ED FOUTZ INTERVIEW [BEGIN SIDE 1] This is Brad Cole from Northern Arizona University. It's March 9, 1998. We're in the Rug Room at the Shiprock Trading Company with Edwin Foutz. Also present in the room is Lew Steiger running the sound equipment. And we're going to ask Mr. Foutz a few questions about his background as a Navajo trader. Cole: First of all, Ed, I'd like to ask when and where you were born. Foutz: I was born May 7, 1937, in Farmington, New Mexico. I guess that's why I love this area. Cole: Were your parents from Farmington also, or what was their background? Foutz: My father was from Kirtland--raised and born--and he was raised here in Kirtland. The Foutz family basically came over from Tuba City, where they'd been sent down by Brigham Young in the 1800's to colonize Tuba City. My great-grandfather and his family moved up here, and of course they've been in the valley--when I talk about the valley, in the Kirtland- Farmington areas, the San Juan Valley--ever since. My mother and father met at BYU, Brigham Young University, at Provo, Utah--she being from Provo, Utah, he being from here. And he courted her and brought her back to the Reservation. Let's see, he was back here at the age of thirty, and that was in 1939. He died during the spinal meningitis epidemic on the Reservation, and he died [when] he was thirty years old. He was a partial owner of Teec Nos Pos Trading Post at that time. [He] helped bury one of his friend's, Red House's, daughters one night. And about ten days later he contracted and came down with the disease, and he died about eight days later in Farmington. Cole: What was his name? Foutz: His name was Edwin Luff, L-U-F-F, Foutz. And actually, I'm a Junior. I never use the Junior because we've really never been together, where I've had to use the Junior. Cole: What was your mother's name? Foutz: Laprill Sumner [phonetic spelling]. She was from Provo, Utah. After his death, she was down here for some time with the Foutzes--maybe a year or so with the kids, and then she returned to Provo, Utah. And I think after that time, my sister and I came down about every summer of our life we spent down here with our grandparents. Then we returned to Provo, Utah, and stayed with our grandparents in Provo, Utah, going to school. At the age of fourteen, I went to work with my uncle, Russell Foutz. At that time, he had Teec Nos Pos, and I don't think he had this store at that time. I went to work for him, helping truck, and just doing any miscellaneous jobs I could. I loved it, because I was learning a lot of things. Cole: So is that how you became involved with trading? Foutz: That was the start of it. Around the Indian people, that was it. I loved it, and I liked learning, and I enjoyed being with him--he was a great teacher, and I learned a lot from him. My mother remarried, and I hadn't had a male figure in my life, immediately there, and I guess Russell kind of fulfilled some of that, too--he and Helen. They opened their house to me, and they were very, very gracious. He taught me a lot. He taught me this business. As I was raised, I went back to school, and I guess as I looked at the business, there were so many Foutzes in the trading business at that particular time--I think at that time there was maybe twenty some odd stores under the Foutz name. They weren't closely related or connected, but there were Foutzes running them--my cousins, my third and fourth cousins, and uncles. And I decided not to go in [the trading] business, so for a long time I was doing other things. I�d owned a Quality ice cream store, and was working for a company. One year, I think it was about in 1964, [I] visited Russell and Helen in Farmington with my wife. As we were driving back to Provo, she said, "Ed, I don't know that I'm gonna be real happy about it, but every time you're around the Indian people, you just come alive. You just have a whole different quality. I really think maybe you ought to pursue it." Well, odd enough, it was a short time after that, that Russell called me and asked me if I'd be interested in working in and buying-into Shiprock Trading Company. At that time, he didn't have anybody to run it. And not that I could run it right off, but I could learn. And he wanted to know if I'd be interested, which I was. And so a very short time after that, we moved down. Cole: And that was… Foutz: That was in 1964. And I'd worked before that time. I'd worked until I was about eighteen, nineteen years old, with Russell. I transferred to Arizona State College, and at that time ran a shop for Russell on 5th Avenue during the winter months when I was in school. Then we would close that during the summer months and I'd come up here and work at the trading post. And so I got to see, you might say, the retail end of the arts and crafts business in Scottsdale, and the wholesale business as well as the trading end of it, where we were trading for livestock and things on the Reservation. Cole: Describe Teec Nos Pos in 1945, when you were working there. Foutz: I'm not sure, and you need to talk to Russell about that, the year it got moved up to the road. For a long time, Teec Nos Pos was around on the dirt road, or the old road, in the valley, by the boarding school, and up that little valley. And of course that is where it derived its name, which is "Circle of Trees," 'cause it was surrounded by these beautiful cottonwood trees on the wash there. And it was an older store. We'll furnish some pictures of it. It was what I would call the older-type store. It was run on a huge diesel--ran the electricity out there. That's why I can always remember that, is because of the wonderful quiet noise it made night and day. And you'd finally kind of--what I'd say, the noise would fade out, because you'd never notice it until it went off. And then it became so silent, that something was drastically wrong. But they run it off of a big diesel, so they didn't have electricity out there. And it was a bull pen. And they had an old-type gas pump out front that you would hand-pump it back and forth. And it had a reading up in the glass meter to where you'd pump out seven gallons, if that's what they wanted, and then you'd put that in the car. And it was just what I would call your typical 1940 trading post with everything behind the bull pen. It was a high bull pen with a stove in the middle, the groceries on one side, the dry goods on the other, along with your tack and horse and horseshoes and things like that. They had very little refrigeration, and your ingredients that you sold at that time were pretty abbreviated. When I say that, you would sell one type of bread, and maybe sweet rolls. And your fresh meat. And you wouldn't have a lot of refrigeration for it, so you'd butcher in the morning, and you'd cut that carcass up during the day and sell it piece by piece, but it pretty well all went out during the day. It was interesting in that we always had what we called a guest hogan out in front of the store. That was typical of a lot of the trading posts where the families would come so far, like the ones that lived down by the Four Corners around the San Juan River. By the time they'd come up to the store, they couldn't get back home that same day, so they would stay over and use the hogan out front overnight. And it was there, furnished by the store, free--it was just a service. But the people would come up, and a lot of the people would get there earlier in the day, and then they'd socialize all day long--talk and visit--and they'd come in at lunch time and pick up little stuff like crackers, or maybe corned beef or corned mutton, or vienna sausage or sardines, or something like that, just some little light [snacks] to have for lunch. And then they would sit around talking in the shade of the store. The store most always would close at noon. Then they'd open about an hour, hour-and-a-half later. And then the heavy trading or the heavy business went on from about two to three in the afternoon until closing, because everybody wanted to get their things and head out for home. And so that was kind of a social time for the Indian people as they came together. It was a time they could come together and find out what others were doing in different areas-- because geographically, they were still pretty isolated at that time--a few cars, but very few. Cole: So what kind of transportation did most of them have? Foutz: Horse. It was a combination--a few cars and trucks--a few trucks I should say. Mostly horse and wagon at that time. Now this is at Teec Nos Pos. And that was still pretty well that way at that time. Cole: About that time period, how would you view the social and economic conditions of the Navajo people? Foutz: A lot of the social would come together at the time of dances and things like that, because the Indian or the Navajo, being nomadic, lived in their different areas, and they didn't do a lot of cross- socializing or meeting one another--only at events like a squaw dance or a fire dance or a sing or something like this. This was a great time to come together. And I think during that period, that's why Shiprock Fair was so big, because this was a gathering of Indians from all over this area of the Reservation. And young people would get to meet other young people that weren't particularly from their area. It was a great time for that. I think the boarding schools were still very strong at this time. A lot of water was being carried at that time, and probably a lot of use of what we called river water, as drinking water and things. The trader or the trading post was looked on as a source of water. They'd come in with their barrels and fill up the water and carry it back home at that time. So that was another service that was rendered by the trading post at that time, as a center, because they had, usually, water, and access to it. Economically, it was what I would call the last of the trading era. I think during the 1940's [was] the real trading period, but there was some cash flow out on the Reservation, both from payrolls and from Social Security and welfare, payroll and other sources. There were some railroad checks. There was getting to be a small cash flow to where everything wasn't trading. There was some cash and some trade. And I think it was during that era that the transfer from all trade on arts and crafts started to change to where a lot of times you would buy things at half trade, half cash. And you would give either a trade slip, if the people didn't deal with you, or you'd give a trade token or a trade slip, and then they could trade that out over a period of time, and then you'd pay the other half cash for things. So the trading era, back in the forties and fifties, was starting to change--the change being that the cash flow, and the people wanted cash, because they were going to maybe outside markets and different demands for that cash than they've ever had before. Cole: What kinds of things did your uncle let you do at the trading post during that period of time? Foutz: Oh, at Teec Nos Pos I didn't stay there so much, so a lot of times I was used for trucking commodities or merchandise out that we would buy here in town, of suppliers that didn't go out that way with it. And a lot of times we�d bring back livestock or pelts or something that we had traded for from the particular store. And a lot of times I'd drive livestock back in and bring it in to the ranch, which was at Kirtland. I would stock while I was at the store, and boy, I was pretty young back then. I was, what, eight, nine years old, and so I was just learning. I was trying to drive. They'd have to take the keys out of all the cars, or I'd be trying to drive, like I think any youth that age, and things that are pretty normal. I can remember throwing rugs to Gil Maxwell and Penny, his partner, when I was about eight or nine years old at Teec Nos Pos. So there were times when I was there, and I'd help fold rugs or unfold rugs. And I can remember these very distinctly, because during that time there weren't a lot of dealers that would come through looking for rugs--especially wholesale, where they would take more than just one rug. And so it was always a highlight when a dealer came by. It was an important time. And I can remember folding rugs as they would throw 'em to these dealers. It was Ed Crane and Penny and there was a Mr. Keely that used to go up and he would run up through Jackson Hole and that country in the summertime and sell a lot of rugs. There was Ed Green from Boulder. He would take quite a few rugs up into the Colorado area. And yet from those, there weren't a lot of customers. Once a year I can remember the highlight of the whole summer was going to the Gallup Ceremonials. I would help Russell and Helen over there set up a booth, and then just be in the booth. And I kind of thought maybe I was helping. As I look back, probably because of my age, I was a lot of times in the way, but they were very, very good about it, and I think I learned a lot. I loved the arts and crafts, and Russell did, and I think through that I learned a great deal from him. But at that time we'd always look for accounts at the Gallup Ceremonial. And one of the biggest accounts we always had there was Fred Harvey. And so when Fred Harvey used to come by, it was a very important thing, and they would buy their rugs. Sometimes it helped make that whole summer season, and we depended heavily on that cash, because we have to convert those rugs so we could buy more arts and crafts the coming fall and winter. Cole: Do you remember any of the buyers from Fred Harvey? Foutz: Oh, Mr. Evans was one of the early ones. When I was [ten to fourteen], it was Mr. Evans, a thin, bald-headish man, and I would guess, I'd say Scandinavian of some kind. But he was foreign. He worked in Albuquerque. I remember the first stack of rugs I took over. Russell sent me over, I was fourteen years old. They were in the back of the station wagon, and I took 'em in there, and I can remember him having an old broom handle that had been cut off and the nail was pointing out. And every rug you'd throw to him--I don't care the quality or the price of it--he would jab that in it and pull it apart to see if it had a cotton warp. And Fred Harvey at that time would not buy anything with a cotton warp in it. So immediately, if it had a cotton warp, he'd say, "Oh! when will these weavers learn?!" and we'd fold it back up, and of course carry it right back out. After that I believe it was Trammel Bowman. They'd moved their buying office at that time to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Trammel Bowman then was the head buyer for the Indian arts and crafts. I think after Mr. Bowman, it was probably… Oh, gosh. For a fact, he's been there until just lately, and I can't remember his name, I'm sorry. That name will have to come around to me. Cole: So you then worked at Teec Nos Pos for _____ years? Foutz: No, I wasn't really working for Teec Nos Pos as much as I worked with Russell. And I really stayed with Russell and Helen in Farmington. And Russell, back in that era, did not spend much time at the stores. He'd go out for a day and then come back in. The roads were still dirt, and I can remember in trucking out to Teec Nos Pos, that several of those washes would be washing at that time. And of course they were hauling a lot of uranium out of Monument Valley, and so we had convoys of uranium trucks. But a lot of the times when the washes would be running, they would run so high that even the uranium trucks, the big diesels, couldn't even go through 'em. And we would sit there on one side of the wash, if we were going out, and we had commodities on the truck, so I'd open a box of sweet rolls and pull out some sweet rolls, and they'd have a coffee pot, and we'd make some coffee, or we'd have some pop, and we'd sit there until the water would go down. And then they would hook onto my truck, because it was a deuce-and-a-half, it was still small enough that the water would go through the running boards and out through the engine, and they'd pull me across with a winch. They could get through, and then they would pull me through. But at that time, it would still take a long time to get out to some of those roads. They could be in pretty bad shape real fast because of the weather. Cole: Did you learn to speak Navajo? Foutz: I speak fairly good Navajo, as long as I'm in the store. You get me to church, or somewhere out of the store area… But I would say I speak Navajo well when it comes to the store, yes. Cole: When did you learn? Foutz: I think that was something I picked up right along. My grandfather, Al Foutz, [who] I stayed with in Kirtland there when I was very young, taught me how to count. He'd be on the front porch, resting on the couch, and I'd be with him, and for some reason he taught me to count. And I think with a lot of young minds, you pick up things much easier. And I, for some reason, never forgot how to count in Navajo, from him, and some of the things. He always dealt with the Indian people. He'd run trading posts himself, and he had a part of Progressive Merc, but even after that time, he would always keep a lot of livestock on the farm, specifically with the Indian people in mind. While they were still using horses to pull wagons, he'd always pick up at the auctions in Cortez and Durango, animals that he thought would be good for them--either riding or work horses. And the Indian people would come by all the time to buy horses, or to buy cows, or to buy sheep from him. And so he was always dealing with the Indian people there. So even when I was younger than that, I was around them. Cole: Did your uncle or yourself drive animals to town? Or was it mainly just… Foutz: Russell. I was back at the area when we'd drive the livestock to town, and mainly that would be your lamb drives. Russell certainly was involved in that still, and I still can remember hearing the stories about how they would start to eat hay or something with some burrs in, and they would get scabs on their jaws so bad they couldn't eat, and they'd start to lose weight. But it was always a time to look forward to, because of course your lamb and your wool season were so important to the trader. Even back in that era, that was the way that we really kind of cleaned off, that people were able to pay their accounts completely off, was if they sold their wool or their lambs. Then that was a time that the traders pretty well got their accounts receivable or their accounts down to where they could pay their bills, and pay the bank off, maybe, on some of the note that they owed them. Very important. Cole: How would you describe the Navajo-Anglo trading relationship at that time period? Foutz: At that time period? Oh, I think probably the trader was a great intermediary between the outside world and the Navajo. The Navajo, up to that time, had been very isolated. He relied a great deal on the local trader for a lot of his communication, and to-- what would I say?