faithful to his time and period. This good blend between history and romance probably is due to the good mix of the two authors that arrive from different origins, but come together to write a very moving but at the same time tender book.

As the story came to life my interest in the historical events described was peaked. This is the most moving book I have read in a long time. I can only recall one other book, "Song of The Loon" by Richard Amory, that has moved me as much. It is one of those books that one cannot read without being forever changed.