Sing Down the Moon

“‘It is possible that our friend will never be married,’ she said. ‘Who wants a girl who has arms that look like sticks?’”

Bright Morning’s friends Running Bird and White Deer mildly tease her as the three watch over their families’ flocks of sheep. They pick on Bright Morning’s physical appearance as well as her interest in Tall Boy. Bright Morning ultimately proves this teasing wrong: She not only eventually marries Tall Boy, she also proves to be a strong, brave woman, despite her arms “like sticks.”

“On the barrels of their rifles were fastened long, sharp-looking knives. That is why we always called them the Long Knives.”

Bright Morning explains the origins of the term “Long Knives,” which is what she and the Navajo villagers call the white soldiers with bayonets affixed to the ends of their rifles. The image is especially ominous because it is an example of metonymy, or using a part of the thing to refer to the whole. By calling the soldiers by their weapons, the term reduces them to the fundamental violence that arrives with them.

“I sang little songs to myself. Some were happy and some were not, but all of them were meant for the ears of the gods who listen.”

After the arrival of the Long Knives in the Navajo village, the villagers are fearful and concerned about what the soldiers will do. Bright Morning notes these fears as the group considers the soldiers’ order to leave the village. However, she responds with gentle defiance, singing songs in hopes that the gods will listen. Her act of singing also recalls the title of the novel.

“I saw what I was sure was a Wolf, a Navaho Wolf.”

After the Spaniards capture her to sell her into slavery, Bright Morning is understandably fearful. As the band travels at night, she has a vision of a wolf, which, according to her traditions, can signify the presence of a witch. Though afraid, Bright Morning takes the sign as a reason to be alert and cautious, traits she will rely on when planning to escape from her confinement.

“Run, run, even though they kill you. It is better to die here on the street.”

Bright Morning remains highly observant as she enters the city in which the Spaniards will sell her to a white woman as a servant. She notes the eyes of another enslaved girl, which seem to speak to her with a strong warning about life as a slave. Later, Bright Morning learns that the girl is Nehana. Together, the girls plot an escape, following up on the eyes’ command to run despite the danger of doing so.

“I will never stir the beans nor will I ever smile while I am in this house, I said to myself.”

In another sign of her willingness to defy injustice, Bright Morning reacts to learning about the tasks she will have to complete as an enslaved servant by vowing to never do them. Ultimately, she does compromise in order to survive, and she assists with serving the guests at the señorita’s party. However, she retains the spirit of defiance by refusing to smile at the event, fulfilling the promise she made to herself.

“‘You will be happy here someday,’ Rosita said.”

Rosita, the señorita’s other servant girl, tries to convince Bright Morning that life as a servant girl is not only pleasant but preferable to life as a free Navajo. She attempts to sway Bright Morning by mentioning the good food and other comforts of her position. Bright Morning rejects all of this. Rosita becomes a foil, or character of contrast, to Bright Morning; her differences highlight the traits of independence and loyalty to her culture that define Bright Morning.

“I also wondered where Tall Boy was, if even now he was hidden somewhere near, waiting to take me home.”

As Bright Morning makes secret plans with Nehana to escape from enslavement, she continues to think back on home and Tall Boy in particular. Her thoughts emphasize the bond between them. While at this point in the novel she thinks of Tall Boy as someone who will help rescue her and take her home, Bright Morning develops her independence and self-reliance as the novel moves forward. In the end, it is Bright Morning who takes Tall Boy home.

“It sounded to me as if some evil spirit had leaped out from the far depths of the earth. The cry was not a human sound nor the sound that any animal makes whether in pain or fright.”

As Nehana, Running Bird, and Bright Morning travel through the wilderness in their escape from enslavement, Tall Boy aids them. He lets out a war cry as he battles the Spaniards who tracked them. Bright Morning depicts the fearsome cry as something inhuman or supernatural, emphasizing the anger Tall Boy feels toward those attacking his culture.

“It was a Navaho wind. Joyously I breathed it in.”

Bright Moring returns home from enslavement with a spirit of joy, literally taking in the air of her home. The spirit recalls her happiness at the opening of the novel and foreshadows its end, when she once again returns home after white soldiers force the Navajo on the Long Walk. The moment of joy is particularly poignant because it comes between one traumatic experience (Bright Morning’s enslavement) and another (the Long Walk).

“I watched him ride away, sitting stooped in the saddle, one shoulder lower than the other, and my heart went out to him.”

Tall Boy insists to Bright Morning that he will continue to be a fierce warrior despite his injuries. The loss of the use of one arm is devastating to Tall Boy, and in his anger, he even lashes out at Bright Morning, who continues to support him. With empathy, she sees how his frustrations cloud his worldview. The end of the novel validates her belief in him, as he sheds his anger and settles into a new life as a father.

“We watched the pieces float away, thinking as they disappeared that so had the threat of the white men. But we were wrong.”

Tall Boy works hard to prove his boldness, especially after his injury causes others to doubt his abilities as a warrior. When the Long Knives post a declaration in the Navajo village ordering the villagers to leave, he rips up the flyer. Bright Morning recognizes the frustrated gesture as futile and understands that the threat of the white soldiers is real and imminent. Her wisdom and firm grasp on reality once again define her character and distinguish her from others, even Tall Boy.

