Hubbell Trading Post: Trade, Tourism, and the Navajo Southwest
by Erica Cottam (University of Oklahoma)
For generations, trading posts were the economic centers of the Navajo reservation, places where Indians could sell their rugs and jewelry and livestock, and purchase food and clothing. In the past generation the posts have disappeared. Shiprock Trading Co., a major rug dealer, is now a dollar store.
The demise is due to economics. Indians now have cars and pickups and can drive to supermarkets and retail stores off the reservation.
But the greatest post of them all remains. at Ganado, Ariz., is operated by the National Park Service as a National Historic Site much as it was in the earlier days when it was run by Lorenzo Hubbell, the first major trader on the reservation.
Erica Cottam’s biography of Hubbell and his business empire is a look into a way of life that is all but gone.
Hubbell not only traded with the Navajos, he created a market for Indian rugs across the Southwest. He engaged in agriculture and politics, often to the detriment of the core business. (He also dabbled with Indian women and left behind several half-Navajo children.) The trading business was shaky, especially in the 1930s, when government policy decimated the Navajo sheep herds. Hubbell’s children and their spouses ran the post at Ganado as well as satellite posts. In fact, it was a daughter-in-law who negotiated a deal with the Park Service to buy Hubbell.
Ladies of the Canyons
by Lesley Poling Kempes (University of Arizona)
In the early 20th century, a group of genteel American women rebelled against convention and sought to find themselves and their purpose in the Southwest.
Natalie Curtis, whose hoped-for career as a concert pianist was thwarted by prejudice and poor health, recovered in Arizona, where she discovered the haunting sounds of Indian music. She produced the first important book on Indian music and saved many of the songs and chants of the Navajos and Hopis. And she enticed her friend Theodore Roosevelt to visit the Hopi snake dance and encouraged him to change America’s Indian policies.
California artist went to the Southwest to paint and devoted much of her life to bringing art to San Diego. Carol Stanley, a music teacher from the East, found solace in Monument Valley after her grandmother died and left her enough money to give up teaching. With her cowboy husband, she managed a New Mexico dude ranch and, after her divorce, established the famed Ghost Ranch.
Wealthy, eccentric Mary Cabot Wheelwright, a Bostonian, discovered Indian ceremonies and became friends with the Navajo medicine man Hosteen Klah. Her legacy is Santa Fe’s Museum of the American Indian. And then, of course, there was Mabel Dodge Luhan, who set up a salon for artists and writers in Taos and lured D.H. Lawrence to New Mexico.
These women are among a handful of the adventurous female defectors from stifling Victorian parlors who were attracted to the Southwest, with its wide-open spaces, clean air and indigenous people. While they went there to find themselves, they left behind a legacy of environmental and cultural preservation. “Ladies of the Canyons” tells how a few determined women not only discovered the Southwest but preserved and nurtured its spirit.
Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America
by T.J. Stiles (Knopf)
George Armstrong Custer’s status as a hero has had its ups and downs. So has history’s view of his last battle. Once known as the Custer Massacre, it now is the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The more we know about Custer, the more enigmatic he becomes.
In “Custer’s Trials,” Pulitzer Prize-winning author portrays a complex and deeply flawed man. There is no doubt Custer was fearless and inspired his men like few other officers. He “displayed consistent good judgment and self-possession” in battle, Stiles writes. But he was petty and reckless and vindictive. He and his wife, Libbie, were racists. Custer was a failure in Wall Street investments and a leaden writer who was sued for not completing his autobiography. He was a “kink in the chain of command” in Army culture. What made him a hero was his incredible luck and his success in battle.
Stiles portrays Custer against the background of his times. A romantic warrior, Custer viewed himself as not unlike the chivalrous knights of old. That made him “an individualist in an increasingly organizational society,” Stiles writes. Custer first found fame as the daring “boy general” of the Civil War. “His inability to adapt to life after the war had converted at least some of his celebrity into notoriety,” Stiles observes. He interfered in politics, probably engaged in adulterous affairs, even dabbled in silver mining near Georgetown, with the promotion of a worthless mine. And he gambled. But no matter. Early in life he had set down for himself “a rule … never to regret anything after it is done.” Only in battle did his greatness shine, and that is how most Americans view him.
Stiles’ biography is a long, detailed, well-researched but highly readable account.
Contact Sandra Dallas at sandradallas@msn.com
