Tag: John Wetherill

The Legacy of Nasja Begay: Paiute Guide — By Harvey Leake (ZX#102 )

by stiles • February 18, 2024 • 12 Comments

From early times, a tiny community of Paiute Indians made their homes at the bottom of a remote canyon that transects the Arizona/Utah border. Early in 1909, two of them—a father and son—rode eastward on a rocky, fifty-mile-long trail toward Monument Valley in order to patronize a trading post at a place known as Oljato. The father’s name was Mupuutz, which means “Owl” in the Paiute language, although he was better known by the Navajo translation of his name, Nasja (Nd’dshjaa’), or the name the census takers used for him, Ruben Owl. His son was called Nasja Begay (Nd’dshjaa’ Biye’), i.e., Owl’s Son. Nasja was in his early seventies, and Nasja Begay was about eighteen.

The pioneer trading post at Oljato had been established a few years earlier by John and Louisa Wetherill, my great-grandparents, and Clyde Colville, their trading partner. They were quite fluent with the Navajo language and were learning some Paiute as well.

1906 —THE WETHERILL & COLVILLE TRADING POST: Establishing a Home on the Desert …by Harvey Leake (ZX#97)

by stiles • January 14, 2024 • 15 Comments

The wisdom of such a move was not evident to the folks back in Mancos. The costs of desert life were loneliness, hardships, and isolation from the security of civilization. Provisions were limited to those that could be hauled in over rough wagon roads from distant supply points, and the many niceties of society were no longer close at hand. Nevertheless, the Wetherills came to relish the change. John was no stranger to the desert, and he had developed a profound appreciation for it. Louisa was getting to know her Navajo neighbors, and the two children—Ben, who was nearly four and Sister, a year younger—were hardy and adaptable.

For Louisa, the experience became transformative.

LOUISA WADE WETHERILL: “The Slim Woman” of Kayenta — Harvey Leake (ZX#83)

by stiles • October 8, 2023 • 12 Comments

“The person who seems to be influencing the life of Navajos most is Mrs. John Wetherill of the Kayenta trading post, Arizona. This cultured woman wields more power among them than any chief, or ‘head man’. She is a white woman adopted into the tribe and is a real leader among them, holding her position as a recognition by the Indians of her sympathetic interest in their life. A queen could hardly be more loved by her subjects. She is at once the judge, physician, interpreter, adviser and best friend of her devoted wards.”

Joseph F. Anderson, Archaeology student of University of Utah Professor Byron Cummings

JANUARY 1931: THE STRENUOUS LIFE — by Harvey Leake (ZX#71)

by stiles • July 13, 2023 • 9 Comments

On January 6, 1931, as darkness fell over northern Arizona, veteran explorer John Wetherill and his young companion, Henry Martin “Pat” Flattum, huddled by their campfire in the depths of Glen Canyon of the Colorado River. They had taken refuge from the biting wind in an alcove eroded into the base of a high sandstone cliff. The only sounds were the crackling of the fire, their soft conversation, and the “sh-sh-shush” of the drifting ice floes as they rubbed against the shore ice.

…Wetherill, who was sixty-four years old, seemed unperturbed by their difficulties. “Signs of many beaver on the river but no other animals until tonight, when we camped in a cave, where the Ringtail cat seems to have made its home. The canyon walls are getting lower,” he wrote.

THE MYTH of ‘PROGRESS’— Revealed by Traditional Navajo Wisdom … by Harvey Leake (ZX#60)

by stiles • April 30, 2023 • 5 Comments

The position of these men (like John Wesley Powell) and many others in the Federal Government was that Native Americans were stuck in the barbaric stage and needed to be civilized. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, since their inception in 1849, implemented a number of unsuccessful strategies to bring the Indians “up” to modern intellectual and moral standards, while failing to acknowledge that the divide was fundamentally a philosophic one. William Henry Holmes, who had responded to B. K. Wetherill’s first letter, later expressed the violent aspect of the government approach. He believed that the dominant culture was destined predominate and that “the complete absorption or blotting out of the red race will be quickly accomplished. If peaceful amalgamation fails, extinction of the weaker by less gentle means will do the work.

Powell elaborated on Morgan’s theory in two articles: “From Savagery to Barbarism” and “From Barbarism to Civilization”. He maintained that civilized society is not only technologically and intellectually superior, but morally superior as well. “In savagery, the beasts are gods; in barbarism, the gods are men; in civilization, men are as gods, knowing good from evil,” he wrote.