JACK, EVELYN & SNICK LEE INTERVIEW

   

   [BEGIN SIDE 1]

   

   This is Brad Cole from Northern Arizona University.

We're in Holbrook, Arizona.  It's August 18, 1998.

We're with the Lee family:  Evelyn (Sammie) Lee, who

we're going to interview in a minute, and also present

in the room is Jack Lee and their son Snick Lee.  Lew

Steiger is running the camera.

   

   Cole:  Evelyn, if you could start out and tell us

when and where you were born.

   

   Evelyn:  I was born in Princeton, Arkansas, March

16, 1918.

   

   Cole:  Who were your parents?

   

   Evelyn:  Sam and Nancy Turner.

   

   Cole:  Did you grow up in Arkansas then?

   

   Evelyn:  Uh-huh, I grew up and went to college in

Arkansas.  And I taught in Arkansas until World War II,

and I enlisted in the WAVES [Women Accepted for

Volunteer Emergency Service in the Navy].  Jack and I

married right after the war was over.

   

   Jack:  We met in Hawaii.

   

   Evelyn:  We met in Hawaii.  We went to Winslow

because he had been on the Santa Fe Railroad.  We were

there a year and came back to the reservation.  We were

in Ganado for a short time, and then we went to Keams

Canyon.  We were at McGee's store in Keams Canyon for

seven months before we got L and A Trading Post.  And

then we were at L and A thirty years.

   

   Cole:  So when you were growing up, did you ever

imagine you'd end up in the Southwest?

   

   Evelyn:  Unt-uh.  I intended to get into teaching

with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, so I had considered

that before I went in the service.

   

   Cole:  Was that your college degree then, or was

education?  You said you went to school in [Arkansas].

   

   Evelyn:  I don't have a degree, but I went to a

Baptist college in Arkansas.  But at that time you

didn't have to have a degree to teach.

   

   Cole:  After you met Jack, then you mentioned the

trading post you were at for thirty years.  Where was

that at?

   

   Evelyn:  At Keams Canyon.

   

   Snick:  You said two stores:  McGee's.  The older

brother of McGee, Bill McGee, had one.  That was L. Tom

King's store.  And then the folks had the other one.

   

   Cole:  So about what year did you take up at Keams

Canyon?

   

   Evelyn:  We went to Keams Canyon in 1948.  We

started running L and A Trading Post in 1949.

   

   Cole:  What did the L and A stand for?

   

   Jack:  Lester and Ann.

   

   Evelyn:  See, Jack's brother owned it first.  His

name was Lester and her name was Ann.

   

   Jack:  They hadn't come up with a title, so....

   

   Evelyn:  A name that was, you know, not like some of

the others.

   

   Cole:  And were they still there when you purchased

it from them?

   

   Evelyn:  Yeah, we were partners for several years,

and then we first purchased half.  And then as they got

older, we bought all of it.

   

   Cole:  What was Keams Canyon Store like when you

first moved there?

   

   Evelyn:  A lady had had it, and she was an

alcoholic, and she drank the money up instead of

getting merchandise.  And when we went into the store,

the Hopi clerk had gotten shoe boxes from everywhere he

could, and he had the shelves filled with empty shoe

boxes.

   

   Jack:  Made it look like they had a lot of

merchandise.  Ha!  An open box in there, being just

boxes.


   Snick:  And that same Hopi clerk that did that,

stayed with the folks all the years they ran the store.

   

   Evelyn:  Yeah.

   

   Cole:  And what was that person's name?

   

   Evelyn:  Dennis Nahoodyce.

   

   Cole:  And I won't try to pronounce that!

   

   Snick:  He had incredible loyalty.  He stayed

with–Carmen Stiles was there.

   

   Evelyn:  Yeah, he was with the lady before us, and

tried to keep her business going.

   

   Snick:  Loyal to her, and then loyal to the folks to

the last.

   

   Evelyn:  I'm very good at Hopi names if you want me

to spell it.

   

   Cole:  That'd be great, actually.

   

   Evelyn:  N-A-H-O-O-D-Y-C-E.

   

   Jack:  Ooo-dot-cee.

   

   Evelyn:  First name Dennis.

   

   Cole:  So was Jack's brother a partner with Carmen,

too, then, or not?

   

   Evelyn:  No, he just bought it from her.  And

there's nobody left for all of his trading posts for

you to interview.

   

   Snick:  Lester Lee.

   

   Evelyn:  Lester Lee.

   

   Snick:  He was involved in several trading posts.

   

   Evelyn:  Yeah, he had Two-story Trading Post and

Steamboat Trading Post.

   

   Cole:  So at L and A, were your main customers Hopi,

Navajo, or both?

   

   Evelyn:  Both.  We had an arrangement.  Jack wasn't

too fond of Hopis, so the Hopis were my customers, the

Navajos were his.  He was reared on the Navajo

Reservation, he spoke Navajo before he did English.

   

   Snick:  I don't know what the split would have been,

but pretty close to fifty-fifty with the Hopi-Navajo

customers.

   

   Evelyn:  Uh-huh.

   

   Jack:  She took care of the Hopis, and I took care

of the Navajos.  And the reason for that was that I

never learned to speak Hopi, because all Hopis spoke

Navajo, and I could just converse with 'em in Navajo

and didn't have to learn Hopi.

   

   Evelyn:  But I had great rapport with the Hopis--I

still do.

   

   Cole:  Do you speak Hopi?

   

   Evelyn:  No, but he does.

   

   Snick:  Well, not much anymore.

   

   Evelyn:  He went there when he was eighteen months

old.

   

   Snick:  You know, when you're a child, you just

learn.

   

   Evelyn:  You know, that's an accomplishment, too--

Hopi's a difficult language.

   

   Cole:  How would you describe some of the

differences between the Hopi and Navajo?

   

   Evelyn:  Well, you're going to cut some of this, it

said...

   

   Snick:  Day and night, though--you can't compare.

   

   Evelyn:  There's no comparison.

   

   Snick:  Complete different culture, religious

beliefs.  Hopi's a very sophisticated language.

   

   Evelyn:  And culture.

   

   Snick:  They're balanced to prevent intermarrying

and all of that--very sophisticated.  And the Navajos,

being very nomadic, were very basic.  Total different

beliefs and total different directions, so you really

can't compare 'em at all.

   

   Cole:  Did the Navajo and Hopi get along pretty

well, at least in your store?

   

   Evelyn:  At that time, before this joint use thing

came up.  Oh, they got along beautifully, because the

Navajos went to the Hopi ceremonies, and they traded

food.

   

   Snick:  What encouraged that trade area with Navajos

was that Keams Canyon was a government agency.

   

   Evelyn:  For the Hopi.

   

   Snick:  For the Hopi.  But when they installed

health care facilities and schools, they were for Hopi

and Navajo.  So naturally the Navajos moved in closer

to where they could go and take care of health problems

and their kids would be in boarding schools.  Plus the

Hopis hired a lot of Navajos to tend their stock.

   

   Cole:  I didn't know that.

   

   Snick:  Uh-huh.

   

   Jack:  Oh yeah.  My gosh, my mega argument with the

government, when they started (Evelyn:  This joint use

stuff.) was that you're fightin' in between.  You're

cuttin' down the middle, because there's just as many

relations, people, you're cuttin' relations in half

____________.

   

   Evelyn:  There was a lot of intermarriage.

   

   Jack:  There was a lot of intermarriage in there,

and you're killin' one branch and raisin' another one.

   

   Snick:  You know, there was a normal amount of

strife and incidents, but pretty much they got along.

I remember when we would go to kachina dances when I

was a kid, there'd be as many Navajos at the kachina

dance as there was anybody else.

   

   Evelyn:  That's right.  And they were invited into

the Hopi houses to eat.

   Snick:  The Navajos used the Hopi medicine men,

which their medicine was much more sophisticated than

the Navajo medicine men.  I think the responsibility

lay with the government for encouraging the Navajos to

move on Hopi land.  (tape turned off and on)

   

   Snick:  I gave it some thought last night, and if

you could characterize the traders, there were a lot of

traders that came to the reservation strictly to

exploit money--a good many of 'em.  And then there were

others that grew up in trading families and, you know,

you do what you do.

   

   Jack:  Raised with the kids, and were kind of

relatives.

   

   Evelyn:  There was great rapport.

   

   Snick:  And then there was a fringe of traders, like

the Lippincotts at Wide Ruins, that I think came for

the novelty of it all.  They were wealthy and it was an

adventure.  There were a handful of traders of their

generation that were there for the adventure and the

newness of it all, and it was a complete change of

lifestyle for 'em.  But the exploitation was a big

percent of the traders.

   

   Evelyn:  It was.  And some were downright

disreputable.

   

   Snick:  You wanted an opinionated view...

   

   Cole:  And we'll get back to that, but I might just

back up now, while Jack's here, and ask Jack when and

where were you born?

   

   Jack:  I was born in Breen, Colorado, in 1917.  And

there's no post office there anymore.  It was south of

Durango, approximately fourteen to eighteen miles south

of Durango, Colorado.  It was a little farming

community.

   

   Cole:  And who were your parents?

   

   Jack:  Ernest Lee, my dad.  And Annie Hunt Smootz

was [phonetic spelling] my mother.  I'm relatives to

most all of the old traders on the reservation.

   

   Evelyn:  At that time, all the traders were kin:  in-

laws, out-laws, by marriage--the early traders were.

   

   Jack:  See, there's one that you're talkin' about,

the Wheeler [family].  Clarence Wheeler and all of

those were mixed in with my family.  And the McGees was

mixed into my family.

   

   Evelyn:  The McGees are his first cousins.  Their

mothers were sisters.

   

   Jack:  Their mother and my mother were sisters, and

such.  So we're all kind of joined together.

   

   Evelyn:  Not now.

   

   Jack:  Not now, but at the beginning.

   

   Cole:  Did your parents own a trading post when you

were born?

   

   Jack:  My great-grandfather had the first trading

post at Tuba City.

   

   Cole:  And what was his name?

   

   Jack:  John D. Lee.

   

   Jack:  And his son and family lived at Tuba City.

My father and my Uncle Joe Lee left Tuba City in 1904,

and went to the San Juan River.  That was when the

government bought and made a reservation from all those

farmers and Mormons that was at Tuba City.  My dad was

the last one, they locked him in.  They locked his

fence and they said, "You either get out, or we're

gonna lock the fence."  So he danged near starved to

death, and finally he left over there in, I think it

was 1906.

   

   Evelyn:  But Jack's father and Joe Lee, his father's

brother, did start several trading posts in that area.

   

   Jack:  You probably have the record of Joe Lee at

The Gap Trading Post.

   

   Cole:  No, we really haven't heard much about that.

   

   Evelyn:  Well, he built the first trading post

there.

   

   Jack:  At The Gap.

   

   Snick:  And he built Shonto.

   

   Evelyn:  And he built Tonalea, Red Lake, that

Babbitts have now.

   

   Jack:  And Cow Springs at Babbitts, and Uncle Joe's

was across the highway.

   

   Snick:  When the government bought out the farms in

the Tuba City area, that was the third drawing, re-

drawing, of the Navajo Reservation.  See, they redid it

three times.  The Navajos just kept movin'.  The first

drawing was about at the Lukachukai Mountains.  And the

second took in Ganado and toward Keams Canyon.  And the

third drawing was when they removed the farmers at Tuba

City and made that more of the Navajo Reservation.

   

   Evelyn:  But his great-grandfather started Lee's

Ferry.  And from prison he still ordered his grown and

married sons to do what he wanted them to do, and he

told Jack's grandfather, Joseph Hyrum, "Go run the

ferry."  So he did, until it was sold.  And then he

started a home in Tuba City.

   

   Cole:  So were there many family stories about John

D. Lee?

   

   Jack:  Oh, yeah.  He was one of the guides that went

down the river with, what was that expedition?

   

   Evelyn:  He supplied the Powell expedition, he

furnished their food.

   

   Jack:  And the federal government chased him for

forty years before they caught him, 'cause he killed

all those people, they claimed, at Mountain Meadow

Massacre.

   

   Evelyn:  But he started a trading post at Moenave,

which is near Tuba City.

   

   Snick:  And built the first crossing of the Colorado

River at Lees Ferry, and constructed the road down into

the canyon with Hopi and Paiute workers.  See, that's a

little known turmoil, when they redrew that Navajo

Reservation in that area.  Most of those springs and

where there was water, with the exception of Moenkopi,

were Paiute.  And the Paiutes were completely displaced

and have never been compensated.

   

   Jack:  Was decided here recently.  And now ______

the Paiutes a bunch of money because they were around

Tuba City and The Gap, and returned back to Troy

Washburn’s trading post.

   

   Snick:  A lot of the trading that _________.

   

   Jack:  We were talking one day, and he said, "You

know, there's some Navajos up there in those springs.

They're funny people, they don't speak Navajo and they

don't speak--I don't know what they're speakin', but

they're funny.  They're Indians, they're not Navajos,

but they look like Navajos.

   

   Evelyn:  But it was Paiutes.

   

   Jack:  Paiutes.  They'd lived up there for years and

years and years, I guess, and nobody knew what the hell

was goin' on until here recently.  They got....

   

   Evelyn:  Money for the land.

   

   Jack:  Money for their land.  When they divided it,

they divided their part like the Navajos did.

Supposedly they thought they were Navajos--I guess the

government.  And they got quite a bit of money here

just recently.  But like Troy said, "Funny people.  I

don't know their language."  (laughter)  But he said,

"They trade with me and they speak a little bit of

Navajo and some other kind of language."  I never paid

a lot of attention.  They live back under where there's

those hangovers where there's springs, like Moenave and

different places over there where there's big springs

under that rim.  That's where they lived.

   

   Evelyn:  Jack's father was a linguist.  He spoke

Navajo, Paiute, Hopi, Zuni, and Apache.

   

   Cole:  Wow.

   

   Jack:  Good.

   

   Evelyn:  Fluently.

   

   Jack:  Fluently.

   

   Cole:  What did he do then?  You said he didn't own

a trading post.  Did he get into trading?

   

   Jack:  No, he was just kind of a renegade.

(laughter)

   

   Evelyn:  He hunted gold.

   

   Jack:  He was a prospector first.  He had a copper

mine--what they called a copper mine out of Tuba City

there.  He had a copper mine and he sold it for $1,600.

From that day on, he was a prospector, he was gonna get

rich.

   

   Snick:  Well, now, he ran Tonalea.

