March 19, 2016
I arrived in Phoenix
on Tuesday evening, just in time to go to a baseball game with Rich and Barbara
who had been there for a few days. I stay there for more baseball games on
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I’ll spare you the details,
which are somewhat covered in my mangled score sheets as is typical of spring
training games which may have 30 players on each side at some point in the
game. But just to make the point that I was there, the final scores of the
games I attended were, I think:
Cincinnati(6) vs. Arizona(10)
Seattle(11) vs. Oakland(11)
Colorado(6)
vs. LA/Anaheim(6)
Dodgers(2) vs., White Sox(4)
Now that those details are out of the way on Sunday morning
I started to head for the Santa Fe trail. I
actually warmed up for that on Saturday morning by going to a flea market in Phoenix. It did remind me
of what I have read abut the trade fairs in Santa Fe when the traders from
Mexico would come north with their wares (blankets, furs, pottery, and,
everyone’s favorite, silver) and meet with the traders arriving from St Louis
with their manufactured goods, cloth, weapons, and whatever else they thought
would be of value. Much of the goods at the Phoenix
flea market were a modern version of what would have been in Santa Fe: clothing, household goods, kids’
toys, tools. Some things at the flea
market you could not have seen in Santa Fe in 1830: Old cell phones and old
regular phones, an endless variety of cases and cords for digital gadgets,
stacks of mattresses (hard to transport on a mule), all manner of orange tipped
replica and imaginative firearms hung on screens net to pink-tutu wearing
Barbie-like dolls. Toys for boys and girls. But clothing, clothing, clothing – probably
very similar to Santa Fe in 1825.
So the flea mafrket was a good introduction to the barter economy which characterized
the 19th century and is still flourishing in the 21st.
With that introduction, I started off this morning about 0630
from Phoenix
and headed north and east eventually to IS40 (also known in many places as
Historical Route 66). I have marked my
route on this Google Map:
The country in these mountains certainly reflect the Wild
West: Rye Creek, Whisky Springs, and “Caution – Elk Crossing” signs were a few
of those that I saw. The license plate in the truck I was following for a few
minutes reflected the true nature of the modern times in Arizona: “LKHUNTER.” I don’t think the
driver’s name is “Larry.”
You will note that I
left my intended route on IS40 to Gallup
and took a detour north. I saw a sign that said “Hubbell trading Post National
Historic Site” so I exited the freeway figuring it was right there somewhere
near the off ramp. When I got to the end of the off ramp the sign point north –
39 miles. I hesitated, realizing that
that might mean an 80 mile round trip to see a pile of rubble. But was I ever
wrong.
After the drive through the mountains surrounding Phoenix
through the Tonto National Forest it would be hard to find a more fascinating
landscape – dry lake beds dotted with small bush-like vegetation, high desert
area (5000 ft. most of the way), pine forests (apologies to anyone who knows
better the tree species – the only tree species I know is Christmas)., and a
very rocky landscape. But the drive to
the Hubble Trading Post site was just as remarkable: A flat rolling desert with
a road that was straight as the flight of an Apache arrow across the 6000 foot
high mesa. In some areas I could see the
road probably 15 miles away, perfectly aligned with the section I was on, but a
hundred yards in front of me the road appeared to drop of the edge of the earth
and until I got the edge I could not see anything but the road rising out of
the other side of the apparently bottomless pit. I finally arrived at Hubbell Trading Post
site in the little village
of Ganado, named after
Ganado Mucho a Navaho Indian Chief. After a few minutes of wandering through
the visitor’s center I joined a couple of tourists for a tour of the Hubbell
House given by the young Indian girl in her Park Service uniform.
Briefly, Lorenzo Hubbell was born in the New Mexico Territory.
His father was an American businessman in the area and is mother was Mexican.
He followed in his father’s footsteps because he was very friendly toward the
Indians in the area, spoke their language fluently, and was a good
businessman. At one point he was hired
by the government to translate documents into Spanish and Navaho. About that time Kit Carson, then a Colonel in
the U.S. Army was ordered to take care of the “Indian problem” in New
Mexico and Arizona.
Carson’s solution
to the problem was to kill as many of the Indians as he could, bun their crops,
burn their fields, and burn their houses.
He then forced them on a 400 miles “Long Walk” to Fort
Sumner in New Mexico Territory.
The Navahos were held captive from 1864 until 1868 at Fort
Defiance at which time the Indians, under the leadership of Chief Ganado Mucho,
signed a treaty with the US Government which returned some of their land to
them. In the ensuing years Hubbell established about 35 trading posts on the
borders of the Indian lands, was married, and had four children. Over the years
he and his wife died, the two brothers ran the trading post business but sold
or closed many of the stores. Around the turn of the 20th Century
the home built behind the trading post in Ganado where the family lived until
the last member died in 1957. The land was deeded to the National Park Service
and the contents of the house went along with the other buildings.
The house is filled with typical 19-20th century
furniture, but most notably, Navaho blankets and rugs casually strewn about, dozens
of Navaho baskets which are attached to the ceiling between the rough hewn wood
rafters, and dozens of sketches of Native people done by the well-known painter
Eldridge Burbank. Burbank
was a frequent visitor to the house and is known for his paintings of the
Indians in the Southwest as well as in the Northwest. Unfortunately, photography is not permitted
in the house.
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