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Before the Roads Were Paved
Living with the Navajos at Canyon de Chelly (1950-1952)

by Dorothy Cumming

125 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #01-0063; ISBN 1-55212-662-5; US$17.00, C$19.50, EUR14.00, £10.00

An accumulation of memoirs of living with the Navajo Indians with a first-hand view into these unique people and their culture. The reservation was very isolated with primitive living conditions; in reality, still a frontier.

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about the book      Tony Hillerman      about the author      sample excerpt      catalogue info

About the Book It was on Columbus Day, October 12, 1950, that my husband and I joined the United States Indian Service and went to live with the Navajos in northern Arizona at Chinle, near the entrance to the famous Canyon de Chelly. We were just out of the University of Arizona, my husband with a degree in Range Ecology and I with a degree in Anthropology. And like Columbus, we sailed forth on uncharted seas to a new frontier and we arrived just in time because, although we didn't realize it, an era was dying. The last real American frontier, the frontier of cowboys and Indians, was passing, but we didn't stop to think about it as we were too busy living it. Every day was an adventure and life was good. Yah te hey as the Navajos say, it was good. In 1950 there were no paved roads on the twenty-four thousand square mile reservation. There were no motels, no restaurants, no movie theaters, and no supermarkets. In short, there were none of the so-called necessities of our civilization. But there were 24,000 square miles of open country of stark, rugged beauty, and here and there a hogan, a flock of sheep and goats, and once in a while, a trading post. Wagons and horses were the common method of transportation. It was three or four months sometimes before we got into a town and then we went only out of necessity. I didn't want to leave the reservation for too long as I was afraid that I might miss something while I was gone. We purchased our daily supplies at the local trading post and hoped we would not get sick as it was 40 miles to a mission doctor, if the road was open. Now all that has changed. We left the reservation in 1962, after having spent ten years in three agencies with the Navajos and two years with the Hopis, whose reservation is surrounded by the larger Navajo reservation. This book is dedicated to the Indians and to the personnel of the United States Indian Service, and it is told with the spirit of sharing - sharing an adventure with others who were not so fortunate as to have been there with us at the time.

What Tony Hillerman has to say...

 

"In her BEFORE THE ROADS WERE PAVED Dorothy Cumming gives us a collection of her recollections of life on the Navajo's "Big Reservation" before pavement swept in, bringing telephones, television, tourism and so forth to engulf the Dineh. It's a charming book, and a wonderful example of how such wonderful thoughtful people can help civilization preserve its past. Her report herein on the government's great Dog Improvement Project is a treasure, and so is the rest of the book." -- Tony Hillerman

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About the Author Dorothy Cumming was born in Waukegan, Ilinois, and graduated from the University of Arizona with a degree in Anthropology. She married a rancher from a pioneer Arizona family and they have two sons. They joined the U.S. Indian Service in 1950 at Chinle, Arizona, and spent 30 years in Indian service. Dorothy is a past member of Western Writers of America - National League of American Pen Women. She taught classes at Yavapai College in Prescott, Arizona, and she loves to read, ride horses, and write stories.

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Sample Excerpt - WAGONS AND TRADING POSTS

The next morning, as we were finishing our breakfast, I heard a knock at the back door. It was Smith, the range man from Kayenta, 90 miles to the north. He had come down to show Kendall the complexities of his job. I invited him in and gave him breakfast. Then Smith said, "Ready to leave Cummings? We 're going on a three-day camping trip out on the reservation. Kind of get to know your way around."

"But we just got here," I protested. "Our things aren't even unpacked."

"Give you something to do while I'm gone," my husband said. Then Kendall went outside and brought in the few boxes and barrels we had. He located his bedroll, packed some extra clothes in it, and they were off, leaving me alone to begin housekeeping in the middle of the Navajo reservation. I felt like a missionary's wife in the wilds of darkest Africa. Oh well! At least the natives aren't expecting me for dinner, I told myself.

After unpacking for several hours, I began to get hungry and realized there was no food in the house, so I got in the car and drove down below the hill to the trading post. The post, built at the turn of the century, resembled a fort. It had thick adobe walls, tiny windows that were guarded by iron grates, and a heavy wooden door to repel Indian attacks.

I parked the car among the wagons and horses. There were several Indians lounging about outside and five cradle boards, each with a black-eyed papoose wrapped snugly inside, propped up against the wall by the door.