   

   Evelyn:  Yeah, he ran Tonalea.

   

   Snick:  That Uncle Joe and he built.

   

   Evelyn:  Uh-huh, but his older brother ran Tonalea,

and was bitten by a rabid skunk.  He went back to Tuba

City to his family.  Jack's grandmother wanted to take

him to St. Louis, which was the nearest rabies shot,

and the old man, Joseph Hyrum, said, "He'll be okay."

So he died of rabies.

   

   Jack:  They had him chained to trees and stuff.  He

went mad from rabies.

   

   Evelyn:  His name was Tommy Lee.

   

   Cole:  And where exactly was Tonalea at?

   

   Evelyn:  It's a Babbitt store called Red Lake.

   

   Snick:  It's northeast of Tuba City about fifty

miles.

   

   Evelyn:  The Babbitts will tell you about that.

   

   Jack:  They just recently rebuilt that Tonalea

place.  It's pretty nice-lookin'.

   

   Cole:  So did your dad then continue to prospect the

rest of his life?

   

   Jack:  He was a genius--a sort of a genius.  He done

all this work for the sawmills, building roads years

ago--building sawmill roads so they could haul the logs

out by train from (Evelyn:  Happy Jack.) Happy Jack and

Long Valley and Mormon Lake and Lake Mary and down in

that area.

   

   Evelyn:  He built the first road up on the San

Francisco Peaks.  He was an uneducated engineer, a

natural.

   

   Jack:  Later on, when I was a kid and working my way

through school, I went to a Catholic school in Durango,

Colorado, and I was taking algebra.  You know in those

days they had special problems in the back of the book.

   

   Evelyn:  They had the answers in the back of the

book.

   

   Jack:  Yeah.  And this lady (chuckles) teacher gave

me the answer ________ the answer to this thing, and

said, "You work this problem out, and you're supposed

to get this answer, this is the correct answer."  And I

went to my dad and I told him all the theorems and the

numbers and all whatever it was, and he just ducked his

head for about five minutes, and gave me an answer, and

I wrote it down.  I looked in the back of the book,

that was the answer.  He done it in his head!  He never

worked the problem out, you know, like you do in

geometry and algebra and stuff.  He never worked that

out on paper, he done it in his head.

   

   Snick:  When Granddad was at Tonalea is when he

stood in the wagon and talked to the two Navajo clans

that were feuding?

   

   Jack:  Yeah, to keep from gettin' killed--talked all

night.

   

   Evelyn:  Yeah, they were gonna take over the store.

It was because of intermarriage, two cousins (Jack:

Two clans married together.) had married, and the

families were irate.  And he said he never spoke such

good Navajo in his life as he did that night.

   

   Jack:  Sittin' on that wagon with a .33.

   

   Evelyn:  Calmin' those Navajos down so they wouldn't

kill him and everybody else.

   

   Jack:  My dad was a good old man, a good provider,

but he was a renegade.  He was away from home

90 percent of the time, and my mother raised the

family.  But he'd come back with a bunch of money and

give it to her, and then he'd be off again.  He was a

good provider, but he just wasn't a home man.

   

   Cole:  Would you ever go with him on any of his

trips?

   

   Jack:  No.  He'd take off with one of the older

boys, or somebody else.

   

   Snick:  Big family.

   

   Jack:  When my brother....

   

   Evelyn:  One brother's missing from that picture.

   

   Jack:  When my brother Larry and I were just little

renegade kids, after my mother died we were just kind

of orphans.  We was with my dad and he was with this

prospector, and they went into Nevada to find

turquoise.  It was way out in that darned old desert.

It was just desert, and Larry and I was foolin' around,

they was diggin' in some holes.  We was foolin' around

gettin' into mischief and stuff, and we found a little

knoll that somebody had dug, and there was a lot of

marble rocks--looked like marbles, and we were good

marble shooters.  We dug out a bunch of those darned

things and were shootin' marbles.  And they were pure

turquoise.  My dad, when he died, had half a one.  He

had it cut and made a ring out of it--the most

beautiful thing you ever seen.  But they never could

find enough of 'em to do any good.  But they were round

like a marble.

   

   Evelyn:  Your next question?

   

   Jack:  (laughs)  Now ask some more--I got carried

away!

   

   Cole:  That's fine.  When did you start trading

yourself?

   

   Jack:  Well, I just was back and forth, clerkin'

here and there--mostly just clerkin'.

   

   Evelyn:  He mainly was reared by his brother,

Lester, on the reservation.

   

   Jack:  Whoever'd take care of me!  (laughs)

   

   Evelyn:  And then he had Steamboat Trading Post.

   

   Cole:  So where were some of the places you clerked?

Steamboat and....

   

   Jack:  I was at Steamboat, I was at Two Grey Hills,

and Iron Springs, Salina....

   

   Evelyn:  Ganado, Lower Sunrise.

   

   Jack:  Where the Old Man Wheeler--maybe you

interviewed him....

   

   Evelyn:  They're gone.

   

   Jack:  They're gone.

   

   Evelyn:  And so is Sunrise Trading Post.

   Jack:  Sunrise Trading Post.  Navajo name for

Sunrise was Shonto--everybody called it.  South of

Ganado, down towards Cornfields, where the farm agency

is.

   

   Evelyn:  That's about all the places you were.

   

   Jack:  Yeah.

   

   Snick:  You've probably seen in putting this

together that a lot of the traders were trained by an

older brother, or got started in a store by an older

relative.  It just was a progression like that.

   

   Jack:  When my mother died, my brother Al was

runnin' Salina, and he took me with his boy and the

family, to Salina.  So I stayed at Salina for three or

four years with him.  It was just like that.  Then I'd

go to another brother's and have him feed me (chuckles)

a while.  Then other places.  I was at Steamboat for

years, off and on.

   

   Cole:  How old were you when you first....

   

   Jack:  Eight years old when my mother died.  But I

went to the reservation when I was six.

   

   Cole:  And you speak Navajo?

   

   Jack:  Oh, yeah, I learned to speak Navajo before I

did English, because in those days there wasn't no

whites around in the trading posts--there was all

Navajo kids to play with--so I learned how to speak

Navajo before I did English.

   

   Evelyn:  The whole family are linguists.

   

   Cole:  And when you said you had Navajo playmates,

what kinds of things would you do?

   

   Jack:  Just get in damned mischief!  (laughter)  We

caught a bear one time.

   

   Evelyn:  Roped a bear.

   

   Jack:  Roped a bear, this kid and I.  We was out

horseback ridin' at Black Mountain.  We had a big idea,

big shot, you know.  At that time there was a lot of

wild cows up on Black Mountain, where Piñon is now,

back on that mountain.  A lot of wild cattle up there.

And this kid and I, we was ridin' around up there,

lookin' for those.  I told him, "If we caught some of

those, we could take 'em to the railroad and sell 'em

and get money!"  (chuckles)  We talked about it and

after a bit I went down to my brother Lester and I

said, "If we brought some wild cows off the mountain up

there, would you take 'em?  Would you help us and sell

'em for us?"  "Yeah, yeah."  He passed it off like we

were a bunch of dummies.  Well, anyway, we went up

there and caught twenty-five head of those and brought

'em down there and took 'em to Chambers down here on

the railroad, and we sold 'em, Lester sold 'em.

   

   Evelyn:  In that same deal of roping the cows, they

roped a bear.

   

   Jack:  Yeah, and this old Tapaha Nez, this kid's

daddy, he come out there just as we were tryin' to get

rid of that damned bear.  (laughs)  We couldn't get

loose of him!  We had three ropes on him and we

couldn't get the damned ropes loose.  Our horses were

wild and crazy.  We were in a hell of a fix.  Finally

the old man Tapaha Nez, he got a rope on one leg of the

bear and one of the rest of us got a rope around his

neck and we stretched him out and got rid of the ropes.

The old man Tapaha Nez just beat the snot out of all of

us for catchin' that bear, 'cause that's against--very

taboo, you know.

   

   Evelyn:  Bears are sacred to Navajos.

   

   Jack:  Whew!  Singin' and everything.  We just got

the hell kicked out of us for catchin' that damned

bear, and why we done it, I don't know.  We were just

gettin' into mischief, I guess.  (laughs)

   

   Snick:  It's surprising that kid stuff is pretty

much universal.  Had nothing to do with cultural

barriers or anything.

   

   Jack:  (laughs)  No.  We just caught a bear.  We

were good ropers.  We could catch calves pretty good,

so we decided, hell, we'd catch that damned bear.

   

   Steiger:  I'm surprised he let you catch him.

Aren't those guys pretty fast? bears?

   

   Jack:  They're mean and they'll chase you, too.  You

get a rope on 'em, and....

   

   Steiger:  When you'd got the first loop on him, was

he runnin' from you or to you?

   

   Jack:  He ran from us, and then we tightened up on

those ropes and this other boy, he got another rope on

him, and we was tryin' to stretch him out.  And then

when he went mad, he would jump up in the air, and he'd

chase me, and then he'd chase him, and then he'd

chase....  Gollee!  And then we got scared.  The

tradition got the best of us.  I went to those damned

things, too, just like the other boys when they had

their sings and stuff.  I knew that that was bad, we

were gonna die or somethin', if we didn't get rid of

that damned bear and not tell anybody.  We were gonna

get rid of the bear and not say anything, but the old

man came in and saw us, and knew we was in trouble.  So

he helps us (chuckles) get rid of the bear, and we had

singin' and everything.

   

   Evelyn:  (aside about cooler)

   

   Jack:  We got into it.  When we caught those--

rounded those cows up, there was about a half-grown man

that went with us.  He got bucked off and broke his leg

and we had to carry him off the mountain, take him down

there.  His folks got mad at us.  We thought we was

gonna hafta go to jail at first, for a while, 'cause we

sold those cows and paid off and got out of mischief,

payin' off.  That was the last roundup we had, the last

go-around.  No more wild cows!

   

   Cole:  When you're sayin' "paying off," what do you

mean by that?

   

   Jack:  Well, you have to pay off to get out from

under the traditions.

   

   Evelyn:  You mean catchin' the bear--you had to pay

the medicine man.

   

   Jack:  Yeah, we had to pay for the ceremonies.

   

   Cole:  Did you have a ceremony?

   

   Jack:  A ceremony to get the ch’©©dii out of us.

   

   Evelyn:  A sing is one Navajo ceremony.

   

   Cole:  What kind of ceremony did they perform for

that?

   

   Jack:  Oh, they burned cedar smoke and they sang and

drank some old crazy stuff that was nasty.

   

   Snick:  For purification.

   

   Jack:  Then they [string?] their damned feathers at

you.  You sit there.

   

   Snick:  It's serious.

   

   Jack:  Uh-huh, scary.  "What they gonna do to us

next time?!"  (laughs)

   

   Cole:  So I imagine when you were a boy at the

trading posts, they put you to work, too, didn't they?

   

   Jack:  Oh, yeah, I had to help clerk and help clean,

clean the place up, chop the wood--if they could catch

me.  Everybody burned wood.  ___________.  This one

place, Steamboat, one Christmas, somebody, a friend

that had another trading post, raised some turkeys,

gave Lester and Ann a turkey, and they didn't want to

eat it, so they kept it.  Well, evidently, it was a

male turkey and a female turkey, because after a while,

we had turkeys all over the damned place!  And them

damned turkeys would hide their nests, and the first

thing you know, here come a damned old hen turkey with

eighteen or twenty little turkeys, bringin' 'em in.  We

had turkeys everyplace.  You couldn't give 'em away!

   

   Evelyn:  The Navajos wouldn't eat fowl at that time.

   

   Jack:  They wouldn't eat fowl at those times--they

wouldn't eat chicken or turkey.  That was taboo.  You

know, they would buy, when they got real sick, they

would buy a can of sardines that had oil in it.

   

   Evelyn:  Medicine men used it.

   

   Jack:  The medicine man.  And they'd take that for

medicine, eat that fish.

   

   Evelyn:  Other than that, they didn't eat fish.

   

   Jack:  They didn't eat fish, but they'd eat that

sardines, I guess 'cause it was physic _____.  It's

real oily, and there's somethin'....  (laughs)  But for

years and years and years they wouldn't eat chicken or

turkey or pork or nothin'.

   

   Evelyn:  Well, they'd eat pork, but they wouldn't

eat fish.

   

   Snick:  Now, did the Hopis eat fish and fowl?

   

   Evelyn:  Unt-uh.

   

   Snick:  They didn't either?

   

   Evelyn:  I used to serve shrimp when I had Hopi

housekeepers, and they wouldn't even stay in the

kitchen!  Still don't eat it.

   

   Jack:  She had a Navajo lady who brought prairie

dogs in and cooked 'em.  God! they're stinkin' things!

Whew!

   

   Evelyn:  Well, they don't take the innards out

first.  They roast 'em with the insides.  And I went in

the house from the store and I couldn't stay in my own

house.  Hopi woman cookin' prairie dogs.

   

   Cole:  Was that pretty common?

   

   Evelyn:  Uh-huh.

   

   Jack:  The Navajos really liked 'em, and I guess

prairie dogs was good to the Hopi lady too.

   

   Evelyn:  It was their stand-by when food was scarce.

   

   Jack:  But like this old Hopi man said, "Don't kill

those prairie dogs, just shoot at 'em if you're hopin'

to kill 'em, 'cause we eat 'em when we're poor."

(laughter)

   

   Snick:  I don't think America realizes the extent of

the poverty.

   

   Jack:  You know, my brother Lester was a whiz at

talkin' to these people, his customers, to help

themselves.  He spent lots and lots of money on blooded

sheep.  He would give 'em to the sheepherders--I mean,

the ones that had sheep herds, he'd give those bucks to

'em, one or two, and say, "Now, when your sheep have

lambs from these bucks, you have to give me eight lambs

for this buck.  But wait 'til your sheep has...."  He

wouldn't take cash.  "You pay me back in lambs."

   

   Evelyn:  That was your brother Lester at Steamboat.

   

   Jack:  Yes.  And he had a bunch of those black-faced

sheep that come out of Texas.

   

   Evelyn:  He really built up the sheep herds.

   

   Jack:  He built the hell out of their herds, and

then turned around--and talkin' about cheaters--the old

man________, was the type of man that, like she says,

they come out to exploit the Indians and get a bunch of

money and then take off.

   

   Evelyn:  So he bought the blooded sheep and even the

ewes.