--to find things that he had got, on how he could qualify for welfare or Social Security. A lot of times it was just how well the trader, and how up the trader was on things. And so the Indians relied on him heavily for that type of thing economically. I think the trader became, a lot of times, relatively a good friend, somebody they could really trust and rely on. And when I say a friend, it wasn't just a business, seller-buyer type situation, but it was somebody that they could come to when they really needed it, whether they could pay back or whatever, but they knew they could rely on that person to help. And I think that went both ways. I think there were great relationships back in those eras. And of course they relied on each other so much. But the trader, I think, went beyond that. I think a lot of times he was… Between that, he was the banker. I think he was the postman. When letters would come in from, let's say, people in World War II--some of the young ones went off to World War II--that he was the one that would read the letter a lot of times, or be able to read a letter to 'em, because a lot of times they didn't have somebody that could really read that much at that time-- or the kids would be away to school. So a lot of reliance there. Cole: Did you ever fill that role when you were at that age? Foutz: No. No, Russell always had either Jay or Lloyd Foutz there, or somebody older that was looked on as the local trader. I was not the trader. And I think to really get to that level where the people had trust in you, you would have to spend some pretty solid time there, as Jay and Lloyd did, and Russell himself had been there long enough that the Indians had enough trust that they would deal with them. And I didn't speak good enough [Navajo], and because of my age, back in that era, they did not [speak enough English]. Later on in my life, here at Shiprock Trading, I did that many times. At the time of a death, called on--not just to help, but to maybe speak. Just any way that you could, you would try to fill in, because they were adopting our way of life, and sometimes it wasn't too comfortable for them. And while they wanted to do some things, they didn't quite know how to do it. And they maybe did know how to do it, but they didn't have confidence that they really did, and so they would use you to make sure of that confidence to back them up, you might say, in a lot of ways. Financially, you were a go-between a lot of times with the finances at this period, because at that time the banks weren't out here. There was a bank now at Shiprock, and there are branches out on the Reservation now as we speak, but back in that era, there was not. They were either in Farmington or Gallup or some border town. And consequently you had to do a good share of the financial counseling for 'em. And that was really basically lending money. And that was in the form of pawn, or on livestock, or possibly on their account that they'd pay off with livestock or wool and mohair. It was interesting. You look back at the trading eras and the first time that we really got a cash flow out here on this reservation of any substance was during the Roosevelt days when the New Deal came out. They started building reservoirs out here, and doing a lot of water work in drilling small water wells and reclamation work. And that was some of the first substantial checks that were out in this country. And up to that time, it was almost purely trade. And so as you come away from that era, you just constantly get a little greater cash flow out here, and then with the advent of uranium and oil and gas, and just the jobs that came along with things like that, you started to get substantial cash flows. Cole: As a child working for your uncle, did you have time to play, and did you have playmates? Foutz: Yes! I had a group of cousins. My Uncle Bob and Aunt Helen had kids, as Russell did too, and I played with all that group, yes. Really, most of 'em, because of my age, they were my cousins up there, but kids here in Shiprock I got to know real well. And as we moved here, yes. My kids were raised and went to school here. Yeah, some of the good friends I have are Indian people, are from out here. And they were great times, but really from the time I was, I would say, twelve or thirteen, I really didn't take a lot of time to play. I think I was more interested in working and staying busy. And once I started with Russell, it was pretty well work most days. Now, to me, that was playing, I enjoyed that. I don't look back on it as I missed anything. We'd play in the evenings, and I certainly had those times when we'd enjoy long weekends and that, but still we were pretty busy during the day. Cole: Would you say that--I'm sort of curious-- Navajo kids your age, were they also pretty busy, they had things to do? Foutz: Well, at that time most of them--I'll qualify that--were not living in big areas, so they were living on small farms. So they had things to do. They had livestock to look after, they had responsibilities, and they were expected to take care of those responsibilities--whether it was tend to the sheep or the livestock or help with the hay in the garden, and things like this. And the girls were to help with the weaving and cooking and things like this, and they were brought along. And so it was very interesting, because during that era, they were nomadic and spread away from each other, and you can't help but notice as you come into Shiprock, as the people have built these housing projects, through both the tribe and the government, and then just the people, because jobs around here will look for places, and they built places here. But slowly as these people have come together, the young people don't have things to do anymore, they don't have the responsibility, and they have extra time on their hands. And so for the very first time, as these kids came together, we started to have problems with groups, you might say, at night. As kids got together, they started looking for things to do, and some of those things were maybe looking for trouble--or they ended up in trouble. No different than we were, but it was interesting, because you could definitely see the shift happening. And it's even still happening, on more of an accelerated basis. And here in Shiprock… Did you come in from Gallup? (Cole: Yes.) You maybe saw the area that all those little houses out there were built for the Fairchild Semiconductor Plant. I almost say that that was like putting together, once the jobs left, that, to me, as I watched families come in there, and the kids have nothing to do, that you might say that in a small way, that was like building a ghetto, in that the same things happen. The kids didn't have anything to do when they got there, and all of a sudden they were looking for things to do, and boy, we really had some hard things going on in town, as we still do today. Not just because of that, but it was just an interesting thing to see happen, as you look back now-- that you don't get to see capsuled, finite things like that happen in many communities like you did out here. So things have really changed, it's changed a great deal, as the cash flow… The roads, of course, came along--the area of transportation changed. And with that, the demands of the people changed. And then I think the really big change came about with the advent of communication: Your radio and your Navajo Hours that were aimed and beamed almost straight at the Navajo people in the way of advertising and things. And it used to be at the old trading post that fashion lagged maybe two or three or four years behind the fashion, let's say, in the country. If pointed tennis shoes were in, somewhere maybe three or four years later, they would be in demand on the Reservation. With the advent of radio, and especially with TV, the young people, as well as all of 'em, were brought into the world today. So if chocolate Cocoa Pops were popular as a cereal, that's what you'd better stock in your store, because that's what the kids would be coming in and telling their parents they wanted to buy. And so things changed pretty radically. You couldn't carry just the good old standard things that we used to in the early days in trading posts. Their demands, like everybody else's, started to change and widen, and we started carrying a greater selection of meat. Instead of just mutton and lamb, we carried chicken and luncheon meats and things like this. And in the early days you'd never see that, because of refrigeration of things, as well as for just… Cole: Did you have a nickname? Foutz: I think most people are given a Navajo name. The Navajo people are a very descriptive people, and they give you names. And it's a very interesting thing. Do you know why there's so many Begays? Cole: I have no idea. Foutz: Begay means "So and So's son." So if your father was given a name, and you were the first son, you'd be your father's name [followed by] Begay. My father's name was �Ashkii Tsoh, which was "Big Man" [Big Boy], and I was �Ashkii Tsoh Biye� to a lot of people from Teec Nos Pos, but a lot of 'em didn't know my father. So I was so associated with Russell, and he was called D�gh�ch��, which in Navajo means "Red Moustache." So I was called a lot of times D�gh�ch�� Y�zh�, or D�gh�ch�� Biye� "his son." And really, in Navajo, he's my �ab�zh� y�zh�, or my uncle on my father's side. Cole: When you came back in the sixties and actually owned a post, did that name stick? Foutz: Yes! Oh, the Indian people knew my father, and of course Russell was here with a partner with me. And even more than everything else, rather than being called �Ashkii Tsoh Biye� at that time, I was called D�gh�ch�� Y�zh�, which was "Little [Red Moustache]." I didn't carry a Red Moustache, but I was with Russell, and that kind of, to a lot of people, associated us together here at the store. And so I was really called D�gh�ch�� Y�zh� a lot of times. Cole: How did the supply system work? Like, say, in the forties when you worked for Russell, how did they get diesel, gasoline, and groceries out to the trading post? Foutz: There were a few large suppliers that would come by, but most of the time you'd buy your stock or let's say you'd stop by Farmington Merc. That was the big supplier in town, and they carried a lot of the trading posts from wool season to lamb season, or you ran an account there, and very seldom did most traders pay up their account. They would pay it up once a year. And I think they would carry a lot of dry goods, Pendleton shawls. They would carry tires, they would carry almost anything the trader would need, and you'd back in there, or you'd send an order in, and they would fill that order, and you'd go back at the end of the day and they'd have it sitting out on the warehouse floor. And you'd back up your pickup or your bigger truck to it, and you'd load on that order and take it out to the store at that time. As things progressed along, and as Kimball started to come out, they would actually deliver to some of the stores out on the Reservation if the roads were good enough. Cole: Who is Kimball? Foutz: Kimball was a supplier that I believe--and I'm not quite sure--I think they bought out possibly Farmington Merc, it become Charles Ilfeld, and then I think Kimball's was a large wholesaler in this region, and they bought out Charles Ilfeld, and I think [it] became Kimball's. For a long time Kimball's serviced a lot of the trading posts and small businesses up in this area. Then slowly, as the Associated IGA or Associated Grocer came in, we joined for the first time in Denver. And so we were supplied from the Associated Grocer Company from Denver. And at that time, for the first time, we became fairly competitive. But backing up, as you move around, your mind takes off on one phase, but during that phase of time, Kimball was serving then for the very first time. We would start to get flour from Tanner's Flour Mill in Cortez. He would deliver out to the stores, and he'd bring out maybe a full truck at a time. And for a store like Teec Nos Pos, that would maybe hold us for three weeks to a month. They would supply us with one truckload of flour, or a partial lot, and they would drop some at Beclahbeto and some at Teec Nos Pos. And these were still dirt roads at that time, and so a lot of suppliers didn't come out. Then you were pretty well--you had a few reps, what we called representatives, coming through, selling dry goods, like Henry Yeltsin, and Herbie Mann from Phoenix had National Dry Goods. And there was the Babbitt Brothers had their wholesale place in Flagstaff. And then there were several little ones, the Rio Grande Lotion Company started coming out with salesmen and that. They found out enough business was out here, that they'd work this area. And they would slowly start to deliver out here. But before that time, boy, you were pretty well dependent upon a supplier if you lived up in this area out of Farmington. And we'd pick things up from Charles Ilfeld or Kimball's. And then later on they'd start to deliver, as the companies got bigger--like Kimball's would start to deliver to the store. And then after Kimball's, IGA came in. And for the very first time I feel like we got relatively competitive, because of that association. We could belong to a large group of people, buying in such volume, that our things were delivered at a fairly competitive price--and much fresher. Cole: And that was… Foutz: And that was when I was here at Shiprock, and I'd say that's probably in the, oh, probably 1970's and maybe early 1980's, that IGA came in. Cole: And who would you have been competing against? Foutz: Here in Shiprock? (Cole: Uh-huh.) There was Bruce Bernard Company up just here on the hill. And then there was Bond and Bond Company, that had been here a long time, down on the river. And then Mannings opened a store that Charles Dickens had. They bought them out. And then there was Manning Trading Post. Back in the very early time, there was two or three stores here, but when we started, there was Bruce Bernard, Shiprock Trading Company, and Bond and Bond, and then there was a little convenience store over here run by the… Oh, the family from Cortez. Again, the name slips me. So it was competitive, we did have competition here for almost any phase. Whether it was the Bernard�s and us--we were competitive for livestock. The other companies, we were competitive for arts and crafts as well as any business. So for the first time we had some pretty strong good competition, which was good for the Indian people, as well as good for our business. It made us stretch a little more. I think when I ran this store, as I got a little older, I had one great advantage, and that's we bought so many arts and crafts. Russell had a great love of arts and crafts, and he knew 'em well. He, at that time, I think, had decided that if he was going to be real good at arts and crafts, that you had to establish outlets. And consequently, he was out working hard to establish those outlets--Fred Harvey. Russell worked with Fred Harvey, and he worked with accounts a great deal, building up the type of thing they wanted, and he would listen to 'em and go back to the weavers and work with them to try to find marketable things that would be more marketable the next season, and come up with new ideas. In doing that, he was instrumental in bringing Germantown wool back to the Reservation. Now, a lot of people were critical of that at the time, because they said, "Well, aren't handspun rugs better?" Well, they were, if the weaver could handle it. But a lot of times a weaver would spin all of her wool, do her hand dying with her homemade coloring, and come in, and the end product was very unsalable. Now, a lot of weavers could handle--let's say half the weavers could handle it well, but the others had a hard time between dying and coloring and keeping a rug straight and the pattern going, to where when they got through with six months' work, they'd bring it in, and you'd rather not buy it, because you didn't know where you'd go to sell it. And it was really a hard thing. By bringing the commercial wool back in, we could take a weaver like that, and she could double her output, control her coloring, and I think to a lot of those weavers, we tripled and [quadrupled] the money they were getting in a year's time. So I think when you look at one side of it, you might argue the point, if you're a purist and said, "Well, gee, handspun wool's the best," but looking at the overall marketability of the rugs, not just that, but the quality that came out on your four- ply yarns were just almost as good as your handspun. But we certainly put more money in the hand of the maker. Cole: So Germantown… Foutz: Is a commercial yarn rug, or a four-ply yarn. The original, where the Germantown word comes from is the very, very early four-ply yarn that was used back in the early, early 1900's in the Germantown rugs, came from Germantown, Pennsylvania. And so it was always referred to as Germantown. We bought a lot of our wool from New Richmond, Ohio, from Crescent and Klassen [phonetic spelling] Woolen Mills, back in the early days here. Russell worked very hard about establishing great wool connections. And when I say wool connections, [I'm talking] about the processing of good wool for the weavers. And he was always looking for new markets. And he worked with them to where he refined it. He wasn't just taking the colors, but he wanted certain colors that would be marketable. He worked with 'em long enough, and he was able to buy enough of it, that they would listen to him, and dye the colors that he needed, to where he came up with colors that were very, very good for, let's say, Shiprock yei'iis--beautiful greys, beautiful beiges-- and consequently the market just absolutely opened up, and we were able to sell a lot more of 'em, because they were more attractive to the average buyer, and we were able again to put more money in the weaver's hand. And that's very important when you're here, looking at the source. You don't think of just the market out there, you've got to think of the supplier, too, or the maker. And I think Russell was very conscious of that, and we were, and I was taught that. We've worked at that very, very hard, and as we made outlets for it, then we could buy more arts and crafts, but also you had to stay on the road selling. And so a lot of times we were out selling, and I think when I was relatively young, at that time I was buying in with Russell, or buying part of Shiprock. We went for the very first time to what we call a "market" up in Denver. It was the Merchandise Mart in Denver, and it was a gift show. And we took a booth and we sat up and we sold to customers for the first time. Well, not only at the gift show do you sell, but you were able to go completely around that market, and maybe there were four or five hundred suppliers at that time, and so you were seeing new lines that we could buy from: scarves, new commodities that the Indians were looking for in the colors that they liked, that weren't just coming through here. So we didn't become just reliant on the suppliers coming through, but we widened the market that we had, and we went out and bought things, and so we became very competitive, price-wise, and I think our selection was much greater for the first time. And I think that helped build the store to the level that we were able to build it. Cole: What other types of arts and crafts were you dealing, [in addition to] rugs at that