HUBBELL TRADING POST NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE

BY JO JEFFERS

An epoch of a great man
and a great era in Navajoland
enshrined forever in The

The Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site came under the jurisdiction and administration of the National Park Service April 3, 1967. The Site includes 150 acres and eleven buildings and structures of the original Hubbell compound.

All men dream. Some men realize their dreams through hard work, good fortune, and the help of friends. Few men have the courage to pursue their dreams alone, into the wilderness, with nothing but a horse, a bedroll, confidence, and love of life. Juan Lorenzo Hubbell was one of the few.

He was born in 1854 in Pajarito, New Mexico. His father, James L. Hubbell, was a Connecticut Yankee who had fought in the Mexican-American War and had stayed in the Southwest as a government contractor for horses and cattle and he owned a freight line consisting of forty-eight wagons and teams. James Hubbell married Julianita Gutiérrez, whose parents owned the Pajarito land grant. The Gutiérrez family was from Toledo, Spain . . . aristocratic Spaniards who had been granted twenty square miles of land by the King of Spain. The son of James L. Hubbell and Julianita Gutiérrez was born with a combination of Yankee vitality and Spanish grace of spirit. By birthright, he fitted into the place he later made for himself as the most famous of all traders to the Navajos.

Juan Lorenzo spoke Spanish before he learned English. At the Pajarito hacienda, he had been well tutored. He had grown up with the affection of his family, a solid background of conventional studies, and an appreciation for quality. Juan Lorenzo's father wanted him to be familiar with his Anglo heritage, and so he was sent to Farley's Presbyterian School in Santa Fe to complete his education. At seventeen, he finished school. Politely but firmly, he was told by his father that his dependent years were over. He was on his own.

For one year, he worked as a postal clerk in Albuquerque for forty dollars a month. Short and wiry, athletic and healthy, Juan Lorenzo considered office work only a means to an end. In his personal recollections, he stated:

The indoor life of a postal clerk did not satisfy my craving for romance and adventure, which seemed to beckon to me from the newly developed Utah Territory to the northwest. In 1870, therefore, I invested most of my savings in a saddle horse and outfit and set out for Utah Territory, which was then virgin land.

At the crossing on the Colorado River now known as Lee's Ferry, Juan Lorenzo met John D. Lee. Fourteen years after the Mountain Meadows Massacre, in which a wagon train of Gentiles named Fancher had been killed by Mormons, John Lee had confessed to a part in the incident. Immediately, Lee had been ostracized from society in Washington, Utah. With several of his wives and their children, he had escaped to Kanab. There he had met Jacob Hamblin, a scout and missionary, who had helped guide Lee to the remote crossing at the junction of the Colorado and Paria Rivers. Here Lee had begun a new life on the banks of a muddy, turbulent river between steep-walled canyons. Trading with Indians and ferrying them across the Colorado was his only means of living while he was in exile.

Juan Lorenzo liked the big, tough, agreeable Mormon, and he spent several weeks at this isolated outpost, learning about the country and the Navajos who traded there.

Lee was a new kind of trader. A trader who treated Indians as if they were human beings, not chattel. As a boy at Pajarito, Juan Lorenzo had no doubt heard stories about the early Spanish traders in New Mexico. Eighteenth-century Spanish settlements were strung like beads on the thread of the Rio Grande River from Taos to El Paso. These northern settlements were poor, devoid of the precious metals which made Mexico rich. Ranchers had little money for the necessities of life and none for the luxuries. Unlike Anglo settlers to the north, they were totally dependent on traders from Chihuahua to bring them leather goods, woven cloth, wood furniture, and tools. The Spaniards wanted Indian slaves from the north to work the gold and silver mines in Mexico. Young females sold for $100 to $150, depending on their health and attractiveness, and males sold for half that amount. The sale of human beings was technically illegal under Spanish law, and so the bookkeepers listed slaves as piezas, "pieces" or "goods." In the summer, a trade fair was held in Taos. Indian goods and slaves were then taken to the January fair in Chihuahua to be sold. By the time Juan Lorenzo's father had settled in New Mexico, the overt slave trade had ceased, but brutal memories were fresh.

