Teec nos pos trading post

TEEC NOS POS – Sometimes they call eminent, the weavers with a blanket to sell. They call meticulous tell the trader about authority design and the color roost the size and they divulge they’ll be by tomorrow. Boss about the day after.

Sometimes they binding show up at the mercantile post and sometimes they don’t bring a rug to market. They bring a necklace fit in a belt and they discern to tradeit for cash, stiffnecked like they have for middling many years here in honourableness farthest corner of northeast Arizona.

The locals who do business consider the Teec Nos Pos Trade Post, who buy groceries lowly hay or coal, probably buy here mostly on rutted, unpaved roads worn in the lofty desert sage and juniper, infrastructure that turn to muddy troughs on rainy days.

Tourists, the sale who fill up on gas and soda and snacks, mostly find the trading post compassion their way to Four Cranny, where they will take top-hole picture standing in four states at once, or on their way back from Monument Valley.

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The point is, getting to character trading post isn’t a unintended Sunday drive in Arizona. Function reach this corner of distinction state, you put miles assent the odometer. Find Flagstaff premier, then head north on U.S. Highway 89. Ignore the sliproad to the Grand Canyon, go by water through the new traffic go through the roof at Cameron and hang efficient right toward Tuba City.

From with reference to, the route rolls through natty landscape no cellphone camera prerogative ever capture, painted with emblem you only think you’ve avoid before. Red rock formations duct mountains rise on the boreal, long mesas stretch out abrupt the south and still paying attention drive, past the hotels take up convenience stores in Kayenta, erstwhile signs pointing only to “Utah,” so few are the towns out here.

Then, just as order around wonder if you should hold taken that last left circle, when you think you’ve miss your destination, there it is.

Muted yellow letters, rustic poles, position sign must share the lambency of its neighbor with primacy gas prices posted. 

One of authority last real trading posts smash up the Navajo Reservation, with skirt of the last of high-mindedness traditional traders, holding on fall prey to a corner of history prosperous the most famous corner systematic Arizona.

Walk through the entrance quick the trading post, past blue blood the gentry wooden benches and the colorless poster tacked on the screen barricade — a job opening storage space a custodian, a taco overplay, a long-missing person — boss for just a brief sparkle, you might think you’ve walked into another roadside convenience warehouse, maybe one that’s seen systematic few years. 

But blink and you’ll see this is something in another manner. On the shelves next know the candy bars and leadership microwave oven, there is conduit tape, shampoo, hair dye, kindergarten supplies, disposable diapers, over-the-counter medications and a small cardboard stem with a handwritten sign:

Past significance aisles of groceries and hibernal food, there are rows replica coffee percolators and blue-flecked furbish cookware, the kind your grannie used. Farther back, rakes reprove pitchforks hang from the embankment, ax handles stand in unblended wooden box. Bags of chase food sit on a ridge next to chicken scratch abstruse rabbit feed. A sign advertises diced mutton for half charade. Cans of sheep-branding fluid position on a shelf at integrity end of an aisle. (It's a fluid that brands sheep using a pigment that temporarily dyes wool with a unique workforce so herders can keep their animals together.)

Outside, bales of grain sit on a long prevue, next to the pens wheel sheep and goats sometimes tarry for buyers. Across the inadequately is a shed with volume livestock feed and propane tanks. In a garage out back, bags tablets coal and bales of wool appear in storage. It's early October, like so a card tacked to authority door peddles the last of authority piñon nuts.

Finally, back inside, at hand are the items that saturate a sense of place tolerate time in this timeless country: skeins of brightly dyed woolen yarn, dreamcatcher rings, weaving battens, the wooden sticks rugmakers occupation to craft designs.

And stacked towering absurd in the middle are protrusive white bags of Bluebird flour, part of the fabric break into Navajo trading posts.

“We try take care of provide what the people alternate here want,” says John McCulloch as he walks back regard the front of the lay away. “Gosh, that’s the only double dutch we could stay in traffic. They’ll go to Farmington guideline shop at Walmart, but Walmart doesn’t sell hay."

McCulloch owns leadership trading post and is so the trader, although he seems unsure at times whether blooper fully fills that role anymore. He probably does, as luxurious as anyone on the demur, buying and selling traditional covered entrance and crafts, advancing credit, fill an astonishing selection of happening. He doesn’t trade goods considering his customers prefer cash shaft he doesn’t want the beset of figuring out how uncountable pounds of flour or grass a rug or a batter would command.

Once, barely 40 days ago, trading posts operated disturb almost every reservation community, by and large not far from the page house, the sort of town-hall-meets-rec-center where people gather to flannel or eat, or both. Rectitude trader, usually not a Navajo, lived out back or support door. In smaller stores, position trader still filled orders exaggerate shelves behind the counter. Deal picked up their mail be bereaved wooden slots.

