The Trading Post. Ii: Letters From a Primitive Land

April 27
HERE’S a conversation I have about twenty times a day: —
CUSTOMER. How much left?
I. Nothing left.
CUSTOMER. Really?
I. Really. Nothing left.
CUSTOMER. But I gave you fifty cents. Give me five cents’ worth of raisins and five cents’ worth of stick candy.
I. Really, you have nothing left. Coffee twenty-five cents, one orange five cents, one package of red dye ten cents, tobacco five cents, cigarette papers five cents. Nothing left. You know there is n’t.
CUSTOMER. Ya-de-la. I forgot the tobacco. I put it in my pocket.
The women are the worst, and how they do rant and rave if they think they can make me believe they are short a half dollar. They’ll argue for hours, and it’s often cheaper to give them the money outright than to have them go home angry and tell everyone they hav e been robbed.
Yesterday they came early and stayed late — almost all night, in fact. About 9.30 P.M. we drove the crowd out and made for bed. Ken was almost asleep, Betty was snoring, and I had reached the cold-cream stage when definitely, though faintly, I heard that blowy whistle a Navajo drives his horses with. He keeps up a continual noise of shooing, whistling, and ‘Get up, there!’ in English. I take it he thinks the white man has discovered a language the horse understands. Anyhow, I heard the freighters coming — two four-horse teams from Gallup.
I screwed the lid back on the coldcream jar; Ken got up and dressed. I put on a kimono and hunted frantically for strings to tie up my stockings. The teams came to the platform in front of our door and unloaded. All the savages came in again and stood around and impeded traffic as we carried flour, coffee, canned goods, oranges, tobacco, sugar, handkerchiefs for headbands, and corduroy pants. I checked the load and tried to understand the remarks they made about my appearance. Can you see the picture? Almost midnight, coal-oil lamps, piles of freight, savages, and the one woman present in a kimono and a pigtail.
We are having another plague of whiskey in the neighborhood. Someone among the Indians, and we suspect our own crack freighter, is selling whiskey. Many of our near-t rusted stand-bys are prostrate — wit h headache. We have been unable to catch one of them with liquor, but its effects are evident enough. It’s a case for the police, I think. I hope we can give them a scare—not the police; the bootleggers, you understand.

May 5
Perhaps I did not tell you about the cherry-red plush coat. It was full length, and that means to the ankles, red plush lined throughout with black sateen. There were five pockets. When my part of the work was finished the owner put five buttons made of half dollars on t he front, seven or eight made of dimes on each sleeve, one on each lapel, and seven on the slit up the back that I had made so he could ride in the coat. It was gorgeous. The first day it was in his possession, he gambled and lost it. At once he came in and ordered another, but we were out of the plush and have never been able to get it.

May 18
I’ve just seen something that you’ll hardly believe. I am doubting even though I ’ve seen it happen. A Navajo first aid — and I must say the doctor would probably have come too late.
The freighters who are going out tomorrow with wool for shipment are camped here for the night, and a boy about fifteen was putting twelve head of mules into the corral. One of the mules kicked the boy, one foot hitting his shoulder and the other the back of his head. If he had been an inch closer, he would have been killed. The boy’s father, his grandfather, and Ken saw the kick and saw the boy drop. Ken, of course, started toward him, but the Indians stopped him. Old Utcity, the grandfather, and a big doctor himself, came into the store and called everyone inside. The boy’s mother, who was cooking supper outside, came in with her two little tots and sat down on the floor; the father came in and stood with head bent and arms folded.
A doctor not related to the boy went out alone and down to the corral. I came into our room and looked out of the window, though Ken told me not to, because the others did n’t, and he would n’t.
With a little medicine bag in his hand, the medicine man walked slowly to the corral gate. There he stood for an hour, or five minutes, — one can’t estimate time under such conditions, — and then he zigzagged into the corral, sprinkling medicine out of the bag. When he reached the boy, he took pinches of something out of the bag and dropped them on or around the boy. He made motions in the air as if he were driving something away. I think it was about ten minutes before he stooped down and helped the boy to his feet. The lad walked slowly and painfully about. The doctor followed him, making signs and pushing away something imaginary. They came out of the corral, went by the house, and disappeared over the hill.