Juan Lorenzo had heard, too, of the Comancheros. They were Spanish-speaking men who traded with the Kiowas and Comanches. The Indians stole horses and cattle from settlers, then sold them cheaply to the Comancheros. Settlers and army personnel hated Comancheros for contributing to Indian raids. An army officer once described them:

They were dressed in conical-crowned sombreros; jackets with stripes running transversely; large, baggy breeches extending to the knee; long stockings and moccasins. They were badly armed and presented a poor and shabby appearance, though we learned that they were a good specimen of the class to which they belong.

The Spanish traders had left a mark of greed, injustice and inhumanity on the Southwest. Navajos had not been immune to early Spanish exploitation, but they had taken as well as received, raiding enemy tribes, selling livestock and slaves. They had remained free and mobile, with the help of good horses, stolen from the Spaniards. The Spaniards had called them Lords of the Soil. By 1800, the Navajos were a strong culture, held together by language and family ties. They had begun their own westward expansion, into the land of the Hopis and Utes.

In 1846, Charles Bent, of Bent's Fort, Colorado, wrote:

The Navajos are an industrious and warlike tribe of Indians who cultivate the soil and raise sufficient grain for their own consumption and a variety of fruits. They are the owners of large flocks and herds of cattle, sheep, horses, mules and asses. Most of their stock has been acquired by marauding expeditions against the settlements of this territory. They manufacture excellent coarse woolen goods for wearing apparel. They roam over the country between the San Juan and Gila. They have in their possession many prisoners, men, women, and children taken from the settlements... whom they hold and treat as slaves.

During the Civil War, Kit Carson had been sent by the government to round up the Navajos. Some of them had escaped to the west, to the unknown regions of Monument Valley and Black Mesa—the cunning, the rebellious ones, the ones who escaped white domination. At Lee's Trading Post, Juan Lorenzo saw the pride and dignity and freedom of a still isolated people-the western Navajo.

The others had been marched to Bosque Redondo and placed in captivity. There they remained four years, where more than half of the captives died from disease and deprivation. After the Treaty of 1868, the government allowed them to return to their homeland and allocated small herds of sheep and goats to keep the Indians from starving. Families spread out over the reservation and began tending the herds, which increased rapidly. They had promised to live in peace with the white man.

After the Treaty of 1868, trading posts had replaced trading forts. Mexican traders from Santa Fe had been the first to come into Navajo country. Berrado's trading post at Horsehead Crossing, now Holbrook, sold everything for fifty cents, regardless of value, the proprietor being unable to grasp the intricate mathematics necessary for making change. What he lacked in astuteness, he compensated for in generosity. A sign above the door read: "If you have money you can eat. No got money, eat anyway."

Mormon traders like Hamblin and Lee had drifted south from Salt Lake. Civil War veterans came west, southerners sought to forget homes and families that no longer existed, and northerners came searching for a new life away from the industrial dirt and noise of burgeoning cities. Sam Day and Anson Damon were among them. Englishmen and Germans came, too, seeking adventure and challenge and business opportunity. Thomas Keam was the best known of the Europeans. A few, like the Frenchman, Dan Dubois, were tough survivors of the mountain fur trade, now gone forever.

In The Indian Traders, Frank McNitt states, "It was the military who beat the warring Utes, Navajos, and Apaches into submission; it was the traders who helped them recover and start out in a new direction."

Juan Lorenzo wanted to see more of the country and learn more about this promising business of Indian trading. He rode up into Utah, where for a few months he clerked at a trading post at Kanab. In Panguitch, Utah, an incident occurred which changed the course of his life. What happened or why, no one knows. He referred to the incident enigmatically:

Some parts of a story are best left untold, so it is enough for me to say that I became involved in difficulties at Panguitch, Utah, in the spring of 1872. These were serious enough that I found it necessary to flee, and I fled toward the south with a bullet in my left leg and a bullet hole through my body. I wandered for days, scarcely knowing where I was or what actually happened. Eventually, I staggered into a Paiute camp where the Indians took pity on me. They fed me, treated my wounds, and detailed two squaws to nurse me back to health. I don't really know how long I was there or what actually happened during that time because I was in a delirious state. I can only be sure that I owe my life to those Indians. They saved me from what must otherwise have been certain death. In time they had me on my feet and ready to travel again, and I drifted southwest into the Hopi country.

