ELIJAH BLAIR INTERVIEW

   

   [BEGIN TAPE 1, SIDE A]

   

   This is Karen Underhill with Northern Arizona

University.  We're here with Elijah Blair, owner and

operator of the Dinnebito Trading Company.  We're in

Page, Arizona, it is Monday, February 9, 1998, at

11:15 a.m.  Also present are Lew Steiger, who is

operating the recording equipment, and Brad Cole from

Northern Arizona University.

   

   Underhill:  Well, Elijah, we have lots of questions

for you, so we'll just start.  Where and when were you

born?

   

   Blair:  I was born in McRoberts, Kentucky, November

28, 1927.  That's in the Appalachian Mountains, in a

small mining town in Eastern Kentucky.

   

   Underhill:  And what did your dad do for a living?

   

   Blair:  When he was in McRoberts he actually was a

blacksmith, I think, for the coal companies, and I

don't know which one.  But actually, we lived about

twelve miles from there on a small hillside farm.

That's where we moved back there, right after I was

born.

   

   Underhill:  And when you were growing up, what were

some of your options for life?  What did you think

you'd end up doing?

   

   Blair:  Well, the big push was to ... people back

there ended up going to school and became a

schoolteacher, or you worked in the coal mines.  If you

went to school, most of the thing was, the big push

was, to come back and teach the hill people.  And the

other thing was, if you worked, you would work in some

of the mines.  There was a lot of big mine--coal--

companies there, and so the options was going to

school... basically the push was to be a schoolteacher,

or come back and work with the people.  Hillside

farming was not all that good.  What my mother pushed

me into...  I had a mother that was a leader and a

director and an ambitious mother that said, "You kids

have to be somebody."  So bein' a hillside farmer

wasn't "bein' somebody," so that was about all the

options we had, really, is the mines or goin' to school

and bein' a teacher--most people ended up bein'

teachers, which isn't all that bad, but that's what

they did.

   

   Underhill:  What brought you to the Southwest?

   

   Blair:  Well, as I may have said before, my oldest

brother, Raymond, was in the Marine Corps in the

Philippines in the early thirties, and he became a pen

pal of Marilene Bloomfield, in one of these pen pal

magazines.  Later he was discharged from the Marine

Corps and came to Gallup.  Marilene and her family

picked him up, and they later on got married at

Toadlena, where her family owned the trading post.

   Then later on, my other brother, Brad, he was in the

Marine Corps also, and he was discharged sometime like

in '45, directly at the end of the war, after the end

of the war, and he came out to visit the other brother.

So when I was in the service in the forties, and I was

discharged actually the end of '47--I think I came out

January 2, '48, and I was goin' back to school.

Actually, I went in at the end of the war, but they

were still drafting, and so I went in and actually went

into the Army for about eighteen months, two years, and

I was goin' back, usin' the GI Bill to go to school,

'cause I didn't have any way to go to school, and I had

actually applied to go to school at Ohio State.  Just

before I was discharged, my brother sent me a one-way

ticket to Cortez, Colorado.  I was discharged in

Denver, at Fitzsimmons Hospital where I was stationed.

Raymond owned a store at Mancos Creek, just south of

Cortez, and I came in January, I think, of '48.  And

then I stayed there about two weeks, and I always

teased my sister-in-law that she got tired of feedin'

me, so she got me a job at Toadlena Tradin' Post, which

was actually her sister and brother-in-law’s.  Here I

am.

   

   Underhill:  You mentioned your first trading post

job.  What were conditions like there:  your living

conditions, working conditions?

   

   Blair:  Well, as I said, my first job was at

Toadlena. They got me a job, actually, at Toadlena,

which was the old-style, behind-the-counter trading

post.  And I was really just a laborer or a flunky or

whatever you had.  My first job was actually to be the

janitor, stock boy, and they had two cows that I was

supposed to milk.  I milked those cows, so that was my

first job.  But they just had two cows.  I worked my

way through high school milking five cows day and

night, so I thought, "Hey, this is a piece of cake!"

(laughs)  So I worked, that's really where I started.

I was paid like $100 a month.  That would have been

1948, and it was a small little separate apartment at

that time there, that I stayed in while I was there.

See, I was by myself, then.  That was in January.

   

   Underhill:  And who were the owners?  These were

your brother's sister and brother-in-law then?

   

   Blair:  My brother's sister-in-law and brother-in-

law.  See Charles Herring  and Raymond Blair married

sisters--Bloomfield girls--and they owned the store

there at that time.  And this was the original store--

not original--but this was one of the old stores that

George and Lucy Bloomfield owned and ran, which was the

father and mother of these girls, which was the father-

in-law and mother-in-law of my brother and Charles

Herring.  This is a lot of these, guys.  (laughs)

   Underhill:  Did they mentor you in the sense of they

were trying to teach you about the trade business at

the time?  Or were you fairly limited in the work you

performed?

   

   Blair:  No, you had the opportunity, I think....  I

think they knew that I was ambitious enough.  Most

young kids, you know, they wanted someone to come and

work and really learn the business, because it wasn't

that easy to find someone to work in these trading

posts, because of the isolation and change of

lifestyle, different culture, and a lack of being able

to communicate in Navajo or English.  No, they really

pushed you into becoming knowledgeable by what you was

doin'.  So if they found an apt student, they worked on

you, they did.

   

   Underhill:  What were the living conditions like at

the time for customers?  And I imagine they were Navajo

customers coming in?

   

   Blair:  Yes, this was on the Navajo Reservation.

There was a school there, and quite a few people worked

in the school, and they had regular Bureau of Indian

Affairs type housing.  But the majority of the Navajos

who lived around there lived in hogans--they all had

hogans.  And this is where they lived.  Now, I'm sure

there was exception to this, and I remember one or two

smaller frame houses that were around there, but the

majority of the people in '48 lived in hogans around

Toadlena.

   

   Underhill:  And what was their primary occupation?

   

   Blair:  Um ... other than workin' for the school

there, that would be the only work there, the one that

had, but that was a small school, it was BIA.

Basically they was involved in livestock.  Weaving.

Toadlena was probably one of the biggest weavin' areas

there was, which is [where] the Two Grey Hills rug

comes from.  And by the way, George Bloomfield was

actually the person who introduced--he sometimes

doesn't get credit for it--but he was really, I think,

the one who really introduced or promoted the Two Grey

Hills rug, was George Bloomfield and another guy named

Davis.  But George Bloomfield was probably the biggest

one.  And that's what, they wove rugs, they had the

sheep, they had farms.  They would have farms up on top

of the Lukachukai Mountains, way up on the top of the

mountains up behind us.  And they would bring the

produce in to us, potatoes, etc. See, the tradin' post

bought whatever they had, so we bought it, whether it

was rugs, piñon nuts, potatoes, corn, or whatever--and

we bought that.  Employment wasn't really such.

   

   Underhill:  How long did it take you to learn to

speak Navajo?

   

   Blair:  (chuckles)  About fifty years, I figure!

(laughter)  I don't know, three or four years.  After

the first couple of years, you learn to speak fairly

what we call "Indian tradin' Navajo."  You learned the

words and stuff like this.  But to really learn to

speak a language, I think two or three things happen.

You first--if you can't communicate with people, you

learn to speak body language, and that's the first

thing you learned.  You learned by watchin' 'em, what

the feel was, and then you learned to speak orally.

And after you learned to be able to communicate in that

way, then you had to learn what I always refer to as

"speakin' the culture."  Until you can really speak the

culture--or "understand" is probably the better word, I

always use this.  After that, then you can speak the

language.  But you did have the advantage, because you

can read people's feelings, and you learn to do this

because you couldn't communicate with 'em.  If you ride

a horse, you can speak the horse's language by the way--

and I rode horses all my life--you always know--and

this is 'cause you couldn't communicate.  Same thing

with when you can't communicate until you learn culture-

- four or five years, probably.  By the time I left

Mexican Water, which is actually four years after I

started, I was pretty good.  I was not fluent as I am

today, but I could speak good Navajo.  But I was twenty

years old when I started, so that makes a difference.

   

   Underhill:  At what point did you feel you were

accepted by Navajo customers and by the community?

   

   Blair:  (pause, followed by sigh)  It's hard to say

at what point.  I think after you had been there for,

oh, the first year or two, you know, depending on

yourself, you know, the person himself.  With me, you

know, I was so curious and so gung ho to learn about

Navajo Culture. It was fascinating to me, I wanted to

learn, and I was obviously interested, and you talked,

so I would say particularly at Mexican Water, the

second year there, I think I was pretty well accepted.

We were doing a lot of things for each other.  I was

reading letters from them, I could speak enough Navajo

to where I was writing and reading letters and doing

all these little things--just, you know, services in

the community.  I think in a year or two--two,

particularly--you were pretty well accepted.  There

again, it depends on attitude.

   

   Underhill:  When did you get your nickname, and tell

us about that.

   

   Blair:  Well, (chuckles) when I went from Toadlena,

before I'd left Toadlena to Mexican Water, I went back

to Kentucky and married Claudia, who was my high school

sweetheart--we graduated from high school together.

And then we brought her out to Toadlena.  And after

we'd been there for, oh, let's see, I think I got

married in June, so I came out with her in November.

Then Charles Herring's brother-in-law--another brother-

in-law of my brother Raymond--they hired me--Jewel

McGee and Roscoe McGee  hired me to go and manage the

store at Mexican Water.  And Claudia and I, that was

when they said, "Well, you know, we're going to pay you

$200 a month, but we really expect your wife to work

too."  (laughter)  So we went to [Mexican Water].

Let's see, that was eleven months from when I started

working in June.  They had just bought Mexican Water,

and I was hired to go out and manage it with Claudia.

From Shiprock, it was eighty miles west, on a dirt

road.  It isn't the present-day Mexican Water--that's a

new store--the old Mexican Water is three miles north

of there, which has really been torn down now.  When we

got there, the next morning I get up and there's a new

wagon sittin' out front.  I go to the door and I

figure, "Well, that's the store's wagon."  But there

was an old fellah there, a Navajo fellah that kept

coming up and talking to me, and he kept pointin' at

that wagon like he had his horse, he wanted to haul it

off.  And I kept sayin', "Where's the money?"  So [I]

talked to him, "Where's the money?"  So this went on

all day long.  At noon he'd come back in, wantin' to

haul off the wagon.  Well, I wouldn't let him have it,

'cause he wouldn't pay me for it.  So my brother was at

Red Mesa.  This went on for about three days, every

day, the same thing.  And my brother, Brad, was at Red

Mesa--he and Carolyn.  And Brad and Carolyn came down

one night, and this old guy....  See, we always had a

guest hogan at the tradin' post, for your customers

when they came and they stayed in there.  We even

furnished coffee and the staples for them to stay in

there.  So he just camped there.  He had his horses,

and we put 'em in our corral.  So he came down, and

Brad had been there about two years longer than I had.

He had come, I think, in '45, and so when he saw Brad,

boy, he was really happy, 'cause he knew that Brad

could speak Navajo.  So he got up and he started

talkin' to Brad.  Well, come to find out, he had bought

the wagon from the previous owner, and he had already

paid for the wagon.  (laughs)  So I wouldn't let him

have it.  Then he found that he was just....  You know,

a Navajo is the most tolerant person in the world,

accepting person in the world, and he finally said,

"Your ears are just round and nothing goes in!"

(laughter)  And that's when they first started calling

me Jaa’ or Jaa’ Yázhí.  And from then on, later on,

they really started calling me either Jaa’ or Jaa’

Yázhí–little ears.  A lot of the people called me Jaa’,

and mostly Jaa’ Yázhí.  That's where I got my name, and

it's been there fifty years later.

   

   Underhill:  And your reputation preceded you, so the

name followed you wherever you went.

   

   Blair:  I guess, 'cause they always call me that.

Most of the time, they will give you a name that is a

descriptive name, something about you, something like

that, some way you looked or some way you acted or

whatever.  This was basically the way the Navajo named

the trader, or themselves--they named themselves that

[way].  It's always a descriptive name.

   

   Underhill:  Now you're at Mexican Water and you are

operating a post for the McGee family.  How would you

describe the Navajo-Anglo trade relationship to someone

who may know very little about it?  How does it work?

   

   Blair:  At that time, at that period?  This is

complicated, or more complex than to actually do it.  I

guess I always thought "Think of the trading post as

the same thing that you would think of the anchor

tenant in a large shopping center, except the trading

post was the anchor tenant for the community."  So the

trading post is what actually held the community

together.  So there is where everybody came, not only

to trade or sell their product--whatever they had--but

they also came there to socialize.  So everything that

happened in this community, say, of a radius of twenty

miles or so, this was the hub, and it all came into the

trading post, and everybody met there, things were

done....  And you dealt, whether or not she had a rug

to sell or to barter with, or they had an account

already established with the trader previous to you.

