RUSSELL FOUTZ INTERVIEW

   

   

   [BEGIN SIDE 1]

   

   This is Brad Cole from Northern Arizona University.

We're with Russell Foutz in Scottsdale, Arizona, at his

store called Russell Foutz's Indian Room.  And we're

going to interview Mr. Foutz about his days as an

Indian Trader, and this is part of the United Indian

Traders Association Oral History Project.  Also present

in the room are Ed Foutz, and Lew Steiger, who is

running the audio and camera.

   

   Cole:  Russell, if we could start out, you could

tell us when and where you were born.

   

   R. Foutz:  My folks was runnin' the Teec Nos Pos

Trading Post when I was born.  I guess they brought

Mother in about a few days before, and I was born in

Kirtland, New Mexico.  Our family's been in the trading

post business and the ranching business practically all

their lives.

   I understand this interview is about the history of

the Traders Association.  The Traders Association, as

far as I can remember, was in existence about all the

time I was a trader, which is quite a while.  I started

out in this, working for my dad in a store that was

called Progressive Mercantile Company.  That was a

little wholesale supply store at Kirtland, New Mexico.

They furnished financial backing and merchandise to

quite a few of the stores on that part of the

reservation.  I think at one time there was probably

about twenty-two or something.  They was four partners

involved in this.  All of 'em were ex Indian traders.

There was Burt Dustin, his brother, Shel Dustin, and my

dad, who the Indians called ‘Ashkii biwoo’ bitsilí.

His brother was one of the founders of this business.

He was known as "the man with the big teeth," ‘Ashkii

biwoo’, and so naturally my dad went as "the brother of

the man with the big teeth."  The Indians would have a

name for practically every trader that come on the

reservation--they would attach a name to him.  Like one

of the old traders was Shash yázhí, and that was

Tanner.  He was built like a little bear, so they

called him "Little Bear."

   

   Cole:  What was Tanner's first name, do you know?

   

   R. Foutz:  Joe Tanner--the old man Joe Tanner.  He

was married to one of my dad's sisters.  The other

partner, he did a lot of this.  Burt Dustin did a lot

of freighting and hauling merchandise to these stores.

And they named him.  He had a real nice team of horses

they freighted with, so they named him ºíí’ bidziilii,

"the man with the big horses, with the strong horses."

The other partner was Willard Stolworthy who was

married to one of Joe Tanner's daughters, so he was

known as Shash yázhí biye’.  He was the son-in-law of

him.  So it was a fairly [small] Mormon community in

those days, and I started out working there, helping to

buy the rugs and keeping the dry goods straightened up.

I was, in those days, when we started out, we was

buying these Navajo rugs by the pound.  I would set

them out and put them in the different stacks.  I

think, as I remember, they went from about 75¢ to $4.50

a pound.  And then they would weigh them out, and there

would be a few special rugs that would be bought by the

piece.  I would get one of the--either Dad or one of

'em--to help put a price on one of those.  One of the

stores was at Crystal, and Chee Dodge had died and

there was one of the daughters that had some of his

things, and one of his rugs, [a buy it a dress?] or

something would come through every once in a while from

his.  So the rugs in those days run from a dollar a

pound saddle blanket up to--a real high-priced rug, if

it went to be a hundred dollars, it was right special.

   The best rugs of the area was made at either Two

Grey Hills, Teec Nos Pos was a two grade see, the rugs

mostly came from--the better rugs came from.  But all

of them did some part of the weaving.  So that's how a

lot of these stores got started.  I know that I can

recall that Red Mesa was bought from Bob Martin, a

Navajo fan.  And Roscoe McGee's uncle, who was a

partner in this store--Willard Stolworthy set him up

and sold him an interest in that store.  He also set

Jewel McGee up, helped set him up at Red Rock.  There

was an older brother that died, a Melvin McGee.  He had

a little store called Bitterwater.  They made nice red

rugs out there too.

   My first memories of the Traders Association....

   

   E. Foutz:  Russ, can I just interject something?

   

   Foutz:  Yeah.

   

   E. Foutz:  Before you leave Progressive Merc, they

had an unusual working agreement, the four partners.

   

   R. Foutz:  Uh-huh.

   

   E. Foutz:  Did they all work there at one time?

   

   R. Foutz:  No, they would two work for six months,

and then the other two would work for six months.

There would be Dad and Shel Dustin would work for six

months, and then Willard Stolworthy and Burt Dustin

would work for six months.

   

   Cole:  Why did they split the time?

   

   R. Foutz:  Well, I guess there wasn't enough work

for them.  They had other interests.  They had either

ranches or something to look after, or interest in

other stores to look after.  That just seemed to be the

arrangement that they did, and it lasted for the entire

time from the early 1900s 'til they sold out in, I

believe, the forties.

   

   Cole:  Do you remember who they sold out to?

   

   R. Foutz:  They sold out to Charles Ilfeld, and they

took interest in the store at the Ilfeld Partner Merc

Company in Farmington.  And Ilfeld had one large store

in Gallup, and they had a branch store in Farmington,

and that's who they sold out to.  But they took an

interest in that.

   In those days, all the sheep from that area was

brought to Farmington and shipped out on a narrow gauge

railroad track.  And there must have been, they'd

probably been close to 100,000 head of sheep that would

come through there and be shipped out from Farmington.

And they would go to Alamosa, Colorado, and then they'd

be unloaded and transferred onto a broad gauge.

   In the fall of the year it's quite cold.  I remember

one story they tell about these Indians coming in.

That was before alcohol was legal, but they would get

hold of wine when they got to town.  And it was cold

this night that they were shipping these sheep.  And I

guess two of the herders had got in the railroad car

and passed out, and they went to Alamosa with the

sheep.  They said when the gate was opened to unload

the sheep at Alamosa, these two herders was the first

ones out, so they tried to get them back there.  Then

they had to be....

   When I was about the last year in high school, there

was a man from Armour Packing Company come to New

Mexico--wanted to buy Navajo lambs.  They had heard

that they was real thrifty and progressive, so they was

signed up with Ilfeld Company, and Kelly there was

agreeing, and they would feel free to buy for anybody

else.  But they said that I knew most of the traders

and that I would be willing to help them.  That was my

first experience in the sheep business.  I think we

bought close to 50,000 head of sheep that year for

Armour Packing Company.  I think I received a

commission of 10¢ a head for buying them, so that was a

lot of money in those days.

   But right after that, the livestock began to dwindle

on the reservation, and they call it the "John Collier

days," when he brought in his sheep reduction program.

It brought a lot of uprising on the reservation.

Before that, some of the families had probably over a

thousand head of livestock.  And they were making them

slaughter their goats and their sheep, making them buy

'em.

   I remember that was my brother who was one of the

early members of the Traders Association, [Edwin Luff

Foutz?] was out at Teec Nos Pos right about that time.

And maybe he had just died right before that.  He died

at Teec Nos Pos.  There was an epidemic of meningitis

going around, and they didn't feel that they could

close the store, that that was the only source the

Indians had of getting merchandise, or getting help, or

getting any word to the hospitals or anything.  But

even though he run the store with the no stove in it,

and the windows and doors open, he still contracted

meningitis and died.

   

   Cole:  Do you remember what year that was?

   

   R. Foutz:  I don't remember exactly what year he

died.  What year....

   

   E. Foutz:  It was 1939.

   

   R. Foutz:  At that time, Kenneth Washburn was his

right-hand man that was helpin' him out there.  There

was an Indian by the name of--what the Indians had got

together and they was gonna lynch the range rider--or

the district superintendent he was, I guess.  Rudy

Swivel [phonetic spelling].  I guess he's from the

district superintendent.

   

   Cole:  What was his last name?

   

   R. Foutz:  Rudy Swivel.  And they took he and his

wife, and they was tied up in a hogan, never--but

released.  They weren't hurt, but they kept 'em for

several days there.  They said that a Navajo by the

name of Earl Saltwater come by and told Ken Washburn

that he'd better send his wife and kids to town, and

that he had to cut the telephone lines.  So Ken sent

his wife and kids to town, and Earl cut the telephone

lines.  So they had no way of getting word to the

police at Shiprock or anything that this riot was going

on.  It had gone on for about a day or a day-and-a-

half, when they got somebody sent to a nearby trading

post, Beclabito, where they could get word to Shiprock

to send the police out to settle it up.  And some of

the--I know the people that went to jail--they were

some of the finest Indians we have.  But they believed

that they was having their liberty taken away from

them, and they had to protect it.

   So after my brother died--he had a half-interest in

the store, and the other half belonged to Willard and

my dad.  They bought the interest from her, and that's

when I first got my interest.  I got my fourth-interest

of [Luffs?] and the other fourth of it went to the man

he had out there running it, Kenneth Washburn, who

stayed up and run the store.

   The Association, the first time I can remember about

the accomplishments of the Association, was when they

first tried to establish sales tax to the Indians on

it.  I know Jack Klein [phonetic spelling], who could

have been the president of the Association at that

time--I don't know for sure.  But I know he and Luff

Foutz and Ralph Bilby, who was in charge of both of the

Babbitt stores, they was the instigators of getting the

help of....  Who was the congressman?  Dale Rhodes

[phonetic spelling] I guess it was.  Rhodes, they was

getting his help.  And they got an attorney from Provo.

This attorney had got a tribal settlement from the

Utes, and so they hired him.  And the Traders

Association gathered money enough to hire him, and they

took this to the Supreme Court, and it was proven in

their favor that there was so much regulations of the

federal government and the Bureau of Indian Affairs and

the tribes, that there was no room for any state

regulations on the reservation to any of the Indians.

So they didn't have to pay on the tax.  That was one of

the big accomplishments of the Traders [Association]

that I can remember.

   

   Cole:  Do you remember about what year that might

have been?

   

   R. Foutz:  Oh, gosh, I can't remember what year that

was.  You can research it and see what year that was

passed, that went there, but I don't remember about

what year that would have been.

   

   E. Foutz:  Boy, that was before me, Russell.  I know

that lawyer you spoke of from Utah was Ernest

Wilkinson, that later became president of BYU, Brigham

Young University.

   

   R. Foutz:  I don't even remember when Rhodes was in.

I don't remember what years Rhodes was _____________.

   

   E. Foutz:  Wouldn't it be in the forties?  Or

earlier?

   

   R. Foutz:  I think it's earlier.  I think it was

before _________.

   

   E. Foutz:  Dad was involved with that?

   

   R. Foutz:  I think it was probably before the

forties, because I got out of the service in the

forties, 'cause the first store I ever owned all by

myself, without a partner, was a store called Coyote

Canyon, which was right out of Gallup.  And I know I

hired this Ardith Pennielson [phonetic spelling] to run

it, and made an agreement that where he could buy it if

he wanted to.  But when I was in the service, the rumor

was going around that the tribe was buying all the

stores, and they were gonna run them themselves.  He

was offered a job at Babbitt's, and he took that, and

then Coyote Canyon was sold.  That store was sold in

the thirties, so I imagine this was before the

thirties, that that was taking place.

   

   Steiger:  I just wanted to clarify.  When those guys

took that trading post over, the Navajos--that was over

the stock reduction?

   

   R. Foutz:  They didn't take the trading post, they

took the government ...

   

   E. Foutz:  ... representative, the Bureau of Indian

Affairs ...

   

   Steiger:  ... who was the one who was sayin', "We're

gonna have to take back _________."

   R. Foutz:  He's the one that was gonna take out

Lynch.  They had he and his wife both _____________.

That was over the stock reduction, yes.  That was over

the stock reduction.

   

   Cole:  Was there any kind of procedure?  How was the

stock reduction implemented, and how did they

actually....

   

   R. Foutz:  They just told these people that they had

to get rid of that many sheep, that they was gonna

slaughter 'em, buy 'em at a certain price, that they

had to get rid of a certain amount of sheep, goats, and

horses.  They was so extreme about it, that the herds

went down, some of 'em went down so far that some of us

traders brought in sheep and let them buy them back,

and we brought in bucks and stuff.  It was like any

other program, it goes to the excess when it was in

there.  And a lot of the Indians shifted from sheep to

cows, where it didn't take a herder....  'Cause that

was a custom among the Navajos, that they would keep

one of the children home, and wouldn't go to school.

He would be the sheepherder.  The one they kept home,

sometimes you'd only see that one, ____________, you'd

only see them once a year when the sheep come to town.

I mean, they was very uneducated.  Some of the

sheepherder girls and some of 'em that was in there was

crippled, had a broken hip.  There's several stories

about why they were, but I don't know whether any of

'em was true or not.  But they always kept one child

out of school to take care of the livestock.

   

   Steiger:  What would those stories have been?  That

they did it deliberately?

   

   R. Foutz:  Uh-huh, some of those.  Uh-huh, some of

those stories would be....

   But I had cousins that was in the early trading

business, too.  They were the Powells, and one of 'em

about my age was Francis Powell.  And about the first

Indian Traders Association I can remember going to, I

went with Francis Powell.  We went into that

Association [meeting], I can remember seein' this

grayish-haired man setting up there.  I asked him

[Francis] who what was, and he said that was Lorenzo

Hubbell.  So when he was active in the Association, I

don't know.  In those days, the active people was the

Hubbells, the Wheelers, the Bellamys, and on our side

of the reservation was the Foutz’s and the McGees on

that side.  I guess the early days, the papers of the

Association, they must have been--I understand they was

in a fire and a lot of 'em was burned up in Gallup

before the headquarters was shifted to Farmington.