The intimate contact with the Paiutes strengthened Juan Lorenzo's compassion and understanding for Indians, and he left with gratitude and a sense of justice. He wrote: "The Paiutes saved my life and I've saved the lives of a lot of Indians in return for what they did for me."

His wounds healed, he traveled south, away from the trouble in Panguitch. At the Colorado River, he reached an impasse. Near the wild, lonely place where the Little Colorado flows into the big Colorado, the rivers rush swift and strong through deep canyons. He could not go back. For several days he explored the gorge, looking for a place to cross that would give him a gambler's chance to survive. Systematically, he gauged the current by throwing sticks into the water, and reckoned how far downstream he would be carried before reaching a place on the opposite shore which afforded a foothold for his horse. He lashed his belongings to the saddle and pushed his horse into the icy water. Clinging to the horse's tail, he guided the animal by splashing water in its face, emerging from the mighty Colorado a few yards from the place he had chosen.

Juan Lorenzo rode on into Hopi country, with the square little alluvial farms and the fortress-like villages on top of the high mesas. For a few months he lived with the Hopis, learning the rudiments of their language. A Hopi Snake Clan chief became his friend. He was allowed to witness many ceremonies never before or since seen by a white man. He respected the culture and religion of others, and because he retained his own dignity, values, and identity, he was respected in turn by them.

From the Hopi mesas, he rode east to the Navajo agency at Fort Defiance. There he met Thomas Keam, an Englishman who had a Navajo wife. Keam was to become a lifelong friend and a rival for the Navajo trading empire. Tough-minded, hard-working and generous, he knew the great gap of misunderstanding between the Indian and White worlds. Juan Lorenzo had already begun to feel out the Navajo mind-nonaggressive, nonbrutal, in harmony with nature. The Navajos had lost. Now they would quietly accept and wait ... outwait the white man's impatience. Juan Lorenzo and Thomas Keam knew that the only bridge between the lifeways was a man's acceptance of another man as an individual, as a friend. As businessmen, both recognized the growing prosperity of the Navajos and anticipated their future needs.

The government agent was hopelessly bound by red tape, paper work, and prejudice, with neither the time nor the desire to understand. He considered his position as agent at Fort Defiance similar in comfort and status to a Russian political exile's sojourn in Siberia. Two of the richest chiefs, Manuelito and Ganado Mucho, disliked the agent. Ganado Mucho said, "He makes our heads ache and gives us pains in our legs. When we feel that way we go drink whiskey." The Navajos called one agent "Old Man Who Smells His Moustache."

At Fort Defiance, Hubbell also met Willy Arny, a trader who had been a New Mexico sheep man. Arny was a stiff-backed moralist with larceny in his heart, and he saw to it that Keam and other “squaw men” were removed from the agency, giving “immorality” as his reason. His competitors out of the way, Arny proceeded to make a fortune. In spite of his shortcomings, he was largely responsible for the beginning of the Navajo wool trade and, in 1871, persuaded a few Navajos to bring their wool to sell at Fort Defiance. He bought the poor grade, dirty, short-staple wool and shipped it by ox team to Albuquerque, where it was resold to eastern merchants. At first the wool was hacked off with stone knives or pieces of tin cans. A sheep would average one or two pounds. In nine more years, the Navajos would be able to trade a million pounds. By 1890, they would bring in two million pounds of raw wool.

About 1876, Hubbell rode south from Fort Defiance. Ganado Mucho, Hubbell’s friend, was head of the Big Water Clan and subchief of all western Navajos. He promised Hubbell a large trade if he would take over the small post formerly owned by William Leonard. Hubbell found the place to his liking, a clearing on the banks of the Pueblo Colorado wash. Water and wood were available, and Navajo families clustered in groups of hogans over the surrounding country. The land was just off the reservation boundary. Juan Lorenzo homesteaded the tract and called it Ganado, after his friend, Ganado Mucho. He began to build his dream.

In the 1870s, the government was determined to “civilize” Indians by forcing them to cut their long hair, wear trousers, go to school, and learn English. Missionaries were bent on saving Indian souls by making them give up their ceremonies and beliefs. Only the trader could serve as an effective intermediary. Only the trader could bring two diametrically opposed worlds together.