time? Anything? Foutz: Rugs and a few baskets, a little Navajo pottery. And back in the 1950's the very first sand paintings that I ever could remember coming in, were brought in. The very earliest ones were from Freddie Stephenson [phonetic spelling] in Chinle, and he was called Grey Squirrel. Relations of his, Patsy and Frances Miller from Sheep Springs, started bringing a few in. And then James Joe, that was also related to that family, started doing some work here in Shiprock. And I can remember Russell buying a small box of sand paintings, different sizes, from James Joe, and we took 'em to Scottsdale for the very first time, and people liked the idea, but they didn't quite know how to react to it. And slowly, as people built up a little confidence that they were an art form, they started to move. And just slowly--and it was slow at first--we started to establish a market for sand paintings. But a lot of the people back in that time would not do sand paintings, because it was duplicating a religious deity on something that couldn't be destroyed. That was really against the Navajo religion, to an extent. Now, a lot of the sand painters got around that by altering colors or altering some of the personages enough that it wasn't a duplication of anything that they felt like would be holy to the Indian people. And yet it was a very sensitive issue for a long time. A sand painter would come in, and he never wanted to show his sand paintings out front--he'd always kind of bring them in a back room to show them. And there was just enough sensitivity to some of the people on both sides that they just kind of honored that. And so that was interesting. The first sand paintings that came in, we never framed. We sold thousands of sand paintings unframed before we ever thought or got the idea of framing them ourselves. And now almost 95 percent of the sand paintings that we handle--and you saw the quantity of them--are all framed now. So our framing bill is immense every month. Sand painting is a big business now. Back in that era, it was pretty well rugs, where the big stay, we had some pawn jewelry, we had some new jewelry, but most of it was rugs and small things like that. That's one thing the Foutz family was known for, was always Navajo rugs, back in that early era. Cole: So what was the size of the Shiprock Trading Company when you moved in here? Was it still a bull pen operation? Foutz: It wasn't a bull pen, no. It was a very small store up front, and it was self-service. The Jack family had owned it for some time, and they really needed to sell it financially. They had gotten themselves in a financial bind, and so Russell bought it, and it took us a while to bring it back. But our big feature at that time was--no, it was self-service, and of course we sold a lot of corned mutton and corned beef. Your lards and your shortening were a big thing. Coffee was a big thing. And we didn't have a lot of refrigeration right at first--we had two or three small cases, and then one small case of meat. Joe Harris, who went to work for Russell at a very, very early time--I'd say in the forties or early fifties, I guess-- was with us for twenty-some odd years, and was always the butcher. The Indian people took a great liking to Joe. Joe was [of] some Indian [tribe from] back East-- I think it was Choctaw or one of 'em--but he and his wife--his wife worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs here, and Joe worked here at the store. But we had fresh meat, and that was one thing the Indians would always come in for, was they liked their meat fresh, and they knew how they liked it. They were very, very fussy with their preparation, and how they wanted it, and how fat they wanted it. They were much fussier, I think, overall, than the Anglo woman or person, shopping. They knew their meats. And of course they were sheepherders, and so they ought to. And they were very, very good at it. Not a lot of vegetables. Most of your vegetables, because of the lack of refrigeration, were dry. It was potatoes and onions and some bananas and oranges-- things like this--but nothing exotic like we have today. In our own supermarkets we've gone through immense changes. As we think of the market today, I think back then it's been immense. Out here it was even more startling. So they were pretty limited in the things that we carried there, but they were self- service, and the people could pick up things. A big majority of the store at that time, I'd say, probably at least half when Russell first bought the store, was credit, and half was cash. And that trend just constantly, that percentage just slowly changed until it became almost 10 percent trade or charge, and 90 percent to 95 percent cash. The store was very in volume, compared to what it was four or five years ago-- it was very small--small volume. We slowly added to the store. I think it went through three or four major changes. It's interesting to me, and I'd just like to take note, because I think a lot of people wonder about why they didn't see more stores built and added onto during that era of time. The Navajo Tribe, by the lease that they gave, back in the early era were giving twenty-five-year leases. After that time, they'd give shorter leases, maybe ten, fifteen years, during the era that I came in. They would own--immediately after like we did the expansion here and spent a lot of money--they own those improvements. And for some reason, had they wanted to break [the] lease, or they would find some clause that I was not doing right, that they could put me out of my lease, they would not have to pay me for the improvements, they owned those. They own the building and improvements to the lease. Consequently, a lot of the traders, or a lot of the people out here, didn't want to spend a lot of money, because they didn't know how long they'd be out here. There was always, oh, what would I say? Talk in the background, sometime the Navajo Tribe would want to take the trading posts over, and see that these were run by the Indian people. And I think it made a lot of your Anglo or white traders a little nervous-- especially in enlarging their stores or spending a lot of money out there to improve. And I think consequently, during that era, you didn't see a lot of improvement in the stores, because of this. Cole: What year did Russell first buy this store, do you know? Foutz: Boy, you're gonna have to talk to Russell. I think I would just back up. I'd probably say back in the fifties. I'd say early fifties, probably 1954, 1952, something in there--so it was early fifties, that he's had this store since then. It's my understanding that this store was started by Mr. Elgart [phonetic spelling] that was in Tuba City. He was down there, Tuba City was, I think, originally settled by a group of Mormon people that were sent down by Brigham Young. At that time, it wasn't on the Navajo Reservation, and they had beautiful farms going there. And because of the locale, and because the Indian people were relatively close, Mr. Elgart built a trading post down there, and I think you've got a wonderful picture of it in your archives. Well, when they extended the Navajo Reservation, the people had to sell their farms out. And so the Bureau of Indian Affairs at that time bought the people out, and my great-grandfather with a segment came up here. Mr. Elgart came up with them. That was my understanding, that he started this store in about, I believe, 1894. And then I'm not sure, but I know Jess Foutz at one time worked here and had part of this store. And then it went to the Evans family, and I think from the Evans family to the Jack family, and then from the Jack family, Russell bought that, and ever since then, it's been in the Foutz group. Cole: When you came in, in 1964, I'm sort of curious, what was the situation with transportation and the Navajo people in 1964? Foutz: Okay. Here we're on what we'd call the periphery or the edge of the Reservation. So there are more cars per capita here than you would find on what I would call further out on the Reservation or the interior of the Reservation. But here in 1945 I would say more cars, and if not--certainly not every family had a car--they had a relation or somebody that they could get access to a car if they had to go to Farmington. But I think even back in that era, people did not travel or go to town like we do today. I think maybe the average family would go to Farmington maybe once every two or three months, maybe monthly. And there were some that worked maybe just slightly off the Reservation--they went more, but not a lot. While they were traveling quite a bit, the average one didn't go around. And of course even back in that era, the Indian people would actually pay somebody to take them to town that had a car. So this was a way that some people made money. They didn't run a taxi cab, per se. We could call it that, but they had a transit service, you might say, and they rented that to the other people. That happens even today. Cole: Was it still fairly common then to see people on horseback, wagons? Foutz: Not as prevalent here in Shiprock. It was getting to be a little uncommon to see wagons. You'd see wagons and that, and I think I've got one picture, and I'll never forget it, of an old wagon and team of Willy John's. He used to work at the store. But one winter he pulled up back here, and the whole harness had been made out of old water hose. He couldn't afford a harness or a harness setup, but because the [hose] was flexible and everything else, he'd made the whole harness out of this rubber hose. And it was the darnedest-looking setup you've ever seen, wrapped around his horses and that. But the wagon was going just fine and that. But as you went not too far out on the Reservation, just say to Teec Nos Pos--let alone Chinle and that--you saw a high proportion of wagons in that area. Here in Shiprock, just because of the edge of the Reservation, and because industry came in like Kerr-McGee, and we had the helium plant here, and we had a small settlement at that time. No, we had more transportation here. The horses would be here, but the wagons were going fast. Cole: Was that uranium? Foutz: Kerr-McGee was uranium. It was a rendering or a processing plant here. They brought the uranium in from several places on the Reservation, notably Monument Valley. In fact, you can see the big tailings pile out here that's been covered. It was huge. But they had a big payroll. Plus they built quite a group of beautiful homes down here for the Reservation, for their management and for people like that. Cole: Is that where the Dine College houses are now? Foutz: No. That would be the Navajo Community College over there. That was right down here back of the old chapter house. I think most of the houses have been leveled and taken away. And the helium plant was out here across in the flat back of the shopping center. And they had about sixty to a hundred homes out there, done in a subdivision with beautiful trees and everything else. That was a big thing, the processing of helium here, that would come from that Rattlesnake find right up here by Shiprock. They worked a lot of people. Kerr-McGee, that, and Helium Corp., yeah. Big payrolls. Shiprock was quite a community at one time. Cole: So by the middle 1960's, when you became involved with the trading post here, would you say it was mainly a cash economy then? Foutz: In the 1960's? Yes. But what it had been, it was converting into a cash. I think, oh, when you say "cash," okay, it was cash with a lot of emphasis on welfare and Social Security. When I say "welfare," the distribution of state welfare commodities was a big thing at that time. Your welfare and Social Security paydays were very big. Your livestock, we were still trading here at the store some sizeable livestock accounts--notably wool and mohair--the Garnezes, the Kendalls, the Knights, the Lights--were all related, but they were big livestock families. And we still traded on the account with those things. We would run probably one-and-a-half McKaskeys of just charge at that time. Some of those would be welfare checks, some of 'em would be payroll checks, like the Navajo Tribe. And some of 'em would be livestock. But by far cash is the most thing, yeah. Cole: What is a "McKaskey"? Foutz: The McKaskey is an old metal box you'll see out there that closes. It was the McKaskey Company, and they made charge account receipt holders, and they would make 'em fireproof, so when you closed it at night, it was so heavy-metally, that if you had a fire, up to that time it would withstand some of the heat and not ruin your accounts. And also, it had a lock on it so you could close those accounts at night and lock it, so if you were broken into, they couldn't steal all the accounts and you wouldn't know who owed you money. And so it was the McKaskey Company--I'm sorry--that did that. And if you went to any trading post in the old days, you'd always see their charge accounts. It's very interesting. As you go out in Jay and Loyd's at Beclahbeto, say, you'll see racks of these books stacked up with the family's names on. And that's why I wanted you to stop by there, because that store is like going back twenty years here, because they charge still today, to so many of the families. Your average store does not charge today. For a fact, there are very few trading posts, per se, left, that buy livestock. When we say "trading post," you know the trading era kind of evolved from all trade, the cash trade, and then slowly the convenience store kind of come in. And your local came in, your big stores at Kayenta and Tuba City and Chinle--City Market and Basha's came out here. And so slowly the convenience store took over where the trading post once was. And yet there's still livestock out here. And so there's still the need for some services that buy, competitively, livestock and wool, mohair, and things like that. While the market's decreasing, there's still some here. The sheep have decreased for two purposes, I think. First of all, they've lost their sheepherders. Years ago, during the forties when I came out, and during the thirties, I think most families would kind of hold back one of the children or one of the kids and basically say that he was not going away to school, but he was going to stay home and become the herder, or the one that looked after the flocks or the sheep. So they basically had the sheepherders built in. Well, the way that the Indians take care of their sheep, you've got to have a sheepherder, they've got to go out every day and go out to a different part of their [grazing] permit to keep the feed coming along. [END SIDE 1, BEGIN SIDE 2] Cole: This is Brad Cole from Northern Arizona University. It's March 9, 1998. We're at the Shiprock Trading Company in the Rug Room with Ed Foutz. Also present in the room is Lew Steiger, who is running the camera and sound equipment. Ed, could you continue? We were talking about the role of the sheepherder in the Navajo family. Foutz: Well, as you know, as the livestock has changed out on the Reservation, the role of livestock, it's interesting to me, because back in the early days, you know, really, basically, the Navajo really grew up. As they were nomadic, they took with them their sheep herds. They relied on their wool, they relied on several things that came away from the sheep, the lambs for increase and of course the meat of the sheep, mutton, to eat. But as the new era came in, so to speak, and as we said that all their kids needed to go away to school, for some time that wasn't enforced to the point that a lot of the younger kids--or not a lot, but somebody in most families were retained out of that to stay home, to become the herder, and basically were never sent to school. A little later on, some of the older parents had to supplement the sheepherding, and then now, they really have a hard time finding herders to stay with their flocks, and so they either have one of two alternatives: and that is to either take one of the older ones out, or put flocks together, or keep the flock in the corral sometimes, feeding them hay. At the price of hay today, you find that even though they love their herds so much, it's a very expensive thing. And consequently, you've seen more of your Indian people go to cattle, or to cows, and that on their grazing permits they don't have to herd the cows every day, or look after 'em. They check on 'em maybe once every two or three days or once a week, and keep track of 'em. Then that doesn't take near the time that it does to look after a herd of sheep. And so you've seen a great decrease recently in the herds of sheep out here, and the size of herds of the sheep and goats, brought on primarily by that. And then also, just recently, very recently, they lost their government subsidy or incentive on wool and mohair. That was that the government subsidized wool at a certain price. And that certainly meant a lot of differential to the Indian that sold their wool for 32� and if the incentive was at 65�, they got the difference between 65� and 32� from the government. And so that made it very economically feasible, or much more feasible to raise sheep for that purpose. And that subsidy now is gone, and consequently it's hard, economically, to keep a herd going with the price of hay today, that they have to supplement their feed on the Reservation; and a lack of really, basically, herders, it's hard to really have a herd. So your numbers of sheep and goats have radically or drastically decreased over the last few years, and have been decreasing for some period of time, with the cattle increasing a little bit, but really even down, too. Your people are turning from that kind of economy, and livestock-oriented background, more to a job and training and that type of background. It's interesting. Cole: Take 1965, 1966. Describe for us the role of the trader at Shiprock Trading Company with the wool and mohair--maybe the wool season, how that all came about, how much you'd buy and sell. Foutz: I think this was one of the great responsibilities, if you will, of the trader, or anybody doing business. If you're going to be a successful business person out here, you need to render a service to the people that you're trying to do business with. And I think that service to them is to find a market or to be a competitive market in handling what they need to market--in this case that we're talking about, wool and mohair. In the early days, we pretty well used to buy wool and mohair here at the store and market it through two or three people that would traditionally market Reservation wool and mohair. Now, I define Reservation wool and mohair, because there is a differential because most of your mohair in the United States is sheared twice a year. Mohair, goat wool, on the Reservation is sheared once a year. And as we were speaking earlier, the only other place that I know of in the world today that is another market where they shear their goats once a year is in Africa. And so we have long mohair here, and so when long mohair is needed, this is a market they've gotta come to find it. And [Navajo] wool is different than the rest of the wool in that there's greater dust out here in the way of wind blowing and dust storms in the spring. And so if we have a lot of dust, before we shear, that wool picks up a lot of that dust, and retains a lot of it, to where there's greater shrinkage on this wool than the average pasture sheep. And your markets know that. So they're unique markets, and they're uniquely a little different than anywhere else in the United States. And over the years, your people who have bought this know this, and build that into the price they pay for the wool, which is a little less because it shrinks more. Interesting too, there are some--what would I say?