   I think that that bill was one of the highlights

that the Association got through.  Another one of their

big accomplishments, besides being a liaison with the

tribe, was during the war [World War II], when silver

and everything was rationed, and they wasn't able to

get silver when the traders kind of formed, through

their organization, was able to buy silver to be

distributed to the Navajo silversmiths.  They had to

keep track of this silver and who it went to and what

store it went to.  That silver the merchandise was made

out of was marked with a number.  The stores all had a

number printed on that.  On our side of the

reservation, over on the San Juan side, we had very few

silversmiths, so that didn't affect us very much.  The

Indians over here were more into the weaving of rugs,

and the ones over on the Gallup side were more the

silversmiths.  There were some good silversmiths around

Sheep Springs and Newcombs, but there wasn't very many

right up and down the valley.

   

   Cole:  So the numbering system was mainly so the

government could track where the silver was going?

   

   R. Foutz:  So it could track where the silver went,

yeah.

   And then as the tribe and the regulations and the

government was putting more restrictions on the stores,

and the leases, the amount of time that you could have

a lease was up, the Association played a big part in

negotiating with the tribe and with the government on

leases on the reservation.  It ended up that quite a

lot of the stores got twenty-five-year leases that they

never got before.

   With the livestock gone, and all the Indians having

cars, most of the trading posts just went to the

stations with the 7-Eleven-type [convenience store]

business.  They felt that the Association had served

their purpose, and voted to abandon it, which there is

probably only about a half a dozen stores on the

reservation anymore that is, or that you could count,

of old-time trading posts.  And there just really

wasn't that much use for them.  The Association

probably had served their days.  Like a lot of the rest

of us old traders, (someone chuckles) we've served our

days, along with the Association.

   It was a good life.  We needed the Indians, and in

those days, the Indians needed us.  All of us old

timers at one time have helped bury their dead; been

their banker; been their advisor.  Most of us was

sincere, we had their interest at heart.

   I do recall one winter day that they come into Teec

Nos Pos and he wanted us to help his--Old Growler was

from up there at Sweetwater.  His son had died, and he

wanted us to come up and help bury him.  That was quite

an education for me, because I had always heard that

they was reluctant to--these women were reluctant to

dress and to have to do much with one of the ones that

was buried, that had died.  But when we went up there,

his face was painted with his war paint, and they had

made him white pants out of this white calico, and he

was all dressed for burial.  They buried him, they said

their prayers over the grave, they asked us to say a

prayer over the grave for him.  And that was all fine.

And it was cold.  About a couple of weeks later, Old

Growler, he come in the store.  He said he'd been by

the grave, and it looked like the coyotes was digging

down in that.  Did he think we ought to go out and put

him back a little deeper.  And we told him no, we

thought that that was all right, that we'd put him deep

enough, that we didn't think we needed to go back to

put him a little deeper.

   But both the old traditions of the Indians fading

away, it is good that the younger weavers are keeping

on weaving, and now I think the Indians themselves are

realizing what a part of history that amends to their

children.  And I think they are teaching their children

more of their languages and their customs than they

have in the past.

   I know it was a good life for my family, and a good

life for my folks' family.  They are wonderful people

to work with, and they're showing as they go to school

and stuff, that they are leaders, and they can compete

with anybody in this business of these days.

   

   Cole:  When did your dad get in the trading

business?

   

   R. Foutz:  Dad come from a polygamous family.  He

was born at Kanab, Utah.

   

   Cole:  Do you remember about when that was?

   

   E. Foutz:  Dad'd be about a hundred years old or

something, so when....  When he come to Kanab, when

they come in there?

   

   Cole:  Or when your dad was born.

   

   R. Foutz:  When my dad was born?  Dad was born, I

don't remember his birthday.  I don't remember it off

hand.

   

   Cole:  Somewhere in the 1890s, it sounds like.

   

   R. Foutz:  [In] 1880-something, yeah.

   

   E. Foutz:  Eighty-seven [1887], I believe, but

that's a guess.  I can get it for you this afternoon.

   

   R. Foutz:  Yeah, uh-huh.  But this was a Mormon

settlement in Tuba City.  I think he had three wives.

He had one up in the Utah area, I think.  And the

government bought out that Tuba City area where they

settled.  And of course they refused to sell their

little piece of land that they had there, and it's

still deeded land--it belongs to the Babbitt Company

now.  I remember the first time I went through there,

looking for it.  There's a little graveyard there, and

I did find the headstone, or the board of a head, where

one of dad's sisters was buried there.  He has a sister

buried there.  He was in the trading business all his

life.

   

   Cole:  When did he move over to the New Mexico area,

do you know?

   

   R. Foutz:  (long pause)  Hmmmm, in about, oh,

somewhere between 1915 and 1920, in there someplace.

There was four of 'em.  That was quite an unusual

story, 'cause there was four of 'em down there, that

Progressive.  So every time anybody wanted anything,

they would get the agency for it.  So I think one time

or other they had the Maytag agency; they was the first

one to have the Chevrolet agency that went to [Prairie

Smoke?]; they was the first one to have the Chrysler

agency.  (chuckles)  They thought they could get it

cheaper if they got the agency, so they got the agency,

I think, in there.

   Then Joe Tanner, he was....  (phone rings)  He was

one of these people that lived with the Indians, traded

with the Indians, and I think Uncle Willard, they took

care of a lot.  In fact, he was the first one that

brought any buffalo to the reservation.  He was a

friend of Chee Dodge's--he got in good with Chee Dodge.

He talked Chee Dodge into developin' the artesian well

out there the other side of Bisti, out in there.  He

thought they could farm on it.  And then he bought a

herd of buffalo.  He would take these buffalo to the

Gallup Ceremonial.  The Indians would ride some of 'em.

I think he'd kill one buffalo and maybe twenty head of

cows and sell buffalo sandwiches all during the Gallup

Ceremonial.  He was quite a character of the early days

of  the reservation.

   

   Cole:  When did your dad end up at Teec Nos Pos?

   

   R. Foutz:  Teec Nos Pos, one of the first owners of

it was Hamp Knowle [phonetic spelling].  He come out,

he had TB and he was out at Teec Nos Pos.  Dad went

there right after he was married.  And [Luff?] was the

old--Holmes Luff [phonetic spelling], now.

   

   E. Foutz:  Luff would have been--let's see, he died

in 1939.  Dad was born in 1909.

   

   R. Foutz:  In 1909.

   

   E. Foutz:  So he would be....

   

   Cole:  Eighty-nine.

   

   E. Foutz:  That'd be eighty-nine years old.

   

   R. Foutz:  So, see, he was out there when these kids

were just this tall, so he was out there in....

   

   E. Foutz:  About 1900?

   

   R. Foutz:  Uh-huh.  The first picture I see of Bob

is about three or four years old out there, feeding the

chickens, so it's about that, yeah.

   

   Cole:  So was your Dad one of the founders of

Progressive Mercantile?

   

   R. Foutz:  His brother was--Jim Foutz that went to

Salt Lake, yeah.

   

   Cole:  And then did your dad own other trading

posts?

   

   R. Foutz:  Yeah.  Let's see, the group of 'em owned

different.  They owned shares in maybe a quarter of all

those trading posts.  Then the four of 'em, I think,

bought--a very interesting story--they bought a sheep

ranch.  It was called the Gallego Sheep and Mercantile.

They bought it from an Englishman that come from

England by the name of Dick Simpson.  The story goes

that he was from a royal family there in England, and

they said if he didn't quit gambling and losing money,

they were gonna disinherit him.  So I guess he went out

and lost a lot of money and then he got on a boat and

come to America.  And he ended up out there on this

Gallego Sheep [Ranch].  It was an old....

   But I remember I went with Dad--these four people in

there bought this ranch at Gallego.  It's called the

Checkerboard area.  It's right off the reservation and

they have deeded land, homestead land, Indian

allotments, and the grazing?].  I think there was about

twelve school sections, five deeded sections, and then

some State land.  I don't know how much it was, but I

know when I came back from the service, we decided to

go from sheep to cattle.  It took about fifty miles of

five [strand] barbed wire fence just to fence it all.

That's the story of how come that I own the building

that we're setting in now.  The government condemned

this Checkerboard area where we had our ranch to put in

the Napi [phonetic spelling] Irrigation Project.  And

they bought us out--Ken Washburn, myself, and Dad still

had an interest in it at that time.  And with the money

that I got, I came to Scottsdale and bought this

property here, and the property across the street.

________________.  And then I liked Scottsdale.  The

people here, the arts and crafts _________, they bought

lots of high-priced Indian rugs.  Mrs. McCormick, and

Mrs. Wrigley, they were both collectors of it, of

Indian arts and crafts--Mrs. McCormick, especially was.

She had hogans built for them to live in, and had a

place for them to sell their merchandise, and she was a

big collector of it.

   About this time of year, about February, fat sheep

was very hard to come [by] on the reservation.  And

this was a driveway where the Basque would drive their

sheep from the mesa up to Flagstaff, and they would

stop here on the canal and shear the sheep.  I would

set on a wool bag, and I would buy the dry fat sheep

from them, and truck them back to the reservation for

meat for the reservation.  That's where a good supply

of their winter meat come from, the mutton, because

that's their main source of food, is mutton.

   

   Cole:  About when was that, do you remember?

   

   R. Foutz:  Oh, that was about the late forties.

   

   Cole:  I'm not sure I got this down, but what were

your Mom and Dad's names?

   

   R. Foutz:  His was Alma Luff Foutz, and hers was

Harriet Dustin Foutz.

   

   Cole:  And your dad had how many brothers then?

   

   R. Foutz:  I think there was eleven in the family.

   

   E. Foutz:  Thirteen.

   

   R. Foutz:  Thirteen in the family, but there's only

about....

   

   E. Foutz:  Two died early.

   

   R. Foutz:  Two died early, yeah.  Two or three died--

Don, the baby, I think.  June was the oldest.  They

were all traders, I guess.  June, Dad, Elmer, and Hugh--

that's it.  That was all of 'em, yeah.  And the

sisters, a lot of 'em were married to traders, too.

   

   Cole:  Well, you said you were born at Teec Nos Pos.

Did you then move to grow up in Kirtland then?

   

   R. Foutz:  We grew up in Kirtland, yeah, 'cause

after Dad got his start there at Teec Nos Pos--I don't

remember whether it was Shell or Willard's turn to go

out there--but we moved into there, and Dad went into

the running of the Progressive, yeah.

   

   Cole:  When did you first, yourself, start working

in a trading post, do you remember?

   

   R. Foutz:  When I was in high school, in the summers

I would go to Teec Nos Pos and relieve Luff or whoever

was there, where they could go on vacation.  Then they

would be gone for ten days.  Then I'd go on down to Red

Mesa, and stay at Red Mesa and relieve that trader,

where he went on vacation.  That's when I was in high

school.  I was out at the trading posts when I was in

high school.

   

   Cole:  At that time, did you think you were gonna

become a trader?

   

   R. Foutz:  I thought I'd become a trader or a

rancher, because that's all there was in those days.

The Burnhams had some nice horses that ran.  I thought

I might become a horse owner, too, which I did, but

that was....

   As for stock, these stock brokers would call me up

and say, "We have some nice stock."  I would ask them

what breed they was (Cole chuckles) and they would get

disgusted and hang up on me.  And I'd want to know what

they ate [and so on].  That was about the only stock I

ever owned, was just the livestock that you had to

feed.

   

   Cole:  What were the trading posts like when you

were in high school out there working?

   

   R. Foutz:  Well, let's see, at Teec Nos Pos, I was

out there working at Teec Nos Pos.  As we'd go into the

store, it was connected to there.  They were old rock

buildings.  I remember this first time that I was going

from the store to--here come this great big blow snake

which I got this close to, and then had to go over the

top of it.  They kept them in the wareroom to take

[care of] the mice.

   There was very few checks, maybe....  At first there

was only about one family that got a check there.

There was very little money.  We kept on the wool.

We'd sell part of it, then we kept on the wool.  Most

of the furniture was made out of coffee crates--the

Arbuckles Coffee Company.  You did your own cooking.

They had a cow.  It was quite primitive in those days,

yeah.  So it was about as primitive as you can get,

probably, in those days.  Ken Washburn, he was there.

(narrator moves away from microphone)  By the way, he

wrote poetry at night, when he was a teenager, too.

(tape turned off and on)  ... right around the fire.

That's when I was still in high school.  He would write

poetry and send it in to the Ladies Home Journal under

a woman's name--he would put a fictitious name on it.

A few pieces of his poetry was published.

   

   Cole:  Was it about that time when they had that

incident with the range riders--you were still in high

school then?, or about that time period?

   

   R. Foutz:  No, I was out of high school then.

   

   Cole:  And what exactly were the duties of a range

rider?

   

   R. Foutz:  He was to keep track of any dispute over

the Indians--who was on the right range.  He was a

government man.  And he was supposed to control the

range, to see that it wasn't overstocked and stuff.

That's what brought about this....

   

   Cole:  Do you remember--either yourself or your

father--was the range overgrazed at that time?

   

   R. Foutz:  It was overgrazed at that time, yes.  And

it was a drought year.  They had some dry years, I

know.  It put us practically out of the sheep business,

it was so dry around that year.  They did have some

real droughthy years, yeah.  And it did need reducing,

there was no question about it.  They had lots of

horses, because a lot of the Indian's wealth was

measured in the amount of livestock he had and the

amount of horses he owned.  That was his status.  And

the wild horses wasn't--they were overdoing the land

all right, yeah.

   

   Cole:  What kind of horses?  Any particular breeds?

