The Old Red Lake Trading Post Begins Its Second Century - Along "The Rainbow Trail" - 2013

 

The Old Red Lake Trading Post Begins Its Second Century - Along "The Rainbow Trail"

In the first chapter of author Zane Grey’s “The Rainbow Trail”, he opens his 1915 novel at Red Lake, Arizona. “Shefford halted his tired horse and gazed with slowly realizing eyes. A league-long slope of sage rolled and billowed down to Red Lake, a dry red basin, denuded and glistening, a hollow in the desert, a lonely and desolate door to the vast, wild, and broken upland beyond. Red Lake would be his Rubicon. Either he must enter the unknown to seek, to strive, to find, or to turn back and fail and never know and be always haunted.”

One hundred years ago, Red Lake, now called Tonalea (Navajo for “gathering place of waters”) held great foreboding for the drifter named Shefford. Zane Grey, a master of mood, went on to describe the Red Lake Trading Post. “Suddenly, Shefford became aware of a house looming out of the barrenness of the slope. It dominated that long white incline. Grim, lonely, forbidding, how strangely it harmonized with its surroundings! The structure was octagon-shaped, built of uncut stone, and resembled a fort.”

Grey went on, “As he approached on horseback, no living thing appeared in the limit of Shefford’s vision. He gazed shudderingly at the unwelcoming habitation, at the dark, eyelike windows, at the sweep of the barren slope merging into the vast red valley, at the bold, bleak bluffs. Could anyone live here?”

In the book, Shefford soon meets Presbrey, the fictional trader who owns and runs the Red Lake Trading Post. Almost inadvertently, Shefford saves a young Navajo woman from an attack by a missionary who is visiting the store. From there, Shefford and the Indian woman travel separately toward Kayenta. Grey’s description of Kayenta indicates that it was then another trading post consisting of two buildings and a corral. To discover what happened next, along "The Rainbow Trail", one must read the novel.

In October 2013, as I approached Tonalea from the north, along U.S. Highway 160, I knew none of Grey’s story. Although I had often seen the dark and foreboding structure described by Zane Grey, I had no idea that its history stretched back more than one hundred years. I saw it as a somewhat forlorn convenience store, frequented by local Navajo residents and by tourists intrepid enough to enter the dark structure. Having never stopped there before, I resolved that day to do so.

The reason for my stop was to photograph the elusive Red Lake, which supposedly lay downhill from the old trading post and general store. While researching an earlier story about Cow Springs, a few miles north, I had found a Google satellite image of Red Lake. With its copyright date of 2013, I assumed that the map accurately depicted Red Lake, which appeared to be nothing more than a dry meadow to the east of the old trading post.

To my surprise that October day, I saw a shimmering pool of water at the bottom of the hill. A century earlier, Zane Grey described it thus: “In the center of the basin lay a small pool shining brightly in the sunset glow. Small objects moved around it, so small that Shefford thought he saw several dogs led by a child. But it was the distance that deceived him. There was a man down there watering his horses. Shefford went on with his horse to the pool.”

The only difference in my visit to Red Lake was the time of day and the passage of one hundred years. As before, the shallow pool, rimmed by a wide swath of wet sand shone in reflected light. With my travel trailer in tow, a trip to the far pool was out of the question. Although Indian Route 21 took off from the highway on the south side of the building, I knew that turn-around spots were rare on such routes. Instead, I contented myself with a few telephoto images of the far-flung, shimmering pool. After taking pictures of the lake, I had a decision to make. Should I enter the dark and foreboding building or travel on to Flagstaff, where I planned to spend the night? With the sun sinking low and no fellow visitors in sight, I decided to travel on.

As I swung my rig around the back of the building, I hoped to find an exit there. Although the way was not easy, there was an exit loop around the back. Before departing, I marveled at the huge water tank ensconced behind the building. It featured a Navajo language inscription and a Navajo maiden, with water flowing from her basket. Seeing the huge supply tank, I realized that Tonalea and the old Red Lake Trading Post were to this day a “place where the waters gathered”.