They would bring in their rugs to pay the account.  Or

they would sell a cow.  You would be in there, and

someone would say, "Well, Sam Begay has got a cow out

here."  So you go out to the corral and you would weigh

or buy or look at--different methods of doing it--the

cow, and then you would go in and he would take out

pawn pay on his account, etc.  This happened over and

over about lots of things, depending on what season you

was in.  If it was in wool season when they were

shearing the sheep, then they would bring the wool in.

Or lamb season, they would bring lambs in.  Or if they

ran out of food, they would bring lamb in, so the

trader would always trade the lamb for merchandise.--

they would need flour and things that they didn't have,

like flour, lard, baking powder, sugar, salt, stuff

like this.  Those were big staple items for the Navajo,

so they brought it in.  And the biggest thing that I

used to tell, when I hired lots of people like myself

at Toadlena, over the past fifty years, and wannabe

managers, and I always told 'em, I said, "You know, you

can get a job anywhere, but this is not just a place to

make a living.  This is a way of life.  If you don't

see that this is really a way of life, then don't try

to come out here, just to make a living.  You can go

make a living anywhere, but unless you see the

potential, like I think I really did when I went out

there, the potential was obvious.  And that was the

biggest thing that we did, and we took care of every

need that that Navajo, particularly, and I think other

Native Americans, but Navajo is basically what we did.

Whatever they needed, whatever type of merchandise, we

stocked it.  If we didn't have it, we got it for them.

And any products that they produced, whether it was

farm products, livestock they raised, piñon nuts that

they [gathered] if there was a piñon crop that year,

rugs, saddle blankets, anything that they had that they

needed, we furnished a market for it.  It didn't

matter.

   Another big thing that really impressed the Navajo

was the fact we bought goat and sheep hides, and he'd

bring those in and he would bring it up and stack it on

the counter.  We would weigh it back in the wool room

and then we would pay them or sometimes you would trade

them, depending on their choice. That didn't come to a

lot of money, lots of time you would just pay 'em if

you had the money to do it.  Or he would just trade it

out.  It depended on their choice. He always had the

option, "Did you want to trade it out, or did you want

us to pay you?"  Many stores may have not had money,

but I usually had enough money that we gave them the

option.  Lots of times they had no place to spend money

other than there at the trading post, so lots of time

they'd just say, "Well, give me a sack of flour," or

whatever it came to.

   You have to think of the trading post as actually

everything that happened in Navajo life, or what they

were gonna do, they met friends there, they made

arrangements to have ceremonies or stuff like that.

They would lots of time find the medicine man there.

So they would hire him.  This was the hub. The social

hub, actually, was the trading post.  And this was

basically what we did, and we was there to take care of

anything that they wanted, or if we didn't have it, we

could get it.

   

   Underhill:  How did the pawn system work at that

time in your earlier years?

   

   Blair:  Well, it basically works exactly the same as

it does now.  The pawn actually....  First you gotta

realize that the Navajo does not accumulate money.  His

security and his wealth was all put into his jewelry,

or livestock, etc.  And his status symbol actually was

either in the livestock he owned--the cattle, the

sheep--or then into the jewelry that he had.  When he

had money or trade items, then he put it into jewelry.

This was really how he accounted for money, where he

stored his savings account, as I call it.  He put it in

there, and that's where it was.  So as long as he had

jewelry, he could take it to any trading post, where

he'd ever seen a trader in his life, wherever the

trading post was, and then he could pawn for anything

that he could want--if he didn't have a lamb to sell or

a cow to sell, it was out of wool season or lamb

season, then he could bring it in and he could pawn for

a saddle or groceries or whatever.  And there was a big

difference between trade pawn and cash pawn--I think a

lot of people thought it was all cash pawn.  See, we

had, probably the majority of our pawn on the

reservation was actually trade pawn, which there was no

interest charges on trade pawn.  All of our mark up was

already marked up in the merchandise that you sold, the

saddles all marked up that they pawn.  If they did pawn

for cash, which occasionally they did, you got more

cash pawn at different times, because there was a

bigger need for cash for different things that they

had. And like I say, if you had a ceremony or something

around Mexican Water Trading Post, for instance, and

you had some guy came out from Rock Point or Chinle or

somewhere like that--he was there doin' the dance or

Squaw Dance, somethin' like that, and he saw that you

had a wagon out front, or a saddle that he wanted.  So

then the other trader may not have this.  With the

pawn, see, it's just like money.  He could pawn that to

that trader and he could buy anything that he wanted.

This was the way it worked.  Now, this was trade pawn.

Okay, a lot of your locals, you already had an

established credit system with them, because you knew

how many lambs they were gonna sell, or how much wool

he's gonna sell--you had a running open account with

them.  But the pawn system, actually was about someone

you didn’t know pawning for  additional stuff that they

may want, or merchandise that they needed or somethin',

or it was someone who really didn't have the livestock

or whatever to sell, so he didn't have a charge

account, or someone that you didn't know, so he pawned.

Then you go into that, that's the trade pawn, which we

normally kept it for a year or longer.  And we would

take it in there, and we would keep it for practically

a year, always, just about always a year. One of the

big misconceptions of the trader and the pawn, they

thought, well, you're gonna go out there and get it so

we can rush and sell it.  See, it was a disadvantage to

us to sell the pawn, because then if you did, then they

didn't have the pawn to rotate and buy another saddle

or another wagon or whatever.  This was a trade pawn,

so it was really a good thing for us, and we would keep

it forever.  If they came along when this fellah had

pawned his beads or somethin' like that, he would have

a ceremony.  See, with the ceremonies, they definitely

like to have all of the jewelry and stuff on it, on the

person, particularly the patient that was havin' it.

They wanted all of her jewelry on her.  And so many

times the trader would loan back to the person his

pawn, for, say, a five-day ceremony.  As soon as the

ceremony was over, then they would bring it back and

put it back.

   And another thing that the pawn system worked as, is

it was safe keeping for them.  And back before the days

of truth in lending and stuff like this, see, he would

come in and he would say he would pawn a bracelet

that's worth $500.  Well, he may only buy ten dollars'

worth of stuff on his pawn, but see, we had his

bracelet. it's just like an open-end account.  He came

in a month later, said, "Well, I want some more flour."

So then you would just keep adding it to that bracelet

as he came in.  And many times he would say, "Well, I

don't really want to take it out, because you have this

vault, and it is safe here.  If I have it at home, my

kids or relatives or whoever will try to get me to take

it to offer as, pawn it for something else.  But as

long as it's here, then I don't have it, and I don't

have to say 'no.'"  And that's basically what it was.

It was safe, and then they didn't have to turn down

their relatives.  Besides being something as collateral

for things that they needed, we kept it safe for them,

and they wanted it that way.  They really wanted it

safe there for them.

   In cases of deaths, or something like that, if

people had pawn in there, we always somehow made

arrangement, because they always, you know, buried all

the jewelry with the deceased, and we always somehow

made arrangement to get it back to them.  May have to

switch things around, but we definitely did it, this is

another system that worked.  Now, that's one thing.

   I think the pawn needs to be addressed about cash

pawn.  This was another big misconception about the

cash pawn.  In every store that [I] ever owned or

worked in, the way it worked is a guy came in and he

wants ten dollars, and we had a 20 percent charge,

20 percent interest rate.  Now, I'm not talking about

annual percentage rate that the fancy people came up

with later.  But simple interest.  If he pawned for ten

dollars, you charged him twelve, ten dollar price plus

two dollar interest.  So you put that on his piece of

pawn and you stored it.  Okay, you kept this for a

year, and it was twelve dollars.  That's what [I was

telling you about].  If he came back the next day and

took it out, it still was twelve dollars, because there

was no pro-rated charge or set-up checking. In today's

world, you have a set-up charge, and you have this and

that. Now you go to the bank and you find out how many

hidden charges there is, but none of these set-up

charges is computed into an annual percentage rate.  We

didn't ever hear about annual percentage rate.

Everything was simple interest at that time.  And I

think the majority of traders did it basically this

way--I did.  And so it didn't matter.  This is what we

did, we charged about 20 percent, kept the pawn for a

year, and they paid it out, whenever they took it back

out, they paid the two dollars.  And this was basic to

the way it always was, in every store I have ever

owned, this is what we charged for cash pawn.

   

   Underhill: With the stores that you did own, how did

you obtain a lease from the Navajo Nation?  Can you

tell us about leasing?

   

   Blair:  (sigh)

   

   Underhill:  We don't believe in asking small

questions.  (laughter)

   

   Blair:  The stores, I guess we need to tell you

about leasing before the ones that I did own.  See, I

came in '48, okay, so I really didn't end up owning a

store until like '53, or part of a store, until '53.

So I was just workin' 'til '53, then I became a partner

in a store that actually already had a lease.  But the

other stores I bought into.  See, in 1955, the United

Indian Traders Association, along with the tribe and

the Bureau of Indian Affairs, they negotiated a blanket

lease of twenty-five years for all trading posts, all,

probably maybe some exceptions. All trading posts ended

up with a twenty-five-year lease in 1955.  So this went

on, and in this period of that twenty-five-year lease,

and with that lease, see, you could transfer--well, you

could transfer that lease if you had ten years or

twenty years left on that lease.  But you could get

them transferred within that twenty-five-year lease.

Now, that ended, see, in 1980.  So when you got to

1980, you had a completely different system.  To me,

one of the best things that ever happened to the trader

and Navajo people, and really the tribe, and the Bureau

of Indian Affairs.  What they did was this twenty-five-

year lease, which was actually pushed and negotiated by

the United Indian Traders Association.  And at that

time Charles Tansey was the attorney for the tribe,

which later became the attorney for the United Indian

Traders Association.  He definitely knew both sides of

the coin.  So it was a good thing.  Now, that tells you

how.  So when [I?] moved in and became a partner of a

store, if this lease was in place, then you ended up

adding your name to the lease.  So that's about the way

it was.  It was after this period when leasing became

so cumbersome and complicated that it never really

happened again--that was the only time it happened.

And this ended in 1980--most of those leases did.

   What all do you want to know about leasin'?  After

that, you had to go to the chapter house, you had to

get approval from a chapter, and then you had to go to

Window Rock, and you had to go to Economic Development

and then you had to go from Economic Development

eventually through all the bureaucracies that there

was, and I don't know how many it was, but they was a

bunch.  And eventually you would end up with the tribal

government deciding.  It's the tribal president of the

government.  And then you had the same group here that

worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.  To me, this

was duplication, because you had the same thing

happening.  This was later on.  Even with people who

was puttin' in new stores during this twenty-five-year

period--see, this was basically the same process that

they had to go [through].  They had to go through the

chapter, to the tribe and get it signed off, and then

they went to the BIA.  And then the Bureau of Indian

Affairs had to agree to the same thing.

   Now, it was so cumbersome that it would sit on

people's desks, and you had all those bureaucrats and

all those offices that anybody could hold it up.  If he

didn't sign off, step-by-step, then, you know, it could

be there forever.  Dinnebito I think is probably a

perfect example.  See, Dinnebito's lease ended in 1980.

I had been there twenty years, and every time we went

to the chapter, everything was approved, everything was

wonderful, and everybody was wonderful.  But see,

everybody was in the same boat at that time.  So we

were all there tryin' to get leases.  Well, after bein'

there for twenty years, I never had any objections

whatsoever from the local people, all unanimously

approved, but you get to Window Rock, then, boy, you

had a different ball of wax, because the bureaucrats in

these different offices--young, supposedly educated.

They always said, "Well, a trader always said he never

had any problem on the reservation until he got to

Window Rock," which was absolutely true.  He was

actually like, you know, grass roots people don't know,

or, like, you know, he was saying the all-knowin'.

Well, he had it in reverse.  The all-knowin' was the

grass roots people where the trading came from.  They

knew what we had done, they understand what we're

doin'.  But this held up the leases, and it got to

where you never got a lease.  I don't know, you never

really had leases.  By that time, see, is when  all the

traders had pretty much left.  So there wasn't very

many leases issued except like with Thriftway.  All the

traders left, and Thriftway came in and bought out all

those leases.  I think they had thirty-nine.

   Now, I had been there twenty years.  I ended up

gettin' a five-year lease barely after twenty years at

Dinnebito, and there was never any question about what

I did at the local level, see.  And at the end of that--

in '85, see, the lease was up again.  I stayed there

'til '92 and never got it renewed again.

   Well, I absolutely refused to pay bribes--although

you had opportunities many times--people would make

implications that there was other ways that you could

get preferential treatment, which I never fell for.  I

don't think it was the thing to do, and I never did do

it.  It became very cumbersome, and you had two

entities.  You had to satisfy both of them.  I know of

one person in Chinle, it was the Bureau of Indian

Affairs guy.  I know that my lease set on his desk for

two years, that he never touched it; and every time I

fussed at him, he would come out and he would re-

survey.  At that time I was flyin' my own plane, and

the Bureau of Indian Affairs had built an airstrip out

in front of the store on the flats out there, when they

built the school there at Rocky Ridge.  And they kept

saying, well, I was illegal by having this airstrip.