Ruth Underhill, in The Navajos, says: “The influence of the traders can hardly be overestimated in this next period of Navajo history. They were the bearers of a new way of life, even as the Pueblos had been three hundred years ago.”

The trader’s existence depended on a good relationship with the Navajo people. He learned their language and customs and taboos; he sold them calico, string, yarn, dye, hammers, axes, wagons, and harnesses; and waited patiently while they inspected every item and bought their supplies, one article at a time. The traditional economy changed from a barter system to a credit-barter system.

Navajos received food, clothing and tools in exchange for wool, hides and blankets. Also, the trader would extend credit for anticipated lamb and wool crops. After spring shearing, Navajos would pay off the winter’s debts with their wool crop, and in the fall they sold their lambs, bags of piñon nuts and hand-woven blankets. If a Navajo needed money for some emergency, he would pawn his fine old silver and turquoise jewelry.

The Navajo cared about his credit: his survival and his honor depended on it. Hubbell once told Joe Tippecanoe, an Indian employee, “Pay your debts and you’ll always have credit.” Hubbell demanded payment of just debts, but seldom sold a precious piece of old pawn. Often he would let a woman borrow her pawn for a few days to wear to a ceremony.

In the early days, no actual money was available. Traders made their own tokens of aluminum or brass alloy. Seco, dry, money it was called, or pesh-tai, thin metal. On one side was a serial number and the name of the trader. On the other was “good for,” and the value of the token.

Most of the early trading posts were no more than tents or lean-tos. United States trade regulations were strict. Penalties for trading without a license were severe, and a license could be cancelled at any time for political reasons. Traders owned their own buildings and improvements, but not the land. If a trader moved, he could either sell to another trader or give up the building. By 1886, the government had put a ceiling on profits — not more than 25 per cent of cost plus freight could be charged, and the profiteers vanished.

Because Hubbell owned his land, he constructed his buildings to endure. His post at Ganado was built like a hacienda, the buildings forming a large square. They were constructed of reddish sandstone, thick-walled, with iron-barred windows and high, beamed ceilings. The hacienda, with its stables, corrals, warehouses, office, and store, stood solid, warm and comfortable in the dry sunlight. A guest hogan was built for Indians who had come a long way to trade.

When Hubbell began trading, he was twenty-four years old. At first, the Navajos nicknamed him Nakeznilih, “double glasses,” because of his thick-lensed spectacles. Only eight years had passed since the bitterness of the Bosque Redondo. Congress had prohibited the sale of guns and whiskey, but Navajos were well-armed with bows, arrows, and lances. The memory of degradation was strong and painful. Soon after Hubbell came to Ganado, a group of Navajos rode up to the store. A big man walked in, picked up a sack of flour and walked out the door. Hubbell jumped over the counter, caught the Indian by his long hair, pulled him to the ground and began to twist his ear. About seventy Navajos watched and waited to see what the new trader would do. At last the big Navajo got up and left Hubbell with his sack of flour. Hubbell looked up at the crowd and said, “Come on, any of you who think you can steal from me. I’ll twist the ears off any Indian who wants to try it.”

Public Bill 89148, which arranged for acquisition of the Site by the U. S. Government, was first introduced in 1958. While it met Senate approval each session thereafter, the bill did not pass Congress until 1965. President Johnson signed the bill into law August 28, 1965. In the bill, Congress set aside a sum of $952,000 for the land and all holdings of the Hubbell Trading Post including all fixtures and historic mementoes contained in the Hubbell home, a veritable treasury in itself, and for eventual restoration of the compound to its past glory when it was the largest and most important Navajo trading post.

The “trading post” will be operated by the Southwestern Monuments Association, a non-profit organization pledged to the preservation and conservation of our natural resources. Visitors will see a “living trading post” where trade with the Navajos is carried on today in the same manner as it was a half century ago.

Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site is one mile west of Ganado, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation and fifty-five miles from Gallup, New Mexico. It is reached by Arizona 264 (Navajo Route 3).

The Site is open daily to visitors from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. (every day of the year). During the summer season eight guided tours are given from 9:00 a.m. through 4:00 p.m. For more information write to Superintendent, Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site, Box 388, Ganado, Arizona 86505. man? He is our friend." The others moved back and Many Horses freed Juan Lorenzo. In the years that followed, the two men often would sit in silent understanding, smoking their pipes before Hubbell's fireplace. Many Horses asked to be buried on the hill above the home of his friend, Juan Lorenzo, overlooking the compound.

