Come, Come to the Navajo Fair

Indian life has been forever governed by the seasons. Autumn is the yellow time when cottonwoods turn from young men to old, when the crops are gathered and the corn is carefully tied. For some it is a time to burrow deep in the earth, to seek the sweet smelling grasses for lining the dug place readying it to receive the orange pumpkin, knobby squash and green melon as surety against want. It is the time of gratefulness to the earth for her harvest. Soon the Yei-Bei-Chis will come, adding dramatic event to the season of the hoarfrost. And wherever the people gather, the long winter months will abound in a feast of legends told by the elder ones. There will be merriment and fun, the moccasin game will be played with gusto and good humor. All eyes and ears will be keened to the music from a storied past. Autumn is always the same, only the people change. Now there is a newness about the oldness, a bit of burnish, a faster pace to the Indian gait; a developed pride in his changing time. And the Navajo has found the Fair to show himself and others what this change is like. It is his proud place, something to which a prideful people point with pride. Among the world's expositions and fairs this one can be called unique and yet in many ways it is remarkably like the fairs you have always known. There is more and better corn at any county fair in Iowa but those who grow it do not reckon their days to the planting of its seed, they do not sing to it special songs of good growth or save the few perfect ears as a special gift for an aged medicine man. In the midwest one is mindful of the vastness and productivity of the fields brought about by the carefully calculated science of modern farming but one is detached from the product itself. To the Indian, corn is a part of all that is past, of all the future holds and as such it becomes a part of those who plant it and do its harvest. And so it is that this fair is different. Its appeal is to those whose imagination is stirred by Navajo legends, to those who seek in this wide land of contrast a brief surcease from the hurried world; it is also for those who find in the paintings of Remington, Fechin and Russell a memory of the vanquished greatness that was once a free people. Some Navajos see the fair as a purely commercial venture, others hold it to be an example of tribal morale building, but for many it has become a link with their past welded to their pursuit of the future. Set in a greasewood flat, hovered over by the Defiance Uplift, it is protected on the east by jagged silhouettes of pink sandstone and on the south by the shadow of Hunter's Point. In a distance is the wind-hewed eye of the Window Rock, economic home of the young tribesmen, the progressive eyes of a people whose real heart is made of yesterdays. In its beginning it was only this same greasewood flat cut off on the back side by a rocky outcrop. During fair time this hilltop was filled with canvas-covered wagons, which came with creaking slowness from areas all over the reservation. Each one carried the required gear of Navajo camping: blankets, sheepskins, juniper wood

Wood, pots, pans and the essentials of cookery: flour, baking powder, salt, lard, sugar, coffee. Daytimes the activity was confined to the coming and going to the fair below, the greeting, the visiting. But when twilight came, all interest was in the camp itself. Little fires flickered in the half-dark, coffee boiled and roast ribs sputtered in the coals. There were camp sounds: the hollow echo made by bare palms slapping our fry bread for the evening meal, laughing men waiting to be fed. In the light of early night the silhouettes of horsemen lent drama to the domestic scene. By the fire someone would begin a chant, others would take it up and there reverberated on the autumn air a Navajo song of the good life, the voices bounded from one to another, the embers glittered on the design of an old man's hatband, on the coral beads and heavily cut silver of a woman's wealth. There are some who say that this has passed away. But to those who seek with discerning eyes it can still be found, for with the Navajo, camping is a way of life born of necessity. Within the parking lot you will find them now... the Indians wagons mostly replaced with Detroit's trucks. Early in the morning the clear sound of the axe splitting the burning juniper wood comes to those there to listen. The camp stirs, a baby cries, Smoke rises from the cook fires, coffee is put on to boil, cups are rattled. In the canvas openings, the women tidy up their hair. Fry bread bubbles in deep fat. Later in the day from cool, shadowed wagon boxes, from truck tail gates, from hastily constructed tarp shacks these same Indians will sell to others who come to buy. A great blackened tub will hold boiling ears of unhusked corn, a ten gallon drum of coffee will simmer and the aroma of mutton stew will fill the air. Most colorful will be the vendors of nature's plenty: melons... green and round, long and white, creased and scalloped, deep cad-mium orange and onion shaped. And there will be also the native peach: small, pink-tinted, hearty and full meated. This small lane of open-air vending is as near to things Indian as you can find at the Fair.

When you at last turn from this look at the realms of Indian trading, you seek the west and there sets the Big Hogan, hub of the Navajo Fair. Well conceived and executed, it is modern architecture's conception of the Navajo's traditional dwelling. Within this new concept of the old, one can see much of the forward look and hope of the Navajo people. Here are displays from their thriving furniture enterprise, from the hekum plant of the four corners, from the coal deposits... and from their lumbering industry, a source of economic plenty from the red-barked Ponderosa pines of the nearby Defiance Uplift. There are the plans of the tribe itself, presented with many pictures and graphic illustrations that all can understand. Many of the displays are constructed to acquaint the Navajo with the policy of his tribal council, of its ambitions and aims, especially along the building programs that are either taking place or in planning stage. Most of this work is of great value in disseminating information throughout the wide area covered by the reservation. Health exhibits are here and special programs are planned to promote good health practices, safety at home and on the road. There are displays of oil companies, pipeline outfits and uranium companies who have interests on the Navajo and there are booths regarding BIA services... Forestry, Branch of Land operations, Relocation, Education, Stationed.

inside are tribal and government representatives to dispurse information on law, social security, welfare. The visitor is amazed by the wide diversification and professionalism of the displays. The Big Hogan presents the forward look of the Navajo people and it is interesting for showing the Navajo as few believe him to be or capable of being.