You know, there was something wrong with me having the

airstrip.  Well, I didn't build the airstrip.  I did

use it, and I did maintain it, but it was just an

excuse.  It was just an excuse to keep it to where that

they didn't have to do anything.  But I think they were

still waiting for something.  And it was this way with

everything.  And the lease is the same with the Native

American.  He had no more preferential treatment than

the Anglo did.  It's the same.  If a Navajo right now

says, "I want a home site lease, or a lease to do a

business," it's just as bad.  It's just as bad for

them.  And it's always been this way, except in 1955

when the Traders Association negotiated a lease that

was a good lease.  And even now, I get away from the

leasing, but I still think that you have to blame the

leasing mechanics of both the tribal and federal

government, you know, of why there is 40 percent

unemployment on the reservation.

   There's 40 percent unemployment on the reservation

because of tribal government and the federal

government.  They will not let the private sector get

on there and give them leases that is transferable and

is renewable.  Even in Mexico you can get a ninety-nine-

year lease that you can transfer or renew.  And I, at

many meetings with the tribe and other people, I have

always said--they talk about unemployment on the

reservation and this and that.  If you would go in the

Gallup Independent and put in an ad, say, "We will give

anyone a ninety-nine-year lease that wants it, as long

as they meet...."  They would have to set up a criteria

of requirements that you would have to meet, and what

you was gonna do and all this stuff.  Then you would

have no unemployment.  The Navajo people are hard

working, intelligent people, and they want a job, they

want to work.  But the leasing practices, economic

development, on the reservation is what curtails all

development out there.  And this, until they change

that, this will always be that way.  You have to get

away from preferential treatment or whatever to

different people for whatever reasons.  It's always

funny to me that one guy can get thirty-nine permits,

and a guy who's been there forever gets nuthin', and

has no record of ever bein' anything other than a good

guy businessman that was well accepted by the

community.  It's just hard to understand (bribes).

   

   Brad Cole:  If a trader wanted to physically expand

his building, make an addition or whatever, how would

the investment on that work, and how would it fit into

the leasing?

   

   Blair:  Thank you, sir, for bringing that up.

(laughter)  See, the trader was treated different from

shopping centers.  Any capital investment or any lease

hold improvement, is what they called it, was at the

trader's expense, and when he left, everything was left

there.  They didn't pay you for nuthin', contrary to

like these other shopping centers and stuff like that.

See, these were built by other entities--either tribal

or grant from federal government, I don't know who.  I

did serve on a DCI [Dine Cooperative Inc.] board at

Chinle one time, and I know all the money came from

grants.  And they leased tenants like Basha's and

whoever was there.  And any investment or  addition you

made on the [tradin' post], first you had to show what

you were gonna do, how much money you was gonna spend,

stuff like that.  That was really never a problem, to

get this done.  Well, later on it became a little bit

of a problem, the more the federal bureaucracy got

involved in it, like EPA [Environmental Protection

Agency] and all of these different people. But any

additional capital investment that you did, the trader

paid for it.  There was never anything.  And the lease

itself says that whenever you left, then everything

that you built became the property of the Navajo Tribe.

So it was there.  And that is completely contrary to

the way they treated shopping centers.  This is one of

the reasons that you saw many traders who didn't do a

lot of improvement, because they knew with all of the

bureaucracies of the tribe, the federal government, of

gettin' the leases approved, and you know, whatever,

personalities, whatever cause there was, that they was

a little afraid to do a lot of improvement.

   Now, I was a little bit funny, I did a lot of

improvement, ended up walking off and leaving a lot of

it, but I'm still glad I did it, because I was trying

to service the people as they wanted to be--really, as

a progressive trader, you had to change to put in more

than inventory behind the counter.  So we just said,

"Okay, well, we hope that we can recoup our investment

by being there long enough," which actually we did, you

know.  But at the end of the period, you left, and if

you couldn't transfer it or sell it, you lost it--a lot

of 'em were sold, but not for really what they should

have been sold for.  But it wasn’t  a very marketable

product that you had.  You lost it. All of a sudden

your lease is run out, and you've got this building

sittin' there, and then you've got no buyer.  He said,

"Well, what have you got to sell?  You have nothing but

a building, and I don't have a lease.  Until I get a

lease, I won’t buy"  And it really made it hard.  Yet

we had been there forever.  Everybody else came and got

a different deal, different deck of cards or paid the

price.  (laughs)

   

   Underhill:  In hearing you speak about this topic,

one of the critical elements, I think, to trading, is

the difference between the Navajo perspective on

economics and the Anglo perspective on economics.  Can

you talk a little bit about the Navajo collectivist

viewpoint versus the profit motive, perhaps?

   

   Blair:  Well (chuckles), you sure ask questions that

have to be covered in depth.  Here again, you have to

know the culture.  Like I said, if you speak Navajo,

you can't do it unless you know the culture.  And in

the Navajo language, there is two words that defines

their philosophy of economics or business or life

forever.  And one of them is a word which actually

means "stingy" or "tight" or something like this.  See,

the Navajo, if you interpret this in their philosophy,

see, they are collectivists, or socialistic.  The

Navajos have what we call their own Navajo "social

security" system.  It's a matrilineal society where all

the kinship is related to the mother's clan.  So then

if you belong to the mother's clan, then you are

forever responsible for each other.  So if you marry

the girl, then you become responsible for her, her

mother, and every member of her clan.  This is one of

the reasons that if you try to rise above the other

members of the clan, then you become “stingy,” because

it is a leveling philosophy.  Ayn Rand called it a

leveling philosophy.  What it was, you know, Karl Marx

came up with socialism and stuff like this.  He thought

he was original when he sold it to Lenin and all these

other people, but the aboriginal people had been

practicing it for thousands of years.  They've always

been a socialistic, collectivist society in a tribal

existence.  And most Native Americans are still that

way today.

   And the other word is....  Okay, first you are

“tight stingy” because you try to have more sheep than

the other guy.  You actually should share.  And you

know, Karl Marx says, "From each according to his

ability, to each according to his need."  Well, it's

exactly what they were saying, except Karl Marx thought

he was an original in it.  But see, as a man tried to

become prosperous and get more money, more sheep, more

jewelry, whatever.  They'd say, "Well, he's ‘tight-

stingy’"  And I can name you a dozen good people that

the Navajo says, "Well, he's stingy, because he rose

above his peers. He had more than he needed when

someone had less and then he should share."

   So the other word means you are crooked or a

cheater.  Now, this is the closest that you can define

that.  I still think you can't define every Navajo word

into English.  Unless you know the cultural background,

it's hard to do it.  But it really means that you

basically are crooked or you cheat or something like

that.  And it comes back to a socialistic

interpretation of business economics, or philosophy of

economics, okay?  Because they will come in to me, and

I remember the first time I went to Mexican Water,

actually, although they did say that at Dinnebito.

(chuckles)  But this guy came up, and he didn't speak

any English, and he picks up this can of beans, and he

was talking about, "You are a cheater, because you

charged me more for this can of beans than you paid for

it."  See, that shows that he belonged to a society

that just by charging him more, see, made me crooked.

This is one of the things that they never understood

when they had those hearings with the Navajo in the '72

hearings at FTC [Federal Trade Commission].  See, when

they say this trader is crooked, see, you and I know,

in a capitalistic world or a free enterprise world, I

have the right to make a profit on this, and I'm not

crooked.  But to them, in a socialistic collective

society, you're actually taking something from them

that don't belong to you.  You should sell the beans

for the same price.  And this happened all the time.

So this is their interpretation of bein' crooked.  See,

the capitalist, which the trader actually was a free

enterprise entrepreneur, he was capitalistic, see, they

could not understand.  Well, this is not bad, this is

good.  This is the way the free enterprise system

works, this is what made this country the greatest

country in the world, is because we came here because

of a capitalistic system.  Although, our elected

official, sometimes, like particularly in the sixties

and seventies, they kind of strayed away from this and

got a little bit more liberal and bleeding heart, and

actually was saying, "Hey, you know, capitalism wasn't

all that good."  But that's basically--the good guys

are the [capitalists].  They're the ones who made this

country the greatest country in the world.

   And so it's a misinterpretation of what is crooked,

or what is stingy.  Who has the right to do this?  I

had, just recently down here, bought a rug from this

girl downstairs.  This is 1992.  The first guy told me

this in 1948.  The girl downstairs, I bought a rug from

her, she says, "I know you're going to sell that rug

for more than you paid me for it."  Now, this kid was

educated in our educational system, and in our

universities, and this is why we gave the scholarship

to Northern Arizona University.  "Hey, teach them

something about capitalism."  This is what we said.

This is what we do.  And I think one of the books they

should say that they should put in the business

department down there is Ayn Rand's Virtue of

Selfishness, and the other one is Capitalism, the

Unknown Ideal.  See, they've got to know this.  This is

an acceptable way of life.  You're not crooked because

you do this.

   But that question came up last week, and I got to

relate this story to you about just this same thing.

There was a guy in here, not real super educated, but a

guy who was in his fifties, something like that, an

educated Navajo.  He was in here, and real friendly,

real nice guy, he's talking about him being a

silversmith, and I realized I didn't know him.  We were

talkin' in Navajo and English, too, back and forth, and

I said, "Where you from?"  He said, "I'm from out at

Inscription House."  I said, "Oh, you knew Bah Jo Phah

[phonetic spelling]," which was the name they called

Stokes Carson [phonetic spelling].  Stokes Carson was

in this country forever.  When I said, "You knew Bah Jo

Phah."  He said, "He cheated!"  First thing he said!

"He cheated!"  And then he switched to Navajo and he

said, "stingy-tight-crooked-cheater."  And he first

said bi»hatsoh, and then "he cheated."  Then I said--I

didn't offend him--see, I knew Stokes, I knew the whole

family, and I said, "Well, what do you mean he

cheated?"  He said, "Well, he stayed out there all of

those years, and he never gave nothin' back.  And he

finally died.  There's no way he could get all that

stuff into that box with him."  So that made him

crooked, because he took more than he needed, so he

became the capitalist.  To me that was the best story

about capitalism versus socialism. The only difference

in collectivism and socialism is where the control is

vested: socialism in the state, and collectivism in the

culture itself, which is much more demanding. And this

happened last week.  This guy said, "He cheated."  I

know the Carson family, they were good.  And Stokes, he

was a trader, he made money.  But you don't make money--

the Navajo interprets this as "you make money off of

us.  You actually got more from us than you needed,

because when you left, you couldn't take it with you,

you couldn't get it in that box.  So this makes you

crooked." This is the key to what I am trying to

explain.

   I even read this from my friends in Northern Arizona

Economic Development.  What's her name?  Joan....

   

   Underhill:  Tomichi? [phonetic spelling]

   

   Blair:  Tomichi.  Nothing in this pamphlet mentions

the difference in socialism or capitalism.  There's

nothing there.  My friend Al Henderson, he has another

program with what's his name, Terry Jan....

   

   Underhill:  Janis?

   

   Blair:  Janis.  He's there too.  See, they don't

interpret the difference in the economic philosophy of

the Anglo and the difference in the economic philosophy

of the Navajo.  And what makes you crooked in their

eyes, what makes 'em crooked in your eyes is two

different things.  And see, they don't do it.  Somebody

should tell 'em that.  (laughs)

   

   Underhill:  I think you just did!

   

   Blair:  Yeah, 'cause it isn't mentioned.  And no one

understands it.  Can't you see how the trader ended up

actually with a bad name? because you had two different

philosophies, 180o opposed to each other, and the

interpretation of what is good, what is bad, what is

honest or dishonest was two different things.

   

   Underhill:  And how did that play into the 1972

Federal Trade Commission

   hearings, and maybe a little background about that?

   

   [END TAPE 1, SIDE A; BEGIN SIDE B]

   

   Underhill:  ... at the Dinnebito Trading Company in

Page, Arizona, Monday, February 9, [1998], 12:15 p.m.

Brad Cole is present, as is Lew Steiger.  During our

quick break, and we wanted to capture for tape, Brad

had asked the question about taxation, and what kind of

taxes you did pay as a trader.

   

   Blair:  Back at this original 1955 negotiated lease

for twenty-five years--I think it was '55, probably

ended in '80--I think basically all the people who was

included in this period paid a 1½ percent of gross

sales, taxes or lease payment in rent, to the Navajo

Tribe.  And that was basically the taxes, all the rent,

actually--actually, it was rent--1½ percent of gross

sales.  And that's what we paid to the tribe.

   

   Cole:  What about trade pawn and pawn?  How did that

fit into that?  Or would it?

   

   Blair:  The United Indian Traders Association fought

this tooth and nail before my time, and we finally came

to the conclusion that there was not a sale until there

was an actual sale.  Some of the accounts and whatever

tried to say that every transaction was a sale, but I

think we basically won out and said it wasn't a sale.

We was on a cash basis, not an accrual basis, and so we

paid at the actual sale, which was the gross sales.