   

   Jack:  And Lester was there to stay.  He built their

herds up so that every year he'd get a good reputation

of the buyers would come out and [say], "Oh, those are

good-lookin' lambs, we'll buy 'em."

   

   Snick:  Try to get the lamb prices higher.

   

   Evelyn:  But see, it was all credit.  And some of

the traders would take their last sheep to clear their

accounts in the fall, [even] if it wiped 'em out.

   

   Cole:  What were the economic and living conditions

for the Navajo?

   

   Jack:  It was just dog-eat-dog.

   

   Evelyn:  Just terrible.

   

   Jack:  Just terrible.  They had their sheep, and

that was about it.  And they had wool.

   

   Evelyn:  They had wool in the spring and lambs in

the fall.  And in between there was no welfare, no

money.  You really had a hard time.  They'd come in

with a single saddle blanket, and at that time they

were from three to four dollars, and it was just hard

to get flour, coffee, shortening, and potatoes, for

four dollars.

   

   Jack:  One old lady would come in about every two

weeks and she'd have a saddle blanket.  She couldn't

weave for sour apples, and I'd just take the damned

thing and throw it over.  Go on and get some bakin'

powder, some salt, and some potatoes, some coffee, put

it on the counter (Evelyn:  Well, you knew she was

gonna buy anyway.) put it on the counter and "thank

you," and she just (claps hands), (in Navajo)

"Háshinee’..."  She would say, "My little boy" and just

pat me around.  I kept her alive.  And then we'd just

[pale] the damned rugs and take any kind of damned

thing to get some money to pay the wholesaler for some

more merchandise.

   

   Evelyn:  Tryin' to get rid of the rugs.

   

   Jack:  But I never said a word to her.  I just took

the rug and gave her a sack of flour and some coffee

and baking powder and stuff and kept her alive.

   

   Evelyn:  Before the days of some help, you can't

imagine the poverty that the Navajos were in.  It was

unbelievable.

   

   Jack:  One winter it was a real bad winter at

Steamboat, and my brother Lester got a bunch of the

leaders together and said, "Now, you guys get out there

and cut some logs and get your horses up here.  I'm

gonna put a great big pot of beans on the fire, and

we're gonna have something to eat.  But in the first

place, what you're gonna do is, you're gonna take those

logs and you're gonna go all along that ridge over

there."  It was about five miles long, that ridge.

"You're gonna go with those horses and drag those logs

up and down that thing and get that damned snow knocked

off."

   

   Evelyn:  So the sheep could graze.

   

   Jack:  "Then when you get through over there, you

come over here and we're gonna give you a big feast:

pinto beans and stuff."  He had a great big pot, one of

those old wash pots, a great big old steel wash pot.

It was full of beans.  And those poor guys, they just

ate and ate and brought their kids in, their little

ones, and just hogged up.  But the snow melted off and

they had some grass for the sheep!  (laughter)  He got

'em to do that for somethin' to eat.  He helped 'em

that way.

   

   Evelyn:  But in that day and time, they tried to

help themselves.

   

   Jack:  They were enthused about it, but they never

thought of anything like that.

   

   Evelyn:  And the terrible winter of 1967.  I saw 'em

up on the hillside at Keams, trompin' the snow--the

family would go around all the bushes and tromp the

snow down so the sheep could graze.

   

   Snick:  And then the sheep would come along in their

tracks and eat the brush.

   

   Jack:  But they worked.  What all made me mad and

disgusted was that the Bureau of Indian Affairs petted

'em, give 'em stuff.

   

   Evelyn:  Well, they didn't try to teach 'em to be

self-sufficient.  But they knew how to be before there

was a Bureau of Indian Affairs.

   

   Jack:  They got to where they got so bad that when

they come out with the surplus commodities and stuff to

give 'em stuff, they'd just sit there, "Well, bring it

in, bring it in."  They wouldn't even go out and get

it!

   

   Evelyn:  But that's beside the point.  Another

question.

   

   Cole:  What kinds of things would the Hopi bring in

to trade then?

   

   Evelyn:  Oh, kachina dolls, baskets.

   

   Jack:  And pottery.

   

   Evelyn:  Baskets, pottery.  They had an arrangement

so the market wasn't flooded.  All the mesas made

kachina dolls, but there weren't many in that day and

time because it was a taboo to make the kachinas.  And

then First Mesa made pottery, and Second and Third

Mesas made baskets, but a different type of basket.

But Hopis are self-sufficient.  We bought corn from

them, but you never bought this year's or last year's

corn.  They kept three years of corn, because they've

been through famines, and they weren't about to run

out, because some years you didn't grow any corn.

   

   Snick:  And they needed the seed.

   

   Evelyn:  Uh-huh.

   

   Cole:  What were their living conditions like?

   

   Jack:  They were farmers, and they raised some

stock.

   

   Evelyn:  They had the rock houses up on top of the

mesas.  I think their conditions were better than the

Navajos.

   

   Snick:  Well, havin' just an older culture, and more

established, they farmed and they knew how to dry

vegetables and preserve it for winters.

   

   Evelyn:  And they knew how to gather.

   

   Snick:  And living in a community-type setting

versus Navajos being just total nomadic, it was easier

to administer health care to the Hopis.  In a

community, they would help each other more.

   

   Cole:  Did the trading system....  Like, you know,

there's this way the Navajo traded for the credit, the

wool, the lamb season.  Did the Hopi....

   

   Evelyn:  We credited very few Hopis.  They didn't

ask for it.  They either brought in something, or they

brought money.

   

   Jack:  We bought their dolls and their pottery and

stuff.

   

   Evelyn:  And usually that was in trade, 'cause we

could offer a higher price in trade.

   

   Snick:  With the Navajos about almost 100 percent

credit.  With the Hopi, it was probably less than

10 percent.

   

   Evelyn:  Yeah.

   

   Cole:  What about pawn?

   

   Evelyn:  Well, Hopis don't pawn.

   

   Cole:  Not at all?

   

   Evelyn:  Unt-uh.  We had a couple of customers that

did some pawn with us.  One old lady had a beautiful

basket, museum quality.  She pawned it when she needed

cash.  And then when she got very old, she sent me a

Christmas present, and it was that basket.  I put it in

the museum in California.

   

   Cole:  What museum?

   

   Evelyn:  At Hayward.

   

   Snick:  Cal State Hayward.

   

   Evelyn:  Cal State Hayward.  That's where all of our

stuff is.  (pause)  Next question?

   

   Steiger:  I have a question, and maybe it's

inappropriate.  It sounds like the Hopis were pretty

good customers, but Sammie said that you didn't like

'em, that you preferred the Navajos?  I don't

understand.

   

   Jack:  Well, because the reason.  The reasons for

that, I suppose, is that I was more familiar with the

Navajo (Evelyn:  I think so.) because I grew up with

some of 'em.

   

   Evelyn:  It's a totally different culture and

everything else.  He was comfortable and he spoke

Navajo.

   

   Snick:  I think that's probably not the right

terminology.  He didn't dislike 'em, he was just much

more comfortable....

   

   Jack:  I was more comfortable....

   

   Evelyn:  No, he didn't dislike them.

   Jack:  I liked the Hopis, but I wasn't comfortable

around 'em, because I was more comfortable around the

Navajos, because I was more Navajo than I was Hopi, you

might say.

   

   Steiger:  Yeah.  I just didn't understand.

   (whole roomful of people talking at once)

   

   Snick:  There wasn't any animosity or anything like

that.

   

   Jack:  No, there was no animosity or anything.

   

   Cole:  Did you have a Navajo nickname?

   

   Evelyn:  Uh-huh, but we hate to tell it to you.

(laughter)  They called him "Mr. Goddamned."

   

   Cole:  (laughs)  And why is that?

   

   Evelyn:  'Cause he swore all the time.

   

   Jack:  I took up that from my brother, and every

other word was "God damn" with him, and I just started

usin' it.

   

   Snick:  Well, let me give you a little lead-in.

Dealing with the Navajos, this oftentimes....  With

Navajo lifestyle--and not so much today, but back then--

it was constant strife.  It was always an emergency or

some happening--lots of accidents.  It would frustrate

you, 'cause it was just this on-going thing.  Chei used

to do most of the business out in the hay barn, and

they would go out there to him, or go into the office

or the vault at the door....

   

   Jack:  ... tell me their troubles, and I'd say,

"Well, I'll be goddamned!" or "I'll be darned!"

   

   Snick:  And he'd say, "Well, goddamned it!" and then

go ahead and work out whatever deal needed to be worked

out to get 'em out of that bind.  So when I was

learnin' from the folks in the store, the Navajo elders

would come in and ask me in Navajo, "Where's God Damn?"

They wanted to talk to him.

   

   Evelyn:  Now, you cut that out of this transcript!

(tape turned off and on)

   

   Jack:  I have to think about it.  ________ "Well,

I'll be goddamned!"

   

   Evelyn:  It can't be cut out, huh?

   (all talking at once)

   

   Jack:  There's a doctor in Memphis, Tennessee.  He

come out there to Keams.  Had a brother that was a

pharmacist for Public Health, and he'd come out there

and teach these young doctors how to set bones and

stuff.  This doctor from ________.

   

   Evelyn:  He wrote the textbooks on orthopedic

surgeries.

   

   Jack:  He stayed with us, he and his brothers would

stay with us at the store.  When he left to go back to

his practice, he had the Campbell Clinic in Tennessee--

Memphis, Tennessee.  And he said, "If you come to

Tennessee, you come to the clinic, and when you get to

the office, you just say, 'I'm Mr. Goddamn,' and I'll

be right down from upstairs."  (laughter)  "You just

tell that gal at the office that you're Mr. Goddamned,

and I'll be down in a minute."

   

   Evelyn:  We used to have open house at the trading

post at Keams.  We had a guest house.

   

   Cole:  How often would you have guests?  (Evelyn

laughs)

   

   Jack:  Every day.  (laughter)

   

   Snick:  Every day.  Always, when growin' up, I

thought you always had somebody doin' a book or an

anthropologist or a doctor or somebody.  I thought

everybody grew up like that, 'cause we always had

people (Evelyn:  Always.) that were stayin' there in

the guest house.

   

   Evelyn:  We had a couple of men that stayed for a

year, were doing a book on infant behavior from the

University of Chicago, and they were our guests for a

year.

   

   Cole:  Do you remember who they were?

   

   Evelyn:  Dan Friedman and Pat Callahan.

   

   Snick:  They were doin' a genetic study, world-wide,

on newborn infants to establish gene pool quality.  And

the last of their study was doing Navajo and Hopi

newborns.  They thought they'd be up here like three

weeks, and they ended up bein' better than a year.

   Jack:  We let 'em have one of our apartments--they

lived in it.  Callahan is in Santa Fe now.  He's head

of what? (Evelyn:  I don't know.) for the State of New

Mexico.

   

   Evelyn: Something in the state.

   

   Snick:  Just an interesting lifestyle, that you had

these folks.

   

   Cole:  Who were some of the other memorable folks?

   

   Evelyn:  Oh, a lot of anthropologists:  Tom Bahti

out of Tucson, Clay Lockett from Flagstaff.  You've

heard his name.  (Cole:  Yeah.)  I just can't remember.

   

   Jack:  That big ol' guy that leaned in the damned

window and helped us one day.  What the hell was his

name?

   

   Evelyn:  D. W. Griffiths' nephew.

   

   Snick:  He's a professor at the U of A now.

   

   Evelyn:  Yeah, on folklore.

   

   Cole:  Was that James Griffith, maybe?

   

   Evelyn:  Jim.  Yeah, James Griffith.

   

   Cole:  Great big fellow?

   

   Evelyn:  Yeah.

   

   Jack:  About nineteen feet tall.

   

   Evelyn:  He was a guest often.  In fact, when we

left the reservation, I just missed the anthropologists

terribly.

   

   Cole:  When the Navajo traded with you, did the

women do most of the trading or the men, or was there a

mix?

   

   Jack:  Women mostly.  Men, all they wanted was a new

hat or a new pair of shoes.  "Oh, gimme this, gimme

this, gimme this."  The woman, "Get on back there!

Shut up."

   

   Evelyn:  But, you know, it's a matriarchal society,

and the woman owned the house and she owned the sheep

herd.  The men were at their mercy.  And the women did

the trading.

   

   Jack:  You got the okay from the women, if they come

in for credit.  I'd say, "Well, how many lambs can you

bring in this fall to pay your bill?"  And she'd tell

me.  "No!  I don't want you to tell [him that], I don't

want you to bring in that many.  I want to get

somethin' else!"  She'd say, "Shut up!  I'm the one who

has the say, they're my sheep!"  So I'd make a deal,

and I could figure an average about how much a head one

lamb would be, so I'd let him have that much credit.

And then in the fall they'd bring that many lambs in to

pay.

   

   Evelyn:  You know, when we were going through the

stuff that we had left from the trading post the other

day, we roughly figured, and in thirty years we lost

$6,000.  That's unbelievable that we didn't lose more

than that.

   

   Snick:  In bad accounts.

   

   Cole:  Wow.  That's amazing, actually.  What about

Hopi?  Did men or women equally do the trading?

   

   Evelyn:  Yeah, the man brought what he made in and

sold it.  The women would...      (Jack:  ... bring

pottery.)  The men made the kachinas.  And once in a

great while we'd buy some Hopi weaving, and you know

the men make all of that in the kivas--not rugs, but

the Hopi robes, wedding robes, and the sashes that the

kachinas wear, and that sort of thing.

   

   Snick:  See, the Navajos learned to weave from the

Hopis.

   

   Cole:  I didn't know that.

   

   Jack:  The Hopis had sort of a....  I guess it was

wild cotton.

   

   Evelyn:  They grew it.

   

   Jack:  They grew it themselves, and they made those

robes.

   

   Evelyn:  They wove with cotton where the Navajos

wove with wool.  But the Navajos had sheep for the

wool.

   

   Steiger:  I have a question.  On the weaving, did

people weave before the white man came?

   

   Snick:  Uh-huh, the Hopis.

   

   Evelyn:  The Hopis did.  The Spaniards brought the

wool to the Navajos, but they learned to weave from the

Hopis.

   

   Snick:  See, the Pueblo ancestry wove at Mesa Verde,

with cotton.  See the lineage there is a lot deeper

than Navajo lineage.  The Navajos learned all of their

crafts from other tribes.  See, they learned baskets--

not all Navajos make baskets, but the Navajo medicine

baskets they learned to do from the Paiutes on the San

Juan River up in Monument Valley and Navajo Mountain

area.  And they learned to make pottery from the Hopis,

they learned to weave from the Hopis.