The family went outside, but made no move to go near the boy. After a little the mother followed the boy, but came back alm ost at once. Ken walked around where he could see and saw the boy lying on the ground out of sight of the house. We waited and watched, and surely the Indians must have been doing the same, but there was not the least appearance of uneasiness or watchfulness on the surface.
After a little the boy moved into the hogan where his grandmother was staying because her sons-in-law were here, and if any son-in-law sees his motherin-law they both go blind. I went out to speak to the old lady and take some oranges to the boy. He was lying by the fire with a shawl under his head. The next morning he was sore and aching, so the father got another Indian to drive his team and took the boy home.
During the treatment, neither boy nor doctor made a sound, and there was no emotion on the part of anyone except myself.

June 1
The amount of silver under our counter is diminishing rapidly. I wish the last piece were gone, but there’s no possibility that that will happen. No, a large stock of silverware on hand does not mean that we are competing with Rogers ’47 or with a later make. It means that at wool-shearing season most of the pawn is redeemed and taken away. This silver is the silver money that has been hammered into beads, belts, rings, bridles. It is an Indian security and one of the trader’s greatest worries.
Every Indian owns at least one necklace of silver beads, with a crescentshaped pendant — the arms of friendship, they call it — hung by the middle of the curve. Sometimes this is mounted with turquoise, sometimes it is plain.

On each side of the pendant plain silver beads and four-petaled squash blossoms alternate.
At any time an Indian can take off his beads, pass them across the counter, and say, ‘Give me ten dollars in trade and keep my beads until shearing.’ Perhaps each member of the family will do the same, and every other family, until the trader has dozens of strings of silver beads worth from fifteen dollars each to three or four times as much. It is no small responsibility to house this treasure, I assure you, and there’s many a long argument as to just how much each piece is in for. At any time the owner may partly redeem his possessions or get more credit on them, and the difference between the successful trader and the failure lies in the pawning sense and the collecting ability.
It is very poor policy indeed for the trader to say to the Indian who has just sold his wool, ‘I’ll just credit your account with this money.’ A Navajo will not forgive that. He wants to handle the money, and if he does not feel inclined to pay his honest debts, that is the trader’s loss.
Sometimes an Indian will hand you the forty dollars you have just given him for a sack of wool, to redeem his silver bridle. Then he will pass the bridle back to the trader, pawn it for forty dollars, and trade the money out. Of course the trader does not want a silver bridle. It is no good to anyone but the Indian, and he wants it only once a year when he dresses up to go to the Yabachi, the harvest-home dance. At that time he comes to the trader, borrows the bridle for a week, if the trader will let him have it, and brings it back at the end of the week. The rest of the time it is hanging among the trader’s white elephants under the counter.
Many a trader has been shot and his store burned because he lost pawn.

