Nasha Bil Hoga, He Who Walks Alone

About the Book

An eleven-year-old Navajo boy is taken by force from his Arizona reservation home and bussed to Fort Sill Indian School near Lawton and Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in 1949. The U.S. law requires the Navajo children to attend school in a federally operated boarding school. The boy is treated roughly at his capture and on the bus trip. He vows to escape from the school and walk/run back the eight hundred miles back to his home, realizing he has no money and does not trust the white man. He is forced to rely on his survival skills.

He makes several friends at the school. However, in the spring, he leaves at night and starts his journey home. The challenges he faces at the school and also his journey and how he overcomes those challenges are detailed. When he finally reaches his home area, he hears crying from several people and creeps through the sagebrush to see what is happening. The same government agents who seized him are trying to wrestle an eight-year-old girl from her mother and grandmother and put her on the bus. But while that happens, the boy slips unnoticed on to the bus and invites all the children to follow him, and he will hide and protect them until the agents have gone and stopped looking for them. Twenty-one of the children come with him, and he hikes for two days, covering his trails, until he reaches an old unknown cliff dwelling that he and his family had stayed at many times. It is well hidden.

For close to a year, the children survive in the cliff dwelling, learning Indian skills from the boy and school skills from a twelve-year-old girl. Meanwhile, a large political battle takes place for many months, and finally, the law is changed so the Navajo children can stay on the reservation to learn the white man’s ways and education. When all the papers have been signed by the Congress and the president, the children’s group is able to return home.

A large dinner is planned by the tribal council for their return. At this dinner, the boy, Jeff White Cloud, has his name formally changed by the tribal leaders to Nasha Bi³ Hoga, He Who Walks Alone.

About the Author

Mike Wyant has spent a lifetime building a successful career in finance, real estate, and construction. At age eleven, he was a janitor for a small savings and loan association in Lawton, Oklahoma. At age twenty-nine, he was the youngest vice president of the nation’s largest savings and loan headquartered in Los Angeles. Along the way, he was a carny worker in Texas, a river guide and mountain guide in Arkansas, and a professional photographer in Oklahoma; and he held many positions from teller to president of several companies in California. He has experienced much of the story he wrote about Nasha Bi³ Hoga, He Who Walks Alone. He lived in Lawton, Oklahoma, from 1945 through 1961 and had friends at Fort Sill Indian School, just a few miles away. He spent many hours exploring all the woods and creek beds at the school property. He fished, hiked, dug worms in the pig pen where the huge sow lived, ate in the cafeteria, slid down the large round fire escape chutes, and enjoyed many of the other events as described in the book. Occasionally, over that time, one of the young Navajo boys would be missing from the school; and word got around that he had gone home. Some of these boys made it, and some may never have reached home, but they felt it was worth the try in order to maintain their lifestyle. Mike has shared those memories in this book. Mike has written since his high school years. He was a photography/journalism major in college; however, he had to drop out due to his losses in a flood during his third year. He later moved to Los Angeles, and most of his “books” are individual reports for major financial clients who own large commercial properties. Mike is a “real estate doctor” and goes to the project, analyzes it, and writes a business plan on how to turn around the project. He has written many poems and songs, some of which have been published in newspapers and magazines and recorded. One poem about the American flag is on a mural in the city of El Segundo where Mike lives today.