   

   Jack:  They learned to weave from the Spaniard

wool....

   

   Evelyn:  Well, the Spaniards furnished the first

wool, but the Hopis taught 'em to weave.  But the

beyeta rugs, of which there are very few--there's one

at Hubbell's--were the Spanish cloaks that they

unraveled and wove into a rug.  And they're either dark

blue or dark red.  Had you heard of the beyeta before?

   

   Cole:  I've read about it.

   

   Evelyn:  Well, there's one at the museum at

Hubbell's.  It's the only one I ever saw.  It's a dark

blue one.

   

   Steiger:  And that's a Spanish influence?

   

   Evelyn:  Uh-huh.

   

   Snick:  The beyeta was a Spanish cape, the soldiers

cape.  And they would unravel that and....

   

   Jack:  They were all handmade.

   

   Evelyn:  Those cloaks were hand knitted, and they

unraveled easily.  And that was what they made the

first rugs from.

   

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

   

   Cole:  This is Brad Cole from Northern Arizona

University.  We're visiting with the Lees in their home

in Holbrook, Arizona.  It's August 18, 1998, and this

is Tape 2.

   Jack, I was going to actually ask you, as a little

boy, if you remember the sheep reduction, John

Collier's sheep reduction.

   

   Jack:  Oh, yeah, I remember that.

   

   Cole:  And if you could describe that for us.

   

   Jack:  He just come out there and he just shot 'em.

   

   Evelyn:  Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

   

   Jack:  And then the government, to offset the furor

of the people--they were up in arms, they were ready to

go to war--they would say, “Buy my goat skin.”  The

government told the traders, "Buy those goat skins,

give 'em a dime apiece, and we'll pay for it."

   

   Evelyn:  Or sheep skins.

   

   Jack:  Or sheep skins.  A dime apiece.  The Navajos

today, if you mention John Collier, they're up in arms,

even today.

   

   Evelyn:  It was a terrible thing.

   

   Jack:  It was a terrible thing.

   

   Snick:  What brought it about?

   

   Jack:  Overgrazing, I think, to start with.

   

   Evelyn:  Yeah, I think it was overgrazing, and they

did the same thing in my country, down in Arkansas.  We

had no stock laws, and they killed the cows and

everything else.

   

   Steiger:  At the same time?

   

   Evelyn:  At the same time, during Roosevelt's

administration.

   

   Cole:  So it was sort of a Depression-era policy

almost.

   

   Evelyn:  During the big Depression.

   

   Jack:  And then there was a lot of crooked

(chuckles) damned traders--there's always crooks in a

bunch--they'd take those damned things and count 'em

twice and get twenty cents apiece, instead of ten!

We'd have sometimes two of those....  At that time a

ton truck was a big truck, and they'd have flat beds on

'em, and sides.  And then sometimes it'd be two or

three of those things stacked--we'd bale 'em--with

sheep hides and goat hides.  And John Collier and his

group would come out there and if this guy had 250 head

of sheep and a permit for 50, right then and there,

bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, they were all dead.

Right there in front of the people!

   

   Evelyn:  It was a terrible thing.

   

   Jack:  It was terrible!  "What are we gonna do with

the meat?!"  "I don't give a damn what you do with it,

let it rot!"

   

   Evelyn:  But the Navajos are bad for overgrazing,

and aerial pictures of the Navajos surrounding the Hopi

Reservation, you can't imagine the difference.  The

Hopi Reservation is green, and they strictly have no

overgrazing.  And it's nothing but sand and sagebrush

on the Navajo.  The last winter that we bought lambs

for our own use--we'd always put ten in our freezer--we

got it from the Navajos, and we couldn't eat it, 'cause

it tasted like sage.  That's all they had to eat.

   

   Jack:  Sagebrush.  That's all the danged lambs would

eat, was the sagebrush.  You couldn't eat it, we had to

throw most of it away.

   

   Evelyn:  (aside about microphone)

   

   Snick:  That overgraze situation--jumpin' up fifty

years--that was one of the reasons the Navajos moved

onto the Hopi land, 'cause they had overgrazed theirs

so bad.  And the government did nothing to stop it,

until it was such a problem that the Hopis took the

Navajos to court.

   

   Evelyn:  This is after John Collier.

   

   Snick:  Right.  Like history repeating itself.

   

   Cole:  That would have been like the forties when

the Navajo started moving onto the Hopi....

   

   Evelyn:  Yeah, or before that, too.

   Jack:  You know, really, this is off the record, but

I have been, most of my life, very belligerent towards

the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and I still am.  They

ought to do away with that completely.

   

   Evelyn:  Jack, let's not do that on the tape.

   

   Cole:  If you don't mind, what kind of problems have

they created?  Do you mind talking about that?

   

   Jack:  They haven't created anything but a bunch of

damned crap!  They're out here for the money.  (Evelyn:

They try.)  The Bureau of Indian Affairs seem like

they're out here for the money and that's it.

   

   Evelyn:  They try.

   

   Jack:  They try, but they don't know [how] to help.

Like the old saying is, to get the head of the bureau

in and [fair?] as they find where a bunch of kids made

the snowman and it's half-way melted, and they took it

and made the head the bureau, what was left.

   

   Snick:  I think they were genuine in wanting to help

the Indians.

   

   Evelyn:  Oh, they were, they were.

   

   Snick:  But it's like I think in modern days, like

the Department of Education--they're setting a standard

for all kids in the United States out of Washington.

They hired specialists in the field and set up programs

for the Navajos, who most of these folks in Washington

knew nothing about.

   

   Jack:  Never seen a Navajo.

   

   Snick:  And it looked good on paper and in theory,

but they were unworkable.  I mean, they classified all

Indians as "Indians," not different tribes and so

forth, and just assumed the Navajos were farmers and

just jump right on these programs, and they just threw

money at the programs, and that eased the guilt

conscience in Washington a great deal, and it really

did nothing but take away the self-determination of the

people in these programs _________ abandoned.

   

   Evelyn:  (aside about microphone)

   

   Snick:  But I think my opinion is that probably BIA

is the biggest detriment the Indians had.

   Evelyn:  That's going to be cut out of the tape,

too, can't it?

   

   Snick:  Well, it doesn't make any difference.

   

   Evelyn:  (chuckles)  No.

   

   Snick:  I think everybody's realizing that now.

   

   Steiger:  Yeah, I don't think that's news to

anybody.

   

   Cole:  No.

   

   Jack:  But when you sit on the reservation as long

as we did, and watch the deterioration of a tribe of

Indians, I don't know what word you would use, but they

depended on the Bureau of Indian Affairs.  They sit

there.  "Do you think I ought to go to the bathroom?"

"Well, yeah, go on."  "Okay, I'll go to the bathroom."

That's the attitude that the Bureau of Indian Affairs

gives to the Indians.

   

   Evelyn:  Well, it was paternalistic.

   

   Jack:  Yeah.

   

   Steiger:  When did that start?

   

   Jack:  Hell, I don't know.

   

   Evelyn:  I don't know when the Bureau of Indian

Affairs started.

   

   Snick:  (same time as Jack)  __________________

early 1900s.

   

   Jack:  They started when we first started, because I

had to get a danged Bureau of Indian Affairs license to

operate.

   

   Evelyn:  He said in the early....

   

   Snick:  Late 1800s.  It wasn't called the Bureau of

Indian Affairs then.  I think it was under an Indian

Agent.

   

   Cole:  Uh-huh, Department of Interior.

   

   Snick:  I may be incorrect, but I think one of the

Babbitt in-laws was the first Indian agent.

   

   Evelyn:  Yeah, later became Senator Ashurst.

   

   Cole:  Could have been.  Yeah, I think they did have

Indian agents throughout the area.

   

   Snick:  As things go in Washington, it grew into

this big bureaucracy.

   

   Evelyn:  You know, that agent business went way

back, because John D. Lee was Indian agent for the

Paiutes in Utah.

   

   Jack:  That was way back in the 1840s.

   

   Evelyn:  Eighteen thirties.

   

   Snick:  But the tribes that didn't allow themselves

to totally succumb to that, did better.  And the

smaller tribes, like the Hopi and some of the Pima and

other smaller tribes that didn't bite that carrot,

didn't take the whole carrot, they did better.  So

their whole cultural structure wasn't undermined.

   

   Cole:  Was there an Indian agent at Keams while you

were there?

   

   Evelyn:  For the Hopi, yeah.

   

   Cole:  Do you remember who?

   

   Jack:  (inaudible, several talking at once)

   

   Evelyn:  There were several superintendents.  The

first one, when we went there, was James Crawford.  And

then there were probably eight in our years there.

   

   Cole:  And what kind of changes did you see during

your years at Keams Canyon, in trading?

   

   Jack:  Well, you take a person that's on dole,

eventually they resent it.

   

   Evelyn:  Well, they deteriorate.

   

   Jack:  They deteriorate.  And that's what the Bureau

of Indian Affairs put them in a class as they were

under a dole system, for the government to come in and

give you so much, give you so much, give you so much.

   

   Snick:  Well, the change, though, that I think

changed from a total barter system, early on, and just

the people bein' self-sufficient with their sheep or

their rugs or whatever, with a total barter system--to

a total welfare-based trade system.

   

   Jack:  That's what it ended up being.

   

   Snick:  In my lifetime, at the store, in thirty

years it went from a total barter system to a total

welfare system.

   

   Jack:  And they just sat there, and like I always

said, here comes the BIA with their trucks loaded with

free goods, and the Navajos wouldn't even get up and go

out and get it.  "Well, if you want me to have it,

bring it in."  And they'd not get up.

   

   Evelyn:  But I'm gonna give the government credit

where credit's due.  They had some programs that were

great, and one of 'em was when that WIC Program--Women,

Infants, Children--I never saw children look better,

saw 'em progress as much as they did, when they were

getting that nutrition.  And the lambs got very big and

fat, because the Indians can't tolerate fresh milk.

   

   Jack:  So they fed it to the lambs.

   

   Evelyn:  So they gave that to the lambs.

   

   Jack:  And the traders sure did like that, because

instead of a fifty-pound average lamb, we got some

seventy-pound average lambs!  (laughs)

   

   Evelyn:  You know, I've never known an Indian that

can tolerate milk.  It gives 'em instant diarrhea.

   

   Cole:  I didn't know that.

   

   Jack:  That was my thoughts with the Bureau of

Indian Affairs.  I wasn't very fond of 'em.

   

   Evelyn:  But they did some good things.

   

   Jack:  They done some good things, but they done a

lot of bad things too.  The overall picture was bad.

   

   Evelyn:  The BIA health system was the first

doctors, and they surely needed them--other than Dr.

Salisbury [phonetic spelling] at Ganado.

   

   Snick:  It's hard to imagine that there was this

huge body of people that had no health care.

   

   Steiger:  Who was Dr. Salisbury at Ganado?

   

   Evelyn:  Well, he started the Ganado Mission and

that big hospital.  He had clinics:  had one at Salina

Springs, various places.  And that was their first

health care, before BIA had hospitals.

   

   Snick:  He was funded through the Presbyterian

churches.

   

   Jack:  He was a doctor missionary.

   

   Evelyn:  And he was in China first, and then came to

the Navajo Reservation and spent his life there.

   

   Jack:  And he always told us old heathens, "When you

want to get some people to join your church and listen

to you, feed 'em first, and get 'em full."

   

   Evelyn:  Doctor 'em first, and then feed 'em.

   

   Jack:  Doctor 'em, get 'em well, and feed 'em good.

Then they'll listen to some religion.  (laughter)

   

   Cole:  Were there a lot of other missionaries out on

the reservation?

   

   Evelyn:  In later years.

   

   Jack:  In later years, lots of 'em.

   

   Evelyn:  Did lots of harm, too.

   

   Steiger:  What kind of harm did they do?

   

   Jack:  Got 'em all so confused....

   Evelyn:  Got 'em confused about their religion, and

forty-eleven other religions.

   

   Jack:  You can only absorb maybe one or two.  And

then when you got 500 of 'em crammed down your throat,

it gets kinda crazy.

   

   Snick:  It caused intra-family and intra-clan

turmoil, because they might get two or three members of

the clan to join a religion, and then the family would

feel like they needed to put them out, and it caused a

lot of intra-family fighting.

   

   Evelyn:  But the Hopis didn't go for missionaries.

And you know Catholic missionaries still are taboo on

Hopi, because of the ruins out there where the

Catholics killed the Indians and the Indians killed the

priests.

   

   Cole:  This is from the Spanish time period?

   

   Evelyn:  From the Spanish.

   

   Steiger:  Awatovi.

   

   Evelyn:  Awatovi and Kowyaki.  Have you been to

Awatovi?

   

   ?:  Uh-huh.

   

   Evelyn:  You have to get a permit to go out there

now, don't you?

   

   Steiger:  Maybe we did.  I should shut up.

   

   Evelyn:  No, go ahead!

   

   Steiger:  Well, okay, and then I'll shut up.  We've

heard a lot of talk about that relocation, but you guys

are the first ones that ever said that it was grazing.

And this is the first time I've ever heard that the

Hopis were taking care of their land and that the

Navajos weren't.

   

   Evelyn:  Well, if you go up in an airplane and

look....

   

   Snick:  Let me tell about Bob DeMent.  We have a

friend in Colorado that's a very [well-]known,

international range management expert.  He did projects

in Russia and Africa--all over the world since World

War II.  He was hired by the Joint Use Commission to

study the feasibility of the partition land.  He was

just totally amazed at the lack of vegetation and the

native plants that had been so overgrazed that they

ceased to exist on Navajo.  And right across on the....

This is after they partitioned.  On the Hopi side,

where they rotate their graze, it was like being in a

different country.  I don't know why people don't

think, never mention that, because when all of this

came about, that was just common sense.  That's why the

Navajos kept movin', so they'd have better graze for

their animals.

   

   Steiger:  Well, this is the twenty-fourth interview

we've done, and this is the first time we've heard a

word about any of that.  I guess it's 'cause most of

those people weren't involved in the joint areas.

   

   Evelyn:  Uh-huh.