After taking a deep breath, I drove down a rock-strewn slope, with my travel trailer bumping slowly along behind. Turning back on to Indian Route 21, I spotted some street art on the door of an old metal garage. Although I could not discern what deity or devil the artwork represented, the panels that held the painting seemed to reflect each other from left to right. Upon further study, I realized that my impression of a mirror image was incorrect. Some details on the left side of the painting were different on the right.

As I departed Red Lake, heading south on U.S. Highway 160, I let out a sigh of relief. As I drove, I wondered who now ran the general store at Tonalea and what the place was like inside. Again, I turn to Zane Grey for his first impression of the trading post interior. “Shefford had difficulty finding the foot of the stairway. He climbed to enter a large loft, lighted by two lamps. The huge loft was in the shape of a half-octagon. A door opened upon the valley side, and here, too, there were windows. How attractive the place was in comparison with the impressions gained from the outside!”

Since I did not go inside the ancient building that day, I cannot describe it here. On my next trip along the “The Rainbow Trail”, I will stop at the Red Lake general store and see for myself. Meanwhile, wouldn't it be nice for the State of Arizona to honor a business that has operated continuously there for more than a century?

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By James McGillis at 04:04 PM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link

A Sense of Entitlement No Longer Serves Us - 2009

 

A Sense of Entitlement No Longer Serves Us

Since Navajo National Monument is so peaceful and quiet, I stayed on the morning of October 7, 2009 to enjoy the otherwise empty campground. It was over two hundred miles to my next destination, at Moab, Utah. In order to visit all my favorite places along the way, I would have to stretch geodetic verisimilitude. Today, my intention was to see it all and still be in my Moab camp before the sun descended behind the Moab Rim.

 

I stopped first in Kayenta, Arizona, a city within the Navajo Indian Reservation, or “Res”, as the locals call it. Kayenta is also the southern gateway to Monument Valley, via US-163 Scenic Highway. While US Highway 191 North will get you to Bluff faster, it is a bone-jarring road through unredeemed scenery. Every time I go the fast way, I wish I hadn't. Passing through Monument Valley is now my right of passage to the Four Corners and the High Southwest.

 

Other than an Anglo insurance adjuster assisting a local resident, everyone I saw there was Navajo, or Dine’, as they call themselves. Although Navajo facial features differ from those we might see elsewhere, the youth of Kayenta wore attire indistinguishable from their suburban brethren across the country.

 

While visiting Kayenta in June 2009, I located a field north of town from which emanated the vortex of a regional dust storm. Driving south towards Kayenta that day, I traced the point of origin to a field across Highway 163 from Chaistla Butte. I was amazed to find that a dust storm covering hundreds of square miles could have its origin in one empty field.

 

Ten minutes later, in Monument Valley, I observed ongoing destruction of the landscape. Along Highway 163, several dogs herded a flock of sheep southward toward that fateful field. With no humans in sight, the dogs kept the sheep moving down that parched valley. As it is today, when ancestral Puebloan Indians first inhabited Monument Valley, there was no year-round running stream.

 

For over one hundred years, Anglo ranchers’ sacred cattle and the Navajo’s sacred sheep have eaten the West. Left unchecked, sheep will eat low lying plants down to their roots. One needs to look no farther than the fence lines along Arizona highways to see the damage. When compared to the overgrazed landscape of the open range, the protected area along the roadside is lush with vegetation. Shifting sand and blowing dust have been part of their lives for so long; locals of all ethnicity now take it their moving landscape for granted.

With an extended dry cycle in the West, we must control and curtail grazing in wind-sensitive areas. Allowing further destruction and dissipation of the land will encourage even earlier seasonal dust storms, with attendant early snow-melt in the high country. The issue no longer centers on sacred grazing rites or cattle ranching traditions. Now, the issue is the survival of the Western landscape and all of us who live or play within it. Only when all humans abandon their sense of entitlement will this endangered land begin to heal itself.

As we enter another

 

On this October day, a cold front had cleared the air in the Four Corners region. As I approached Monument Valley from the south, I caught a glimpse of the Abajo Mountains, over seventy miles to the north. Before reaching those mountains later that afternoon, I would cross the Arizona - Utah border in Monument Valley, then on through the towns of Mexican Hat, Bluff and Blanding.

