Foreword -- Preface -- Map -- Introduction -- Exploring Navajoland, 1930s -- John and Louisa Wetherill, Labor Day, 1939 -- Mike and Harry Goulding's Monument Valley -- Ancient Cities, 1930s -- Buckskin Charley's Last Ride -- Harold Baxter Liebler, Priest to the Navajo -- Trading Pepsi for Navajo Rugs -- Navajo Pictorial Rugs -- The Durango Collection -- Trading with Santiago.
Chaco Canyon, Canyon de Chelly, Mesa Verde, Hovenweep . . . For many, such historic places evoke images of stone ruins, cliff dwellings, pot shards, and petroglyphs. For others, they recall ancestry. Remnants of the American Southwest's ancestral Puebloan peoples (sometimes known as Anasazi) have mystified and tantalized explorers, settlers, archaeologists, artists, and other visitors for centuries. And for a select group of writers, these ancient inhabitants have been a profound source of inspiration. Collected here are more than fifty selections from a striking body of literature about the prehistoric Southwest: essays, stories, travelers' reports, and poems spanning more than four centuries of visitation. They include timeless writings such as John Wesley Powell's The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Tributaries and Frank Hamilton Cushing's "Life at Zuni," plus contemporary classics ranging from Colin Fletcher's The Man Who Walked Through Time to Wallace Stegner's Beyond the Hundredth Meridian to Edward Abbey's "The Great American Desert." Reuben Ellis's introduction brings contemporary insight and continuity to the collection, and a section on "reading in place" invites readers to experience these great works amidst the landscapes that inspired them. For anyone who loves to roam ancient lands steeped in mystery, Stories and Stone is an incomparable companion that will enhance their enjoyment.
For travelers passing through northern Navajo country, the desert landscape appears desolate. The few remaining Navajo trading posts, once famous for their bustling commerce, seem unimpressive. Yet a closer look at the economic and creative activity in this region, which straddles northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southeastern Utah, belies a far more interesting picture. In Traders, Agents, and Weavers, Robert S. McPherson unveils the fascinating—and at times surprising—history of the merging of cultures and artistic innovation across this land. McPherson, the author of numerous books on Navajo and southwestern history, narrates here the story of Navajo economic and cultural development through the testimonies of traders, government agents, tribal leaders, and accomplished weavers. For the first half of the twentieth century, trading posts dominated the Navajo economy in northwestern New Mexico. McPherson highlights the Two Grey Hills post and its sister posts Toadlena and Newcomb, which encouraged excellence among weavers and sold high-quality rugs and blankets. Parallel to the success of the trading industry was the establishment of the Northern Navajo or Shiprock Agency and Boarding School. The author explains the pivotal influence on the area of the agency’s stern and controversial founder, William T. Shelton, known by Navajos as Tall Leader. Through cooperation with government agents, American settlers, and traders, Navajo weavers not only succeeded financially but also developed their own artistic crafts. Shunning the use of brightly dyed yarn and opting for the natural colors of sheep’s wool, these weavers, primarily women, developed an intricate style that has few rivals. Eventually, economic shifts, including oil drilling and livestock reduction, eroded the traditional Navajo way of life and led to the collapse of the trading post system. Nonetheless, as McPherson emphasizes, Navajo weavers have maintained their distinctive style and method of production to this day.
Placenames also function as mnemonic devices that may facilitate communication, travel, resource-finding, and mythological memory, and as such are highly charged linguistic symbols.".
The Navajo rugs and textiles that people admire and buy today are the result of many historical influences, particularly the interaction between Navajo weavers and the traders who guided their production and controlled their sale. John Lorenzo Hubbell and other late-nineteenth-century traders were convinced they knew which patterns and colors would appeal to Anglo-American buyers, and so they heavily encouraged those designs. In Patterns of Exchange, Teresa J. Wilkins traces how the relationships between generations of Navajo weavers and traders affected Navajo weaving. The Navajos valued their relationships with Hubbell and others who operated trading posts on their reservation. As a result, they did not always see themselves as exploited victims of a capitalist system. Rather, because of Navajo cultural traditions of gift-giving and helping others, the artists slowly adapted some of the patterns and colors the traders requested into their own designs. By the 1890s, Hubbell and others commissioned paintings depicting particular weaving styles and encouraged Navajo weavers to copy them, reinforcing public perceptions of traditional Navajo weaving. Even the Navajos came to revere certain designs as “the weaving of the ancestors.” Enhanced by numerous illustrations, including eight color plates, this volume traces the intricate play of cultural and economic pressures and personal relationships between artists and traders that guided Navajo weavers to produce textiles that are today emblems of the Native American Southwest. Winner - Multi-cultural Subject, New Mexico Book Awards
Established in 1911, The Rotarian is the official magazine of Rotary International and is circulated worldwide. Each issue contains feature articles, columns, and departments about, or of interest to, Rotarians. Seventeen Nobel Prize winners and 19 Pulitzer Prize winners – from Mahatma Ghandi to Kurt Vonnegut Jr. – have written for the magazine.