   

   R. Foutz:  No.  They were just mostly horses,

descendants from some horses that come out of Old

Mexico.  But later on, there was some horses that was

bred pretty well.  The calvary had some good remount

horses, and some of those remount studs went to the

reservation.  But some of these over around this side

of Gallup, they raised some horses, and they raised 'em

all the time.  And there's a few remount studs got

around the valley there.

   The Indians have always raced horses.  They raced at

their squaw dances and whatever they did--one day or

one afternoon they would lead out a horse.  They would

put a shawl or a blanket out there, and one would lead

out their horse, and one would lead out the other

horse, and they would start betting and putting their

money on this blanket.  They would bet, and they've

always had a place to run horses.  When we were kids

there at Kirtland or Fruitland, we used to swim our

horses across the river and race with the Indians.

They had a track smoothed out there.  Then we'd race

against 'em, and they did the same way.  We'd put what

we had to bet on the blanket, they would put what they

had [on the blanket].

   

   Cole:  Was it money, or other things?

   

   R. Foutz:  Well, money, or watch, or whatever we

had, what we would bet with them.

   

   Cole:  How did you do?

   

   R. Foutz:  We did pretty well.  I didn't have

anything really that fast.  I didn't do so well, but

some of the others did pretty well.  They had some

mares out of a remount stud, and they did pretty well.

My little buckskin mare didn't do all that good.

   

   [END SIDE 1, BEGIN SIDE 2]

   

   E. Foutz:  Russ, there's a story that I'd like to

kind of get down, because it's of interest, and I think

it ties to one of the court cases that the United

Indian Traders Association was involved in.  Remember

when the person came out from Winslow or Holbrook to

try to close you down at Teec Nos Pos?

   

   R. Foutz:  Oh, to collect his....  Yeah, that was

from St. John's, yeah.

   

   E. Foutz:  Tell us about that.

   

   R. Foutz:  Well, that was after this ruling went

through that they had no authority on the reservation.

   

   E. Foutz:  Who had no authority?  The State?

   

   R. Foutz:  The State had no authority, or the

counties had no authority or jurisdiction.

   

   E. Foutz:  To collect taxes?

   

   R. Foutz:  To collect taxes.  So that's when I was

young and smarty, probably.  This man from St. John's

says that we didn't pay our taxes on that.  He was

gonna come out and collect enough stuff to get our

taxes.  I told him, "Fine, just come right out."  I was

just kidding him, I didn't think he would show up.  But

he did, he showed up with his siren and everything, at

the front of the store.  So I got on the phone and

called the supervisor in Shiprock--his name was Jonas--

and told him they had been out here to collect stuff

for [the money?].  And he just said, "Let me talk to

him."  And so he talked to him, he said, "Well, if you

pick up anything, we'll have the Navajo police waiting

for you here, and we'll have to confiscate that, and

we'll have to detain you too."  So he got back in his

car and went back to St. John's (chuckles) and didn't

bother me.  So that was after that court hearing that

they had, though.  But now, I think it's come that you

have to pay on your own personal stuff, but that's all

you have to pay on.

   Going back to Gallego.  When they bought that

Gallego, I told you this man.…  He went from that back

to bein' the English gentleman.  There were only two

tennis courts at that time in that country, and they

were both from Englishmen.  He'd built one there that

they played on, and then there was an Englishman that

settled at Fruitland right there next to where Gressy

was.  He built his tennis court, too, there.

   The other gentleman we're talking about, that owned

Bruce Bernard's, that this come from, I think he was a

surveyor that come to this country.  He was very much

interested in the improvement of the Navajo sheep.  So

he raised a herd of sheep of the finest stock you could

have, and he would lamb them out right back of his

trading post, and then he had a range up at Dolores

where he run them in.  And he would grade their wool

when it come in, and he would sell the Indians the

bucks and put them out to 'em.  He was the first one to

put bucks and stuff up there, to improve their sheep.

   

   Cole:  And where was his store at?

   

   R. Foutz:  His store was right there at Shiprock.

It's one of the oldest stores there.  Where Ed has his

store--that's Shiprock Trade--I don't know what year I

bought that, but that was quite a sight.  I bought

that, that was bankrupt, and it had been closed up for

almost a year, I guess.  And I bought it without going

inside.  And so when we looked in there after we bought

it--I opened the door and looked at it, and you

couldn't even see the floor for those big cockroaches

and stuff that was around that store.  (phone rings)

   This store has quite a history to it, too, the

Shiprock Trading Company.  It was run by Uncle Shel,

and Claude Powell's dad.  They run that store there.

Later, a man by the name of Will Evans bought it from

them.  And Will Evans was a painter, and he painted

yé’ii bicheii all over everything--on the tables, on

the walls, on the service station and everything.  The

Shiprock white yé’ii rug didn't come from any Navajo's

background--they're copies of Will Evans' [designs].

The Shiprock yé’ii is what he painted all over his

store.  That store was responsible for the Shiprock

yé’ii that come around there.  And the other store

above it that was Bruce Bernard's, they were

responsible for the improvement of the sheep in that

area.  He did the most for the improvement of the sheep

in that area.

   

   Cole:  So did you buy Shiprock from Evans?

   

   R. Foutz:  I bought it from Vernon Jack, I think.  I

think Evans sold it to Jack.  Did I buy it from Vernon

Jack?

   

   E. Foutz:  Was it Vernon or Sylvan?  One of the two.

   

   R. Foutz:  Vernon Jack, I bought it from Vernon

Jack.

   

   Cole:  Now, was that the first trading post you

owned on your own?

   

   R. Foutz:  Let's see....  No, the stores I have

owned, one of the first I owned on my own was during

the war that I said I owned.

   

   E. Foutz:  Coyote Canyon.

   

   R. Foutz:  Coyote Canyon.  Then the next one was my

interest in Teec Nos Pos.

   

   Cole:  How much of an interest?

   

   R. Foutz:  I started out with a fourth, and then I

was the only one that ever owned, in the history of the

store, all of it.  I ended up owning all of Teec Nos

Pos.

   

   Cole:  Did you sell that at some point, then?

   

   R. Foutz:  I’ve never sold Teec Nos Pos.  I guess my

daughter thinks she owns it now, it's in her name--so I

guess I've sold it now.  And then I bought a store

called Tosito [phonetic spelling].  That was right

close to St. Austie [phonetic spelling], and I think

that store's closed.  It was a beautiful location.  It

had an artesian well by it.  I sold _____ stores.  Then

I bought Beclabito, which is the store just close to

Teec Nos Pos there.  I bought that from Dad's brother,

Hugh Foutz.  He was a man that didn't put anything back

into his store.  It was just the old number, it had an

old two-by-twelve flooring in there, and there was

cracks in there.  And after I bought it, he said, "When

I bought this store they told me that they were pulling

out the cash register one time, and there were some

gold coins that fell down between these cracks.  I was

gonna take the floor up and look for those gold coins

some day, but I never got around to it.  But if you

ever get around to it, there's some gold coins out

there."  So right after Teec Nos Pos burned--I don't

know, that had to be a bad time--Beclabito caught on

fire and burned down.

   

   Cole:  Both of 'em?

   

   R. Foutz:  Uh-huh, both stores burnt down.  I tried

to figure out where that cash register was in those

ashes, to dig around to see if those gold coins was

really there, but I never did.  No one ever got to know

whether those gold coins was really there or not.

   

   Cole:  Did you rebuild the stores?

   

   R. Foutz:  We rebuilt the store and then I sold it

to cousins of mine that had been workin' for me at Teec

Nos Pos--Lloyd and Jay Foutz.  I sold them Beclabito.

   

   Cole:  Do you remember when the stores burned down?

   

   R. Foutz:  Oh, God, when did they?  My wife would

remember the dates.

   

   E. Foutz:  I'm not sure, Russ.

   

   R. Foutz:  It burnt down, and it burnt down all the

pawn, probably in the sixties, I think.

   

   Cole:  That's sort of interesting.  If it burned the

pawn, did that cause problems?

   

   R. Foutz:  It caused some problems.  I replaced:  I

bought beads, jewelry, and stuff from all over the

country to replace that pawn with.  I replaced all

their pawn that had burnt down.  I still have a drawer

full of old wrinkled-up pawn and stuff that was that.

   And after that store burnt down, they was starting

to build the road on there where the Teec Nos Pos store

is now.  Every time I'd stake out a place to build the

store, they'd move the road.  But before I could build

it, I had to get permission from the community to

rebuild that store there.  So these Indians, they

always liked big, long meetings, so they had to have a

big meeting to decide whether they was gonna let me

rebuild the store out there, or whether I was gonna

replace their pawn and all that--they had a meeting

about it.  So they had this meeting, and everybody got

up and talked about whether they should.  And finally

old Fred Todachini [phonetic spelling] got up and he

says, "We know all the white men cheat us.  But this

man we know.  He just cheats us a little bit.  I think

we better keep him."  This was all in Navajo.  Then he

sat down and laughed.  He thought he'd pulled [off

run?], so they all voted they would keep him, 'cause he

just cheated 'em a little bit.

   But I guess that's the only stores I ever owned.

   

   Cole:  And then Shiprock?

   

   R. Foutz:  And Shiprock, yeah.

   

   Cole:  Were there differences working in the post,

say, in Shiprock, which is a little bit of a community,

versus Teec Nos Pos or some of the others further out?

   

   R. Foutz:  Well, it was different, you had to

promote your business, and you had competition there.

That was one of the things that brought me to looking

for this fat mutton, because if you had fat mutton, you

would draw the business.  So every Saturday we had fat

mutton for sale for 19¢ a pound.  We would kill about

twenty of these fat, globby sheep, that we got over in

Arizona and sell mutton.  And we had a butcher that

drank quite a bit.  So he'd get up about four o'clock

in the morning for his nip, and he would have that

butcher shop in real good condition.  Then we had this

old man that butchered.  We had a little butcher shop

where we butchered our own.  The Indians would all come

and butcher for free so they could get the blood, the

guts, and we would throw out about twenty head of fat

ewes every Saturday.  But you had competition out to

the other stores.  You was far enough away in those

days--they didn't have cars--you had your own customers

there.  In fact, there at Teec Nos Pos, there wasn't

very many stores close.  Even some of the Indians that

lived across the river on the bluff side, over on that

side, the store owned a little boat there where they

could come across there, bring their wool across.  We

kept it tied up there at Cudei, where the Indians could

come across and trade and bring their wool back across.

   You had very little competition in your areas way

out, where Shiprock was a community and you had to

merchandise your things there.  I don't know, was the

19¢ mutton before your time?

   

   E. Foutz:  No.  I remember that.

   

   R. Foutz:  You remember the 19¢ mutton?

   

   E. Foutz:  Yes, I do.  _________.

   

   Cole:  Did you live at any of the other trading

posts?

   

   R. Foutz:  The only one I ever lived at was at Teec

Nos Pos.  I lived at the old store, and then I had a

batchy [bachelor's] quarters at _________ that I lived.

But as far as my family, I lived there.  And then I

lived at Gallego, where this sheep ranch was.  That was

the old trading post there, and that was in the

Checkerboard area.  And we had to build a new store

there, too.  When we had kids, in Gallego the washes

ran quite heavily, and there was a wash on both sides

of that store.  And when the washes run real heavy,

there was no way of getting out of that store a'tall.

So with kids, I didn't want to be stuck out there where

you couldn't get out, so we built a new store up on the

hill from there, on a school section.  Even though we

built it on school land, you got permission from the

State to build it.  The store out there was on school

land when it was taken over by the government.

   

   Cole:  Now, were you ever involved with the

Progressive Mercantile yourself?  Or was that sold

before?

   

   R. Foutz:  I was involved in that.  I was there

quite _______.  Like I said, I worked there....  They

had an upstairs to it, and what little dry goods was, I

kept the pants and the Levis and the stuff, and peddled

the robes and shawls.  I worked in the store all the

time.  I was involved in it even when I went in the

service.  I went to the service in San Francisco, and

everything was rationed.  I would go to these what they

called sweat shops of these Japanese sweat shops and

buy little overalls and stuff for Progressive and ship

'em out there.  And then I went to a saddle shop that

went out of business, and I bought some saddles and

nose bags and things like that.  Like I said, yes, I

was involved in it.  I never owned any part of it, but

I was just involved in doing it, and buying things for

it.  When I was in the service, _________.

   

   Cole:  How many stores did Progressive stock, do you

know?

   

   R. Foutz:  I don't know, there was around twenty.

   

   Cole:  Were they mainly ones that the partners

owned?

   

   R. Foutz:  Well, they would be....  Like maybe Red

Mesa, I think like Red Mesa maybe.  Maybe Roscoe would

get a fourth when he first went out there, or maybe a

third.  Maybe Shel and Willard, which is relations of

Ross, well, maybe they would have the other two-thirds.

And then after they got that paid for, they would get a

half, and they'd would eventually buy all the stores.

And then Burt Dustin, he had two sons-in-law, and he

put them in business, bought the stores at Greasewood

and put them in there.  Dad bought my [middle?]

brother, he bought, he had a brother-in-law, and my

son, that's Sheep Springs.  He would buy those and then

he turned those over there--Bob had Sheep Springs.

   Some of those stores that they didn't have interest

in, but the people who owned them lived right there at

Fruitland, and they supplied them there.  And a lot of

'em was related some way or the other, like St. Austie,

that was a Foutz, but that was Dad's half brother.  And

at Tosito, that was some relation to my mother.  They

were all related in there, one way or the other, that

owned most of these stores.

   

   E. Foutz:  Would Progressive Merc run accounts on

these other stores until wool and lamb season?  They

would actually carry these other people?