-- over the years that I've dealt here on the Reservation, there's been some interesting things that you learn young, and that's there is accepted gamesmanship that goes on in the buying and selling of some of the things out here. And I call it gamesmanship, because I feel that's what it is. In the way of buying livestock, you would find that a lot of times you'd never buy livestock until late in the afternoon, on most days. We'd see very little livestock come into the store for sale till about three o'clock in the afternoon. I think a lot of time the livestock, specifically the lambs, were left off of water for some period of time, and then they were put on water, or even induced for thirst by using a little salt, to where just before they'd come in to bring 'em to market, they would put 'em on water. And of course a young lamb can hold from six to eight pounds of water a lot of times. Well, you've got to understand and know that if you're buying a lot of lambs, or you've got a lot of extra water that you've bought, and when you go to market it, that you don't have that water there to market, and you've lost a lot of weight. With the wool, of course the Indian people were good about--what would I say?--adding some weight to wool in ways. But it was gamesmanship. That was just kind of an accepted thing, but you had to kind of understand and realize it went on, or things could really be difficult when you went to sell it, because you'd take a great loss on it. And you learned these things in dealing year after year with them, and it was an interesting thing to me. I got bested many times in learning the business of dealing with livestock here on the Reservation. And then there are other times when I guess I won, I don't know. But it's been an interesting challenge here. When I first worked at this store with Russell, we would buy about probably 123 or 120 bags of wool, and probably, oh, 12 to 13 bags of mohair. We have recently taken that up to sometimes we bought better than probably 1,500 to 2,000 bags of wool, and up to as high as probably 800 or 900 bags of mohair. Cole: When was that? Foutz: That was probably back, oh, I'd say back… Boy, time gets away from you! Probably back about ten, twelve years ago. And so that would be in the mid- eighties, the late eighties. We were buying substantial quantities of wool and mohair. And I think we did this more than anything else instead of relying on the people that had traditionally bought the wool here that were working for a wool warehouse, to where you had two or three middle people. We got enough size and enough volume going through here that we went right to the wool warehouses themselves. We were selling wool and mohair directly to England, mohair to Johannesburg and to Texas on the wool market, and consequently we were able to pay more to the people and keep it more competitive and yet move the merchandise, the mohair and wool. Cole: Were you buying that wool and mohair strictly from Navajos, or also from other traders? Foutz: The wool that I spoke of there we bought primarily from the Indian people themselves. It was interesting, one year the Navajo learned fast that if they bought a large wool bag from the trader, they had to spend $2-$3 for that wool bag. So they would bring gunny sacks of wool in that we had to consequently put in the big bags and pack. And after one of our wool seasons, we counted over 10,000 gunny sacks we got out there that we'd emptied, to show you the volume that you do in it. We had 10,000 gunny sacks back there. And this was--we drove this to where a lot of the wool and mohair was coming in from this whole region. They'd come, because I feel like we were competitive, and then a lot of the other traders had quit buying wool and mohair. And some of the other trading posts had actually started to be just a convenience store, or had transformed into a convenience store with Thriftway taking them over. Cole: Were you still seeing a lot of lambs during that period? Foutz: We were buying larger quantities of lambs. We'd taken the lamb buying here from probably, I would say roughly we used to buy 500-600. The largest year we ever had was we bought just under 8,000 head of lambs here, and that's a lot of lambs. And we used to buy that on a very small scale. A lot of those lambs were bought one by one in a big bucket on a single scale on their back, you'd place each one in it. But the Indian people would feel more comfortable in weighing like that, because they felt like in a big scale that you could change the weight and they wouldn't know it. So they understood the small scale much better. And so we tried to keep it that way. And while it was a lot of work, it helped us, I think, buy more livestock. Cole: Is the livestock business--the wool, mohair, and lamb business--still that big now? Foutz: No, it is not. I think we've talked about the decreasing herds, and this showed up in lambs and mohair, and especially this has accelerated the last ten years, that the numbers are substantially down clear across the Reservation. The Navajo Tribe runs a wool program, and buys wool and mohair there. We always found that was good competition, but we always could usually match or beat their price. Cole: Do you remember when that tribal wool program came into being? Foutz: Oh, I do not. It's been probably viable or going for the last twenty years. It's been a program, and interesting to me, it's been probably one of the longer programs that the tribe has had going for it, where they've bought things from the Indian people and then have found a market for it. Most of the things they'd start up would slowly over a short period of time be unsuccessful to a degree, or it wouldn't work out, or the service wasn't needed anymore to where they discontinued it. With the mohair-wool program, they've kept it up for some period of time, and it's been a good program for 'em. Cole: We were earlier talking about the whole transition to the cash economy. What effect have you seen, say, from the mid-sixties on, with the federal programs that have come about, and things like that? How has that affected the buying and selling and maybe even the Navajo people themselves, in your perspective? Foutz: Well, I think first of all in that ______, talking about the sixties--of course in the fifties and the sixties we had a few payrolls, but still the biggest payrolls at most stores--and they were very substantial, and probably one of the busiest times of the whole month--would be your welfare, which would be the first of the month; and then your Social Security payday, which would be the third of the month. And those were the two very substantial paydays, aside from Navajo Tribal paydays and your Bureau of Indian Affairs. But they weren't as substantial as that. Now, your payrolls are more substantial by far. There's by far more cash flow than there used to be. For a fact, now we cash substantial amounts of checks. I think there have been weekends where we'll cash $50,000-$70,000 worth of checks in a single day, and have to run back to the bank to replenish for Saturday. But totally changed because of your payroll, and the size of checks. Your welfare and your Social Security checks themselves have certainly, over the last fifteen years, because of the increase in them, keeping up with the standard of living, have gone up substantially in size. Cole: How big did the store here get in terms of how many employees did you have? Foutz: We got as high as probably, oh, I'd say close to twenty-five to thirty employees, at one time. And probably of the twenty- five to thirty, I'd say four would be Anglo, with the rest being Navajo. There were some very, very--what would I say?--highly qualified Indian people that worked here, that could handle anywhere. I had two or three girls that actually could manage the store. They didn't know they could. I don't think they knew they could, but they really could have�. Cole: Did you and Russell ever bring in any kind of like fringe benefits, profit-sharing plans, or anything like that? Foutz: I did, yes. It was interesting, back in the 1980's, we disbursed out of a profit-sharing plan here, and there were some very substantial checks paid here-- most of it to the Indian people. I think there was a little better than maybe $200,000-$300,000 disbursed to 'em in a profit-sharing plan that we disbanded. It was totally funded, and we decided there wasn't a need for it anymore, so we funded out of it. Cole: It sounds like even in the sixties and seventies you still had quite a bit of credit business. How would it work when--sort of take us through when somebody would get their Social Security check or whatever--how much would be put on the account, and how that would all operate. Foutz: Okay. I think if you're gonna run credit and be effective at it, you've gotta have really a good credit manager. And I think that's where I trained two or three of our Indian people to be excellent at that, because you've got to kind of watch. And when I say "watch," you've gotta keep very good track of credit. But let's just take a Social Security check. Let's say the individual received $400-$450 in Social Security. We'd sit down with that individual when they'd open an account with us, and ask them how much they'd like their account to run. And we'd maybe come to terms at $200 or $250 they'd like their account to be. Invariably, over a period of time, a lengthy time, they would always end up trying to go higher than that, because they would always find that they had charged $250 and they wanted more before the check came, and so they'd be in trying to ask you, and so eventually you'd let 'em go up higher. But let's just say the bill would be around $300, the check would come in, or not come in, or they'd get the check, they'd bring it in, pay their account, and the difference between what they owed and what they got they would take in cash. Sometimes that check would come here to the store. We didn't have a post office here, but it would come to our post office box. Other times the recipient received it themselves, would bring it in. I think it's like credit you run anywhere else, you would have some people that would pay their bill every single time, others would pay it most of the time and come in and let you know why they hadn't. Others would not ever pay their bill, and you were continually trying to collect the bills from them. And I guess over the years, that is one reason you've had to--and that really became a dilemma in the trading post, or in this type of business--is how to mark up your groceries, or figure your margins on the product you sold if you were gonna sell some for cash, and be competitive; and others for charge, where some people weren't gonna pay their business, and you carried it for a month and had to pay for that extra cost in the money you had tied up. Plus, there were a substantial number that didn't ever pay their bill, and so you had to take that write- off. And so a lot of the posts would lengthen their margin to cover this extra expense. And it was tough. Some traders, I think tried a double pricing--one for cash and one for credit. And I don't know many stores [where] that ever worked out successfully, because people were unhappy about charging and not paying the same price as somebody with cash. That's hard to keep straight, and I understand that, because I'd be upset, too, if I'd traded at a place for five years and paid my bill most of the time, and yet I was getting charged a higher price. At the same time, I think anybody that's been in business knows that they have to charge a little more if they're gonna charge and cover those kind of expenses. And so that really posed a problem as the greater cash came into being here. And now, really, at a store like Shiprock Trading here, where there is enough payrolls around and that, I don't think you'd really have to do any [credit] business if you were competitive, and I think you'd probably be more competitive if you didn't charge at all. I think there are a lot of the old timers that are so used to charging, they would like to, but I don't think a person would need to [extend credit] to be in business here. Cole: We haven't touched upon the pawn system, but did you have a pawn system at Shiprock? Foutz: We had pawn at Shiprock, we did. And we had a very large pawn safe. Yes, we did a lot of pawn business here, we did. And that was back, and it was a very intricate part of the trading business at that time. This is interesting. Of course, as you know, the one thing that brought the end to the pawn business on the Reservation was the Federal Trade Commission when they came out and did their studies on the Reservation. At that time I was, I think, a [member of] the board of directors of the [United] Indian Traders Association, and we, as an association, tried to give the Federal Trade Commission as much cooperation in the way of feeding our input, as we possibly could, to them. I don't really think that they were open in receiving that as much. I think that they wanted to hear a pretty--what would I say?--narrow feedback on what they got about what was going on on the Reservation. I think personally that the need for some changes were definitely needed. There's no doubt about that, there was room for changes in the way that pawn was taken, and maybe the rates of interest that were being charged. Most traders, I think at the time they came out here, charged, I believe, 10 percent on pawn. And we all held it for a year. And that was probably 10 percent a month. Boy, I'm trying to go back, I think that was 10 percent a month that was charged at that time. When the Federal Trade Commission came out, they held their hearings, and because of those hearings--I think they had pretty well prepared, it was like here in Shiprock. I think when you do business over a period of a year, with, let's say, 5,000-6,000 people, you're gonna have ten, maybe, for some reason or another, are not satisfied, and maybe justifiably so-- you've made a mistake or something's happened like their piece was lost or something like this. Even though you've replaced it, they end up being unhappy. And I think those are the majority of people that were heard at these hearings. I don't think, honestly, it was a representation of the general or the large market that was dealing in the pawn business at that time. I think rates were maybe excessively high, but I think the thing that happened--and I remember the hearings in Window Rock--as I visited with the group of people that were heading up the hearings for the Federal Trade Commission, and Peterson Zah, I believe, was working for the DNA [Din�be�iin� N�hiilna� Bee Agha�diit�aah�] at that time, or the legal end, as a lawyer for DNA-- that when they said that they were trying to get the rates established at 24 percent a year or 2 percent a month, they felt like that anybody on the Reservation would pawn at 24 percent a year, when the banks were at that time charging to borrow, I believe it was around 8- 10 percent. They said, "Well, it's double that." Well, what they didn't take into account is that those banks get a substantial interest or closing charge and handling charge up front. If you lend on pawn a bracelet at 24 percent a [year], that's 2 percent a month. Or let's say on a $50 bracelet, if you were to pawn it for $50, that means at 2 percent for the first month, you'd get $1. That would not cover your initial costs in pawning. And consequently, because of the hearings, and because of the law that was passed because of it, the traders were allowed to pawn on the Reservation at 24 percent a year, or 2 percent a month. Well, it became totally unprofitable, or unfeasible to pawn to that particular rate, and consequently, that brought the demise or the end of pawn on the Navajo Reservation. I feel bad about that for the people in many ways, because I think first and foremost it hurt the people pawning in that they now have to travel. They didn't quit pawning jewelry--pawn just moved off the Reservation to the surrounding communities. They're now the people, or the people that we were servicing on the Reservation, in their little, in, let's say, their home when they lived at Shiprock--now they have to travel to Farmington. That's just an added expense to them, to handle their pawn, the Navajo Tribe, and consequently that hurt the people themselves. Secondly, the Navajo Tribe lost control over the pawn, on the length of time it [could be] held, and they could have really dictated the laws by which we pawned on the Reservation, and oversaw that. Secondly, they lost the income to off the Reservation. So I think in several ways possibly it was too severe in that it went too far. I think it would have been better for the people and the tribe if they would have allowed pawning on the Reservation [in] some way, under a controlled thing, with different controlled interest rates. I think they'd have answered the needs of the people to a higher degree. But as it is now, there's no pawn on the Reservation. Cole: Were you allowed to charge interest, or did you charge interest on your charge accounts? Foutz: Yes, I think some people charged interest on their charge accounts. This is one thing we never did. I think there were some trading posts that did--or that's my understanding. Cole: But that did not fall under the [FTC regulations]? Foutz: That did not fall--to my recollection, that did not fall under that. They addressed, really, the credit system. And you might say the trading business up to that time did live--it had grown up and it continued, and you might say to a degree it was saturated credit. I believe that, and so I think it helped us kind of wean off that a little bit, which I think was a betterment--for the businessman as well as the person dealing with the stores. I think it was time, and so I think this brought about some changes that were good, very definitely, because of the credit an the saturation of it, possibly, on the Reservation. I think that just happened because the people themselves were used to it, the Indian people, and didn't feel like they could get along without it. And the trader had always been used to it, so it was something that I think just grew up, and it was a habit, so to speak. I don't think it was meant to really--what would I say?