The center of trading activity was known as the "bull pen." It was a milling place, a close, dark, smoky room where friends gathered to warm themselves and talk over the weather, ceremonies, the condition of livestock, clan gossip, sheep and wool prices. In the center stood a pot-bellied stove. Saddles, harnesses, bridles and blankets hung from the ceiling, and sacks of flour, sugar, Arbuckle coffee, and pinto beans stood against the walls. Groceries, dry goods, tools and utensils crowded the shelves . . . thick bolts of calico for Navajo dresses . . . Levis, shirts, belts, boots, and Stetson hats for men . . . kerosene lamps, coffeepots, tallow candles, pans, iron skillets. In the 1880s, a 100-pound sack of flour cost $5.50, a pound of coffee cost 25 cents, a mackinaw blanket was $4.50, a Stetson hat was $4.50. Calico cost ten cents a yard. Hubbell was once asked how much his hay cost by the ton. He smiled and pointed to the loose, unbaled hay which was kept for horses of Navajos who came to trade. He picked up an armful. "I don't sell it by the ton," he said, "I sell it by the bouquet."

Hubbell came to know the people well. Instead of "Double Glasses" they began to call him by the affectionate term Naakai Saani, Old Mexican. In the dimness of the bull pen they would sit. In the smell of piñon burning, acrid leather, tobacco, sheep dung. They squatted on the floor, leaned against the walls, smoked, and chatted quietly in their language, as soft as the desert wind. When Navajo friends came in, Old Mexican would open cans of peaches, tomatoes and sardines, to ward off the tiredness of traveling. An open tobacco can sat on the counter, free for the taking, nails driven up through the bottom to prevent the taking of too much. The trader had become part of the family — a white man who would live as Navajos lived, who would become part of the land and of the people.

In 1879, Juan Lorenzo married Lina Rubi, of Cebolleta, New Mexico. His trading empire grew — he acquired posts at Chinle, Black Mesa, Cornfields, Nazlini, Keam's Canyon, Oraibi, and Cedar Springs. At first, supplies were freighted by wagons from Fort Dodge, Kansas, over the Santa Fe Trail. In 1881, the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad crossed Northern Arizona. Hubbell built a big supply warehouse in Winslow. More than a warehouse, the adobe building was filled with museum pieces . . . pottery, baskets, swords, guns, kachina dolls, paintings, leather and bead work. Business at Ganado had grown. More than a million dollars a year in wool and hides alone was handled. With courage, integrity, humor, and compassion, Hubbell had become the most powerful of Indian traders. Mexicans and Anglos called him "Don" Lorenzo. Don Lorenzo wrote:

Out here in this country, the trader is everything from merchant to father confessor, justice of the peace, judge, jury, court of appeals, chief medicine man and de facto czar of the domain over which he presides.

In 1882, Don Lorenzo was elected sheriff of Apache County. Never in the history of the American West did a more lawless time or place exist. The entire northern part of the Territory was embroiled in a range war between cattle and sheep men. Violence threatened the towns, and desperadoes on the run from Texas and New Mexico had taken over Springerville. Hubbell moved his family to St. Johns, the county seat, where for four years, they slept behind barricaded doors and windows. The night stillness was disrupted by pistol shots. Outlaws and cowboys would get "likkered up," yank innocent citizens out of bed and make them dance to gun music. In Hubbell's two terms of office, more than a dozen attempts were made to kill him.

In his memoirs, Don Lorenzo told the story of these unbelievably dangerous years:

I went into politics in this Territory as one of the first and few men who had the courage to tell certain politicians that they were a lot of damned rascals. They took it and feared me because they knew that truth and honesty are not afraid of man, beast or devil.

When I came to St. Johns, I asked the storekeepers why they allowed the thieves to rob them. I sent for guns and ammunition . . . The fight started in St. Johns . . . the first week, seventeen of them were killed and eight of our boys . . . It was a rough fight and lasted a long time.

