JOHN W. AND JOHN D. KENNEDY INTERVIEW

   

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   This is Karen Underhill with Northern Arizona

University.  It's December 16, 1998, and we're here

with John W. and John D. Kennedy in their home.  Also

present are Brad Cole with Northern Arizona University,

and Lew Steiger, who's operating the camera.  We're

here today to talk about the Indian trade.

   

   Underhill:  John, we always like to begin at the

beginning.  Can you tell us when and where you were

born?

   

   John W.:  My father was operating a general store at

Guam, which is just opposite the present ______

refinery this side of Gallup.  Guam was quite a trading

center back in 1909 and 1910.  That was the end of the

railroad, and the logging trains came out to Zuni

Mountain to hit the main line there, so there was a

good deal of train activity.  My mother came in on the

train to Albuquerk [Albuquerque, New Mexico], when I

was born.  As I tell people, there are two great things

that happened in 1912:  statehood and I arrived.

(laughter)  From Guam, the store had been owned by Hans

Neumann who later had the Gallup Mercantile Company in

Gallup.  Hans sold the store to the A. B. McGaffey

Company, which was the parent company that my father

was working for, the logging company in the Zuni

Mountains.  Hans backed him on a project to go into the

Navajo country.  So in the spring of 1913, he took

wagonloads of building materials and hauled 'em out to

Salina, which was about thirty-five miles from Ganado,

and built the Salina Trading Post.  He operated the

store for two years, 1913 through 1915.  He then sold

the store to the two Boardman brothers, Harry and

Horace Boardman who were brothers-in-law to Hans

Newman.  Dad bought the store at Chinle--Chinle Trading

Post there at the mouth of the canyon.  He bought it

from a fellow by the name of McAdams.  Now, there's a

little confusion there.  There was a J. H. McAdams, who

originally came to the territory and worked with the

Richardsons out at Blue Canyon, in that country.  But I

think this was a George McAdams that he bought the

store from--that I'm not sure of--but there was a

George McAdams that owned a store at Lukachukai, and

then later owned Chinle.  See, that store was built

around 1902, I think.  At one time the Cousins family

worked it.  They were working it for one of the

suppliers.  Then my dad sold it to Cozy McSparron in

January 1919.  And I remember we crossed the mountain

in buckboards.  A buckboard is a seat with four wheels

pulled by two horses.  There was about eighteen inches

of snow across the mountain.  We got into the old

sawmill late at night.  The next morning they spent

hours trying to get an old Republic truck started.

They pulled it all over the flat with six horses,

finally got it started, and we got down to Fort

Defiance and stayed with Louie Sabin [phonetic

spelling] that night.  Then the next day we went on

into Gallup.  So we had a three-day trip.  Today you

can do it in about an hour and twenty minutes, so time

has changed quite a bit.

   My father then bought a store over on the north side

of Gallup on Third Street, but he didn't like Gallup

town trading and had a chance to buy the Rock Springs

store which was three-quarters of a mile off the old

Fort Defiance Road.  It's now about three miles south

of the Window Rock Road.  He bought the store from a

fellow by the name of George Samson.  George had had

several stores:  I think one at Lupton or Houck, and

then another one--I think Tohatchi on [Highway] 666

someplace.  My dad operated this store 'til 1935.

Later he lost it during the Great Depression of the

thirties, because he had been in an agreement with the

Gallup Mercantile that he would handle all their

livestock because we had about a township of land there

across from him.  All the lambs coming off the central

reservation came through our place.  We had a sheep dip

for that final dipping before they loaded 'em on the

cars.  But the Depression was a deadly thing.  No one

had any money, and for our medium debt, why, he had to

give up his trading post.  Today it would be an easy

thing to handle.

   He then went to Atarque to run the Atarque Sheep

Company for some people out of Dallas.  And then later

moved into Gallup in the wholesale gasoline business.

But that's kind of the background on our trading

activities.

   He established Kennedy Oil and was servicing a good

part of the central reservation stores because he knew

all those traders and they knew him.  It was an

independent oil agency.  He developed a fine following,

and the older brother, George, came in with him in due

time, and later on the younger brother.  After my

father retired, the two brothers ran the oil company

then until they sold it to Malco [phonetic spelling]

out of Roswell, a few years ago.

   Now, if there's any questions on any of the stores

running any direction ________ whether it be Flagstaff

north or Winslow north, but I can tell you where most

of 'em were and who was there.

   

   Underhill:  We're gonna start with Guam.  What

brought your dad to the Southwest, or was he born out

here?

   

   John W.:  He was born near Brookfield, Missouri, and

he had an older brother who was a special agent for the

Santa Fe Railroad here at Albuquerk.  And like all

young fellows, he went west.  For a while he was a

streetcar conductor here in Albuquerk, and then

McGaffey offered him a job running a commissary up at

Sawyer, New Mexico, a little lumber camp on Oso Ridge

out south of Bluewater.  And then from there he moved

down to Guam to run the big store, and then eventually

on out into the Navajo country.

   When he acquired the Rock Springs Store, out from

Gallup, he still had these old Indian stockmen that he

had dealt with at Salina and Chinle, that still came to

him every year with their wool and their lambs.  A lot

of them never made a deal without consulting him first.

He had a very fine relationship with the Indians and

spoke the language well.  He could sit and talk to 'em

two hours at a time in their language.  I always

remember one time there was Al Leggy [phonetic

spelling] and Lou Sabin and my dad were talking across

from his store, and talkin' about the Navajo language.

One of 'em had heard a new word that week.  That's how

well they knew the language.

   

   Underhill:  And what did the Navajo call your dad?

   

   John W.:  Hosteen Sa-lun, for Salina Springs.  Of

course it's called Salina, S-A-L-I-N-A, but it's an

anglicized version, because the Navajo word "tsé" is

"rock." (In Navajo)                   is "between the

rocks," because the store was between two high bluffs,

see.  But you see many variations of this, like

Sanostee, S-A-N.  It's actually _______________.

That's "rocks in a circle," see.  Sabinito, that's

"beautiful rocks."  Or, some of 'em say it was named

for Louie Sabin when he moved over from Fort Defiance.

But you see the word tsé is used many, many ways.  Like

the buttes north of Winslow, ___________.  That means

"the rock slide on the face of one of those buttes."

________ is "white," tsé is "rock."  But they call it S-

A, see, say, _____________.  Instead of T-S-E, which is

"rock."  (laughter)  So, you see, many, many places

I've often wondered if it wasn't a word that gave the

Spanish trouble when they were talking about Canyon de

Chelly, because actually the Indian name, tsé....  They

called the town Ch’íníl_.  We call it Chinle, but then

it was called Ch’íníl_.  The name of the canyon river

meant, "the water coming out of an opening."  Well, the

Spanish had trouble with this.  Instead of tsé, they

said "de," de Chelly, see?  I think that's where it

came from, I may be wrong.

   

   Underhill:  Now, who was your mother?

   

   John W.:  My mother was Mary Jeanette Eidson,

E-I-D-S-O-N.  She was born in Brookfield, Arkansas, a

suburb of Jonesboro in northeast Arkansas, and she came

to Albuquerk in 1905, lived with the Hammond and the

Emmons [phonetic spelling] family.  You recall that

Glenn Emmons was later Indian commissioner under

Eisenhower, and she lived with them when she first came

to Albuquerk.  She got into schoolteaching and met my

father here in Albuquerk and they were married in 1909

and went up to Sawyer, the lumber camp where he was

running the commissary for A. B. McGaffey Company.

   

   Underhill:  What are your early memories of being at

the post at Salina?  You were out there, you were

fairly small then.

   

   John W.:  Yeah.  I don't have any memories of

Salina.  I've gone back there many times.  I do have

early memories of Chinle.  My mother refers to a place,

an incident in her book.  The three of us boys, the

older brother and younger brother, we'd walk up the

canyon and there was a place where as the winds blew,

the sand sifted over the rim of the canyon.  There was

quite a large sand dune, and we used to go in there to

play.  This one day we came out of the canyon, and

shortly thereafter, there was a massive flood came out.

The waves were six foot high, and it was just a streak

of luck that we were able to get out of there.  Someone

had their arm around us.  Those floods used to occur

because they didn't have the Wheatfields and Tsalie

dams that they have now.  So if there was a

thunderburst up in the mountains, a couple of hours

later there'd be this huge flood coming out of that

canyon.  I can remember vividly the hogan logs and dead

burros and all the debris that washed down.  The water

came, swept into that curve there by the store, and we

had taken all the rugs off of the floor because the

water was beginning to come in on the floor of the

house.  We didn't have to move out, it subsided shortly

after that.

   Trading at Chinle was kind of an isolated thing at

the time.  If you made a trip to town, it was an all-

day trip.  We'd leave at four in the morning and drive

all day long by way of Ganado and St. Michael's, get

into town about dark.  They just had the two-track

road, a wagon road, to follow across that country at

the time.  There were no graded roads at all.

   

   Underhill:  And "town" was Gallup?

   

   John W.:  Yeah, that was the main trade center for

all of the central reservation.  Farmington was the

trade center for the northeast traders, and Flagstaff

was the trade center for the western traders.

   

   Underhill:  What were living conditions like at

Chinle when you were young?

   

   John W.:  Well, it's changed a great deal.  Whenever

a salesman came by, or someone touring the country, and

they had to stay overnight, why, they stayed at our

house, and we boys slept on the counter over at the

store.  There were no facilities of any kind in Chinle

at that time.  Later, Cozy built several cottages.

When I was selling for the wholesale house in the early

forties, I always stayed there.  I'd go out and work

all the way to Ganado one day, and down to Chinle the

next, and then back to Ganado and out to Sunrise and

Dilkon and White Cone the next day.

   

   Underhill:  So when you went to visit, you didn't

sleep on the counter, huh?

   

   John W.:  (chuckles)  Things have changed.  Chinle

now has three large motels, they have almost 300 rooms,

I think, now, for guests.

   

   Underhill:  What do you remember about the Navajo

customers as a child?

   

   John W.:  Well, we had some great characters that

they traded with:  the sheepman from Tselan that used

to come by Rock Springs and bring his lambs and wool in

every year.  And then we had another Indian by the name

of Ash©©h.  That's the Navajo word for "salt."  He

lived up near the summit above St. Michael's.  He

always came in and traded with my dad.  There was an

unusual event happened there one year.  He had lost

several sheep to poison weed.  ___________ he thought

the herd had been bewitched.  So nothing would do but

what he sold the whole herd of sheep.  And I happened

to be at Chambers the day Al Tietjen unloaded all those

sheep.  And then a few days later, they came to get my

dad, and Ed Vanderwagen [phonetic spelling] was driving

in the government experimental herd from Mexican

Springs.  It had been sold.  Ash©©h met him out there

in the sagebrush near China Springs and they sat there

and dickered for that herd of sheep.  My dad always

talked about the time Ash©©h’s wife would keep reaching

in her shirt and bring out another wad of money.  She

was carryin' about $15,000 in cash in her blouse.

Those old people relied on him pretty heavily for

advice when they were making a transaction of any kind,

so he had to be a part of that particular transaction--

witness the event, you know.

   Another interesting incident:  in 1921, we'd just

gone out to Rock Springs for the summer, and one of my

cousins from Missouri was helping my father in the

store, but this Indian family came down and said that a

member had died, and would my father bury them? 'cause

the Navajos, up until World War II had a belief they

didn't want anything to do with dead people.  In the

flu epidemic of 1918, if they died in a hogan, they

just caved the roof of the hogan in and abandoned it.

This particular day, we drove up and they had dug a

deep grave.  We took two Arbuckle's coffee boxes and

nailed 'em together to make a coffin.  He was rolled in

blankets.  We had to set him in the coffin, lower it in

the ground, and cover it with earth, and then they had

a lot of logs and big rocks to put on the grave,

because they didn't want coyotes or anything to bother

it.  After the grave was covered, we had to lead his

saddle horse, which was a mare, over by the grave, and

shoot it so he'd have his horse on his next trip, his

next journey.  Had to let the colt run free.  He had a

saddle and a silver bridle and personal belongings in

the hogan.  We had to burn the hogan down, per the

instructions of the family.  I was about nine at the

time, but I've always remembered that.  That was my

first funeral service, I think.

   

   Underhill:  Do you speak Navajo?

   

   John W.:  Yeah, I have trading Navajo--all the names

of items, prices and things, and can deal with 'em

fairly well.  I can follow their stories.  I can't

carry on a diverse conversation, but I can handle the

trading end of it.  And of course I went to the Zuni in

1943, took a partnership in a store down there, and all

the old-time stockmen spoke good Navajo.  They spoke

Spanish, Navajo, and some Laguna.  So I was making my

deals with stockmen in Navajo--whether it was for wool

or lambs or calves--so my Navajo came in pretty handy

there.  And then during the war when we were so short

of help, I had to take over all the jewelry buying, and

I immediately had to learn the names of items--silver,

turquoise--and the prices, and what I wanted 'em to

make next.  In the four years there, I got to where I

could handle Zuni fairly well also.

   

   Underhill:  Now, when you were a child, what kind of

chores did you have?  Would you help in the store, or

did you help with wool season or lamb season?

   

   John W.:  Well, that all came at Rock Springs.  I

was too young at Chinle.  We always sacked up the wool

as it came in every year.  We had a rack for our wool

sacks, and one of my jobs was to sack wool all the

time.  And as we bought sheep, we'd start buying pairs

in July when we knew--we had rain and there were some

water holes--[we'd] start buying pairs.  So while we

were developing a bunch, my younger brother and I had

to take care of these sheep each day--take 'em out and

graze 'em all day, and come in at night.  And then once

they got a good-sized herd, he hired a herder.

   Then because of government regulations, when

shipping sheep from the Navajo Reservation, for years

they had to have two dippings to qualify, 'cause the

sheep were badly infested with scabies.  So these

dippings had to occur about ten days apart, and there

was a dip at Kayenta and one at Ganado and one at

Chinle and one north of Tohatchi, and then we built one

there at Rock Springs, so that most of the sheep coming

off of the central reservation came by our place there

in October-November.  I can remember we'd have as high

as 17,000 head of sheep there at one time.  We dipped

every day.  We'd have to go down, haul loads of wood,

and heated the water for the dip, and had a crew

running these sheep through the dip and so forth.  I

usually was right at the head of the dip where if they

threw them in or they jumped in, you got splashed real

well.  So I was covered with Black Leaf 40 dip and bath

water all day long.  I was wearing bib overalls.  It

was a tough job, lots of hard work, but it was all

right.  But it was a part of the livestock industry at

the time.  It's no longer required now.  It added up to

lots of activity at that store we had, 'cause that was

the last stop before the railroad.

   

   Underhill:  Did you witness John Collier's livestock

reduction?

   

   John W.:  Yeah.  Let's see, where was I when that

happened?  (laughs)  It's something the Navajos still

resent.  It's still high on their priorities of things

they dislike from Washington.  (laughter)  I know when

so many of 'em were highly incensed, because Navajos

measured their wealth in the amount of livestock they

had, whether it's horses or sheep or cattle.  When they

were told to reduce to 200 head, if they had 800 or

900, it was a devastating blow to them.  I know I

worked for the Atarque Sheep Company south of Zuni

Reservation in the spring of 1931.  They had had to

kill hundreds of sheep.  Over behind one ridge, there

was a mountain of old sheep carcasses and bones.  It

just made a regular hill of 'em.  They killed thousands

of 'em, under that livestock reduction program.

   

   Underhill:  And what was the impact on the people?

   

   John W.:  Oh, it was serious because they were so

dependent on their sheep that when you took away 60 or

80 percent of their income, it was a real blow to them,

and they never did quite recover.  Of course when you

look back on the history of New Mexico, see, the early

traders that came out of Missouri and into Las Vegas

and Taos and Santa Fe, traded merchandise for

livestock.  And over a period of time then, they began

to issue livestock to a lot of these Spanish land grant

people on a partedo basis.  And by the early 1900s you

had about 2 million sheep in the state of New Mexico.

Now there's just a handful left.  It's no longer a

sizeable industry here.  But the Navajos acquired their

sheep originally by raiding the Rio Grande villages.

They built up a pretty heavy sheep count.  I can't

remember the amount of wool we used to ship.  I was

with the Gallup Mercantile all through the thirties,

and we shipped millions of pounds of wool.  Everything

went through Lawrence, Massachusetts for [scouring?],

and then on to the wool brokers in Boston for selling,

'cause the wool trade in America was centered in

Boston.  That has also disappeared.  The wool now goes

directly to the cloth manufacturers that moved from New

England into the South, and that changed that activity

in America.

   

   Underhill:  From your own observations of grazing

conditions in the early thirties, do you think that

livestock reduction was necessary?  Was there

overgrazing, or was that Washington's opinion?

   

   John W.:  It was partially necessary, because some

areas were badly overgrazed, and yet the Navajos could

manage their livestock well enough that they always

could get 'em into the hills where there was extra

grazing when there was snow on the ground.  They could

manage to keep livestock alive.  There were just a few

places that were overgrazed, but I think the thinking

was at the time that there were memories that there

used to be grass up to a horse's belly as you rode from

Tohatchi to Shiprock and that was all gone, so they had

to bring that back.  The livestock program was really

too severe.  It had an awful impact on the Navajo

Tribe.  Of course since then they have been heavily

subsistent on what Washington sends out.  It's a big

factor in their lives now.