--catch or keep the customers. I think it was just something that had been there in place, and both parties had been used to, and it was retained longer than it possibly should have been. Cole: Other than the travel, is there a big difference between how the pawn operation works on the Reservation versus now where it's off the Reservation? Foutz: Well, it's governed by state laws off the Reservation. And when I say that, the laws in Arizona would be different than in New Mexico. We have a pawn place in Farmington, New Mexico at this time. We are regulated by the State of New Mexico. At this particular time, we can charge 54 percent a year. We are asked to hold by the State for six months--we hold for a year. We get 10 percent for the first month, and 4 percent thereafter. The 10 percent up front gives you enough return to cover your costs and your initial expenses to where you'll do it. Then after that, it could be 4 percent or 2 percent, it doesn't really matter, because it returns enough that the person will pawn. Cole: Would you say most of the pawn you take in now is reclaimed or not? Foutz: We lose about 2 percent a year, which is very, very low. We hold for a year, and we deal with mainly Indian people that we've dealt with over a period of time. I think that that will change a little bit as the great and heirloom pieces of jewelry are lost. The people are pawning new pieces, pieces that they have just made and can't sell somewhere, so they'll take it in to pawn it somewhere. They've initially sold it to the place where they pawn it to when they initially pawn it. So that turns. So I think that slowly our percentage of turn will become greater--just by the people that we're pawning with and the type of things that we're pawning. And that's why I'm saying the great old jewelry that we used to see on the Reservation is slowly just disappearing, and it's going. Cole: In your years in the trading post business, were you ever involved with Navajo ceremonies? Foutz: Involved? This is a place the trader was asked--in the early days, a trader became almost a partner with that, depending on the size of it. I can remember a big yei�ii bichai or a fairly large sing going on at Teec Nos Pos, Russell would be asked to give substantial things, like a beef, some sheep, and quite a bit of flour to feed the people that came to that sing. He may participate with the family in the way of donating a basket or two and buckskin. So there was a participation that was a service rendered, but yet the trader had a tremendous influx of business because of the people that would come there, because they were very isolated. Later on, as a store here that I worked at so much, where it wasn't--well, I'd say we still became very involved with it. We were asked to contribute and to help with it. The Navajo people are great ones to reach out and ask family and friends to participate and help, are given the chance to have them participate and help at the time of a sing and a special need. The trader was no exception. And we, all the time, if the customer was a regular customer of ours, we'd always participate and give to it, depending on what was needed at that particular time. We were always invited out. I've been invited out to many as a participant, as a friend, or just somebody who'd been personally invited out. And that was always what I would consider an honor. I always looked on it as such, and always tried to do that. I think it was part of being in the community, and sharing. I don't know, I think it's like belonging to a service unit when you're in a town or something. I think it's part of being in the community and that. You bet. Cole: Did you ever have any dealings with… You mentioned earlier on about working with some Navajo on funerals or things like that. How did that come about? because it seems like there are some taboos and stuff with the Navajo, dealing with death. Foutz: I think in the early days, and predominantly you go back at the time of my father, I think those taboos were very, very strong, perhaps--or stronger than they were. Slowly, as I come along, the Christian church had made great inroads--be it the Catholic or Mormon or Baptist or whatever, they're all out here-- had made enough inroads that a lot of the people had slowly started to accept burying. And of course just being environmentally--you couldn't very well bury people all over the Reservation. [Or] if you didn't bury 'em, leave--because in the early days, they would just move out of a hogan that somebody had passed away in. As time kind of progressed, and then the people kind of accepted the burial and the cemetery and this kind of concept--and of course your Public Health Service certainly encouraged this, just to control infectious diseases and things like that, it becomes a necessity. And consequently, the people back that. And yes, when we were asked--I don't think that the people back in the time that I first got down here saved a lot of money, and they didn't save for crisis, if we want to call [it] this, or a major something that was unexpected. They weren't users of insurance like we are, or been taught to be. And they weren't great ones to say, but they believe in, we would say, passing the hat, or letting friends and that contribute. And so they would pass the hat and have friends and family contribute both financially to cover the expenses, and then to help with food or anything else that would need be needed at that time as the family came together. There have been times that I've been asked to speak at several [funerals]. In my own church--I am a Mormon, or a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints--I've been asked to speak at Catholic funerals or Baptist, or several others, just as a friend, or as an associate. I've always tried to do so. Cole: Did you ever have any direct dealings or needs to use a Navajo medicine man? Foutz: Myself? Cole: Uh-huh. Foutz: Hm, I have not. I have been in many sings. I think through a person's faith in something or somebody, that they can receive and be healed and many great things. But I've had many friends that certainly were involved. I had a doctor that was a great friend of mine, Bob--Robert--Pudge [phonetic spelling]. He was up here, and he was in specialized medicine and ethnic medicine now, and teaches it at the University of Washington, and also a university in New York. He teaches both. It's interesting. No, I have never myself [used a medicine man]. We've done another thing always in our stores. Russell taught me this, and we've always just tried to do it, and that's we've always carried items that they need at the time of a sing: specifically from us would be medicine baskets or wedding baskets and buckskins that have been hand-tanned, that have the ears and the tail completely, that could be used in a sing. And we've really tried to keep these things priced extremely low. And until recently, we've been able to do that, but the price of baskets has just escalated because they've become such a marketable thing that it's driven the price up. But for years and years and years a wedding basket would cost from $25-$45, while other baskets have just soared. But we tried to keep them very low because of that, because the people at the time of a sing really needed something--and a lot of times couldn't afford a lot, but they had to have a sing. Cole: How would the community in your experiences in the forties, and then again in the sixties, deal with medical emergencies? Was there access to doctors and hospitals? Foutz: There was always the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Here at Shiprock we've been lucky, we've always had a fairly substantial hospital here. And so the people have always had access to that, free. As wards of the government, by treaty, they have always been given--we had said that we would take care of their health. And we've always furnished those needs. I found a lot of the people, I think because of the length of time they had to wait to be seen up here, or by a Bureau of Indian Affairs doctor, or through maybe some of the ways the doctor had handled them, lost faith in the doctors up here. And a lot of 'em would come in and pawn or want to borrow money because they wanted to go to town to a doctor up there they had to pay money to. And they were willing to do that, but they felt like maybe sometimes the service was a little better up there, or more personalized, I don't know. But I know that quite a bit of this went on. And yet, I think it was well staffed up here, the doctors were. They had a surgery unit up here, and for a long time Dr. McKenzie was one of the first Navajo doctors, surgeons, that I know of, and he was very, very well thought of, and he performed surgery up here, as well as in Gallup a lot. And he was from a family, this Ed McKenzie, that used to deal with us forever here at the store. It's interesting, here you have a great surgeon, and yet his parents could hardly speak English--not that it mattered any--but in one generation, that's what had happened, which is really remarkable, which I think is wonderful. Cole: What about veterinary care? Foutz: Veterinary care, we carried some vet supplies here as we got a little more sophisticated and got refrigeration. Before that time, the people just used what I would call basic substantial, you know, natural understanding of the elements around. They have natural things that they always used to put on-- salves and ointments they used to put on animals, that they would make from vegetation and plants. Before that time, as we got other things, and they had access to a veterinarian and penicillin and sulfide drugs that would cause some infections to go away--the people were very stock-oriented people. And they learned fast, and then so we carried veterinary supplies and syringes here for that purpose, you bet--and encouraged it. And I think the Bureau of Indian Affairs, through their programs, certainly educated the people in the use of things with the livestock there. But these people teach themselves. They are great livestock people and want to take good care of their things--plus, they have a great basic understanding of it, they've always handled livestock. Like you and I would panic maybe at some little thing--some of those animals get sick--they have an understanding to know what it is, and they don't panic and they don't spend a lot of money, but they get it taken care of. Cole: Maybe switch gears here a little bit. You were saying that Shiprock Trading Company buys and sells a vast amount of rugs, especially Navajo rugs. Foutz: Yes. Cole: How do you buy rugs? How do you tell what's a good rug? Maybe you could tell us a little bit about that. Foutz: Arts and crafts rugs… Well, okay, you know, you back up and Shiprock here regionally was always known for the Shiprock yei'iis, and Mr. Evans that owned this trading post at one time, was really attributed to starting the yei'ii rug. He worked with some of the weavers here in this town that were doing figure rugs, or what we'd call a sand painting rug, and he went to 'em and he said, "I feel like if you'll take three or four of these figures and put 'em on a rug that somebody can hang on a wall, that we'd have a very marketable piece that would market well in the market today." And some of the weavers went and started weaving these yei'ii rugs, or similar rugs to a yei'ii, and they found it very marketable. And so over a period of time, this became the center of yei'ii rugs, and it's where it originated, and were attributed to, and especially with white backgrounds. As Russell came along and started �em using commercial yarn with the yei'ii rug, they became greater, much higher quality rugs. They were finer, more elaborate in design, and just beautiful, with different color backgrounds--grey, beiges, dark grey--and just became a very, very viable thing. You can see stacked in this room, that stack of yei'iis over there. There's two stacks of yei'iis right there in the corner. But then as Russell took the store over, we worked on it, with the wools that we carried for weaving. And over the years Russell built up outlets for rugs to where we could buy the rugs. If you buy rugs and can't sell 'em, you can't buy a lot of rugs. And consequently, we built up markets and worked hard at servicing those markets like Fred Harvey. We helped educate them, and helped find the things that they could market in different markets. As the economy went up for red rugs, we tried to supply red rugs for 'em. And we kind of tried to answer the needs of both markets, and we tried to be in between those markets, telling the weavers what was needed, or letting them know what was marketable, and then taking that to a market to where we could move it and come back and buy more of that product. Consequently, we took this store up, and yes, we would average, I would say, between 150 to 250 rugs a month that we'd buy here at this store. And that was a lot of rugs back in those days, and this has been fairly consistent for all the time that I've been around the store. We have kind of deviated from there. Russell would buy rugs from other traders, as over time I have done the same thing. We'd go out and buy from traders if we had a particular need. But as weaving used to be a regional thing, we used to buy yei'iis here, and then slowly, because Two Grey Hills only was a short distance away, we were starting to buy some Greys. As people became more mobile, they would bring Greys in here, and then Teec Nos Pos from Teec Nos Pos, to where slowly we would buy several different types of rugs right here at Shiprock, that people would travel twenty, thirty miles to come to us, because of the price we could pay, because we had a market for 'em consistently. And we worked, again, very hard at doing that. Then slowly, as the rugs got better and the prices higher, we started advertising at greater distances. And now weavers will travel from all over the Reservation to come up in this part of the country to sell a rug--not just because of Shiprock Trading Company, but because up in this area there are five or six extremely strong buyers. And if we can't buy the rug, somebody else will--or usually can--to where they can market their rug up here. And over the years we have really built a reputation for carrying extremely good Navajo rugs, and yet quality rugs. We've become known for it. I'd say the Foutz family has become known for that, and we've worked extremely hard at Shiprock to really perfecting that, to where we really carry a lot of quality rugs, [and a lot of quality rugs] go through here. Not just being that, but the thing you really have to kind of, I guess, work on the other end, is letting the weavers know that you're consistently here to buy top rugs. They don't want to travel, let's say, eighty miles to get over here to sell a top rug, and find that you're not buying, or you haven't got the money to buy, or you've got too many rugs already and you can't buy. But we've always tried to establish a market and be here open to buy, to when that weaver gets here, she knows she can market the rug. And generally speaking, it's been our kind of--what would I say?--if a great rug walks in this store, we try to buy it. You don't see very many leave the store without getting bought. And I guess a lot of times that means that we just pay the price she asks. But I've always been a believer that quality sells, and consequently, we've always reached for that. Steiger: How do you know a great rug? Foutz: How do I know a great rug? Gosh, I'd just take a look at the weaver, and if she was a great lady, I'd say it was a great rug. (chuckles) No, I'm just kidding about that. Great rug. This is always interesting, and we were talking about this before. I think so many times, to me, the people, when they come in here--but I am the same way when I go into a market I don't know a lot about, we're out of our comfort zone, but we try to make--and I think especially buying a Navajo rug--too hard. So many times I will be showing somebody some rugs, and let's say there's several couples there, and somebody will say, "Well, how do you tell a good rug?" And I'll say, "Just a minute, and I'll show you." And I'll keep throwing the rugs, and then I'll reach over and throw just what I would call an extremely good rug. And usually speaking, the women, and even some of the men in the audience there, or in the group, will go, "Oh!" And I'll say, "That's how you tell a good rug," because as they have looked at it, the beauty of that piece just comes out, and it brings that response or reaction that we do when we see a piece that's just "Wow!" It's a beautiful piece. Well, that means that the pattern, the coloring, the size, and everything in that rug has come together to make an attractive rug to the point that it's a marketable or sellable piece. And that means I can pay more, because the account that we'll sell it to will pay more, because they recognize that as just a good rug. Now, the weave goes in there, too, consistently, but with most rugs, the weave isn't that important, as long as it's consistently good, and for the price rug it is, it's tight. But buying a good rug, it's that. And it's always wonderful when a weaver will bring in a rug, and a weaver maybe that you don't know so well, when she walks in, most of these weavers take great pride in the things that they have done. And they'll, a lot of times, dampen it and iron it, prior to bringing it in. Then they will roll it, and let's say if it's a substantially-sized thing, they'll roll it in a bed sheet. So when they come in, you don't see the rug, but it's rolled up, and so as you come into a room like this, and unroll the rug, and you're seeing a gorgeous piece, your heart just absolutely jumps, and you are delighted to have that weaver bring it in. It's interesting to me, in trading or buying from somebody on this type of thing, so many times the buyer will try to get an upper edge by kind of pointing out maybe a little flaw or a defect in the piece. Well, I've always felt like that weaver on a big piece has lived with that piece for six to nine months and she knows every flaw in it, so I don't really need to point it out to her--that's kind of negative. And if I had spent nine months making something, I really try not to make it a negative experience for her or for me, but a positive one. And we'll work on the beauty of the rug, even to build it up. I think some people think it's gonna cost 'em more if they say something good about the rug. I don't know, I think if I had made a rug and spent six to nine months on it and somebody praised it, I'd just feel kinda good about it. And I have always felt like people like to come back and deal with people that are positive instead of negative, and so we've tried to build that atmosphere in the store, and have it a positive experience for the people that come in, and kind of build 'em up. They know a flaw, and maybe as you look at a rug and it's a little crooked, you can maybe just kinda of fold it out and kind of take note of it softly. But you oughtn't to do it and say, "Wow." Some traders will say, "Wow, that's really crooked, I can't pay you much for the rug." Well, that's ouch. If I'd have spent nine months on that, I don't know but that would have been received too well. But we were lucky, we've built the business, we know the rugs, and I have just felt like myself as--I mean, it�s kind of filled my life, in that I just received so much, really from the people. The people are ones to give. They are great people and I think just down to earth, and I have just come to enjoy my life amongst them. But the rugs