June 15
Every once in a while I have a feeling that this is n’t I, and that all I am seeing is unreal. Do I actually see these Indians, the rough landscape with its scrubby trees, its scant grass, its lizards and coyotes, its water holes and trails — trails everywhere, with horse, cow, and sheep tracks and moccasin prints; not a dwelling for miles at a time, and then often smoke, but no dwelling?
The hogans are dirt-covered and are an exact match for their surroundings. Unless one sees the blue smoke in the air, one is not likely to see the habitation at all. A real hogan is a work of art. It is domelike, with a smoke hole some three feet across at the top. As you stand on the inside, the structure seems to be a large inverted basket made of peeled poles. The outside is covered with dirt put on moist enough to pack and smooth over the surface so it will shed rain and not blow away in the high winds.
Even in the coldest weather the hogans are so warm that the family remove part of their clot hes when they are going to stay inside for a time. The men wear what I call hogan pants. I have made many of them out of unbleached muslin, cretonne, or sateen. They are made like a sailor’s trousers, but are slit up t he side so the owner will have another place to sew silver buttons.
The basketlike interior of the hogan is soon smoke-stained and dark in color, but there is plenty of fresh air and sunshine coming through the smoke hole. Household utensils are few. The cooking things are put away, more or less clean, in a wooden box.
There is a great demand for the empty boxes the canned goods come in. I can appreciate the Indian need of the boxes, because that is my own style of furniture. A box is something rare and valuable. I was scolded by an indignant housewife for breaking one up to build a fire. She said I should get dry wood and bark from the trees and save the boxes for my friends who needed them in their hogans. I feel corrected, and shall save the boxes from now on.
In houses where I sometimes call to see the progress of a blanket I am allowing credit on, or to see a sick baby, they keep a box for me to sit on. Once I sat on the skins on the floor with the Indians, and both of my feet went to sleep. I can’t tell you their word for that condition, but they understood what had happened, and ever since have been very good about keeping a box for me. They will say, ‘Come over to our house and sit on your small square box today,’ or ‘Give me a box. Your old box is broken and there is no box for you at my house.’ When they say that, it seems that I should give them a box; otherwise a box is ten cents.
All the small crevices between the poles of the hogan are shelves and hiding places to tuck things away. The rough knots are to hang things on, and the weaver’s loom is supported by the overhead poles. In nice weather the weaving is moved out to a summer shelter of green boughs.
Of all places, a hogan was never designed to walk about in. You come in and sit down at once, because as long as you stand the smoke circles about the room, and when you sit down it ascends in a straight column to the smoke hole. You need to have your eyes full of this cedar and piñon smoke but once to make you feel that blindness is upon you.

July 23
Our Old Lady and two of her daughters arrived to call and to return the beads, bracelets, and medicine basket that they borrowed for their big sing. The Old Lady herself was the star performer. Such a sing is a curative or healing ceremony and is more interesting than the call.

The ceremony begins with a sand painting. I went early and found the high and mighty medicine man, a stranger to us, arranging a cushion of green boughs and ripe grass. When he had finished that he made a big suds of yucca root in a basket. This he placed before the boughs and sprinkled both with powdered leaves of some sort. All the time he was singing, and other singers with rattles sang with him.
Now the Old Lady took off her shirt and moccasins and knelt on the green boughs. The doctor or medicine man took down her hair, took off her beads, wet her head, and then washed her beads while she washed her hair. He poured the rinse water over her head. Never before had I seen an Indian man make himself useful to a woman in the least degree.
When her head was washed, he washed her feet and sprinkled her back, and I began to think he was going to help her off with the only skirt she had on; but three women came in and held robes to make a screen while the Old Lady finished her bath to the music the singers kept up.
After the bath, they told me there would be nothing more to see for a time and I could go home and come back about noon. I did. It was when I returned at noon that I saw the sand painting. It was so large there was barely room to sit one deep around the walls of the hogan.
It was done in black, white, red, blue, and yellow sand, and was beautiful beyond anything I had expected. The design was four stalks of corn, representing the corn god, with ears and silk on each. On the top of each stalk was a square head with arms and hands, one hand holding a large ear of corn and the other a ball. On each top corner of the head there was a tassel and on top of each tassel a bird, and a good bird he was, too. Around the foot and two sides