   

   Steiger:  Did the grass ever come back?

   John W.:  Not the way they thought it would.  In

some areas it looks good.  They got into places like up

there at Chee Dodge's, up toward Crystal.  They ripped

out the sagebrush and reseeded large areas which now

have a good heavy sod for grazing.  They improved the

range quite a bit in that manner.

   

   Underhill:  During the Depression you mentioned your

dad lost the store because of a debt to Gallup

Mercantile.  (John W.:  Yeah.)  What impact did the

Depression have on ___________?

   

   John W.:  Well, he had had a working arrangement

with the ranch.  He would process all the livestock

prior to shipping out of Gallup.  And they had an

arrangement where he'd take half the profits or half

the losses.  Well, as a big company, they weathered the

storm, but when the Depression hit, it was too much for

an individual.  His share of the losses was too great,

and it took the ranch, is what it amounted to.  They

had a fine facility with the dip and the lakes and the

waterholes--almost a township of land--why, he could

handle a lot of livestock.

   And another facet of that stock reduction was when

they got rid of all the horses.  I can remember they

trailed horses in by the thousands from all across the

reservation.  They had a reduction plant at Coal Basin,

just over the hill from Wal-Mart there in Gallup.  I

forget what the capacity was.  They could kill several

hundred a day.  We handled all those horses on our land

there at that time, where they drove them for days with

a minimum of feed.  There were dead horses all over

that ranch.  I got the benefit of that, because I was

doin' a lot of coyote trapping, and the coyotes would

follow the horses in.  I had a pretty good crop of

coyotes to chose from.  (chuckles)

   

   Underhill:  And what were you doing with the coyote?

   

   John W.:  That was the way I got my pocket money

during high school, was to trap.  I trapped coyote,

bobcat, badgers, fox, some weasels.  I remember in my

last two years I saved my money, and then I had a

summer job at the ice plant, and enrolled at New Mexico

State that fall, and my mother would send me forty

dollars a month.  My board and room was $32.50 and I

had $7.50 to cover all other expenses.  Things have

changed there also.  (laughter)

   

   Underhill:  What did you study at New Mexico State?

   

   John W.:  Well, I went into general education.  It's

much the same as it is now.  Your first two years are

to try to see if you're a college student or not.

(laughter)

   

   Underhill:  When you were growing up, did your

mother serve as your teacher?

   

   John W.:  At Rock Springs we were at the old road.

We were ten miles from Gallup, so in 1923, we'd sold

the house in Gallup and moved the family out to Rock

Springs.  They hired a teacher to come and live with

us.  It was a May Childers from up near Smith's Lake,

on the Crownpoint Road.  Her dad had a big ranch out

there.  So May lived with us and taught all three of us

daily.  We corresponded with her up until about a year

ago.  She had moved to Oregon and she was ninety-some

when she passed away.  The second year they brought a

young woman out of Kentucky, a Miss Linear, and she

taught us the second year, and eventually married Con

Shillenberg [phonetic spelling] that had the Rough Rock

Trading Post northwest of Chinle.  And then after that,

we drove back and forth....  Well, we spent two years

of boarding in town and going to school and going home

on the weekends.  Then we started driving back and

forth to school.  So for six years we drove in daily

and back.  We never missed a day of school.  In those

days, I think there were about three cars at the

school, and one of 'em was ours.  There were times when

we walked in without the car, but we never missed a day

of school in six years.  Of course school buses were

unheard of at the time.  We were doin' our own busing.

(laughter)

   

   Underhill:  You mentioned witnessing a burial when

you were nine, and that your dad also served as an

advisor of sorts to folks.  What other kinds of duties

did traders perform in that era?

   

   John W.:  The old traders were called on for

everything that the Indians didn't understand.  If he

got a letter from some branch of the government, the

trader had to interpret that letter for him and give

him the guidelines.  They handled sickness.  If there

was a time of need, they had to help the family out.  I

remember a trader at Copper Mine told me one year,

"I'll never be a rich man because the Navajos know me

too well."  When a Navajo comes to you and says, “Ad

shonii,” you can't turn 'em down, you gotta take care

of 'em.  So the trader did all of that for 'em.

   An interesting incident like that was Earl Kennedy

up at Lukachukai.  He and his wife worked as a team and

traded there for twenty-eight years, I think.  This one

councilman was interested in Earl's methods.  Earl

didn't like the councilman at all.  So Earl was telling

me his problems one day, and eventually a fact-finding

board, which called for two members of the tribal

council, a member from the Indian commissioner's office

in Washington, and a member to represent the traders,

and the four of us would meet to name a fifth who

served as chairman.  Well, they had this trial on Earl

at Gallup.  I know the second day he went through these

long interpretations that can only happen in a

prolonged Navajo meeting.  This one Navajo was

testifying that they had had a meeting and forty-eight

had voted that Earl had to leave, and five abstained.

I told the lawyer running the meeting, "I want to ask a

question."  He said, "How's that?"  I said, "I want to

know if that represents all the votes in that chapter

district."  Well, another Indian testified they'd had

another meeting and 212 had asked Earl to stay.  And

that broke up the meeting.  I saw the lawyer that

night, and he said, "You just pulled the rug right out

from under us.  We thought we had a case."  Earl and

his wife had been up there all those years, and they'd

done everything the Indians wanted--answered their mail

and helped 'em through sickness and one thing and

another.  So the fact-finding board stated that Earl

should be given his license without prejudice.  That's

when these twenty-five-year licenses came into effect.

   So I think it was five years later I stopped by to

see Earl one day, and he didn't say "hello" or "go to

hell" or anything.  He went over and got a letter and

handed it to me, and it was a letter from Window Rock

stating that they could no longer accept the rent from

him because he didn't have a valid trader's license.

He said, "Now what am I gonna do?!"  I said, "Give that

to me."  And I went down to see the trading supervisor

at Window Rock and I said, "Now, Bill, you know Earl

real well.  You know he and his wife aren't gonna

leave.  They're out there takin' care of the Indians,

and they're not gonna come down here and sit for a half-

a-day waitin' for someone to see 'em for fifteen

minutes.  Why don't you straighten this out?"  He said,

"What'll I do?"  I said, "Get a license agreement and

go up there and ask him if he'd mind signing it."  So

Bill made the trip up there and presented the license,

Earl signed it, and that resolved it.  But that was

five years after he was granted permission to have a

license.  And that's the way it works in the Indian

country!  (laughs)

   

   Underhill:  Now, who initiated that investigation?

Was it tribal council, or was it BIA?

   

   John W.:  The tribal council felt that this one

member made such an issue of it, they felt they had to

have a hearing.  So they called for a hearing and there

was a fellow from Indian Wells--he was an Indian

preacher.  And then Howard Gorman from Ganado.  Tom

Reed [phonetic spelling] from the Indian commissioner's

office.  Tom Reed's dad had been a lawyer for the Santa

Fe Railroad here.  And I was named to represent the

traders.  We named Bob Allen [phonetic spelling], the

banker, as the chairman of the meeting.  And that was

the rule when they set these twenty-five-year leases,

that they would have a fact-finding board to resolve

any serious difficulties between the Indians and

traders.  That's how that came about then, but they

only had one or two fact-finding board meetings there.

It never worked out very well.

   

   Underhill:  Do you remember what year that was?

   

   John W.:  Let me see....  It was in the early

fifties.  I can't remember exactly when it was.

   

   Underhill:  That's fine.  What kind of man was Earl?

   John W.:  Earl was....  Most of those guys were

fairly conservative, except the younger one--he was a

wild one.  Earl had some of everything that he ever

bought in the years he was at Lukachukai.  One year a

fellow who was traveling the reservation and picking up

rugs for me and selling jewelry, came in and said,

"Earl has a bunch of piñons."  I had been shipping

quantities of piñons for years.  I had an outlet in New

York that took millions of pounds.  So we arranged to

go out there with him in February or March--cold,

miserable day, the snow was blowing.  We weighed Earl's

piñons, and I gave him a check for 'em and told him I'd

have a truck pick 'em up in a few days.  We were havin'

coffee in his kitchen, and I said, "Earl, where are all

your rugs?"  I was just probing.  He said, "Well, you

saw the stack in there by the flour in the wareroom."

I said, "That's your dogs.  Where are your rugs?"

After a while he got a key off the kitchen wall and we

went out and opened up a pumphouse in the back yard and

it was stacked solid with Navajo rugs--years and years

of supply.  It was a pumphouse as large as this room

here.  So we set an orange crate out in the back yard,

put on our mackinaws, put an adding machine on the

orange crate.  He'd pull a rug out.  "How much, Earl?"

"Sixteen or fourteen or eighteen," whatever it was.  He

had his code on there, "H.O."  We would kid him, "Earl,

last time, 'H.O.' was fourteen.  How come it's sixteen

now?"  (laughter)  Finally he said, "I think I've sold

enough stuff today," and the adding machine said $7,000

plus, and I was wondering what I was gonna use for

money.  So I arranged to have a wholesale truck pick

the rugs up a few days later.  But there was a shortage

of rugs at the time, and I let word out there in Gallup

that I had these rugs, and within a week's time, Kirk

Brothers and Woodard and Mercantile took the whole

works.  So in December that year, Earl was in Gallup

and he told my friend, "You and John come out again.

I'll have the coffee ready."  So we went out and

weighed rugs again, and it took three trips to clean

him out before we got all the rugs out of that.  I wish

now--today you'd have a field day with those rugs,

'cause a lot of marvelous old designs.

   But Earl....  One time my friend wanted some wedding

baskets, which all the medicine men used, you know.

And he said, "Earl, I've gotta have a few wedding

baskets."  And Earl said, "I don't know whether I can

let you have any or not."  But they went out to one of

the barns, and he must have had 2,000 in there!

(laughter)  But he was that way.  He saved a lot.

   I think of the time....  I used to get a lot of rugs

from Russell Foutz when I had the wholesale house, and

Russell liked to lead the parade with those traders up

there.  He said, "I've gotta have a new Cadillac."  So

I told the Cadillac dealer in Gallup, "I've got the

rugs, and as I sell 'em, I'll just send the checks to

you every month if you want to give him a Cadillac."

So Russell got a Cadillac.  So the next time I saw

[this one particular trader], he said, "Goddamn it, I

want a Cadillac!"  I said, "Well, what have you got,

Walter?"  We went in his vault, and he had all these

shoe boxes of the dead pawn of every year he'd been

there, twenty-some years.  So I looked and I said,

"Well, we can make a deal."  So I'd get a box and look

at it.  "Oh, I can't let that go!"  The next one, "I

can't let that go!"  I said, "Walter, for godsake, you

wanted a Cadillac.  Stop right here."  And that ended

the deal!  (laughter)

   Another time John and I were out pickin' up rugs.  I

told him we'd have some fun there at Dinnehotso, so we

drove down and [the same trader] said, "What the hell

you doin' out here?"  We told him that we came to help

him with the new road, there'd be a lot of tourists.

He really exploded because he said, "I don't want those

people in here.  They'll argue with you five minutes

over a can of Vienna sausages!"  So after a while we

were havin' coffee in the kitchen, he said, "Aren't you

gonna look at my rugs?"  So we went back and I said,

"Go on, take care of your trade."  And I sorted these

rugs in two stacks.  He come back later and he said,

"Now, what's this?"  I said, "Well, I've got a bunch of

jewelry out in the car, and if it looks as bad as this

stack, I'll trade ya'.  And this other stack, if your

luck holds out, you'll eventually get paid for them."

He looks at 'em, "Well, I guess that's all right.

Bring your jewelry in."  We brought the jewelry in, and

he traded out all the rugs for jewelry!"  (laughter)

He used to sell a lot of fine Zuni clusters to all

those stockmen out there.  The women prized those Zuni

pins like American women do diamonds--big cluster

bracelets, the pins, and the big belts and so forth.

But he had that pawn he'd collected for twenty-six

years, I think it was.  He had the store for many years

after that, but he started pickin' out the top of that

pawn.  I said, "You wanted a Cadillac, so let's stop

here."  (chuckles)

   

   John D.:  You know, I remember one of the things

about Earl, when we made those early trips, and he just

had that little stack of rugs, and some tourists came

in and said, "Do you have any Navajo rugs?"  He said,

"No."  And there's the stack sittin' over there, so

they're standin' around.  After a while they said,

"Well, what about those?"  He said, "Oh, those are

prayer rugs."  "Really?!"  They were god-awful rugs.

Like Dad said, they were the dog rugs.  And so pretty

soon they're rootin' through 'em and everything else.

They walked out, and I remember we said "Earl, what the

hell's a prayer rug?"  He says, "Those are rugs I'm

just prayin' somebody'll come by and buy."  (laughter)

From then on, anytime anybody ever said, "I've got a

prayer rug...."  (laughter)

   

   Underhill:  Now, was this attitude toward tourists

pervasive among traders?

   

   John W.:  Well, so many of the traders, you know,

they worked all day long.  It was hard work:  they

opened up in the morning and it was a crash program

until they could finally close their doors sometime

after dark.  So they were always behind in their work,

whether it was stocking shelves or getting stuff out of

the wareroom or whatever.  Well, when a tourist come

along, they took up a lot of time, asking questions and

wanting to see everything.  And while you're talking to

one tourist, you could wait on three or four Navajos.

A lot of 'em, they held back a lot when they were

dealing with outsiders.  Later on, as the roads

improved, they all got to where they'd like to have a

tourist come along and look at the rugs, but it took a

few years to break 'em down.

   

   Underhill:  How frequently did you get tourists when

you were still living with your mom and dad at the

different places?

   

   John W.:  Well, at Chinle, you rarely ever got

anyone.  I can remember when Herman Schwietzer

[phonetic spelling] with Fred Harvey Company used to

come by.  He'd bring a suitcase of coral and he was out

pickin' up rugs.  He would stay with us overnight and

pick up rugs the next morning and then go on to the

next trading post.  That was kind of the extent of the

travel.

   Well, in 1917, the Smithsonian was excavating the

ruins in the canyon, and a lot of their crew camped

there at the store.  The old boy that had the Fernandez

Ranch out here at San Mateo....  God, I know his name

as well as I know my own.  But he was a college student

at the university, workin' out there in the summertime.

So he always came in, in the evening, just to visit

with us and help my mother with the dishes and so

forth.  That was about the extent of outside travel in

those days.  The roads were nonexistent.  You had an

awful time just finding Chinle.

   

   Cole:  What was Schwietzer like, do you remember?

   

   John W.:  Yeah, he was a shrewd trader.  They had

developed this line of hotels along the Santa Fe, and

they found a great interest in Indian product, and they

developed a tremendous business.  They had the

wholesale base here in Albuquerk and distributed to the

other branches.  But Herman was real selective in his

buying, and then later on he was succeeded by Bob Boyd.

I did a lot of business with Boyd in the fifties.  When

I had a place there in Gallup, he would come by and get

a lot of rugs from me--quite often a lot of Zuni

jewelry.  But they were a big factor in those days--in

fact, they were about the number one outlet for Indian

arts and crafts in the early days.

   

   Underhill:  Got Chinle and Rock Point.  Did your dad

work with local weavers in the creation of rugs?

   

   John W.:  Yes.  Of course all traders usually took

everything an Indian brought 'em, because they didn't

want that Indian goin' to some other store.  So they

bought all the rugs and all the hides and pelts and the

wool and the lambs.  But on the first ceremonial in

1922, he was one of the rug judges at the Gallup

Ceremonial.  The little exhibition hall was just a

galvanized building that you could bake bread in, in

August, and you just wandered in the door and made a

loop around to look at the various rug displays, and

that was the size of it.  Yeah, nearly all traders--

progressive traders always tried to figure out how to

build up their Indians.  That was their main chore,

because if the Indian prospered, they prospered.

   Yeah, the traders were basically--in most areas they

were a great help to the Indian, and the Indian

realized it.  You did have that conflict that went back

to the establishment of Fort Defiance in the 1880s

where you had the great triangle:  the Indian, the

government official, and the trader.  Two were always

played against one.

   

   Underhill:  What did you think of government

officials over the years?

   

   John W.:  Well, some of their programs were

unrealistic as far as the Indians were concerned.  I

think in the early days, the territorial days of New

Mexico, nearly all the Indian agents were just

political friends that were given a job and sent out to

the country, and they served their time, a year-and-a-

half, two years, and then went back and a new agent

appeared.  So there wasn't a very healthy program to

develop the welfare of the Indians.  That did change in

later years when big money became involved.  The annual

appropriation was a sizeable thing.

   I think of Pete MacDonald--you've heard of him.

Pete and I used to have lunch about once a month before

he ran the first time.  I told him, "Pete, you're going

to be elected.  There's a couple things I wish you'd

consider.  One is that you develop a better

relationship between Window Rock and the traders.

Break down this competitive feeling and antagonistic

feeling and work together.  And the other is, I wish

you'd work closer with the border towns:  Flagstaff,

Winslow, Gallup, and Farmington.  Maybe have a three-

man committee that'll meet at Window Rock one week for

lunch, and the next week meet in Gallup.  Just exchange

ideas and not fight your battles through the

newspapers."  Oh, he thought that was a great idea.  He

got elected, and it went just the reverse.  I remember

he ran this one story about the drunkenness in Gallup

one year.  I said, "Pete, that was an awful blow to the

town of Gallup.  Why in the world did you do that?!"