are just a special thing, because each one is so uniquely different. You never know what's gonna come out. Like I say, when that comes out of that sheet, you never know what to expect, whether it's gonna be a small saddle blanket, or a beautiful piece, and so it's just always kind of like opening a box of Cracker Jack--you can always get a surprise. Now, if you know the weaver, well, then you pretty well know what to expect. But this has been always just an extension of something that you've done that I've loved, but it has even added to it, because I really truly love seeing the rugs, from working around here. Steiger: I've got one more question, and then I'll shut up. You mentioned when we met how fun it was, because you dealt with such a variety of people. Did you actually have a day when you were out there buying sheep, and then you come in and you're dealing with Rockefeller or something like that? Foutz: Okay. That was just a "for instance." But yeah, let's back up. You know, out at a post like this--and that's why I called Shiprock so fun, because of the arts and crafts, and because of the livestock we continually built up. We had a reputation--and so you would be out buying livestock, you'd be out buying some hay, you'd be out in the front, handling, let's say, a charge account or two, and then you'd always have kind of the unique person walk in--let's say Rockefeller. Will Rockefeller donated a mill down here, and so he got coming in. And he'd heard of us, and so yes, he showed up at the counter. But the nice thing is, then, is you meet people like that. Or let's say Robert Redford was in maybe a year later, and he comes in continually. But you meet people like that, but the unique thing is, is you don't just meet 'em, but you meet 'em in an element that's so uniquely different, and they enjoy it to the degree that you do, to where let's say you go back into their country, like I had the opportunity to visit Mr. Rockefeller in his office. I was embarrassed the day that I went in, in announcing to the secretary who I was, she took the message into somewhere, and it wasn't maybe two minutes later that the door come bursting open, and Mr. Rockefeller came flying out, and he says, "My gad, what are you doing back in this country?! You're supposed to be back on the Reservation." And I looked over, and there were about four people waiting to see him. Well, he ushered me back in his office, and he would have taken the rest of the afternoon with me, and to me it was a little embarrassing. But yet, it gave me the opportunity to meet some people on a level that [I'd] never have met them otherwise. And not just a Rockefeller--that's just a "for instance," and of course we all rise to names. But a lot of other people that you've met at such a level, that open doors, and you've made associations with, that you wouldn't trade for anything, that it just gives you a neat--what would I say?--position, because it was so unique. You don't go many places today, and if you were to say "Indian trader"… Or I don't even know if that fits. You could say, "I'm a businessman on the Navajo Reservation." I guess you could introduce yourself as many things. But it would be so uniquely different that it sometimes raises eyebrows or opens doors or gets you kicked out, one or the other, I don't know. (chuckles) But it is, and the variety here was just that, and I think this was what was so fun. And I worked at Teec Nos Pos, and I worked at a couple of other stores. When I was much younger, I was working for Russell here, and that was when I was probably seventeen, close to eighteen years old. My cousin, R.B. Foutz, that now owns Newcomb and Toadlena Trading Posts, was working here, and both of us were kind of getting restless to do something on our own. Well, at that time, Russell bought Tocito Trading Post from Mr. McGee, and gave R.B. and I, if we would stay with him, each a quarter of it. And so at that time we would be trucking livestock out to Tocito, we'd come in here, and I can remember a night or two that R.B. and I would work all day at this store, truck merchandise out to Tocito, livestock back in that night, getting back in here about 10:30, 12:00. We'd just take a blanket off the blankets that were for sale, roll up in it, and sleep on the counter somewhere, and be here for work the next morning as we'd open the store at about 7:30. But this is when you're young, energetic, and all full of that old vigor that gets in us. So that is an era. But we actually go back to that time, yeah. Working. We were talking about working at other stores. I don't think there's another store that I worked at that I loved with the way that I liked this, and it was strictly because of the mix. You were not just doing that, but you were buying, let's say, mutton by the truckload. And when I say "mutton," that doesn't mean much to you, but these people are very fussy on the mutton that they eat. And as we progressed along, and we were not buying the mutton from them in quantities enough to sell back as meat, we had to go out to the market. So we would go out and buy a truckload of mutton, and that would be 300 head. But then we'd have to grind it and feed it so it was just perfect for the way the market wanted it here. Well, now, that sounds strange to you, but that's what brought people maybe ninety miles on a Saturday to buy mutton here. Now, the average store would probably cut up, let's say, five to fifteen mutton on a weekend. We were going through ninety mutton, just on Saturdays. And we drove it that way, of just servicing the people, and having that mutton fed, and a cover of fat on there just thin enough the way they like it, because they are fussy--again, I've told you--with meat. But they would come ninety miles to the store just to get fresh mutton, and we were known for it. And on weekends we'd run specials, and because of those specials, we really brought people a long way. But the variety of the challenges that we were able to do, and the promotions we were able to do: we'd run rug contests a lot of times here. It was a lot of fun to do. We'd give away good jewelry, or Pendleton shawls, and cash sometimes. And the weavers got a really--you know, this was back when contests weren't that popular. They hadn't happened out here. And it really made a difference. And then I think as we stimulated these outlets for top rugs, we were able to come back and work with weavers to where the quality of rugs substantially went up, but we were able to pay the weaver for that quality. (vacuum sweeper noise begins) In the time that I was here, I would take the same weaver and quadruple and sometimes ten times the money that she was able to get. And this is one thing that I know Charles Herring, when he was alive--I was talking to him not so long ago, and he said, "Ed, if there's one thing I can remember about you at Shiprock, is that you were able to take that business and see that the weavers got a lot more money for their product over the years that you were there." And I think perhaps we did. We sold so many that we were such a sizeable market, that… (vacuum sweeper noise grows louder; an aside about stopping tape; tape is stopped and restarted) That really isn't my heart you were hearing, or the pacemaker--it's my stomach! (laughter) But the same with the arts and crafts as you see around here, we were the first, that I know of, that really went into the framing of sand paintings. And then as we went into the framing, we really started to experiment around, and we went into the chrome and glass, the brass and glass, for New York markets. We went into the pine frames, and then slowly we went into the matting of it. And now the matting has almost become an art of itself, as the young people like Bill Foutz and some of the others have got into it in cutting mats. It's almost become a work of art itself. So we've got to take… But the thing that I've really always tried to do is never grow tired, or just get in a rut doing the same thing. It's always been stimulating to me that you take a weaver making a Storm pattern, or a Two Grey Hill, and she'd got to such a level--let's say it was a tapestry weaver--to where she was getting $5,000 a rug. Well, encouraging her to do maybe a black background, keeping the same quality, it was so uniquely different, that you could take that weaver and you could actually add another $2,000 to her, if she didn't do black all the time, but did it once in a while. And it was fun to do, but we did some of this. And it was just moving--and the same with the sand paintings. As your competition caught up with you, it was always fun to try to move on to the next level. And a lot of times we missed, but a lot of times we had fun hitting, too, and it was stimulating. [END SIDE 2, BEGIN SIDE 3] Cole: This is Brad Cole from Northern Arizona University. This is March 9, 1998. We're here at the Shiprock Trading Company with Ed Foutz. Foutz: Still! Cole: Still. And Lew Steiger is still running the camera. This is Tape [Side] #3 of seven or eight to go, I think! Foutz: We're goin' for the record? (laughter) Okay. We were speaking about the rug market and rug marketabilities. You know, as you think about the progression of rugs, you think about the sand paintings, or the sand painting rugs that we carry. And behind you is a stack of sand painting rugs. But a tremendous market for those, the authentic market. But it's frustrating, because these weavers will weave, and you'll get the price going up as the economy in the United States goes up. I didn't realize until the shortage of gas that came along in, what, the 1980's? (Cole: Right.) When all of a sudden we didn't have enough gas and we didn't know if we were going to be traveling all summer, and so the market kind of dried up, because Fred Harvey and places like that did not know how many customers would find themselves to them, not being able to travel, and so they were not buying very many rugs. And consequently, we were nervous about the rug outlet. But it turned out well, but we did find out one thing: That the rugs are so tied to the economy, and sometimes when the economy is really good, the rugs have gone up and escalated in price. Then all of a sudden when we've gone through a tremendous downswing in our economy and the market has gone to pieces, we find the Navajo rug market's got to do the same thing, and adjust. And to come back and help the weaver understand, when she was getting $4,000 a rug, that the market will not absorb that price today, is not an easy thing to do and help her understand the complications of it. And yet we've tried to educate them to this. A lot of times they know, but it's hard to come down from $4,000 to $3,000 when you'll be getting somewhat the same rug. But this has to happen sometimes. We worked on a very interesting project with Ruth Tiller and Roseann Lee who are sisters to Sam Tiller, that I've talked to you about, from Two Grey Hills. They wanted to start, and I one day, Rose was coming in here with these very small tapestries. And the tapestry was selling from $2,000 to $3,000 for this size of rug. And it was counting close to 100-110 weft to an inch. And Rose was frustrated because I had three of her rugs that I hadn't been able to sell, and she came in with a fourth, and I said, "Rose, I can't give you a lot of money for it, because I've already got three, and I can't sell 'em at the price I've been selling." So I just told her what I could pay for it, and I said, "Rose, try somewhere else. If you can sell it for more, fine." And she came back in late in the afternoon and sold me the rug and had come down about $1,500 in price. I think we probably gave her around $2,000. I'd been paying her $3,500 to $4,000 for that rug. She said, "What can I do?" I said, "Well, Rose, no one's done a great big tapestry or a large tapestry. Why don't you do a large tapestry?" And she said, "Well, what do you mean 'large'?" And I said, "Four by six or four by seven." And so she said, "I'll think about it." Well, she came in a little while later and she was laughing and happy--and this was about two weeks later. She said, "I've talked to my sister, and we're gonna start a large tapestry." Well, this went on, and she came in about a month later, and she said, "Now, Ed, this rug's gonna be on the loom for some time. You're gonna have to lend me money kind of as we go along, because this is gonna take quite a while." And at that time I didn't realize how long it was going to take. So when the rug was somewhat along, I guess it had been on the [loom] about nine months, Bill Bob and his wife came over from Cristof's, the store in Santa Fe, and they had heard about the rug and wanted to do some picture-taking of it, so I took Bill Bob, and we went out to Roseann Lee's mother's place where the rug was on the loom. And I have never seen anything like it in my life, in that it was about seven foot wide. And that means the loom was wider than that, and it was on substantial metal pipes about this big around, the bottom and the top of it, and they had about twelve big tie-downs, chain tie-downs, pulling that pipe down to where that warp was so tight it was more like a harp-- you could almost play it, but it was so fine. Well, the girls would sit side-by-side weaving on that rug. And so you could not see if they had somewhat an inconsistency that their sister didn't have, about every hour they'd change seats, so they would weave on both sides, so there would be no disparity or no difference. Along in that rug, Roseann Lee found that they had made a mistake, and she backed up about three months' work, undoing, unraveling, getting down to that mistake to take it out. The mistake was so small--and I am fussy--but I said, "Roseann, it's not worth taking out." It wasn't that big a thing, I couldn't hardly detect it, but it bothered her, and so she took it out. The girls worked on that fairly steadily--and this was a Two Grey Hill tapestry that counted over a hundred weft to the inch, and they worked, I don't know, for about a year-and-a-half on that. They had what I would call a family disagreement, and the two sisters weren't getting along at all, and so they did not weave on that rug for about four or five months. One day their mother came into the store and I said, "Ruth, I'm worried about that rug. It's pulled so tight, that when you release those tie-downs, is it going to just accordion and come together like an accordion?" And she got that twinkle in her eye, and her eyebrow went up and she says, "Ed, you know me well. Anything I had anything to do with is not going to be anywhere [near] that. You don't have to worry about that rug, it's going to be perfect." Now, I forgot to tell you why I was worrying about that rug. Up to that time, they had been getting money from me on it, and I said it had been about a year-and- a-half. Well, as I checked one day on what they'd picked up so far, they'd picked up about $4,000-$5,000 in cash on that rug. Well, that was a lot of money for me on any rug. I just wasn't used to something this large, this length of time. That rug took them four years to complete. Now, they didn't weave totally all the time on that, but I remember finally, as we got a call, I got a call and I was in Phoenix at our home, and Roseann Lee--and I could hear the excitement in her voice--said, "We've completed the rug." And I said, "Well, fine, I'll be down here. Why don't you bring it down?" Well, her and her sister, Barbara Ornelas [phonetic spelling], came down with the rug to Phoenix. Well, they were just ecstatic. They were bubbly and bouncing and they were so excited about the rug. And we rolled the rug out in my room, and I don't know that I've ever had quite anything like that take me, in that it was absolutely perfect, and yet it was almost six by nine-- perfect Two Grey Hills. The pattern was so intricate and busy, because she lays her pattern out on graph paper. And so it's not just a rug, it is the most intricate thing you've ever seen. Here was this gorgeous masterpiece, and she rolled it out, and she said, "What do you think?" And I really couldn't… I just sat and I just absolutely looked at the rug and took it in for some time, because I really couldn't answer for a while. And finally I said, "Rose, I have never seen anything like it." And she said, "What do you think we can sell it for?" I said, "I don't know. Rose, I think probably $20,000-$28,000, something up in there, is wholesale on that, or we can sell it for. But before I tell you that, I need to get a reading from somebody that might know. I'll go up to Dan Garland and take it to a couple of places and kind of get feedback on what they feel like they could sell it retail for." Roseann said, "That's great." And then she looked at me and she basically said an interesting thing that I so understood. She said, "Ed, you're family, you're like my brother. Do you know, I don't want something to happen. If you buy that rug from me, and you pay me $30,000 or whatever you pay me, and I hear afterward that you've got a lot more money out of it, I don't know that I would ever be able to forgive you or feel the same about you." Well, I thought for a minute, and I totally understood that. I said, "Rose, I understand that. I totally do. Maybe we just better work out something that's a little unique or different on this rug." So we decided to partnership the rug. Her and her sister would [each] own a third; I, because of the money and it was up to $15,000, $16,000 by that time that I had in it, would own a third of it; and we'd partnership it with her and her sister being able to overrule me on anything they wanted to, because they had two-thirds of the rug. That fit okay with them, and so that's what we decided to do. I took it out to Dan Garland and let him take a look at it. He had never seen anything like it, and we decided maybe the rug would be worth around $30,000- $38,000. Well, Rose came back and I told her that, and at that time it was in August, and she said, "How about letting me take the rug to the Santa Fe Market and see what we can do with it?" So her and Barbara Ornelas took a booth over at the Santa Fe Market and took it over there to the show. It's a judged show, and it's a big show. Well, the next day she called and she was laughing and she said, "Turn on your TV tonight, we're gonna be on TV." And I said, "What do you mean you're gonna be on TV?!" She said, "We won the Best of Class, which is the best rug over here. Then they put all the best of the classes together and we took the Best of Show." That was really an accomplishment for a Navajo rug to beat out the pottery and the jewelry and everything else, and they were gonna be on TV. And they were in the headlines of the paper and everything else. Well, the next day, they'd picked up the rug from the judging where it's on show that night, and the next morning they get to pick 'em up and then they go back to their booth to sell things. Well, they picked up the rug the next morning about six o'clock, they walked back to their booth, and at seven o'clock this couple came by and asked a couple of questions. And then Mr. Marcus from Neiman-Marcus came by and he and his family furnished the money for the ribbons, and they usually end up buying the