Medicine Bag with Corn Pollen

If you were to open Code Talker to a random page, you might find a mention of corn pollen. And you might be confused. Why corn pollen? Wait—pollen comes from flowers: is corn a flower?

Why's Chester always pinching bits of it from his medicine bag and touching it to his tongue? Does that taste good at all?

We can find the first example of this mysterious pollen in Chapter One, when Chester tells us:

I pinched some corn pollen from my medicine bag, touched my tongue, my head, and gestured to the east, south, west, and north. (1.33)

This is still strange to most non-Navajos out there, but it's getting clearer. We can tell that this is a ritual, and we can pretty well assume that it has something to do with protection. After all, Chester pinches the corn pollen in his medicine bag as he's about to land on Guadalcanal, right before his first big battle in the Pacific. You can bet Chester's Catholic buddies are making the sign of the cross right about now, and his Jewish pals are saying the Prayer of Protection.

The medicine bag with the corn pollen keeps popping up again and again in the book. At another point, Chester tells us:

Roy's medicine bag was different from mine, but they both had the same purpose: protection. No two medicine bags were identical, because their contents were personal, but one ingredient was always the same—bright yellow corn pollen. (12.24)

There we go: now we know for sure that, according to Navajo belief, a medicine bag with corn pollen provides protection. It's why Chester and Roy are so attached to their medicine bags during battle. What with bullets whizzing around everywhere, they need all the protection they can get.

In another part of the book, Chester explains to us how "[t]he pollen used…was collected at harvesttime, in September […] The pure pollen was stored in a jar or a flour sack and, usually, blessed by a medicine man. Medicine men went from house to house in the summer, blessing corn pollen. Only blessed pollen could be used in a medicine bag" (6.18).

The corn pollen, clearly, is a big part of Navajo culture. Why? Well, corn is a staple of Navajo cuisine. It's a food that the Navajos have been growing and eating for thousands of years. So the corn pollen represents sustenance: it's the reason the Navajos are able to survive and grow—you can compare this to a Christian prayer like The Lord's Prayer, which states "Give us this day, our daily bread" or how, in Muslim tradition, any bread dropped to the floor must be either brushed off or fed to the birds rather than wasted.

No wonder, then, that they see corn pollen as a blessing and use it for protection. With out it, they'd be kaput—we all need to eat.

The medicine bag with corn pollen represents Chester's link to his heritage. The fact that he keeps it with him at all times shows us that this guy respects the traditions and customs of his native culture. In fact, even as a very old man, Chester tells us that:

I still travel with my medicine bag in my pocket. (23.6)

So the medicine bag and the corn pollen suggest Chester's connection to his Navajo culture, and the way that he draws on that culture for strength and protection.