From the Big Hogan, spread like the open palm of the right hand, the carnival atmosphere of the fair days before you. Portable sno cone shacks, children with sugar spun twins, kewpie dolls on slender canes, odors of frying meat, pickles and mustard, the clink of soda bottles, the crush of paper cups. And there are the Navajos... largest of the Indian tribes passing on the big show. Everyone is there... the old-style Navajo with his change and tall Stetson; the young one with his hair cut, wearing Levi's and preferring a Pendleton jacket to the blanket. And the older women, proud of their young daughters in toreador pants but wearing themselves the velveteen blouses and pleated skirts like their mothers wore. It is a kaleidoscope of color, an atmosphere of gayety and fulfillment that has replaced for them in this age the buffalo hunt of their elders.

It is not surprising that one of the favorite exhibits of the Navajo people is that sponsored by the Arizona Fish and Wildlife Commission. The enchantment is with things small but its meaning harbors part of their life. Here one finds the fawn, the bottle-fed bear cub, gophers and numerous smaller animals of the Arizona desert. Animals are a part of Navajo culture. The bear, mightily feared, is the one from which the swear-named Piñon come, the deer's hide is used at the Yei-Bei-Chi dances, it makes his moccasins. He marks with interest the snake, the raccoon, the coyote. He has heard the coyote tales all his life and the snake he will not kill even smudging his hogan with the ill smell of raw wood set aflame to bring it unharmed from hidden places in the roof logs.

The visitor, used to the common myth that the reservation is only a dusty place full of sand dunes and scant vegetation, finds the agricultural exhibit a revealing surprise. The Fair Premium List covers eighty-four items, vegetation, finds the agricultural exhibit a revealing surprise. The Fair Premium List covers eighty-four items,

FAIR BEGINNING

"CARLOAD OF AXES ENROUTE, PUT A NAVAJO ON EACH HANDLE!" That cryptic wire, from Bureau of Indian Affairs, Washington to Assistant General Superintendent John McPhee on the Reservation, was the opening salvo for an event, which in 1967 was to draw some 70,000 visitors.

John McPhee saw the order as more than a stop-gap measure to help needy families during the Depression.

His pet idea-with-a-purpose to creating a show-place for their arts and amusements, it would be a place, he contended, where the scattered tribe could gather from some 14 million acres for a weekend every year. With business to examine tribal progress, friends and visitors to help evaluate their products and plans, it might well become a Navajo tradition. And the Navajo who was getting good money would see that everybody else had come too.

Under McPhee's guidance, the Fair expanded to include in 1937. Sponsored by the Bureau each year until 1947, it "Reabsorbed like the green bay tree." Following a recess in the war years, a Post Navajo Tribal Fair was held in 1947 under Indian auspices and with Mr. McPhee still taking an active part.

In September, 1961, the 15th celebration formed expanding facilities on spacious fairgrounds near Window Rock, Arizona. Only one of the original buildings remains as Tribal Park Headquarters, museum and a library. McPhee hopes the library will become a depository for "all things Indian,"

Where scholars and students may come for research and study.) A new outdoor Civic Center, used all year, crowns a high spot overlooking all the grounds.

A colorful Fair Program, edited each year by John McPhee, rounds out the offerings of exhibits and performances, contests and judging, with a survey of industrial, school and community services over the whole reservation, presenting the 1961 theme-"Resource Development."

Like most men of real accomplishment, John McPhee finds his hands too busy with work to be patting himself on the back. As Administrative Assistant to the Tribal Chairman and Public Relations Director, he has a finger in many pies. Among them, he says, will always be the annual fair on whose committee he serves along with Maurice McCabe, Tribal Secretary, and Howard W. Gorman, Fair Commissioner.

Mr. McPhee, who was Editor of the Arizona Highways Magazine in 1953-67, seems to believe in that admirable maxim: "When your actions speak louder than words... don't interrupt," and never interrupts the acclaim given the Navajo Tribe for their truly astounding progress to which he has made a real contribution.

When the Fair is in action, he is its nerve-center, trouble-shooter, spider in the midst of an intricate web. With the Information Booth as headquarters and a notable public-address system transmitting requests and announcements, he gives the impression of being everywhere at once.

Within sight and sound of all the bustling activity and granted at the steady flood of visitors pouring through the Fairground gates, John McPhee has the solid satisfaction of seeing a dream come true-a dream of ten years ago, when he put "A Navajo on each handle" of a carload of axes.

For everything from sunflowers to Persian melons, strings of red chilis to acorn squash and bales of alfalfa to sheaves of oat hay. It is true these crops come from a limited area within the reservation proper but it is the variety that intrigues the visitor. And the fruit . . . did all that really grow here? Apples, grapes, peaches, nectarines, pears. The Indian knows the citrus, apple, banana and berry but by tradition the peach is his fruit . . . the one he has always known. It is told that once many, many years ago, in days that were long before and the land was harsh with the Hopi people, that a woman of that tribe came to live with the Navajos in Canyon de Chelly. She had with her her girl-child wrapped in a woven blanket.