   

   Snick:  And another thing that really brought about

a lot of violence, was the rustling.  And that brought

about the Hopis hiring extra police.  The Navajos were

just rustling to a big amount, in the Hard Rocks north

of Second Mesa.  And that brought about a real problem

with law enforcement.  It just finally had gotten to

where the Hopi tribal chairman, Abbott Sekquaptewa

[phonetic spelling] asked BIA, and asked and asked and

asked for them to honor the Hopi Reservation boundary,

and make the Navajos move back.  (Jack inaudible, both

talking at once)  You know, about the ancestry of the

Navajos being in that Hard Rock area, that's baloney.

   

   Steiger:  You mean the Navajo ancestors weren't

there?

   

   Snick:  No.

   

   Cole:  About what time was that, that they had all

the cattle rustling and stuff?

   

   Snick:  That was in the late fifties and all through

the sixties, up until the seventies when this went to

the Supreme Court.

   

   Cole:  How did this escalation of violence affect

the store?  Did you see....

   

   Evelyn:  No.  It had nothing to do with us.

   

   Jack:  We just were involved....  We heard it every

day.

   

   Evelyn:  Both sides.

   

   Jack:  The Navajos would come in and be at you

about, "Well, they trespassed us and [they're] gonna

hafta pay a fine.  And they trespassed us over here,

and they trespassed us over [there]."  And you heard

about that every day in the trading post.  That's the

reason we were involved in it, because we heard it

every day.  And we knew that Old John Joe over here was

married to one of the Hopis and they had half-breed

Hopi and Navajo families.

   

   Evelyn:  Fighting.

   

   Jack:  And they was fightin' against each other.

   

   Snick:  You have really complex issues.  But, see,

it was perpetuated by the government, with their

inability to act.  It could have been stopped early-on,

but it was just their inability to enforce the law.

   

   Cole:  What would have been the best way to stop....

   

   Snick:  I think if it had been any other ethnic

group, in a boundary situation like that, they would

have brought out federal marshals and enforced the

reservation boundaries.  I mean, that's their own

sovereign land.  The Navajos are sovereign, the Hopis

are sovereign.  Had that been Hispanics or blacks or

anybody else, I'm sure the federal government would

have enforced the law.  But in that issue, at that

particular time, the Navajos' impact in Washington was

very great.  You know, they're a huge tribe and they

had great lobbyists.  I think the Senate Committee on

Insular Affairs was very intimidated and they didn't

enforce the law, they didn't see that it was enforced.

And so it turned into a multi-million-dollar fiasco for

the taxpayer, and it's still not resolved.

   

   Evelyn:  You know, I think the reason you haven't

heard any of this before is because you haven't

interviewed anybody that was on the Hopi and Navajo

both.  Yeah.

   

   Steiger:  I think so.

   

   Jack:  We were about the only ones that was

involved, because we....

   

   Snick:  And once again, Washington tried to throw

________.

   

   Jack:  ___________, you might say.

   

   Snick:  It's just like, "hell-oh!"

   

   Cole:  What about your social life at Keams Canyon?

   

   Evelyn:  We had none.

   

   Jack:  We had none.

   

   Evelyn:  We entertained ourselves.

   

   Snick:  Do you mean as far as, like, town things?

Movies and stuff like that?

   

   Cole:  I'm thinking like what you did, as far as to

entertain yourselves.

   

   Evelyn:  Stayed at home and listened to music and

read.

   

   Jack:  And we sight-seed a lot.  We would put the

kids and picnic lunches, and we'd go over here, and

we'd go over [there], and find out new roads and

things.

   

   Evelyn:  There was no rapport between us and BIA.

   

   Jack:  No, none.

   

   Evelyn:  Don't get me wrong--we had some BIA

friends, but we didn't attend their social affairs.

   

   Snick:  We spent a lot of time at Hopi things.

   

   Evelyn:  Oh, yeah.

   

   Jack:  Lots of 'em.

   

   Evelyn:  We were very involved in the Hopi culture

and their society.

   

   Cole:  What are some of your favorite memories of

those events?

   

   Evelyn:  The Hopi Wahpaha.  That's when they gather

the corn, when the corn's fresh.  A Hopi man will hold

up something and say "wahpaha," and then the women

fight to take whatever it is away from him.

   

   Snick:  It's like fifty, sixty, seventy people.  All

these families.  They roast the corn, and everybody

brings....  It's kind of like a Hopi potluck, but the

high point is that all the men will bring these

trinkets or little knick-knack stuff.  And after

everybody eats, then you get one out of your bag and

start yellin', "wahpaha!" and just runnin' through the

crowd.  And the women just grab ahold of ya', tryin' to

get whatever piece of jewelry or whatever you have.

   

   Cole:  Would either of you do that?

   

   Snick:  Oh, yeah!

   

   Evelyn:  Oh, of course, and we took boxes of stuff

from the store.

   

   Jack:  The kids would have the biggest time, and

we'd take boxes of toilet paper.

   

   Snick:  It could be anything--simply a box of

Cracker Jacks or something expensive, a blouse, or

whatever you wanted to take.

   

   Evelyn:  And once in a while a Hopi man would get a

piece of beautiful pottery and wahpaha it and he'd say,

"For bahanas [phonetic spelling] only!"  That's "white

man."

   

   Snick:  So only white ladies could chase him.

   

   Evelyn:  So only white ladies could chase.

   

   Jack:  She took a piece of pottery away from this

great big old guy.  He's still a good friend.  He's

dead now.  ______________.  I thought to myself, "How

can he hold that big old piece of pottery up there just

like an eggshell and not break it?"  She was just a-

grabbin' for it and wrastlin' him and havin' the

biggest time.  They were just a-screamin' and

hollerin'!  He finally gave it to her, you know, and

let her take it.

   

   Evelyn:  We fully participated in Hopi society.

   

   Cole:  Was there any particular mesa that you went

to?

   

   Evelyn:  We were nearer to First Mesa, but we were

very close to quite a few people at Hotevilla.  And

that was a difficult mesa, you know.  That had the

"traditionals," they called 'em.  But we had lots of

friends out there, and we went to Hotevilla a lot.

   

   Cole:  Did you know the Kaboties at all, Fred

Kabotie, the artist?

   

   Evelyn:  We knew him, but barely.  When we first

went to Keams, Fred had just started being an artist.

And we didn't have the money to buy his paintings--to

our sorrow.  But we knew him slightly.  We were better

acquainted on First Mesa.

   

   Cole:  What about other artists that you might

remember from Hopi?

   

   Evelyn:  On Hopi?  Ray Naha.  We had lots of his

paintings.  We bought his when he was a young boy.

   

   Jack:  All these are....

   

   Evelyn:  No, they're all over the house, the Naha

paintings.

   

   Snick:  You know, then, they weren't recognized as

artists, and so you didn't look at 'em in the eyes like

that.  It was a survival for them and survival for the

trader.  I mean, you dealt with hundreds of potters

that are now known as famous artists.  Back then they

made all the pottery they could make, and you bought

all that you could buy so that you both could make a

living.

   

   Evelyn:  We used to sell Nampayo pottery for forty

cents a bowl, and Frog Woman too.

   

   Jack:  Yeah, a dealer would come in and I'd say,

"I've got a thousand pieces of pottery in here, and

I'll let you have 'em for twenty cents apiece, or

fifteen cents apiece, if you'll take 'em all."  He’d

wrangle around for half a day or so and say, "Well,

maybe I could give you eight cents," or somethin' like

that.  (chuckles)  I'd sell maybe 4,000 or 5,000 pieces

at eight cents.

   

   Evelyn:  Never less than twenty cents.

   

   Snick:  It wasn't until up in the, oh, seventies

that there started to be outside recognition that these

people were really artists, and then they started

developing real good names and reputations around the

country and could command more money.  But in the

fifties and sixties, it was survival.  These carvers

and potters didn't know they had an art form--they just

knew they could do something to make some money to buy

some groceries.

   

   Evelyn:  This is my favorite Naha painting, the

small one.  That's a koshare, a Tewa, clown.  And he

danced up a storm and had to get the hell out of there,

he's comin' out of the picture.

   

   Steiger:  [Maybe I ought to get a shot of the

painting.]  And what was that called again?

   

   Evelyn:  That's a Tewa koshare.  Don't ask me how to

spell it.  It's the equivalent of the Hopi mudhead

clown.

   

   Jack:  The Valley National Bank, when it was such a

hot shot in Phoenix, offered us $5,000 for that, and I

wouldn't take it.

   

   Snick:  I'm gonna follow you guys back to Flag and

see how many times you shake your head while you're

goin' up the road!  (laughter)

   

   Evelyn:  I hope they tape what they say when they

leave here.  What else do you want to know?

   

   Cole:  (laughs)  Do you remember who some of the

wholesalers were that came and bought those pots?

   

   Snick:  In the stuff that they're givin' ya' there's

a bunch of business cards of dealers that they sold to.

   

   Cole:  Okay, great.

   

   Jack:  There was one big dealer in Oak Creek Canyon

we sold dolls to.

   

   Evelyn:  Don Hoel.

   

   Jack:  Yeah.

   

   Snick:  Well, and for several years, supplied that

interior decorator in New York City.

   

   Evelyn:  Yeah, Notah Brahms decorating firm.

   

   Snick:  And we had a hell of a time packin' that

pottery.

   

   Jack:  I had to build boxes with lumber, and pack

'em and pad 'em.  Gollee, she done a big deal.

   

   Evelyn:  For a few years we supplied Disneyland, but

they bought the small, cheaper pieces of pottery.  Oh,

we had pottery and kachina doll customers from all over

the country.

   

   Snick:  But that was a commodity, and we never--and

the Hopis didn't either.  I mean, they didn't look on

it as, "Well, this is just a wonderful art form bowl

here."  It was just like, "This is a sack of

groceries."

   

   Cole:  While you were at the trading post, did you

see that change, then?

   

   Jack:  Yeah, well, we would take dolls and stuff at

Little Mouse, that you took to the ceremonial one time,

and they didn't give it back to you.

   

   Evelyn:  Oh, God!

   

   Jack:  Things like that....

   

   Evelyn:  We exhibited at the Gallup Ceremonial.

   

   Snick:  Just like rug stores, like Burnham or....

We spent a lot of time encouraging the carvers.  The

better job they could do, the more money we could pay

'em, and the better we did at the store.  The trader's

role was to market their product.  They sure as hell

couldn't go out and save up twenty kachinas and go

market them.

   

   Evelyn:  A lot of the carvers would come because I

had the ethnological report with drawings of the

kachinas, and they would come to look when they wanted

to make a different kachina.  But the Hopis are very

subject to Bell's palsy--you know, when the eye draws

and the face draws, if you don't get medical help

quick.  And whenever a Hopi carver had that, he never

carved another doll.  They blamed carving kachinas.

They blamed the Bell's palsy on carving kachinas.

   

   Snick:  This one Hopi, Sandy Coochayama, made snake

dancer kachinas, and he got it.  He never made another

doll.  To this day he hasn't.  It wasn't an easy

transition for the Hopi men to go from making the

kachinas to give to the children as an educational tool

of their culture--it wasn't easy for them to make that

transition to just do 'em commercially.  It was a

turmoil with 'em.

   

   Evelyn:  Oh, inward turmoil.

   

   Snick:  They realized they could make good money

carvin' 'em, but it was a real situation with 'em.  And

it's just been the younger generation since, oh, the

eighties, probably late seventies, that it's very easy

for them to do it strictly commercially.

   

   Steiger:  Why was it a turmoil for the older ones?

   

   Snick:  They say the kachinas--there's three forms

of the kachina.  There's the mystical kachina spirit;

and then the kachina doll, the carving, which was done

to educate the children of the religion and what the

kachina did, the role it played in the overall Hopi

well-being; and then the kachina dancer, which is the

man that takes on that form and does the prayer

ceremonies in the plaza.  So it's an integral part of

their religion.

   

   Jack:  They still have their ceremonies, like the

goin' home dance, ________________.

   

   Snick:  And when they became collectible....

   

   Jack:  ... goin' back to the San Francisco Peaks.

   

   Snick:  When the American public wanted to start

collecting 'em, early-on there were a few Hopis that

would venture out, and oftentimes it was very secret.

They'd bring 'em in wrapped up.  They didn't want the

other Hopi....

   

   Evelyn:  I know it.  They'd want to go in our house

for Jack to buy 'em.

   

   Snick:  They didn't want the other Hopis to see that

they were selling these things.

   

   Evelyn:  Or they'd say, "Now, don't set this up on

the shelf."

   

   Jack:  That one kid, he was real bad about that.  He

didn't want anybody of the public, until I sold it off

the reservation, to see it, because it conflicted his

religion.

   

   Evelyn:  (aside about microphone)

   

   Snick:  You know, visiting with Hopis that I grew up

with, now, I can look back--and they can too--and

there's a better understanding of the unravelling of

the Hopi culture, because of this commercialism.  See,

when they really started carvin' the dolls to sell,

strictly for that purpose, it took them completely away

from the kachina world that they were born into, which

was the basis for their survival.  And it just caused

the generations to completely pull away from that

belief.  It's meaningless now, except for dollars.

   

   Cole:  Would that have been the same for any of

their other arts and crafts, like their baskets, their

jewelry?

   

   Snick:  No.  You see, the pottery and the baskets

were utilitarian.  As they became better at it, then

the potteries became collectible.  But it had no

religious significance.  But the kachinas did, it was

an integral part of their holding the people together,

through prayer and that basic existence.  And I think

that had a great deal to do with the unravelling of the

young Hopis not believing.

   

   Steiger:  Because by the religion, they're not

supposed to be selling it.

   

   Snick:  That's right.  It's supposed to be carved to

be given to the children.

   

   Jack:  I was gonna say ____________.

   

   Snick:  And see, it wasn't the anatomy and the exact

proportions.  We see these kachinas that are done

nowadays--the early kachinas were just a form--but it

was the clan markings and the symbols that identified

that particular god, that played a very important role

in whether they had a corn crop or had rain, or whether

the plants did well.

   

   Evelyn:  There's a ritual of kachina dances for

every phase of their life.  And it's a prayer, you

know.

   

   Jack:  I think roads and the public had a lot to do

with it, because of the public comin' in to see the

kachina dances.  Then they would want to go down, and

they'd see some place sellin' 'em.  "Well, I'd like to

have this.  I saw this ceremony out here last weekend.

I would like to have a doll to remember that with."  So

that's the way it worked up.

   

   Evelyn:  Yeah, gradually.

   

   Jack:  Gradually.  Was from the public.