   

   Underhill:  Speaking of United Indian Traders

Association, of course that's a big part of the story

we're trying to capture.  The 1972 Federal Trade

Commission hearings, if you could tell us a little

about the hearings, and then maybe the role of the

United Indian Traders Association in that.

   

   Blair:  Well, that was probably one of the biggest

fights that we probably had, which actually was with

DNA actually.  You know, they was the ones, and FTC

came in and had the hearings, you know.  But who

promoted this was DNA and these legal aid attorneys,

most of 'em from back East.  And they came in and it

was promoted actually at that time by Peterson Zah,

because he was the director of DNA, and I think sold

the idea that the trader was an exploiter, that he was

really exploiting these people.  They said everything

in the world about us, that we had a captive audience,

that we did credit saturation and all of these

different things that the trader did, and they had the

hearings, and we participated.  I think--I was

president during this time, of the Traders Association,

and LaVoy McGee either was vice-president or whatever,

but LaVoy and I went to Washington, D.C., which

Peterson Zah was there, and we met with FTC.  And you

know, trying to explain what I have been explaining to

you in this setting, you should try in the asphalt

jungle in Washington, D.C.  Now, this was....  It was

just hard to look at those Anglos and Belaganas around

this room who was gonna decide not necessarily so much

my fate, as the Native Americans', the Navajos' fate,

because to me, who was really being done in on this

whole thing was the Navajo people.  The trader really

wasn't the guy that was gonna really be hurt from this,

but we tried.  But you just couldn't relate it to them.

But anyway, they had the hearings, and the big thing

was that the trader’s interest.  You know, the annual

percentage rate--take cash pawn, for example.  Well, I

told you we charged 20 percent.  Well, if you charge

20 percent on a ten-dollar pawn, and the guy comes in

the next day and takes it out and you don't prorate the

percentage, or you don't adjust the amount you charge

him, then this computes into 240 percent annual

percentage rate.  And boy, I mean, the papers blew this

up like, "Oh, that's awful!  Two hundred and forty

percent?!  This is the awfulest thing in the world!"

Well, to give you a comparison, if off reservation at

the same identical period, even today in Arizona--and

New Mexico was even more so, and Colorado--all the

border towns, you have a set-up fee, which is like

$5.00 in Arizona.  So you would charge him $5.00, and

then you give him an annual percentage rate of

36 percent, but you didn't have to compute the annual

percentage rate, which if you did, you would have over

1000 percent, which was legal at that time.  I don't

know, I shouldn't say 1000 percent, but there was a

percentage, if you took it out the next day. In New

Mexico at this time, the annual percentage rate was 54

percent, without the set-up extra. This was just

something they never did.  See, they wouldn't allow the

traders to....  When we went to Washington, when LaVoy

and I did, one of the big arguments we was sayin',

"Well, we don't mind the 2 percent Arizona or the

3 percent per month or 36 percent, actually, a year, as

long as you had a set-up charge."  But they would not

agree to have a set-up charge like everybody else does.

And that's what we have now.  You have $5.00, a rifle

is $10.00.  But that isn't computed in the annual

percentage rate.  And this was the big argument.  But

on the rez, they didn't want that.  They wanted to wipe

out the trader and no argument was gonna make any

difference about anything.

   

   Underhill:  And why do you think they wanted to wipe

out the traders?

   

   Blair:  I (chuckles) think it was just the times--

very liberal times that they had.  They didn't

understand what I have explained about the difference

in economics between the trader and the Navajo.  They

thought that we was out there to rip them off.  At this

time, you know, truth in lending come in, and boy, the

big, bad word was "open-end credit," like we had used,

and stuff like that, and you credited them from wool

season to wool season.  A guy just trades.  See, yet by

today we have open-end credit on your credit cards.

See, all you have to do is pay a minimum, and you have

open-end credit.  They didn't want that.  I think it

was just a liberal time in the world, and these people

were idealistic, social reformers, and they had this ax

to grind, and I think Mr. Zah probably had a very bad

experience somewhere with a trader that wasn't probably

the best trader in the world.  And he could have had a

bad experience.  So he was really ok, but....  And I

know him.  I saw him later, and he's an okay guy, but

he really wanted to reform unknowingly.  They even put

out a book, said, the traders are destroyin' the

tradin' post system.  They thought it was really a

system, like we were all out there together, and we was

doin' all these things to the Navajos.  They didn't

know.  Why they did it, 'cause they didn't understand.

They still don't understand.  If you're sittin' out

there in the middle of the reservation, and an old lady

at Navajo Mountain, like today, and she needs a sack of

flour.  All she's got to do is take one lamb to that

trading post, that he will buy, and she can get a sack

of flour.  Today, if she wants a sack of flour, to sell

that one lamb, which there's no lambs left--she can't

sell it, so why should she?  There aren’t very many of

'em left.  She has to go to Cortez, Colorado, to a sale

barn, or St. Joe's, Arizona, to a sale barn.  By the

time you haul that lamb to Cortez, Colorado, to a sale

barn, you kind of defeated the purpose.

   Now, there is other individual dealers in livestock

here and there that do do a little of this.  But

basically, the trader was gone.  And they couldn't see

how this would make that much difference.  They

completely destroyed the market for the Navajo products

in this.  Now, you tell me why.  I don't know why.  I

would have thought, as we call them, "economic

illiterates," they were economic illiterates.  And I

think as I told you before, I was quoted in The Arizona

Republic and half a dozen different publications that I

said that FTC and DNA "came with rope in hand to hang

the traders, but they hung the Navajos."  And I don't

know that they ever understood it.  They say, well, all

we were doin', we didn't want to put in shoppin'

centers.  I was on the board, helped to put in the

original shoppin' center that DCI [Dine Cooperative

Inc.] put in in Chinle, Arizona.  The shoppin' center

was past due, it was time.  The Navajo people, the

Navajo consumer had a more diverse merchandise to buy

from, but that you can't put one in Chinle, Arizona,

and solve a problem of a Navajo living on Navajo

Mountain on top of Black Mesa, that is 50-75 miles away

with no roads, all the mud, all the snow.  If they

wanted to do that, then they would have had to have

gone to Navajo Mountain, to Dinnebito, Piñon, etc., and

then put in small satellite shoppin' centers and trade

like the traders did, which the shoppin' center

operators wouldn't have done it, because it wouldn't

have been economically feasible to do it.  The trader,

if they had have left it alone, it would eventually

evolve to where there would be no reason for the

trading post.  But they just come in and whacked it

off, and the Navajo was sittin' there, holdin' the bag,

really--that's who got hurt.  The trader--you know, we

were business people.  When it became to where it

didn't work feasibly for us, we changed, we moved, or

we did something different.  But the Navajo, see, he

was stuck, he could not go anywhere.  He was settin'

there, and then had to adjust his lifestyle.  But you

know, the Navajo has been so, mistreated by the federal

government, that this was just another blow.  He just

humps up and takes it.  And really, I don't think the

grass roots people really understood what was

happening, or they may have made a little bit more to

do about it, 'cause they interviewed a lot of Navajos.

I know when we interviewed Mr. Link down there, he

said, "Yeah, but there was a lot of Navajos that was

interviewed in this thing."  They were, the same Navajo

that says Stokes Carson can't get it in that box.  The

same mentality.  Well, see, they was doin' that.  You

were a cheater because you made more than you could put

in that box.  Same thing.  They didn't understand it.

Yet, these legal aid people--attorneys fresh out of

Harvard or wherever these law schools that they came

from--had absolutely no idea in the world about

capitalism or free enterprise system.  See, lawyers are

taught--they're paid mouths.  That's what they are.

They know nothin' to do with economics.  They don't....

Well, my accountant one time said to me, about how we

run a business, he said, "Elijah, I am the accountant.

I know how to balance the figures.  You're the one who

knows how to run a business."  And that's right.  An

attorney does not know how to run a business.  An

accountant doesn't know how to run a business.  He can

tell you if the books balance.  The attorney can get

you sometimes out of jail if you do something wrong,

but he doesn't know anything about economics.  Yet

these are the people, as I said, they were idealistic

social reformers, these guys came, with a gun.  See,

the gun was FTC.  This is where they got the gun.  It's

very scary when you give an idealist a gun, and that's

what they did.  And you see, and I can go on forever

about the effect this will have on the Navajo consumer.

   See, when the trading post left, when you had this

anchor for the community left out here, then about this

time this welfare system came in.  So then all these

people, there's no reason now to sit out there and have

this big herd of sheep where they could take to the

trader and buy and sell to him, or whatever.  They have

to go off the reservation, or to a shopping center on

the reservation.  So then consequently, the Navajo

actually moved to these communities, like Tuba City,

Kayenta, the big communities and towns, and then you

see the ghettos beginning to appear.  And this is gonna

be the next big push.  These people are livin' in

ghetto conditions, because they can't live out there,

because they removed the source of the market for their

product.  The trader serviced that.  And there's no way

for them to do that now. There's no reason to be out

there.  They thought about--any more, you say somethin'

to the Navajo about the sheep herd, they say, "There's

no sheepherders.  Only the sheepherder is the dogs."

And the dogs are the [sheepherders].  You just have

five or six little bunches of sheep.  There's nothing

to do with the sheep.  They eat 'em, or they trade 'em

back and forth with each other.  But it doesn't

supplement the economy like it did for part of the

family group working somewhere else.  This livestock

supplemented the income and stabilized this existence

they had out in the remote areas.

   

   Underhill:  Let's maybe look at some of those

historical changes.  You mentioned the livestock and

the role early on.  How did the stock reduction impact

trading?  And that was probably a little before your

time, but do you have any sense about that in the 1930s

and the fallout from that?

   

   Blair:  All I really know about it is it was really

before my time.  It happened in the thirties.  But I

know, there's one Navajo cuss word that a Navajo knows,

and that's John Collier [phonetic spelling].  That is

the worst thing in the world that you can call anybody,

is John Collier.  (laughs)  That's the way you cuss in

Navajo.  John Collier was the guy, he was the Bureau of

Indian Affairs superintendent of the stock reduction.

That was really a bad word.  And I think, here again,

it's typical of everything that our federal government

has ever done.  Whatever they touch with the Native

American, there is 999 different ways that it could

have been done better if they would just come out and

ask the people who it was gonna affect, the Navajos

themselves or the traders.  See, the trader usually

knew just about everything that was happening in the

community, 'cause everything happened in the community,

a better way to do it.  But the decisions are made back

there in that asphalt jungle ______ they was tryin' to

make the decision about the FTC, it is not the place to

relate to what they were doin'.  You know, it was the

method they used.  As I said, the livestock was

probably the biggest status symbol the Navajo had.  So

the more he had, the better, the more social standing

he was thought about, as bein', you know--that, and his

jewelry.  This was his status symbol.  And when they

start roundin’ these things up, and they shoot 'em and

bury 'em and push 'em in ditches and kill 'em, that was

an awful thing to do.  They are so close to the

livestock.  The method that they used was awful.

Granted, there was a reason to do it--the grazin', the

grass was definitely overgrazed, and somethin' had to

be done.  I will give them that.  But the method that

they used, typical of every federal project they've

ever done on the reservation, to the Navajo or any

Native American, they should go hire a different bunch.

But that's about all....  And I really don't know.  I

just know how vividly they dislike John Collier.

   

   Underhill:  I've heard you mention the Railroad

Retirement Board.  How does that fit into the trading

story?

   

   Blair:  When I came to the tradin' post in '48--and

I'm not quite sure exactly when....  And I'm not too

sure but what the United Indian Traders Association may

have been involved in this, I'm not sure.  But someone

finally figured out that, see, you had seasonal

railroad work that worked on the Union Pacific and DNRG

and Santa Fe and all these places--there was seasonal

work that these Navajos went and worked on there. They

were laid off, and then they came back.  Well,

actually, they were actually qualified for

unemployment.  So somewhere back in there, someone must

have said they should be able to sign up for

unemployment.  So then they made, all traders became a

special claims agent for the Railroad Retirement Board.

And we were special claims agents.  And every Tuesday,

I think, at Mexican Water, when I went there, you had

all these people who had ever worked on the railroad,

they came in and they signed up for unemployment.  And

then the next week they came in again, and you asked

them all these questions, "Are you able to work?,

willing to work?, and all these things to qualify."

You say, "Yeah."  And then every two weeks they would

get a check.

   

   Underhill:  Through the trader?

