Remembering Iowa traders among the Navajo

Life among the Navajo (online access)

 

Ways to remain engaged during a pandemic

The feature article below was published earlier today in the Waterloo and Cedar Falls Courier (Waterloo IA). The full text and photos can be accessed online here.

Snaggle-toothed | a dancer and a mountain lion

Don Lorenzo Hubbell (n.d.)

Above Photograph of Don Lorenzo Hubbell, Arizona trading post owner. His family founded the Hubbell Trading Post (a National Historic Site) on Highway 191 near Ganado AZ. He was supportive of the efforts of American anthropologist Edward T. Hall, who worked with the Native Americans in the area of the Four Corners during FDR's implementation of the New Deal. Hall also described Hubbell in a later, brief memoir, titled West of the Thirties (NY: Doubleday, 1994), in which this photo was reproduced.

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Edward T. Hall, An Anthropology of Everyday Life: An Autobiography. NY: Doubleday, 1992—

Lorenzo had been given the Navajo name of Nakai Tso (the Big [or Fat] Mexican). A snaggle-toothed man of tremendous girth and immediately obvious appeal, Lorenzo chewed tobacco, which he spit into a coffee can on the floor next to his foot whenever he needed to stop and think. Each conversation was punctuated by a splat as Nakai Tso, like a practiced bombardier, zeroed in on that can. His skin was mottled from what must have been a liver disorder; he spoke with a gravelly rasp that was more like a thick whisper than an ordinary conversational voice. He was able to communicate expressively with his left eye while speaking out of the right side of his mouth. When he pushed himself out of his chair, the movement transformed what only a moment before had been a mass of flab into a cross between a ballet dancer and a mountain lion—the grace, ease, and speed of his movements were truly extraordinary. Relatively expressionless of face, he nevertheless had a twinkle in the eye that came and went with the tempo of the conversation. To know what was happening in his head, one had to attend the twinkle. When he encountered lies or fraud, the twinkle became a glint. Like most businessmen in the West, Lorenzo wore the pants of a nondescript gray business suit supported by narrow suspenders, a shirt to match, a tie, and a straight-brimmed four-X beaver Stetson hat. I never saw him dressed any other way. In spite of a rather rough exterior which was typical on the reservation in those times, Lorenzo had an air that set him apart. As I had suspected, he was no ordinary man.

Coming noon tomorrow to North Liberty, Iowa

For weeks I have been working on a new presentation for the Humanities Iowa Speakers Bureau, which I finally finished yesterday. Titled IOWANS IN NEW MEXICO: The Newcombs and the Navajos, it's the story of the involvement of my ancestors, for nearly four decades, with the Navajo people of the Four Corners region of the American Southwest.

My ancestors were from Manchester IA. Two of my great aunts (Pentony sisters) married Newcomb brothers (also from Manchester), while a third Newcomb married a Wisconsin woman, later known as Franc Johnson Newcomb, who became an authority on Navajo sandpainting and folktales. A third great aunt married a photographer in New Mexico, who worked for the National Geographic Society, and took some of the first archaeological photographs of the ancient dwellings in the region of Pueblo Bonito NM. As a child, I heard about these people (they sent kachina dolls as gifts) and now I have unearthed the details. What a story.

I will present it for the first time publicly tomorrow, Friday, January 31, 2020, starting at 12 noon, at the Community Center in North Liberty IA (just north of Iowa City) at 520 West Cherry Street. Sponsored by Humanities Iowa, it is free and open to the public.

Here is the formal description of the program, as posted on the website of the Humanities Iowa Speakers Bureau—

Around 1907, in advance of New Mexico's statehood, three brothers from Manchester, Iowa, moved to the vicinity of the Navajo Indian Reservation, near Gallup. For the next thirty-odd years, the Newcomb brothers (Charles, Arthur, and Earl) worked for, owned or managed remote trading posts on the vast reservation. Newcomb, New Mexico bears their name.  Two of them married sisters from Manchester (Madge and Isabel Pentony), the sheriff's daughters. A third Newcomb brother married a Wisconsin teacher (Franc Johnson Newcomb) who became a leading authority on ceremonial sandpainting and helped to establish the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian. For decades, the Newcomb brothers and their wives lived among the Navajo, learned to respect their traditions and actively promoted handcrafted native arts and crafts. They later wrote insightful books about their years as Navajo friends and neighbors. Roy R. Behrens (the speaker) is descended from the Pentony family, and as a child, he often heard stories about his New Mexico relatives. This is a fast-paced 50-minute talk about the Newcombs, the Pentonys, and the Navajos, illustrated by rare archival photographs.