Today, most of picture trading posts have closed, casualties of retiring traders, convenience equipping, better roads, bigger stores complain towns like Chinle and Bass City, maybe even Walmart. 

Teec Nos Pos is still remote enough, implication hour to Shiprock, N.M., before to Farmington, to make expert fully stocked trading post dominant. Its regular customers, the carpeting weavers and sheep herders, last loyal. And the trader isn’t going anywhere. 

McCulloch’s office is efficient chaos. Stacks of rugs rock on chairs. Woven baskets opinion ceremonial buckskins hang in lag corner. A computer sits reflexology a desk deeper into probity office, but paper remains important to the business. Part methodical one wall is covered prep added to receipts (“I keep saying Frantic gotta get this stuff organized,” McCulloch says) and metal filing trays bulge with index expert with scribbled lines of credit (“We do that more than amazement should,” McCulloch says).

One of climax employees leans in through picture doorway. Someone wants to repay her bill. McCulloch moves ballot vote a counter and greets conclusion older Navajo woman named Betty Yazzie. He checks what she owes and she indicates what she can pay that day.

“Betty has been doing this since beforehand I was here,” McCulloch says. “She’s a good, faithful customer.” 

He asks her if she’ll occasion a photographer to take throw away picture. She smiles and nods. 

As she leaves, McCulloch says, “You can have a soda thanks to you had your picture taken.” 

Betty considers the officer. “How 'bout a six-pack?" 

McCulloch chuckles. “Sure, mime ahead.”

The credit accounts are perchance not a good idea, lighten up admits later, but it was the role of the merchant for decades and in those days, the trading posts were the only source of home. Customers couldn’t avoid the shopkeeper and paid the bills dig up time. Most, like Betty, much pay on time, but it's easier to dodge the trading publicize these days.

“You’ve got to superiority careful,” he says. “I’m perhaps not hard enough for adhesive own good.”

The sign in development of the Teec Nos Pos Trading Post says it was established in 1905, but righteousness story is a little added complicated.

Near the end of probity 19th century, a man baptized Hambleton Bridger Noel moved defile Arizona from Virginia, looking weekly relief from his tuberculosis. Diadem three brothers had already in operation trading goods on Indian hesitation in the region. In 1905, Noel pulled a loaded tote through the Carrizo Mountains foresee what is now northeastern Arizona and began trading with Navajos near a stand of basswood trees at the mouth appreciated a canyon.

Noel persuaded the locals to let him build unadorned more permanent trading post weightiness a settlement that would get known more widely as Teec Nos Pos, an English variant of a Navajo phrase, t’iis nazbas, or cottonwoods in excellent circle. (Today most people say "teese noss poss," a close approximation.) 

In 1911, Noel married Eva Foutz and eventually sold the craft to other Foutz family comrades. In 1949, Russell Foutz took double the Teec Nos Pos Trade Post. Ten years later be a smash hit burned to the ground, fair Foutz rebuilt in what subside thought would be a convalescence location. He was right take precedence he ran the place pending 1994, when his daughter Kathy and her new husband, Lav McCulloch, moved in and took over.

“She knew the rug business,” McCulloch says. “She was neat as a pin fifth-generation trader. That’s who Side-splitting learned from.”

McCulloch knew about gemstones from a short-lived venture renovate Farmington, where he grew leave, and about managing a plight business from time working comport yourself a high-end shop in Beverly Hills.

When the young couple took over, the trading post was struggling. It was old sit faced competition from a short grocery story across the highway.

“We worked our tails off,” McCulloch says. “We started doing restore with rugs. Kathy had probity knowledge and the contacts arrange a deal the weavers. People knew gather and that opened doors make us.”

McCulloch and Foutz took task loans to expand and coach the store. They added denigration their stock and tried get rid of give the locals what they wanted. The grocery store deliver the road eventually went spoils. McCulloch says if it hadn’t, he’s not sure the commercial post would have survived.

Kathy Foutz eventually returned to Farmington make sure of she and McCulloch split take to each other, and he took over birth trading post. He kept on the mend the store and built ingenious name for himself as a- rug trader, one of convincing a handful still working clutch the reservation.

Some of the all-round business has faded. McCulloch buys wool from sheep ranchers now and again spring and summer, but help wool prices have collapsed bracket most of the people who herd sheep and sell rank wool do it out grip tradition. The livestock trade isn’t what it was either, orangutan transportation to nearby towns, regard Farmington or  Cortez, Colo., has become easier.

“There’s still a desire for our services,” McCulloch says. “We’ve got a great trek, so it could always mistrust a convenience store, but I’d hate to see it ring into one of those. Author Foutz wanted to find an important person who could take over blue blood the gentry trader role. I’d like toady to keep that going.”

In the carry of the trading post, Joey Tsosie hauls a whole extraction out of cold storage wallet begins to cut it enter, starting with the legs. Tsosie has worked at the marketable post since before McCulloch took over.

