Tag: Louisa Wetherill

Canyon Kiddies …by Harvey Leake

by stiles • August 1, 2021 • 0 Comments

The artist and cartoonist, James Swinnerton, on the right with some real canyon kiddies—Betty and Fanny Wetherill

If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it…

Finding Value in Hardships …By Harvey Leake

by stiles • March 31, 2021 • 2 Comments

Stuart Young’s photo of the expedition members just after they forded the swollen San Juan River. Back row, left to right: Byron Cummings, William Blum, Neil Judd, Edgar Lee Hewett, Dogeye Begay. Front row: Malcolm Cummings, Randolph, Donald Beauregard, and John Wetherill.

The most inaccessible, least known, and roughest portion of the Navajo Reservation is bounded by the Navajo, Colorado, San Juan, and Piute canyons. […] Buttes, mesas, and small domes predominate and are so tightly packed that the base of one…

A Satisfied Mind …By Harvey Leake

by stiles • January 31, 2021 • 4 Comments

The spiritual home of the traditional Navajos was their enduring natural surroundings rather than their temporary hogan shelters. Nede Cloey (Nii'ditt'oii) at his hogan in Tsegi Canyon

The wealthiest personIs a pauper at timesCompared to the manWith a satisfied mind —From the song “A Satisfied Mind,” by Joe “Red” Hayes and Jack Rhodes “I don’t think Mr. Harriman is very rich. He has not as much money…

Kayenta, Then and Now …By Harvey Leake

by stiles • November 30, 2020 • 10 Comments

On one of her early trips to Kayenta, Lillian Wilhelm and her friends had to revert to old ways. Elephants Feet formation in the background. “Each time a Navajo hitched his ponies to a stubborn mass of metal and towed it to its destination, he thought a white man was stupid to forget that a horse was his best friend,” wrote Lillian’s friend, Mildred Kaye Smith.

“We had spent one night at Kayenta. No one could be even that short a time in the Wetherills’ house, hearing them talk, seeing the beautiful things hanging on their walls, without catching some of the riches to be found…

Strength in the Face of Adversity: Lessons from the Past …By Harvey Leake

by stiles • May 31, 2020 • 3 Comments

Although the 1918-19 influenza epidemic exacted a devastating toll on the Navajo people, the survivors rebounded with remarkable fortitude and optimism

We took mules, all of us, as we expected the very roughest kind of trailless work; and we got it…. Wetherill said, while we were in an oak thicket on a very sharp slope at the foot of a canyon,…

The President Slept Here: Theodore Roosevelt’s 1913 Visit to Kayenta and Beyond… by Harvey Leake (With assistance from Natalie Cunningham)

by stiles • July 30, 2019 • 5 Comments

How would you feel if you learned that a former president was coming to stay at your home? In 1913, fifteen-year-old Sister Wetherill was both excited and worried when she heard that Theodore Roosevelt would be spending some time at…

The Early Fight for Glen Canyon and the Rainbow Plateau…by Harvey Leake

by stiles • December 2, 2018 • 2 Comments

The recent controversies swirling around Bears Ears National Monument are only the latest in a series of struggles resulting from attempts to increase federal government involvement with exceptional places in the Utah/Arizona borderlands region of the Colorado Plateau. Elmo R.…

The Wisdom of Wolfkiller: A Nineteenth Century Navajo Shepherd and Sage…By Harvey Leake

by stiles • September 30, 2018 • 2 Comments

“When I was a young boy, about six years old, my grandfather and mother started me on the path of light.” —Wolfkiller Found among the papers of my great-grandmother, Louisa Wade Wetherill, was a remarkable story of early Navajo life…