 

During my 1965 visit to Monument Valley, I had discovered a favorite scene. Now heading north, capturing that scene required me to stop and look back. From a mesa top, I had a long view toward the buttes and spires of Monument Valley. Here, the movie character Forest Gump stopped running and returned home. Over forty years after my first visit, the spot was just as majestic and unspoiled as it was in my youth.

 

After departing Monument Valley, I traveled across a narrow bridge that spans the San Juan River. There, serving as the northern gateway to Monument Valley is the town of Mexican Hat, Utah. Home to about one hundred hearty souls, it was there; in a roadside diner, that author Edward Abbey set the scene for the climactic chase in his 1975 novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang. Since Abbey set his scenes with geographical accuracy, a now abandoned diner In Mexican Hat may have served as his model.

 

The actual Mexican Hat Rock is a disk of sandstone sixty feet in diameter. Perched as it is on a much smaller boulder, one must invert the image to see the hat. In the background, stand convoluted and eroded landforms of fantastic proportions. With only the San Juan River to carry away the products of erosion, one can only imagine how many thunderstorms in the desert it took to create such fanciful shapes.

 

The next Utah landform of note I encountered was Comb Ridge. The large, tilted-block monocline divides much of Southeastern Utah along a north – south axis. Named for its resemblance to a cockscomb, one can see how the eroded ridge top inspired such a name.

 

Approaching Comb Ridge from the south, the highway first crosses Comb Wash. With the ridge of eroding sandstone looming above, the Highway 163 climbs over the steep ridge. Partially because of space constraints, highway engineers gave us a strong running start down into the wash then up through a dramatic road cut. From plateau top to the bottom of the wash and then to ridge top again takes less than two minutes. With its changes in elevation, swooping turns and potential for falling rocks, the short transit up and over Comb Ridge is both dramatic and memorable.

 

Heading north from Comb Ridge, Highway 163 briefly shares a route with U.S. Highway 191. In the town of Bluff, beneath sugarcoated sandstone canyon walls, the two highways again diverge. There, at a T-shaped intersection stands a remnant from the past known as the old Cow Canyon Trading Post. Since images of the old trading post serve as “Moab Ranch” in my online novel at JimMcGillis.com, I stopped to look around. A rustic buckboard at that location provided a backdrop for pictures of Kokopelli and Coney, two of the characters in my novel.

 

My next stop was in Blanding, Utah. As did Bluff to its south and Monticello to its north, Blanding began as a Mormon outpost and settlement in the late 1800s. Today, Blanding’s simple, clean appearance belies the angst and anguishes many of its longtime residents feel.

 

The collecting of ancient Indian artifacts, locally called “pot hunting” has been illegal on public lands since President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act of 1906. In the 1980s, arrests and prosecutions of several prominent local citizens had curtailed, but not ended the looting in San Juan County. The arrest of twenty-six Four Corners residents in early 2009 indicates that looting of artifacts from graves is still considered by some to be an “entitlement activity”. If Ute Indians from the White Mesa Reservation were to dig up the Blanding City Cemetery in search of valuables, would townsfolk passively accept such behavior?

 

After the recent BLM arrests, the San Juan County Sheriff contacted both of Utah U.S. senators, requesting a federal investigation. The investigation that he requested centered not on possible conspiracy to loot artifacts from our public lands. His main concern was that a phalanx of armed federal agents had arrested middle aged and elderly citizens of Blanding. Included in the arrests was a member of his family.

 

Whether we agree with the tactics of federal agents or not, it is hard to argue against ending what had become rampant grave robbing and desecration of sacred sites. Whether the issue is overgrazing or pot hunting, only when we abandon our feelings of entitlement shall we begin to heal both our relationship with the land and with the spirit of the ancients.

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By James McGillis at 04:15 PM | Environment | Comments (0) | Link

The Navajo Indian Reservation - Its Art and Culture - 2008

 

The Magic Gate - Part 4

The Navajo Indian Reservation - Its Art and Culture

Monument Valley

Leaving Moab, we drove our Ford south to Monument Valley, Utah/Arizona.  After viewing the area made famous by Henry Fonda in the movie Fort Apache and John Wayne in Stagecoach, we stopped at Goulding’s, an historic trading post and tourist lodge.  While there, the manager showed us a hand-wrought silver and turquoise belt buckle, recently pawned by a Navajo elder.  Mistaking our disinterest for a desire to bargain, he dropped the price to one hundred dollars, which barely covered the value of the silver and turquoise.  To us, that was a lot of money, so rather than buying the belt buckle, for about the same price we purchased two hand-loomed Navajo rugs.