   

   Snick:  Well, then, human nature.  When these

carvers were exposed to more outside society and the

kachina ceremonies had more and more visitors, then

there was a time period in there that they tried to do

better kachina dances, and have better costumes, and do

it bigger, because more whites were observing it.  And

that, too, pulled away from the basic thing, the

prayers.

   

   Jack:  And the idea that this little gal, she'd say,

"I live in New York City, and I'd like to have a doll

from one of those ceremonies that I just got through

seein'."  Well, some kid would come along and say,

"Gollee, maybe she'll give me ten dollars and I'll make

one and sell it to her, and she could remember it."

And that way it just worked up and up and up, to where

you looked on the bottom of it and said, "Who made this

one?" before you bought it!  (chuckles)

   

   Snick:  I've often told people in galleries--and I

make my living selling this stuff--but instead of the

kachina being an art form and being in a gallery--

Gallery Ten or whatever--it probably should be in a

religious store where they sold religious things.

‘Cause it is a branch of their religion.

   

   Jack:  It all is.

   

   Evelyn:  It's all the foundation of their religion.

   

   Jack:  Now it has to be John Joe's name on the

bottom of it.  "That's the one I want, because I saw

him dancin' one time."

   

   Evelyn:  Or, "He's a famous one."

   

   Cole:  What about Navajo arts and crafts?  Did you

get a lot of rugs at Keams Canyon?

   

   Jack:  Keams Canyon area was the sorriest on the

whole Navajo Reservation of weavers.

   

   Evelyn:  We bought rugs.

   

   Jack:  We bought rugs, lots of rugs.  But Dinnebito

and in that area, was where the good rugs come from.

And old Bruce got all those good customers over at New

Lands.

   

   Evelyn:  He's great at developing his rugs.

   

   Jack:  He's the world's best at developing beautiful

rugs.  And he got all of that experience at Dinnebito.

   

   Snick:  For the story where the weaving is

excellent, it had to be anchored early on by a trader

that committed his whole life to developing that

weaving.  So that's why not all stores were good rug

stores.

   

   Steiger:  Which ones are the really good ones?

   

   Snick:  Well, you know, Hubbell had a great

influence.

   

   Jack:  Well, that was that Ganado red.

   

   Snick:  Well, but he had nine stores, so his

influence in different areas carried over to newer

traders, because he set the foundation and encouraged

those weavers.  They just developed into better

weavers.

   

   Evelyn:  And Troy Washburn developed two or three

different rugs at stores he had.

   

   Snick:  But the trader had to take what ability he

saw in that area and go with it.  And if there weren't

weavers in a particular area, maybe they developed

baskets.  You know, they worked with what the folks

were doin'.

   

   Evelyn:  Bill Lippincott developed the Wide Ruins

rugs and the vegetable dyes.

   

   Cole:  Did you know them at all, Bill and Sally?

   

   Evelyn:  Unt-uh.  Didn't know 'em at all.

   

   Jack:  I barely did, when I was a kid.

   

   Evelyn:  Well, you were a grown man when Bill....

That was after World War II.

   

   Jack:  Yeah.  But I used to go by Wide Ruins when I

was haulin' hay out from St. Johns and Springerville up

to on the reservation when I was a kid.  I'd go by Wide

Ruins and get me a lunch out of the store.

   

   Evelyn:  That was before Lippincotts started.

   

   Jack:  Yeah, that was before they came.

   

   Cole:  Well, what about Navajo ceremonies?  Were you

invited to those or participate in those also?

   

   Jack:  Oh, yeah.  The only ones that we never could

squeeze into was the mountain chants.  Most of your

younger medicine men couldn't learn the songs and the

prayers of the mountain chant.  And it was so expensive

that most of your ordinary Navajo people couldn't

afford the mountain chant.

   

   Evelyn:  They'd stop when....  They'd gone through

the series to the fire dance, and by that time the

sheep were all gone, they'd eaten 'em all.  We've seen

all the ceremonies up to the fire dance, and we've seen

the fire dance.

   

   Steiger:  Well, when you say "expensive," you mean

they had to pay....

   

   Evelyn:  They had to feed the crowd.

   

   Jack:  They had to feed the crowd and pay the

medicine men.

   

   Snick:  See, Navajo healing ceremonies, there's a

succession of 'em.  It starts with the squaw dance,

isn't that right?

   

   Evelyn:  Uh-huh.  Yeah, it does.

   

   Jack:  It starts with your four-day singin' at

night, and then the squaw dance, and then the yé’ii

bicheii, and then the fire dance, and then to the

mountain chant, and that's it.  By that time, you're

broke.

   

   Snick:  Oftentimes, even for a fire dance, you'd

have eight or nine medicine men.  And they're just like

positions in the outside world.

   

   Evelyn:  Boy, they are!

   

   Snick:  I'm tellin' ya', they don't do that for

free, and it can really bankrupt a Navajo family to

have those real high-power healing ceremonies.

   

   Jack:  I've seen Navajo people that have butchered

at least twenty-five to thirty head of sheep for one

ceremony.  Well, that takes your herd down fast, when

you butcher that many.  And all the flour and stuff

they gotta buy to feed the people.  They feed everybody

that comes there--plus payin' the medicine man.

   

   Snick:  Plus they would have to go out and buy the

baskets, because not all Navajos made medicine baskets.

So they might need whatever the medicine man told 'em

to get.

   

   Jack:  Maybe seven or eight, ten baskets.  At that

time, those baskets even way back there was all the way

from $15 to $35 apiece.  Now, they're $100, $200, and

$300 apiece.

   

   Cole:  Were you ever asked to contribute from the

store?

   

   Jack:  Oh yeah, I've done lots of it.  Then come the

damned yé’iis in for yé’ii bicheiis, with their sacks.

Some of 'em you'd have to run off.  "Money, I want

money."  But you give 'em flour and stuff to feed the

people.  They'd sometimes have a pickup-load of damned

flour that the traders gave 'em to feed the people.

   

   Evelyn:  We contributed all the time.

   

   Jack:  They'd come all dressed up in their masks and

stuff.

   

   Snick:  Well, the families, the grandmas would come

in, and it would be a real problem.  And they would

ask, and they were your customers.  So you'd just....

It was a lot of charity.

   

   Evelyn:  Oh, yeah.

   

   Jack:  More charity than you was makin'.

   

   Evelyn:  Lots of donations.

   

   Cole:  And were the traders technically restricted

from participating in ceremonies, do you know?

   

   Snick:  What do you mean by participating?

   

   Cole:  As far as with your trading licenses.  Were

there any restrictions on what kinds of involvement you

could have?

   

   Several:  No.

   

   Jack:  You'd better not drink or anything like that.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs issued those licenses.

   

   Evelyn:  There weren't many restrictions on our

license.

   

   Cole:  And you've had licenses then....  How did

your licenses work?

   

   Snick:  You had to be licensed by the Navajo Tribe.

   

   Evelyn:  And by the Hopi.

   

   Snick:  And by BIA.

   

   Cole:  When you first went out there, though, was it

still both tribes, or just the BIA?

   

   Evelyn:  Well, when we first went out there, Hopi

was under Navajo, and their agency was at Window Rock,

along with the Navajo Agency.  And our license came

from the Navajo....  Well, there wasn't any tribal

council then.  Our license came from BIA.

   

   Jack:  Wherever the agency was.

   

   Cole:  Did you ever have any problems getting

licenses?

   

   Evelyn:  No.

   

   Jack:  You were allowed five acres to operate on

your license.

   

   Evelyn:  But then shortly after that, well, the

Hopis pulled away from the Navajo and they got their

own agency at Keams.  And so we had to get our license

there from the Hopi.

   

   Cole:  And how often would you have to get a

license?

   

   Jack:  Once a year.

   

   Cole:  Did you ever get longer licenses later?

   

   Evelyn:  Unt-uh.

   

   Jack:  Hopi issued them once a year.  I had a bunch

of 'em.  What did we do with them?

   

   Evelyn:  Oh, we're not gonna dig those out.

   

   Cole:  Because I've heard that in more recent times

it's more difficult to get a license.

   

   Evelyn:  Oh, yes.

   

   Jack:  You've got a lease.  You could go to the

bureau and if you could finagle around and use a little

bit of under-the-table money, you could get a ten-year

or a twenty-year lease.  But then the tribe--now on

Navajo, the tribal council has to have a meeting and

agree on it.

   

   Evelyn:  It takes an act of Congress!

   

   Snick:  There's two separate things here.

   

   Cole:  Right, that's what I realize.

   

   Snick:  First you have to obtain a lease to build

that store, from the tribe.  And it also has to be

approved by BIA.  And then you apply for the trader's

license from the tribe and BIA.  They're separate.  And

the problem in modern times nowadays is getting a lease

from the Navajo Tribe.

   

   Jack:  They just won't hardly lease you anything

anymore.  The McGee brothers finally got one, and it

took 'em about eight or ten years, but they finally got

a twenty-five-year lease.

   

   Evelyn:  At Piñon.

   

   Jack:  At Piñon.

   

   Snick:  But because of gettin' their hands burned

with the Thriftway Corporation--you know, they just

were handing out leases to Thriftway like popcorn, and

found out that Peter MacDonald was gettin' $10,000 in

cash per lease--then Window Rock just completely

tightened it down, and it hasn't (Jack:  Opened up

yet.).  It's still just very difficult, even for a

Navajo, to get a lease.

   

   Cole:  Did you get caught up in that?

   

   Evelyn:  Unt-uh.

   

   Jack:  Our first lease when we first started there

was ten-year.  I think it was a ten-year lease.

   

   Evelyn:  We weren't caught up in that because we

leased from the Hopi.  __________ Hopi.

   

   Jack:  See, the place that we leased was an

individually owned piece of land from the Hopi.  And we

leased from them directly.

   

   Snick:  Plus the Navajo tribal business statutes and

Hopi tribal business statutes are totally different.

The Hopis drew up their law codes--business, criminal,

all of it--to correspond with the state that they're

in, so that there wouldn't be any conflict of (Jack:

Law and order.).  If there was a law broken on Hopi, it

would correspond to the law in Arizona.  Navajo drew up

their law code and it makes no sense.

   

   Cole:  Well, on the Hopi Reservation then, would you

pay taxes and stuff?

   

   Evelyn:  Oh, yes.

   

   Jack:  Oh, yeah, I was locked up every year.

   

   Evelyn:  No, he doesn't mean that, Jack.  There was

a levy.  We had to pay 3 percent on gross to the Hopi

Tribe.

   

   Cole:  Did you have to charge any kind of state tax?

   

   Evelyn:  No.

   

   Snick:  Well, the state tried several times, and

they went and took it to court to try to force

businesses on the Indian reservation to collect sales

tax for them.  And the Supreme Court has thrown it out

every time.

   

   Evelyn:  In this stuff we're giving you are some

letters about the state trying to impose a sales tax on

the reservations.

   

   Snick:  Which is in violation of the United States

Constitution.  And the same thing they were tryin' to

do with the casinos.  They want to get a revenue off

the Indian casinos, which is on sovereign land.  It's

not any different than when they were tryin' to get it

off the trader.

   

   Evelyn:  There's a lot of that stuff in that box.

   

   Cole:  Great.

   

   Jack:  The Navajo County treasurer locked me up

every....  He wanted to charge me personal property

tax.

   

   Evelyn:  No, tax on the buildings out there.

   

   Jack:  On leased land, and it was Indian land, see.

And for a long while I paid under protest.  Then he'd

send the county sheriff out to lock me up the first of

every February.  (laughs)  He'd come out with his lock

and put it on there, and then we'd go fishin'.

   

   Steiger:  You and the sheriff?!

   

   Jack:  (laughs)  Yeah.

   

   Evelyn:  They never actually locked us up.

   

   Jack:  No, he'd just come out and he'd say, "I

brought the lock to put on your door."  And then he

said, "How's Wheatfield?  Is it catchin' any fish?"

And I'd say, "Yeah, let's go."  We'd go fishin', and

he'd be up there all day fishin' with me.  He'd come

down, "I guess I'd better go on back to Holbrook."

(laughs)

   

   Snick:  State governments have always tried--New

Mexico and Arizona--have always tried to, by any means,

collect taxes off the Indian revenues, or whatever was

generated on the reservation.  And they haven't

succeeded yet.

   

   Evelyn:  But you know there's a reason for that.

There's so many reservations in Arizona and New Mexico

that they're short of taxes all the time.  I can

understand the state trying to get some revenue for all

the land that's tied up on the reservations.

   

   Snick:  Well, and they're mandated by law to furnish

highways.  And the Indian people do enjoy a lot of

things provided by the state, but don't contribute

anything in taxes.

   

   Evelyn:  Except sales tax in town.

   

   Snick:  Uh-huh.

   

   Jack:  But you see, reservation Indians can go into

the county and get their car license.  You know, we pay

a terrific tax on that.  And they get it for nuthin',

they don't have to pay for those.  Just the tag is

eight bucks.

   

   Snick:  It's twenty-five dollars now.

   

   Jack:  Yeah, whatever it is.  And if I went in with

the same model car, it'd cost me $260.

   

   Cole:  You'd mentioned there was another trading

post at Keams Canyon.

   

   Jack:  McGee Trading Post.

   

   Cole:  And who operated that?

   

   Jack:  The McGee brothers.  Bill McGee and Cliff

McGee, and this Clarence Wheeler--he was an in-law.

You've interviewed him, I think, already.  (Cole:

Yeah.)  He lives in Farmington.  But he was just an in-

law and he was a clerk, he wasn't any owner or

anything...

   

   Snick:  Have you interviewed any of the--Cliff McGee

or....

   

   Cole:  We're actually tryin' to track him down to

interview him.

   

   Snick:  He lives in Mesa.

   

   Cole:  Yeah, I called his store in town here, and

they said they were gonna....  They wouldn't give me

his number in Tempe, but they were gonna have him call

me….

   

   Evelyn:  It's too bad that you can't talk to Bill

McGee.  He's the older brother who first owned Keams

Canyon Store.

   

   Snick:  He lives in Scottsdale.

   

   Evelyn:  He knows a lot about Sunrise Trading Post,

'cause he worked there for years.

   

   Jack:  He and I worked at Sunrise for a good many

months.

   

   Cole:  That's Stella's....

   

   Evelyn:  Well, he only has daughters, and I don't

know 'em.

   

   Cole:  Isn't that Stella Tanner's brother?

   

   Evelyn:  Yeah, they're brothers to Stella Tanner.

   

   Cole:  Yeah, 'cause we interviewed Stella, and she

had mentioned Bill down in Mesa.

