Don't Let the Sun Step Over You Chapters 7 & 8

In this two chapters, Eva Tulene Watt wrote in chapter seven about her life in Chediskai and in chapter eight when her family raised horses and their daily lives there in Chediskai. Watt said that there were six families who lived in the area, but “they didn’t stay there like we did” (164). Many of the families were in and out of the area because of some getting killed, or families not moving to the area until harvest time came around, or families who only came for the summer. She remembers that even though her family was a permanent fixture to their area, her families and the other families always worked together and shared things and created their own kind of community.
Watt speaks about the salt bank that her family would use as a resource to get salt for cooking and foods. There were two white men who came to the salt banks in 1932 or 1933 and they ended up exploding the bank/cave which destroyed it. She says that “now its all down on the ground. It’s all chopped up. They used powder-dynamite-to destroy it. I don’t know why they did that. I don’t know what they are looking for” (173). It sad that the only white people that they ever saw came to their community destroyed a vital resource. I just want to prose the question for people to ponder such as why was it vital or why do you think she remembers so much about this being that she was just a child? Do you think that this was the “talk of the town” which caused a lot of uproar and unrest to those living in the community?
In chapter eight Watt speaks about when her family was raising horses. Her family would use these horses for everything. Not only would they raise them, but they would the hair to make rope and soap, and also they would eat horse meat and then used the hides to make bags. I really liked her story about raising the orphaned horse that was rejected by the others for some reason. I feel like that story may have spoken about other people in her community or people that she herself has encountered. They took care of that horse when it needed the help. That just speaks about the kind of people that they are. Just a few thoughts