of the whole was a framelike stripe with corner posts of turkey and eagle feathers. Every line of the ent ire picture was clear and perfect.
At one side the Old Lady sat on a pile of new calico, covered with a buckskin. She was sans shirt and shoes. While the chorus kept up a steady number, the doctor painted her. A dazzling sight, I assure you.
The colors were mixed very thin and smooth by rubbing the little balls of colored clay on smooth, flat stones, dipping the clay balls in water, and rubbing again. When all was mixed, the doctor touched the white paint with his two forefingers, and, singing high and shrill all the while and keeping time with his painting, he made a double row of polka dots down each arm, then hit or miss over her back and down the front. He duplicated the performance with blue paint and then with yellow, until there was only a pleasing background of brown skin showing.
Still using the two paint fingers, he drew a black line straight across her face through the eyebrows. Her face above t his he made a dead white. From the black line down to and including her upper lip he made a solid yellow; her face below this and about half her neck he painted black. No one could possibly have recognized my dear and respected neighbor. Her beautiful black hair was wet and dangling and had bits of herb sprinkled through it.
All this was hard work for t he doctor. He weighed two hundred and twentyfive, and was stooping and singing constantly. The perspiration dripped from his face, and his plush shirt showed dark, wet areas.
It seemed to me there was not much more the old fellow could do in the way of decorating the Old Lady, but he knew something else. He moved his paint stone down to her feet; still chanting gustily, he squatted on his heels and, dipping small feather brushes in the paints, he made a snake on each foot. The heads in white, with black mouth, nose, and eyes, were on each great toe nail; the white zigzag angles of the bodies ran halfway up the shin bone. Her skirt was folded back barely enough to allow for the painting.
When all was finished, no one could have called her naked; she was actually the most covered-up person I ever looked at. Comical! I wanted to both laugh and weep. My poor dignified Old Lady — and everyone so sober!
While all this was being done, an assistant had been covering a ten-yearold boy with black and white polka dots. It seemed he was being taught the ceremony.
The decorated ones were now seated in the middle of the picture, where the doctor waved feathers, shells, sticks, and all sorts of jimcracks over them, and finally tied a bunch of feathers like a toy duster to the Old Lady’s topknot. She looked rakish as anything, with all that paint she was wearing. Then he took two little boards with gods painted on them, and, clapping her between them, he twisted her body to the right and then to the left, all the time making a sort of trilling noise that almost wrecked my gravity. He did that with every doodad he had in his pack, and then went over the lot again.
She sat with her legs straight out in front of her, and he placed boards at the soles of her feet and t hen gave each foot a little kick; with a trill he brought feather dusters down on her head; finally he put around her neck a necklace of dried and braided corn husk and bracelets of the same on her arms. After he had done everything anyone could possibly think of, he sent the two painted ones out. Then he put the handle of the feather-duster affair in his mouth, took a bunch of eagle feathers in one hand, and blew the whistle in the handle of the duster as he dragged the feathers down a line of the painting. In this way he went down each cornstalk and around the border.
This being finished, a robe was spread down in the middle of the floor, and the two patients — victims would be a better word — were called back. A basket of corn meal, with a pattern in medicine drawn on top, was set before them. The doctor took a pinch about as big as an egg and shoved it into the Old Lady’s mout h. Somehow she managed to down it in time for the next. After that, she and the boy helped themselves for a little, and that act was over.
They asked me to have some of the corn meal and I tasted it. No salt! How they ever swallowed it I don’t see.
It requires a specialist and an artist to do what that M.D. did. No common doctor could have made the sand painting; bis ease and confidence were wonderful. The sand used is from the different sand rocks of the Painted Desert formation we have around here. The black is charcoal. All the colors are ground fine on stone mills. The material he used to paint the Old Lady was the same, mixed with water to about the consistency of putty. The water used was dropped from a turtle shell.
In making the painting the sand is held in the closed fist and allowed to dribble in a thin stream between the thumb and forefinger. There may be some three or four colors in less than a half inch, but all the lines are true and not in the least blurred. I understand that every inch of color has its own proper place. The doctor had several assistants, but if anyone made the least mistake, he corrected it. Of course his only design is in his memory.

August 5
About five yesterday afternoon a messenger came bringing several things that did not add to my happiness. One was a reminder that a note at the bank is overdue. ‘Please give this your immediate attention.’ We are borrowing money to pay on a farm we are buying — in a country where there is more water than there is in a well.

