Vineland <> Son of Old Man Hat

[R. Fiero]

In 1938 the University of Nebraska Press published “Son of Old 
Man Hat,” by Walter Dyk which was a tale related to him by the 
storyteller Left Handed.
Dyk believed that Left Handed was autobiographical in the story 
of Old Man Hat.  On the contrary, the tale was a complete 
fabrication and was a mirror held up for the ethnographer Dyk.

“The story that Left Handed tells is an interwoven story that 
includes events that he experienced, observed, or heard of, 
stories that he fabricates, skews, or exaggerates, and, perhaps 
most importantly, stories that reflect his interaction with his 
German (but American educated) ethnographer Walter Dyk. . .  In 
Left Handed's telling, the childhood of the son of Old Man Hat 
is a story of neglect, abandonment, and isolation--a situation 
that begins to explain the origins of a man who does not 
respect Navajo elders, who is ignorant of Navajo culture and 
language (evidenced in the main character's occasional 
confusion of appropriate kinship terms), who objectifies other 
people, who is an unfaithful husband, and who is a liar. We are 
told that the character referred to as the son of Old Man Hat 
(in all likelihood, not Left Handed) is a child who is raised 
by an old couple neither of whom are his biological parents nor 
grandparents and neither of whom take great pains to educate 
him in everyday skills nor in the songs and rituals important to the Navajo.”

Susan B. Brill de Ramírez states “Finally, once I opened myself 
up to considering the possibility of Old Man Hat metaphorically 
being based on a non-Navajo, Left Handed’s stories began to 
open up entirely new possibilities. In my own fieldwork in the 
Tsaile/Lukachukai area (the region where Left Handed had lived 
several generations ago), I subsequently learned that one of 
the descriptive names used for Abraham Lincoln was Hastiin 
Ch’ah (Old Man Hat): Abraham Lincoln, the man who was President 
of the United States when the Navajo were sent on the Long Walk 
in 1864. And the symbolic son of Old Man Hat, the metaphoric 
son of Hastiin Ch'ah: a young white man in Navajo country who 
had a dark beard--the young anthropologist Walter Dyk. Left 
Handed repeatedly held up a mirror for his young ethnographer, 
telling him stories upon stories about the objectification of 
Native peoples by young outsiders disrespectful of the 
knowledge and wisdom of his elders.
“. . . I was speaking about the storytelling behind the 
presumed straightforward facticity of the autobiographical 
text. At one point, I looked at my friend and I could tell that 
she was deep in thought. After awhile, she turned to me and 
said, You know, back home [we were in Eugene, Oregon at a 
conference on Native American Literatures], when someone is 
called Lefty or Left Handed, that often means that he is 
tricky. You know, someone who tends to tell stories, a liar. 
Well, throughout Left Handed’s stories, he repeatedly reminds 
us that the son of Old Man Hat is a liar who tells stories that are not true.”

http://www.trinity.edu/org/tricksters/TrixWay/index.html
Where find Archived Issues > Volume 1 Issue 2 > article by 
Susan Brill de Ramirez:
http://www.trinity.edu/org/tricksters/TrixWay/current/Vol%201/Vol%201_2/Sbrill.html