I'd scarcely more than taken the oath of office as sheriff before the Texans swept down on the country and ran off some 200 head of horses belonging to the Indian sheep men. Then it was up to me to go after the Texans . . . and by todos santos, I went . . . and I never let them quit running until I had chased them 125 miles and had the last Texan in jail and the stolen horses returned to the Indians. I settled that war, although it took me nearly three years to do it, and it had cost the lives of nearly 300 men . . . counting five of my deputies and some 295 sheep and cattlemen and Indians, who shot it out while the war lasted.

Don Lorenzo was castigated by the cattlemen for protecting the sheep men. He was half-Mexican. His trading business depended on the sale of Indian wool and hides. Still, his principles were as high as his ambitions. He stated: "In handling this situation I took the side of the sheep men, not because I favored them, but because the country was better suited for sheep than it was for cattle."

Commodore Perry Owens, one of the West's most famous lawmen, succeeded him in 1886. Don Lorenzo had all but resolved the cattle-sheep war, and in the next four years Owens would break up the outlaw terrorism by virtue of a six-shooter and a Winchester rifle. Don Lorenzo was free to return to his business and his family.

Don Lorenzo was a good husband to a good wife. Four children were born to them . . . Adele, Barbara, Lorenzo and Roman. Don Lorenzo spoke and acted with authority, but was not unkind or unjust. He did not drink liquor or smoke. “Liquor is bueno por nada,” he would say. For a time, some Mexicans ran a still at Piñon Springs, where they made White Mule whiskey and sold it to the Indians, who then caused trouble. Don Lorenzo bought the place, smashed the still and dumped out all the mash.

He was no crusader without human weaknesses. A passion for gambling was a part of his nature. As a young man, he often cut the cards for as much as $30,000. He enjoyed betting on anything from poker to horse races, and in 1896 he lost $60,000 in a poker game. The next morning he gathered his courage and told Señora Lina, his wife. She gave him a long, steady look, and said in her gentile Spanish, “Well, Don Lorenzo! I think it is about time for you to choose between your penchant for gambling and the question of whether or not our children are to be educated like ladies and gentlemen. I’ll be pleased to hear your decision after you’ve had sufficient time to think it over.”

His decision was made muy pronto. He answered, “I give you my word of honor. I’ll never gamble again.”

Hospitality was a trait of the true haciendado. Don Lorenzo’s graciousness was legendary; his tastes were catholic. No one was denied. The Hubbells entertained statesmen, artists, scientists, tourists, bullwhackers, and Indians. They provided food, beds, transportation and guides for anyone who required them. E. A. Burbank, the western artist, once stayed ten months, painting the Navajo country and people. All Don Lorenzo asked from his guests was stimulating conversation and good manners. Once an easterner insulted Don Lorenzo by insisting on paying for his room. When Don Lorenzo refused, the guest left a twenty-dollar bill in his room. The maid found it and gave it to Don Lorenzo. He was furious. That evening, a flash flood prevented the stage from continuing, the easterner had to return. He was allowed to sleep in a storeroom and have his meals in the kitchen.

The Hubbell home was built about 1900 in the northwest corner of the quadrangle of buildings. In front was a long screened porch. The hall was forty by fifteen feet, with seven bedrooms opening from it. One wall of the hall was centered by a great stone fireplace. The floors were covered with magnificent Navajo rugs, and baskets lined the walls. The novels of Dumas, Ruskin, Twain, Dickens, Poe, and Hawthorne stood comfortably used in their cases. The home was a retreat for all sorts of people, and Don Lorenzo spent thousands of dollars entertaining both friends and strangers.

Many employees depended on the Hubbells — Mexican field hands, Navajo clerks, housemaids, workers in the warehouse, barn and stables. The cooks often prepared a hundred meals a day. The baker made 200 loaves of bread twice a week in the outdoor oven. The barn man took care of the sixty-six horses and mules of the freight line.

In the spring and fall, the Hubbell post had great trading fiestas. Navajos rode in with wool sacks from distant hogans. For three and four days the smoke from many camps rose thin and blue, and the smell of mutton stew, corn meal, and strong coffee filled the air. Horse races, chicken pulls, foot races, and gambling games filled the days. Navajo friends would eat at Don Lorenzo’s table with the family, while others were fed in the kitchen or the hall.

