Underhill writes, “I was always running about in those days, looking at these things, acting strange. My mother saw it and she did not think it was right… He [grandmother’s brother] sang all night, and in the morning he said, ‘You could be a medicine woman.’ ‘That cannot be,’ said my father. “We have one medicine man in the house and it is enough.” So the medicine man said he would take out my crystals. He leaned over me and sucked them out of my breast, one by one...Then he made a hole in a giant cactus and put them inside. Then he looked at me and said, ‘They will grow again, for it is a gift.” (page 52). Despite her great uncle’s encouragement, Chona listened to her father and mother and did not become a medicine woman. Chona stayed within the allowed role of a woman. Yet, with her independent spirit, she healed babies as an elder as well as made songs and had
Underhill writes, “I was always running about in those days, looking at these things, acting strange. My mother saw it and she did not think it was right… He [grandmother’s brother] sang all night, and in the morning he said, ‘You could be a medicine woman.’ ‘That cannot be,’ said my father. “We have one medicine man in the house and it is enough.” So the medicine man said he would take out my crystals. He leaned over me and sucked them out of my breast, one by one...Then he made a hole in a giant cactus and put them inside. Then he looked at me and said, ‘They will grow again, for it is a gift.” (page 52). Despite her great uncle’s encouragement, Chona listened to her father and mother and did not become a medicine woman. Chona stayed within the allowed role of a woman. Yet, with her independent spirit, she healed babies as an elder as well as made songs and had