   

   R. Foutz:  They carried 'em, they paid twice a year,

yeah.  They paid the wool season, then they carried

their accounts.  And all the records of those are still

in the basement there.  Yeah, they would pay twice a

year.  They in turn borrowed the money from the bank,

Mrs. Sammons [phonetic spelling], what they didn't

have.

   

   E. Foutz:  Progressive Merc would, and the traders

would buy some.

   

   R. Foutz:  They would buy, and they financed the

stores.

   

   Cole:  Do you remember any problems like in the

thirties, during the Depression, with the economy?  Did

that affect the posts on the reservation?

   

   R. Foutz:  It affected everybody:  the traders that

had kids in college, they were cut off.  They'd go, but

it was real bad during the thirties.

   

   Cole:  I was sort of curious, too, about the

meningitis epidemic.  What effect did that have on the

Navajo also?

   

   R. Foutz:  There was quite a few of 'em died in that

area.  That was the epidemic that went through there,

yeah.  In those days I guess there wasn't very little

cure for it, I guess.

   

   Cole:  How long did that last?

   

   R. Foutz:  (sigh)  I don't know.

   

   Cole:  Do you speak Navajo, Russell?

   

   R. Foutz:  Enough to get by, yeah.  I never talked

it real fluently, but I speak, yeah.

   

   Cole:  How long did it take you to learn, or when

did you start?

   

   R. Foutz:  Oh, I learned it in high school.  I mean,

when you was out there....  I was out there by myself,

and none of 'em spoke English, so you had to speak

enough to get by.  When I'd go out there to relieve a

trader, you was the only one there, so you had to speak

enough to get by.

   

   Cole:  When you were in high school, how would you

describe the living conditions of the Navajo?

   

   R. Foutz:  In those days they all either went away

to school or they went to these boarding schools.  The

Indians, which there's a boarding--there's still some

of 'em in existence where the Indians would send their

children to a boarding school.  They'd go to Shiprock

or they had a few boarding schools around on the

different parts of the reservation.  There's one there

in Teec Nos Pos.  I would say that some of each family

went to school and some of 'em didn't.  But they didn't

go to public schools in those days.

   

   Cole:  Did they live fairly close to Teec Nos Pos?

How far would some of 'em come to the trading post, do

you know?

   

   R. Foutz:  They would come....  We always kept a

hogan for 'em to stay at night.  A lot of 'em come and

spent the night there.  They would come from, oh,

twenty-five miles.  The ones that come from way down

the other side of Cudyhi, I guess it'd be further than

that--close to Fiftymile area, they would come.  They

would bring their horses.  They would either come horse

and wagon, you always had a place for 'em, tied their

horses, a place for 'em to stay at night.  The hogan

was nearly always busy, somebody was staying there--

sometimes a couple of families would stay there at

night.

   

   Cole:  What was the economy like then when you were

in high school?

   

   R. Foutz:  The only pay days they had....  We didn't

need a lot, we always had all we could eat.  There

wasn't any....  When I was in high school the economy

was decent, they had some kind of a job.  They had

enough money that they could go to a dance on Saturday

night.  Nobody went without anything.  It was a Mormon

community and nobody went hungry in a Mormon community.

It wasn't that bad.

   

   Cole:  Did the Navajo have much cash at all then?

   

   R. Foutz:  Very little.  Like I said, at first I

don't remember why these people got a check.  There was

only one check come there for years.  They were

descendants of scouts, and these ones that got it were

both deformed.  But I think it was a check from a

family that was government scouts or something there.

At one time, there was only one family that got checks

at Teec Nos Pos in the real early days.

   

   Steiger:  The scouts--what campaign would that have

been?

   

   R. Foutz:  That would have been of the early work

for the government.  Some of their descendants might

have got money.

   

   Steiger:  Like not World War I or something like

that?

   

   R. Foutz:  No, no, no.

   

   Steiger:  Before that?

   

   R. Foutz:  That was way before that, yeah.

   

   Cole:  Did World War II have a big impact on the

reservation, do you think?

   

   R. Foutz:  I don't think so.  There were a lot of

the educated Navajos went, and most of the young people

went, but I don't think the world....  There was a

shortage of sugar and coffee, and all the rationing

that went on, but I think they fared as well, because

they raised so much of their own stuff anyway.  I don't

believe it affected them as much.

   

   Cole:  How about after the war when Navajo soldiers

came back?  Was there more cash in the economy then?

   

   R. Foutz:  There was more cash in the economy, yeah.

   

   Cole:  How did that affect the trading business, or

did it?

   

   R. Foutz:  Well, that didn't affect it as much as it

did when they got the Aid to Dependent Children and

stuff--that brought in lots of checks.

   

   Cole:  And when was that, do you know?

   

   R. Foutz:  I don't know when that first come into

effect.  I don't know, it was about....

   

   Cole:  Was that 1960s?

   

   E. Foutz:  It had to be 1960s or a little before

that.  I believe even in the fifties they started some

of those programs.

   

   R. Foutz:  And then the tribe and the government

would have work projects that would bring in quite a

bunch of money.  They'd have a project where they would

have a  bunch of women working on a project, and a

bunch of men, so they had work projects on the Indians.

   

   E. Foutz:  I think those were Roosevelt, probably.

   

   R. Foutz:  But right now the economy, I think, is

probably the best it's ever been on the reservation.

There's jobs for either on or off, I think you could

call 'em.  It's not what it should be, yes, but I think

it's the best it's ever been.

   

   Cole:  How big did the Shiprock Trading Company get

to be, as far as employees and business?  What kind of

an annual business did it do, do you remember?

   

   R. Foutz:  Well, Ed was there when it was at its

peak, so Ed could tell you that.  What was the maximum--

twelve employees, Ed?

   

   E. Foutz:  While you were there, probably twelve.  I

mean, it slowly got up to about thirty [to] thirty-

seven.  But no, we had about twelve with Joe and that,

before that expansion.  Yeah, about twelve.

   

   R. Foutz:  I think it was about twelve.

   

   E. Foutz:  I think that would be right.  A couple at

the station.

   

   R. Foutz:  And some girls working.

   

   Cole:  Do you still have a store up in that area,

Russell?

   

   R. Foutz:  No, the only ones I have is I have a

little store and a pawn shop at

   Kirtland, and then I have a store in Farmington.

That's the two stores.

   

   Cole:  When did you establish those?

   

   R. Foutz:  (sigh)  The one in Farmington, probably

in the late forties.  And I left in the late forties.

I bought E. P. Wood's store in the late forties, I

guess, when I established a store there in Farmington.

And the one in Kirtland, that was probably forty years

ago, so that was probably maybe--so what's forty years

from now?

   

   E. Foutz:  Forty years ago would be about in the

fifties.

   

   R. Foutz:  One of 'em in the forties and one in the

fifties, probably.

   

   Cole:  And when did you sell Shiprock?

   

   R. Foutz:  (sigh)  When did you buy all of Shiprock,

Ed?

   

   E. Foutz:  Oh, boy!  (laughs)  I don't know.  It

was, I think, in the early seventies, wasn't it?  Or

late sixties, early seventies?

   

   R. Foutz:  Early seventies, probably.

   

   E. Foutz:  Early seventies, I would guess.

   

   Cole:  To sort of change gears a little bit, I was

interested, you mentioned going to the Gallup

Ceremonial when the fellow had the buffalo.

   

   E. Foutz:  That was Joe Tanner.

   

   R. Foutz:  Joe Tanner.  They have a big Gallup

Ceremonial every year where all the people in it were

supposed to be Indians.  It's a rodeo.  It's kind of

like the Shiprock Ceremonial, only it was bigger than

that.  They had a yé’ii bicheii and an Indian rodeo and

all that.  It continues on.  We have one in Shiprock.

We call it the Shiprock Fair there, where they have a

ten-day yé’ii bicheii and dance and run horses and

stuff.

   

   Cole:  Do you remember the first time you went to

the Gallup Ceremonial, how old you were?

   

   R. Foutz:  No, I don't remember that.  When I first

went I was probably ten, twelve, or fourteen, something

like that.  Let's see, we had a relation that lived in

Gallup, and they had a boy about my age.  I was

probably ten or twelve when I first went there.  And

the Shiprock Fairs, I guess they've been going on ever

since we've--I don't know when they first started, but

they've always had a Shiprock Fair there too, where

they have the yé’ii bicheii.  They display their stuff.

Grandma Martin, we used to put her beads out on

display, her red beads.

   Speaking of Grandma Martin, when the government give

Fort Lewis to the school, what part of the school

education, they went through it, they made it [that]

any Navajo had free tuition to go to Fort Lewis.  And

there's a very well-known woman that we call Grandma

Martin.  She only died about four or five years ago, I

guess.  She was one of the first Indians to go to

college, and she went to that Fort Lewis School there.

And we was talkin' about her famous red beads.  She had

probably the biggest strand of red beads that there

was--had two strands--she always wore around her neck,

under her clothes.  And I was almost kiddin' her about

when she died, about I was gettin' her red beads.  Her

kids drank quite a bit.  And she said, "Yes, you're

gonna get a strand of my beads, but my kids are not

gonna get it--you're the one that's gonna get a strand

of beads."  So one day she came in there, and she

motioned for me to come in the back room.  She sat

down, and she had her red beads out.  She said, "I'm

going to give you these.  I promised you a string of my

beads.  These beads have been on the Long Walk."  You

know, whenever that....  "They were my grandmother's

beads, they've been on the Long Walk, and I want you to

have a strand of them."  And here she was in the back

room, telling me she's dying this weekend.  I said,

"You're not dying this weekend," with her little hands

trying' to get this string of red beads off.  _____

off, she gave 'em to me, and she said, "No."  I said,

"Grandma, as long as you're that--I want to furnish the

bracelets they're going to bury you with."  "Okay,

let's pick 'em out."  And I said, "Grandma, this is a

payday week, we're busy out there.  You don't have to

die this weekend, you can die some other time."  She

said, "Oh, Mr. Foutz, you say the most terrible

things!"  I said, "Put it off 'til Monday.  Come back

in and get your [bracelets]."  "Okay, I'll try."  So

the following Monday, she come in to get her bracelets

to be buried with.  She'd put it off.  She lived

another five years!  (laughter)

   

   E. Foutz: After that did she?

   

   R. Foutz:  Another five years.  I've still got the

string of beads just in my desk drawer up there.  And I

don't know who got the rest of those.  She said those

kids wasn't gonna get 'em, so I don't know whether they

did or not.

   

   E. Foutz:  I don't know if they took 'em off, or

they were buried with her.  Did Bob Martin and her

husband and her, did they run a store?  _________.  Did

they run a store in Shiprock?  Didn't they own Vaughn's

or something?  ________ one of the stores?

   

   R. Foutz:  That was Dax De Claw [phonetic spelling]

that owned Vaughn's.

   

   E. Foutz:  Okay, I thought her and Bob Martin had

started a store.  No?

   

   R. Foutz:  Don't think they ever started--the only

store that I ever knew [that was] Indian run was

Dashley's.  Dax De Claw owned the Bond Store there.

   

   E. Foutz:  The old Bond Store on the river.

   

   R. Foutz:  Right there where--who's there?, Chuck or

somebody's there?

   

   E. Foutz:  Uh-huh, Chuck.

   

   R. Foutz:  I said no--no, Dave said that.  Dax

De Claw, he was killed in--wasn't he hit over the head

or something, too?

   

   E. Foutz:  He was killed.

   

   R. Foutz:  He was killed, yeah.  I think _________.

   

   Steiger:  I think we should say just real quick what

the Long Walk was, or would people know that?

   

   R. Foutz:  That was the one where they rounded 'em

up and....

   

   ?:  [Bosque Redondo]

   

   Steiger:  Okay.  I was gonna ask about _________.

Well, actually, you can tell us, Ed.

   

   E. Foutz:  Well, the Long Walk would be when the

Indians were rounded up by Kit Carson and the calvary

and were gathered up and taken off of that reservation,

or off of that area, and taken down to the Rio Grande

to, what is it?

   

   ?:  The Bosque Redondo? [phonetic spelling].

   

   E. Foutz:  Bosque Redondo, yeah--and area.  And the

Indians remember that very, very well.  That would be

likened to the Bataan Death March to a lot of us,

because a lot of the tribe were either kidnapped or

died during that long walk.  It was in the wintertime--

I think he was referring to.

   

   (aside about tape)

   

   Cole:  I was wondering, Russell, would you ever hear

stories about the Long Walk, or about the Navajo Treaty

of 1868?  Did people talk about that?, either of those?

   

   R. Foutz:  No, she [Grandma Martin] was about the

only woman that I ever discussed it with, because she

spoke fluent English.  But anything else about it is

just what I've read.  I guess, well, you can read the

history on it, about how many of 'em died.  I guess

hundreds died on it, and hundreds died while they were

there, before they was sent back to their own land.

What was that, 1860s?

   

   R. Foutz:  I don't know, it was in the early 1800s,

I'd say.

   

   Steiger:  (aside about tape, tape turned off and on)

   

   Cole:  Russell, was it common for you to supply

jewelry and items for Native American Navajo burials?

   

   R. Foutz:  Yeah, it's real common for other Indians

and other people that know them to give things for

burial, yes.  When somebody dies, yes, it's quite

common.  They always come to the traders and say, "Will

you help with something?"  "Yes."  It's generally a

piece of jewelry or a robe or a belt or something you'd

furnish.  Even today, I still do it quite a bit.

   

   Cole:  What would you do if somebody passed away

that had pawn in your store?  Would you give that back?