   

   Blair:  No, they got a check from the Railroad

Retirement Board.  It was a government check, and this

is a government office, the Railroad Retirement Board,

and they actually got a government check from the

Railroad Retirement Board.  Some way was funded through

the federal government.  And this is--all traders did

this, the Railroad Retirement Board.  So then we signed

up, we was unemployment agents.  Actually, we were

agents of the unemployment service.  So then when the

railroads opened up in the spring and the jobs opened

up, then they would call--the headquarters was like in

Gallup--then they would start to saying, "Well, Mexican

Water has fifty claimants, so then they need forty

workers in Idaho," or something like that.  And then

they would call and say, "Okay, from Dinnebito we want

five workers or ten workers," and stuff like this.  And

then we delivered them on such and such a date to

Farmington, New Mexico, where they would be put on a

bus and shipped to wherever in trucks.  We have

pictures.  And we haul them in a pickup.  Sometimes

you'd have as many as twenty people.  So we would have

a truck that you all stand up in the back.  And I have

pictures where these guys are standing in the back, and

we hauled them from Mexican Water to Farmington, New

Mexico, which was 130 miles, 80 miles of dirt road, and

we delivered them there.  And this went on.  I think I

was a Railroad Retirement claims agent until in the

late sixties--seventies I was still shipping.  Even in

the seventies, I think I was a federal retirement

claims agent.

   

   Underhill:  Elijah, it's almost like what didn't you

do?  But the trader performed a variety of functions.

You've mentioned interpreter between Navajo and

English, being a Railroad Retirement agent.  What other

kinds of community services did the trader perform?

   

   Blair:  Well (chuckles), see, the trader was the

Bilagáanaa, the white man.  To the Navajo, this Anglo

is supposed to be all-knowing, because they were

certainly makin' all the rules for 'em, governing their

whole life.  And the trader actually did, to them, we

could do anything.  So anything they wanted to do, or

problems they had, they would come to us.  And I think

of bein'--marital disputes between husband and wives.

Gosh, I've gone over to Paul and Glenda Jone's hogan--

they lived right next to the store--and not separated

'em, but talked to each of 'em individually.  I'll tell

you one story about old Louis Mitchel.  He weighed

about 350 pounds--no, 250, 275 pounds, somethin' like

that.  Had this real small lady, Ason Shorty.  Her name

was Rose Mitchel.  She's still living.  But real small

lady, and Louis would get a little bit too much to

drink, so they'd always come.  And so they came down to

the store one day and they says, "Louis is gonna kill

Rose.  You gotta come or Louis is gonna kill Rose!"

Well, they lived back up on the mesa behind there, so

he's got an ax and he's chasin' Rose.  So I get in the

pickup and I run up there, and here, sure enough, old

Louis is runnin' on poor little old Rose.  She wasn't

that big.  Short with this ax.  Boy, he's gonna grind

her up.  So I went up there and I talked Louis out of

the ax.  (laughs)  That was only one story, but I can

tell you a million stories about old Louis and Rose.

   One time they were comin' down from Towaoc, Colorado

and Rose was very vocal.  Louis was a great big guy,

never said very much.  They came down from Towoac down

through there, and Rose was obviously onto Louis

because he had had too much to drink, and he was giving

[her a] hard time.  They would always ride in the back

of the pickup, and it was wet and snowing and stuff

like that, so he just reached out, picked up old Rose,

just pitched her out.  (laughter)  And they go way down

there before they realized, "Hey!" you know, she's back

there in the mud, so they have to turn around and go

back and get her.  (laughter)

   But, you know, we did everything--whatever.  The

kids always wrote letters.  They sent the kids off to

school, so we read the letters, and then we wrote the

letters back to the kids.  The kids always wanted

somethin', they wanted pants and we'd get 'em pants.

So we'd end up chargin' to the accounts.  Anything, any

legal matters....  At Aneth many years ago, there was--

oh, there was allotments over there, when oil was

discovered at Aneth, Utah, there.  There was one guy,

he was actually the son of Old Man Jelly, but his

mother was a Paiute.  So the rest of the family did not

want Cyrus to participate in Old Man Jelly's allotment,

which had the oil royalties on it.  So Cyrus comes to

me and says, "Hey, that's my daddy!"  Let's see....

Yeah, and I went to court and hired this Dan Malinski

[phonetic spelling] and we went to court with the

family in Gallup--it was federal court--to prove that

Cyrus was the son of Old Man Jelly.  And I ended up

being the interpreter, 'cause as I said, "These guys

had interpreters too, but interpreters tend to

interpret what they want to interpret.  So I was in

there, and I would set by Dan, and I'd say, "Hey, that

ain't what he said!"  So anyway, this went on for about

two weeks.  Let's see, Cyrus ended up, we proved that

he was the child of  Old Man Jelly, and he became, I

don't know how many hundred thousand dollars he got out

of the oil royalty.  He's right now in a nursing home

in Blanding, Utah.  And the family, I'm sure, is still

gettin' that oil royalty from him.  But this is just

part of the things that we did.  Whatever.  Whatever

came up, whatever.  At Aneth the river came right down

by the store.  So in order to get the people from the

other side of the river back across, we had this little

wooden boat that we built and furnished for them to go

back and forth to the store.  One of the things I'll

show you guys tomorrow as we go by, back in those days,

see, you didn't have these case aides, as they call

'em, welfare people, tried to get people on welfare,

stuff like that.  So the trader knew that--see, it was

actually to our benefit to get these people that would

qualify for disability, aid to dependent children and

stuff like that, so the case work was like over in

Blanding, Utah, or somewhere like that.  Well, they

didn't come to the reservation.  So we would load--I

remember Brad and I one time, got a pickup and put

whoever we thought would qualify--we pretty well knew

who would qualify--so we went from Mexican Water to Red

Mesa, down across country to Bluff City.  Well, you get

to Bluff City, then there was no bridge at Bluff City

at that time, but the case worker was over at Cow

Canyon Trading Post--we were supposed to meet him

there.  So then we'd already prearranged to where they

would meet us with horses, and we rode everybody across

the river, two-by-two, or whatever horses, and we took

'em over to get to the case aide.  And all these

people--you know, this is things that we did.

   Gosh, there was just....  And it was so normal to do

it, because you thought, "Hey, we're here to serve."

You know, our primary objective was service--versus the

discount stores, where they say, "You got price, you

put it up on a shelf and you buy it if you want to,

'cause it's good."  The traders serviced the customer,

and he worked with that customer.  This was....

(exasperated sigh)  There's probably a hundred other

things that we did that I don't know--anything that

they wanted.  But those two or three samples of what we

did.

   

   Underhill:  You mentioned the welfare, Social

Security.  How was that a benefit to traders?

   

   Blair:  Well, see, the more money....  To get back

to the philosophy of the Navajo, back to his

collectivism.  See, money had no value to this Navajo--

only when it was spent.  He would buy jewelry,

livestock, or merchandise.  But you and I put it in a

savings account, or we invest it somewhere, stuff like

that.  The Navajo bought stuff, and money had no value

at all.  So now you're sittin' out here in the middle

of the reservation, nowhere.  Every customer that you

could get, that would qualify for welfare--see, they

would get a check, and they would end up there in your

store with this check, and there was no bank, so then

we cashed all the checks for them.  So we either

extended credit towards those checks, or when they

cashed a check, they would turn around and buy whatever

they wanted.  And you know, the greatest thing in the

world to a retailer is having someone settin' in your

store, tryin' to throw money at you, and that's exactly

what they were doin'.  And see, this is another reason

they never understood why it was such a lucrative

business for the traders.  To me it was a lucrative

business.  All you had to figure out is what did they

want, and be sure that you had it, and some way arrange

payment schedules and whatever would fit for you and

them, so that they could buy.  Now, the more

progressive traders did this.  They made the stores

larger, they got more merchandise, and they tried to

pay and get higher prices for rugs.  If you upgraded

the Navajo economy itself, through higher prices for

their rugs or livestock....  See, we bought registered

bulls, traded in the old bull for the new bull.  We

bought registered bucks and bought and traded it in.

See, any time that the trader could improve the plight,

economically, financially, or from a more--it was more

marketable to have better livestock, better calves, and

better wool.  See, we brought better wool in because

you got a higher price for a better, than the old

Churro sheep that the Mexicans brought in.  So we did

all this.  And you did it.  We didn't have altruistic

reasons for doin' this, we did it because when we

raised their standards of living, or their economic

base, it raised ours, because we knew we was gonna sell

'em something.  So we did all of these things.  You

always was doin' things like this.

   

   Underhill:  What do you think separates a good

trader from a bad one?  You've used the word

"progressive" a couple of times, and described some of

the things that the traders did.  Anything that stands

out that might distinguish someone who's a good trader

from a bad trader?

   Blair:  Well, I really think I'd rather talk about

who the good trader was.  The good trader.  (chuckles)

Them who didn't fit into this category was probably the

one who weren’t.  The good trader was one who went out

there and he accepted the Navajo people, their

lifestyle, their culture, their religion, their

philosophy of life.  He tried to understand it, and he

tried to work with it, or fit it so that they could

live together and understand each other, yet they was

180o opposed to each other in economic philosophy.

Now, I think the good trader figured this out.  See, he

came out there, and he had no preconceived ideals.  He

wasn't the missionary type. Or he wasn't a social

reformer, or whatever.  He came, and he thought....

There were some of the missionary-type trader there,

and I think even those realized that, "Hey, you know,

we've gotta live with these people.  We can't set here

and talk about 'em being good, bad, or whatever."  We

just learned to work with 'em and live with it.  And

then you had, as I said, the more progressive trader as

the economy chanaged, particularly after World War II,

which actually when I came in there.  As the Navajo

were more exposed through the war--a lot of them went

into the service, you know, during the war.  And a lot

of them went to the railroad and worked outside of the

reservation, and they saw different things.  They saw

different things that they needed.  So then the more

progressive of trader tried to have all of these things

for them.  And whatever they wanted, they tried to get

for them.  They made the stores larger, they keep

growin' with the changes of time.  And they treated

them just like they would any other person--Anglo or

whatever.  They didn't treat them different--the same

rules applied to a Native American that did to your

fellow trader or fellow Anglo.  Now, this was the good

trader.  They didn't make a difference because he was

Anglo--or he was a Native American, you was an Anglo.

   You had different types of traders.  You had four or

five.  You had traders that came out, a lot of the

missionary-type trader.  You know, he wanted to save

the people.  But actually, he didn't do too well,

because he didn't do too well because it was

controversial with the Native American.  Then you had

other traders who come out who wanted to become a

Native American.  He wanted to really go and be them.

He, to me....  Actually, the trader that came with no

preconceived ideas, no....  Well, he didn't have any

reason to try to convert.  He was actually a free

thinker.  He didn't exactly accept....  You know, he

accepted what they were, for what they were, and didn't

try to say, "You're wrong," or whatever, something like

that, 'cause this really alienated a lot of the

customers because you was that.  You know, to say,

"Hey, you know, your lifestyle is wrong," or "your

religion is wrong," and stuff like that.  You can't do

that and still be a trader, and be a successful trader.

And this is what the Navajo _______.  You, know, it's

one thing to say that they were different, but many

people, I think a lot of the traders said, "Hey, you

know, they're wrong.  Boy, you gotta convert you into

bein' something other."  I always took the premise

that, you know, it isn't a matter of right and wrong,

it's the right to be right or wrong.  So, you know,

leave 'em alone, let 'em do whatever they wanted to do,

in their own way, and try to live and adjust to them,

'cause you actually was out there in the middle of

nowhere with no one else around, except them.  They was

what you had to work with.  But you had two definite

types of traders.  You had a trader that came and

actually just sold everything.  He tried to, you know,

just do it as cheaply as he could, and get everything

out of the community that he could, whether or not he

was....  He bought all the livestock, everything.  You

think of him as a taker or a giver.  The guy that took,

he just took everything, this trader did, _________.

Then you had the giver, which I've always thought of as

a guy who comes out and he worked with the weaver,

trying to bring the weaver up, or the livestock up to a

level.  And here again, we weren't doing it for any

altruistic reasons.  This trader knew that if he could

raise their standard of living, the financial

conditions they were in--and he was there for the long

haul.  See, the other guys, some other traders came

and, "Hey, I'm gonna be here ten years and leave," or

"I'm gonna be here so long."  But the trader who came

and stayed, he really was trying to bring them and him

up to where there was more money, more everything to

come along.  To me, this was the good trader, that guy.

   

   Underhill:  You mentioned weavers and folks with

livestock too.  How did you identify potential

artisans?  Obviously people came in the store, but....

   

   Blair:  Well, see, Karen, every day you had a weaver

or a potter or a basketmaker--depending on the area

that you was in--they came in.  And they wanted to sell

you something.  It didn't take you very long to realize

that this lady really could weave.  She did a real

quality piece of work, although....  I think a perfect

example was at Dinnebito.  This is where the real

weavers were.  I mean, the weavers that had such a

potential that had never had a trader to help them

develop what would be a commercial, marketable item.

'Cause when I first went to Dinnebito, I had an office

as big as this office, and you would sit there and you

would fill it up, stacked up this high, all around the

wall here--maybe not quite full--of saddle blankets.