The Navajos bade the woman welcome and she stayed with them. In that canyon the daughter grew up and the mother grew old recalling for her child stories remembered from her own people, the Hopis, who also tilled fields and tended trees with sweet-tasting fruit upon them. When the daughter was of marriageable age she took a young Navajo for her husband. Remembering the stories her mother had told, she went with him to the mesas to seek her people. And from them she brought back to the canyon the peach seed, a gift to her from the people of the sun. Some say they were first planted at the White House in Canyon de Chelly and that all the peaches of the Navajo are sprung from those planted there. However it may have happened, peaches have for many years nourished the Navajo's sweet tooth. They have often served him as a means of barter . . . a sack so high for a sheep, a goatskin of dried peaches for a tanned buckskin.

Though few in number, most Navajo farmers take pride in the things they grow and the Agricultural exhibit always holds interest for the individual Navajo. They look for the entries of contenders, who vie for honors year after year. People from a certain locale are careful to note how their section won out in the blue ribbons. It is a delight to have one of these on the webbly Persian, the scalloped squash, the thick-skinned hubbard, the deep-ribbed muskmelon regardless of whether you grew them or not if they came from your area. Once a contender gets a ribbon . . . regardless of its color . . . you have an avid competitor for future fairs.

Neighboring the Agricultural exhibit is the Arts and Crafts building . . . always of exciting interest. Here are myriad displays of blankets . . . every color, every hue the earth, the plant and man can make. Some of the blankets are bold and simple in design, others intricate and detailed; some thick and utilitarian, some so thinly woven they create a tapestry effect. The apex of the weaving art is generally seen here. An old hand at blan-kets speaks of the Sheep Springs Blue, Klagetoh wool,

Two Grey Hill design, Shonto red, Chinle crown and many more. But it is not necessary to know this or hear it either to sense the great appeal of this native craft. Fashioned merely to protect his body from the chill winds and to ornament his person, the blanket became for the Indian his passport into the white man's world. Artists saw it and were entranced with the color and design, writers discovered the romance from which it came and everyone who loved beauty and the unusual sought it out. In the old times it was said the Westener's view of the Navajo depended upon whether he had just bought a blanket or lost a band of sheep. Many times the Navajo has changed blanket size to suit the whim and pocketbook of the buying public and they have changed color to suit taste, time and the trader but their loom is one thing they have kept intact. Nothing but the materials of nature are required to set it up and one can always find the few poles needed whether the sheep are grazing in the mountain country or down around the desert hogan. There will be one of these looms set up in the Arts and Crafts building and should good fortune be yours you will see a blanket take shape. The weaver will be deft and sure though unused to large crowds. But it is not this weaver you must remember . it is all the others who sit in front of hogans and do this same task, who find in it a wealth of remembered things. the sheep she herds, the wool she clips, the yucca root she gathers with which to clean it, the things of nature she knows will dye and tone the wool. It is in the time and peace that is her own that she makes it, remembering old and patient ways, designs seen long ago. Of much interest, too, will be sprigs of plants used to make the different dyestuffs used in the wool dye process . the flowering tops of the rabbit brush for yellow, light tan from Mormon tea, prickly pear for rose and others. From such small and sustaining things is the blanket made. Adjoining the rug room are the long and well-filled counters housing the silver displays. Borrowing from the Spanish his knowledge of silversmithing, the Navajo craftsmen have developed an artistry peculiarly their own. Here you will see an array of the best they produce. All the jewelry that Indians love is here. The conchas, originally some say an ornament of the plains Indian which came to the Navajo as the loot of battle and was adapted by him for his own use. At first they were round, scalloped and simple in design. Retaining the scallop, they have become heavy and ornate but still beautiful. They are now used on belts and proudly called by those who possess one the conchas belt. There are buckles: those wrought and those cast, those simple and those extravagant in taste and design. And the ketohs. These were once made of leather and protected the wrist and forearm from the snap of the bowstring. Now they are silver, made by the soldering of individual pieces or by casting. Many times turquoise is used for decoration. Like the English long bow, the twang of the bowstring lies in forgotten glory. But these highly decorative ketohs, emblem of the vanquished, are still to be seen at dances and sings. The Hopis, too, wear

CAMERA DATA

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOSEF MUENCH "PARADE OF FLAGS" Rodeo Grounds Navajo Tribal Fair Window Rock, Arizona. The rodeo is one of the liveliest of the Fair events. Here riders with flags of the several states and the Stars and Stripes face the enthusiastic audience at the opening of the daily program at the annual Fair. The Fair will be held on September 6, 7, 8 and 9. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.11 at 1/100th sec.; Tessar lens; September.

"RODEO SCENE" Rodeo Navajo Fair Grounds Window Rock, Arizona. Wild Steer riding takes plenty of courage and the Navajos and other Indian performers have it, as they jump on the back of a steer just as he is released from the chute. In the foreground, a clown adds to the fun and a referee watches for the timing, as well as to come to the rescue if the rider gets into difficulty with his unwilling mount.