"Oh," he said, "when you have a chance to get on

national television, you'd better take it."  And that

was a bad experience.

   

   John D.:  Two of the things that we really saw that

the others have probably told you, is when the

government restricted the trading and the pawn

activity.  That really started the demise of trading on

the reservation.

   

   Underhill:  And you were running a wholesale shop at

the time of the FTC hearings?

   

   John W.:  Yeah.  See, I had a wholesale house in

Gallup from 1952 until 1979.  We bought rugs from just

about every trader, and I had a sale force covering--

the main area was western America, but we did have

customers from New York and Chicago and so forth.  The

big effort was here in the Southwest.  We were moving

lots of merchandise.  One time we led the pack in the

wholesale business.  So we turned a lot of product, and

here always you try to improve the product and come up

with innovations that will help the producer better his

situation.  That was the main play, because you can

always buy rugs, but how many good rugs can you buy?

Yeah, the trader has a very definite spot in the

economy of the reservation.

   

   Underhill:  In the 1970s was the DNA and then FTC

hearings.  How did that impact your wholesale operation

when the traders were pulling out?

   

   John W.:  We weren't having any real problems,

'cause we were buying jewelry from, oh, probably 500

Zuni and Navajo families, and we had a good production

crew there in the house in Gallup.  So our operation

was strictly a wholesale merchandising operation, and

we abided by the OSHA rules or any other regulation

that came along.  A lot of traders were affected

adversely.  And like he mentioned the pawn business.

Every trader used to keep pawn, and it was merely a

guarantee against credit that they advanced.  An Indian

would leave a necklace with a trader, and periodically

come in and get a few more groceries against that

necklace and pay on it at wool season, and then redeem

it with livestock in the fall.  And this was the

guarantee the trader had that his credit was okay.

Well then the government put an end to that kind of

trading, and now you have these operators in Farmington

and Shiprock and Gallup and Gamerco that handle mass

quantities of pawn.  I mean, it's big business.  And

they changed their rule here in New Mexico, the state

law--actually, the only law this Navajo tribal

legislator had submitted that one year, so they had to

give him his bill--where they could only [END TAPE 1,

SIDE A; BEGIN SIDE B] make 4 percent a month, I think

it is.  I'm not real clear on the rules, 'cause I

haven't handled any of it.  They had to keep it six

months, and then one month's notification before they

could sell it.  But if an Indian brought in quite a

quantity of pawn 'cause he's gonna buy a new pickup or

something, they broke it up into a lot of small

packages, so they were making a percentage on all of

it, and then they changed the interest every month,

see.  So actually, the old pawn deal was better for the

Indians than the one they have now.

   

   Underhill:  Do you think the Navajo recognized that?

   

   John W.:  I've been away from it too long to really

make a judgement on that, but I'm sure they have,

because the old-time traders just about disappeared

from the reservation, and the only thing that saved the

Indians is that they're very mobile these days--they

all have pickups and we have zone areas that produce

certain types of rugs.  Well, these rugs will show up

anywhere now, because they'll drive 200 miles to sell a

rug.  The same with their livestock.  They keep hauling

in livestock every time there's a pickup payment due.

So you got places like Gamerco and Thoreau and Shiprock

where they buy a lot of stock year-round.  There's no

longer this gathering and selling a whole lot of

livestock in a set period of days in October, and then

having so many days to get 'em off of the reservation.

That all changed.

   

   John D.:  You know, I think a lot of that--going

back to what you said--there became some distrust

because a lot of the Indians thought it was the traders

that were putting that on 'em.  You know, the Truth in

Lending Act and things like this.  And all they wanted

was twenty dollars to go to town.  Before, they used to

just come in and put a bracelet down, get twenty

dollars, and go to town.  All of a sudden it became

very long and drawn-out.  I think a lot of 'em thought

it was the trader's fault--and it was the government

that was imposing that on the trader.  (original tape

changed)

   

   Underhill:  This is Karen Underhill with John

Kennedy.  It's December 16, 1998, and also in the room

are John's son, John, and Brad Cole of Northern Arizona

University, Lew Steiger, and "Pepper."  (laughter)  And

it's Pepper snoring, it's not any of us.  I want you to

know that.  (laughter)

   Let's do talk about some of the older traders now.

First of all, were you a member of the United Indian

Traders Association?

   

   John W.:  Yeah.  When I was in Zuni we had a

trader's number.  I was a partner with C. G. Wallace

from 1943 to 1947.  The Traders Association was formed

to further the sale of authentic Indian arts and

crafts, and there was a fellow by the name of Bertram

Staples that had come to the Southwest and was located

at Coolidge, which formerly was known as Guam.  And

Staples was the driving force in organizing these

traders to form this association.  In due time, the

recognized dealers all had a number which they could

put on, stamp their product, "U.S." with an arrowhead,

"I.A."  U.S. Indian Traders Association.  The last few

years there in Gallup, I think M. L. Woodard was the

secretary, and then at the very last, Carl Hine was the

secretary.  Carl had been the manager of Gross Kelly

[phonetic spelling] Company there in Gallup.  The

reason the Traders Association went into quite a change

at that time, during the World War II, they were able

to get a commitment from Washington to get so much

silver for the Indians to produce jewelry, because that

was one of the few means of employment the Indians had.

Well, after World War II, this became quite a business,

and the Indian Traders being a nonprofit organization

suddenly found out they were handling quantities of

precious metal.  So they divorced themselves from that

business.  They sold it to Carl Hine, and then he sold

it to a fellow by the name of Brazier [phonetic

spelling] and then Brazier sold it to Woodards.  But

the need then for the Indian Traders no longer existed

because there were other associations working.  The

sales volume had expanded greatly.  The Association

just existed in name the last twenty years.  I think

Don Reeves in Farmington was secretary and Walter

Kennedy was the director, I think, and some other

fellow (John D.:  Russell) was there.  They finally

decided to liquidate, and that's where you folks come

into the act.

   

   Underhill:  Yes, we're final liquidation.

(laughter)  I like that.

   

   John D.:  You know, in the sixties, they became more

and more involved with changes in regulations and stuff

like that, and became strictly a reservation group,

where before they used to handle a lot of....  There

were a lot of people on the periphery that were in the

Association, but after a while, that was their sole

function, was to basically combat the government over

regulations on the reservation.

   

   Underhill:  You mentioned that you had a number with

C. G. Wallace.  Do you remember what your number was?

   

   John W.:  Yeah, I can research and find that out.  I

don't remember it for sure right now.  But I know

Wallace had a number, and Drolet had a number at

Naschitti and Mike Kirk [phonetic spelling] had a

number at Manuelita.  Harold Prewitt had a number down

there at Prewitt, New Mexico.  John Kirk had a number

there in Gallup.  But any of 'em that were producing

any amount of arts and crafts--well, the Foutzes had

numbers 'cause they were in the rug business heavily.

Hubbells had a number.  Cozy had a number down at

Chinle.

   

   John D.:  A while back Don Reeves told me what your

number was, and I can't remember.

   

   Underhill:  If either of you ever run across a list,

or even a partial list, we've never found one.

   

   John D.:  I thought Don had one.

   

   Underhill:  ______________.

   

   John W.:  I think he has.  He should know.

   

   John D.:  I saw him a couple of months back, and we

were talkin' and I thought he told me that he had a

partial list.  He didn't have the whole list, and he

wanted to know if we knew any of the names and numbers.

   

   Underhill:  Right.

   

   John W.:  Yeah, I know over the last fifteen years

I've had I don't know how many inquiries wanting to

know if I knew who all had numbers.

   

   John D.:  But I seem to remember Don saying "your

number was...."  He probably had the best knowledge.

   

   Underhill:  _____________.  In terms of these early

members, we'll just run a list here.  (laughs)  L. L.

Sabin.

   

   John W.:  Yeah, it's interesting how some of these

traders came into the picture, 'cause Louie Sabin and

Charlie Newcomb came from Iowa and worked for the store

at Guam that my father had managed.  After he left to

build Salina Trading Post, they came in and clerked at

that store, which McGaffey Lumber Company had bought

from Newman.  Then when Sabin left there, he went to

Fort Defiance, and it seems to me that C. C. Manning in

Gallup had the store at Fort Defiance, and he hired

Louie to run it, and then eventually Louie bought the

store.  Charlie Newcomb worked for Manning for a while

in Gallup, and then I think Manning had Naschitti at

that time, and Charlie went out there, and then later

acquired Crystal across the mountain, and he was there

until the fifties.  Then he sold Crystal and moved back

to Coolidge.  That was his last store.

   

   Underhill:  What was Mr. Sabin like?

   

   John W.:  Louie was a very jovial fellow, very

neighborly.  I know whenever we were in that area, he

always expected you to stop and say hi.  In later years

when I was with the wholesale company, he was a nice

fellow to deal with.  He eventually sold the store to

Ray Dunn [phonetic spelling] who had--he called it Dunn

Mercantile.  He had the trading post at Navajo

Mountain, and he bought Louie Sabin's store, and then

Louie came on over to Sabinita and operated for a

while.  He had bought that land and was selling off

lots in it, so his trading activity wasn't much after

he left Fort Defiance.  Let's see, some of the

other....

   

   Underhill:  C. G. Wallace?

   

   John W.:  Take Ramon Hubbell.  See, when we were at

Salina, a stopping point in coming to Gallup, we'd

travel by buckboard.  You'd either stay at Ganado or

Cross Canyon the first night, and then on into Gallup

the next, or vice versa on the return trip.  So we got

to know Hubbell very well.  He had trading operations

at Piñon and Marble Canyon and Black Falls, down at

Chinle.  See, when we were at Chinle, he'd come in

there and with the store he had Camillo Garcia when he

built a huge adobe building, a two-story building--and

I think it still stands--but Camillo Garcia was his

trader, and Camillo had been operating a store at

Cornfields west of Ganado.  Eventually Camillo bought

the old Stag Store, which was on the east side of

Chinle Village, and he operated that until his death.

He had that and the Chinle Valley Store which he had

Felix Martinez running.  It was unfortunate when

Camillo and his son were killed in that plane crash,

'cause it changed the whole order of things with that

family.  The son was the only male heir.  There were

three daughters, and of course with Spanish families

the son was supposed to acquire the business.  Camillo

had been a very successful trader:  he had a big

interest in the motel at Chambers, and a big interest

in the Shalimar at Gallup, and one of the banks at

Gallup, and his two country trading posts.  He was a

good operator.

   And let's see, some of the others are....  Ramon,

when I was with the wholesale house in Gallup in the

forties, I took a sheep buyer out there, a fellow from

Muleshoe, Texas.  Ramon had his sheep between Ganado

and Klagetoh, and we drove out and looked at 'em about

sundown, and then came back and stayed there at night.

I remember Ramon went out on the back porch and cut

chunks of meat off a hindquarter of beef that was

hanging there and came in and just threw 'em in the

live coals in the fireplace, and we had broiled steaks.

   An interesting experience years later, when I was

operating the wholesale house, my own company there in

Gallup, I stopped to see Dorothy Hubbell one day, and

she was talking about the problem she was having with

Washington concerning Hubbell Trading Post.  So I wrote

a rather strong letter about everything that was there

in the inventory of 1961 was still there, and if

there's any question about it, it could be solved real

easily.  I wrote Goldwater, and I got back a stinging

letter from him about if I knew so much about

Hubbell's, why was there so much Hubbell pawn showing

up all over the country?  And I wrote back in the same

tone, 'cause he made me mad, I said, "If you'll check

further, you'll find that that pawn came from the

Hubbell wholesale house in Winslow, and not from the

Hubbell Trading at Ganado."  After the second go-round--

the first time they applied for the Park Service to

take over the place, some Kansas or Nebraska farmer

wanted to know why they had to bail out a busted Indian

trader, so the thing was stopped.  But as the second go-

around, after I wrote those letters in, they approved

it and they made it a national historical site, and

Dorothy always thanked me for my effort in that.

   We knew Lorenzo Jr. when he had Oraibi.  We went to

the snake dance in 1924 at Walpi, and I remember we

stopped at Oraibi Trading Post to get gas, and he had

fifty or sixty of those steel drums of gas out in

front.  And here were all these people, hoping to get

out of the Indian country, lining up to get gas.

They'd pump one barrel dry and then roll another one

over and pump it dry.  Lorenzo was a well-liked trader.

Well, both Lorenzos, Senior and Junior.  Ramon was not

the businessman that they were, and eventually some of

his ventures got into trouble and they lost a lot of

their holdings.

   

   Underhill:  C. G. Wallace, your partner?

   

   John W.:  Well, he came to me while I was workin'

for the Gallup Mercantile and offered me a half-

interest in his store at Zuni if I'd go down and run

it.  We spent several months negotiating, 'cause I

wasn't sure I wanted to make that deal.  I moved my

family to Zuni, and for four years we worked it night

and day.  We had a retail outlet in Gallup.  In that

time we bought the store at Cedar Point from H. W.

Gibson, and so we had the three places to worry about.

We parted ways in 1957, and it was one of the worst

business deals I ever encountered.  It probably was a

real education at the time.

   

   Underhill:  Why did that become a bad business deal

for you?

   

   John W.:  Just Wallace, the character that he was,

and his business methods and so forth.  We clashed and

I got out of the system.

   

   Underhill:  What were some of Wallace's

characteristics?--at least those that you can put on an

interview?

   

   John W.:  Well, some of the things, like I say, I

don't know whether you want on tape or not.  (laughter)

   

   Underhill:  Anything you're willing to tell us!

   

   Steiger:  It's whether you want 'em on tape!

   

   Underhill:  Yes!  (laughter)

   

   John W.:  He was a successful businessman.  He had

that trading operation and a ranch over near Sanders.

We bought the Gibson store, and then he had the De Anza

Motor Lodge here in Albuquerk, but most of his

activities are based on greed.  That greed supported

women friends all over the country.  So it led to

problems.

   

   Underhill:  And you mentioned--and we're going to

some of these other older traders--that you had your

family with you at Zuni.  (John W.:  Yeah.)  When did

you marry and who did you marry?

   

   John W.:  Well, I had worked at the Mercantile there

a good many years all through the thirties until 1943.

The Gallup Mercantile was a branch of Charles Ilfeld

Company, which had wholesale branches in Trinidad,

Raton, Las Vegas, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Santa Rosa,

Pasteur, Magdalena, Gallup, Farmington, and Durango.

That was quite an experience.  I worked up through the

ranks, I started on the warehouse gang, and then was

receiving clerk, then shipping clerk, then cost clerk,

then grocery buyer, and then salesman.  While we were

at the Merc, a fellow I had run around with for years

was going with Mrs. Kennedy's sister, and they

announced their plans for a wedding.  I was the best

man and she was bridesmaid, and that's where we met.

That was in 1938.  We were married in 1940.  Fifty-

eight years later, we're still here.  (laughter)  But

that's how that started.  When we went to Zuni--see, we

were married in 1940--John was born in 1941.  In fact,

the day before yesterday was his birthday.

   

   Underhill:  So was mine!

   

   John W.:  When we moved to Zuni, we had a son and

daughter, and then later another son arrived while we

were there.  And then when I left, we came into Gallup.

And of course that was a real trial for Mrs. Kennedy,

because she was expecting the fourth.  It was necessary

that I have a spinal operation, and I came into

Albuquerk and I had two strips taken out of a shin, and

a derrick built under my lower back.  They fused four

vertebrae together, and this was when they were first

experimenting with these operations, so for several

months then I had a hospital bed in the house at

Gallup, and here she was with four youngsters and me to

take care of.  So that was a bad year in her life.  But

we came through all that all right.

   

   Underhill:  Lloyd Ambrose?

   

   John W.:  Lloyd Ambrose, again, was a part of that

Newman-Boardman complex.  He was married to one of the

Boardman girls, so he was a brother-in-law of the

Boardmans, as well as a brother-in-law of Hans

Neumannalso.  Let's see, Lloyd operated a store at

Thoreau at one time.  And then let's see where else did

he operate?  He came into the trading business late,

and after....  Oh, they had the store at Crownpoint,

and when they sold Crownpoint they built the motel

there in Gallup, in partnership with Mrs. Neumannand

her second husband.  That's how that lodge on the east

side of Gallup developed.

   

   John D.:  El Rancho?

   

   John W.:  No, wait, it was this side of El Rancho.

One of the motels there by the arroyo.  I can't think

of the name of it now.

   

   John D.:  It must have been the Lariat or the Blue

Spruce?

   

   John W.:  No, it was on east of there.

   John D.:  Hacienda?

   

   John W.:  It was where you turned to go up to the

high school, just west of there they had that motel.

   

   John D.:  Oh, yeah.  It was Coronado.

   

   John W.:  Uh-huh.  But Lloyd wasn't in the trading

business that much.  It was mainly Thoreau and

Crownpoint, through his connection with the Newman and

Boardman families.

   

   Underhill:  What do you recall about Lloyd Ambrose's

personality?

   

   John W.:  Lloyd was a friendly fellow.  He and his

wife were very friendly and neighborly folks.  We

visited with 'em some at Crownpoint.  Usually we were

around 'em in Gallup at various gatherings and so

forth.  They were good neighborly people.