   

   R. Foutz:  Some of the families do, and some of the

families don't.  Some of the families take it out.  And

the ones that don't take it, it's probably still

around.  Like this pawn that's hanging in there, that I

still own, of Fred Todachini's.  A lot of those Indians

at Teec Nos Pos that have died, the kids didn't take it

out.  A lot of that pawned jewelry I still own.  But

you always give the kids a chance to take it out if

they want their family's jewelry.

   But these beads, this red coral, it had to come up

with the early Spaniards, and it's kind of like a

family tree.  When one dies, they take some of it and

bury it with them.  And the others, they keep on and

build and put it on.  And you take one of these old

strings of red beads, and you can go through and count

about five generations on that one strand of beads,

that they do that.

   And then when the coral--that was their most

precious stone, and their most precious thing they

owned.  If you had the red beads, it didn't matter how

much you pawned 'em for, if they were good red beads,

they were gonna take those red beads out of pawn.  They

was valuable.

   And then, there for quite a long period, there was

no coral that was around the reservation, that went on

the market.  It was just this real old coral that come

from up, probably old timers from Old Mexico.  So I was

down here one year, and I ran into a teacher and

someone by the name of Mrs. Stavasanio [phonetic

spelling], and they was from Italy, and she was doing

something over there.  They had some coral like you see

these Indians wear, and she had some drilled.  It was a

big coral, and she had drilled this coral.  (aside

about locking door)  She had brought this coral over,

and she had drilled this coral across.  They wanted to

know if I would buy it, that she heard the Indians

liked coral.  I said, "No, but if you would take that

back and get them to drill it lengthwise and bring it

over, you could sell all the coral that you could have

made."  And she went back and started to have them

doing that, and bringing it over here and selling it.

And about ten years ago, or six--no, less than that--

six years ago, I guess she died, and I got a letter

from her.  She's saying--thanking me for putting in

that _____, that that had supplied them with a living

for the last forty-five years.  And her husband had

died and she was selling the last of her coral.  I

still have some of that original coral that they sent

back over there, that they drilled this way.  So that

red coral we're talking about, is either a couple of

hundred years old and it come up with the early

Spaniards, or it's coral that has been imported in the

last sixty-five years.  So it's either a couple of

hundred years old, or only sixty-five or seventy years

old.  But that is their most valuable possession of a

family, is their string of red beads.

   

   Cole:  What other influences have you had on arts

and crafts that you can remember?

   

   R. Foutz:  Well, after the war, they always

[skinded?] their own wool and stuff, and after the war,

they had these Shamiah [phonetic spelling] rugs.  And I

come across a--I had a beautiful Germantown rug that I

exhibited at the Gallup Ceremonial, and somebody

bought.  And some woman come up to me and she says, "I

know who wove that rug," and she named the man that had

wove it.  I always admired his rug.  And these

Germantown rugs, they sold for in demand and they

brought lots of money.  So I went to Shamiah and I saw

these Shamiah people weaving these rugs out in Shamiah.

So I got the address of these people that was where

they got their four-ply yarn from.  And I ordered the

four-ply yarn and brought it, stocked it, to Teec Nos

Pos.  And I had some rugs wove out of it.  Then I even

had one of the weavers split it, this German[town

yarn], and weave it into one-ply.  The one-ply that

they--and I couldn't tell the difference, and so I

didn't think the experts could tell the difference.  So

I had one of the better weavers weave one of the rugs

out of the commercial one-ply, and put it in the Gallup

Ceremonial.  And I just put it in the Gallup

Ceremonial--"I don't know what category this rug should

go in.  You can put it whatever category that it goes

in."  So they put it in the category of the hand-spun

Navajo weavings and give it the blue prize of hand-ply

weaves.  Well, I knew the judge quite well…. And not

only that, it got the Indian Traders Association prize.

I said, "[judge], it was bad enough that you put a blue

ribbon as homespun on a factory-made rug, but it was

even worse when you gave the Traders Association prize

money on it."  I took the ribbon off of it….  I had a

lot of fun out of it.  So I thought, "Well, if the

judges can't even tell the difference in these rugs,

and these old rugs are worth a lot of money, why

wouldn't the new rugs be worth just as much money as

the old ones whether they were commercial or not?"  So

whether it was a good thing or a bad thing, but it's

the only thing, but I introduced the commercial four-

ply wool on the reservation that all the rugs are made

out of now, except maybe one percent maybe.

   

   E. Foutz:  I think it really helped a lot of your

poor weavers become better weavers and get more money

for their rugs, because they could control the coloring

and their consistency of weave a lot better.  I think

it was really--I would say this, it helped a lot of

families make a lot more money on the reservation.

   

   R. Foutz:  Do you remember Clay Lockett?

   

   E. Foutz:  Oh, yes! very well.

   

   R. Foutz:  He drank quite a bit and he cussed quite

a bit.  He cussed me quite a bit for doing that, but it

was all in fun.

   

   Cole:  Why was he such an expert on rugs?

   

   R. Foutz:  'Cause his mother left him a lot of

money, I guess, I don't know.  (laughs)

   

   E. Foutz:  Clay had studied, and he (R. Foutz:

Yeah, he wrote a lot of books.) _______ authority and

he had a shop at that time in Tucson.  Wasn't that back

in ________ when he had that shop in Tucson?  And he

was looked on, and he had done some studying.  He was

one that liked to do it, and he was the kind of person

that they sought after.  Russ, you also did--I think in

learning from you, I watched you.  Tell us a little

about some of your rug contests that you ran, and the

extremely good jewelry that you give.

   

   R. Foutz:  Yeah, we did give rug contests, and then

we would have the tribal authorities judge these rugs

every year.  There at the early days of Teec Nos Pos,

they would just string over the sheep fence all the way

around.  We would give to these weavers, I would give

the real good jewelry for different prizes.  It turned

out to be in those days it was good jewelry--it was

jewelry that could be passed down, so that a lot of the

good jewelry was given up there.  So that was a big

influence on helping them to weave good patterns and

encourage their weaving.

   And then there was one real talented boy.  Most of

the Teec Nos Pos weavers, they all have their own

designs _____________.  But there was one, we called

him "Little Indian," that he always drew on a piece of

wrapping paper the design for his wife's rug, and they

followed that.  I thought, well, the man can do that,

too.  So then there was one of the good weaver's sons,

on a tablet he was doing that.  So we'd get him to draw

rug designs.  He'd draw 'em on a paper....

   

   [END SIDE 3, BEGIN SIDE 4]

   

   ... and he says when he was up at Teec Nos Pos, he

sold bayeta cloth.  He says it come in a bolt.  He says

it just looks like red outing flannel.

   

   Cole:  Really?

   

   R. Foutz:  Uh-huh, he says that he would sell that.

He imported it from England.

   

   E. Foutz:  [Well, my loss?]

   

   R. Foutz:  And he sold it.  He said it was on a

bolt, looked like white outing flannel.  And since

that, I notice in that medicine man kit that's in our

back room where there's supposed to be some bayeta

cloth, you get to lookin' at it close, when it's torn

up, it looks like a piece of red outing flannel.

   

   Cole:  Interesting.

   

   Steiger:  (aside about tape)

   

   Cole:  This is Brad Cole from Northern Arizona

University, we're with Russell Foutz in Scottsdale,

Arizona.  It's April 3, [1998].  Also present in the

room are Ed Foutz and Lew Steiger, and this is Tape #3.

   Russell, you were telling us about the fellow at

Teec Nos Pos who made the drawings for patterns and

sold 'em there.  Maybe tell us about that.

   

   R. Foutz:  Yeah, there's this....  The women at Teec

Nos Pos, those rugs are famous for their patterns and

their outline patterns.  If one family uses it, the

other family's not supposed to.  And there was a real

talented boy by the name of--his name at first was

Harry.  His mother was one of the better weavers out

there, and he was always drawing the patterns for these

rugs.  And so he would draw them on sheets of paper.

He'd put 'em in our candy case and we'd let him sell

'em for 50¢ a piece.  Some of the real good patterns

from Teec Nos Pos ________ come from the weaver was

probably a pattern that this young boy designed.  And

one of the most famous Teec Nos Pos weavers is Little

Indian.  This little man would come to the store all

the time, riding his mule, and her rugs are the most

collectable of any of the Teec Nos Poses.  And her

designs were drawn by her husband.  So the men did play

an important part in some of the designs of the rugs

today that's on the market.

   

   Cole:  What would you do to encourage kids that were

learning to weave?  Was there anything there?  Did you

buy their rugs?

   

   R. Foutz:  We'd always buy their rugs and put their

ages on 'em.  And we used to exhibit rugs with the

juveniles, and we used to buy all [of them].  We would

always by a little girl's first rug.  We always did

that to encourage them.  And there is some men that got

to be good weavers.  What was our blind man, Ed?

   

   E. Foutz:  James Sherman?

   

   R. Foutz:  James Sherman.  James Sherman went blind

and even though he couldn't finish a rug, he would get

it half-way finished, and we'd buy his unfinished rug

and roll it up, which we still have quite a few of.

But we always did what we could to try to encourage

weavings.

   Weavings and rugs was my first love.  I started my

first collection before I was married.  Now the main

things I put back was I was real interested in sand

painting rugs.  So the rugs that I saved mainly was the

rugs that was woven from the red sheep.  The reddish

sheep was the color, by the time they carded it out,

was the color of the sand.  I knew this color could

never be reproduced, because the reddish sheep was

going out of existence.  I did collect some sand

paintings of that.  I think probably the most valuable

rugs probably that's on the market is this Hosteen

Klah's sand painting rugs, which ended up at the

Wheelwright Museum.  He is probably the most famous of

all the weavers, and he was a man with no children, and

his nephews and nieces have turned out to be some of

the best weavers on the reservation.  They were guided

by him.  Daisy Tauglechee was his youngest niece.

Mrs. Sam, her rugs are collectable.  They're the finest

sand paintings.  And Mrs. Jim, they're all descendants

of Hosteen Klah.  Hosteen Klah had a rug half finished

when he died, and these three nieces finished it.  I

think that rug is still owned by the Newcomb family.

And Daisy went on to be the most famous of all the Two

Grey Hill weavers.  She's noted for her tapestries.  If

you owned a Hosteen Klah, I'm sure they're valued in

the $50,000 and upward class.  So it was not only the

women, but the men also have played a very important

part in the history of the weaving of the Navajo Tribe.

   

   Cole:  Are the sand painting rugs kind of unusual?

   

   R. Foutz:  A sand painting rug is a copy of a sand

painting they do in a ceremony, you know.  And these

they tear up.  And they have copied these.  And unless

you were a medicine man, it's a kind of a--you're not

supposed to weave one of those rugs--you'll go blind if

you do.  I remember the first rug I got, the first sand

painting rug I bought, it was at Gallego, and I had

made arrangements to buy that rug for a certain price.

And when it was finished, the deal was made.  Then

about two weeks later she came back and said that I had

to give her another $200 because she was going blind

from weaving that rug, and she would have to hire a

medicine man to give her a ceremony to keep from going

blind.  So I had to give her another $200 for her to

have the medicine man treat her so she wouldn't go

blind.  That is the value of these rugs, because they

are copies of what they do in the healing ceremonies.

They have what they call a ten-day--nine nights and ten

days.  Each day a different sand painting is made in

the hogan, and it's part of the healing ceremony of

that ritual __________.  And then just a regular squaw

dance that is three days, there's still the sand

paintings ____ with that.  Some of these Indians make

up their own sand paintings and their own drawing.

It's just like a doctor has his own medicine, they have

their own sand painting.  That's supposed to heal a

certain disease.  I think when I went to my first

ceremonial, I think it was with Bruce's dad, Bob

Burnham.  I was staying with him out to Bisti, and we

rode out to this hogan on our horses.  We went to this

ceremony--they always last all night.  About three

o'clock in the morning, his folks come looking for him.

We was about thirteen, and we were still settin' in

that hogan with that medicine man, havin' a healing

ceremony on these women.  That intrigued us, so we were

still there.  They thought something had happened to

us, but we were just at the ceremonial.

   

   Cole:  Did you stay, or did you have to go?

   

   R. Foutz:  Well, we had to go home.  It was three.

They told us to get on our horses and go home.

   

   Cole:  Were you allowed to see the sand painting

done?

   R. Foutz:  They're allowed.  If you're known in

those families, you're allowed to go in.  As a rule,

they don't.  Like out there, they were friends of the

trader, they knew the trader, and they were allowed to

go in.

   When I was first married at Teec Nos Pos, my wife

was from the East, and so I paid for an entire ten-day

yé’ii bicheii right at the trading post, so she could

see the ceremonies.  Since I was footing all the bills,

we was allowed to go in and see all the ceremonies

there.

   

   Steiger:  Did you think the medicine men were fairly

effective?  We've heard some stories both ways, and I'm

just curious.

   

   R. Foutz:  Certainly their effective, because they

believe in 'em.  It's just whether you....  Of course

they're not gonna cure an uncurable disease, but it's

just like you going to a doctor.  If you believe in

that doctor, he's gonna do you some good.  And they

believe in what they're doing, and they're gonna do

good, but if it’s  diabetes or something like that that

they have, some of the things that they do, they're

probably the only help they can do is a person's mind

and the state of their being, they're helping.  But

some things make 'em think they're well, so they are

well, and the same with a lot of us, too.  We think

we're well, we'll get up and be well.

   

   Cole:  You had mentioned your uncle selling by-etta

[phonetic spelling] cloth.

   

   R. Foutz:  Uh-huh.

   

   Cole:  What exactly is that?  Was it used in

weaving?