Don Lorenzo knew his customers. He knew how many lambs and how much wool each family should have. Credit for the coming year was extended accordingly. Often he rode out into the back country, sleeping under the stars, going from one hogan to another, trading, buying in order to meet his contracts. Sheep were brought into the corrals, then driven in many bands of one or two thousand each to the railroad at Chambers. Some years were bad, some good, but the Hubbells always filled their contracts and paid their promised prices.

In the 1880s a smallpox epidemic spread over the reservation. Don Lorenzo had had smallpox as a boy and was immune to it, and for months he helped the people with their sick, dead and dying. He vaccinated hundreds of people and buried the dead by the wagonload. The Navajos began to believe that he had supernatural powers to heal.

By the 1890s many Navajos had become wealthy. Grass was high and thick; sheep herds had multiplied rapidly. The trading business had expanded and prospered. Don Lorenzo sent to Mexico for a silversmith to help Navajos develop their own silver craftsmanship.

Navajo blankets had been in demand locally for years. Cowboys, army officers and ranchers prized them. Navajo women bought machine-made blankets, unravelled them, and rewove them in traditional patterns, a slow and laborious process. During the nineties, Navajos began to make blankets out of commercial yarn, and quantity replaced quality. Germantown yarn and analine dyes were available and inexpensive; gaudy and tasteless patterns and colors were woven. Navajo blankets of this period reproduced everything from Ivory soap wrappers to the American flag.

Anxious about the downgrade of weaving, Don Lorenzo encouraged Navajos to return to traditional designs. He had dozens of good geometric patterns painted in oil and kept them available for Navajo women to copy. He also assured them of a market for the better designs.

When Pendleton Woolen Mills copied the classic Navajo styles and mass produced blankets of excellent quality, Navajo weavers lost their market for hand-woven blankets, even buying the Pendleton blankets for their own use. Don Lorenzo convinced them that they should weave heavier, more durable pieces to be used as rugs instead of blankets. About the turn of the century, Fred Harvey encouraged one of the greatest native American arts by buying hundreds of Navajo rugs of fine quality for his Harvey Houses along the Santa Fe Railroad.

The Ganado type of blanket became famous. It was bordered in black with a red background and cross or diamond shaped designs. Don Lorenzo insisted on size and quality, discouraging the cheapening use of commercial dyes, except red and black, which could not be duplicated by vegetable dyes.

By the early Twentieth Century, the range was depleted from overgrazing. The great prosperity of the 1880s and 1890s was over. Wind swept over the bleak expanse of Northern Arizona and devil winds swirled dirt into high cones. The people were beginning the hard times which would last until the 1960s brought good conservation practices.

Don Lorenzo was elected to the Territorial Senate in 1893 and served until 1912. He was personally acquainted with every president from Grover Cleveland to Warren Harding. One of Theodore Roosevelt's first official acts as president was to sign a bill giving Hubbell clear title to the land, which was by then inside the Reservation boundaries. Twice Roosevelt stayed with Hubbell to attend the Hopi Snake Ceremony. Don Lorenzo wrote:

I still have a mental picture of him, clad in a pair of old shoes, a flannel shirt, two-gallon hat, and his corduroy trousers stuffed into canvas leggins that laced down the sides. He watched the dance from a sitting position, with his back against an old adobe wall, raising himself on his hands occasionally to see better.

In 1913 Señora Lina died. It was as if Don Lorenzo had lost part of his own soul. She was buried on the hill which overlooked the Hubbell Trading Post. In the years which followed, Don Lorenzo grew to depend more and more on his sons to carry on the business. Lorenzo operated the Winslow store and the western part of the Reservation trade, and Roman managed a trading supply house in Gallup.

In 1920, a young lady came from the Midwest to act as a private tutor for the children at the Ganado post. Roman's first wife had died, leaving him to raise the children. He married the young teacher. Roman had his father's innate graciousness and real concern for the people, and he and Dorothy Hubbell assumed the responsibilities of operating the Hubbell Trading Post. Dorothy grew to love the country and the people in a way no one who has not been part of them can ever fully understand.