 

 

Later, we turned off the highway, stopping at the end of an unmarked dirt road.  There, we photographed our two new rugs against the red soil of Monument Valley.  Soon, we realized that we had parked near a Navajo homestead.  In front of the ancient, traditional hogan, we saw a Navajo woman weaving a rug on a large outdoor loom.  Embarrassed that we had invaded her privacy, we placed our store-bought rugs in the car and quietly drove away.  Not once did she turn to look at us.  It was as if she had appeared from some timeless other place.  We could see her, creating her art in that place, but she either could not or preferred not to see us.

Kayenta, Arizona

Beyond the southern end of Monument Valley is the town of Kayenta, Arizona.  In the 1960s, Kayenta was desolate, forlorn and seemed forgotten by all except its Navajo residents, who represent ninety-four percent of the town's population.  Today, as Kayenta's population approaches 9000, the city features a McDonald’s, a Burger King and a supermarket.  As a sign of the times, the local high school recently installed the only video message board within one hundred miles. 

 

Here is my alternate memory regarding our stop in Monument Valley.  I wonder which version is true?

The Corn People

Jim knew a little about Navajo rugs; for instance, what made one more valuable than another.  When he entered the trading post that morning, he spotted a treasure right away.  It was a handmade Navajo rug, featuring corn people on a white background, with a black border.  Although the rug was small, the tightness of its weave and the depth of its colors made it stand out from the others.  Casually fingering the price tag, Jim’s eyes widened when he saw $1000 hand lettered on the tag.

 

After a quick trip out to see Paul, waiting in the car, both Paul and Jim entered the trading post, then headed in opposite directions.  From that moment, events unfolded quickly.  Paul proceeded to the self-service coffee bar, where he accidentally dropped a full pot of decaf on the floor, shattering the glass carafe in the process.

 

As a knot of employees formed around the scene of coffee chaos, Jim rolled up the prized rug, tucked it under his arm and walked out the door.  An hour later and half a mile away, the two friends united.  With high-fives and sincere congratulation, they celebrated their victory over the tyranny of the trading post system. 

 

“The weaver probably got $200 for this rug.  What a rip off of Native Americans”, Jim said. 

 

As Jim steered the car into the parking lot of their dusty motel in Kayenta, Paul added, “I am proud to have taken part in the liberation of such a fine rug”.  Dropping Paul at the motel, Jim turned north on Highway 163, leading back into Monument Valley.

 

As he turned off the highway and on to a dusty track, Jim mumbled, “The Indian got paid for this rug long ago, so hitting that predatory trading post where it hurts means I am doing something on behalf of all the Indian nations, not just the Navajos”.

 

Rolling to a stop in front of a barren hillock, he proceeded to lay out his treasured rug on the face of that brick-red hill.  Waiting for the sun to sink lower in the sky, Jim sat there entranced for an unknown time.  Then, when the light was right, he stood and clicked many pictures of the rug.

 

When he finished his photography, the sun was fading fast.  As the light changed and he shifted his focus, he saw before him a Navajo woman, working at her loom.  With a traditional hogan as a backdrop, slowly and steadily she sent the shuttle across the loom.  After each long stroke, she paused to tamp down the woolen threads.  Staring at this scene, Jim felt a shiver go up his spine.  He felt like he had been photographing the details of a bedroom, only to find that someone occupied the bed.

 

After quietly removing the rug from its place on the hill, he gently opened the car door and sat down inside.  After red dust poured from the rug to his lap, he dumped it on to the empty passenger seat.  Closing the door so softly that the latch did not fully engage, Jim started the engine and slipped the shifter into gear.  Then, he idled the car away, toward the highway.

 

Not once in all this time had the Navajo woman looked in his direction or acknowledged his existence.  As his car crested a small hill in fading light, he glanced back in the rear view mirror.  The woman had vanished, but hanging there on her loom was a half-finished rug, depicting corn people, on a white background, with a black border.

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By James McGillis at 04:49 PM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link