   

   Underhill:  Does J. M. Drolet ring a bell?

   

   John W.:  Marshall Drolet.  I forget where Marshall

came from.  It seems to me like he came from New York

City.  He operated the Drolet Naschitti Trading Post,

which was called Drolet's Trading Post.  All the years

I was at Gallup, he bought supplies there at the Gallup

Mercantile, and then later on I had occasion to call on

those stores.  Marshall developed quite a Jewelry

business there at Naschitti, as Harold Prewitt

developed one at Prewitt.  And then Mike Kirk had

developed a jewelry business out there at Manuelita.

And all three of 'em funnelled a lot of jewelry into

the Gallup Mercantile when they had the Gallup Indian

Jewelry Company as a wholesale outlet.

   

   Underhill:  Bruce Bernard [phonetic spelling]?

   

   John W.:  Bruce had the store on the hill at

Shiprock.  He was a successful--he'd been a rancher,

and he was successful in livestock activities.  He

always promoted better sheep activities and better

sheep production with the Navajos.  I had occasion to

ship his wool a few times when we would buy us a little

there at Gallup.  But he was a good businessman and

very well-liked in that area.  His former store is now

occupied by Bill Foutz.  Bill Foutz has his trading

operation there.

   

   John D.:  Did Marshall go to Shonto, or his son?

   

   John W.:  No, Sam Drolet was a brother of

Marshall's.  Sam ran the store over on the Cuba

Highway, where you turn off to Chaco Canyon.  His son

married into the Carson family and managed (John D.:

Shonto.) Shonto for quite a while.  He abandoned that

about four years ago, had to go back to the university

to get his degree.  I think he's teaching somewhere

now.  And Shonto sold this last year to Eddie Foutz's

son has Shiprock Trading.  I think they bought it as a

source for saddle blankets and baskets.

   

   Underhill:  You've mentioned Mike Kirk a couple of

times.

   

   John W.:  Mike and his brother John.  John had a

wholesale house in the northern part of Gallup.  Mike

was quite a showman.  He was really the fellow that

started the ceremonial.  He got Horace Moses, who was

the superintendent of Gamerco Coal Mine to promote this

summer show, and it was mainly for the entertainment of

the miners and the people of the trade territory.  Mike

knew trading very well, but he had been involved in

various show activities.  After a couple of years with

the Gallup Ceremonial, he came over to Albuquerk and

they tried to start an Indian show here, but it never

did take hold.  After Mike died, his wife ran Manuelita

Trading Post for years.  Her son, Dean, then opened

another store a couple of miles from Manuelita and

worked a lot of silversmiths for several years.

   

   Underhill:  What was Mike Kirk like?

   

   John W.:  Mike?  Well, let's see, was he a cousin of

Cozy McSparron or not?  But he and Cozy were very

similar individuals.  They were interesting characters

and good showmen.

   

   John D.:  Cantankerous, too.  (laughter)

   

   John W.:  Independent individuals, yeah.

   

   Underhill:  What would you say that the early

traders had in common in the way of characteristics?

What did it take to be a good trader then?

   

   John W.:  Well, the main thing, most of 'em became

good neighbors, because there weren't any neighbors in

the trading business.  So the next trader was your

friend and neighbor, and not a competitor.  And in

later years, they all became very competitive.  But in

the early days, we were at Chinle and Sunday we were

even down at the valley visiting the Fraziers, or they

would come up to Chinle visiting us.  We visited back

and forth.  Later, they left Chinle and moved to

St. Michael's, and they visited with us a lot at Rock

Springs.  We stayed very close to their family for many

years.  That was the condition with all the old

traders.  If they started for Gallup, they stopped and

visited with every trader on the way in, just comparing

notes and ideas.

   

   Underhill:  Now there were some, of course, that

came and stayed for many, many years.  And there were

others that came and left quickly.  What do you think

made a good trader?  Someone who could be reasonable at

business and stay?

   

   John W.:  Yeah, it was those that liked what they

were doing, like Tom Keams at Keams Canyon.  He was

quite a force there.  And the Hopi county, he actually

acted as their agent for about twenty years.  He sold

out to a fellow by the name of Slim Alderman [phonetic

spelling].  Alderman was a very successful trader and

later built a store down there at Indian Wells, which

has since been abandoned.  Had a big stone building.

But you never had many traders that retired wealthy.

They gave their life to the trading business, and that

was it.

   Certain individuals had a strong influence on the

Indians:  Lorenzo Hubbell, Sr., Slim Alderman at Hopi

at Keams.  Camillo of Garcia was good at Chinle.  You

had the Foutzes up in the San Juan Valley running out

to Teec Nos Pos and that area.  They all had a great

influence on the Indians and Indian thinking and the

Indian activities and so forth.

   

   John D.:  They all liked 'em.  If they didn't like

'em, they couldn't survive.

   

   John W.:  That's right.  Yeah, they got shot.

(laughter)

   

   Underhill:  And how were you treated?  First as an

Anglo kid, and then later as a trader yourself?

   

   John W.:  I'm eighty-six and I'm still here!

(laughter)

   

   Underhill:  You didn't get shot!

   

   John W.:  I always think of the incident....  We

were at Rock Springs and Cassidy had the store that

Kennedy had at Lukachukai.  The Indians didn't like him

at all, and one night someone fired a shot through the

window.  They were sitting at a table reading, and they

packed up and left the next day and moved down to

Chambers, Arizona.  But that happened a lot.  They

killed old Sloppy Jack at China Springs there, just out

of Gamerco.  We were at Rock Springs at the time.  And

I was telling John a while back about the conditions at

Salina.  The first winter we were there, we were there

six months without seeing another white person.  There

was a family down the draw known as....

   

   John D.:  The Left Hands.

   

   John W.:  Left Hand Many Goats outfit.  One day they

sent word up to my dad that they were comin' up to kill

him.  And he sent word back that he guessed today was

as good as any, to come on, he had his .12 gauge ready.

And from then on they got on fine, they never had

another bad day.  He traded with 'em for years and

associated with 'em later.  Years later Howard Wilson

was sheriff at Gallup, and he had traded at Shoshibito

[phonetic spelling] and Frazier's and Tosicai [phonetic

spelling] and was active in railroad hiring and the

Manuelita uranium leases and oil leases and so forth.

I was in Ganado with the manager of the mercantile, and

they were out contracting wool.  We ran into Howard,

and he said, "I want you to go with me over to Salina.

I've got to go get one of the Left Hand fellows,"

'cause they were filming a picture there west of

Gallup, Ace in the Hole, and they wanted a character

Navajo.  So we went out there and got hold of the

Indian, and two of 'em decided to ride with us.  So the

three of us were riding in the front, and the two

Indians in the back seat, and they kept talkin' to

Howard in Navajo.  I never indicated I knew anything

about what they were saying.  Finally one of 'em asked

Howard who the other two fellows were.  Howard said,

"Well, you had a problem with this one fellow's dad

years ago, and it's something he wants to get

straightened out."  It really floored 'em!  (laughter)

I was running a grocery store in Gallup and whenever

they were in Gallup after that, they would come by to

see me.  Yeah, they thought that was quite a story.

   

   Underhill:  Why did they want to kill your dad?

   

   John W.:  Well, that brings up an ongoing story.

Down through the years, these characters that Hillerman

wrote about, they were prevalent in that area, the

ghost people were prevalent in that area.  Dave Murry's

son was operating the store here in the seventies, I

guess, and one day a fellow walked in, the store was

wide open.  They found Dave's son dead in the store,

someone had killed him.  And to this day, they don't

have any idea who it was.  Then Dave got rid of the

store.  The next fellow that was there, he was a

questionable character, and he got to dealing with some

characters out of California and suddenly he

disappeared.  It was a total mystery of what had

happened to him, 'cause the place was abandoned.  Well,

they got to investigating later on, and they found out

that the seat in the two-holer outside had been removed

and his body had been dumped down in there and then

covered with newspapers.  They thought the fellows that

had been coming from California probably did it, but

there was no proof.  And today that store stands there

abandoned.  It's ch’©©dii.  The Indians won't stop, and

it's just decaying, sitting there, and this is the

store my father built in 1913.  There's been two

unsolved murders there.  There could have been three,

if they had carried out their deal with my dad.  That's

just a side story.

   

   John D.:  It's interesting that that store, it's

abandoned--but [un]like all the other trading posts

[where] windows are gone, everything that's useable is

gone--that store is still intact.  The windows aren't

even broken out of it.

   

   John W.:  The sand has blown against the front door,

you can't open it.

   

   Underhill:  No one will touch it, huh?

   

   John D.:  Yeah, uh-huh.

   

   John W.:  Yeah.

   

   Underhill:  Amazing.

   

   John W.:  There are countless stories across that

reservation.  I can tell you stories, but they are....

(laughs)

   

   Underhill:  Tell us a couple of your favorites.

   

   John W.:  Well, another sideline is the piñon

business. The Ilfeld Company had a deal with a New York

concern that handled edible nuts.  Whenever there was a

piñon crop, they would ship them to New York City, and

they were consumed down there in the Lower East Side

where the immigrant villages were--you know, tens of

thousands of immigrants leaning out of the window,

drinking cheap wine, and eating piñons.  I saw in the

Ilfeld book where they shipped a carload out of Las

Vegas in 1906 at six cents a pound.  Well, in later

years all of eastern New Mexico would pick piñons for

their own use, but not commercially.  So it developed

that whenever there was a crop, you only got production

if it was where the Navajos could work.  So every year

we'd make a survey, and it would take about six weeks

to cover all the southwest producing areas to see if

there was a chance for a crop.  In 1936, I was with the

wholesale house and New York asked the manager if we'd

make a survey.  So the manager took me along and we

were at Keams Canyon the first night, and we stayed at

Cameron the next night.  It was a four-day trip.  I

estimated maybe there'd be maybe 4 million pounds that

year.  So they formed this corporation in New York with

the nut house, we'll say, and they borrowed a half-

million dollars of call money, which was money you

could get in at 2.0 or 2.25 percent.  And we started

buying piñons at twelve cents a pound, because they

figured 4 million pounds, twelve cents, plus the

freight, they could handle that.  When the dust settled

the next spring, there were 8 million pounds.  And

these piñons were stored in Santa Fe and Las Vegas,

Magdalena, the wool warehouse here in Albuquerk,

Gallup, and Flagstaff.  And I went to Flagstaff four

years later and shipped the last of those piñons.  It

took four years to clean up the crop, 'cause in those

days, New York was the market.  But after World War II,

there were thousands of young fellows that spent their

time in the Southwest and acquired a liking for piñon.

So today if there's a crop, it takes over a million

pounds just to satisfy the demand in the Southwest.

That's how the piñon business evolved.  We used to ship

millions of pounds.  And after the Gallup Mercantile

ceased, the New York people made me their agent out

here, and I bought and shipped cargo for them.  One

year there was a big crop at the Grand Canyon.  I went

out and looked it over and figured I'd better get busy.

So I went to Babbitt Brothers and said, "I'm an agent

in the piñon business.  This is what I can do."  They

figured I was infringing on their territory, and they

said they weren't interested.  So I hired a customer of

mine who had a summer stand on Highway 89 in the pines

out north of Flagstaff.  He had a trailer house and a

little warehouse building and telephone and water and

so forth.  So he wanted to sell that, and I traded him

rugs for it.  I said, "Just leave it intact, I want to

use it where it is."  So I hired Hugh Lee, and he got

on the radio as "Piñon Charlie" and announced that he

was buyin' piñons at that stand.  We shipped fourteen

carloads out of Flagstaff.  I went out every Thursday

and shipped a 60,000-pound car.  I could see that the

market was getting out of hand so I went to him one day

and said, "Shut this thing down," because I made the

trip and I figured there were 3,000 Indians pickin'

twenty pounds a day out there.  So we shut it down, and

I still had to go into storage with three carloads,

which is dynamite, because they shrink in weight.  The

market is uncertain.  But I finally sold 'em the next

spring and got out from under it without taking a loss.

But I've had every lesson in piñons __________.

(laughter)

   

   Underhill:  We've been told it's a very volatile

market.

   

   John D.:  You know, he's pretty modest in what he

did, because nobody in the piñon business did anything

without checking with him first--nobody--the traders,

the buyers.  He could drive along at sixty miles an

hour and tell you what the crop was.

   

   John W.:  You'd see the cones glistening on the

tree, and then you'd stop and see if they were gonna

blight, or if they were gonna mature properly.  There

are certain areas that are very good.  Grand Canyon is

a marvelous area.  Shonto is another big area.  Pietown-

Guemado is another huge area.  This year they had a

rather general crop.  I've been out of touch with it

for several years now, but they apparently had piñons

at Thoreau and that area, and then down south at

Pietown and Mt. Taylor, and up in the Tierra Amarilla

and Cuba--up in that country they had a big crop.

   

   John D.:  There was also a system he developed where

the traders could call in every Monday and get a price

that would last for a week, and they were protected,

because of the volatility of the market, you know.  So

he would protect them for a week.  He said, "Okay, I

will guarantee you this price."  Then I would take off

in a truck on Monday, and every day--there were a lot

of days I would load 20,000 pounds, come home, unload

20,000 pounds, get up in the morning, go do the same

thing.  And when we showed up, the traders knew they

were protected on the price, because they had been

given a price.  And if the price dropped, we took the

loss.  And so we had to hurry and buy, hurry and load,

hurry and unload, hurry and ship.  Everything was

hurry, hurry, hurry, because they were shrinking

10 percent in six weeks.

   

   John W.:  The thing that ruined the business,

though, was that guarantee, because in scarce years

when there was a limited crop, the trader knew his

guarantee, but the first guy along that offered another

penny, bought the piñons.  So you'd send your truck out

to pick up your piñons, and no, they didn't have any.

So your guarantee cost you money in the bad years.

That's when I got out of the piñon business, because

traders with piñons are like Klondike gold-seekers.

They get a gold fever and they become changed

individuals.  They will change their tactics and their

ethics, all over the price of a damned sack of piñons!

(laughs)

   

   John D.:  It was one of the later years, I remember

we were debating on whether or not to get in it, so we

were sitting there talking and Mom said, "You know, you

guys...."  The thing we were debating was first of all

the amount of energy it takes to do it, and especially

loading and unloading 20,000 pounds a day by myself.

So that's 40,000 pounds in a day, you know.  And we're

sitting there talking about all the work it is and

everything else, and Mom said, "You know, you guys are

like the firehouse dog.  When the bell rings, you're

gonna run."  (laughter)  And we did.

   

   Steiger:  What increments would they come in?

   

   John D.:  They'd come anywhere from five pounds to a

hundred pounds.  They'd bring 'em in flour sacks

_________.

   

   John W.:  That was another thing I was always

critical of.  I would buy recleaned bean bags, and I

would furnish the traders with bags, because if you

didn't furnish 'em bags, and you went out, they would

have 'em in cornflake boxes or oat sacks that the

piñons would spill out of.  Here they're buyin' a

valuable crop, and they treated 'em like pinto beans.

They didn't care if they were on the floor or Indian

corn.  They mishandled 'em to perfection.  I called on

Tuba Trading one year.  Vans there, they were buyin'

piñons for me.  And I went up there and they had

everything in Kleenex boxes.  I loaded the van with

these huge boxes of piñons that weigh over a hundred

pounds.  And if you just made a mistake, you split the

box and spilled piñons everywhere.  But the traders

would never prepare for a crop.  I would go in and say,

"Well, you'd better get ready, you're gonna have piñons

this year."  "Oh, is that right?!"  They never had any

idea that there were piñons, until an Indian walked in

with a coffee can lot and asked what the price was.

You always kept 'em in position, but they always kept

me out of position.  (laughs)  I got out of the

business because it was so unethical and so volatile.

   

   John D.:  Last year when we went into the mall--I

had a retail store in the mall, in Gallup, the Rio West

Mall.  I went to the mall people and said, "Look, if

you'll give me a space to buy piñons...."  And they

didn't know what piñons were.  So anyway, we went ahead

and did it, and we knew the crop was over by Flagstaff,

so we got on the Harry Billy [phonetic spelling] Show

in Holbrook and said, "Bring your piñons to the Rio

West Mall in Gallup."  And they brought us about a

quarter of a million pounds, and the mall people were

just....  And all the shopping carts in the mall were

lined up, all these people with all their flour sacks.

Then we put 'em into another place, and on Sunday we'd

have an eighteen-wheeler come in, and we'd haul 'em

out.  It was all cash business.  It was a great thing

for the mall that year, because as soon as they got the

money, they went to all the stores in the mall.  It was

a great, great thing for the economy anytime there was

a good piñon crop.

   

   John W.:  That stirs up a lot of activity, because

the Indians spend all that money.  It's manna from

heaven, is what it is.  It's a great day for them.

They'd quit a good job to go pick piñons.  It's just a

part of their way of life.

   But speaking of piñons being a cash crop, the basis

for Indian trading from the 1880s until World War II

was basically credit given by the wholesale houses to

the country traders.  The trader made his first payment

in the spring with wool, and then cleared his account

with livestock in the fall.  And that was the basis of

all the Indian trading to start with.  That went on

'til World War II, and then supermarkets came in and

direct sales to stores.  And then the last development

was Thriftway buying up all the trading posts and

making cash service stores out of every location.  But

the basis of all the trading was wool and sheep

trading.  That was the basis of credit for all of the

trading.