   

   Evelyn:  Did you interview her for the trading post

over by Chaco Canyon?

   

   Cole:  Well, yeah, she was over there, and then she

was with her sons--you know, J. B.--quite a bit, and

sort of followed him around.

   

   Jack:  Well, she took care of Buddy and

____________.

   

   Evelyn:  She's a fine lady, really fine lady.  But

those Tanner kids were reared at the farthermost

trading post that's known out of Farmington, very near

Chaco Canyon.  And Stella taught 'em at home.  They

speak beautiful, beautiful Navajo, because that's what

they came up with.

   

   Jack:  Buddy Tanner and I was clerkin' at Keams

Canyon together one time, and we just had a good time.

(laughs)

   

   Snick:  That's J. B.

   

   Cole:  What was Buddy like?

   

   Jack:  Oh, he's a hell of a guy.

   

   Evelyn:  Lots of fun.

   

   Jack:  One day he's a millionaire, the next day he

owes five million.  He can't make a lick for

__________.

   

   Evelyn:  He's a very good trader, but he's like

Jack.  He had such rapport with the Navajos that if

they said they're hungry, Jack instantly believed 'em,

and so they'd butt in, laid it out for free.  We had a

constant battle at our house over everything he gave

away.

   

   Snick:  You know, you can learn to talk Navajo too

well.

   

   Evelyn:  Uh-huh.

   

   Jack:  Really, Buddy and me, we knew too damned much

Navajo.

   

   Snick:  Well, when the grandmas come in with a

plight, you feel their pain.  I mean, you're there.

And these old traders would just hand it out to 'em.

   

   Evelyn:  Oh, we've had many a fight at our house

over that.  I was tryin' to make a livin', and he was

givin' it away.

   

   Cole:  Did you have a nickname, Sammie?

   

   Evelyn:  Unt-uh.  I don't know what the Navajos

called me--probably "son of a bitch."

   

   Jack:  No, she was "sweet potato."

   

   Snick:  Oh, the younger generation of traders, a

really good trader that has his same problem with the

Navajo grandmas, is Bruce Burnham.

   

   Evelyn:  Yeah, he does.

   

   Snick:  I mean, he is just there in their pain and

suffering.

   

   Jack:  Well, you feel for 'em, you're close with

'em, and it hurts you.

   

   Evelyn:  And wasn't Bruce reared at Burnham?

   

   Snick:  I think so.  You interviewed Bruce, didn't

you?

   

   Cole:  Yeah.

   

   [END TAPE 1, SIDE B; BEGIN TAPE 2, SIDE A]

   

   Cole:  This is Brad Cole from Northern Arizona

University.  We're visiting with the Lee family in

Holbrook, Arizona.  It's August 18, 1998, and this is

Tape 3.

   We were just talking about the role of the trader in

Navajo burials.  Maybe you could tell us a little bit

about that, Jack, and maybe some of the humorous

stories.

   

   Jack:  Like she said, he sat and got drunk down

there in California and sat in front of the train and

got cut in half.  So I got him back up to Keams, and he

was at the hospital there at Keams.  I went over to put

some jewelry--the family had brought some jewelry to

put in his casket--and they said, "Just go in there and

help yourself."  I lifted up on that darned thing, and

(whoop!) the casket just went up in the air.  I

thought, "Well, what in the hell?!"  'Cause he wasn't a

little guy, he was about average size--I figured maybe

a hundred pounds at least, dead weight.  And that

damned casket went up light.  So I got down in there

and I opened the lid, and he had a brace right across

here, a steel brace, right under his chin.  I moved

that down, and that's all that was there, just his

chin.  And the rest of him was gone, cut off, and they

didn't put it in the casket.  So they braced it and put

that stuff all in there.  I thought, "Well, that ought

to do, be all right, if we don't have any difficulty."

So I had a string of beads and a silver belt, and I

laid it down under that partition thing right across

here, and I put the lid back on the casket.  The next

day I had the hospital bring it over to the cemetery

right across the road.  I got this preacher down from

the mission and I told him, "Now, we're gonna have some

trouble here, 'cause this guy's brothers are mean, and

they’re drunkards.  So let's hurry this up.  Get it

buried fast."  "Okay, okay."  We got over there and got

everything, and he was doin' his preachin', and here

come two of the boys, and they were drunker than hell.

I could tell they were drunk.  They had a pair of new

pants and some boots.  And I said, "Uh-oh!" to myself.

They're gonna dress him and they're gonna find out that

there's not all of him there, and then hell is gonna be

to pay.  So I nudged this preacher with my elbow.  I

said, "Cut it off! cut it off!  Say your prayer and

let's get the hell out of here and bury that guy!"

"Blah, blah, blah," he just kept a-goin'--he had a

chance to preach, you know.  And I poked him again,

just, "Damn! hurry it up!  We're gonna have some

trouble here, 'cause there's only half of him in the

casket."  I'd already explained to him, and he just

kept on a-goin', just like "the Lord will take care."

They started down in that damned casket, so I just

popped that damned missionary, knocked him down in the

casket and got down in there and threw him out and

said, "Get on home!  Get the hell out of here!"  They

were gonna open that casket and re-dress that brother

of theirs.  So I just put the lid back on and I said,

"Boys, fill it up!"  And I cussed that darned preacher

for a week.  He woulda got us killed!  (laughter)

   

   Snick:  I've got a funny story about the competition

at Keams.  It has to do with a death.  I don't remember

the family's name, but a Navajo man, by tradition, they

believed that everything goes on the spirit trail, so

they'll kill his horse, and they mark up the saddle.

They'll mark it up with an axe, chop it, so that it

releases the spirit of that saddle, and the horse's

spirit is released, and it can all go with him.

   

   Jack:  ____________.

   

   Evelyn:  All goes on the ______.  All in the grave.

   

   Snick:  The men that were supposed to be doin' the

horse and the saddle, they killed the horse.  At Keams,

it was in a canyon, and this was up on top of the

canyon rim.  They must have got scared of the witches

or whatever, but they didn't mark the saddle.  My

buddies and I, we knew the general location where they

did this.

   

   Evelyn:  Tell him who your buddies were.

   

   Snick:  The Hopi kids.

   

   Evelyn:  No!  The superintendent's....

   

   Snick:  Oh, yeah, it was the superintendent of the

BIA agency was one of 'em, and then two Hopi guys.  So

we had to go see where they killed this horse.  Hell,

the saddle was just layin' there, and it was a brand

new saddle.  So we thought, "Well, hell, they didn't

chop it up," and we were schemin'.  We came up with the

idea of pawnin' it to Cliff McGee.  His ethics were

that he would take pawn from a kid, knowing that it was

probably stolen.  He'd just give you a little bit, and

then it would go dead and he'd have a brand new saddle.

So we got the two Hopi kids to take that saddle down

there and pawn it.  And sure enough, he took it in

pawn, knowing that two kids don't have a new saddle.

Well, word got out that the saddle got pawned.  And

see, the Navajos are very superstitious of the dead.

Well, in two or three weeks, hell, he didn't have any

customers--nobody would go in the store 'cause that

ch’©©dii saddle was in pawn.  When he finally figured

it out, he had to get a high-powered medicine man to go

in the store and bless it.  Didn't he have a big feed?

(Evelyn:  Yeah.) and got all the Navajos to come in,

and the medicine man to do a blessing ceremony to all

the customers.  (laughter)….

   

   

   Evelyn:  (aside about lunch)

   

   Jack:  And then another time at Two Grey Hills I was

there alone, and at that time they were building that

irrigation ditch from down the river, on the San Juan

River down to Shiprock, and they went through an old

ruin.  They quarantined the whole valley 'cause it had

spinal meningitis germs started.  I was goin' to school

over there, and workin' at Two Grey Hills.  This gal

died at Two Grey Hills, and the BIA doctor at Shiprock.

I called him and I said, "Doc, what am I gonna do?

That woman died from that disease in the spine."  She

was bent over like that.  The muscles, I guess, tie up

on 'em, I don't know.  But she was an awful-lookin'

thing.  I said, "Doc, I think she has that damned

disease that was quarantined."  He said, "Oh, my God, I

don't know what to do.  It's so contagious!  I'll tell

you what, get some cotton gloves"--we got some.  I had

some of those old brown gloves.  And I got a pair of

those.  He said, "You go out there.  Put something over

your face, a towel or something over your face, and

don't breath much.  Don't get any closer than you have

to, but you go ahead and bury her.  And then when you

get back to the store, get that damned wash tub

out...."  That's what we bathed in, and old galvanized

tub.  He said, "Fill that about half full of water.

You got any Lysol?"  I said, "Yeah, I got a bottle of

Lysol, quart size."  He said, "Pour half of that in."

I guess it was only about maybe three or four gallons

of water in that damned tub.  I poured that whole works

in there....

   

   Snick:  It'd eat your damned skin!

   

   Jack:  Stirred it around, stirred it around.  And he

said, "Now, get in there, take all your clothes off and

get in that tub and take a wash rag and just soak

yourself with that water, all over--your head and

everything, face."  In about five minutes I decided I

would rather die!  I was burnin' like hell, that old

Lysol was eatin' me up!  (laughter)  Ooo! I was

burnin'!  Finally I got out, I dried myself off and the

phone rang again--one of those old crankin' phones.  It

was the doctor.  He said, "Did you get it all done?

Did you get all that Lysol?"  I said, "You son of a

bitch! you wanna kill me?!"  And he just died laughin'.

He said, "You're burnin', aren't you?"  I said, "You're

goddamned right I'm a-burnin'!"  And he said, "Well,

maybe it'll kill those germs, I hope."  But I never did

catch it, so I guess it did.  Ooo, man! I was scared.

   

   Snick:  In the seventies, before I left the

reservation for a while, I was puttin' a new water line

in at their store and house in Keams, and I guess you

guys had put one in, in the late forties when you first

went there.  (Jack:  Yeah.)  Well anyway, I had a

contractor come out with a backhoe, and we're followin'

the old line and just kind of diggin' it.  We were just

goin' in a straight line, and all of a sudden the

damned water line started makin' a big curve.  I

thought, "Well, what in the hell did they do that

for?!"  I went in the store and asked Jay and he said,

"Oh, the Navajo guys that were diggin' that trench for

the first water line hit some bones.  And you know,

they're really superstitious, so they just turned."

Made a big damned turn to go around it and then come

back to the point where [they could] continue the water

line on.  Just really superstitious people.

   

   Evelyn:  Tell 'em about playin' marbles with Matso

down in the wash.

   

   Jack:  Yeah, I'll tell 'em after while.  (aside

about lunch)

   

   Cole:  How long were you at Two Grey Hills?

   

   Jack:  I wasn't there very long, about a year.  What

happened was that I had a birthday (chuckles) and I had

a whole....  That was the most isolated place.  Old Man

Westover, his son owned the place, and I was out there

helping him, the old man.  And they didn't talk.  They

were some funny old couple.  And I was just by myself,

just isolated out there.  But this was on a Sunday, and

I was in the rug room, and I had a bunch of old--oh, I

must have had a hundred small Two Grey Hill rugs.  They

were all beautiful little devils.  I was sortin' the

rugs and stackin' 'em here and stackin' 'em [there].  I

thought, "Damn, what am I doin' this for?!  It's my

birthday!"  So I just left the rugs layin' there and I

went in and told the old man, "I'm takin' the pickup

and I'm goin' to Shiprock.  It's my birthday, I'm goin'

in and look around."  So I went into Shiprock, and up

the river there my uncle lived.  His boy was about my

age, so I thought, "Well, hell, I'm in Shiprock, I'll

just go up and see him."  Loyd Wheeler was standin'

around there, and I said, "Well, let's go to Farmington

and see some girls."  We got in that old pickup and we

got up there and picked out a couple of girls.  One of

'em was the daughter of the county sheriff, a cute

little gal.  We got in that damned pickup and we were

cruisin' around and we decided we'd take the shortcut

to Durango up by La Plata.  We got up there and got

snowbound and burned the clutch out of that old pickup.

The next morning the snowplow come along and they

pulled me into Durango.  The county sheriff was waitin'

for us up there at Farmington.  He had the cuffs out,

he was gonna lock me up for takin' that minor girl

across state lines.  That damned little ol' girl, she

said, "Well, he didn't take me across the line, I drove

that pickup across the line myself!"  "How come?!"

Because Loyd and me was back there in the back, passed

out drunk.  She was just lyin' to beat the....  They

didn't lock me up.

   When I got back to Two Grey Hills, Vic was out there

from Gallup.  He was a salesman for Gallup Mercantile

Jewelry.  He was out there and they'd got ahold of him--

the old man did--and he fired my ass.  And on top of

that, we bought potatoes.  See, they had that damned

ditch comin' from that big spring at Toadlena, and

there was a ditch right down by the store.  The Indians

raised potatoes up there.  They raised potatoes all the

time in those days.  I had a pickupload of potatoes, so

ol' Vic said, "Well, on your way to Gallup, I wish

you'd do me a favor."  And I should have said, "Stick

it up your butt!" 'cause he fired me.  I said, "Okay."

He said, "I'll pick the pickup up in there in a day or

two, but take this load of potatoes in before they

spoil."  So I hauled in a load of potatoes into the

Merc, 'cause he sold 'em to them.  When I was

unloadin', the president of the Mercantile, a good

friend of mine, I talked to him, 'cause he kinda liked

me, the boss man.  And he said, "Vic told me you got

fired."  And I said, "Yeah, I messed up.  I was

celebratin' my birthday and got caught."  He said, "You

want a job?"  "Damn yeah!" 'cause I didn't have no

money, was broke.  So he gave me a damned job.  I

worked at the Merc as a swamper, keepin' the place

stocked up and cleaned up and stuff.  Vic came in and

he was gonna fire me from the Merc.  The old boss man

was out, "Unt-uh, I hired him.  And if anybody gets

fired, you're gonna get fired, 'cause he didn't do

anything bad.  He's just a kid."  (laughs)  And Vic

shut his mouth.

   

   Cole:  What store was the Merc?  At Gallup?

   

   Jack:  Yeah, Gallup Mercantile.

   

   Cole:  And so Vic worked for them?

   

   Jack:  Yeah.  And he bought Two Grey Hills and his

daddy and mother was runnin' it and I was clerkin' for

him at Two Grey Hills.  But I was doin' trading 'cause

I had to buy the rugs and do all the trading, 'cause

the old man was damned near dead, he was so old.