March 30
I never supposed I should be so calm in a smallpox epidemic. It has come upon us suddenly, and almost immediately dozens have died. The Indians come to the store with their bodies covered; they lie down on the floor beside the stove sick as can be, and we have such a time getting them to go home. It’s raw and cold and wet outside, and our stove is red-hot inside. May you never know the odor of drying clothes, none-too-clean bodies, and the disease.
It’s not the least use for us to be careful; the disease is everywhere. Of course, when a medicine man treats anyone, a crowd comes to the ceremony and the disease is spread more effectively. This morning I shook hands with a man who had pox sores all over his body, face, and hands, but I did not notice them until I felt the roughness of his hand. He said two of his children were dead and all the others in the hogan sick, and he had had to come for food. Of course t here was nothing to do but take his money and pawn his beads, which must have had enough germs on them to kill the nation. Such things are of daily occurrence.
Vaccination has been explained to the Indians, and they go willingly to be vaccinated; but the roads are bad and the ponies poor and thin, so I offered to vaccinate here if the vaccine could be sent. I have had about twenty cases and expect more vaccine in a few days.
Among the first to die was our Old Lady — the finest woman and the best weaver in the whole countryside. I have never known a more perfect mother and housewife. She was a most competent head of the family, a counselor and guide to every man, woman, and child. The order she kept among some ten or more children, her own and her grandchildren, was beautiful to see. Already the household shows the absence of her managing hand. None of the children has been washed or combed since the Old Lady’s death. Her father came to me after she was buried and said, ‘My daughter is gone. Her children will be hungry. She called you her child, so you must not forget her babies.’
Very touching. They really believe t hey have a claim on me because I always walked to her hogan when I walked out at all, and I called her ‘mother.’ Now I am expected to feed and clothe the whole family.
In the midst of the death and disaster came Clizy do clizy (Blue Goat), full of distress because his black stallion was in awful danger of dying. Someone or some destructive devil had cut a part of the hair from the black stallion’s tail so that, instead of the full flowing ornament that almost touched the ground, the long black hairs hung in two spikes. This, somehow, was the worst kind of tragedy, and the whole family was in distress; even two of the children who have smallpox cried because the black stallion was bewitched and would surely die. . . .
I expect more vaccine to-morrow and have sent word to the Little Bidoni’s family to come. They are a very intelligent and superior household, with several small children.
The name ‘Little Bidoni’ we gave him because his own name is hard to say and harder to write. Bidoni means son-in-law. His name is Somebody’s Son-in-law. It’s the ‘Somebody’ I can’t say or spell.

March 31
Another day. Only two deaths reported. The condition is worst, we hear, around the government post. Almost everyone everywhere has had t he disease, however, and there is scarcely a smooth skin left on the Reservation.

April 1
Night again. It has been a hectic day. I’ve held the hands of four small poxy Injuns when they came to tell me of a death in their hogan and put out their hands for a sympathetic grip. When they shake hands, they hold for several minutes. What could I do but console them in their way? I’m covered with smallpox germs. One woman, who was covered with sores, laid her head on my shoulder and leaned against me. Her husband died last night. What use precautions?
The Little Bidoni came this afternoon with his two wives and five small children. The smallest, a boy about four years old, had never been to a store before, his father told us. The others, one girl and three boys, were all shy and sweet and so unusually well dressed. They all had on silver belts and beads. The little girl, who was about fourteen, must have had on six pounds of silver, including lovely blue turquoise ear loops of fine beads which announce she is of marriageable age.
My apparatus and technique for vaccination consist of soap and water to wash a clean spot on the arm, then the scraping of a small area, and the rubbing in of a small drop of vaccine.
In this instance Ken and the Little Bidoni stood leaning against the high counter in the store while I arranged my things on the counter. The Little Bidoni stood where he could see the members of his family being vaccinated, but he did not show a wrinkle of anxiety. The children and the two wives as I vaccinated them never for a moment took their eyes from the Little Bidoni’s face; lie gave them very quiet, straight looks, but seemed to be taken up with the conversation which he and Ken carried on by unspoken agreement.
KEN. You have a large and handsome family, my friend.
LITTLE BIDONI. Oh yes. I am happy that you say so. My family is happy at the hogans.
KEN. Your girl is very beautiful. She is quiet and well behaved like her mother, who makes the fine blankets.
LITTLE BIDONI. Yes, you are right. My daughter is a good girl. She owns many sheep and is going to be wise like her mother.
KEN. My friend, your boys are all brave and strong.
LITTLE BIDONI. La-a-a, my brother. My sons, as you see, are all brave. Not one would flinch from any small pain.
Just here I was vaccinating the fouryear-old boy. He was white as a brownskin could be, but made no sound or movement.
KEN. You speak truly. Your sons are all brave and unafraid. Please allow my wife, who likes all brave boys, to fill a bag with candy for each of your children who is here to-day.