They made double saddle blankets.  There's a single

saddle blanket over there on the wall.  And, you know,

you was payin' like--this is in the sixties--you was

payin' like $10 or $12 or $6 or $8 for a saddle

blanket, you know.  And then you saw people like Rose

Dan that brought in the finest saddle blanket you ever

saw.  You'd been around a while, and you realized,

"Hey, this lady can make a rug!  She doesn't need to

make a $10 saddle blanket, she's gonna get more for

it."  So then I went to places--I remember there was a

Don Watson had a store, actually a gallery just like

this, at Cortez--and we took all his rugs, all over the

country, and I took hundreds of pictures of rugs.  So

then I went back to people like Rose Dan.  They was

hundreds of 'em.  And I said, "Hey, make this--make

this rug."  And I picked out the good ones.  I said,

"Well, make this rug."  And so then I moved 'em from

saddle blankets to a rug, a floor rug, this size, three

by five rug or somethin' like that.  And then they went

from a $10 saddle blanket to a $100 rug, just (snaps

fingers) like this.  They already knew how to do it.

In every area that you will ever find on the

reservation, wherever there is good weavers, good

quality rugs comin' out of there, somewhere back in the

back there's a trader who got down and said, "Do this."

You know, "Do it like this," or "change it like this.

This is what the public wants."  See, we continuously

tried. When we bought it, we knew we had to market it.

So then we knew and found out where the market was,

what the market wanted.  So then all traders worked

with these people like this.  This went on--see, I was

at Dinnebito thirty-five years, so we had some of the

finest rugs come out of there, and still do.

Relocation--they all moved from there.  That's why we

moved, because of relocation.  Now they're scattered

everywhere, but they still come to us now, because they

know that we appreciate this type rug.  That's one of

the ways that you found artisans.  You saw their

product they did, and if you'd been around a while, you

could easily identify who was the weaver, who was the

potter, the basketmaker, whoever.

   

   Underhill:  Did you supply the yarn, raw materials

for rugs, at all?  Or did the weaver....

   

   Blair:  Originally, see, back in the days when they

were doing their own shearing, carding, and spinning--

those rugs, see, then they used their own sheep.

You're skippin' fifty years in here.  They used their

own sheep.  Now, one thing we would do, when you had

the wool clipped--like, at the trading post, see--we

would buy like 300 bags of wool at Dinnebito.  Well,

when we had the wool sacked by our sackers, see, we

would have him pull out the blacks, the grays, the

white, good long staple.  The Navajo ladies liked that.

And we would put it in a separate pile.  Then we would

sell it back to 'em, 'cause a lot of 'em didn't have

sheep--and they would come and buy it that way.  But

this was raw wool.  Then later on as you probably are

aware of, you know, they started where they did have

the prewashed and carded wool.  First it came in a

great big skein like this.  Then you just unwrap it,

and you would weigh it and sell it to 'em.  But, as you

saw hanging here in the back room, this is the prespun,

predyed, one-ply wool, just like the Navajo lady did

herself when she was doin' all her own washin',

cardin', spinnin', and dyin' that's here now.  So we do

sell that, and have sold it probably for the last ten

or twenty, fifteen years or so.  And they have been

predyed.  Comes from different places, and we sell most

of that is done now by a commercial yarn.  Now, here in

this area, you do get some of the handspun, like those

on the floor.  That's a handspun rug.  And there is

some around this area.  In the more traditional area,

out in this Navajo Mountain, Shonto, and the west

reservation area is quite a bit.  They call it sheep

wool.  They say, "This is real wool.  That other...."

(chuckles)  And it is.  But you know, the real yarns

that they did themselves.  And there's still some of it

comes up.  Some people like it, but not too many of 'em

do it anymore.

   

   Underhill: And at your trading post... perhaps it

changed over time.  What were the popular items that

you carried for the women, for the men?

   Blair:  Well, one of the most popular items probably

is Pendleton shawls.  See, this was actually--and this

was from day one, where it was 1948 or today, the most

popular item probably was Pendleton shawls and robes.

The other popular item, as I mentioned downstairs a

while ago, is the buckskins and the baskets.  Now, this

was for women and men, this was for the whole picture.

See, you had to have this.  In all the ceremonies and

everywhere they had a ceremony or wherever, the trader

and all of these 200 and some trading posts that was on

the Navajo Reservation....  See, we always had

buckskins and the ceremonial basket, or a lot of people

refer to as the wedding basket.  Actually, it's a

ceremonial basket, 'cause everything, in any ceremony

the Navajo uses, this is the basket that he used.  And

here again, you have to go back to what happened to the

Navajo people when there's no longer a place to buy a

buckskin or a Navajo basket.  There's no trading post

out there now, so the man on Navajo Mountain or Black

Mesa or wherever he is, if he wants to buy a buckskin,

he has got to go off reservation to this place.  See, I

know, I'm a trader.  As I say, I know what they want,

what the Navajo people want, so then we see to it that

we have buckskins and wedding baskets and __________.

And we also sell it to other traders--other traders off

reservation--stores and businesses, because we know

what they want.  But if you think back, then this is

one of the--as I said, who got hung was the Navajo.

See, he can't find that out there anymore.  There

aren't any traders out there that stock this type of

merchandise, so they have to go off reservation.

Thriftway certainly isn't gonna carry it.  There's one

or two stores.  There's one, Hank's, for instance.  He

has a store over at Lukachukai, which is more a

convenience type store.  He will carry a few, but very

few--there are very few places on the reservation any

more that has that.  The Traders off reservation, in

Gallup, they will have these baskets and buckskins.

   The other popular item I would say is for the

ladies, the plush shirts, the material a lot that we

had.  And this always, for the traditional Navajo, even

at Dinnebito, five, six, eight years ago, five years,

see, in the eighties, see, you still was sellin' that

plush shirt for the traditional.  And the materials,

all the materials, sing cloth, was actually here again,

was back to a ceremonial thing--you always stocked

singing cloth to use in the ceremonies.  And the

ladies, you had scarves, material, shirts, blouses.

And as you get into the more modern stores, you had

really--like in Dinnebito we had a complete western

wear section for both ladies and men.  We had boots and

hats and anything of apparel for men and women both.

In the traditional store, we always sold hats, because

the trader was the westerner, and he wore hats--so the

Navajos wore hats, and they identified--the trader

actually was, he took on the western look because he

was a westerner--they all was.  And then the Navajo

came along and so he wore the same type--for many years

now, but not too long ago, the Navajo is not wearing as

much western clothes, but then a lot of the traders

kinda got away from it too.  I always said that the

trader who really didn't want to be identified with the

Navajo didn't wear the cowboy hats and stuff.  And I

still think that had a lot to do with it.  They didn't

want to be identified with the rural country, like back

in the hills of Kentucky you didn't wear your bib

overalls in town, 'cause they knew you was a clodhopper

from back in the hills, so you tried to dress a little

different.  To me, the West, I like to be western

because this is what made this country.  Everybody in

the world wants to come to the West, because the

cowboy, the Indian, the trader, the trading post… the

West has a great heritage, and this is part of it.

   

   Underhill:  Who did most of the buying?, Navajo men

or women?

   Blair:  A lot of the buying was bought by the men.

Well (chuckles) yeah, I would say a lot of the buying

was bought by men.  They, in the olden days,

particularly, women were shyer a lot.  It probably was

pretty much mutual, but the Navajo man lots of times

came in the wagon or on the horse and he knew what he

was supposed to take back.  The women, lots of times,

forty or fifty years ago, didn't always come.  The men

would come, and then they would come with the men, but

the man talked more, and he probably dealt a little bit

more with the trader.  But then the woman knew what she

wanted, and she would buy the cloth and whatever she

wanted.  It probably was pretty much mutual, depending

on what they needed for the family, I think, involved.

   

   Underhill:  If someone were to recall some of the

funny incidents, maybe at Dinnebito, what stories stand

out in your mind?  You've mentioned a couple, but

   are there any that are your favorites?

   

   Blair:  I mentioned, I think, in one of the stories

of Rose Dan, I've talked about her a lot, because she

was quite a weaver, and she still comes here, and she

sells her rugs to Jahi, and it doesn't matter what

happens.  I mean, she comes to sell her rugs to me.

And I mean, this has been going on thirty-five years.

One time she came in the store and she says, "Boy,

Jahi, you are no good"--saying all this in Navajo--"you

sell me that hay up there.  That hay is no good!  It

killed my horse three times!"  (laughter)  That's one

of 'em.

   I [can] tell one on old Bruce.  Bruce worked for me

quite a bit. He was at Dinnebito and we always had

gates around, before we had the self service  gondolas.

We had a gate, and Bruce will tell it himself if you

interview him, so I'll beat him to it.  But we were in

there, and we always had someone that had a little bit

too much Twister or Tokay, and boy, they loved to come

and pick on the customers.  So sometimes we had to kind

of bodily get 'em out of there, or push 'em out or run

'em out.  One time old John Bizardy [phonetic spelling]

was in the store, and he had harassed me forever, and I

had just got tired of it, so I went over that gate

after old John--I was gonna get him out of that store.

And old Bruce, back there, he says, "Here comes Jahi on

John Bizardy out of chute number two!"  (laughter)  By

that time I got so tickled (laughter) that I couldn't!

Finally got old John out, but.... (laughs)

     Well, there was a million.  There was so many.

   Underhill:  Someone once told me--and I don't

believe this--that the Navajo people don't have a

strong sense of humor.  In your experience, what would

you say to that?

   

   Blair:  They have.   Really, they are the funniest

people in the world in their own language, their own

way.  It's the hardest thing in the world....  I could

sit here and tell you dozens of the funniest jokes in

the world that doesn't mean anything in English, when

you translate their joke into English.  It gets back to

the culture and what they're talking about.  They

absolutely have the best sense of humor in the world.

   We had this one guy that worked for me for twenty-

five, thirty years, Robert Silas.  He had a real dry

sense of humor, and he could just keep us in stitches

all the time.  But it all happens in Navajo.  See, the

reason [people] think they have no sense of humor,

'cause they're not communicating with them.  If you

speak Navajo, these are the funniest people in the

world, and absolutely can pull jokes on each other and

do it all the time, and they are happy, funny, humorous

people.  If someone said they knew the Navajo and told

you that, he certainly didn't know 'em very well.

(laughs)

   

   Underhill:  Well, let's talk a little about United

Indian Traders Association.  When and why did you join?

   

   Blair:  Well, actually, as I said, I came in '48, so

I'm sure that Toadlena and Mexican Water were already--

okay, they were already....  See, the trading post was

the member, and whoever owned the trading post

represented the trading post as the member.  So when I

came to Toadlena, Charles Herring was a member of the

Association, which actually he was one of the charter

members of the Association.  And then I went to Mexican

Water for Roscoe McGee.  Mexican Water was a member of

the Association--Roscoe and Jewel is members.  And then

when I went to Aneth, which is actually 1953, I bought

an interest in Aneth Trading Post.  Now, they weren't a

member.  A guy named Ralph Tanner owned the store, and

I became a partner of his.  And then '53 is when I, as

an owner, probably joined the Traders Association at

Aneth.  I hope that comes out right.  I went there in

'53, so I would say I'd had experience with the

Association before that, so I'm sure it's '53 or '54 I

probably became a member.

   

   Underhill:  And I know the membership has fluctuated

a bit, but approximately how many posts were members?

   

   Blair:  I don't know, I hope you guys figure this

out somewhere.  I think the average member of like 120,

somewhere around this, could have been 110-130,

depending.  As someone said, if someone got into

trouble or he needed the Association to fight his

battle, then he would join.  Then when everything

calmed down, people would drop off.  But I think there

was over 120.  At one time, I think there was about 200

posts on the Navajo Reservation, so there was 120 or

so, probably, that was members.

   

   Underhill:  Did you have a [END TAPE 1, SIDE B;

BEGIN TAPE 2, SIDE A] number?

   

   Blair:  No.  That really, the numbering system

actually ended probably back before I even came.  See,

the original members did this, and they did it a lot to

protect and perpetuate hand arts and crafts.  And a lot

of the people who really had the numbers were the

people who were dealing more into silver and turquoise

jewelry, and that's where they used the stamp with the

numbering system.  No, I didn't have a number, and

really, by the time I became an Association member,

this really wasn't a big part of it at that time--by

that time it was really an association more for needs

of the traders, the members that belonged to it,

whatever need they may be, whether it was negotiating

leases or whatever--negotiating leases or any problem

that came up was pretty much what it was when I came

on.

   

   Cole:  Could you explain what the numbering system,

how it came about and what it was for?