FOLLOWING PAGES

"ART EXHIBIT" Show by the Arts and Crafts Guild, these paintings are the work of Navajo artists and show their skill in the use of various media. Two young Navajo women are in charge of the exhibit. 4x5 Linhof camera; daylight Ektachrome; f.11 at 1/50th sec.; 6" Tessar lens; September.

"BREAD MAKING CONTEST" Navajo Tribal Fair Window Rock, Arizona. The Fried Bread Contest, sponsored by the Tribal Council and the Hayden Flour Mills, gives Navajo women a chance to show their artistry in making their favorite fried bread, each over her own fire. Judges grade not only on the methods used but on texture and flavor of the delicious result. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.12 at 1/50th sec.; 6" Tessar lens; September; blue fill in flash was used.

"BEAUTY QUEENS" Traditional Queen's Contest, Navajo Fair - Window Rock, Arizona. Four of the Navajo Beauty contestants, judged on the authenticity of costume, skill in weaving, making fried bread, singing tribal songs and telling stories in Navajo. Lois Hoskie (extreme left) won the crown at the 1961 Fair.

"RUG DISPLAY" The Navajo Rug Exhibit, Arts and Craft Guild Building, Window Rock, Arizona, is a popular attraction for visitors at the Navajo Fair. Only rugs of superb design and weaving are displayed. The large rug on the wall, a "Ganado Red" is 8' 8" x 16' and is the handiwork of a group of Navajo weavers. It is valued at $2000.

CENTER PANEL

"LINEUP FOR BARBECUE" Barbecue Lineup Navajo Fair Grounds, near Window Rock. Put on by Gallup, New Mexico, merchants as a gesture of good will to their friends, the Navajos, the annual barbecue is always a great success. Last year, over 7,000 people were served barbecued beef and "all the trimmings." You can find every kind of costume in the crowd and from the metal hats of mine workers to traditional hair styles of the women. Last year's Navajo Fair attracted 70,000 people during the four-day event. White visitors find limited accommodations at Window Rock and vicinity so accommodations should be planned at Gallup, Holbrook, Winslow and Flagstaff, all within easy driving distance of Window Rock.

Them during summer plaza dances, and spectators who love themduring summer plaza dances, and spectators who love the wonder of things Indian are always peering for a closer look at these bow guards, their use an almost forgotten thing, but their beauty cherished because it is a part of the legendary past.

And there are numbers of bracelets . . . a great variety in design and mounting: some simple, some elaborate, some broad, others narrow, with stones and without, wrought and cast. The Indian bracelet was once made from brass or copper, but silver it is now; silver of workmanship born of the Spanish who brought to him also his other great boons: the horse and the sheep. It is a misconception to believe that Navajo people wore no other stones before turquoise was in plentiful supply. They once used for settings those semiprecious stones found in their own country: garnet, peridot and tourmaline.

There are also earrings and necklaces and brooches; pins, rings and buttons, decorations for velvet blouses. Originally made for himself alone or for trade with neighboring tribes, Navajo silver has become a choice decorative accessory for the most discriminating buyer of things beautiful.

This lavish display offers pleasure to the eye, but it

"CEREMONIAL PARADE" Opening the night program of ceremonial dances at the Navajo Fair at Window Rock, when many tribes perform their traditional steps, a colorful procession comes out of the darkness into the stadium. Navajo women and then Indians from Zuni are glimpsed here in their colorful costumes. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.19 at 1/100th sec.; 6" Tessar lens; September; blue flash was used.

"HOPI BUTTERFLY DANCE" Night Program in rodeo stadium -Indian Ceremonial dances. Here is shown the Butterfly Dance of the Hopi Indians (Arizona's only pueblo tribe). The steps are prescribed by generations-old tradition, full of meaning as well as beauty for the spectator.

"TAOS EAGLE DANCE" Two young Taos Indians (from New Mexico) with feathered arms spread to simulate the Eagles they portray, do the intricate and lively steps of this tribal dance. Agility and skill as well as endurance are called for. Bells on their legs jingle as the Eagles swoop and soar. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.10 at 1/100th sec.; 6" Tessar lens; September; blue flash.

"APACHE DEVIL DANCE" The White River Apaches, from Arizona's White Mountains, present their Crown or Devil Dance -a traditional celebration of the coming of age of their maidens. The girls are beautiful and the dance is full of vigor, with variations of fun which make this age-old performance one of the most enthusiastically received by large audiences of Indians and nonIndians at the Navajo Fair. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.10 at 1/100th sec.; 6" Tessar lens; September; blue flash.

OPPOSITE PAGE "NAVAJO SAND PAINTER" Photograph taken in the Howard Gorman Exhibit Hall, Navajo Fair Grounds, Window Rock, Arizona, during annual Navajo Fair. A sandpainting - created by hours of skillful toil, using colored rocks, powdered and then "painted" by letting it flow from the fingers in traditional, stylized designs. In healing and blessing ceremonies, the sandpainting is used as an "altar" on which the patient sits while powers are invoked to heal and bless. Years of training and practice are required to produce this painting, done on a background of blessed sand. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.14 at 1/50th sec.; 6" Tessar lens; September; blue flash.