   

   R. Foutz:  That's what all the collectors are

looking for now, is the real old rugs that was made out

of bayeta, or some of it was made out of uniforms--

unravelled material that the uniforms had of the colors

there--an indigo blue.  But the bayeta cloth was kind

of an imported cloth from England that was used in

their weaving.  They're very rare, and it's a real

collectible.  And anything ________ if it was

unravelled material, whether it was out of this cloth,

whether it was obvious cloth, or whether it was out of

an army man's uniform, you probably can't tell which is

which, but they claim they can.

   

   Cole:  If you could kind of walk us through maybe

how you'd buy rugs, and also how did you market them?

Did you sell them just to people that came to your

store off the reservation, or....

   

   R. Foutz:  We sold them to the different places.

Our biggest place we sold to was Fred Harvey.  They had

all the parks there.  We sold them lots of rugs there.

And we sold a lot to the other national parks.  There

was Rocky Mountain Transportation in Denver, which they

had the concessions for all those parks up there that

we sold to them.  We sold mostly to dealers.  And then

we'd go on what we'd call a rug trip, and we'd go up in

the Black Hills and sell to those parks--we had

somebody that we sold 'em to wherever.

   

   Cole:  When did you start your rug trips?

   

   R. Foutz:  Oh, I went on rug trips when I was in

high school.  I would go with Uncle Shel, with an uncle

of mine, and we'd go up through Denver, up through the

Black Hills and there.  Then we'd go over to Albuquerk

[Albuquerque], to where they did the buying for Fred

Harvey's stores, and we'd go to Gallup and sell 'em

there.  That was in the thirties when they started.

   

   Cole:  Were other traders doing that also?

   

   R. Foutz:  We were probably the biggest.

Progressive on this side was probably the biggest

distributors of that.  And C. N. Cotton in Gallup.  And

they even went back East to the department stores, and

put 'em in at the World's Fairs.  They went there and

sold.  They were probably the biggest distributors,

yes.

   

   Cole:  So Progressive was really doing the

marketing.

   

   R. Foutz:  They was doing the marketing of the rugs,

yeah.

   

   (break)

   

   Cole:  ... Fred Harvey Company.

   

   R. Foutz:  The first person I remember dealing with

is a name by Mr. Ebbens [phonetic spelling].  He was

the buyer when they was at Albuquerk where they tore

that deal down there.  And the railroads, they come

right along the railroad there.  He was all concerned

because they had a new manager, and they said that the

volume of good Indian rugs wasn't selling like it

should be.  They wanted rugs just to fit on those

tables that they had, so the tourists would just

_______ tables.  And I know we had to give Mr. Ebbens

some consignment of some good rugs so he could sell

'em, to show his new boss that Fred Harvey could still

sell the good expensive rugs.  I think that's twice in

my lifetime we have done that to Fred Harvey--they've

taken in new management and the new manager looks at

figures that turns, and they don't think good things

turn fast enough, so they have wanted to lean more

toward the inexpensive stuff.  Now this new company, I

guess they want to lean towards "T" shirts, 'cause I

guess that's the big thing now.

   

   Cole:  You also mentioned C. N. Cotton.  Was that a

company or a person?

   R. Foutz:  C. N. Cotton was a wholesale place in

Gallup that supplied a lot of the--serviced a lot of

the traders on that side, the Gallup side of the

reservation.  And they were old-time wholesalers, just

like Progressive was on this side.  Then there's also

Charles Ilfeld.  They handled probably more rugs than

anybody.  They would buy them and they was getting them

distributed in the East.  A lot of the rugs were at the

World's Fair in Chicago.  The World's Fair they had was

having Indian dancers and sand painters and

silversmiths go back, so there got to be quite a market

for Indian goods back there, on account of these

displays that they had at the World's Fairs.

   

   Cole:  How did you buy rugs?  How did that work?

   

   R. Foutz:  Like I said, when I first started in

the___, years ago they bought some of 'em by the pound,

and now you just buy them by--some people measure 'em,

some of 'em look at....  But I've gone through so many

I just throw 'em out and buy 'em.  The weave has

something to do with it.  Design has something to do

with it.  And the type of rug has something to do with

it.

   

   Cole:  Do you have favorite weavers that you deal

with still?

   

   R. Foutz:  Uh-huh, we have favorite weavers, yes.

___________ layin' it right there.  I saw one layin'

_________________.

   

   Steiger:  (aside about microphone)

   

   R. Foutz:  You can have one of each of us.  That was

taken in our store.  This is Daisy Tauglechee.  She got

to be the most famous weaver of any of the Two Grey

Hill weavers.  She got to weaving such fine tapestries,

that no [collection of rugs] is complete unless they

have one of her rugs in it.

   

   Steiger:  (aside about holding photo)

   

   Cole:  And how long did you work with Daisy?

   

   R. Foutz:  Hm, probably twenty years.

   

   Cole:  When you got somebody that was doing her

quality of work, would she already have the rug sold

before she even started?

   

   R. Foutz:  No.  She wove two different sizes, we

just bought the one that come in.  We had collectors

that we knew we could sell them to.  She'd got

famous...  And then the sand painting rugs, like you

heard us talking about Hosteen Klah and the

[morphodite?].  He was so famous.  Then [Daisy's]

nieces, there were three of them, and they all turned

out to be famous weavers, and two of them continued

weaving sand painting rugs.  That rug that we're

talking about that those come off of, nobody knows what

that rug is worth.  Everybody thought if it went to an

auction, it might bring in the $50,000 bracket--if they

could prove the history of it and exactly who did weave

it.

   

   Cole:  Do you have any sort of stories about unusual

customers that might have just showed up in the trading

posts to buy rugs?  Did you have famous people?

   

   R. Foutz:  We've sold rugs to Mrs. Wrigley.  And

Mrs. McCormick was a big buyer of Indian arts and

crafts.  And one day I was here decorating this window.

This window here, I was changing stuff in it, and some

man come in and wanted to know something about rugs, if

I'd show him a rug.  "[Do you] know about rugs?"  And I

said, "Yeah.  Do you know anything [about] decoratin' a

window?  If you'll help me with this window, I'll show

you rugs.  Do you know anything about it?"  He said,

"Yeah, but it's been a long time."  So he helped me

finish the window, and then we got back to look at

rugs, and then he introduced himself.  He was chairman

of the board of Sears and Roebuck, Mr. Miller.  Then he

went on to be quite a collector of old high-priced

rugs, and he was a collector of it.

   Another man that used to buy rugs used to buy 'em

down here.  Then he come to Shiprock, he had two big

boxes, he come rollin' 'em in there--of rugs.  He said,

"Sell these rugs for me.  This is my education.  Now

you know what I want to buy."  And he would buy

Daisy's, and he would buy....  This one rug I remember

that his wife was buying, he had a special-built

trailer and a trailer house down here, and they had

that there____ pulling all through Africa.  And this

one, we had a Daisy Tauglechee that had just come in.

It was tiny.  We wanted $3,500 for it, _______ him.

And he turned to his wife and he said, "You don't have

a place in this left that you can put a rug.  You have

Greys over the top of vegetables and dyes now.  Where

could you put this Daisy Tauglechee?"  "I could put it

right in front of the sink, she said."  A Daisy

Tauglechee tapestry!

   

   Cole:  What other kinds of arts and crafts did you

sell besides rugs?

   

   R. Foutz:  Oh, sand paintings, sculptures.  Let's

see, I started a store on 5th Avenue in Scottsdale one

time, and there was only seven of us over there that

had stores on 5th Avenue.  And Mrs. McCormick had

sponsored this Indian in the one.  Old Man Godberr

[phonetic spelling]--the Godberrs around here--their

dad had a store.  Five others that was there.  So that

the first item we sold out of that store was a cane.

In those early days, in those days there were very few

buffalos in the country.  Anything off a buffalo was

sacred, and sacred medicine to the Indians.  We got

some buffalo penises, and to stretch that penis, we'd

put it over a welding rod up there.  And just for

kicks, we'd take that buffalo penis that was on this

welding rod, they bent the top over, and on the top of

it we put the rattles off a rattlesnake.  And this

woman come in and she was looking around the store, and

she says, "What is that cane up there?"  I said, "Well,

that's a ceremonial cane," or something, "of the

Navajos."  I didn't tell her [it was a] buffalo penis.

"I want that.  My husband collects canes."  So that

cane made out of a buffalo penis was the first thing we

sold to this woman.  Why we put it over this buffalo

penis, we had a hack saw, and we'd cut off an inch of

it to sell to these medicine men.  They'd put this

penis over the fires where the smoke ____________.  So

that buffalo penis, that's probably about the most

unusual thing I sold.  I can't think of anything more

unusual.

   

   Cole:  We were wondering if you could maybe tell us

any stories about other traders that you worked with.

You were telling us something earlier about Harry

Goulding.

   

   R. Foutz:  I told you about Harry Goulding.  I told

you about Wiff Wheeler, that the bank foreclosed them.

She wanted the keys.  I think I told it to you where

this woman banker said that she was gonna have to close

his store down, and he gave her back the keys, and he

wouldn't take them until she gave him $2,000 more.  And

he was quite a drunk.  And the closest place where they

sent 'em was up there at Colorado Springs someplace.

And if he didn't show up there to the nurses, they

would call up and say, "Where is Wiff?  Where is Wiff?

When is Wiff coming up here?"  He'd be all liquored up.

"He always does Indian dances for us."  [They] wanted

[him] to come up and dry out again so he could do his

Indian dances.  No, I don't know any _______.

   

   Steiger:  You know, we didn't get the Harry Goulding

story on tape.

   

   Cole:  I was wondering if you could tell us that

again, because we didn't have the camera on when you

were talking about Harry Goulding, how he sold rugs.

   

   R. Foutz:  How he sold the rugs?  You didn't get

that on tape?  Well, it was just this cousin of mine,

this Claude Powell, he was the son of my father's

sister.  He was an old-time trader and been around it

all the time.  He used to go out and sell Goulding rugs

when he was working for us.  And he said he'd go there

to Goulding and they would be talking about rugs, and

Goulding had an Indian woman hid out just a few, a

little place from the store.  And when a car would

come, and they'd come in and wanted to buy rugs, he

would say, "I just don't have very many rugs here.  And

I don't have much money to buy rugs with, but here

comes a woman that looks like she's got a rug right

now.  Maybe you'd like to buy a rug directly from the

weaver."  And so she would come in and she would sell

her rug, he would interpret it for her, and he would

sell the rug to the tourists."  After they left, he

would give this woman another rug, and she'd go out,

away from the store, and wait for another tourist to

come by so she could come in with the rug she "wove

herself" to sell to the tourists.

   But these modern Indians has got quite smart.  I

guess we have about four different Indian families that

come to Farmington and buy rugs from us all the time

and go out and sell them.  We have a woman that comes

down here that goes through all the hospitals and sells

those to all the doctors and nurses.  They're supposed

to be her rugs that she wove, ________.  So they're

gettin' to be quite the merchandisers.

   

   Steiger:  Was it fun doin' business with 'em, just

to trade with various people?  Did you have people that

were always tryin' to out-fox you and like that?

   

   R. Foutz:  Yeah, we had people that was always--we

had some people that was out to fox us quite a bit.

And it was fun.  I mean, out there on the reservation

you'd be bored, you'd have to have something to

entertain yourself.  So we had what we called the wool

room, where the women go back and pick out their own

wool to make a rug with.  And they'd come in and weigh

the wool and buy it.  So we had this one woman that she

was just adapted to steal.  She would steal anything

she could get her hands on.  So back in the wool room,

we put a case of pop.  Here she would be gathered up

her wool like this, and put it in a sack _____.  Then

she'd sneak in two or three bottles of pop in with the

wool.  Then she'd come out and have it weighed.  Well,

she was paying twice as much for that pop by the pound

(laughs) as she was if she'd just come to the store and

bought it!  But you have to do something to amuse

yourself up there.

   But yes, you have characters; you have people that

you depend on to come and watch your store; you always

have a favorite around there that you can depend on.

Our first year there was an Indian by the name of Cady

[phonetic spelling].  They were real poor people, and

one time I went up to pick him up to come down and

watch the store.  His wife was on the loom.  She was

tearing up all the kids' old clothes into strips, and

she was weaving the old clothes into a rug.  I don't

know what it would look like when it was finished, but

you had very interesting people around the stores

_________.

   You would almost have one person that was a famous--

somebody was always the most famous, _______ medicine

man or the medicine woman, and Indians would come from

hundreds of miles.  They'd hear about her and come.

This one woman, they would bring their pawn and stuff

to pay the medicine man.  I know this one medicine man,

he would bring 'em in, pawn 'em at the store.  So this

pawn got to be an awful lot of this one medicine man's

there at Teec Nos Pos that come in.  And it was almost

a flour sack full, and I went in the back room and

dumped it on the bed, and I said, "How much of this

pawn is yours?  How much do you want to keep?"  She

picked up about three pieces and she says, "I don't

want any more, but this is just what they paid me for."

She said, "I pawned it to you _________."  But they

bring sheep and they bring cows.  A good medicine man

would get paid real high.

   But there was always something going on at a store--

either good or bad, there was something always going

on.

   

   Cole:  Did you ever have any kind of scary

incidents, or robberies, or anything like that?