April 30
Back home again from what might be called a pilgrimage. Our nearest government doctor ran out of vaccine. We simply had to have some, so I started to the railroad for it.
How did I go? Don’t ask me. I have a sinking feeling whenever I think of that seven days. A circuit of one hundred and seventy-five miles, with a Navajo team and the Navajo! Snow! Drifts! Mud! Slow travel!
I did not suppose anything in this world would justify to me whipping a horse, but that Navajo team was the most aggravating thing that ever existed. As I left here at 4 A.M. Ken said, ‘Don’t let him drive hard until afternoon. Take it easy until the horses get strung out.’

Don’t let him drive hard! By whipping, yelling, and slashing we could get that team to trot — downhill — never otherwise. If for two minutes the driver stopped his belaboring, they stopped. He would stand up, lean over the dashboard, and lash with all his might, and the horses would walk slowly out of the road and come to a dead standstill; he ’d pull on the line to turn them back and they’d twist their necks, open their mouths, and stand there. Several times he had to get out and slash them around the legs and shoo them back into the road as he would an old cow.
The wonder to me was that not once did that Indian appear to lose his temper; he did n’t seem to think he was passing through anything unusual. For a while I was fairly sick with the whipping, and then I regretted I had n’t brought a pitchfork.
At noon we stopped at a water hole, fed those beast s, and ate our own lunch. One horse would not eat corn, had never learned to like it. Many Indian ponies will not eat grain of any kind, even when they are starving. At first I thought the horse was worn out and too tired to eat, and I began to feel remorse for wanting that pitchfork; but when the Indian tried to catch the brute to hitch up — and the beast was hobbled, too — I got over my pity and remorse.
We got under way again with twenty miles, mostly upgrade, to go. I can’t tell you about the first eleven miles. Sometimes I think I am still traveling that road and always shall be. It was endless. When nine miles from the post office, our destination the first day, we came into the Keams Cañon road. For five miles that led across a wide valley. Five miles of mud and melting snow ! Hard footing for any team — but for that one! It’s a wonder I have any disposition left. We crept and slid and staggered so slowly that when we stopped, as we often did, it would be several seconds before I realized we were standing still. It was sundown. Still miles of mud ahead of us, and the horses done out. A cold night was coming and I began to wonder if I could make it the rest of the way on foot in the moonlight. Again I thought it would be better to wait until the mud began to freeze and we could travel better.
I had not decided when the mail from Keams, two men in a light rig, passed us. They stopped when they could look back into our top buggy and see the passengers were not all Indians. One of the men insisted that he and I change seats so I could get to the stopping place before night. I agreed, and waded in mud over my shoe tops to make the change. Away I went, rejoicing to have mud splattered on me by a real live team.
My Indian got in at ten o’clock, his passenger an hour earlier, because he got out and walked.
It snowed that night and we had a blizzard for the next two days. The road to the railroad was so bad that everyone advised me not to try it. Finally one of the men at the post office volunteered to go, and I let him. Hoping the road would be better, my Navajo and I came back by Nozlini and Chin Lee. It was a little farther, but there were two places to stop instead of one.
So ended my travels. I vowed I’d not go out again until I could go in an airship. Ken expects to go week after next with our own team. The roads will be better, if it does not storm.