"MODEL DISPLAY OF NAVAJO CEREMONIAL DANCES" Arts and Craft Exhibit Room in the Arts and Craft building, Window Rock. Dances of the Navajo Indians are portrayed here in tiny, life-like models. Left foreground Feather Dance; right foreground - Singing chant; center-middle-Corn Grinders; behind them a Yebechai Dance (2 groups). The white figures rear right perform the Fire Dance. Mud Dance is center extreme right. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.20 at 1/10th sec.; 6" Tessar lens; September; existing natural light.

COME AND GET IT!

The second Thursday of September is an important day on the Navajo Reservation. It marks the opening of the annual Tribal Fair near Window Rock, Arizona.

Exhibitors are busy getting booths ready for judging. Four-H Club members curry the coats of their animals. Girl Scouts sell bow-ties, symbol of Fair Membership. Coffee and hamburger stands mushroom into being.

But the big moment arrives at noonday when the merchants of Gallup, New Mexico (25 miles away) put on a barbecue for their Indian friends and visitors.

September 7, 1961, these men served over 7,000 people with mouthwatering beef and a plateful of trimmings. I didn't count the long waiting lines, but the "superintendent of paper plates" reports he started out with 7,000 and ended up substituting paper bags, before the crowd was all fed. The wax-paper cup supply wasn't tallied, but gallons and gallons of coffee were poured just as fast as dippers could fill them.

No gong was needed to call people. The odor of sizzling meat had them lining up from the pits on the hill almost down to the entrance gates.

Paul Jones, Navajo Tribal Chairman was there, smiling under his big hat. As he took a plateful from a Gallup physician in white apron, the Indian joshed: "Well, Doctor, it's certainly nice to see you handing out something beside pills."

This friendly gesture from Gallup to the Fair, has become one of its pleasant traditions. While the warmth, in a literal sense, goes to the Navajo stomach it also reaches his heart.

With seven big beeves to barbecue and all those thousands of plates to fill, the affair can't be carried off with small fires, favored in Indian camps and here it was the men, rather than women, who served.

At the Fair, big metal pits, covered, except when a troupe of chefs turned the meat with pitchforks, stand at the back of the grounds. Rows of 20-gallon containers held brewing coffee and a shelter with serving tables was nearby. Signs designated "children," "V.I.P.'s" and other categories of beef-eaters, were underlined with ropes to guide the lines for smooth and efficient serving.

Queues began to take shape as soon as the first beef was cut, and before long, stretched in all directions, reaching out like tentacles of an octopus, between buildings and down the main mall.

It was a hungry and cheerful crowd. Navajo dresses of velveteen and sateen were sandwiched between business suits and cowboy dress. Babies in cradleboards, youngsters riding their fathers' shoulders were round-eyed as they sniffed the air. The Tribal Band members laid aside instruments to have both hands free and workers from a nearby mine, wearing metal hats, had their own linea mile-long, I would say, just offhand.

Then, as food was served, the queues melted away onto any convenient sitting place in the neighborhood. They overflowed the bleachers of the nearby Fried Bread Contest shelter. They sat on the ground or stood up. Everybody was eating.

Perhaps the Gallup merchants themselves found no time to have a bite. If so, they were the only ones lacking a share of the excellent beef and beans and coffee.

Beyond the vocal thanks offered for each plateful the men of Gallup had the satisfied looks on more than 7,000 faces to tell how great a success was their barbecue at the Navajo Tribal Fair.

FAIR QUEENS

Any Navajo girl, from 15 to 25, may reach for the crown of the Queen of the Fair. It's a contest calling for no bathing suit promenada and is concerned with more than beauty of face or form.Each girl is judged on her qualifications to become a leader of her people. She has a choice of two roles. One is the traditional Navajo woman wearing the beautiful Indian costume of full skirt and jewelrystudded blouse, long hair, and showing such skills as wool-spinning, friedbread making, song and story in the Navajo language.

Or, she may be modern in dress, be able to use a sewing machine and speak over a microphone of her future plans and hopes.

Most Navajo girls are pretty some of them, beautiful. Those competing in the 15th Annual Navajo Tribal Fair were intelligent, charming and gracious as well.

Each girl was introduced by name at afternoon run-offs and evening stadium programs. Her parents' names, her school or place of employment, her home community and sponsor being given, too, as a bow to the many who had helped her become a Queen entry. In addition, her tribal clan was named, making a link between girl and a segment of the Fair crowd. The introductions were made in Navajo and then in English.

During the run-offs, people listened attentively to these bright-eyed girls, telling of their dreams of becoming teachers, artists, counsellors, professional workers. They heard the old Navajo songs and watched skilled spinning and weaving.

Mrs. Annie Wauneka, only woman representative on the Navajo Tribal Council, voiced the wish of every spectator, when she said, before the judges' decisions were made known: "I hope every girl wins."

Each girl did win something in experience, but only two were crowned on the final night, in front of a packed grandstand.

Last year's Traditional Queen placed her crown on the dark hair of Lois Hoskie, 21, of Ganado, who works at the United States Public Health Service in Tuba City. Crowned as the new Modern Queen by her predecessor was Alice Goodluck, 17, of Lukachukai, an art student attending Arizona State University.

When winners, runners-up and "also-rans" stood, poised and confident, before thousands of their own people, there must have been some in the audience who thought of the dying words of Manuelito, Navajo Chief, back in 1893: "My Grandchildren, the whites have many things we Navajos need. But we cannot get them. It is like the whites are in a grassy canyon where they have wagons and plows and plenty of food. We Navajos are up on the dry mesa. My Grandchildren Education is the ladder. Tell our people to take it."