   

   R. Foutz:  We never had any real, real, real bad

brushes.  When I was staying at the trading post when I

was just in high school, staying on the trading post at

Teec Nos Pos, I got awful scared one night.  I heard

this pounding, pounding, pounding, and then it stopped,

and then it'd come again.  I was really quite upset

about it, afraid somebody was out there trying to break

in.  I got up about daylight, I went up there to see

what was going on, and here was a horse on this tin

roof.  He was taking his front foot, pawing [piped

lead?] on the side of the building, and some of the hay

leaves would come out of the barn, and he would eat

them.  Then he'd put his foot out and pound for some

more to get some hay leaf.  I wasn't gettin' broke into

a'tall!  It was just the horse, tryin' to get some hay

out of the hay leaves.

   No, we had one man come back that was--he come in

and wanted to know if we knew who he was.  And we told

him, "Yeah, we know, you're Zonie, you're the one that

killed the white trader across the way and went to jail

and got out.  But you're not botherin' us, we're not

scared of you.  ____________."

   We really had no--the only serious things we had is

some tragedies.  One, they would get peyote and the

liquor mixed up, somebody'd go completely nuts.  But

outside that, we never had any serious troubles.

   I can remember one time we was on a selling trip,

and we was over, went to the pueblos over there, ___

rugs looked at the pueblo.  And we stopped, Johnny

traded a few rugs to this pueblo store for [hay-see?]

and turquoise that they drilled.  And I was with Uncle

Shel, and Uncle Shel says, "Well, wait a minute, I'm

going to go lock the car."  And this Pueblo says, "Oh,

you don't have to lock it, there's no white people

around here."  (chuckles)

   As a rule, they're just like anybody else.  They're

mostly all honest people, but there's bad and good in

every race.

   

   Cole:  What would you say makes a good trader?  What

kind of qualities?

   

   R. Foutz:  You have to realize that you are on their

land, you're on the reservation, and they are your

customers.  And you have to have respect for them, and

you have to treat them just like you'd like to be

treated.  And that's what a lot of traders don't

understand.

   

   Cole:  Were there trading posts that would have poor

reputations?

   

   R. Foutz:  Yes.  They would sell their pawn early,

yes.  They would put weights in their scales.  But they

had a hard time keeping ahead of these Indians, because

they can put lots of weight in that wool and stuff.

_______ probably balanced out pretty even, but they did

have.  It's in any business, you have good and bad in

any of 'em, yeah.

   I remember another.  This Claude Powell that I've

talked about several times, same one that I told you

about was with Goulding.  He said he got to be--he was

deputy sheriff there at Bluff.  And this one fellah he

knew come by.  He says, "Why don't you go with me and

help me?  We're goin' down to this squaw dance down

here with this load of watermelons to sell."  He says,

"We're settin' there sellin' the watermelons," and

Claude turned to him and says, "You say you're gonna

pay me that much money.  How are we gonna make any

money selling these watermelons for 50¢ a piece and

make anything?!"  He says, "It's not the watermelons

we're making the money on, it's the moonshine that's

under the watermelons we're making the money on."  He

says, "There I was a deputy sheriff and got trapped

into (laughing) into going out there to sell

watermelons.  And after all, he was just gonna bootleg

whiskey to the squaw dance."  It wasn't the watermelons

they was making any money on, it was what was

underneath 'em.

   

   Cole:  Was there a lot of bootlegging that went on?

   

   R. Foutz:  Uh-huh, there was a lot of bootlegging

that went on.  And a lot of the Indians made some of

their own wines and stuff and bootlegged it too.  There

was a lot of home bootleggin' goin' on, on the

reservation, you know.

   

   Cole:  Could a trader have alcohol just in his

residence?

   

   R. Foutz:  You can now, but in those days you

couldn't even have it in your residence, no.

   

   Cole:  You'd mentioned peyote.  Was the Native

American Church fairly big?

   

   R. Foutz:  It was big in some areas.  In the Teec

Nos Pos area where we were, it was big there.  Where I

got so much knowledge of it was we always had exhibits

and wholesale sales at the Gallup--they had a big

Gallup fiesta and the wholesale show.  And the one who

had the booth right next to us was Woody Grumlung

[phonetic spelling] who was an artist, painter, and he

was also the head honcho of the Peyote Church in

Oklahoma.  And he was telling me all about the Peyote

Church.  And I was always bringing either feathers or

rattles or something back from them to the Indians.

But it was a real problem up there around Teec Nos Pos--

peyote was, yeah.

   

   Cole:  Is it still, do you think?

   

   R. Foutz:  It's still quite peyote, yeah.

   

   Cole:  Why is that, do you think?

   

   R. Foutz:  I don't know.  It's got to be a religious

deal.  They call it the first church of America.  They

have all these hallucinations when they're on that

peyote and taking that buttons, and I guess they think

these hallucinations is coming from some higher power

or something.  It's quite prominent.  But they don't

believe in alcohol.  It has some good with 'em, because

they know how it makes 'em crazy if they do.  So it's

not all bad.

   

   Cole:  Can I ask you a couple more questions about

the Traders Association?  When did you actually,

yourself, become a member?

   

   R. Foutz:  I would say after the war, about probably

the very late forties, early fifties.

   

   Cole:  And was your dad a member also?

   

   R. Foutz:  I don't think so, no.  I'm not sure.  If

it was, it was just like Bruce Bernard said, they can

go to a meeting, maybe they bought a membership.  The

Association had several types of memberships.  They had

some memberships of people like Palatin Arden [phonetic

spelling], Pendelton Woolen Mills, and deals like that,

that sponsored it.  But as far as going to a meeting

with any active part of that, no, he wasn't.

   

   Cole:  I noticed on that one xerox you showed us

from Bruce Bernard, it was for selling a rug, and it

has the number 2.  What does that mean?

   

   R. Foutz:  I don't know.  I was asking Ed.  I was

wondering if it was that he was the second one that was

issued these tags and stuff to come out.  About the

same time that come out, the Bureau of Indian Affairs

put out a tag to put on rugs with a metal deal on it,

where you put this metal tag on that's saying it was

genuine Navajo rugs and made by handspun wool and

stuff.  And you had to buy these tags from the Bureau

of Indian Affairs to put on it.  And those were the

only rugs that were supposed to be in the national

parks there for a while.  Now, whether he was the

second one that got one of those or what, I don't know

what that number 2 meant--whether he was the first one

in the Association or the second one that got these

tags.

   

   Cole:  You had mentioned stamps they were putting on

the silver.  Did you ever have a number like that

yourself?

   

   R. Foutz:  I never had a number like that ourselves,

but I remember seein'....  No, we never had a number.

   

   Steiger:  Speaking of the silver, it seems like--and

I don't know if this is appropriate to talk about

either--but we were tryin' to understand how we come to

be here, how the Traders Association even had this

money to give away this grant.  Mrs. Kennedy said

something about there had been some leftover silver and

somebody made a real smart trade with that, or

something.

   

   R. Foutz:  After the war, this is no longer needed,

to get this silver business, you could buy this silver

anyplace, so the traders didn't need the silver

business, so they sold the silver business.  And for

the money they got out of the silver business, they put

it in [A&T] stock, and that has been ever since they

sold that thing, has been that stock.  And that thing

has accumulated from that original amount of money up

to almost $600,000.

   

   Steiger:  So when you say "silver business," they

just had a leftover inventory of silver, and they sold

that?

   

   R. Foutz:  Uh-huh, they sold their leftover

inventory and stuff to a private company.  I don't know

whether it went directly to Mr. Woodward, or whether it

went to some man and back to Woodward, but originally

that's the same start of what Woodards have.  His sons

still have a silver business.

   

   Cole:  Did you know Woodard?

   

   R. Foutz:  Uh-huh.

   

   Cole:  What was his [first] name?

   

   R. Foutz:  He was the secretary-treasurer of the

Traders Association for years, and a very good

bookkeeper, and very conscientious.  He probably did as

much for the Association as anybody did.  I think it's

Woody Woodard--I think it was Woody.

   

   Cole:  And what did he do for a living, other

than....

   

   R. Foutz:  He kept books for the Association, and he

run the silver business when he was in the Association,

and that was his business.

   

   Cole:  So he wasn't an Indian trader himself?

   

   R. Foutz:  No, he wasn't an Indian trader.

   

   Cole:  Back in the forties when you became a member,

did you attend the meetings on an annual basis?

   

   R. Foutz:  Uh-huh.

   

   Cole:  Do you remember who some of the presidents or

board of directors were then?

   

   R. Foutz:  Well, in the early times before, it was

some of the Wheelers, and there was one of the Lees.

But the ones I got to know real well was not until

Ralph Bilby was president.  With Babbitt brothers, the

ones before that, I knew, but not real well, until he

[Bilby] got to be the president.  Very sharp, very fine

person, fluent speaker.

   

   Cole:  Did he work on the reservation at all?

   

   R. Foutz:  I don't think so, I think he just worked

in the office.

   

   Cole:  Do you remember about how many members there

were back in the

   forties?

   

   R. Foutz:  Enough to fill a good-sized dance hall.

(laughs)  I don't know.  There had to be somewhere

between fifty and a hundred people that would come to

them.  It was very educational if you wanted.

   

   [END SIDE 3, BEGIN SIDE 4]

   

   Cole:  This is Brad Cole from Northern Arizona

University.  We're with Russell Foutz in Scottsdale,

Arizona.  It's April 3,[ 1998].  Also present in the

room is Lew Steiger.  This is part of the United Indian

Traders Association Oral History Project.

   Russell, you were telling us that in the 1940s at

the annual meetings of the United Traders Association

you'd get enough people to fill up a dance hall.  How

many would that be?, and what were the annual meetings

like?

   

   R. Foutz:  The annual meetings, they had them before

they had the banquet and the dance and the open bar,

'cause they figured that nobody'd be wantin' to go to a

meeting after that.  It was quite a social event when

they all got together.

   

   Cole:  Would it be the only time of the year that

you'd see quite a lot of these people?

   

   R. Foutz:  It'd be the only time of the year we'd

see a lot of the different traders, yeah.  It would

make kind of a reunion of traders, yeah.



   Cole:  And you were saying you remember Bilby being

president of the organization.  Do you know about what

time period that was when he....

   

   R. Foutz:  No.  The Association still has the

records of that.  He served for several terms.  He

probably got as much done for the Association as any

president in my lifetime.

   

   Cole:  You had mentioned earlier the sales tax

issue.  Were you involved at all with the Federal Trade

Commission hearings when that happened?

   

   R. Foutz:  No, that was before my time.  My older

brother was, and Jack Klein was--that was before [my

time].

   

   Cole:  And that would have been when they eliminated

pawn from the reservation?

   

   R. Foutz:  Well, no, that was when they was trying

to put sales tax on the Indians on the reservation,

yeah.

   

   Cole:  Okay.  Do you remember the whole issue of the

pawn issue, when that came about?

   

   R. Foutz:  The pawn issue was only about ten--I

don't think it was over ten years ago.  They made such

strict rulings on taking the pawn on the reservation

that it was prohibitive for the traders to take pawn on

the reservation.  So most of 'em quit taking pawn.

   

   Cole:  Do you remember--I was reading in the records

that there was some kind of an issue dealing with

endangered bird feathers or something like that.

(R. Foutz:  Uh-huh.)  Do you remember anything about

that at all?

   

   R. Foutz:  Let's see, $500 worth one time, I

remember.  (pause)  Maybe another $500 worth again,

maybe down here.  That was when they was--almost all of

the old headdresses, most of all the old dolls and all

of that, had some kind of eagle feathers or some kind

of feathers in them.  I had, I think it was some

feathers, a feathered fan, I think, that we had for

decoration in the store.  Abath [phonetic spelling],

the woman that was working for me, called and said that

there was a man here from Oklahoma or something that

collected these, and would I put a price on this to

sell this.  I put a price on it, and I said, "They're

not supposed to sell it."  And she said, "Oh, he won't,

he's a real nice man.  He just wants it for his

collection."  (doorbell rings)  And so she sold it to

him.  I got hauled into court over it.  Even in court

they said that, "We know Mr. Foutz was innocent about

the goings on in all this transaction, but since it's

been quite an expense to getting him here and all this

time, we think we should fine him."  The judge said,

"We'd better fine him 500 bucks anyway, to help pay the

expenses."  So that cost me $500.

   

   Cole:  Did the Association get involved with that at

all?

   

   R. Foutz:  No, the Association, I don't think, got

involved in any of that.  I think it was all just

individuals, between Fish and Life and the individual

traders.  I don't think the Association got involved in

that at all.

   But there was a bounty on coyotes and stuff that we

bought coyote hides.  We didn't sell them for very

much, but they got a bounty that was put out to the

Indians for killing coyotes.

   

   Cole:  Overall, how would you say that traders have

influenced Native American art?

   

   R. Foutz:  I think it would be just like a lot of

the others.  If it hadn't been for the traders, it

would have been like the plains Indians--beadwork and

the other work--if they hadn't taken an interest in the

people and kept it going.  I think it wouldn't have

gone very far.  I think they're the ones that marketed

and made it worthwhile for the Indians to stay in it.

I think that's what kept them in it.  Where there

wasn't a traders' group that helped market their

merchandise, that is places that the Indian crafts are

practically nonexisting.

   

   Cole:  What would you say that an Anglo person

should understand about Navajo culture?  If you could

teach 'em any one thing.

   

   R. Foutz:  Respect for their parents, and respect

for their elders.  I think that's a lot they could

learn from 'em, because they do have a big respect for

the older generation.

   

   Cole:  What do you feel the Navajo learn from you?

