Chuck and Esther

Tribute to the Navajo Traders

Scattered through the broad miles of country that form the Navajo reservation are some 400 trading posts. The good that these traders and families have done for the Navajo can never be estimated. They have done a great good not only for the Indians but for the Indian service as well. They have made the task of administering such a wide-spread area much easier. Distance is one of the great obstacles that the administrators of the reservation at Window Rock are faced with in their work. It takes days and days to go from one place to another and some places are so remote and wild it would be almost impossible, with the limited funds available, to extend the long arm of the Indian Service into every corner and canyon effectively. This has been especially true in these days of the draft and war regulations. But now each trader has a short-wave hookup with the radio station at Window Rock and instruction and information can be disseminated easily. Distances are not so forbidding. There are so many interesting Indian traders it would be difficult to name them. The stories of some of these traders, especially the early ones, are of epic quality. They are a pretty high type of person, honest and patient and fair. An unscrupulous trader wouldn't last long in the Navajo country. The Indians would cease to trade with them. Yet on the other hand a trader has to keep his wits about him or he'll grow broke before he knows it. The Navajos have an eye for business and will drive as sharp a bargain as possible. The trader knows that and must bargain sharply as well. As one trader explains it: "A Navajo will come to the store to trade. He will have blankets or wool or sheep. It may take him four or five days to reach the post from his home. All the time he is thinking about the trading to be done. He knows just what he wants and you can rest assured he'll profit. He comes in to the post, casually makes his offer and unless you study it carefully you might find yourself the loser. If he trims you too badly the Indians will laugh about it for days. If you hold him to a fair bargain, both for you and him, he'll respect you the more." The visitor into the Navajo country will always exclaim at what he considers the loneliness of the trader's life. But most traders are as much a part of the country as the Navajo himself, they do not find their life lonely or unhappy, and seldom would be as content any place else. That's why they are traders. To these traders all over the Navajo reservation, as a tribute to the good they are doing and have done, to the picturesque and genuine quality they have brought to a picturesque and genuine land, is this issue of ARIZONA HIGHWAYS respectfully dedicated. They are a part of the old, unchanging West, and in our streamlined century remind us of the brave. lonely frontier. R. C.

Chuck Abbott and Esther Henderson (Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Abbott, if you please) are familiar names to readers of ARIZONA HIGHWAYS. They have done and are doing some fine things, photographically speaking, to add to the value of these pages. We could refer you, for instance, to many of the Navajo studies herein, if you wish to see for yourself. Esther is just about the best photographer we know. To this little lady with the big camera are we indebted for our December covers for the past three years of ARIZONA HIGHWAYS and many other fine things. Esther was born and reared in Illinois, was in show business for seven years. One day in New York she decided to choose a profession less strenuous and more secure than dancing, picked on photography, took a course in it and headed west. She thought she would like San Antonio, Texas, but it rained for a week and so she started for the Pacific coast. A happy trainchance took her through Tucson, where she fell in love both with the place and Arizona sunshine on a stop-over, and has remained there since. She has a studio and does very well, indeed. When Chuck was mustered out of the 23rd Engineers last war, he went to his home state of Oregon, found things slow and ended up as a cowboy host at famed Desert Inn at Palm Springs. He organized the (Continued on Page Forty-two)