These girls, one and all, are on the ladder.

It is the small, lovely selection of the old and rare that charms us. Those buffalo robes there not beautiful in any aesthetic sense but what story can they tell? Did they come from the old Republican herd along the Platte, or from the Texas herd protected more by Comanche yells than any map notation of Kiowa and Comanche Hunting Ground or could they be from the Great Northern Herd from which the Sioux made meat? Were they felled by an Indian marksman, driven off a steep canyon wall in Wyoming or brought down by a hide hunter with a Creedmor Forty-Five Sharps or a Big Fifty buffalo gun? Did they come from the last days when even the calves were taken or from the time when the prairie was a welter of buffalo backs so many that the white man as well as the Indian stood in awe of that surging sea?

And that ancient silver bridle hanging there, the one with the hand-hammered conchas. Did it belong to a warrior who wore his lank hair in wild disorder as he drove into the furtherest canyon reaches a band of sheep stolen from a Spanish settlement along the Rio Grande? Or did it belong to a later time, to a peace chief, perhaps, who tried vainly to understand the white man? Or was it the property of a tribesman who loved horses above all passion, who rode like one with the wild black mare across the once lush grasses of the valley near Laguna Creek? The story is there with the bridle. It hangs limply on the wall, its silver worn, its leather stained through much handling. Only the naja speaks now, still warning off the "evil eye" of all who come to stare at yesterday. And there are bowls and baskets, coming from a culture whose roots reach into the heartbeat of whatever is America; stunning coral necklaces and sky-blue turquoise hang from the dead limbs of a juniper branch... a bit of the past, quieting for a moment the mad rush toward the future.

MEET ME AT THE FAIR

September is a delightful month on the Navajo Indian Reservation. Summer rains have left a legacy of flowers, in different varieties, but quite as gay as Spring's bouquet. Corn is ripe. Squash, melons and other fruits and vegetables from Indian farms are being gathered.

If you want to see the finest of their produce, including a grand crop of youngsters (4-H Club members showing their lambs and calves; girls proving themselves in a contest for Queen) come to the Navajo Tribal Fair. It's held the second week-end of September at well-equipped fairgrounds near Window Rock, Arizona, the Navajo capital.

In case you don't know where the Navajo Reservation is located, any United States map will show it. Some 23,000 square miles, almost as large as Massachusetts, New Jersey and New Hampshire combined, fill the northeastern corner of Arizona, spill over into Utah's southeastern corner and New Mexico's northwestern. This is the Four Corners Country only spot in the nation where four states share a common border. Major federal highways lead to it from every direction.

To reach Window Rock and the Fairgrounds you can coming down from Colorado, follow U.S. 666 through New Mexico, turning off at the junction a few miles before reaching Gallup. From the east on U.S. 66, Highway U.S. 666 will take you to the same junction after leaving Gallup. From the west on U.S. 66, a paved route leads from Holbrook, Arizona, north to join Indian Route #3 and then east to the Fairgrounds. You might also leave U.S. 89 in Arizona, a few miles north of Cameron, going to Tuba City and thence east on Indian Route #3 across the Reservation, through the fascinating Hopi towns to Window Rock.

The nearest overnight accommodations to the Fair will be found in Gallup, New Mexico, 25 miles away. The Window Rock Lodge, Indian operated, is always in demand for special Tribal business guests and there are no other settlements.

In Gallup, the self-styled "Indian Capital" there are motels to suit every purse or taste, and a fine assortment of restaurants, for this is a tourist-minded town, crossroads for two busy U.S. Highways.

In addition to caring for you comfortably, the town's location offers a very pleasant drive to and from the Fair. The roads are deckle-edged with the late summer flowers, the views of the reservation plateaus sweeping.

Whether you make the trip twice a day (for surely you will want to be in at the excitement for the entire Fair) or four times, as we did, you will enjoy the clear air, and the expansive views. It offers, as well, a quiet time to go over in your mind the colorful people, their exhibits, the thrilling rodeo, the moving ceremonial dances given in evening programs by the light of bonfires.

Perhaps nowhere else in the country will you find an event quite like this one. So remember, come September, that the Navajos are gathering near Window Rock for their biggest annual event meet me at the Fair!

"WOMAN'S PLACE . . ."

Whoever suggested a roped enclosure for the Fried Bread Contest at the 15th Annual Navajo Tribal Fair, knew how hard it is to keep Pop and the kids out of the kitchen when Mom is cooking. Even the merry-go-round and the cotton-candy stands went begging at 10:00, 2:00 and 4:00 o'clock. Anyone who has ever sunk his teeth into this delicacy of the Indian, needed just one whiff from the branch-covered shelter to bring him up to the ropes, eager for a sample.

The Tribal Council and the Hayden Flour Mills sponsored the affair, which was a great success by popular taste test.

Each Navajo woman entrant was supplied with apron, utensils, 2 pounds of flour, baking powder, salt, fry pan and shortening. Men, on the fringe, chopped wood and brought it to individual fire pits. The women lighted and stoked their own fires, thank-you.

