38 pages • 1 hour read
Scott O'DellSing Down the Moon
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1970A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 13-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary
During the Kin-nadl-dah, or womanhood ceremony, Bright Morning performs a variety of tasks, including grinding flour and corn, chopping wood, and milking goats. She explains that all these tasks are rituals intended to teach her to become a woman. During the celebration, a group of boys chase Bright Morning to symbolically announce her entrée into womanhood. Tall Boy is among those who chase her. Bright Morning slows down because it is difficult for Tall Boy to run because of his injuries. He taunts her for doing so and insists she run as fast as possible. After the celebration, Bright Morning and Tall Boy talk. He asserts that he is strong and did not go to the Spaniards in the wilderness only to save her. Bright Morning senses Tall Boy’s emotional agony.
Chapter 14 Summary
That winter, the Long Knives come and insist the Navajo must leave their village. Tall Boy tears up a flyer they leave behind. The Long Knives return in greater numbers, and the Navajo flee. They argue about whether to stay and fight or leave the area. Ultimately, they decide to go to the high county above the village, carefully hiding the sheep in a hidden canyon and covering their tracks behind them. Tall Boy wants to fight, and he and a few warriors separate from the group.
From the high ground, the Navajo watch the Long Knives arrive in the village. Tall Boy returns, and Bright Morning realizes the other warriors left him behind because of his wounds. Tall Boy creates a lance because it is a weapon he can use one-handed.
Chapter 15 Summary
The Navajo watch in horror as the Long Knives burn down their village. The white soldiers chop down their peach trees and trample their crops, making it impossible for the Navajo to return to their village. Bright Morning’s father says they will be able to build new homes and survive, but she believes the situation is hopeless. The Long Knives then build a camp at the site of the village to force the Navajo to come down from the mesa.
Chapter 16 Summary
The Navajo try to survive on the mesa, but food and water become scarce as the Long Knives hold them under siege. They exhaust all their supplies, sheep, and food. The village leader, Old Bear, dies, as do with other members of the tribe. Finally, Bright Morning’s father says they must leave. The Navajo take an easy path down from the mesa because so many of them are weak. They rest in a cave and consider continuing their journey but instead try to make a new camp.
The Long Knives find the Navajo in the cave. Tall Boy throws his lance at one of the white soldiers but misses. He immediately goes into hiding. The soldiers ensure none of the Navajo have weapons and then force them to begin marching away from their home. The group joins other Navajo groups who are also marching.
Chapters 13-16 Analysis
Bright Morning’s return home from enslavement, along with Tall Boy’s injury and the shift in their relationship, marks a pivotal moment of change in her life. Her womanhood ceremony is a literal reflection of this growth and an acknowledgement of her change and maturity. The ceremony is symbolic but also practical, as she performs a variety of difficult domestic tasks. When the boys chase her during the ceremony, it is a symbolic representation of Bright Morning as a bride-to-be.
Although Tall Boy is among those who chase her, their relationship has clearly changed. Resentment and anger drive his actions following his injury. He is upset that Bright Morning slows down for him during the symbolic chase because it is a moment that reverses their traditional gender roles and, in his eyes, highlights his own weakness. This moment reverberates throughout the remainder of the narrative, as Bright Morning again and again slows down for and leads her husband, despite his reluctance to follow. Tall Boy’s anger also blinds him to Bright Morning’s support: When he vows to remain a warrior, Bright Morning agrees that he can be, but he does not hear her and instead mutters, “No one thinks so, but I will” (70).
After revealing details of Navajo culture in the passages on the Kin-nadl-dah, the outside threat of the Long Knives returns. O’Dell presents the plot twist at this moment to strikingly disrupt the traditional way of life—made viscerally evident through the passages on the Kin-nadl-dah—of the Navajo. Sing Down the Moon portrays the complex reaction to the white soldiers’ order for the Navajo to leave and the division over whether to hide, fight, or comply with the order. Tall Boy’s own insistence on fighting dramatizes this conflict. His resistance is also certainly futile because of his injury, but his convictions are firm; he vows to fight “[o]ne hand or the other” with his lance (79).
By destroying the Navajo’s land and ability to survive on it, the Long Knives force them into captivity. Bright Morning’s father notes the tactic is more effective than attempting to fight the Navajo because “it is easier to wait there by the river until we starve” (84. While some, including Tall Boy, would prefer to fight, this option is futile. Tall Boy’s failed attempt to fight back indicates his, and his people’s, boldness, but it also generalizes the defeat of the tribe. As Bright Morning remarks, he looks “like a boy, crushed and beaten, who flees for his life” as he goes into hiding (89). Tall Boy’s appearance encapsulates the bitter defeat of the Navajo.
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