Sources, arranged by publication date, included: Articles from the Winslow Mail by Janice Henling and others (1917-2009); Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site: An Administrative History by Albert Manchester and Ann Manchester for National Park

Service Division of History, Santa Fe, New Mexico (1993); Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site by David M Brugge for Southwest Parks and Monuments Association (1993); Cultural Landscape Report: Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site,

Ganado, Arizona by Peggy Froeschauer-Nelson for NPS Intermountain Support Office, Santa Fe, NM (1998); Indian Trader: The Life and Times of J.L. Hubbell by Martha Blue (2000); National Register of Historic Places Registration Form (United States

Department of the Interior National Park Service; Listed 11-21-2002); Old Trading Posts of the Four Corners by Richard C. Berkholz (2007); Navajo Pawn: A Misunderstood Traditional Trading Practice by Billy Kiser for NPS Hubbell Trading Post

National Historic Site (2010); Hubbell Trading Post Furnishings Report and Plan by Hubbell Trading Post National Park Service Staff; Heritage Conservation, Drachman Institute; College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, University of Arizona,

Tucson, Arizona (2011); Winslow by Ann-Mary Lutzick (2013); Arizona’s Historic Trading Posts by Carolyn O'Bagy Davis (2014); The Spectacle of Navajo Weaving: Monumental Navajo Rugs by Jennifer McLerran in American Indian Art Magazine,

Spring 2014, pages 32-41 & 71; Big Rug to Reappear At MNA Navajo Festival on Aug. 1 by Diandra Markgraf, Arizona Daily Sun, July 26, 2015.

Due to the seasonal nature of the tribal economy, trading posts were critical to household economies because they

offered not only sales and barter but also credit and pawn. Credit and pawn debts were usually settled up twice a

year – in the spring when the sheep were sheared and in the fall when sheep and cattle were sold.

Navajo pawn began in the 1870s as a banking system quite different from credit. Navajo customers could get

supplies by leaving their valuable property with the trader until they could pay their debt. Over time, pawn became

an important part of Navajo culture and represented the trust that existed between Navajo people and non-Native

traders. And since pawn rooms were locked and fortified, pawning a valuable saddle or piece of jewelry

temporarily secured it. The traders themselves took a risk – they often endured robberies and violence while

holding expensive pawn items.

Successful traders, usually Anglo, strove for good relationships with their Navajo friends and neighbors. They

often learned their language, promoted their artwork, and donated to their ceremonial and holiday gatherings. They

often mediated between Navajos and the non-Native world, acting as translators, legal advisors, caregivers, and

undertakers, the latter because of the Navajo prohibition against handling the dead. Traders and their customers

had complex relationships, and they ultimately relied on each other for their economic survival and success.

By the 1880s, a trading post usually consisted of a grocery store/bullpen, wareroom,

trader’s living quarters, guest hogans for Navajo customers, and corrals and hay barns

for cattle and sheep. After a long day of travel to the post, Native customers could eat,

stay the night, and socialize with each other before they began their trading business.

Traders started out carrying improved versions of familiar basic staples. But they

eventually stocked a wide variety of foods including beef, mutton, lard, bacon, flour,

sugar, salt, baking powder, coffee (usually Arbuckles), tobacco, potatoes, and canned

peaches and tomatoes. Their Navajo customers also asked for cookware and utensils,

tools and oil lanterns, saddles and harnesses, shoes and hats, and thread and fabric. In

exchange for these goods, Navajos brought in livestock, wool, and hides as well as

blankets, rugs, pottery, baskets, and jewelry, for either sale or trade.

As the Navajo population increased from a low of 8,000 in the 1860s to over 20,000 by

1900, the number of trading posts also increased. In 1876, five posts were in operation

and by 1900, there were about eighty posts in operation on or near the Navajo

Reservation. Though the Great Depression and subsequent New Deal sheep reduction

program in the 1930s forced a severe decline in economic activity for both Navajos and

traders, there were almost 150 posts in operation by the mid-1940s.

In order to establish a military presence in Navajo lands, the federal government

established Fort Defiance north of what is now Window Rock in 1851. Fort Defiance

and other military posts consumed most of the Arizona Territory’s crops and livestock.

Soldiers obtained additional supplies from itinerant merchants called “sutlers” that sold

goods on military posts from their covered wagons.