Those clever hands, equally skillful at weaving or sheep-shearing, patted dough into a smooth lump, then thinned it out, letting it flop from one palm to another till just the proper thickness and diameter.

Women judges (dieticians) moved from one fire to another, making notes on how each woman mixed and kneaded the dough, giving points for cleanliness, skill, size of fire, heat of shortening. Samples of finished bread were judged later on texture, lightness, flavor.

Every contestant won a 25-pound sack of flour to take home, a pretty apron plus the prizes for the best bread. Spectators, politely eager for a toothsome bit, won too.

This was serious business woman's business, until the men were invited to participate in one round of their own. They, as well as the watchers, had a ball.

Lanky figures in jeans now donned the flowered aprons. There was a hitch at one table to start the hilarity. A grey-haired old fellow, who knew no English, admitted he couldn't MAKE bread. He thought it was an EATING contest!

By the time this contestant was eased out, another man was demanding more flour. He'd poured too much water in the bowl to moisten the regulation two pounds.

Navajo women crowded the bleachers, some of them laughing too hard to stay on the seats. They yelled with delight when one husband tied his wife's kerchief just as she always did over the hair and under the chin. They howled at the sight of another man, shaping dough by hitting it with his fist (and a grunt) instead of the orthodox kneading.

Fires were too big the grease burned. Some bread was scorched, some came out of the pan too thick or too thin. It overlapped the edge or rose like a balloon and then fell like lead. But there was also some bread turned out that even the laughing wives could and did praise.

The Navajos love to clown and can make a joke of even as serious a matter as the making of Fried Bread.

Long after the 25-pound sacks of flour have been used up, those women will be chuckling to themselves as they stand over their own home fires. They will probably, too, take more pride than ever in keeping alive the time-worn tradition of "Squaw Bread," that is so good and so Navajo.

In the early years there were three distinct units of the day: morning viewing of the fair, parade and rodeo in the afternoon and the night performance. Now there is activity the entire time. So many spectators visit the fair (70,000 in 1961) that one no longer notices when the parade and rodeo begin.

Navajos love a rodeo. It is perhaps a natural thing since the Indian has always set great store by his horse and it follows that he should also respect prowess as a horseman. All the elements of a big-time rodeo are here . . . the ribbon tie, the bull dogging, the grand parade. The contestants are those who might be engineering aids during the week or college students, clerk in a post or herd sheep. They might be an electrician or drive a truck or be a carpenter's helper . . . but his requirements of this day are not of these things . . . the people want to know . . . how expert is he with a rope? How long can he stay astride a plunging bronc? How much will he give in participation? It is often a long wait between events but Navajos are a patient people and they consider it all right if a dogging contestant or two is mixed in with the bareback riding. It is a long, sometimes exciting, good display by nonprofessionals . . . and never lacking in color or enthusiasm.

The rodeo is one of the many places where the young Navajo girls vieing for fair queen meet to be applauded. This reflects in no small degree the “twixt and twain” attitude of the Navajo people for they select both a modern dress and a traditional queen. The girls are charming, poised and sure whether they wear the latest fashions available from Phoenix or those well-remembered patterns cut so long now from velveteen and calico or satin. The winner of the “modern” class rides in the fair finale in an open convertible, the traditional queen in a wagon both equally cheered by the Navajo spectators who sometimes find it easier to balance the two in his own mind than do we, the non-Indian, who likes the nostalgia of memory, who seeks in the Indian philosophy of life something lacking in our own. After the rodeo there is no let up in the fair; perhaps it does seem more quiet, the older ones gone off to rest in the pickups or in the shade of some building, the young ones to all the thrills of the carnival on the other side of the fairgrounds. But they are only readying themselves for the pleasures of the night performance. As soon as it is dusk, the Indian comes back to the rodeo grounds. They look different now, blankets shadowing their faces in the half dark, a quieter group than sat in these same bleachers in the afternoon, the electric lights of the midway, the big hogan and the fair "main street" seem far away. Voices come from the dark some in halting English, others in well-disciplined school voices, and always the Navajo. There are great cones of juniper logs at either end of the grandstand. When these are ignited the spectators sit watching the great flames leap as though they were alive and part of the performance. An Indian, like all true campers, loves a fire. Soon you hear the sound that is like no other; the resonant hollowness of the turtle shell rattle. It is the sound that enriches any Indian dance you will ever attend. The jangle of bells comes next and then the thud of moccasined feet. This is the witching hour when those Indians those Navajo, Apache, Taos, Hopi, Zuñi and others come to dance for those watching from the confines of the night. There are dances old and new, those done in traditional dress and those who appear only in "things" Indian. It is a world of motion, of dancing feet, strange falsetto voices, feathered creatures from another life leaping like the gods they create, howling like wounded crea-

Barbecue attracts one and all at the Navajo Fair Model of Glen Canyon Dam

tures.

EVERYBODY LOVES A FAIR

There's something about a fair something as American as the little red schoolhouse. About a Navajo Tribal Fair, there's an added ingredient -something very Navajo.

You won't catch it from an airplane, circling above for photographs. The picturesque wagons, like a page out of the Old West, which used to come rolling in from every corner of the Reservation and gather on the campground, have given way to pickups. Nowadays the crowds, bucking broncos, barbeque queues, carnival and exhibit halls, look about alike on any western fairgrounds.