   

   Underhill:  In your experience, in the thirties or

just before the war, how much credit would a typical

wholesale house extend?

   

   John W.:  Oh, goodness, I think there at the Gallup

Mercantile in the thirties, I think our accounts

receivable in the spring were $300,000-$400,000.

   

   Underhill:  Oh, my.  And I have to back up for just

a second and ask you how did you learn about piñons?

How did you learn to drive at sixty and tell what the

crop was gonna be?

   

   John W.:  Well, it started with that trip in 1936

when we made the survey.  From then on I was heavily

involved every time there was a piñon crop.  I had to

go out and make these surveys, or I had to warehouse

the piñons.  I got an education in warehousing, because

when you have to store piñons for four years....  Now,

this is a crop that can mildew and spoil.  We learned

that you stack them in loose stacks so that there's air

coming through, and periodically you restack them, so

that where the bags come together they don't mildew.

And you learn that the hard way.  You learn it because

you get some mildew.  We had a competitor one year that

told all the traders that they would buy piñons because

the mercantile was not gonna buy, because they had the

warehouses full.  And so this competitor figured,

"Well, we'll buy, and Ilfeld's gonna hafta buy 'em from

us to protect their supply."  They had these traders

bringin' 'em in, and they loaded up this warehouse

there in Gallup, just had stacks, just piles of piñons.

They weren't stacked in any orderly manner.  Finally,

the day of reckoning came by, and they were ready to

liquidate.  Well, over half the piñons were mildewed.

And my job was to go over with one of these sticks that

you put in a grain bag and you can twist the handle and

get samples out of each section of the bag--sample

every bag, pour it out on a paper and estimate what the

mildew was, and settle on that basis.  And the

competitor lost over $200,000 on those piñons.  I

tasted a lot of mildewed piñons, let's put it that way.

Between that, the warehousing and the shipping and the

surveying, I got to where I could write a book about

the piñon business.  I knew all the angles of it.  It

was an interesting experience.

   

   John D.:  One of the things he's always said about

anything in this business is "you don't learn anything

until you spend time and money."  (laughter)  It's

kinda like goin' to college.  (laughs)

   

   John W.:  People asked me how I learned about

turquoise, 'cause I got to where I could look at

turquoise and tell you what mine it came from.  They

said, "How in the world do you develop this knowledge?"

I said, "It's just like goin' to school.  You spend

twenty years and your money and you get an education!"

(laughter)

   

   Underhill:  Well, now your own wholesale business.

How did you get into that and when?  We'll start there.

   

   John W.:  It was interesting.  After I left Zuni, I

got into the grocery business, bought two small stores,

one in Gallup and one in Grants.  Well then a little

later, a couple of Italian fellows there had been

customers of mine at the Mercantile.  Each had a small

store.  We could see that small stores were coming to

an end, so we pooled our efforts and built the first

California Market there on the corner of Fourth and

Coal in Gallup.  That got underway real well and they

said, "How are we going to attract the Indian trade?"

So we cut a hole in the floor of that market.  I sold

off the little store.  Just inside of the front door of

the supermarket, we cut a hole in the floor and [had] a

stairway down into the basement and into a vault under

the parking lot, and announced that we were buying

Indian arts and crafts.  The first thing you know--the

mercantile at that time was making tens of thousands of

beaded belts, and they couldn't get enough bead strips.

So I said, "Well, tell me what you want."  And I got on

the radio and told the Indians what I was buying, and

would buy an egg crate full of bead strips every

Saturday.  We had traffic lined up all the way up that

stairway.  Then the Zunis got to bringin' in their

jewelry, and the Navajos got to bringin' in their

jewelry.  Well, then we moved across the street to have

a larger facility where we could work some silversmiths

and buffers.  Shortly after that, the Ilfeld was

selling out their wholesale houses to Kimball.  And

they didn't want the Indian business, so a group of us

took on--or my group took on the wholesale department

of the Gallup Mercantile.  It was the Gallup Indian

Jewelry Company.  We took their corporate structure and

just changed the name of "Jewelry" to "Trading," and

kept the corporate books and stock certificates and so

forth.  They moved over to the old John Kirk Building

on North Fourth Street.  Then Bernie Vanderwagen had a

little trading operation in that building, 'cause he

and his brother had bought the building from the Kirk

estate.  So we absorbed his trading deal, and then

later brought Larry Lee in to operate a trading post in

the back of the building and take pawn.  So we

consolidated my business and Bernie's deal, and near

the end, the Gallup Indian Jewelry.  Eventually, we

built a second supermarket on the east side of Gallup.

The business got so darned active, one partner took one

store, another took the other, and I got the Indian

business.  So over a period of time, I bought out the

rest of the stockholders and had moved to the south

side in West Gallup on West 66.  I had full-time

salesmen working in eleven western states, and part-

time salesmen working other areas of America.  At one

time we had ten representatives out.  One of my old

salesmen reminded me here a couple of years ago that I

was the first fellow to take the Indian arts and crafts

business and put it on an expanded merchandising

program.  Most traders ran "ma and pa" operations.  If

someone came by, they sold a rug or some jewelry or

pawn or whatever it was.  But I was carrying a big

inventory and taking big delivery stocks out to the

trade, and big delivery stocks to all the wholesale

shows like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Phoenix,

and Denver.  So that evolved into the biggest element

in the Indian jewelry business there in the seventies.

Then I retired from that in 1979 and came over here.

And the business has eventually liquidated.  Now Tobe

Turpen's in the process of liquidating his business.  I

see he's running regular ads in the Journal that

everything's for sale.

   

   John D.:  Really?!  I haven't seen one.

   

   John W.:  Yeah, they ran a lot of ads during the

summer that they were just gonna operate a pawn

business.

   

   John D.:  Yeah, okay, I knew that.

   

   John W.:  Well, they're advertising that all the

inventory's for sale.

   

   Underhill:  With your first groceries, did you offer

credit to folks, or was it strictly a cash basis when

people were coming downstairs and selling bead strips?

   

   John W.:  In the little stores, all small stores had

their set customers that they gave thirty-day credit

to.  And of course the unfortunate thing, when I bought

the store in Grants, we had a lot of lumber mill

workers trading there, and my manager gave them credit,

but the mill never did open up, and a lot of 'em owed

hundreds of dollars, and then they left town.  So that

store was a catastrophe.  We finally liquidated it.

[END TAPE 1, SIDE B; BEGIN TAPE 2, SIDE A]  And today,

credit is a bygone thing in most grocery stores.

They'll still take your credit card, but....

(laughter)

   

   John D.:  The nice thing you did, though, in the

basement was you had trade slips, where they could go

upstairs and buy groceries.

   

   John W.:  Yeah, see, the Indians would come in and

we'd settle with 'em.  We furnished the silver and

turquoise and we'd deduct that from the finished work,

figure out what they had coming, and give 'em a trade

slip for half and cash half.  Well, they went upstairs

and traded out that trade, and it developed a large

volume for that supermarket.

   

   Underhill:  Did you run into any problems with state

government in terms of trade slips for your own store?

   

   John W.:  At Zuni I had to quit trade slips because

we were giving all the workers trade slips.  Usually in

the late afternoon, the women all come into the store

to get things for the evening meal, and they'd bring a

few rings or bracelets or pins, and want to trade to

get merchandise.  So you'd give 'em a trade slip, so

they'd go out front and trade it out.  Well, the

government said this was wrong, that you had to pay 'em

cash.  Well, that didn't work very well with

reservation stores.  And they had the same situation

with trade coins that so many of the traders had for

years, you know.  Hubbells had 'em, Sabin had 'em,

Kirks had them, and Prewitt.  They were a common thing.

The Indian would bring in merchandise, and if he didn't

trade it all out while he was there, the trader gave

him these trade coins which he could use on a later

trip.  It was just like cash, and some traders got to

where they would honor each other's coins, so that gave

the Indian a little flexibility.  But the government

put a stop to that, too.  So there's very little volume

down on the Indian country now.  Sheep, wool, cattle,

and pawn is all done off the reservation because of the

change in credit policies.

   

   Underhill:  With your store, when you ultimately

moved into the Indian arts and crafts business, how did

you find your silversmiths, and how many did you have

working for you?

   

   John W.:  Well, at Zuni we financed most of the

production when I had the partnership there.  Of course

I got to know practically all the Indians in the

village.  We had Navajos between Zuni and the railroad

that did silverwork for us.  So when I opened up in

Gallup, a lot of 'em come running in.  I'd start giving

'em special orders, what I wanted made up next.  And

that's what they like.  They always like to know that

the next job is sold.  See, you check 'em in today and

say, "Well, now I want you to make this kind of

bracelet."  Well, then they know that that order is

sold, too.  If you had a good silversmith, you'd rotate

him, rings to bracelets to pins to earrings to

necklaces.  Then he's ready for rings again.  So you

could take his output and keep him employed all the

time.  So I had a lot of Indians that worked with me

very closely, and with the large house, I brought in

some inlay cutters from Zuni, and some silversmiths

from west of Gallup that worked right in the place, and

then some other Indians that buffed the jewelry.

Everything was in the raw state and we had to polish

everything.  Now, everybody in the business just buys

finished jewelry.  The Indian has to do his own

polishing.  They all bought motors and polishing wheels

and so forth.

   

   John D.:  I carried the same system into Zuni, and I

started dealing with second and third generations, from

the same system that he started.  A lot of times the

grandmother would come in and say, "Now, I

remember...."  And then that was it, we had business.

(original tape changed)

   

   Underhill:  This is Tape 3, an interview with John

Kennedy.  Also present in the room are John's son,

John, and Brad Cole of Northern Arizona University, and

Karen Underhill of Northern Arizona University, Lew

Steiger, and Pepper is being just a splendid dog.

She's a great dog.

   Before we go back to wholesaling, you were talking

about Canyon de Chelly and "taking the road less

traveled," which I would guess is indicative of your

personality.  (laughter)

   

   John W.:  One spring a buyer had come down from Utah

Parks Company at Cedar City, Utah.  They were the

concessionaire/supplier for all the Union Pacific

outlets at North Rim and Cedar Breaks and Bryce Canyon.

   

   John D.:  And Zion.

   

   John W.:  So I said, "Well, if you've got time on

your hands, I'll take you to Chinle."  So my wife and I

took the two of 'em out and when we got to Chinle, we

just drove up the canyon and it was March and there was

lots of water comin' out of the canyon.  Pretty soon we

met this ranger and he wanted to know what we were

doin', and I told him, and he said, "Well, we changed

the rules.  You're not allowed in the canyon without a

guide."  I said, "Oh, I didn't know that, I'll go

back."  So we went back to the visitors center and he

came out laughing.  He said, "My boss tells me you know

more about the canyon than I do!"  (laughter)  And the

superintendent then was Marvin Gillette [phonetic

spelling].  His dad had been an old horse trader out of

Mancos that used to come to Rock Springs.  So Meredith

gave me a guide permit, and I carried that for years.

That permitted me to go up the canyon anytime.  I never

abused my privilege, and when he transferred, I turned

in my card because I didn't want to be an embarrassment

to the next superintendent.  (chuckles)  But that was

quite an experience.

   

   John D.:  We had that great trip that year.  It was

in 1964 when the Chamber of Commerce called down to the

store and wanted to know if either one of us were going

out on the rez, because the secretary of state from

Belgium was in town.  And I was going out, so they

said, "Can you go?" and I said, "Sure."  So we were out

making our rounds, rugs and stuff like that, and I

said, "I'll take you to Canyon de Chelly."  I was

driving a 1963 Impala and I stopped at the ranger

station to tell them I was going into the canyon, and

you have to drive about forty, fifty miles an hour, or

you're just gonna sink in the sand.  And they said,

"Well, you know, it's rainin' up in the Chuskas, so

you'd better be careful, 'cause a wall of water may

come.  We take off into the canyon and we're flyin',

and pretty soon he's bouncin' around like a marble in a

coffee can, and water's coming all over the place.  We

get up to White House Ruin and then up to Spider Rock,

and then we turn and we high-tail it out.  I tell him

we gotta beat the flood water.  And pretty soon he

says, "Oh, man, you Americans!  You really know how to

live!"  (laughter)  They later came back with a film

crew for about three months and they filmed all over

the reservation for Belgium television.  We got back, I

was drivin' about a hundred miles an hour to get him

back.  In those days, if you were gonna be late for

your plane, you could call and say, "I'm comin'!"

They'd say, "Okay, we'll wait."  And there were all

these people sittin' around, "Where is he?!"  And we're

flying in, and we've got a carload of rugs, and it's so

heavy that every time we hit a bump, sparks fly up from

the bottom of the car and he was just havin' the time

of his life.  We get there, and they're holding up the

plane, so we wheel into the parking lot.

   We used to go in there all the time, and the

backside, when you go down from Sawmill, is where

Grandmother tells her story of spending the night when

their car broke down.  And we probably broke down there

seven or eight times on that same stretch of road.

We'd always get stuck, burn up a transmission.

Sometimes we'd leave the car there.

   

   John W.:  Fluid had dropped flat _______ clay.

   

   John D.:  One night we left the car there, and there

was Mom and a friend of mine, and we had a carload of

rugs, and we burned up the transmission.  It was in the

winter, so pretty soon a stake truck came with a bunch

of guys that had been cuttin' wood and drinkin' wine

all day.  And so we get on this load of wood to go down

to La Font's to get a vehicle, and we left the gals in

the car with the rugs.  Pretty soon, we're riding on

each side, figuring this truck's gonna roll over and

one of us, we gotta jump off this truck.  (laughter)

We got down and got La Font's van and went back and

picked up the gals and came home, and then went back

and got the vehicle a couple of days later.  But we did

that four or five times on that same stretch.

   

   Underhill:  You're jinxed!

   

   John D.:  Yeah.  And the thing that was remarkable

was you could leave your vehicle there, everything in

it, and go back in a day or two and get it, and

everything was fine.  Nowadays, in half an hour it'd be

stripped.

   

   Underhill:  How have you seen Navajo culture change

over time?

   

   John W.:  The main thing with the change in business

was the credit situation, because the old-timers were

gilt-edged--you didn't need a contract or anything.  If

they said they'd do something, they did it.  Their word

was good.  But you've now gotten into the second and

third generations of young fellows that tear up a

pickup a week, and they just take the livestock and go

get another, and the end result is that they broke most

of the main stockmen.  They just put 'em out of

business, because they won't deny their kids anything.

See, they just....  They say, "I've gotta have this,"

they give it to 'em.  It had an awful impact.  Now,

they're highly dependent on government jobs and tribal

jobs, because, see, when we were at Rock Springs in the

twenties, the force at Window Rock was the agent, his

secretary, and the chief of police.  That was the staff

at Fort Defiance.  And now the tribal staff probably

runs to 8,000 or 10,000 people.  So that changes their

economics a lot.

   Then you have service industries like the Thriftway

stations went in, and they hired Indian personnel

everywhere, trained them in how to manage a store and

handle the gas and the cash and so forth.  They

employed hundreds of people.

   The tourist business has built up, too.  It's a real

factor when you consider Canyon de Chelly and Monument

Valley--they're big drawing cards, tens of thousands of

tourists.  This has led to the motel business.  There's

now three big motels at Chinle.  There's two at

Kayenta, there's more at Blanding, and Mexican Hat.

Cameron, of course, was always a trade center out there

north of Flagstaff.  There is still a big trade center.

   

   John D.:  One of the big things, too, is when the

DNA came in, in the sixties, and began to make people

aware of the fact that they didn't have to keep their

deals.  And up to that point, a deal was a deal, you

dealt with people, and all of a sudden the DNA came in

and started saying, "You don't have to do this.

Without a contract ..." and all the legalese that came

in.  And all of a sudden they can no longer come to

town and buy a pickup on their good name like everybody

else.  They had to come in with 30 to 50 percent down,

because the dealer couldn't go repossess on the

reservation.  And so the DNA put, in my opinion, a lot

of things into their head about "you don't have to keep

your deal."  And up to that point, everybody kept their

deal.

   

   Underhill:  Where do you see the Navajo economy

headed?

   

   John D.:  They're dependent on the government.

   

   John W.:  I told Peter MacDonald that he should make

every effort to get into other interests, rather than

government, because if anything ever happened to the

money out of Washington, there'd be a total disaster

for the Navajos.  But they have gone the other route.

Every time something comes up, they call Washington,

they need some more money.  They're so highly dependent

on Washington funding, that it would be a real disaster

if that was changed.

   

   John D.:  In a lot of respects, a lot of 'em might

have become agents for professional ball players.

(chuckles)  "I don't like this deal, so let's make

another one."  And they're constantly changing the

deals, because of the government involvement in mineral

rights and all this.  Just like a ball player, they

sign a long-term contract and a year later they want to

renegotiate it.  And I think it's all this outside

influence that comes in and says, "Somebody's taking

advantage," or something.  It's really unfortunate,

because they have become total wards of the state.

   

   Underhill:  And how does Social Security income or

welfare income play into all of this?

   

   John W.:  That's quite a factor, because there's

still a lot of 'em get railroad retirement checks--the

people that work on the railroad part-time.  Then there

are some gas royalty checks from up in the Kutz Canyon

area and around Farmington, Shiprock.