Tradition surrounded life at the Hubbell's. In the morning, two bells were rung, one for rising to dress, one for breakfast. Meals were served at the big hand-carved dining table, and Don Lorenzo sat at the head and insisted on punctuality. In the manner of the haciendado, he served the plates, guided the conversation, and lent dignity to every meal. His daughter-in-law, Dorothy, said, "He had the ability to make any woman feel she brightened the room."

As he grew older, Don Lorenzo spent more time traveling, seeing to his large holdings, staying with old friends like the Cotton family in Gallup. One day he heard that the eightyfour-year-old former mountain trader, Dan Dubois, was poor and ill. He found him existing miserably in a camp in Coyote Canyon, and arranged for the life-long care of his old friend.

By the 1920s, competitors had cut sharply into profits. Large holdings became too large. Political campaigns and lavish hospitality had been costly. Worst of all, the land was poorer than ever. Even this immense land could not support the steadily growing population. Broomweed, juniper, and blue sage crowded out the grass; bands of half-starved sheep roamed the dry range. To save the future, the government made a drastic reduction in livestock numbers. The people suffered from sudden and absolute poverty, and the trader who had been their friend and counselor suffered with them. Don Lorenzo's empire had vanished for all time.

One day, Don Lorenzo met a group of wealthy vacationing easterners who had been richly entertained by him in the old days. Don Lorenzo was hard pressed for money and happy at their suggestion, "Let's get together for dinner at the Harvey House tonight." That night they ordered drinks and a fine dinner, and when they had finished smoking and chatting, they went out, leaving Don Lorenzo to pay the bill.

Then Don Lorenzo fell ill. An aging Walpai Snake Clan chief rode horseback for two days over bad roads and trails to see his friend. The two old ones sat and talked quietly for many hours in the hall before the fire. None of the wealthy easterners whom Don Lorenzo had entertained traveled over bad roads to see him.

In his memoirs, Don Lorenzo wrote:

The passing of the last few years have rested increasingly heavy upon me. I'm old and in poor health. My life is all in the past. But by los todos santos, what changes and what times I've seen! You who are younger by many years will live to see even greater changes. We've only seen the beginning.

On November 11, 1930, Don Lorenzo died. The message swept fast over Navajo country. Drums of mourning sounded in every part of the Reservation. The people came on foot and on horseback, and gathered slowly around the trading post. The Catholic priest drove from St. Michaels mission, forty miles away, to perform the Sacrament of Burial. Roads were rutted and slippery from a cold, sleety rain, and the day Don Lorenzo was buried, the first hard storm of the winter hit. In the wind-driven snow, his friends and relatives made the long walk to the top of Hubbell Hill. Don Lorenzo was buried beside Señora Lina and old Many Horses, who had once saved him from death.

His closest friends gathered in the hall after the burial. Old Mexican was gone. A time of greatness had passed. An old Navajo man stood in front of the fire, warming the coldness inside him. He spoke in the quiet poetry of the people:

You wear out your shoes, you buy another pair; When the food is all gone, you buy more; You gather melons, and more will grow on the vine; You grind your corn and make bread which you eat; And next year you have plenty more corn. But my friend Don Lorenzo is gone, and none to take his place.

Many years later, the Navajo police noticed a number of car lights shining in the night below Hubbell's Hill. When they investigated, they found that a piece of stone had been chiselled away from Don Lorenzo's headstone. Those responsible for the vandalism were found and brought in to Dorothy Hubbell for questioning. She was calm as she stood before the great stone fireplace. "Why did you do this?" she asked.

A Navajo woman lowered her head. She explained that she had been very ill. The Singer had told her that her only chance for recovery was to obtain some scrapings from Don Lorenzo's headstone so that he could use them in a curing ceremony. Dorothy Hubbell nodded, and the people left in peace. In the hearts and minds of the Navajos, Hubbell medicine was still strong.

On April 3, 1967, the Hubbell Trading Post at Ganado officially opened as a National Historic Site. The National Park Service will continue to operate it as a trading post to the Navajos. Instead of an impersonal museum, visitors will find a center of trading activity. Guides will be on hand to take visitors on conducted tours of the bull pen, rug room, barn, warehouse, corrals, grounds, and the family home. The adobe and rock hacienda on the Pueblo Colorado Wash will continue, a living memorial to the dignity, integrity and courage of the good Indian traders. He will be remembered . . . Don Lorenzo, Old Mexican.