Trying to act nonchalant, I yanked on the door handle. Nothing happened. I pulled harder. It still wouldn't open. Then I beat on the door. No answer. In desperation, I asked the nearest brave if the trading post was open. He wouldn't answer. No one answered, but instead they all turned their heads and pointed with their lips in the direction of some buildings to the side of the post. Baffled and embarrassed, I fled to the safety of my car and drove home. I discovered later that all the trading posts on the reservation closed at noon so the trader and his employees could eat lunch. Navajos never pointed with a finger (witchcraft); they always pointed with their lips. I took up the custom myself after a while - so handy. I also learned that the letters "T.P." on the reservation maps I saw did not mean "teepees" as I thought,but "trading post." Later that afternoon, once again driven by hunger and my confidence being somewhat restored, I went back down to the post. This time, the door was open. The interior was so dark that it took my eyes several minutes to focus but when I could see again, I was fascinated. Navajo women, dressed in long sateen skirts and velvet blouses, their arms encircled with silver and turquoise bracelets that matched their neck laces and earrings, stood there trading or gossiping. Rows of silver buttons marched down the front of their blouses and up their sleeves. These must be the mothers of those babies parked outside on the cradle boards.

The Navajo men wore cowboy clothes - Levi's, colored shirts, cowboy hats, and boots. Some of the black hats had old-fashioned silver hatbands. The older men had their long hair tied up in a big knot or chongo at the back of their necks. One little boy was wearing calico pants, slit up to the knee on the side, a style that went out of fashion fifty years before and that I never saw again. It was a style that had been favored by the infamous Comancheros during the last century, inherited directly from the Spanish conquistadors.

I was so enchanted by the other customers that it took me a while to begin shopping. Tearing my eyes away from an old-fashioned treadle Singer sewing machine with a price tag of $90, I let my eyes roam over the shelves that were stacked with canned goods, Levi's, bolts of velvet and sateen, boxes of western boots, and cowboy hats. From the ceiling, hung saddles and bridles, and kerosene lanterns. On the floor, were baskets of onions, apples, and potatoes. I noticed one old Indian spitting tobacco juice into the apple basket. No apples for me today, thank you!

In a back room, I glimpsed stacks of Navajo rugs and jewelry hung neatly on pegs with tags on each piece. "The jewelry is old pawn," the trader said - family jewelry pawned for cash until the owner can redeem it." He also said that once a week there would be fresh beef brought in by truck from Gallup; and if I wanted eggs, I could get them at the Catholic Mission when the hens were laying. So that would take care of my weekly grocery shopping.

Back at the house, I discovered something almost as interesting as the trading post. It was the view from my front window of the Navajo camp across the street. The yard was full of half-naked children, chickens, dogs, sheep, and a horse or two. Right in the middle of all this stood an imposing black Navajo police wagon.

The family lived in a cluster of hogans, the traditional Navajo home of that time. Hogans are a eight-sided, dome-shaped structure, built of logs and mud, with a smoke hole in the center of the dirt roof. Twelve feet in diameter and forty feet in circumference, they have no windows and the door, which always faced east, was usually covered with a blanket. The furniture was usually sheepskins to sit on and to sleep on, and every morning my neighbor brought hers outside and shook them vigorously, and then hung them on the fence to air.

This was the young woman who must be the mother of some of those children and every time I saw her, I waved to her, but she never responded.

With her housework done for the day, my neighbor had time for other duties. These might include chopping wood, carrying water, or weaving a rug. One day she had a special task. Before my amazed eyes, she killed a sheep, butchered it, cut the meat in pieces, and hung the pieces on her clothes-line. I learned that in Navajo culture, because the women owned the sheep, they had to do the butchering . . . . . . The activities in my backyard were of a different nature than those in the front yard. The second day I was there, I looked out my kitchen window and saw a Navajo wagon and a team of horses tied to my clothesline! The wagon was empty; the owners had gone down the hill to the trading post for a day of visiting and shopping. The horses were munching on what little grass they could find. As the days passed, more wagons and horses appeared and I began to get annoyed. I needed to use my clotheslines and did not appreciate sharing them with the horses. Also, I did not relish the job of shoveling up warm manure and throwing it in our garbage can. When my husband got back from his field trip, I told him about my uninvited visitors.

I don't know if he mentioned it to his boss or the word just got around over the Navajo grapevine, but after a while the wagons disappeared.

Did the Navajos know that the last range man's wife left because she didn't like the isolation of Chinle? I was finding it fascinating here and intended to stay a while, now that my backyard was clear.

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Catalogue Information

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