best of class over there, because they furnish the ribbon and they also buy it. And he came by and looked at the rug, and he said, "Well, I'll be by later in the afternoon and make you an offer." Well, this couple came by and wanted to know something about the rug a short time later, asked a few questions about it, and asked Rose what she was asking for it. Rose, not knowing quite what to say, said $60,000. They took a look at each other and kind of said, "What do you think?" and they said, "Okay, we'll take it." So they went ahead and bought the rug at $60,000. I guess Mr. Marcus came by some time later, about two hours later, to see if he could buy the rug, and Roseann Lee was elated when she could say, "Well, I'm sorry, but it's already sold." The gentleman that bought the rug invited Rose and Barbara to come to Texas, to bring the rug down, and to see where it was going to be in their home, and to pick up their money, and to just spend a couple of days with them. Well, Rose called me up and of course she was ecstatic. And she said, "How do I take the money?" I said, "Well, usually Rose, when you're dealing with somebody at that level, it's fine to take a personal check. But if you're nervous about that, ask for a cashier's check or a money order or something similar to that--it's fine." So I didn't hear anything more from her. They went to Texas, and about, oh, I'd say four days later, her and Barbara Ornelas show up at this counter out here, and they were again bubbly and dancing and laughing. They said, "We've gotta tell you about it, but we've gotta do it in the back." So I brought 'em back into this room and I said, "Well?! What happened?" I can remember Roseann Lee took her purse and dumped it up like this, and $60,000 in 100-dollar bills come spilling out, right down here, all over the floor. And I said, "Rose! Sixty thousand dollars in cash?!" And she said, "Ed, when he asked me how I wanted the money, I forgot what you told me, and the only thing I could think about was cash. He kinda got a funny look on his face, but he said, 'Well, fine, give me a little time. This afternoon I guess I can have your cash for you.'" So I guess he'd had to go to his bank (laughs) and withdraw $60,000 in 100-dollar bills, but here it was, and they spilled it out here. But probably one of the funnest things I've been involved with, because they were just so special, and it was such a special thing for them and their whole family to work with, and Rose, I guess that was maybe five or six years, and she was killed in a car wreck-- Roseann Lee was killed in a car wreck with one of her grandsons not long ago on [Highway] 66. Barbara Ornelas still is very close to the Heard Museum. I think her husband's a pharmacist in Tucson. And she has sold several tapestries since then, but never quite that rug, which was to me one of the most perfect rugs I've ever seen woven. But the story that kind of surrounds that is unique and fun, and just one of those special things that you get involved with, where it turns out to be such a nice thing for everybody involved, which it was. I would partnership with anybody like that--not because we made any money--it wasn't. I kinda came out and got my money back out of it, the girls were very, very happy. I think Rose ended up getting a double-wide trailer out at Newcomb on that one. Amen, that's the end of that! Cole: Do you have other affiliations with weavers, long-term, short-term? Foutz: Oh, do I! I mean, how much time have you got? (chuckles) I mean by that there have been some great weavers. I guess the things that notably come to my mind would be the series of Two Grey Hill tapestry weavers that I've had just really a close association with, and bought most of their product. Rose Mike, Toadlena; Julia Jumbo, her daughter Serina Jumbo; Daisy Ute was from there--just all great weavers. I remember years and years and years ago, Rose brought a little tapestry in this size, wanted $250 for it. I wanted to give her $200 for it. She finally went out of the store with $250 for it. And it was laying on the floor in the safe in there where we buy so many of the rugs when this big account from Cortez comes in, Don Watson, that was very, very famous. He had probably the finest rug outlet. This was back in the forties and fifties and sixties. And he'd come in, he looked at it, and he goes all over the Reservation buying top rugs. And he came by and he recognized the weaver, and he said, "How much for that little Rose Mike on the floor?" And I said, "I just bought it." He said, "How much do you want for it?" I said, "Two hundred eighty dollars." He said, "It's too much." I said, "Boy, I've got to have that out of it." He didn't say any more, but went in and went through all of our stacks and folded 'em back very nicely and picked out a little stack of rugs about this high, and on top of it was Rose Mike's rug. And he went ahead and took it. The next day I got a call from Cortez, and he says, "You know, that little Rose Mike rug that you sold me is probably the finest rug I've ever bought in my life." And he told me he would mark an inch off and mark it with a string, and on that tag he'd put the number. And he'd counted about four different places, and he was known for that, and he'd done that on Rose's and it counted 137 weft to the inch. Well, some years later he had leukemia and knew he was not long for this world, and called me and said, "Ed, I want you to come up and have lunch with me. I've got something for you." So he had this little Rose Mike rug that he'd had put away. He says, "I want to get it back to you." Now, it cost me $2,800, ten times (chuckles) what he'd paid for it. But even there, in that market at that particular time, it was a very, very good buy. But I've still got that rug today. Now, that's just one, Rose Mike. Oh, the weavers, you could go on and on. You've got your sand painting weavers, you've got Mrs. King Tut, or Desbah Evans, or you've got Anna Tanner as a sand painting weaver. You've got Margaret John as a Two Grey [Hills] weaver. But you could go on and on and on. And the thing I [riven 'em?] and I thrill at their rugs, but I enjoy our relationships even more, because they've gone on over such a long period of time. With Rose Mike, I've been buying her rugs for twenty years. And to see her progress from where she was, and I was paying $280 for a rug like this, to where I was paying $5,000 or $6,000 for that same size--that was fun to see her be able to get that kind of difference. And that's what I was talking about earlier when I said I was able to increase the prices the weavers got and build their names, for some reason, I think in such a way that a lot of other people weren't able to, because we were out in the market to such a great degree. Then I'd come back and I would let them know on their next rug that I could pay 'em more, and we'd up the ante. And it was just fun to do, and fun to see the differential. To stop and think, but that's just a case, $280 in probably fifteen to eighteen years up to $5,000 or $6,000, the same size rug. That's wonderful. But her reputation and her weaving--she really did it, I was just able to find a market for them. Cole: What's the state of Navajo weaving now? Are there new weavers coming in that are good? Foutz: There are new weavers coming along. And it goes up and down. Right now, in the market we've got economy-wise today, there are more weavers and more weavings coming off than the market will absorb right now. I hope the economy changes. We're just coming off of a bad summer where things didn't move like they were supposed to, but everybody was the same way. The Grand Canyon, for the second time, decreased in the percentage of people there. And we're just seeing kind of a reversal that we've seen. Foreign money won't buy as much when they get here, so they buy a ticket and lodging and they can't buy a rug to take home. We'll see where it goes from here. There are some real pressures on rug weaving. I think the weavers are there for some time, however I think it is dying off, but not as fast as we thought it would do, because these young weavers are coming along, and the real good weavers can make substantial money doing it--$4,000 to $8,000. Well, to stay home and do something and still come up with that kind of money, even in today's market, that's pretty decent. You've got a whole segment of other weavers coming along that express themselves artistically, like we were talking about, that are weaving so contemporary rugs, they're totally different, a mixture of three or four different patterns in one rug. And we maybe could show you some of that. I think there's definitely a market for 'em, but the thing that the rug weaving is facing is we are so international in our markets today, that the world can make so much product that while they're not Navajo rugs, they are somewhat like 'em in pattern and things, that they're gonna have great challenges in the market today. And it's a whole different pace of market than I'm used to, and I hope my son and those young ones that are in it can kind of come up with the answers. But we always have, and I feel like they can, and I think there'll continue to be a market. And I think that the weavers will have to sometimes adjust their thinking and adjust down their price somewhat from what they're used to getting, because the economy will change. And be patient, because the market will maybe go back up. But yes, weaving is a viable, wonderful, I think, craft. It's uniquely Navajo, and there are just some great, great young weavers coming along. We were talking about the marketability of a rug. And sometimes the weavers have a hard time understanding how they can sell a rug to me here at the store here in Shiprock and they can see it, let's say, at an outlet in Phoenix at a substantially different level. And to maybe just help 'em with that, let's kind of back up and let's take a yei'ii that comes in here at Shiprock and I buy it from the weaver at $100. I try to mark that up, let's say, 20 to 33-1/3 percent markup. Twenty-five percent will cover your expenses. If you travel on the road today selling, 20 percent may sound like quite a bit, but it really isn't, because your expenses are so high today, that that'll just kinda break you out, if you can work closer, because you're carrying a lot of credit and that. But let's just say we mark it up $130 wholesale. And I take it to one of my accounts, and I sell it to 'em for $130, they mark it, it's traditional in the Indian rug business, or the Indian arts and crafts business, to [use] what they call a "keystone markup," and they double it. So that means $130 at wholesale goes to $260. Now, that, to a weaver, sounds radically unfair. But that person maybe won't sell that rug, they'll maybe have to mark it down, they'll maybe have to have it in stock for nine months before they sell it. Because they mark it $260 doesn't mean they're gonna get $260. They hope to, and some rugs they do get that for. I think you've been in business, and Brad, you understand that. But others have to mark down, they've got tremendous overhead to pay, and so what sounds [like a] pretty drastic markup, it is really not that much. That's the same markup we pay for all of our clothing like this, and the things that we have on that we've marked down ____ anything else that goes on, or we're maybe in a phase. But I hope that helps some of the weavers and some of the people understand the marking that has to go up and achieve in this country. And imports have to do the same thing from other countries, too. It's just part of the marketing in this country. Now, if they can go and retail it every time, then probably they'll make a lot different margin. But that's gonna take time, traveling, and they've got other expenses in that. So while __________ say, well, we got a little more going to Phoenix, if they don't enjoy the trip and they just went down, they're maybe… You know what I mean? It's not that profitable for 'em. Does that answer? Cole: Yeah, I think so. I want to maybe switch gears a little bit here again and ask about the United Indian Traders Association. Foutz: All right! Cole: I know that you're a member of that. How long have you been a member? Foutz: Oh, it goes back to, I would guess 19… I've been associated, because the store's always been a member, and as soon as I bought-into here, I was a member. So I would say around the 1965, 1966, 1967, in that era right there. Since then I've been a member. Cole: Why did you join, or why was your store a member? Foutz: Of course I was connected with Russell Foutz, and Russell Foutz has always been a tremendous supporter of the United Indian Traders Association. And when I say consistent, and a good supporter of it, I don't know that there was ever a year that he wasn't a member. He was just an ongoing member. Some members would join, and for some reason, let's say economically, or the need wasn't there for the Association for them, there wasn't a purpose they needed the Association for, they would drop out for several years, and then they would join again and be a viable member. Russell was just consistent, as the Babbitt family was. Each one of their stores, as I can remember--and there were other members, too, as you've looked back on the membership that have belonged for ten, fifteen years. But there were some that would join and not join and be inconsistent. You'd see others that were just absolutely ongoing members--Russell being one of them, and he taught me that. And then I enjoyed the Association. I enjoyed the socializing, I enjoyed the members, I learned from 'em. It was just something that I really received quite a bit from, I think. Cole: What do you remember as being some of the big issues that occurred during your affiliation with the Indian Traders Association? Foutz: How to control your competition. I'm just kidding! Probably two or three things. I guess the predominant need that we used the Association for was anything legally where we needed to band together for, and it usually turned into be a legal thing--where single members did not have the financial means or the political clout to achieve anything. As an association, when you go to somebody and say we were forty or fifty or sixty members of a group-- and that was predominantly the majority of the group out there-- that carried quite a political clout and movement with people, or with things, or with other associations. And secondly, with the funds that we had available, we could hire legal people at such a level, and over a length of time to where we could achieve some things when we had to handle something legally. And I guess [one] of the standout cases [is] the Warren case. That was before my time, but that was where they took the Warren Commission--and I think Russell will touch more on that--but where we basically took it clear to the Supreme Court and the Indian Traders Association did that, to establish that they could not tax on the Navajo Reservation. They couldn't declare sales tax, federally. They were trying to. And that case was a standout. I think another case--and you've got 'em down there-- are… Oh, boy, most of those, the Federal Trade Commission was something that we banded together and the need was great for it. The time that Arizona was trying to tax on the Navajo Reservation was a time. Russell, I'm sure, will tell the story when they had an assessor from, I think Holbrook, call him and tell him if they didn't receive their property tax, they were gonna close him down. And Russell said, "Well, if you think you can, come on out." And lo and behold, the assessor was at his doorstep the next day, wanting to close him down. Russell said, "Hey, hold on for a minute." He went and called Mr. Jonas who was the head of the Regional Bureau of Indian Affairs, and Mr. Jonas said, "Put the assessor on." And he said, "I don't know what jurisdiction you think you have out there, but if you don't back down, we'll have the Navajo Police and the Bureau of Indian Affairs legal people at the edge of the Reservation to pick you up when you come off." So the gentleman left the store and went back home and never said anything again, and the Association kind of backed up on that. Boy, aside from that, I think the Association was a great time to come together in the early days, as we'd come together on these semi-annual meetings, they were a great time of socializing. And in doing so, we were like the Navajo people, we were spread out nomadic, and we didn't have a lot of interplay with people out of your immediate region. And so you got new ideas on livestock, you got new ideas on what some people were doing on a lot of things--on areas of credit or anything else. It was a time to interchange some ideas. It was a time to go over things. And boy, it was just a nice time to get together with young couples and socialize, so I think it filled that need, which wasn't radical. And then I think it was just beneficial to have a group there with the means--and I think it kept us from having some times that we had to use legal people, in having an association, there were other groups that didn't want to take us on, because they knew that we had the ability to do it. Politically, there's some other things. I think that Shiprock Trading had a case before New Mexico pending, which was very interesting. They charged us property tax on a trader down here. I went up to Bud Tansey's [phonetic spelling] office. They handled that case for me. It was a State thing, we went before the State Court, and we got a call from the assessor up here asking us to withdraw. We wouldn't withdraw it, but we didn't push it any further. He says if we pushed that case and won it, that this county would lose all the taxes they're getting from the Utah Mine and the processing plant out here, and they'd just rather we didn't do it. We bowed to that, and ever since then we've paid our taxes under protest here-- [and will until such time as] that case will be taken and won. But the Association did that somewhat. It's a case we could win if we pushed it, but we're not gonna push it right now. For the other cases that might be legal, probably I'm missing a bunch of 'em, but those are the big ones I can remember. Cole: How were the bigger trading companies perceived, like Babbitts et cetera?, in the Association. Foutz: Hm. Okay, I'm gonna have to just say how I perceived 'em. My first association, or my most memorable association through the Association with the Babbitt group--and they are from the other side, so we really didn't have a lot to do with them, other than through the Association--was Mr. Bilby. Mr. Bilby was a son-in-law to the Babbitts and a very impressive man. He was probably in his late forties, early fifties when I first met him. He was president of the Association. He sat on the board of APS and I think Arizona Land and just several things, and was a lawyer, and very articulate. I was very impressed. And then how did I surmise Babbitt as a group? Very well run. They were very impressive. One thing that really impressed me is the Babbitt group stayed together as a group, and they had their own wholesale, and they worked that volume to their advantage. Our family, the Foutz family, was always--what would I say?