May 19
When I opened the mail sack brought in by the freight teams of Sendol zhi, there was the usual roll of photogravure sheets which Mother sends us from the New York Journal. These bring the war nearer than anything else we have, unless it is the food question, but the food in a beef-and-mutton-eating country never is so much of a problem as it is elsewhere, I imagine.
The brown sheet shows photographs of the crowds in Paris, the streets jammed, soldiers marching, flags everywhere.
The page is always immediately spread out on the counter, and as many Indians as can get near crowd around and look and ask quest ions. They point and marvel. I marvel, too, at the real intelligence with which they study the pictures. Not one of them has ever been farther from the Reservation than the railroad towns a hundred miles to the south and east, but of course they recognize the buildings. They count the stories and the windows and guess that a particular building would be as high as such and such a rock or bluff. They recognize cars and automobiles and identify soldiers by the uniforms, and they count all of them.
One day when they despaired of counting so many people as there were in the picture of massed crowds, one took a soda-pop bottle, borrowed my pencil, and drew circles all over the sheet.. Then they counted the people in each circle and asked me to add the numbers. After that they estimated that there were four persons in each space not included in the circles and I added those numbers. It came to several thousand and they repeated the figure all day, trying to grasp the magnitude of it in people. They speculated on how many sheep and horses all the Navajos owned, and the number of people was greater than the number of animals. At last they decided the stars were the only thing as numerous, or maybe the grass.
The army planes in a picture were flying in a formation like a flock of wild geese. The Indians asked if they would come down at the water holes. They couldn’t get away from the idea that things that flew had bird habits even if men did ride in them.
In a few days the brown sheets are worn to rags; every inch has been pawed over and discussed. Always questions follow: How many white people left? Pretty soon, maybe so, Navajos will be the only people left. When all the white men are dead, what will the white women do?
You should have heard one old medicine man rave because there was no more free tobacco in the bowl on our counter. We explained that the soldiers had to have the cigarettes. That did not convince the old fellow that he should not have any.
Another old Indian wants the barbed wire when the war is done. He will use it to fence his desert water hole. He looks at the pictures and says they don’t seem to know how to make a good fence over there, so he will take enough to surround a bit of grass for pasture. They seem to have so much tangled up and going to waste over there!
A picture of a long line of ambulances and hospital interiors impressed all the Indians. One asked if their mothers knew when the soldiers were hurt, and who would and how could they bury the dead where there were no quiet outof-sight places.
One studied the picture for a long time and said soberly, ‘Much weeping. All the women will cry.’

June 4
News! The Navajo men must go to the Fort to register. Great excitement! Some most unwise and shortsighted trader has spread the tale that the registered Indians are to be compelled to go to war and will be put in the front and shot first to save the white men.
This morning a strange Indian came into the store and bought every rifle cartridge we had for the 30-30 carbines, the most used gun with the Indians. Ken says I should not have sold him the cart ridges, but the Indian could see we had them. Somehow I did not want him to know I was afraid to sell them to him, so I asked if the coyotes were getting his sheep and he said yes.
I am not going to worry. Ken says he thinks the old men can keep the young hot-heads quiet. He has invited them to meet here any time to talk things over among themselves. He thinks they had better be here where we can feed them than to get excited on an empty stomach and do something rash.

June 11
Another week gone, and all the men of fighting age are registered. Every day the talk goes on. The plan is this: When the first sign of an order comes for the Indians to leave the Reservation, the Indians around each store are to kill the trader and his family and burn the store. The pawn is to be saved and returned to the owners, and the supplies saved, if possible, for the Indians’ use. They will all rise and act on the same day. When the stores are burned — and please note that they have figured they can use clubs at the stores and save their ammunition — they will all march on the railroad towns and fire and kill as long as they can. They know the white soldiers and guns are all across the sea, so the Indians think they can destroy many towns before anyone can stop them.
How like paradise our ranch would be now. No one can say we have n’t earned it. If this war leaves us alive to get to it, I hope I never see, hear, or smell an Indian again. I must be tired. Likely I won’t feel that way to-morrow.