“But they did not ride away.”

Looking down on their village from the mesa above, the villagers watch the Long Knives set up camp and begin to destroy their home. Bright Morning’s simple, direct reflection on the presence of the Long Knives in their village emphasizes how her understanding of the situation was correct. She understood that the white soldiers had come to stay, and the group of villagers now collectively becomes aware of the same.

“The next night was the first night of the full moon. It was then that my father said that we must leave.”

The Navajo villagers initially set up camp on the mesa above their village in hopes of waiting out the departure of the Long Knives. The villagers disagree about whether to leave or stay, but eventually it becomes clear to all that they cannot continue to survive on the mesa. The moment of clarity arrives with the light of the full moon, signaling that the necessity of leaving is fully apparent.

“I saw his face as he went past me. He no longer looked like a warrior. He looked like a boy, crushed and beaten, who flees for his life.”

Even after the Long Knives discover the worn-out group of Navajo, Tall Boy intends to maintain his stance as a warrior. After his attempt to kill one of the soldiers with his lance fails, he immediately flees. In that brief instant, Bright Morning again empathizes with Tall Boy and recognizes that his pride and identity as a warrior have again been wounded.

“The Long Knives drove us along the river and through the portals of the canyon. Like sheep before the shepherd, we went without a sound.”

Bright Morning shares her observations of the Long Walk. She compares the group to sheep because they are so downtrodden that they follow the soldiers’ commands despite the trauma and injustice of their captivity. Sheep are an important symbol of Navajo identity, especially to Bright Morning, and so thinking of themselves as a broken group is especially painful.

“‘We are walking to our deaths,’ my mother said. ‘The old die now. The young die later. But we all die.’”

Some of the Navajo become resigned to their fate in captivity or harbor false hope of the soldiers’ leniency, losing a sense of urgency to resist or plan an escape. Others, like Bright Morning’s mother, see the white soldiers’ control as inevitably fatal. She becomes angry with her husband for believing that things will turn out alright under the white soldiers’ rule. This division mirrors the way Bright Morning begins to plan an escape while Tall Boy initially rejects the idea.

“I was singing a song to her about a bird in a pine tree. I sang another song to her and another before I was aware that she was no longer listening, that she had died quietly in my arms.”

Bright Morning’s sense of empathy continues to develop even after experiencing her own personal traumas, from slavery to the forced march to the reservation. She even willingly takes care of a child abandoned by its mother (and later, fully forgives the mother), sharing what little food she has with it. In the poignant moment of the child’s death, Bright Morning sings to it, invoking the novel’s title. The heartbreaking experience makes the trauma and injustice of the Navajo’s forced deportation all too clear.

“The heart had gone out of them. The spirit had left their bodies.”

Bright Morning reflects on how it appears to her that many of the Navajo, particularly the men and former warriors, have given up due to the harsh life on the reservation. Separated from their homeland and mistreated by the white soldiers, the Navajo appear to her to have broken spirits. Like her mother, however, Bright Morning does not want to accept either complacency or defeat. Experiences like these accumulate within her, ultimately leading her to become a remarkable example of resistance.

“It was then, at the time the big snow melted when so many were dying, that I made up my mind.” 

Surrounded by death and despair on the reservation, Bright Morning resolves to escape. She decides to make a well-thought-out plan rather than act rashly, much as she and Nehana had thought carefully about their escape from enslavement. It is also significant that this turning point comes to Bright Morning during the time of spring and the snowmelt, as it echoes the opening of the novel, when Bright Morning joyfully greets the arrival of spring in Canyon de Chelly.

“The officer looked at me sharply with his blue eyes. ‘Whose fault it is,’ he said, ‘is for me to decide, not you.’”

White soldiers imprison Tall Boy for attacking an Apache who tries to steal his firewood. Those around Tall Boy are frightened because of the white soldiers’ power. Bright Morning, however, showcases her bravery by actively speaking out and defending Tall Boy before the officer presiding over his hearing. While the white soldiers have the power in that moment, her act of defiance exemplifies her boldness and pride in her culture.

“‘We go now,’ Tall Boy said.”

Tall Boy was initially resistant to Bright Morning’s plan to escape from the reservation and return to Canyon de Chelly. He tries to convince her that her plan is futile, and his actions exemplify the spirit of fatalism that Bright Morning sees as rampant on the reservation. Only after Bright Morning and her mother ridicule Tall Boy for being docile and complacent does he recover some of his former strength as a warrior. In an instant, he changes course and agrees with Bright Morning. The directness of his response, “[w]e go now,” mirrors her own decisiveness.

“Yet not a day went by that summer or when the snows came that I did not think of my sheep.”

The journey from the reservation on Bosque Redondo back to Canyon de Chelly is dangerous, frightening, and uncertain. There are trials along the way, including the birth of Bright Morning’s son and Tall Boy’s continued doubt that it is worth trying to return to Canyon de Chelly. Bright Morning feels compelled and strengthened by thoughts of her sheep. The hope that the animals continue to survive is equivalent to the hope that her tribe and culture can survive.