   Then they had their welfare checks, and that got to

be a big factor--women with a lot of children and no

man in the house.  So that money flow is a big factor

in the Indian country.

   

   John D.:  That's what got Peter MacDonald in office,

'cause he was the head of the Office of Navajo Economic

Opportunity, and his name was on the check.  Really!

People didn't know Peter MacDonald except he signed

that ONEO check, and the next thing you know, he's

chairman, because everybody knew who Peter MacDonald

was.  It was a government program that got him into

office.  Everybody got an ONEO check.

   

   Underhill:  And what do you think of the Navajo

political system as it stands?

   

   John W.:  They've had their problems.  The Indian

way is....  Well, they even exaggerate Clinton's

activity.  They take care of their own.  They can't

help it, you know.  Well, it goes back to the large

family working with an Indian trader.  They constantly

come in wanting something for other members of the

family.  If one of their workers is away working, if

it's a railroad worker, or they're working for a store

someplace, the rest of the family just hounds 'em to

death for help.  They've gotta have money or they've

gotta have groceries or something.  This is very

prevalent in all of their thinking.  I had it with the

Zuni.  We had a young woman that worked for my wife for

fourteen years, and she was just like one of the

family, and she thought the world of Mrs. Kennedy.  And

one time when one of the medicine men, one of the

hataa»iis, got after [her], said, "You're gettin' too

close to the white people, you've gotta leave."  And

she cried and said she had to go back to the village,

and we didn't see her then for another fourteen years.

She stayed clear away.  The Indians are that way.  They

put the finger on anyone that's doing well.

   

   John D.:  I have an interesting situation.  When

Albert Hale was Peterson Zah's aide, they knew that

something had been going on with the Navajo Arts and

Crafts Enterprise through MacDonald.  And so I was

retained to go in and basically audit the inventory.

They were very concerned about the ethics of

everything, and I've known Albert for years, and the

next thing you know, it's his turn.  It just keeps

repeating itself.  I would have bet anything that

Albert would have been the great savior for the Navajo

people.

   

   John W.:  They take care of their own.  The elders

force 'em into this situation.

   

   Underhill:  How many Navajo employees have you had

over the years?

   

   John W.:  Oh, how many sheepherders are on the

reservation?  (laughter)  Well, basically we financed

hundreds of 'em in production.  We would advance 'em

the silver and turquoise and materials to make jewelry,

and then they would pay with the finished product.  The

difference was theirs for their labor.  So they weren't

on an employee's schedule.  There at Gallup at one time

we had about forty people there at the store at one

time.

   

   John D.:  We had eighty-two.

   

   John W.:  About a third white, a third Zuni, and a

third Navajo--something like that.  Down through the

years, with a lot of projects that come along, you

always called on some of the Indians with the know-how

to do the job, whether it's carpentry work or building

work or one thing and another.

   

   John D.:  You know, there's also a part of 'em that

I trace back to the mythology of the coyote stealing

the fire from the fire god.  For necessity, theft is

acceptable.  And that's another problem, is that if

it's for necessity, for the family, theft is not a

problem, because that's how the world was lit, because

the coyote stole the fire.

   

   John W.:  The crime is in being caught.

   

   Underhill:  Is the same true of telling a lie?  It's

not a problem unless you're caught?

   

   John W.:  We hear a lot about that these days.

(laughter)

   

   Underhill:  Bill [Clinton] must be more Navajo than

we know, huh?  (laughter)

   

   John D.:  Dad used to say that you're sitting there

and you're doing your work and everything else, and

somebody comes in the store--and I think this is

something you picked up from Granddad--somebody'll come

into the store and they'll hang around for hours, just

sitting there.  And they're waiting 'til you're at the

very busiest, and then they come up with a proposal

that they've been thinking about for a month, and you

have to make a decision in about two seconds.

(laughter)  That's very characteristic.

   

   John W.:  You talk about stealing.  I think of the

time there at Rock Springs.  Let's see, no, wait, it

was the fellow that had the trading post up at Top of

the World.  His brother was a big rancher out there in

the Seven Lakes district.  What the dickens was their

name?  Anyhow, he had a case of Del Monte raisins--they

come in fifteen-ounce packages, but in the summertime

they get buggy in the warm climate.  So he had put

these raisins back in the warehouse and was gonna turn

'em back to the wholesaler to see if he could get

credit, 'cause the wholesaler used to take labels and

take 'em back to the supplier, get credit.  He put the

raisins in the warehouse, but he had a lot of women

coming in that were weaving, and he had weaving wool

back there.  So they would go back and fill their sack

with wool and stuff a package of raisins in the sack

and come out.  Of course they had to weigh the wool to

determine the price, so he ended up selling all of

these stolen raisins.  (laughter)

   

   Underhill:  How would you describe the Navajo sense

of humor?

   

   John W.:  Oh, I think all the Indian people like to

have fun and joke.  I know when I was working with

them, whether it was dipping sheep or building a dam or

trading, they all liked to have fun and joke and try to

make you the brunt of their stories and jokes, you

know.  They liked to be around happy people.  Zunis and

Navajos won't stay around anyone that's gruff or ill-

mannered very long.  They just won't have anything to

do with 'em.  They like to be with people that are fun-

loving and friendly and so forth.

   

   John D.:  You know, one of the things he taught me

early on is that most of our successful business

dealings are always with the women--primarily because

their role has never changed.  They're not hunters,

they don't have ceremonies, they've got to take care of

the family, and don't ever deal with them without

giving them a moment of laughter, because that may be

the only laughter they get all day.  That was something

that we both--I mean, I learned it from him, and you

always give 'em a chance to laugh sometime when you're

dealing with 'em.

   

   Underhill:  And in the posts, were women primarily

doing the buying when people would come in for

supplies?

   

   John W.:  Well, they bring in their wool and

determine what they have coming after clearing their

account.  And then they tell the women to start

ordering things.  Of course that's when all the work

was done over a counter, and they'd point to a can of

peaches, and then they want to go to buy some

velveteen, and then they want to buy some hardware or

something.  It was after the women filled their lists,

then the men might buy something they needed--some

barbed wire or a rope or a bridle or something like

that.  And see, basically the women owned the stock.

The man is the head of the family, but the women owned

the stock, and they had the final say-so on sales of

stock, wool, and sheep and so forth.

   

   Underhill:  Did women ever have a separate account

for, for instance, a rug or something that they had

made?

   

   John W.:  We did that at Zuni and in Gallup in later

years, 'cause we dealt with a lot of 'em as

individuals, and had separate accounts for all of 'em.

In fact, we probably had more women's accounts than we

had men's accounts.  The main thing you learn about the

Indians, the women are the workers.  (laughter)

   

   Underhill:  Now, why do you think Gallup was such a

mecca for Indian trade, as opposed to other border

towns?

   

   John W.:  Geographically, it came about with the

building of the railroad.  That was 1884, Gallup.  Fort

Defiance I think was built in 1881.  Fort Wingate prior

to that.  And it was the Army traffic, Wingate to Fort

Defiance, to control the activities of the Indians.

And this was all by the way of Gallup.  And

incidentally, at Rock Springs there was a big bluff

there at the springs, and there were all kinds of

calvary inscriptions on that bluff.  The oldest one was

1858, I think.  But the calvary from Wingate would make

that a stop, because of this spring, on their way to

Fort Defiance, 'cause it was a two-day ride, Wingate to

Rock Springs, Rock Springs to Fort Defiance.  And the

thing to remember in all the activity in the Southwest,

everything is built around a waterhole, a supply of

water--either a stream or a wash or a well or a spring--

and that's how all of the posts were located throughout

the Indian country.  They first had to find water, and

then they'd develop a post.  The same way with the

settling of all the communities in New Mexico and

Arizona.  It was all dependent on water.

   

   John D.:  You know, also Gallup didn't have--you

know, Farmington had gas and oil--Gallup just had the

Indian trade.  People in Gallup always have appreciated

the Indian business, unlike a lot of other border

towns.  They'll talk it down and stuff like this, but

Gallup is built around the Indian trade.

   

   John W.:  And the main wholesale business was out of

Gallup--the Ilfeld Company and Gross Kelly.  They did

have A. B. Schuster, Holbrook, and Babbitt Brothers in

Flagstaff.  But Gallup was the main supply point.  Even

in the thirties we would sell a lot of hardware out

there at Gray Mountain and Cameron, clear up to Shonto

and that country, because we had the inventory for it.

But the main road into the Indian country was the road

by way of Fort Defiance and St. Michaels and on to

Ganado and down to Chinle.  So all that traffic was

funnelled into Gallup.  And in the early days, when

Fort Defiance was established, all the freighting was

done from Manuelita, west of Gallup, because they went

up Manuelita Canyon--the Fort Defiance area was a

shorter haul than working from Gallup.  But Gallup

later became established because of the supply and the

facilities and one thing and another.  And then the

coal mines, with the fuel supply for the railroad--that

created that activity.  But it was a trade center for

the heart of the Indian country.  Even people down at

Fort Apache, White River, Arizona, used to come into

Gallup and trade with us.  They bought their hardware

and dry goods there.  I know one year I delivered

several loads of canned goods to the Indian agency at

White River on a government bid.  So it was quite a

distribution point.

   Underhill:  What would you see as the differences

between the country trader, having lived that life, and

then the folks who were based in Gallup?

   

   John W.:  Well, the country trader had to be or have

access to everything the Indian wanted.  If the Indian

come in and said he had to have a singletree for his

wagon, if the trader didn't have it, he got it from his

wholesaler.  The city merchants are more or less

specialized.  They trade groceries and trade dry goods.

They're just trading for rugs or jewelry.  The town

stores aren't active in livestock or pelts at all.

See, the pelt business used to be a big factor.  When I

was at the Gallup Mercantile, I had charge of the hide

and pelt department.  I would periodically send 20,000-

pound loads of sheep pelts to a wool puller in Los

Angeles.  And about once a year I'd sell a carload of

goat skins to leather people in Philadelphia.  And then

you always accumulate a lot of cow hides, and they went

wherever the play was--to Texas or back East, wherever

they wanted the leather.  But at one time, I kept a man

out full-time with a truck pickin' up hides and pelts

all over the reservation.  It was just a separate

business.

   

   John D.:  There was also a big change in the

seventies when the Indian jewelry boom came, and

suddenly anybody who handled Indian jewelry was an

Indian trader.  (laughter)  And so everything totally

changed.  Now everybody's an Indian trader because they

handle Indian jewelry.  Before, that was somebody that

was working with the Indians.  Now, if you handle

jewelry, you're considered an Indian trader.

   

   Underhill:  And what caused that jewelry boom?

   

   John D.:  Fashion.

   

   John W.:  Yeah, just a pent-up demand that started

with World War II when all domestic production was

funnelled into war production.  But the Indians were

granted a silver allotment, so they could make jewelry.

So suddenly every department store in the East was out

west buying jewelry, because they couldn't buy jewelry

in Europe or anyplace else.  So that changed the whole

traffic on Indian product.  Since then, it built up a

demand.  There are a lot of people collecting name

jewelry, name rugs, name pottery, name baskets.  A lot

of major collections which later went into great

auctions or into museum collections, and that became

quite a fad for people to collect stuff, see.  Yeah, at

times you wonder if anything is ever sold, if it all

just goes into collections!  (laughter)  We've had

occasion the last two years to liquidate about five

different collections.  People suddenly realize at this

stage of their life they'd better sell stuff.  They'll

bring it down here and I send word out to my outlets

and as they buy things then I remit to the owner and

take a fee for selling it.

   

   Underhill:  What do you think the future of Indian

arts and crafts is at the moment, with the influx of

Asian forgeries?

   

   John W.:  It really got hurt the last two years,

badly wounded.  Some of those Gallup wholesalers that

were doing $6 million a year are doing $1.5 million

now.

   

   John D.:  If that.

   

   John W.:  Yeah, terribly.  It just destroyed the

business.  And a lot of it was that Arab influence that

came into Gallup.  Then they brought in Philippine

jewelry and mingled everything together.  Nobody knows

whether they're buying anything authentic or not, and

the end result is--well, I think you had the fellow on

the noon show....

   

   John D.:  Paul Harvey.

   

   John W.:  Paul Harvey.  He made an announcement two

or three years ago that Indian arts and crafts were no

longer a sound investment.  And see, at one time, there

were periodic articles in the Wall Street Journal that

"you'd better buy rugs," or "you'd better buy good

silverwork," or this or that.  So it had all America

buying anything of quality.  And suddenly they all got

a chill the last two years.  To go out and sell Indian

goods today is walking in mud.  It's a real chore

because people are just buying what necessities they

have to have to maintain a working inventory.

   

   John D.:  The other thing that is really significant

is in the eighties, our disposable income was about

12 percent, and now it's down below 2 percent.  And so

there's only so much to go around, so of course we're

going more in debt.  There's a society on plastic.  For

example, Yellowstone, for years I used to--I always

knew there was only gonna be 3 million people that

come.  You can't increase your business by having

4 million people come, because all they can handle is

3 million.  So you have to sell 3 million people more

stuff.  And so for years our goal was to increase our

average unit sale.  Over a period of time, we went from

$11 to $23 average unit sale.  When disposable income

began to drop, so did the unit sale.  And suddenly....

I think that's been the biggest impact.  By the time we

pay for our taxes and our services, and everything

else, there just isn't a lot of money left--fun money.

I think that's had the biggest impact on the business,

is disposable income.

   

   Cole:  How does one find somebody that doesn't know

anything about Indian art, wants to buy an authentic

piece of Indian art or a rug?  How do they go about it?

   

   John W.:  It depends on the selling job that a few

of us do.  (laughter)  We've always handled the

authentic product, and that's all we stay with.

Consequently, we have quite a few people refer other

people to us.  I had a woman up from Mississippi

recently, and she had a chief rug to sell.  Now, you

can imagine a chief rug in Mississippi.  Well, she was

an antique furniture dealer, and buying an estate

collection, she had acquired this rug.  She had no idea

what it was or what it was worth, but people told her

she'd better bring it to me and find out.  Someone had

told her it was worth $1,200.  Well, we sold it

recently for $2,750.  I just got the check yesterday,

and I've got to send her word for Christmas.

(laughter)

   

   John D.:  That also was the premise for starting the

Indian Arts and Crafts Association, was to develop a

network where people could go and know that they would

have honest representation.

   

   Cole:  When they were using the UITA stamps, did

they actually--did you insist that they be used on

every piece of jewelry, or was it the early work?

   

   John W.:  That was one of the handicaps.  They tried

to.  They could put it on the back of a naja on a

necklace, or on a big pin, or on a bracelet, but you

couldn't put it in a ring, unless it was a massive

man's ring or something like that.  That was the big

headache with that stamp, was to be able to apply it.

A lot of times the producer didn't have the stamp, and

once you set turquoise in jewelry, you can't very well

stamp that thing with a chisel stamp later on.  There

were several weaknesses to the system.

   

   John D.:  When we founded the Indian Arts and Crafts

Association, there was a big move for hallmarking, and

that still comes up a lot, we should hallmark.  And the

position that I took all through the founding was that

the other people should hallmark, because it's an

inconvenience, it's an expense, and who wants to

hallmark that stuff?  Where the authentic, it would be

desirable to hallmark it.  I can take a sweatshop in

downtown L.A. and hallmark stuff, and so it didn't do

any good.  I always remember Sam Begay.  For years we

used to say--Sam was one of the best Navajo

silversmiths ever, and he worked in our shop.  He made

this beautiful cast jewelry, and [we'd say], "Sam, this

stuff needs a hallmark."  Of course he spoke very

little English, and he never understood, never

understood.  After about ten years, Sam finally comes

up with a stamp and it was quarter-inch letters that

said "S.B."  (laughter)  And boy, I mean, he would just

get there, and he'd go wham! and he'd hit that thing.

He said, "Okay, you want a hallmark?  There's a

hallmark."  And that was a real lesson in hallmarking.

   

   John W.:  See, this Indian Arts and Crafts

Association, John had been with General Foods for five

years and he wanted to come back to the Indian business

and to the Southwest.  So he came into the business at

Gallup and he spent two years calling all these

customers and dealers we had, and explaining why an

association would work.  And he finally got about sixty

or a hundred of 'em and they formed this association,

and he served as president the first two years.  And

here twenty-seven years later, the youngest daughter is

president.  The whole deal was to promote the sale of

authentic arts and crafts, and proper selling

technique, not handin' people a string of B.S. like a

car dealer would (chuckles) but to sell on an authentic

basis.

   

   John D.:  You know, it also came about because of

the lack of organization _______ from UITA.  A lot of

people said, "Well, let's just use the Indian Traders

Association."  But then there was the problem of

registering and the fact that the Traders Association

had gotten out of the arts and crafts business, and had

become in later years just a social organization, after

they got done fighting the regulations.

   

   John W.:  The reservation traders were sheep, wool,

and [plunket?] traders.

   

   John D.:  And they weren't interested in arts and

crafts, so we had to change everything around and look

at it from a whole different perspective, and take all

the different facets of the business.  It was very

difficult, because the business is very "jaundiced," if

you will, in that, "Well, you know, this is a great

idea, but if he's in it, I'm not, 'cause he's a crook."