   

   Blair:  Well, the way I understand it--now, I'm not

too sure I know all this--but when the original people,

charter members who established the Association, they

all was dealin' heavy in arts and crafts, and

particularly in jewelry.  One of the ladies, I think,

called you--this Allison Romero.  See, she's doin' a

history on C. W. Wallace, which I know was one of the

charter members, and he had a number.  And the stamp

that stamped his number on there, and Dobbs Mouth

[phonetic spelling] was also another brother-in-law of

George Bloomfield.  See, he had a number.  And he and

Fern both are gone.  And they had Berrego [phonetic

spelling] Pass Trading Post.  So they had numbers.  I

think the purpose was so that....  See, they had

silversmiths, a lot of these people had silversmiths

who either worked for them, or they worked in their own

homes or hogans, and they brought the silver in and

they bought it from 'em, just like we were buying the

rugs and whatever from 'em.  And this really, when they

stamped their number on this, this authenticated this

was a genuine silver and turquoise made by a Navajo

Indian, or a Zuni, or whoever made it.  And this guy

was actually verifying that.  That's why they had the

stamp.  (aside about tape)

   

   Underhill:  This is Karen Underhill with NAU, and it

is Monday, February 9.  We're at Dinnebito Trading

Company in Page, Arizona, interviewing Elijah Blair.

Present are Lew Steiger and also Brad Cole.  It is now

1:45 p.m.

   

   Steiger:  This is the third tape of three, so far.

   

   Underhill:  We were talking about the United Indian

Traders Association, and taking it back before you were

a member, to get your perspective and historical

knowledge about the organization.  I believe while we

were off camera we talked about the stamps and numbers

for the Association that were issued.  You have a piece

that has a number 31, but you were kind of guessing,

there may have been around thirty or so members?

   Blair:  Yes.  Here again, I really don't know.  I

have this piece that's marked 31, and I was thinkin'

there was thirty-some people, I think.  Grace Herring

may be able to tell you more.  She had a brother-in-law

named Don Smouse.  She may have some information on

Don, which as I know was a member, and had a stamp with

a number.  And these people were basically dealing in

jewelry--a lot.  Now, they were talking about all

handmade Indian art and crafts, but the stamp was

issued, I believe, basically to stamp the jewelry.  And

there's C. W. Wallace, I know of one, Don Smouse,

Charles Herring, Woodard in Farmington, and I think his

name was Don Woodard.  There's a Don Woodard's son, but

I think his name was also Don Woodard.  His son also,

Tom Woodard, lives in Santa Fe, promised me that he has

information, and he would like to meet with you folks

and give you all the information he can.  So you're

going to have to get it, I think, from someone other

than me.  I really don't know that much about it.

   

   Underhill:  While you were involved with the

Association and all the way to the present, what were

some of the big issues?  We've talked about the 1972

FTC hearings.  What were some of the other issues that

got people involved?

   

   Blair:  Well, I think probably the first one may

have been the 1955 lease negotiations with the tribe

and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.  That may have been

first, or I'm not sure whether that one, but anyway,

that was one of the big issues, 1955.  And then the

other big issues was the sales tax, charging sales tax

on the reservation, which the Traders Association

actually took the State of Arizona to court and it was

called the Warren Trading Post versus the State of

Arizona, and it went all the way to the Supreme Court,

in which they won the case against charging sales tax

on the reservation.  I think basically this case is the

one that set the precedent where that there isn't sales

tax charged on any Native American reservation.  Now,

I'm not sure about this, but I know on the Navajo

reservations, and these other reservations, there is

not a sales tax charged, and this was a case that was

won by United Indian Traders Association, and the

Warren Trading Post was owned by Babbitt Trading

Company at that time.  And that was one of the things.

The other thing, as I say, the negotiated lease, and

the leases in '55, I guess, that was one.

   And then the FTC hearings.  That took up a lot of

time.  And in other times, there was individual little

things that came up.  Oh, I know that we and the board

one time, when they came up with the endangered birds,

the feathers that could be used on kachina dolls, and

ones that couldn't be used.  That was some of the

things that we talked about, and I don't know that we

did a lot with that, but it was these type things--

whatever affected a group of traders, not just an

individual trader, but sometime if there's an

individual problem that one individual trader had that

was common, could be common to all, then the

Association would take up [the cause].  Whatever the

need for the membership, you know, arose, then the

Association, we had an attorney which actually was

Charles Tansey most of the time I was there.  And then

we would, you know, attorneys writes letters and

negotiate or whatever.  But the legal cases, our legal

case was actually the FTC one, and the Arizona sales

tax.  FTC actually wasn't a legal case, because we

didn't take it to court or anything.  But that is the

big ones that I think about, rather than any individual

problem that someone had.  Basically that's the only

big ones that I really think of.

   

   Underhill:  Was it Charles Tansey who took the case

to the Supreme Court then?

   

   Blair:  No, he was with the Navajo....  No, no, that

wouldn't have been Charles.  I really think that the

attorney on the sales tax....  See, this is really

happened just about the time I came, or I just came....

Well, '55, see, I had really been there about six,

seven years, but I don't really remember too much about

it.  I know they did it, and I don't know who the

attorney was.  I think in the records, you know, the

Trader Association records, you will probably find that

there.  And I'm not sure, but it wasn't Charles Tansey,

I don't think.

   

   Underhill:  How would you describe the workings of

the Association?  You had a board, and you've been the

president.  Did you have regular meetings, or just as

needed?

   

   Blair:  No, we usually had regular meetings, and we

always had one annual meeting.  We had a regular

meeting.  The president of the board could call special

meetings in case there was something going on that we

needed to get together and discuss.  But we did have a

regular meeting, and we always had an annual meeting.

I think most of the annual meetings were like in the

fall, sometime in September, something like that.  And

then at that time the membership actually voted for the

board, and also they voted for their president.  You

had an election at that time, and then the board was

elected.  There was staggered board, like, you know,

you'd have two going off, or three staying on--

whatever.  They were staggered.  There was always an

election every year for some board members.  And at

that time, also, there was a nomination from the floor

from the board itself who would be nominated.  A member

would be nominated to be a director, and then there

would also be nominated who would be voted as the

president.  And that's at the annual meeting--this

happened every year at annual.  And then we also

usually would have a dinner and a dance and whatever at

that social.  That was the social outlet for that

annual meeting.  And we staggered 'em.  We would go,

like, from Flagstaff one year, to Gallup, and then to

Farmington.  Those were the three places.  We rotated

around and had those meetings at one of those towns,

depending on whose turn it was.

   

   Underhill:  Would you describe it as a fairly

cohesive group with common goals?  Or were there

dissenting opinions about what the Association should

be doing?

   

   Blair:  Well, I really think we all had about common

goals.  But, you know, anytime you get a committee

bigger than three, someone's always doesn't agree with

what-all you're doin', or "you should be doin' this."

But, you know, you had a certain amount of this.  Some

people kinda disagreed with whether or not we should

spend the money to have drinks at the socials.  But,

you know, I'm [not] so sure that I wasn't one of those

(laughter) arguing against that.  But that was a

question to come up annually.  (laughter)  But we

always had drinks at the meetings and socials.

(laughter)

   Underhill:  Within the Association, how were some of

the bigger trading companies like Babbitt Brothers

viewed?

   

   Blair:  I saw that question on your list, and I

really don't....  There was a lot of traders' families,

like Roscoe McGee and Jewel and them--they owned four

or five tradin' posts themselves.  Springer, Harold and

they had a group that owned three or four tradin'

posts.  I don't think they were viewed any other way,

particularly the Babbitts.  See, but one thing you have

to realize about the Babbitt family, by the time I got

there, there was no Babbitts that run a tradin' post.

They were all absentee owners, and I think just

practically every store I've ever been into, I've been

competing with a Babbitt store.  So it wasn't....  They

was just another tradin' post.  No good, bad, or

whatever--they were just another store.  It would

depend a lot on the manager.  You actually was

competing more with the individual trader.  And this

was really what made the trading post itself, was

whoever--I always said, "Well...."  I always tell the

kids, "The only thing, the difference between you and

your competitor, is who bellies up to that counter."

And that's really it.  Who made the trading posts good

or bad was the trader--whoever ran the store is what

made the good stores.  And his attitude.  And so

depending on what the larger stores, like you say, with

the Babbitt stores, there was really no difference.

Frankly, I would much rather compete with an absentee

owner than I did the owner himself.  My biggest

competitors was my brothers.  (laughter)  And we were

all associated, actually.  My brother Brad and I, had

the same partner in two different stores.  But boy, I

liked to compete with my brothers.  They was

competitors.  You know, they ran the store, and they

ran a good store.  Lots of times you get just managers.

They didn't have the same goals, they didn't have the

same interest as just a guy who owned it, or who become

a junior partner like we all did in the tradin' posts.

So it was....  Absentee owners was good for you, if you

was an owner that was competing with 'em, frankly.

   

   Underhill:  What differences, if any, exist between

traders who were actually operating on the reservation,

and those who were in the border towns?

   Blair:  I don't really know that there was a lot of

traders actually in a border town who really operated

the same way we did.  There was a few, now.  There was,

later on, like that Navajo Shopping Center in Gallup.

They basically did the same thing I did.  I think one

of the biggest things, they had an advantage over us

because they didn't have all these rules and

regulations that we had to do with.  And if they wanted

to make a capital improvement on their building, they

could do it.  They really could compete with a lot

easier, because they had a different set of rules.

They owned their own land, owned their own building,

and they actually operated a lot like we did.  They had

the pawning systems we already covered.  The off-

reservation stores were legally doin' what the State

said they could do, but they were charging twice as

much for the cash.  Annual percentage rate to them was

twice as much as what we were charging, yet we was the

ones they said, "Hey, you can't do that."  And there

wasn't very many like we were.  There is a few, but not

a lot.

   

   Underhill:  Was the United Indian Traders

Association involved in Navajo politics at all?

   Blair:  Not at all.  They really wasn't.  That's one

of the things in our lease with the--which actually

came out with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, it's a

federal lease.  We were licensed.  One of the

stipulations in there was that we would not get

involved, as an association or as a trader, in the

politics.  So neither one really was.

   

   Underhill:  How has the Navajo-Hopi land dispute

affected trading?

   

   Blair:  Well, it affected the trader that was there

in the middle, like myself.  Well, it really caused the

traders there and the Navajo people....  Like with us,

for instance, see Dinnebito, they got done with

relocating the Navajos, there's very few people there.

So we just really relocated and came over here and

abandoned the business.  Now, later on it opened up as

a small convenience store--it's operated by a Navajo

family.  But to me, there wasn't enough people left,

see, there, to do it.  So it practically, you know,

moved a lot of people off of there.  I know Cow

Springs, which was a Babbitt store, is no longer there.

I don't know whether they closed because of that, but

I'm sure it affected them.  Piñon....  But see,

Dinnebito was really right in the middle of it,

actually.  They just barely went right around us, and

then relocated everybody around it.  Some of the best

customers that we had ended up somewhere else, so it

was probably more affected [than] a lot of the other

stores were.  If they relocated the customers, then it

affected them.

   

   Cole:  Did the Association have any involvement or

opinion on the Navajo-Hopi relocation?

   Blair:  Huh.  No, not really, because it was such a

magnitude that it was something that was untouchable.

And there wasn't that many traders who was involved.

Let's see....  I asked Charles Tansey a question one

time about it, 'cause I was definitely involved, and I

said something about, "Can they really just take your

store?  Can the federal government really just

completely destroy your store and not reimburse you for

this?"  And Charles' answer was, he said, "Well, the

same federal government who rounded up all of the

Japanese-Americans and put 'em in concentration camps.

So does that answer your question?"  (laughter)

   

   Underhill:  Or as any legal counsel says, "Don't ask

your attorney something you don't want to know."

(laughter)

   

   Blair:  That's pretty good.  You didn't ask this,

but I'm gonna say it anyway.  But see, this is another--

there was a book written by Jerry Kramer [phonetic

spelling].  He's with The Arizona Republic now, and he

called the book The Second Long Walk.  You know where

the original long walk was, when they were down to

Whetistee [phonetic spelling] with Fort Sumner.  And

this really was.  As I said before, anytime the federal

government did anything to a Native American, there was

999 better ways to have done it.  This situation was

created by the federal government.  The Navajo had

nothing to do with it, the Hopi had nothing to do with

it.  It was completely created by Washing-tone, as the

Navajo calls it.  And they fool around with it, and it

just made it worse.  It is as bad a ripoff of the

Navajo consumer, the Navajo people, as the FTC hearing

was.  It did the same thing.  It was the most inhumane

thing that ever--one of the many that they have

endured--that ever happened to the Navajos as

[relocatees?].  And it was completely....  So many

different ways it could have been handled, rather than

this.  But here again, the decisions are made back

there in those asphalt jungles, talking to people who

really didn't know, didn't listen to it.  The news

media got involved.  I think one of the things that

hurt really the Navajo cause of Big Mountain--and I was

in the middle of it.  We had so many of these

militants, where they were Anglos, whatever, American

Indian Movement people.  They moved in there, and they

was really gonna save the Navajo.  But they really hurt

the cause, in my opinion.  Now, they would probably

disagree with me, but they hurt the cause of the Navajo

people.  And here again, I'm not saying the Hopis

didn't have the right to the land.  The Hopis was

basically given the land, but I don't know if you

understand.  It was set aside by President Arthur, and

he says, "We're settin' this land aside for the Hopi

Indians and any other Indians who would need to live

there."  Well, when he did it, the Navajo was already

livin' there.  That was in 1868.  So a hundred years

later they try to solve it.  Just think how many Navajo

was born and how big the population of Navajos grew

there.  So if they were gonna do that, they should have

done it a long time ago.  But I'll quit.  I could talk

all day.  (laughs)

   

   Underhill:  How would you say that traders have

influenced Native American art?  You've touched on that

in terms of showing designs to various weavers.