Join the milling crowds and wander through the exhibits. Then you'll begin to notice the differences. There are, of course, the usual crying babies the tired and/or hungry ones. The cradleboards which some of them are still carried in, are alder than the Stars and Stripes, These tiny tots' elders beginning, it would seem, with school age, all seem to be having a wonderful time, without being overly noisy about it. No one seems harried. No one bored. Having a job to do at the Fair isn't excuse for missing the fun and guests are reveling in the whole affair.

You'll find no jostling for places at the big free barbecue; no stam peding for parked cars at the close of performances, no little groups of adolescents having questionable fun at someone else's expense.

I heard an out-of-state visitor ask: "Don't the Navajos have any teen-agers?" The reply he got was: "Oh yes, but they are too busy to act like teen-agers."

That certain dignity, which goes with long full skirts and striped blankets, isn't lost here when young Navajo girls put on high heels and modern dress to compete for the title of Queen.

Yet Indian dignity is far from dull, it's elastic. Where, but in a Navajo rodeo, would a couple of jean-clad girls, a frankly fat, middle-aged woman, and a wrinkled grandmother in ankle-length skirts, volunteer to rollick through a burro race before thousands of spectators? Who, but the same grandmother, after flying over the burro's head, saddle and all, would calmly re-saddle the ornery beast and ride in chortling triumph to the finish line?

The M.C.'s didn't miss a chance to quip in English or in Navajo. They took sly digs at their own leaders, at guests, at themselves and at any non-Indian within range. And did the crowd love it!

This good humour permeated every event, melting aloofness which often makes the individual lonely in a crowd. Once inside the fairground, there were no strangers.

Like the man who acknowledged an introduction with: "We've howdyied before, but never shook," everyone was ready to be friendly. It was a warm spirit-catching as measles.

Names didn't seem important, but some were known to all. The genial man with a little moustache, always center of action, was John McPhee, Tribal Public Relations Director and Assistant to the Tribe's Chair man, Non-Indian and holder of several other posts that all mean work, the Fair was his original idea and has remained, through the years, a pet project.

Navajo leaders, who would have been called "chief" in another day, but now are Tribal Council Chairman Paul Jones, Assistant Tribal Chair man Scott Preston; Executive Secretary Maurice McCabe, Fair Commissioner Howard W. Gorman were plainly at home among all their friends.

To an onlooker, then, the Fair had the sparkle of a festival, ably con ducted and thoroughly enjoyed by a remarkable group of Americans who are making great strides in developing their resources with dignity and foresight. And the "proof of the pudding" was Everybody loved the Fair, Theirs tures, doing dances whose origins come from where we know not and which we, the non-Indian can never really understand. There are the gentle corn-grinding songs, the songs they sing to a bright, clear lovely lovely norning, to the first star; there are songs iulling and tender, those harsh and warlike and always the fire, vital and alive cascades of sparks flying in the night, flames keeping tempo for the dancers. There is a strangeness about it. Maybe it is just the night and the crowd, now silent, now animated; maybe it is the aloneness you feel as those about you seep into a world you can never know. And one always wonders... is it just the darkness and the fire, the blocky outline of blanketed figures that makes you feel this way or is it something else that brings this strange detachment? Are you witness to an Indian pilgrimage, a long walk back to their spiritual stronghold

where they sing again to the old gods and the old gods answer, echoing in voices that you cannot hear from the darkness of the night. The moon hangs high in the autumn night and those who see it wonder.

This fair then is the projection of an Indian dream and always the Indian has favored the dreamer. There were times when he foretold war victories, a good hunt or saw again the return of the buffalo to the upper regions of the Platte. But that age has passed away. The dreamer now is not one Indian but many and the thoughts they carry are not only those of the old and wise. They have marked their dream with a ceremony in the grand tradition of the great tribes who used to roam the land. It has always been so. wherever he found life good man has always called for a feast, a thanksgiving, a ceremonial. It was true of the mountain men when they met at Taos after a winter of trapping . . . it was a raucous and sometimes blood-letting experience, but the pelts were dense and heavy, there was companionship after many months of solitude and there was warm water and brawling through the night; the buffalo hunter, tallow streaked and recking from the stench of too good a kill came into Dodge or even to the ill-fated Adobe Walls for an occasional feast; there was the corn huskings in the early history of our nation and the country fairs of a thousand midwestern counties of the central plains. Thus it is that the Navajo has created for himself a mod-ern Indian celebration. No medicine man chants over it or sprinkles corn pollen on the paths. Visitors who come are awed by the displays, the wonder of color, the progress, the lavishness of worn silver. They cannot fathom the transition of this Indian people known only from stories, calendar art, western publicity. Who is he really? they wonder and who can answer? He is the young man next to you . . . his English is excellent, he has a mind of his own, he has plans for his people; he is also the old one you just passed . . . his hair tied up in the raw wool string. The things of the young are not his . . . progress, economic plenty. His dream is none of these . . . his dream is his reality, his treasure, his way of life. Thus it is we have two dreams and one people, two minds and one heart, two voices to speak and many to listen. "If there were dreams to sell Merry and sad to tell And the crier rang the bell What would you buy?"* *From Dream-Pedlary by Thomas L. Beddoes