(laughter)  It's like Dad said, everybody used to be

neighbors.  And I remember in Gallup in the late

sixties, when there were twelve people in the Yellow

Pages in the wholesale Indian business, and in 1972,

there were 400, and everybody was competitors.  Before

that, there was a very definite standard.  There were

certain price breaks, everybody took the basic markup,

and then it just became totally bastardized--changed it

forever.

   

   Cole:  You mentioned the social aspect of UITA.

Were you ever involved?  What were their annual

meetings like?

   

   John W.:  They would have an annual meeting at

Farmington or Flagstaff or Gallup.  It was a big bash,

a dinner meeting with a dance afterwards.  It was some

good associations, and then there were always a few of

those traders that had been out there dry for a long

time that tried to drink it all in one session.

(laughter)  They had good meetings.

   

   Cole:  We've heard a story that we've never been

able to verify that occasionally a trader would lose a

trading post in a poker game in Gallup.  Is there any

validity to that?

   

   John W.:  Well, I heard of one.  You know Larry Lee

liked to play poker, and he played with those fellows

down at Holbrook--Armond Ortega and the fellow that has

the highway stores.

   

   John D.:  Geronimo.

   John W.:  Hampton is his name?

   

   John D.:  No, has Geronimo.

   

   John W.:  Yeah.  Several of those fellows.  They had

Larry in a game one night and he kept losing, and

finally he bet the Klagetoh store and lost.  Of course

his older brother, Lester Lee, had Steamboat Trading,

and he had an interest in Klagetoh.  He got in the car

the next day and went to those fellows and said, "Well,

look, I'll pay you so much, and that's it.  You don't

get Klagetoh."  (laughter)

   

   John D.:  In Gallup there's a lot of places that

have been shuffled around in poker games.  Not trading

posts, but restaurants and night clubs and stuff.

There's one in Gallup that used to change hands about

every two months--on Saturday.  (laughter)  And

sometimes about three months later it'd come back to

the original guy.  There's big-time poker in Gallup.

There's guys over there that make their livin' playin'

poker.  You don't see that a lot, except in Vegas and

stuff, or Gardenia [phonetic spelling] or somethin',

but in Gallup there's guys playin' poker for a livin'.

   

   Underhill:  Now when you had your wholesale

business, who among your salesmen stand out in your

mind?  Any salesmen that worked for you that you were

particularly fond of?

   

   John W.:  We had Walt and Chris Monroe.  These were

a man and wife team.  He was headquartered in

Englewood, Colorado, and handled Montana, Wyoming,

Colorado, eastern Utah, and northern New Mexico.  As he

came to Gallup for supply, he could call on the stores

here--Raton and on up the line.  Walt worked for us for

twenty-six years, a very loyal salesman.  He had been

selling knickknacks when I hired him.  A cousin of mine

from Denver--I was looking for a salesman, and he

recommended Walt.  We had to educate him totally,

'cause he had no idea about Indian goods.  His wife was

a real sincere woman, and they got to where they

established a fine relationship with all their

accounts.  They kept track of the birthdays and

anniversaries and so forth.  They were very effective

and had a good healthy territory.

   The couple that had Arizona, he was an old-time

retail operator, and knew a lot of the people in the

business, and was just an affable personality.  He got

along very well out in the Arizona-California

territory.

   Then I hired a fellow that had been in the insurance

business for several years, and he came to me and he

said, "I've seen insurance tear up countless young

fellows, and I want to get into this Indian business."

So I started him out up in the northwest, which is a

sure way to starve a fellow to death, but he was a

poker player, so whenever he couldn't make any money

selling Indian goods, he'd go get a poker game.  Then

eventually we sent him east, and then he developed--

after he left us--he developed quite a clientele with

all the major museums in the East, in their gift shops.

He passed away two or three years ago, but his widow

took a full load of pottery back last month to Peabody

Museum in Boston, and she came over here and said,

"They need name pottery from the forties and fifties."

So I gave her a load of stuff, and she did very well

with it.  She called me the day before yesterday.

She's back now and wants to come over and settle.  But

he was in the insurance business, he'd learned to sell,

and he knew every trick a salesman could know, I think--

how to get next to people and how to open 'em up and

how to finally get a program started.  He was very

effective.  He was a good one.

   

   Underhill:  And what was his name?

   

   John W.:  Wayne Bailey.  Big fellow, weighed about

280 pounds.

   

   John D.:  He also spent a year in Reno, waiting to

get a divorce, so he lived in Reno so he could

establish residence.  When that year was up, he

probably knew more about all Indians than anybody I

ever met in my life.  He just read constantly for a

year, and he knew everything there was to know about

virtually every tribe in North America.

   

   John W.:  He became very effective in judging

baskets--the Washoe and the Pomo and the northwest

baskets.  He became expert at that, and got to dealing

in 'em very effectively, too.

   But those were the key salesmen.  Most of the others

were part-time people that had other businesses, or

they might be in a business where they were on the road

and they would take our jewelry on a supplemental

basis.

   Another interesting experience that evolved from the

Indian business, a fellow in the....  Oh....  In the

Sioux deal.

   

   John D.:  Up in Montana?

   

   John W.:  Our detective.

   

   John D.:  Oh, yeah, yeah, Nando.

   

   John W.:  Nando!  He had been with the Wildlife

Service and they were trying to find out what happened

to all the goods that were stolen at Wounded Knee.  So

I gave him a case of jewelry and a lot of our

letterheads and order forms and he was working under an

alias, but the idea was if anyone called in and said,

"Does this man work for you?" he said, "Yeah, he's one

of our salesmen."  Well, he uncovered most of the stuff

that was taken.  He would get to dealing with these

Indian dealers that had beadwork or leatherwork, and

gain their confidence, and finally they'd take him in

the back room to show him this new merchandise they

had.

   Then the next deal he got into was in Alaska.  The

natives were goin' along in kayaks and killing these

walruses to get their tusks for ivory.  They'd kill

twenty-five or thirty at a time, and just leave the

carcasses to waste.  So I gave one of their agents a

case of fetishes, and got him calling up there to

locate ivory or carvers that could do this kind of

work.  They ended up indicting twenty-some people in

that deal.  They used our jewelry as a front.

   

   John D.:  That's when they were taking chain saws,

they'd just cut the head off the walrus.

   

   Underhill:  How often have you been approached with

hot stuff?

   

   John W.:  I don't think we've ever [been] offered a

whole lot of it.

   

   John D.:  We haven't offered any!  (laughter)

   

   John W.:  I know we had that woman that was stealing

from us in Gallup.  We had a night shift, and we had

bulletins out in all the motels, cafés, and service

stations that they could see weavers at work down in

our store.  I had two women that worked that shift 'til

nine o'clock.  One time I came in with a load of rugs

and put 'em in the rug section and covered 'em, and I

said, "Now, don't bother these."  Well, the next

morning, for some reason, I went over and looked, and

one of the fancy rugs was missing.  So in a little

while I put out word in Gallup and a fellow called me

and he said, "I think I bought your rug, and I sold it

to a fellow over on Maloney Avenue."  So we went and

got it.  Well, this woman was coming in with a

youngster in the evenings.  She had a shopping bag, and

when these two women would get busy with a customer,

she'd go over and put a rug in that shopping bag.

   

   John D.:  We were also changing shifts, too.

   

   John W.:  Yeah.  I don't know how many rugs she

stole from me.  But obviously it was several, because

we didn't have a good year.  (laughter)

   

   John D.:  I had one time where somebody called the

store and the voice said, "Do you buy collections?"  I

said, "Yeah."  And they said, "Well, I have a friend

who has a collection."  He goes on to describe this

collection.  It sounds pretty phenomenal.  And he said,

"Now, my friend wants cash, and my friend is in

Montana."  And so one thing leads to another, and it's

sounding pretty interesting.  There was a lot of things

from the Lewis and Clark Expedition and stuff.  So I

said, "Well, how much does your friend want?"  He said,

"Well, I don't know.  You have to look at the

collection."  So I decided to go up there.  It was in

Havre, Montana.  I went over to the bank and I told the

banker, "I'm goin' to Montana and I'm gonna need some

money, but I don't know how much.  So when I go into a

bank in Havre, Montana, to cash a check, they're gonna

call you."  And he said, "Okay."  So I got into Havre,

and went to the bank and I cashed, I think, maybe a

$15,000 check.  I had $15,000 in my pocket, and I go to

meet this guy and walk into a sporting goods store.  It

was the most incredible collection I've ever seen.

That put me at ease that it wasn't a stolen collection.

I wasn't sure how I was gonna deal with that.  So he

said, "Let's go downstairs and talk."  So we go down

into this basement, and the entire downtown of Havre,

Montana, shared the same basement.  There was this huge

cavern.  So we're going along, and all I got a chance

to do was look at this great stuff.  There was a medal

from Lewis and Clark, a Jefferson Peace Medal.  I'm

trying to--couldn't figure out what this stuff was

worth, and he wants to take me out into the basement to

do the dealing, 'cause it's gonna be cash.  And we go

down through this basement, and we walk into this

furnace room, and I went, "Oh! how did you do this to

yourself!  Let him have the money and save your life."

He shuts the door and he pulls this light cord, and

this little light bulb comes on.  And I said, "Okay,

what's it gonna take to buy this collection?"  He puts

his hand out and says, "Start countin'."  And I don't

know if I have enough, I don't know how much it's gonna

come to."  So I sat there and I just started peelin'

hundred-dollar bills into his hand.  We got to, I don't

know, about $6,500, and I would have gone $25,000-

$30,000.  He folded his hand, he said, "We got a deal."

Up to that point, I still didn't know if I....

(laughter)  You know?  First I went up there wondering

if it was gonna be stolen merchandise; secondly, I was

wondering if I was gonna get killed over the money.

And then we gathered all this up.  In the meantime, I

had this guy that worked for us come out from

Cleveland, because he really knew old, old stuff.  They

had this huge buffalo head--I mean, it was a monster.

I said, "What about the buffalo head?"  He said, "No,

no, the buffalo head stays.  It's the biggest buffalo

ever killed on the northern plains.  It was killed in

the late 1800s."  I mean, it was huge.  The guy keeps

sayin', "I've got a guy in Cleveland that'll buy that

head."  So we finally make a deal for this head, and we

take it down and I had to go get a U-Haul trailer just

for the head.  We get to Great Falls, and we thought,

"Now how are we gonna get this thing to Cleveland?"  So

I walk up to United Airlines and I said, "I want to buy

two first-class tickets for this buffalo head!"

(laughs)  And they said, "You can't do that.  You're

gonna hafta ship it air freight."  So we scratched

around, we said, "Okay."  So we went down to Ward's and

they had a freezer--pallet freezer, a chest freezer--

and we put that on that pallet with the cardboard, and

it still bowed it out.  We lashed it in with ropes and

everything else, and we put it back in the trailer,

back to the airport, to air freight, and they said, "We

can't take it.  It's improperly packaged."  And I'm

thinkin', "Gee, what are we gonna do?!"  We finally

checked it as excess baggage for three bucks and sent

it to Cleveland!  (laughter)  It was monstrous!  And

that collection ended up in Arizona Highways and it was

quite....

   

   John W.:  A fellow up in Portland bought the head.

   

   John D.:  The head ended up in Portland!

   

   John W.:  His store was the Buffalo Trading Post,

and he bought the head.

   

   John D.:  But I wasn't sure if it was hot

merchandise or what.  There was enough of an intrigue

there to go to Montana and find out.  Now, ironically

enough, my youngest son is going to school in Havre,

Montana.  I'm going up next month to see him, and he

said that whole downtown basement now is a big museum,

and they call it Downtown Havre, and you take this

tour.

   

   John W.:  I'll be darned.

   

   Underhill:  Then there's the memorial light bulb

room.  (laughs)

   

   John D.:  Yeah, that furnace room.  When he shut the

door and pulled that little chain, I thought, "Man, I'm

a gonner."  And I had hundred-dollar bills in all my

pockets.  And I thought, "Well, if I pull one out and

he thinks this is all there is, maybe we'll make a

deal."

   

   Underhill:  Well, if you could go back and change

anything, any regrets, anything you would do

differently as an Indian trader, and then Indian arts

and crafts wholesaler?

   

   John W.:  Well, I just recently completed quite an

article.  I called it "Retrospect:  1912 to 1998."

[END TAPE 2, SIDE A; BEGIN SIDE B]  And I did this for

all the grandkids.  The theme was that everything I did

in my life, from the Depression--because the first job

in the Depression was ten hours a day, six days a week

for twelve dollars a week--twenty cents an hour.  And

then I worked up into different jobs, and then

eventually the Zuni deal, and then later these other

deals.  But as I cited for all of 'em, my moves were

all made based on economics, how I was gonna provide

for my family.  Today, most people have the choice of

getting an education and getting into the field they'd

like to get into.  So the message I gave them was to

set a program and stay with it, and it takes years, but

stay with it, and it'll take care of you.  I was in the

Indian trading quite by chance.  And like I say, it was

all based on the economy of the moment.  So yeah, I'd

always wanted to go to college.  I had one year of

college, based on what coyote furs were worth.  I took

my vacation for years with the wholesale house.  I went

to see our suppliers.  So I went through the cannery,

the Del Monte people, the CHB Pickle people in

California, the Western Sugar Refinery, a candy outfit

in Los Angeles, Bracht Candy in Chicago, Mars Candy in

Chicago, Brown Williamson Tobacco in Louisville,

General Motors cars in Detroit.  I spent my time going

to see our suppliers, and the end result was that I got

an education that has been an aid to me in almost every

field that I got into.

   

   Underhill:  And when you were young, was there a

dream that you had?

   

   John W.:  Oh, I wanted to get an education.  I was a

good student.  I was exempt in all my studies all

through high school--didn't have to take the final

exam.  But in the Depression, there was no money, there

was no chance to go to school.  We didn't have college

programs or anything.  My dad was losing his business,

his hands were tied.  So I had one year of it, and then

I went to work from there on, and stayed in the

commercial field ever since.  That's a field I like and

seemed to get along with all right.  It wasn't a field

of choice--circumstances dictated what happened.

   

   Underhill:  Is there anything else about trading or

your business that you would like to add, or that

someone should know, that we haven't covered?

   

   John W.:  Well, there are many stories.  I might

give you a little one, just to show what the

possibilities are.

   I left Gallup early one morning and was over at

Cedar Ridge, a Babbitt store there on [Highway] 89,

when the trader opened.  I noticed a competitor's truck

out in the parking area when I drove up.  So I went in

and the trader said, "Well, gosh, I sold all my rugs

last night.  I can't do any business."  I said, "That's

all right."  He had five cradle boards, these Navajo

cradle boards.  I said, "Well, how much are your cradle

boards?"  He said, "Twenty dollars."  I said, "Well, if

you want to pick out a hundred dollars' worth of

jewelry, I'll take your cradle boards."  So he called

his wife and said, "Pick out some jewelry."  So while

she was pickin' jewelry, he came to me and said, "Where

can I get rid of some piñons and some pine nuts?"  I

said, "Well, I could take the piñons and pay you for

'em.  The pine nuts are a problem, because the

commercial trade does not like 'em, because they're

soft-shelled and they mildew in a hurry."  My eastern

connections just wouldn't take 'em under any

circumstances.  So I said, "I'll make a call when I get

home, and I'll call you."  So I called him late that

next day.  I said, "I found a home for your pine nuts

and piñons."  He said, "Well, if you'll work with me

tonight, I'll bring 'em in."  I'd sold the pine nuts to

a parrot food manufacturer, and I made $1,000 on the

pine nuts that he'd had for over a year.  And so he

brought 'em all in, $2,600 worth, and he picked it all

out in jewelry.  So I tell people that there are

opportunities everywhere you look, 'cause I just said,

"Well, what'll you charge me for those five cradle

boards?"  It evolved into $2,600 worth of trade

activity.

   I find all over the Southwest I can go into a store

and spot something and pretty soon make a deal of some

kind for it, and sell it in the next few days, because

so many people have something, but they don't know

where it goes down the traffic chain.  So I've always

emphasized the fact that you can make your own deals,

and the deals exist everywhere.

   

   John D.:  Now, there's the time we went into Polacca

Trading.  I had just barely turned sixteen.  Joe

Nielsen [phonetic spelling] was there.  He was runnin'

the store, and he had pottery everywhere and he didn't

know what to do with it all.  We made a deal to buy

every piece of pottery in the store for a dollar

apiece--the little ones, the big ones, everything for a

dollar.  And I went back three times with the station

wagon to get it all out of there.  The Nampayos,

everything, all a dollar.  (laughter)  God! there was a

lot of pottery!

   

   John W.:  Yeah, later on, young Hunter (John D.:

Myron.) ___________ Heard Museum Shop the last few

years, was running the store, and I went in one morning

and went back in the wareroom and he had these sifter

baskets that the Hopis make.  There was a double stack

of 'em, starting on the floor and pyramiding up to the

ceiling.  He said, "I gotta get rid of these baskets."

I said, "What'll you do?"  He said, "Well, will you

take 'em for a dollar apiece?"  I said, "Okay."  And

you know, today, I think those things are $35.  He had

'em, didn't know what to do with 'em.

   

   John D.:  We also used to make the rounds at White

Cone and Delcon and Indian Wells for saddle blankets

once a week.  I'd go out and come back sometimes with

the station wagon, I'd have 'em baled on the roof.  I'd

have 'em rolled up under my legs, and I'd have the

entire station wagon full of saddle blankets.  Once a

week.