June 29
A week ago Ken listened, by invitation, to the Indian powwow held here. About a hundred and twenty-five

Indians sat on the shady slope by the camp hogan, ate doughnuts and coffee, and smoked cigarettes; and then one, and another, and another talked. They kept it up all day. For the first time I realized where the Indians got their reputation of being serious and unsmiling. The sun went down, and the moon — what there was of it — came up, and still they talked. I was tired out and ready to drop. About midnight I went to bed and tried to sleep.
I think I had dozed off when the most blood-curdling uproar brought me to my feet in the middle of the floor. Horses were clattering over the trail, quirts were slashing and saddles squeaking — note how thin the walls of this house are. At last I distinguished Ken’s voice in the farewells, and I let my breath out.
Next the Navajos’ riding song floated through the night. We had n’t heard that for weeks, — not since the men went to the Fort to be registered, — and how beautiful, how perfectly uplifting it sounded.
I was almost in tears before Ken could tell me what had happened. After he had told me, I could not decide whether to weep for joy or for apprehension, so I did neither, but went to sleep and slept all night — or what was left of it.
It was just like Ken to think of the solution that would suit the would-be warriors, but might not please other white men.
As I said, first one and then another talked. The young men were for organizing a massacre and killing as many whites as they could before soldiers could be brought in. Some eighteen thousand fighting men had registered, and they had bought all the ammunition on the Reservation. Killing the whites on the Reservation would have been no job at all; they would scarcely be in good training by the time they reached the towns. They knew all that only too well.
The older men could remember Kit Carson and his scouts, and they did not want trouble. The young fellows answered with the story that the Indians were to be sent across the sea and put in the first lines and killed first.
Toward midnight they asked Ken to talk, and with nothing but his own conviction to go on he made several serious promises.
At one time the Mexicans owned this land where the Navajos are now, and quarrels over land are within the memory of all and the experience of many.
Ken told his audience that if the Indians were called to fight it would be to protect their own hogans, their own families, and their own wide valleys from the Mexicans. He told them that if they were called for that purpose Washington would see that they were made soldiers and provided with all they needed. He told them that if they were called off the Reservation he would go with them and lead them.
It was what they wanted to believe, and they believed it. Since, they have been getting their herds in shape as any white man would if he expected to leave home; they have bought such things as heavy shoes, saying moccasins would not do for long marches. Old men and all want to start south to meet the Mexicans.
We were afraid a report of Ken’s words would reach the Agency before our letter. If the Agent contradicted the report — we should n’t be making any more speeches about war policy or anything else.
We got our letter off to the Agent by special messenger, but felt none too comfortable while we waited four days for the answer. When it came it was hearty approval of what Ken had done.
We admit to ourselves that what Ken did probably averted a massacre, but at best the situation now is a doubtful joke. Ken might have to make good on some of his promises.

July 9
Do you know, I believe I am the only woman in the Allied countries who is not knitting, and I don’t so much as own a needle. And I don’t know how to knit. The Red Cross centres you speak of — the nearest one is a hundred and fifty miles or thereabouts from me. I feel guilty. Perhaps it will count for something that I have handled so much of the wool before it becomes yarn.

November 9
Packing to move your earthly goods in one small camp wagon is something of a job. We nailed up a few boxes and sent them out by the freight teams yesterday. When we start we shall take only a camp outfit. We are to go over a pass that is three full hard days north of us.
Our successor is at the store and is in control, and we are so glad and relieved to be able to give our whole time to packing and getting away. Almost four years we’ve been here. In all my life I have never put in a more colorful period. I feel as if I were returning home after a long journey in a foreign land. I am glad I went and glad to be home again. The new life will be interesting too.

November 12
Armistice! The whole world happy, and we did not know it until twentyfour hours after. No need to fight Mexicans! Nothing to do but hurry to those green fields and grow food.
And I don’t need to learn to knit.
Yours,
H.