--splintered to the point of we were just different families, and we never did come together as a group, other than Progressive Merc, to where we took advantage of, let's say, the twenty stores that we had out there, in our buying or volume capacity. So I thought Babbitts were very wise there, they diversified. I was very impressed with the whole Babbitt organization. I knew the individuals. The Powell family ran two or three of their trading posts. I was always impressed with the quality of people that they hired. I always felt like that they had the Indian people, or their customers, at heart. They weren't out there [just] to make money, but they were out there to service the people. I liked their attitude toward business on the Reservation. Really. I thought most of their stores that I went into were always quality places. They changed with the times, they moved forward as the need moved forward. They came from the bull pen to the self-service. Their places were always kept up well, I think they were clean, and you couldn't say that about a lot of trading posts you walked into. I remember walking into an old trading post one day, and I looked around, I thought, "Gee, this is what an old-time trading post would look like, or should look like," and I was just impressed. I remember getting back in the car with my wife, and she was just appalled. She said, "Did you see the dust on all those [cults?]?," and all this stuff. And it was. They were hanging from the rafters like you would in the old days and things. But her reaction was totally different than mine. Mine was full of nostalgia and things like this, and hers was, "Boy!" you know. And some trading posts weren't kept up. But the Babbitts--I don't know that they really took advantage because of their size. I think that they serviced the people better because of that, and I think that's a real asset. Cole: Did the Association ever act as brokers for members? Did they find markets or anything like that? Foutz: I think they did in the early days. And there were times with the sheep and the wool and mohair, that they tried to, in my era. When I say "my era," when I was with Russell and that. But I think most of the traders were so competitive, that they had a hard time selling to one place. Russell bought from other stores, wool and mohair. I think one of you asked that question, and I never addressed that. Later on, as I had Shiprock Trading Company on my own and bought Russell out, I would buy from other places, wool and mohair--some of the places that didn't have good outlets--to where I could cover their price, and they were out of my region where the people didn't feel like it was competitive. I think the traders close around, like Jay and Loyd, would be a little nervous selling to me, in that they felt like we were competitive enough that I'd have a hands up in knowing the amount of wool they bought and the price. I can understand that, and I never really tried to be too aggressive there. Russell, when he was here, would buy from other traders--both rugs and wool and mohair, because I think we established stronger outlets, and consequently I went way beyond that on mine. And it helped--by putting the volume together, we got a better price. Cole: How much of the membership was Navajo Reservation traders versus off the Reservation, or Apache, Zuni? Foutz: When I first came into it, there was quite a segment, there was two or three members that were down on the White Mountain Apache Reservation. There were several members like the Pendleton Mills and Mr. Brachman and Holbrook that sold Pendletons. And a group of arts and crafts people--not a big group. And then there were some retail outlets that wanted to be able to hang the United Indian Traders Association [logo in their shops], that were authentic people in the Indian business. When I say "authentic," [I mean] that carried authentic handmade things all the time. Like Mr. Holbrook's in Denver, he was always a member. I think that when I came along in the 1960's, I would say 80 percent, if not even higher, closer maybe to 90 percent, were [Navajo] Reservation Indian traders. And predominantly the problems that we confronted and faced were almost all Reservation-oriented, somewhat. Cole: I know the organization was established mainly to make sure that arts and crafts items were authentic. It seems like that still was a problem in the sixties with a lot of the (Foutz: It was!) shops that came along the Interstate. Foutz: Oh, absolutely! Cole: Did the Association continue to deal with that issue? Foutz: I believe at one time there were some letters written from our legal office to some of the outlets that we specifically knew that were using the word "Indian handmade" a little loosely. And we tried to, what I would call "rattle the chain," in a way of warning. I don't think that we ever took anything legally, or anything went too far, but there was quite a bit of talk in directors' meetings. Nothing kind of came from that, no, that I know of. I think that some State laws, we supported some State laws that were written for that. And I think maybe one of the laws we supported a little financially, in the funding of it, in New Mexico, that made it illegal to sell anything under a false name. And it should be. I think any of us that buy something that was misrepresented to us, we all have a sour feel in our mouth afterward. And it hurts the market. I think if we're sold something that's Indian made, but the Indian was maybe living in Mexico, and we were sold that as that, then that's a different thing. We bought that knowingly, and I think that's the thing. But I think to be fooled, I don't think we really appreciate that, I think that hurts everybody. But there are those that will always try to do that as the market gets so good. And I think that's one advantage the tribes have. I think there's a real need for that, and I wish the Tribe itself would become a little more involved, maybe out in the political market, helping to write laws that would protect the Indian arts and crafts a little more than it has in the past. Cole: Did the Traders Association have any involvement with the Navajo-Hopi relocation issues that you recall? Foutz: Relocation, as to… Cole: As to the partitioned lands. Foutz: Boy, that was far enough that you need to talk to traders down there. (aside to store help) On the relocation, that was a whole different place, and the Indian Traders Association did not, to my knowledge--but somebody like Elijah Blair at Dinnebito, and people that you've spoken to that have been very active in the Association know more than I would. I don't think the Association as an association became involved with that. That was pretty well a land dispute between two tribes. There wasn't a lot we could do there. Cole: How long, how many different times, have you been president of the organization? Foutz: I've been president once. I've been vice- president two or three times. I've been on the board for a long time. As the need for the Association really disappeared, we did not meet as regularly, and then we actually did not meet for several years, because of no need. And that was probably some of my fault. It was poor leadership in a way. I think we should have probably had an annual meeting, at least, which we did not do. Our legal counsel at that time kind of grew apart from us, and did not really stimulate that getting together. I had moved to Phoenix, and the whole, I'd say, period, was nonproductive, but there was just no need for the Association that there used to be, of getting together and talking about things. As the traders slowly were sold off, there just weren't that many in the trading business. And now as the makeup of the directors--like Lavoy McGee and several of 'em are not in the trading business anymore at all. They have been, but they're not actively in it [now]. I'd almost fit into that scenario in that I've got an arts and crafts place and a pawn place in Farmington, and my family's connected with it, but of course I've sold this to my son. And that happens to be the fifth generation in our family. I'll just mention that, because that might be of merit, historically--somebody might be interested in that. Cole: Did the Association ever have any involvement with Navajo politics? Foutz: Oh, I think so. I don't think you can be in relationship out here and be effective without doing some lobbying, if you will. We didn't do a lot of it, but we did some lobbying. In politics we never backed a particular person, one over another. I think that was a very individual thing. And really, the makeup of the Indian traders themselves, they're very--what would I say?--most of 'em are loners, they do better on their own and their own thinking, and they weren't great ones to come together and say, "This is how something should happen." I don't think we ever really influenced elections or anything like that, but I think we politicked for some things that we wanted, like we wanted less bureaucracy in leasing, and streamline the leasing apparatus to where it wouldn't take so long to get through a lease--anything that would do that. We've certainly been actively involved in Window Rock. We've had our legal counsel there a couple of times on different things. Cole: Let's switch gears here again a little bit. What separates a good trader from a bad trader? Foutz: And you want my advice on that one? Ah, a good trader. I think it comes down to one thing. I think the basic ingredient is if you love or if you recognize the people you're dealing with. What would I say? If you respect the people that you're dealing with, I think especially out here, that is really a prerequisite if you're gonna be a good trader. You've gotta recognize them. I think that you've got to recognize and render service, and fulfill that service in a way that's beneficial for those people that you deal with--not just for yourself. I think if you're going to do that, you're going to be in business for the long term out here. And I think if you're not, that your time and your days are counted out here. Competition alone will weed you out. But I think that if you can be fair… I think the one thing that you've got to be [is] profitable. You can't be a viable business and not make money. You've got to be making money so you'll still be in business tomorrow. I think some people actually look on profit as a dirty word. That is not. Your successful businesses today make some money. And if they didn't, they wouldn't be here, and they couldn't service you. But I think a fair profit… I think the big thing is, you've gotta be there to service the people. And if there's a service needed, you find out what it is, and you service it, and you do it in a fair way, in a competitive way, and then I think it can be a good relationship. And I think by fulfilling that need, you'll be ongoing. And I think that a person, if he's willing to adjust and move, I think there's still great opportunities out here on the Reservation for a person. I don't think the end is here. I think that you've gotta be flexible, you've gotta be changeable, and you've gotta change with the times and see new avenues and new ways you can service the people that are out here, 'cause they have needs. And I don't know that you'd call us Indian traders anymore. (laughter) I think you'd be businessmen out on the Navajo Reservation, probably. But I think there's great opportunities out here--I really do. Cole: What do you think you've learned from the Navajo? Foutz: Hm. (pause) I think I've learned an appreciation for people that are different than I am, that think differently and are different in a lot of ways. And I think that it's made my life a lot easier in seeing their struggles at a level that they are, and yet [to] overcome and be as happy and as content and as fulfilled as they are--that certainly I can do the same in my life. They've taught me patience, they've taught me better understanding, to be more content with what you have, to share. They're great sharers. They're great family people. And when you're a friend, you're a friend. There's a respect there, and exchange, and words don't have to be said. It's just there and you know it, they know it. I've loved and enjoyed that. I think that I've received more than I've given. I think they're that kind of people. I've loved being out here. I wouldn't trade that for hardly anything in my life, I don't think. I mean by that, they're a great people, and they've got so much to give. And yet so many people say they're very quiet and stoic. I think they're like anybody, if you don't slow down and reach out, you'll never have that opportunity to learn and tend to get from them. But I think it's like anything, if you come out with the idea of serving, and not just taking, that you're open to receive. That may sound strange, but it's true. I think those that have come out just to make a living, they've done that maybe. And I don't think they've ever kind of gone deeper and really enjoyed the people. When I say "enjoyed the people," [I mean] really got to know the people. The people just have so much [to give?]. You know, everything that we have in the world isn't that important, really. And sometimes they've got so much to teach. I've seen older couples come in here to Shiprock and move into one of these homes that are furnished here with all the conveniences we have of running water and all the conveniences-- kitchens and everything else--and they move back out to the interior of the Reservation where they've got a one- room hogan, and they cook over a [fire] and carry their water, but they're happier. You know, sometimes we need to slow down, and they teach me that all the time--that we run by the clock. I love the saying--Eugene Joe one day came in to me, and I was running around the store frantically, and he said, "Hey," he tugged my sleeve and he said, "don't run with the clock, walk with the sun." That is kind of a Navajo-ism or an Indian-ism, you might say, but it's true. We are so geared and so fast, and as we get in this world today with all the conveniences we have, the Internet and everything else, the pace gets greater. We fill our lives full, but when it's all through, is that important? Do we learn from it? I think we learn more from people than we do from things. They've taught me that. Cole: What do you think they've learned from you? Foutz: Wow. (pause) Huh, I don't know that I'd be a good one to answer that. I don't know that I could. You know, I really don't. I don't know, you'd have to ask one of them. (pause) I'd like 'em to learn a lot, but I don't know that that is really true. I think I've been a good employer, I know that, 'cause I've worked at that one really hard. I don't know, I really don't. I think there you'd have to do a self-analysis, and I think how we view ourselves is so distorted sometimes, I really would be almost fearful of puttin' that one down. I just hope that my enjoyment for them shows itself to where they know that. And I've felt like maybe that was… You know, some people say, "Well, you could never do business out here without speaking Navajo." I've said that really isn't true. If you--we talked about being a positive reaction--if you will just accept and love them as a person, they feel and sense that. And I think if any of us go into a place and we feel that we're accepted or feel good, you'll want to return if you possibly can and do business there, instead of somewhere else. And I think that we've worked hard about that relationship here. And I don't know, some of the relationships, I feel like genuinely I've got some great friends out there. And I hope they would feel the same way. And I think that goes two ways a lot of times--you have to give and get. And I hope maybe they get some of that from me, and acceptance. I don't think you have to speak Navajo. I think if you accept them and they know that, they'll come back. They can always get an interpreter, they can get one of their family members, or they can find somebody to interpret for them. I think they'll come back and do business with you. And so I don't think a prerequisite is learning the language. I think it's wonderful, and I think it's a respect to them that you do, but I don't think it's a necessity. I think it's really an acceptance of the people as a person, because I think there's a lot of places they go, that they don't feel that accepted. You watch them in town, or some of the places--I don't know that they feel that accepted all the time. That's one thing that I'm really a stickler on, and I've really worked to try to do. And then I just try to be--and I think it's because of the ethics-- I've tried to be very fair with them. I hope they've felt that. I've done well, and I've made money, but I've run, I think, a very fair place. So many times you deal with the elder women. I've always tried to just think that was maybe my mother, or somebody in my family, and my reaction has tried to be to treat her just like I would like her to be treated somewhere else. That's the bottom line, I don't care where you are. So I hope that's come across. I certainly hope they've felt that. Cole: What are some of your favorite memories of being a trader? Foutz: The people. The people and the relationships. Some of my favorite memories: livestock. I love being in livestock. I like to be out on the Reservation and smell pi�on pine on a winter night, and to know the isolation and the quietness of the Reservation, the calmness of it. I love that. Singular experiences we could probably go into, but just overall I'd just say just everything comes together: the people, the beautiful geography that you're in, the desert here, the livestock and the mix that we've had here, just come together to just make a very, very wonderful, I think, experience for me. The arts and crafts, the family scene, my family going to it, and the interest they have, the heritage of our family. As I was younger, this didn't mean anything--I almost shied away from it. As I've got older, it's a great thing to have a heritage like that, passed down. And yet there's a responsibility, because I've tried to teach my kids you don't use a name, you give to it. Do you know what I mean? (Cole: Uh-huh.) Okay. And I can't say that about all the Foutzes, and so I've tried to preach that one, to not use that name, but to give back to it, to where it grows and means to another generation what it could. And so, yeah, it's just been [great]. I guess I'm really appreciative of the heritage that gave me this opportunity out here, because it's so unique. I don't think that if you're not born into it that you would never come into it at this level. And so it was a unique thing, and to think of our forbearers putting up with what they did out here, and the isolation and the things that they went through--yeah, I've gotta be proud of them, and I'm grateful to them, to have this. But you look around, and boy, these people have got-- artistically they're wonderful. You know, they're a happy people, they're a great people. We can return to that one if we get a chance to. I mean, if we ever sit down together for another hour or two. We'd really better kind of pull this--yeah, I think we'd better quit. [END OF INTERVIEW]