In the winter of 1864, the federal government forced nearly 9,000 Navajos on the “Long

Walk” (Hweéldi in Navajo) to desolate Fort Sumner at Bosque Redondo in New Mexico

Territory. Over 2,500 Navajos died from starvation and exposure on the journey, and

more died from deplorable conditions at the fort. In 1868, the survivors returned from

their imprisonment to the newly established Navajo Reservation, created from a small

portion of their original lands. They stopped at Fort Defiance along the way to pick up

thousands of sheep and goats provided by the federal government for resettlement.

The interned Navajos had acquired a taste for certain foods and goods during their

confinement at Bosque Redondo. Many sutlers began to establish more permanent

enterprises, usually near water sources and known trade routes, and encouraged Navajos

to trade their surplus livestock and wool for supplies. If these new trading posts were

located on the Navajo Reservation, they were licensed and taxed by the federal

government and the tribe, and traders were prohibited from selling alcohol or guns.

Trading posts played a unique role in the economy of the American West from the 1870s through the 1970s.

John Lorenzo Hubbell was the most successful, respected, and influential trader of the era. The Winslow

trading post and warehouse played a critical role in the Hubbell family’s trading empire.

The Winslow area has long been at a crossroads of commercial and cultural exchange. The Little Colorado

River sustained the nearby Homol’ovi villages, and a passable ford across the river brought prehistoric

trails, military expeditions, pioneer wagon roads, and Mormon settlers through the area long before the

railroads crossed the Colorado Plateau. Ancestral Puebloans, ancestors of the Hopi, inhabited the Homol’ovi

villages northeast of present-day Winslow from A.D. 200 through 1600. Inhabitants likely grew and traded

cotton for pottery with the Pueblo villages on the mesas to the north. When they vacated Homol’ovi at the

end of the 14th century, the inhabitants likely migrated north to those mesas, where the federal government

established the Hopi Reservation in 1882.

The Athabaskans, hunter-gatherer ancestors of the Navajo, may have arrived in the Southwest as early as the

1400s from northern Canada. By the 1700s, Navajos, or Diné (“the people”), were building wooden homes

called hogans, growing crops, and tending sheep. They also engaged in mutual trade with Pueblo people,

Spanish settlers, and others living on the Colorado Plateau.

Though the Spanish introduced horses, sheep, and new crops to the region, neither Spain nor Mexico ever

gained control of the southwestern Colorado Plateau. The United States acquired most of ten future states as

a result of the Mexican-American War and 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. The federal government

created the New Mexico Territory in 1850 and the Arizona Territory from the New Mexico tract in 1863.

The Arizona Territory’s northern region remained isolated and undeveloped.

This Navajo woman, child, and weaver from Dilkon pose

for a photo in 1927. Dilkon is 36 miles from Winslow,

Béésh Sinil (the “place of steel rails”) to the Navajo.

Navajos are expert sheepherders, like these two shearing

sheep in a “Frashers Fotos” postcard from 1932.

This map of the Little Colorado River watershed boundary (in blue) shows Winslow’s proximity to

Navajo and Hopi tribal lands and the Hubbell Trading Post in Ganado. (Archaeology Southwest)

Trading posts played a critical role in the economy of the

Navajo people. More than other Native peoples, Navajos

produced a high variety and volume of goods and welcomed

the opportunity to exchange them for the supplies they needed.

Trading posts provided a vital link between the reservation

and the marketplace by offering an exchange system for

goods, as well as transportation of those goods over scarce

and hazardous roads.

The Winslow Visitors Center: A Hubbell Trading Post History was made possible by the Old Trails Museum/Winslow Historical Society and the Winslow Chamber of Commerce. This exhibit was developed for

the Winslow Visitors Center’s Centennial Celebration by Old Trails Museum Director Ann-Mary Lutzick. Unless otherwise noted, all images and interviews are from the Old Trails Museum Collection. The

exhibit’s border designs are from the “World’s Largest Navajo Rug”; images courtesy of Dan Lutzick. The Print Raven in Flagstaff printed the exhibit panels. The Old Trails Museum thanks the following people

for their help with this exhibit: Bob Hall and Angela Gonzales Moser with the Winslow Chamber of Commerce/Winslow Visitors Center; Nancy Mahaney and Kathleen Tabaha with the Hubbell Trading Post

National Historic Site; Renee James and Robert Spindler with ASU Archives and Special Collections; and Laura Keller with the Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records.