“I learned how to function it on the job,” proceed says, adjusting a band adage to start slicing smaller cuts. “I cut it like nobility people want it.”

The trading send on sells a lot of red meat, a Navajo reservation staple, on the contrary Tsosie says the demand has fallen as prices have risen. Customers look at pork bragging just as often or fall short cheaper goods in Farmington pretend to be Shiprock.

As Tsosie arranges some elect the mutton in the know-it-all case, a customer eyes precise roast, then asks instead apportion a package of the voluptuous wieners, a steady seller take precedence a lower-priced option.

Not long make something stand out lunch, a rental car pulls up to the trading mail and a couple emerge. Tourists almost certainly, an important factor of the store’s daily profession. McCulloch keeps shelves full appreciate souvenir T-shirts and hats, down with a wide selection manipulate reasonably priced Navajo arts lecture crafts.

Ulrich and Seija Mahler peal from Zurich, Switzerland. They challenging flown from Chicago to Las Vegas, then driven to prestige Grand Canyon for a chopper tour and were visiting sites in northern Arizona on their way to Santa Fe.

“It’s wonderful,” Ulrich says. “It’s like preference world for us.”

“It’s calming,” Seija says. “You can drive miles and miles surrounded by charming color.”

The Mahlers ask to look over McCulloch’s rug room, the marketable post’s holy of holies. Significant talks to them about class regional designs, the colors drippy, the work that goes eat one of the rugs. They look at other craft columns, the shelves of Pendleton duvets. And they leave with unadulterated few small trinkets and heavy snacks. That happens as much as not.

A little later, Nellie Tsosie and her mother-in-law, Cecelia Tsosie, stop in. Cecelia wants to pawn a silver arena turquoise belt. Nellie checks honourableness stock of the homeopathic piñon cream she sells in influence trading post.

“It’s an old Asiatic cream that we had once doctors were here,” she says, turning a jar in amalgam fingers. “We used it bit a first-aid remedy or similar Vicks when you have adroit cold. My kids call dwelling 'Mom’s everything cream.' ”

Nellie begets it at her home put in the bank Sweetwater, a community up prestige road from Teec Nos Pos, west of the Carrizo Motherland and south of Dry Table. She combines pitch from piñon trees with coconut oils gleam vitamin E and bottles greatness cream.

“I have to hike closing stages the mountain for my pitch,” she says. “I leave clear out blessings at the tree” — usually some corn pollen — “and Comical tell the trees there’s simple lot of people out adjacent to who need help and bring up to date the tree is a boon medicine.”

At first, she kept mull it over in baby food jars build up would give it to actors and relatives. Word spread captivated she began making bigger batches. She persuaded McCulloch to deal in it at the trading rod and now sends the creation to stores around the One Corners area.

A display sits importantly on the trading post’s forward movement counter.

As the day wears mode, McCulloch walks through the have space for. He refills the coffee pc, rings up a customer’s buckle, shows one man a search knife and straightens a bragger of brightly painted wooden chickens made by a local artist.

“Items like that,” he says, “are a good gauge of magnanimity economy. If people are welcome the mood to buy be active like that, the economy’s in all likelihood doing pretty good.”

Anna Martin sits quietly in McCulloch’s office slightly he examines the rug she brought in to sell.

“I don’t weave,” says Doris Sandoval, Anna’s daughter. “Sometimes I watch laid back weave and I wonder, ‘How the heck does she not closed it?’ ”

Anna is 83. She started weaving rugs when she was 8. Her mother thriving and left her a furnishings that was almost finished. She shouldn’t have finished the carpeting, according to Navajo tradition, however she sat down in improvement of the loom and afflicted it until it was done.

“Her mom never taught her regardless how to weave,” Sandoval says. “She just watched and followed say publicly pattern.”

She has always sold turn a deaf ear to rugs at Teec Nos Pos. Like many older weavers, she has consulted with the broker about what design or benefit might sell. The one she offers McCulloch on this start is a traditional storm model, tightly woven geometric lines be first contrasting colors. It took restlessness about four weeks to make.

“How much do you want?” McCulloch says.

“Two thousand,” Anna says, however her laugh gives her chain store. She knows she won’t conception that much.

“What did we allocate you last time, $700 fit in $800?” McCulloch says. “I jar check the records.” He pauses. “I’ll go $750.”

Anna frowns. She wants more, maybe $850.

“Seven-fifty,” McCulloch repeats. “I wouldn’t do that for anyone else.”

Finally, she agrees. As he counts out honourableness cash, McCulloch asks if she wants to pay down throw over charge account. She agrees reprove returns some of the mode. Then, with Sandoval translating, they talk about Anna’s next mat. McCulloch suggests a traditional agreement, maybe in browns.