Anything else come to mind about ways you've influenced

art?

   

   Blair:  Well, I would just reiterate the thing.  If

you find a good weaving area where good rugs come from,

there was a trader there that influenced.  He had a

special interest in the weavin', and he also liked....

He appreciated the weaving, he appreciated what it went

into, so he tried to direct--not exactly direct it--but

encourage weavin' and other art, but weavin' is a big

thing, biggest for the Navajo, the biggest thing.  You

just tried to improve it by talkin' to the people.  And

you know the Navajos were so receptive, the weavers

were, of good traders who was interested in what they

do, because they knew that when they made it good, that

they would be better off.  They also knew that you was

gonna be better off, but they encouraged you to do it.

   I always, in my office in Dinnebito, it was a big

office like this, had a six by eight window out in

front.  And I always would hang up the rugs across this

wall, and you would see the ladies sometimes when I was

in the office, they would stand like this, looking

through, to see if their rug was on Jahi's wall.  And

then they would always come in and they would say,

they'd come up to the ladies, Sadie, Cardy, or Rose

Dan.  They'd come up and say, "Jahi, what do I make for

you now?"  They always would come up, say "give me the

picture," 'cause, see, I always passed out pictures.

Now, I wasn't the only one that did this.  But this is

what I did, and this is why we probably, until they

scattered all of those people, they became some of the

finest rug producers ever was.  And it still gets back,

the trader knew the trends.  He knew the market.  He

knew he was gonna hafta sell it, so he encouraged

colors that were complementary to the decor, ladies'

fashions, or whatever happened that would be

acceptable, depending on what the decor for that period

was.  We went through the all naturals, the golds, and

the pastels, which has really been good.  And all these

colors, and the trader encouraged this, and he knew

this.  And if you was really, as you asked me about,

when I was accepted....  Really, the trader really was

accepted, then these ladies came in and says, (in

Navajo) "What kind I make?"  And they always would ask

you, and so you'd say, "Make this one," or "Make this

one, do this."  And traders come back--you know, you

think of the Ganado red.  Okay, Ganado red is one that

Hubbell’s [phonetic spelling] pushed.  It has a red

background.  While we were at Dinnebito, Jim came up,

said, "Well, why don't we have a Dinnebito black?"--my

son Jim.  And one of the most popular rugs that we have

right now is a Dinnebito black.  People [ask for]

Dinnebito black.  You just switched the background from

red to black, or gray, or white.  See, these have

grays.  One thing at Dinnebito, "Oh, I've got to

encourage 'em to do red background."  That was before

Jim came along.  Used to, a lot of stores, you would

see only the gray background, or something like this.

So we'd keep switchin' it around, but the Dinnebito

black is becoming one that Jim pushed, so it's the

trader always changed with the times and encouraged the

weavers.  And this is why you had the good weavers.

Some traders were not involved at all.  At the

trader... Aneth Trading Company, when I went there,

Aneth was never a real big weavin' area, because the

traders were there before me, the families, they just

weren't into art.  So I was there about thirteen years,

and I finally started gettin' a little bit of good

weavers there, and there is some good weavers around

there, but not a lot.  They just weren't.  It has to be

developed by an interest and appreciation by the

trader--somewhere.  Now, if he isn't on the reservation

anymore, Jahi's in Page, Arizona; or the Foutzs are in

Shiprock; or Burnhams are down at Newlands or something

like that.  But somewhere, there's a trader family that

is... appreciates and encouraging this.

   Underhill:  How did improvement in transportation

affect trade? and since there were more vehicles on the

reservation.

   

   Blair:  Well, by this time, you know, this is one of

the big changes that you had to do.  And a lot of the

traders changed, some of the traders didn't change.

Guys like a lot of us saw, "Hey, you can't just sit

here in a room that is twenty by thirty or forty,

behind the counter, and satisfy the needs of all these

customers."  So then you had to change, you had to make

a larger store or trade area with a large inventory

with a larger selection of goods.  So transportation

did that.  In order to keep your customer tradin' with

you, you had to be competitive with off-reservation

stores and your shoppin' centers that came in--or

actually off-reservation mostly.  And this is where the

biggest change was, and that's the biggest effect that

they had, is when....  If you didn't change, you sit

there and run just a small pop and mom operation, which

actually, originally, they were all kind of pop and mom

operations.  But as the need grew, as the change came

on, in order to be successful, you had to change with

the times.  And I think this is what made, again, the

good trader, the progressive trader.  And to try to

hold his customers, he had to have what they needed, in

a bigger store.

   

   Underhill:  How has the Thriftway syndrome impacted

trading?

   

   Blair:  Well, you have to realize that Thriftway

came into effect because the traders were actually

forced, because of the new regulations governing them,

to sell out or just close up and leave.  So there is

really no comparison between Thriftway and the traders,

because they're doin' exactly 180o opposite of what you

did.  Thriftway is a type that, you know, it's a

convenience store.  You buy the merchandise, you put it

on the shelf, and you put a girl up at the checkout

stand, and then they buy it, and you add it up and take

their money.  There's none of the service that is

involved with the traders.  You know, they don't do the

pawn, the credit--strictly cash and carry.  So when all

the things I've said about what the trader did--see,

these people done none of this.  All they are is just

there--gas, pop, chips, a little groceries, and stuff

like that.  So they had none of the buckskins or the

baskets for any ceremonial purposes.  They served none

of these purposes that the trader fulfilled to all the

needs of all the customers in that particular area

around there.  So the Thriftway is a cash and carry

convenience store.  That doesn't even compare to the

service that the trader gives.  Although, it was better

than nothin' when the traders all left.  At least they

took up some of the slack.  At least they could buy--

rather than drivin' seventy-five miles to get a loaf of

bread, they could go down here and get a loaf of bread

a little bit closer, if they had the money to pay for

it.  At least they do serve a purpose, now that the

traders are gone.  See, the trader isn't gonna go back

there.  This'll never happen again.  So the Thriftway,

there needs to be a store there.  At least it takes--

they can get some things, staples that they need.  And

the Thriftway store, as far as I'm concerned, was

priced comparably to what the tradin' post charged--

they still are.  Their mark-up is about what ours was.

The only difference is, you pay for it--you didn't

trade your lamb or whatever.

   

   Underhill:  What was the standard mark-up for most

items?

   

   Blair:  Well, I don't really know that you could

really....  You know, there was so many different

things that you marked up, so you really couldn't say,

"Well, this...."  Every manager that I ever hired in my

life always said, "Well, give me a mark-up, a

percentage of mark-up."  Well, if you run a business,

Karen, you can't do that.  Every item has its own

acceptable mark-up in the marketplace, so you have to

determine that on each item as you go through there.

   

   Underhill:  You've described what you have now here

in Page at Dinnebito Trading Company as a gallery.

Where do you see the future of trading companies?

   Blair:  Well, to me, the future of trading--the

trading has already gone.  Okay?  See, there's no

future as a trader, what we have been talkin' about all

day.  This is the next era.  You know, I said the

trading, actually it's the end of an era.  What we've

talked about all day is actually an end of an era of

the general merchandise, a service-oriented trading

post.  But then you have the tradin' families, like

myself.  And there's quite a few of 'em.  There's some

of 'em still even out there on the reservation that do

a little bit of the convenience store--Hank, for

instance, he does a convenience store, also arts and

crafts.  You know, kind of a combination.  But he

doesn't do all this other trade.  But then you have

families like me who have good rapport and acceptance

with the Navajo people.  And we love what we're doin'.

See, we do this because we like it, and because we can

still do it.  And we also know that there is a demand

for Indian art.  And we like it, so then we come to do

a gallery.  We also have the pawn shop off the

reservation.  We mentioned pawn on the reservation, all

the regulations for it.  I'd just like to mention,

explain why a trader comes off the reservation if he

does pawn.  See, the reason he's doin' pawn, see, he's

still servicin' his customers.  See, the Navajo, Native

American, particularly Navajo, see, he cannot go to

conventional financial institutions and borrow money.

He has no collateral, he doesn't have anything....  If

he has a pickup, his equity in it is already gone.  You

know, he can't borrow anything against this again.

Now, they do, some pawn shops hock, you know, trailers

and stuff like that.  But basically, the Navajo cannot,

through conventional financial institutions, cannot

borrow money.  Now, the bankers take offense to me.  I

did a talk to the Rotarian ladies here one time, and I

said that, and the banker was there.  He jumps and

says, "Oh, yeah, we do!"  Well, he may do less than one-

hundredth of one percent deals with the Native

Americans.  So they come to us to pawn to get money to

pay car payments or buy food or whatever, because they

cannot get money anywhere else.  That's why you have

hundreds of pawn shops on border towns around the

reservation.  We do it because anytime there's a need

for a business, some entrepreneur will come in and put

it in.  Well, us traders, that's what we are.  We know

the business is there, we know that they need this,

there's no place they can get it, so that's why we do

the pawn shop.

   Another thing about the pawn shop does, it attracts

all these artisans now in this gallery here, the people

we want to deal with.  We want to draw the artisan in

to us.  I have been all over the reservation, five or

six different locations, so many people know me, so we

get lots of artisans anyway.  But the pawn shop still

services the people.  I had a lady here just recently

come in and she says in Navajo, "Thank you, Jahi, for

comin' and takin' care of us, because without you, we

would never have any money."  That is what so many of

them say, and so many people think.  So pawn shops has

historically been looked at as kind of a sleazy

operation.  I mean, this is, we know this, but to the

Native American, it is a service that they have to

have.  And we do it because we're still servicin'.  The

gallery is part of it, and I think people who, families

who appreciate and want to deal with Native

Americans....  See, like I told someone one time, I

said....  He said, "What are you doin' out there?  What

do you do that for?"  I said, "Hey, guy, I could make a

livin' somewhere else.  I like what I'm doin'."

   I went to Australia one time, and I told the travel

agency, I said, "I want to go to the Outback in

Australia."  He said, "What do you want to do that

for?!  It's just like West Texas."  I said, "Hey, guy,

I spent forty years on the Navajo Reservation 'cause I

liked it.  It was my choice to be there, so I want to

go to the Outback."

   

   Underhill:  What are you most proud of in your

career as a trader?

   

   Blair:  Hm.  I knew you was gonna ask that.  Oh....

I don't know, it's maybe the acceptance, the rapport

that you had with the people.  I think Bruce said the

Navajo made us feel ten foot tall.  We were so

accepted.  We were, if you was a good trader, the

Navajo--and that's a lot of it, I think--we were good

guys.  My mom always said, "Hey, you gotta go be

somebody."  Well, I think we were, we did become

somebody.  To the Navajo people, see, we were somebody.

We were.  I guess to bein' accepted and to bein'

dealin' with them and living in another culture, I

think it was so broadening to live in another culture.

I think everyone should live in another culture.  And I

can get philosophical here if you want me to, but I

really--when you live in another culture--and I think I

lived in a culture in Eastern Kentucky, and now I came

out and I've been in a Western one.  Now I ended up in

the Navajo culture.  And it is so broadening to

realize....  See, there's no one has all the answers.

You know, everybody comes out in the Native American

culture.  They go to BIA schools, or they go to the

missionary  and we practice paternalism on 'em, tell

'em how they gotta be like the white man.  Well, it

makes it realize we don't, we have no crystal ball, we

don't have a red phone on the desk that goes upstairs

and tells how things are, you know, particularly from

the mystical standpoint or whatever.  And it makes you

realize, it's a little humblin' to realize that you,

that no one has all the answers.  It just....  I think

it is very broadening.  I think it was for my children.

You know, you just had so much to learn, just from

observin' that there's another world, another world.

The Navajo culture made you realize, "Hey, we have our

culture, we have our religion, like Christianity, and

they have their Navajo religion."  Then think of all

the Islamic or all the other religions in the world,

and who can say "we're absolute"?  And that's what I

think people have done to the Native Americans, and I

think this makes me realize there's no absolutes,

there's no one knows, and it's great to--they taught

you this.

   

   Underhill:  And what did you teach in return?

   

   Blair:  Ha!  Gosh.  Well, I taught 'em how to do a

rug.  (laughter)  I didn't teach 'em how to do the rug,

I really taught, oh....  I guess I encouraged them how

to make a rug that would be acceptable to the market, I

guess, to market their products.  I hope that I taught

them that every white man in the world wasn't alike.  I

don't really know what--I guess you'll have to ask the

Navajo what I taught.  I don't really know.  I hope

that I made 'em realize that there was different

people, individuals.

   

   Underhill:  Your children grew u