   

   John W.:  That one year we sold over 7,000 saddle

blankets.  And today, you could drive all day and not

find a dozen of 'em.  That's another business that went

by the boards because they buy the Mexican product now,

or buy these commercial pads.

   

   Underhill:  And who were you selling the majority of

the saddle blankets to?

   

   John W.:  Oh, King's Ranch in Texas, the saddlery

companies (John D.:  Heiser.) and saddle shops all over

the country.  Everywhere there was a saddle shop.  I

had a card index of all these customers, and

periodically I'd just put out a postcard mailing that

had singles and doubles for so much, and here would

come a bunch of mail orders.  We hauled, I think it was

thirty-five stationwagonloads of saddle blankets that

year.

   

   John D.:  There was also the time when Jack Lee

retired and closed up LNA out at Keams Canyon.  He

called and wanted to know if one of us was gonna be

out, and I stopped by.  He had saved every receipt,

every ticket, everything, all the time he had been

there.  He had added up over a quarter of a million

dollars' worth of transactions between us, and it had

been almost all trade, and he had every ticket, they

were all lined up.  And he sat there and he stayed up

for like two days, just going, "ka-chink-ka-chink-ka,"

adding all these things up.  He said, "You're not gonna

believe this.  You gotta come...."  (laughter)  So it

didn't mean anything except to him and us.  (laughter)

But it was pretty remarkable, because there was so much

trading.

   

   John W.:  I used to stop at his place, and sometimes

you didn't stop, because you knew it wasn't a fast

stop.  (laughter)  Some of those stores, it took two

hours just to say hello.

   

   John D.:  The other thing is, I always remember Bob

Allen used to say at the bank in Gallup, "When the next

depression comes, I'm moving in with you guys, 'cause

you know how to trade."  (laughs)

   (original tape changed)

   

   Underhill:  This is Tape 4 of an interview with John

Kennedy.  It's December 16.  Also in the room is John

Kennedy's son, John, and Brad Cole of Northern Arizona

University, and Lew Steiger.  I'm Karen Underhill, and

Pepper's sleeping.  We won't wake her up.

   

   John W.:  When the Kilgores, who were from Sedona,

bought the market from Alvin Curley [phonetic spelling]

up at Tuba City, I went over and said, "Now, take

saddle blankets then just the same as money," because

singles were five dollars and doubles were ten dollars.

So he started that process, and I'd go over every two

or three weeks and get a load of saddle blankets,

'cause they were the same as five- and ten-dollar

bills.  That's the way opportunities break in this

business.

   

   John D.:  That year, too, I was drivin' a truck for

Coca-Cola on the reservation.  After I got rid of my

pop, I'd haul rugs back in on the Coke truck, and a lot

of saddle blankets.

   

   Underhill:  And did you have that flexibility with

your job?  You could use the truck for hauling?  You

were going that way anyway.

   

   John D.:  Just did it.  Yeah, I mean, I was comin'

back empty, so I'd haul stuff back.

   

   John W.:  Well, there were a lot of traders [who]

liked for us to take their rugs and pay the pop people,

too.  An Indian trader that has a bunch of rugs wants

somebody to take 'em.  So there's all kinds of deals.

   

   Underhill:  Do you have a favorite rug style or

area?

   

   John W.:  Not necessarily.  You've probably seen the

rug map of the various producing areas on the

reservation.  That was in Bahti’s first book.  He got

the idea from me, because I'd taken a reservation map,

and I had a colored photo of the rugs from the various

areas, and that's where that thought came from, because

we knew we could get storm patterns over on Highway 89,

and the Ganado reds at Ganado, and the vegetable dyes

at Crystal, or the Crystal rugs and the Two Grey Hills,

and the Yé’iis at Shiprock.  And that's how that came

about.  It was just part of merchandising them to

educate dealers on where rugs were developed, and

different types and where they came from.  Always, in

the distribution business, you have to be thinking

about how you're going to help that customer liquidate

so you can sell him another order.

   

   John D.:  You know, a second ago when I was talkin'

about soda pop, if you talk to Jackson David, he got

into the trading business because he was the Pepsi

dealer in Durango.  The traders, because the Indians

didn't have running water, they drank a tremendous

amount of soda pop.  It's unbelievable.  So through

high school I worked for Coca-Cola, and I would go out

and deliver a whole truckload to just like three or

four or five stores, and two days later, Pepsi-Cola

would go do the same thing.  And that's how they got so

much of their liquid, was the soda pop.  It was all

warm until about the seventies, 'cause they kept it on

the shelf, and they just took it off the shelf and

drank it, 'cause there was not enough--cooler boxes

were expensive.  But the amount of soda pop that was

consumed on the reservation is just amazing.

   

   John W.:  And today, that's probably part of the

problem of obesity and diabetes.

   

   John D.:  Yeah, diabetes is a generational thing.

It takes twenty years for it to mature.  It can go back

into the sixties and seventies when they were consuming

such incredible amounts of soda pop, and say that might

be a contributing factor.

   I remember when the Foutz brothers got all those

stores together, and boy, they developed tremendous

leverage with the soda pop dealers, because they had

all of these stores.

   

   John W.:  They had fourteen stores.

   

   John D.:  They had fourteen stores, and they were

going through thousands of cases of pop a week.

   

   John W.:  Walter Kennedy out there at Dinnehotso

used to get an eighteen-wheeler-load of pop at a time.

(John D.:  Yeah.)  Nobody liked the water at

Dinnehotso.  (laughter)

   

   John D.:  Can you imagine an eighteen-wheeler of

just soda pop into a store this size of this building

here?!

   

   John W.:  Well, there are many experiences in

trading like that.  There's all kinds of 'em.  I've

given you a few of them.

   

   Underhill:  And very well.  Well, Lew usually has a

question?  No?!

   

   Steiger:  I know it's hard to believe.

   

   Underhill:  (laughs)  Usually I miss something.

   

   Cole:  Twice in one day!

   

   Underhill:  That must mean I'm getting better!

(laughs)  I've got a good subject.

   

   John D.:  One thing that was remarkable, was that on

the reservation, all the time it was always trading--

always trading.  We were off the reservation, but we

were constantly trading.  We would pick up rugs, and

they would take jewelry, 'cause they needed jewelry to

trade for more rugs, for wool, for livestock, and we

always supplied the jewelry.

   

   John W.:  That went back to the territorial days

when a fellow like Hubbell or Keam set up a trading

operation--$2,000-$3,000 worth of inventory is all they

needed, 'cause of the price of merchandise.  They'd set

up a tent, and that was their store.  A lot of 'em

started with tent stores up in Washington Pass and Fort

Defiance and Hopi Country.  And even at Toadlena, the

first was a tent store.

   

   John D.:  Then when the tourists came, they started

buying a lot of jewelry.

   

   John W.:  But they traded for everything.  They

traded their merchandise for pelts, wool, and sheep.

Then the wholesaler had to find a market for those

products.  There at the mercantile we financed all

those reservation accounts, open credit, if they had a

good record with us.  The last fall I shipped their

livestock, we shipped 45,000 head of lambs and 500 head

of cattle.  And the business they got into, after years

of handling sheep in the New Mexico territory, then

they developed a system of feeding the livestock in

Cozad, Nebraska, or with sheep feeders up at

Scottsbluff.  I took a trainload out of Farmington, the

last load one year.  We used to load at Flagstaff,

Sunshine, Winslow, Holbrook, Chambers, Gallup, Thoreau,

and Farmington.  This last load was a bunch of lambs

out of Farmington.  I had twenty-six of these narrow-

gauge cars.  They would hold 100 to a deck, 200 lambs

to a car.  I rode the train to Durango and then across

at night to Chalma and then to Antonita and we'd trade.

We stopped to feed and rest the livestock, and then

switched to standard-gauge cars on the Denver area

Grand.  Went to Pueblo and then up to Denver.  We

joined the Union Pacific, and they took us to Cheyenne

and down to Scottsbluff.  And there they had an

operation where they'd put 1,000 lambs in a pen.  They

had a caretaker that stayed with 'em all the time,

because this would be out at a country farm, because

that farmer wanted to go to a show or church or

something, the lambs didn't get fed on schedule.  And

they would contract for beet-top acreage.  This was the

beet growers.  They cut the tops off and figure out

what the yield was per acre, and they would contract

that for feed.  They fed the wet pulp from the sugar

plant after they had gotten all the sugar content out

of it.  It was like truckloads of sauerkraut.  They go

down the highway, spilling this juice all over the

highways, dump it in the troughs at the sheep pen.  And

then they'd stockpile alfalfa and corn at each pen.

   But these lambs out of Farmington, the load averaged

fifty-seven pounds.  And of course I was up there for a

few days just to learn the feeding operation for the

company.  But those lambs went on to the fat market in

April at 114 pounds.  They doubled the weight.  Well,

that's a pretty good price to get for your corn, you

know.  Put the corn into mutton and sell the mutton.

But that became a big part of the wholesale business,

the amount of wool and livestock that we had to handle

every year.  And that was the basis of all reservation

trading.  The trader traded for merchandise, he traded

his product to the wholesaler, and then the wholesaler

had to find a market for it, either feeding lambs or

selling wool to Boston or piñons to New York--whatever

it was.  But that all changed after World War II.

There was much more government money, plus highway

projects and everything else.  So the economy changed

at that time.

   

   Cole:  Was the trader expected to pay his account on

a monthly basis?

   

   John W.:  No, it was seasonal.  They'd make a deal

that they were gonna buy merchandise, and they would

bring all their wool in, in the spring.  Well,

generally the wool only paid part of their account,

because the long-term credit was from October 'til

June, see.  Then they'd make their wool payment and

start buying more merchandise and clear their account

with livestock in the fall.

   

   Cole:  So they were essentially on the same cycle as

the people they traded with.

   

   John W.:  Uh-huh.

   

   Underhill:  Did you charge interest on that credit?

   

   John W.:  No.  That was before the banking influence

came in and they found out you could charge for things

like that.  (laughter)  You let a trader or an Indian

owe you for six or eight months, and all the time you

could have been getting (laughter) ______________.  We

didn't have credit card companies then.

   

   Steiger:  I actually did think of one.  I don't know

if it's appropriate or not, and you might not want to

have it on tape, but you mentioned when we weren't

rollin' about your screenplay that you were writin'

that involved the conflict between the--well, just

involved the stock reduction, John Collier and all

that.  Maybe you don't want somebody to swipe your

idea, but I was wonderin' what the premise of your

screenplay is.

   

   John W.:  It's a greater story than that.  You'd

better hear the whole story.

   

   John D.:  The story is of Chet Lahay Paladin

[phonetic spelling] who was a Navajo artist.  It's a

true story.  He was born at Canyon de Chelly in 1926,

not too long after Dad was there and my granddad.  And

so a lot of what takes place in the script--in fact,

the trader is Hosteen Solant [phonetic spelling],

that's his name, which was my grandfather's name.  It

deals a lot with how the traders dealt with the

Indians, trying to get away from this down-and-out rez

life and the drunks and everything else.  One of the

traumatic things was the stock reduction program.  We

went back, I read the book The Navajos and the New

Deal, where they had a lot of the minutes of Collier's

meetings with them, and a lot of the dialogue, and

incorporated a lot of that into the screenplay, so that

people would understand what a very, very traumatic

thing this was.  It was the Navajo holocaust, in many

respects.  So Chet Lahay saw this as a young boy, when

he had to leave the reservation for a period of time.

Anyway, he went on and had an incredible life that took

him to--he became a merchant marine at the age of

fourteen, and he was in the South Pacific with another

Navajo guy, and they were sneaking up on the Japanese

while they were building bunkers and stuff, preparing

for the war, and they were sketching.  And then they'd

sneak back down.  And the government found out about

this when the war broke out, and so they tried to draft

'em into the Army, but they were only fourteen years

old, so they put 'em in the OSS.  Paladin ended up in

Germany as a spy, and he was captured and sentenced to

death in Dachow.  When he was going to be executed,

this SS guard pulled him out of the line.  It was a guy

he had worked with on this ship in the South Pacific.

And so he went on to have the incredible tortures done

to him because he befriended some of the Jews.  He

brought in a lot of his Indian and Navajo spiritualism,

trying to get them to go inside themselves to survive,

and went through some absolutely horrific tortures.

Then when he was found, when they liberated Dachow, he

was found in a railroad car full of dead bodies, 'cause

they thought he was dead.

   He went on to survive, and part of his survival was

he took on the spirit of a dead Russian artist who died

in Paris at the time he was in Dachow, and he became a

channel for this entity.  And the thing that's

interesting, people think of channelling as being this

"woo-woo" type thing, but the Indians have been doing

it for centuries, that's what kachinas are, they're

channelers.  They channel the spirits of whatever

entity they are.  And he had learned this, and that's

what kept him alive while he was in prison camp.  So

it's a pretty incredible story.

   So we've just finished it, and it's now out in L.A.

starting the circulation process.  It'll be

interesting.

   

   John W.:  In his short time back in this country, he

became very famous for his art work.

   

   John D.:  Yeah, he became a famous artist, and kind

of ironic, he became a prison chaplain also.  But his

art work, at the time, was considered too far out.

People would say, "Gee, this is...."  And now it's

very, very spiritual.

   

   Cole:  Do you have any of his art work yourself?

   

   John D.:  No, I don't.  His widow has an incredible

collection, and she has most of it.

   

   Steiger:  Did you guys know him?

   

   John D.:  I knew of him, but we didn't deal in art.

And you knew of him.

   

   John W.:  I knew of him, but here again, we handled

the art work of Little No Shirt and Harrison Begay and

some of those fellows, but we never did get into

Paladin's work.

   

   John D.:  I heard a story about him on a tape, a

book tape I was listening to, and I became intrigued,

and so I started checking the Internet and stuff, and I

found another book about him.  So I wrote to the

publisher to find out if there were any survivors, and

come to find out, his wife is here in Albuquerque, his

widow.  And so we got to talking and I went to see her

and see his collection and look at what he used to do,

and one thing led to another.  She said people were

writing a screenplay, and I drove home and I said, "I

can write a screenplay!" and I wrote a screenplay.  And

it is good, it's very good.  And then when I first

turned it in, they said, "You've got a three-and-a-half-

hour movie here."  So then I hooked up with a

professional, and we've now made it into a pretty

remarkable thing.  I think the thing I like about it

the most is it depicts Indian life in a way that we

know and understand, and it's not the down-and-out

drunks.  It's a great, great story about how they

interacted with the traders, and what the traders did

for 'em.  So we'll see.

   

   Steiger:  Interesting.

   

   Underhill:  Do we get an invitation to the premier?

(laughs)

   

   John D.:  It's called Coyote.  It was a great, great

project.

   

   Cole:  How long were you working on that?

   

   John D.:  It took me about thirty-five hours to

write it the first time, and then we did ten drafts,

making it more visually powerful.  And it is.  It's

quite a story.  People tell me it's really, really

good.  So we'll see.  I think the thing, when I set out

on it, I said, "I want three things.  I want a personal

spiritual experience, and I want to help his widow with

her estate.  And the third thing is I want to do

something for all of the craftspeople that are out

there that are just dyin'."  Because it was in 1972

when Hollywood brought out the image of Indian jewelry

and stuff, and the business just took off.  And when it

died down, there's never been another boom.  I thought

if I can make something that is accurate in the way

they dress and the importance of the trading, how they

got their jewelry, why it was so important to them,

maybe it'll create another awareness and help.

   

   John W.:  Is it too early to start borrowing money

from you?

   

   John D.:  (reluctantly)  Yeah.  (laughter)

   

   Underhill:  You can trade him something, though!

(laughter)

   

   John D.:  So anyway, we have big hopes.  It's at

Dreamworks right now.  The fact that they're reading it

is a big break for us.  Whether or not they do anything

with it remains to be seen.

   

   Steiger:  That's a good place for it.

   

   John D.:  Yeah.

   

   Underhill:  Wonderful.

   

   John W.:  Look at that little statuette there and

the plaque under it.  They presented that to me at the

Indian Arts and Crafts meeting three or four years ago

in Phoenix for all the work we've done in promoting

Indian crafts.  See there?

   

   Underhill:  Oh, that's great.  Would you like to

hold it so we can get a picture with you?

   

   John W.:  I didn't bring it up for that!  (laughter)

I'll hold it in front of [my face].  (laughter)

   

   Steiger:  (inaudible)  (laughter)  This really is.

   

   Underhill:  It's beautiful.  Very nice.

   

   Steiger:  Thanks.

   

   Underhill:  Well, we'd very much like to thank you

both for your time today.  Very wonderful.  As I say,

I've never met anyone with your recall.

   

   John W.:  Before you go too far, we haven't told you

what the time-and-a-half factor is.  (laughter)  We

went overtime!  (laughter)

   

   Steiger:  Thanks.

   

   John W.:  Got it?

   

   Steiger:  Yeah, got it.

   

   John D.:  I'll bet you guys are havin' a great time

doin' this.  (tape turned off and on)

   

   John W.:  ... up north, and Shiprock I knew

practically all of 'em.  So if you run into a snag

about who was where at a certain time, I can probably

tell you.

   

   Cole:  And actually, the lady that's--they've hired

a lady to write a book on....

   

   [END OF INTERVIEW]