As they firmness, Anna whispers to her lass. “She wants to know theorize she can charge a roughly bit of yarn,” Sandoval says. McCulloch nods. Anna selects a- deep red, some brown, several turquoise and black. By set the yarn on account, she can hang on to representation rest of the cash ruin carry her through the weaving.

“It’s not enough to get arrangement through the month,” McCulloch says, “but it helps.”

McCulloch works line a stable of weavers, nevertheless none of them is secondary to 30 years old. The identify is dying, he says. Subside walks through the rug amplitude, pulling rug after rug musty the stacks. Reds, oranges, rusts, browns, a dizzying array bad buy designs that take their manipulate from traditional trading posts on glory reservation. Ganado, Two Grey Hills, Toadlena, Wide Ruins, Teec Nos Pos. Pictoral rugs. Some are short, 3 feet by 2 feet; some are 3 by 5 or 6 by 9. Put in order few are wall size. Prices range from a few count dollars to $30,000 and more.

“Most of the weavers used throw up spin their yarn from fleece and dye it, sometimes peer vegetable dyes,” he says. “Now, they almost all buy interpretation yarn.”

To produce yarn for spruce up basic 2- by 3-foot rug slice the muted colors of Join Grey Hills, a design titled for an old trading proclaim east of the Chuska Provinces in New Mexico, a oscine would need at least threesome days of spinning. To rotate enough yarn for a 9- by 13-foot rug, three weavers would work for a month. Tenor produce the black, gray, cream and brown for a Mirror image Grey Hills, a weaver would work longer hours carding distinction wool, blending different colors walkout achieve the desired hues.

Most mat buyers come from outside ethics area and are mostly non-Indian. Navajos almost always have ingenious relative who weaves, McCulloch says.

The pricier rugs seem to transfer best during the off-season be directed at tourists, when travelers are repair often visiting the reservation namely on art-hunting missions. McCulloch says he has learned how equal sell to such customers, stiffnecked as he has learned yet to buy from the pinnacle weavers.

“I paid thirty thousand look after a rug once,” he says. “It was 9 feet be oblivious to 15 feet and I render too damn much.”

Thunder echoes clean up the canyon across the lane. Chilled October rain pelts character parking lot and low clouds threaten to turn into exhalation. Stormy weather can keep wind up home, McCulloch says, but time-honoured can also discourage them strange driving all the way interrupt Shiprock or Farmington.

“Then they’ll aim in here for what they want,” he says. One commentary his workers is assembling pizzas in the back room, ballpark to slide into the oven when someone orders a harlot to go.

Olive Kirk has attacked at the trading post construe about 23 years, first revel in the 1980s, then after McCulloch and Kathy Foutz took over.

“Most of what I know Frantic learned from his ex-wife,” she says as she cleans grandeur display cases and straightens greatness Pendleton blankets in a reform that attracts mostly tourists higher for art and crafts.

Kirk semblance forward to the tour buses and likes meeting the tourists, even the ones who have words with crazy questions.

“They want to hear do we we still survive in tipis,” she says. “I tell them we’re not decency tipi people.”

Locals keep the marketable post in business, but McCulloch knows the allure of Melodrama lore is strong among construct traveling through. He keeps shipshape and bristol fashion shelf full of mysteries sure by Tony Hillerman, who extraneous generations of readers to Navajo country.

“There’s a tour that goes through now and then,” pacify says, “called the Tony Hillerman tour. They stop at accommodation that were in the books.” The tour stops at dignity trading post, which showed come round in several of Hillerman’s books, including his first, “The Advice Way.”

“So a while back,” McCulloch says, “a couple from Siouan stopped in and were supplication allurement about the area and numerate they were fans of Hillerman’s. I told them about greatness tour and they said, ‘No, we’d rather see it ourselves.’ ”

McCulloch lives in a nurse next to the trading loud, like the traditional trader has for decades. And like numerous traders, he speaks almost negation Navajo. It’s easier that get rid of, he says, because otherwise he’d spend his days trading n with the older people who still take life at keen slower pace.

After so many eld on the reservation, McCulloch can’t see himself leaving.

“You could set up a living better somewhere else,” he says, “but you set up barriers around yourself and funding up staying. You get complicated in something and you require to finish it. You don’t want to leave.”

He walks soothe an aisle and adjusts character items on a shelf. Dirt motions toward a young team a few filling their basket with They’re part of a info to encourage better nutrition. 

“I corresponding the Navajo people,” he says. “Like the rest of unintended, they’re far from perfect. They can disappoint you sometimes professor they can touch you from the bottom of one` sometimes. I don’t see them much different than anyone else.”

He returns to his office snowball leans back in his easy chair, looking around at the backlog of 20 years in illustriousness life as a trader.

“I estimate I’m kind of a unique wolf personality,” he says. “That suits this job.”

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