   

   R. Foutz:  (long pause)  Oh, we have helped a lot of

them, in helping them with some of the designs, and

what types of arts and crafts would sell.  We have

found a market for the things that they made.  But they

haven't learned as much from me as they have passed on

to us, I think.  We've learned from them:  their

history, their culture, and the things that they still

respect and feel very meaningful to 'em.  Their respect

for their older people and their family ties.  But you

can learn a lot from the Indian culture.  You can learn

their medicine, their care of their people.  It's a lot

that you get from their culture--more than we have to

give--they have more to give to us than we give back.

   

   Cole:  How has their culture changed, if any, over

the years you've been associated with the Navajo?

   

   R. Foutz:  Oh, it's changed completely.  Some of

these families brag that they've sent practically all

their families to college, that they've gone to school

and to college.  The only place when you was young, was

maybe you had somebody working in the wool room,

helping you with the wool.  And now in a trading post,

you couldn't run a trading post without the Navajo

help:  they're the cashiers, they're the bookkeepers.

Every phase of it they can run now.  It has completely

changed.  They run their own stores.

   

   Cole:  Did that change while you were in the

business?

   

   R. Foutz:  It's changed in my lifetime, yes.  It

certainly has.

   

   Cole:  You said your daughter's at Teec Nos Pos now?

   

   R. Foutz:  Uh-huh.

   

   Cole:  What's trading like for her there now?  What

kind of store is it?

   

   R. Foutz:  It's a different kind of a store.  She

had a dress shop.  She still goes to Dallas to do the

buying.  It is surprising, she mingles clothes right in

with her store.  It's not only the Indians buy 'em, but

the tourists.  It's western clothes.  It's a different

type of store than I run.

   

   Cole:  What is her name?

   

   R. Foutz:  Kathy, Kathleen.

   

   Cole:  Does she still buy and sell rugs?

   

   R. Foutz:  She buys and sells rugs.  She has a

collection of Teec Nos Pos rugs herself.  She has one

rug that is probably about--I don't know, I think it's

about twelve by eighteen, I think it is--probably one

of the largest Teec Nos Poses ever woven.  And she has

the same family weaving another one in the same loom.

She has her favorite weavers.  She is marketing her

rugs, and they are getting probably a bigger price for

their rugs out there than they've ever got.  She's

letting the girl's family work in the curio part of it,

selling the rugs.  Some of 'em work on commission in

there.  She's doin' a real fine job out there, and yet

they're continuin' the old type of it, where they're

buying livestock, wool, sheep, and everything, and it's

still one of the old-type reservation [trading posts],

yet it's got a modern touch to it.

   

   Cole:  Does she still do a lot of credit business

too, do you know?

   

   R. Foutz:  Not as much.  They have about maybe a

half a dozen livestock accounts, and a few rug

accounts, and a few thirty-day accounts.  There's some

check accounts, but not to the extent that we did when

we was out there, where everything was on account and

we got paid twice a year.  But they still run some

credit business.

   

   Cole:  So is she your competitor, then, or your

partner?

   

   R. Foutz:  She is my partner.  I am supposed to be

retired, I don't know.  But she still helps us with the

store in Farmington, too.  The rugs that this one

family is weaving, they're spectacular.  I think that

last big one, she paid, the weaver got a little better

than $20,000 for weaving that.  Whether she can sell it

or not, I don't know, but she hasn't tried, she doesn't

want to put it on the market for sale.  When she gets

two of 'em, she'll have to probably put one of 'em on

the market.  I'm very happy that she is encouraging in

going on with that weaving program out there, doing a

good job of it.

   

   Cole:  Do you have other children besides Kathy?

   

   R. Foutz:  Uh-huh, they're both in the same type

business.  The youngest one, he trains the horses here

________.  One of 'em has a silver place where they

sell wholesale silver and supplies--artists' supplies.

And the oldest son is in about the same type of

business that I was in, and he was in the old Bruce

Bernard store at Shiprock.  He has an arts and crafts

store on the corner at Teec Nos Pos, and he's just

built another one at Kirtland.  But he ran Teec Nos Pos

for a while.  We tried to get him to run it, but he

didn't want anything to do with the wool and the lambs

for the trading post.  His interest was leaning towards

arts and crafts, and that's what he wanted to get into--

sand painting, arts and crafts, and rugs.

   I was determined as long as I was alive that Teec

Nos Pos was gonna be an old-time trading post that sold

hay, grain, gas, and oil.  (chuckles)  Our daughter was

the only one willing to do it, so she's the one that's

out there doing it.

   

   Cole:  Do you see a future for the traders on the

reservation?

   

   R. Foutz:  Yes.  That store there, that they've got

at Teec Nos Pos, the way they've modernized it with a

little dining area, and their curio store is so nice,

that the people, especially the Easterners, the

foreigners, they want to go to the reservation to buy

their rugs.  It's gonna continue to be a very good

place.  You have to just change with the times.  If

you're willing to change with the times, yes, the

future is good on the reservation.

   

   Cole:  How would you remember your dad?  What kind

of a trader was he?

   

   R. Foutz:  Dad was very quiet, a very good business

person.  They didn't even use typewriters there.  He

wrote a beautiful hand.  He was very athletic.  The

Indians liked him, he liked the Indian people.  He

always used them to work around the ranch.  I can

remember when I was young, going to these carnivals and

they had an Indian at Shiprock, they called him Big

Jim.  He would go and swing the [sledge hammer] to see

how he could send it up, hit the bell.  Then he'd

holler at Dad, holler at him to come over here.  "You

try it.  See if you can get it up to the bell."  They'd

have a contest of hitting the bell and everything.

They always have been a very--he always liked them.  He

gave people jobs that nobody else would hire.  I guess

I inherited that to a point, I do the same thing.  He

saw the talents in these people, that "there would be a

good irrigator,"  "there's a good farmer."  They could

herd sheep, they would take care of the sheep.  They

would do this, even though they were alcoholics and

they couldn't hold a job.  He overlooked those things

and worked them for the good points they had.  I'm the

same way.  The employees he had was all his life, and

living there.  And my feeling is that I outlived my

good employees.  Mine had been with me for forty years.

They either died off on me, or got where they couldn't

work.  When they worked, they never got fired, they had

to quit.  He had the same feelings there.  I have a

hard time getting used to new help.

   

   Cole:  If you can, maybe describe what kind of a

trader was your nephew, Ed.

   

   R. Foutz:  Ed?  Ed, when he first come to work for

us, Claude was with me--Claude Powell.  He was a crack

salesman.  He was selling ladies shoes in Provo, and he

could charm those women into anything he wanted to.  He

was wanting to learn faster than we wanted to teach

him.  So when it would get wintertime, about the middle

of the winter, we'd figure out some rug trip to send

him on, to get him out of the store.  And he would come

out all dressed up with his summer clothes.  The truck

would be all packed.  "Ed, why do you have those

clothes on?!  You're not going to Phoenix, you're going

to Denver and Wyoming."  We sent him up to Denver and

Wyoming where there's no business--he would sell!  He

would come back with money, it wouldn't make any

difference where you sent him, he would sell.  Very

ambitious, a good business person.

   After he learned the business, he did a super job of

marketing the rugs.  After I sold him all of it, he

continued to expand the wholesale business, and he's

passed it on to his son Jed, that's out there running

it now.  Ed did a super job.  But he never was involved

too much with the early trading part.  He was more

interested in the arts and crafts ___________ than he

was the....

   

   Steiger:  When you say "early trading," you mean

just buying sheep and like that kind of thing?

   

   R. Foutz:  Yeah, he did that, he got somebody to do

it for him, but that wasn't his--he himself wasn't that

much interested in it, no.  He was raised in Provo a

lot, up there, and he was down to our place in the

summertime.  But he did a super job with the store.

   

   Cole:  Did you ever work with any of the McGees?,

Jewel or any of those folks?

   

   R. Foutz:  Jewel and I graduated from high school at

the same time.  Jewel was at Red Rock.  I don't think

Dad was in partners in anything with Jewel or with

Roscoe.  I think some of 'em was in partnership with

some of the other McGees.  There were three of them.

But Jewel was the one I was the closest with.  We were

in high school together, we graduated at the same time.

   

   Cole:  What was he like as a trader, do you know?

   

   R. Foutz:  He was a good trader.  He was an

excellent trader.  He wasn't afraid of work, he was out

there in the store with the sheep and everything.

_________ he was an excellent trader.

   Now, Roscoe was interested in trading, but his son

here, isn't he on the board?  Which McGee was on the

board?

   

   Cole:  Lavoy was.

   

   R. Foutz:  Lavoy was.  Lavoy never did like it.  He

just didn't like it.

   

   Cole:  What about maybe the Kennedys?  Did you know

them fairly well at all?

   

   R. Foutz:  Uh-huh, I knew them all.  Mrs. Kennedy's

husband, Troy, was one of our best friends that we went

to the races with __________.

   

   Cole:  Maybe describe him a little bit _______.

   

   R. Foutz:  Troy was a gambler and a money-maker and

a good trader.  When uranium come on the reservation,

he was out there with those Indians with their uranium

mines.  And I'm positive that's one of the things that

was--his [poor] health was from being around the

uranium so much.  He liked good rugs.  He was probably

a top trader.

   Walter, he didn't do a hell of a lot of good for the

reservation.  He was all right, but he never wanted to

give anything back.  He didn't spend much back on his

store.  He was (microphone knocked) trader all the

time.  Walter stayed with it for years, he was one of

the young and early traders.  And he was a good trader,

he made a lot of money out there on the reservations.

   

   Cole:  What post was he at?

   

   R. Foutz:  Dinnehotso, mostly.  But he worked for

other traders before he got his own store.  But he

never changed much from the times.  He had about the

same Levis on.

   What probably changed the fastest was Thriftway,

when they started buying these stores and making them

into gas stations.  I think that changed the image of

the reservation more than anything, faster than

anything they did.  But the people that changed with

it, like our daughter at Teec Nos Pos, and some of the

stores that are along the other, kept up the arts and

crafts, they're still gonna be real good stores and the

future is good for them.  Mary, out at Canyon de

Chelly, she's probably selling as many good rugs as

anybody in the country.  They come out there to buy

them.

   

   Cole:  And what's her last name?

   

   R. Foutz:  Hell, I don't know what Mary's last name

is.  I just call her Mary.  And speaking of Indian

help, she takes her Indian girls around with [her].

They do the buying of the rugs and the wholesale

buying, and she does the selling.  I noticed at the

last sale that she has Indian girls, she uses Indian

help all the time, including doing the buying for her.

Of course they have a good market there at Canyon de

Chelly, lots of tourists.  She sells expensive rugs….

   

   

   Cole:  How is it for you, getting licensing from the

tribe?  Did you have problems with that, or was it....

   

   R. Foutz:  I've never had any problems.  I think the

community has a lot to do with it.  If the chapter

wants you there, and recommends you, they're gonna see

that you do get a license.  Like our daughter there

that wanted a twenty-five-year lease on Teec Nos Pos

since she's taken over.  The people out there can see

what she's done for the store, and how she's brought

such a nice shopping place to them.  I mean, they did

all the work about getting her lease--she didn't have

to do it, the community did that, because they wanted

her there.  If you're gonna be a benefit for the

community and they want you there, I'm sure you're not

gonna have any trouble with your leases.  But if you

try to take out everything and not put anything back

in, then you'll probably have trouble.

   

   Cole:  What would some of your favorite memories of

being a trader be?

   

   R. Foutz:  Oh, I would say some of my favorite

[memories would be] some of the Gallup Ceremonials

where you took the weavings of the rugs where you had

had a contest from the Indians and picked their best

rugs.  And if you would take 'em to the Ceremonial and

got a lot of blue ribbons on their rugs, that was very

satisfying.

   Probably the most interesting part of it was down at

the old store.  It's a beautiful old place surrounded

by cottonwood trees, and that's what [Teec Nos Pos]

means.  And then there's a steep hill up on top of it

there.  When I got married, and when I took my wife out

there--hadn't been married all that long--I took her

out there, and had the ten-day ceremony yé’ii bicheii

there, right up on the hill, where you could hear them

singing all night.  That was probably interesting

stuff.  It would be fun to just take up there.

___________ wagons, and you just set back on the

blanket and listened to 'em sing.  The chantin' all

night, I think that was probably as interesting as

anything.

   It is a satisfaction that you've seen the trading

post be brought up to be successful all these years,

and go through the different good times and bad times

and see it's still existing.  (chuckles)  To see all

these fancy service stations--and I think we put up a

little shed like this over our gas pumps.  I remember

it had a painting on each side of it, and somebody was

looking through one of the historical magazines, and

here was a picture of Teec Nos Pos with these two pumps

out in the middle of  the desert.  So everybody was

makin' fun of my shed.  Then I would ask 'em, "Did you

ever get yours in the historical magazine?!"

   And then I guess my first very pleasant deal was

when one year that wool went to a dollar a pound at

Teec Nos Pos.  I sold my wool at a dollar a pound when

it was up to a dollar a pound, and paid off the bank,

and by spring the people that sold theirs got 25¢ for

it, and that was probably my most satisfactory deal.

(laughter)  It went to $1.25, and nobody [sold].  They

[were] waiting for it to go higher.  Then it started

down.  I sold at a dollar, 'cause I couldn't sleep at

night.  I owed the bank so much money I didn't sleep

good at night.  I sold mine and paid the bank off.

Most everybody else waited for it to go back up again,

and they ended up gettin' a quarter for it.  (laughter)

So I think that was one.  My most satisfaction was to

get the bank paid off at a dollar a pound.  I think

that was probably what my....

   

   Cole:  You mentioned your wife, Helen, was from the

East.  Whereabouts?

   

   R. Foutz:  She's from Minnesota.