   But I was gonna tell you, when you mentioned

Toadlena, _________ about that ditch at that time.  It

was about this wide, and I guess maybe had a foot of

water in it.  But it come clear from up at Toadlena,

that big spring up there, clear down by Two Grey Hills,

and then went into a wash.  And they irrigated those

damned potatoes down there in that wash at Two Grey

Hills in those days.  Of course that was in the way

early thirties.

   

   Cole:  Did they grow anything but potatoes?

   

   Jack:  That's all.  Well, they grew vegetables and

stuff like onions and stuff.  But the Navajos didn't

care too much about vegetables.  They liked onions and

corn and that was about all.

   (aside about refreshments)

   But that was my extent of Two Grey Hills, but I did

work out there for prit near a year.  I got familiar

with the designs and the quality of their rugs, and I

buried a bunch of people.  (chuckles)  Got into trouble

with the Lysol.  (laughs)  I'll never do that again!

But he told me, that damned ol' BIA doctor in Shiprock

told me.  And it looks like he would have had enough

sense to have said, "Don't go overboard," but I

probably would have anyway, because I was so scared,

'cause hell, that kills ya' in a little bit, that

spinal meningitis or whatever.  And you know they

finally found that ruin was at least a thousand years

old.  And you know those germs are still alive.  They

excavated that damned thing, and boom! people all over

the country had it.  Isolated the whole area.  I guess

the death was quick.

   

   Steiger:  So this meningitis started out from a

ruin, a bunch of people had died of it?

   

   Jack:  Evidently in this ruin, the germ was in the

ruin, and they excavated.  They were building that

ditch, and they cut right down through the middle of it

with their machines, building this irrigation ditch

across the San Juan River from Kirtland down to

Shiprock.  They were gonna make a farm area for the

Navajos out of Shiprock there.  They were building that

ditch, and they'd been through that, and just bing,

bing, bing, they started gettin' spinal meningitis.

The doctor said that's what it was, and it's so

contagious that they just closed the whole works down--

schools and all.  That gal, how she caught it or not, I

don't know how she was over in that area.  She must

have went up to Shiprock for something and got the bug

and she died right quick, and I buried her.  But that

Lysol must have killed those germs, 'cause I put it all

over me, just strong.

   

   Cole: Where did you go after the Merc.?  Where was

your next job after you left the Merc.?  How long were

you there?

   

   Jack:  Oh, I can't remember now.  I was kinda on my

own, and I can't remember what store I went to, whether

I went to Sunrise or Crownpoint or someplace--I can't

remember.  Sunrise, I believe, with Bill McGee and Old

Man Clarence Wheeler.

   

   Evelyn:  (aside about lunch)  (tape turned off and

on)

   

   [voice samples for benefit of transcriptionist]

   

   Cole:  Jack was telling a little bit about when you

were at Pine Springs and what you learned about the

jewelry business there.

   

   Jack:  Oh, yeah, the cast jewelry.  At that time

they used slugs instead of Mexican dollars--they used

silver slugs, squares.  The Navajos out there had--what

do you call it, that thing that you pressed to mash

that silver?  (Snick:  Draw plate.)  Instead of

hammerin' it.  I had a contract with Gallup Mercantile

for silver belts for women, that was connected with

like a chain, at $7.25 each.  I got those guys a-goin',

and this boy and his daddy was a whiz at

silversmithing.  And I ran around with him.  Business

was terrible--I didn't have maybe a customer a week.

I'd just help 'em make silver.  (laughs)  They taught

me to cast silver and everything.  He and his daddy

became real prominent in cast jewelry, there for a

long, good many years.  We made big money at $7.25 a

belt.  Made twelve belts a month.  (chuckles)

   

   Cole:  When you worked in Gallup, that would have

been in the 1930s you were there?

   

   Jack:  Yeah, in the late thirties I was on the

railroad.  I worked out of Gallup on the railroad, and

then I transferred to Third District in Winslow, from

the First District.  And then I went into the service,

and they kept my seniority up.  All servicemen that had

worked for the Santa Fe, they held the seniority for

'em and built it up.  When I got out of the service, I

was an engineer.  I went in as a fireman.  When I got

out of the service, I'd been in the service long enough

to be eligible for engineer.  So I hurried up and took

the engineer examination and became an engineer, and I

only had maybe a year experience as a fireman!

(chuckles)  And I became an engineer in a hurry.  And

then we worked like the dickens after the war was over,

gettin' our people all back to where they come from on

these troop trains.  And then everything died and we

was out of a job.

   

   Evelyn:  When he married me, I told him I wasn't

livin' in Winslow.  We went back to the reservation.

   

   Jack:  So I said, "Well, the only thing I know

anything about is workin' on the reservation."  So I

went to Ganado, and my nephew was runnin' Ganado--Hugh--

and he hired me out there.  He was my tutor for GI

schooling, and I got salary plus schooling, and I

taught him how to trade.  He didn't know nothin' about

trading, but he was my boss, he was my teacher.  We got

an extra $105 a month for goin' to school.

   Then we transferred from Ganado to Keams Canyon.

   

   Snick:  You'll enjoy interviewing Hugh, if you get

the chance.

   

   Cole:  I was going to ask you, Sammie, what it was

like for somebody that had grown up in Arkansas, when

you first went to Keams Canyon, what was your reaction?

   

   Evelyn:  You know what, I couldn't afford a

reaction.  We were tryin' to make a living.  We had

three boys.  He has two sons, and then Snick.  We had

to pioneer our store.

   

   Jack:  It was from nothin' to nothing.

   

   Evelyn:  In the first year there, at the end of the

year, after living out of the store, our part of it was

$98.

   

   Jack:  For a year.  But we did have a house on our

head and somethin' to eat.

   

   Evelyn:  Yeah, we had two rooms.

   

   Cole:  What was your fare, as far as food?

   

   Evelyn:  Oh, we had no refrigeration, and we

couldn't keep meat.  No freezers.  We'd go into Gallup

and buy a lot of stuff in a hurry and eat it.  And then

we ate Vienna sausage or Spam or something out of a

can.  And we had mutton, 'cause you can lay lamb and

mutton out, it won't spoil.  It'll keep for weeks in a

cool dry place.  So we ate a lot of that.

   

   Jack:  And then it got to where we built that place

up so good that I was handlin' all the way from eight

to ten mutton a week, myself, and a beef a week.

   

   Evelyn:  But that was after we had refrigeration.  I

also had no appliances, 'cause we had DC current.  You

could hardly find washing machines and things like

that, that ran on DC current, so I had to scrub clothes

on a washboard.

   

   Jack:  It was scratch.

   

   Evelyn:  It was a hard life for me, and totally

different from what I was accustomed to.

   

   Cole:  What about water?  Did the area have any kind

of well or anything like that?

   

   Evelyn:  The government had running water, and we

had a cold water tap in the house.  We got it from BIA.

   

   Jack:  The reason they let us have water was that

the ECW, Bureau of Conservation, had put a water pipe

from their main line, over right behind our store, in a

water trough for the Indian cattle that came in.  So we

were right there, so they let us tap into that pipe.

We had one faucet, cold water.

   

   Evelyn:  We had no bathroom.  We had a two-holer up

on the hill.  The second son, Jackie--he lives in

Winslow--he went to school one day and got a dumb look

on his face, and the teacher said, "Jackie, what's

wrong?"  "Miss Marken," he said, "can I have the key to

the outside toilet?  I need to take it to my mother.

But that's all right, she can use the pot."  (laughter)

   

   Jack:  Molly Marken [phonetic spelling] come right

over and told her about it.  She just died.  She said

Jackie just embarrassed me to death.  "Oh, that's all

right, she can use the pot."

   

   Cole:  Was Snick born at Keams Canyon?

   

   Evelyn:  He was born at Ganado.  He was eighteen

months old when we went to Keam.  He was delivered by

Dr. Salisbury.

   

   Cole:  What date and year was that?

   

   Snick:  Forty-seven [1947].  When did they open the

hospital at Keams?

   

   Evelyn:  It was open when we went there, but we

weren't allowed to go there.  It was for Indians only,

except in emergency.

   

   Cole:  Where would you go to the doctor, then?

   

   Evelyn:  Usually in Gallup, sometimes Flagstaff.

   

   Snick:  And dirt roads.

   

   Evelyn:  And no bridges.  And if there'd been a

rain, you waited for the washes to run down.

   

   Jack:  We stayed all night at Indian Wells,

Bitahochee, and that guy was just as rude as he could

be, and I don't even know what his name was.

   

   Evelyn:  He gave you a bed, Jack.

   

   Jack:  Yeah, he gave us a bed.  We got out of the

water, but he was sure a rude person--didn't act like

he was doin' anybody a favor.

   

   Snick:  The first paved road was completed out there

in, what, 1964?

   

   Evelyn:  Uh-huh.  It was a hundred miles of dirt

road to Gallup.

   

   Cole:  So how long would a trip to Gallup take then?

   

   Evelyn:  Well, we usually had to stay overnight,

'cause we had to shop for everybody in the community.

Rare occasions when I went and we were going to shop,

all the Hopis had something they needed that we didn't

have in the store, so I spent my day shopping for them.

And then he had so many relatives on the way back, see,

everybody, all of his relatives had trading posts, so

we'd come out as far as St. Michael's and stay with his

brother there and then go home the next day.  We always

took blankets and food and water, because we never knew

when the hills were gonna be slick, and we couldn't

make it home.

   Jack:  But we weren't the only ones.  We all had a

gang, and every damn, we knew which hill we couldn't

make when it was wet.  We'd all congregate there and

build us a camp.

   

   Snick:  Everybody would help everybody.

   

   Jack:  Everybody would help.  We'd take turns, and

everybody helped get up over the hill.  Then we'd come

back and get another car and get it over the hill.

Then we'd come back and get another one.

   

   Cole:  Would you push 'em up?

   

   Jack:  Yeah, and dig and push and push.  We'd have

cables in the darned car, and we'd get them up on a dry

spot and hang onto 'em, and then we'd jerk 'em and

pull.

   

   Snick:  The Indians just had hell, 'cause they just

had wagons.  So it was tough for them.

   

   Jack:  Buddy Tanner's dad, Chunky, come out there

when we first got out at Keams.  He came out with a

truckload of potatoes, and half of 'em was frozen.  We

had to go out between Keams and Ganado and get him out

of a mudhole and get him into Keams before the potatoes

froze.  We had potatoes for a while!  But he was a good

old guy, ol' Chunky was.

   

   Snick:  A lot of the customers would come in and

stay all night, 'cause it was so far, comin' by wagon

on dirt roads.

   

   Jack:  Oh, yeah, we had a community hogan that we

kept groceries and everything in it for 'em to stay

overnight.  The Indians come in, and for groceries we

had a big ol' box with coffee and potatoes and sugar

and salt and a can or two of tomatoes.  We left that in

that hogan, and they'd go in and fix 'em somethin' to

eat and stay overnight and do their trading the next

day and then go on about their business.  Every trading

post in that day and time had overnight lodging for the

Indians, their customers.

   

   Snick:  Babbitts' was a wholesale company that sold

to the trading posts, and they were like an automobile

franchise with Studebaker wagons.  And then we would

order the wagons from them, and the Navajos would save

up, and when their wagon came in, I remember them

coming in and you'd put the new wagon together.

   

   Jack:  The whole community would.  All the Indians

around would all help put up the wagon.  They could put

a danged new wagon together in two hours.

   

   Snick:  They'd bring their best team in.

   

   Jack:  Yeah, a fancy team, and they'd drag that new

wagon....

   

   Snick:  _______ bring it home.

   

   Cole:  What would happen to their older wagon?

   

   Snick:  Didn't they trade 'em in sometimes?

   

   Evelyn:  I don't know.

   

   Snick:  There was a trader--Bruce Burnham told me

about him--that bought the old wagons and re-did 'em.

   

   Jack:  Well, the ones that I handled, they were new

ones, and I didn't take any trade-ins.

   

   Snick:  No.

   

   Jack:  But they'd deal for two or three months, and

they'd finally make a deal.  They'd come in with all

their clean fancy duds on, and a big celebration with

that new wagon.  That's like buyin' a new car!

(chuckles)  Worked together, get that darned thing--

they were green and red.

   

   Cole:  So they actually were responsible for putting

it together then?

   

   Jack:  Oh, yeah, they'd put 'em together.  They knew

how.  They wanted to, they liked to do that.  Even to

this day, a lot of those families will buy a brand new

car or pickup, and they'll take it home and lay out a

great big tarp and they'll tear it out, piece by piece,

and put it back together.  Then they know what's wrong

if something goes haywire, and where it comes from.

   

   Snick:  When did you guys get AC electricity?

   

   Evelyn:  In the late sixties.

   

   Jack:  In the late sixties when they built that new

powerhouse there.

   

   Snick:  And you had converters 'til then and a

propane refrigerator, too?

   

   Evelyn:  Oh, yeah.

   

   Jack:  We had a Hopi man that worked for the BIA,

and we had a big ol' double-doored gas refrigerator.

It'd sometimes quit, and we'd get him over there, and

he'd get about eight men--it weighed a ton--and haul it

up in the back yard and turn it upside down, leave it

there three days, and then come bring it out.  "Now

it'll work, Mrs. Lee."  I found out way, way years

later the reason they have heat under those damned

things is to get that gas hot.  When it raised up and

then it freezes when it comes back through those coils.

And he figured that out, that old Hopi man, and he

turned it upside down and let that gas come up, and

then he'd turn it back up straight, and that gas come

back down and it'd work.  He figured that out!  "I can

fix it.  I'm a good mechanic.  I'll make it work."

Turned it upside down!

   

   ….

   

   Cole:  What about as far as the life of the trader?

We were talking over lunch about....  Was alcohol and

gambling prevalent among traders?

   

   Evelyn and Jack:  Not really.

   

   Jack:  There were just some drunkards.

   

   Evelyn:  I'll tell you where the gambling story

started.  We used to gather, go miles on Saturday

night, and play poker.

   

   Jack:  To different trading posts (Evelyn:  Penny

ante.) with friends.  And there was nothin' else to do.

You either went and visited your neighbors and we'd

play cards and fiddle around and go picnic the next day

or something.  And we'd play cards at night, penny

ante.  And everybody got to gamblin' a little.  It was

fun to play cards.  We played penny ante and nobody

lost anything.  Then some of 'em got carried away and

they [got into] big money.  I think that's the way it

started