PAUL D. MERRILL INTERVIEW



   [BEGIN SIDE A]



   This is Brad Cole from Northern Arizona University.

It's Wednesday, January 26, 2000.  We're in Gallup, New

Mexico, [at the Joe Danoff household] visiting with

Paul D. Merrill about his days as an Indian trader.

Also present in the room is Lew Steiger.  [This

interview is part of the United Indian Traders

Association Oral History Project.]



   Cole:  Paul, let's just start from the very

beginning.  When and where were you born?


   Merrill:  I was born in Ramah, New Mexico—that's

about fifty miles south of here—August 6, 1919.  I grew

up in Ramah, went to school there.  My family had a

farm and a boarding house, and I knew about farming and

ranching, because that's what my family did.  We had a

little log school that I went to, first grade.  That

was the first schoolhouse in Ramah, New Mexico.  Then

in the boarding house, we raised everything on the farm

that we used in the boarding house.  About the only

thing we didn't raise on the farm, like coffee and

sugar and salt, we had to go to the local trading post,

and there were two of those at the time:  Ramah Trading

Post and the Bond Trading Post.  My mother traded with

both of 'em, because they all bought milk and butter

and eggs and things from us.  My mother took in

boarders and roomers, and mostly that would be

schoolteachers and tourists, salesmen, things like

that.  As I recall, back then board and room was fifty

cents per meal and fifty cents per bed.  And you got

everything you could eat, including fresh butter and

milk and eggs and homemade bread and cakes and all

those kind of things.

   I worked on the farm all the time and didn't like it

very much, and the older I got, the less I liked it.

Ramah only had three years of high school, and you had

to go away to school to get your fourth [year], to

graduate.  So at that point I went to Gallup, should

have gone to Gallup to graduate, and Dick White from

Fort Wingate Trading Post came out and interviewed me

and asked me if I would go to work for him in the

trading post.  He and I signed an agreement, and I

still have that agreement.  (Cole:  Really?)  It was

signed in July of 1938.  Then I went back to the farm

from graduation—I would have gone back to the farm.

But anyhow, he asked me if I would go to work for him,

and I didn't have any money, and I didn't have anyplace

to go, so I agreed to go work for him at twenty-five

dollars a month and my board and room.

   So I went to Fort Wingate, and his wife happened to

be my older sister, May White.  I worked in the trading

post for about three or four months, and I had to catch

a bus to Gallup to school every day—that was about

fifteen miles—and didn't have time under the

circumstances, to play football or basketball.  I

didn't like the job:  I had to milk cows and stock the

store, and he was a pretty hard trader—I could see that

from the very beginning.  I didn't have any money, so

if I wanted a Coke, he would put it on the bill, but it

would cost me—Cokes then were a nickel—and it would

cost me ten cents on the bill.  So I didn't like that

very much.

   I finally decided that I wasn't going to do that,

and I told him I was going to quit.  That was after

about two months, and I went to Gibson, New Mexico.

There's no such a town now, but that was a mining town

north of Gallup about three miles.  So I stayed with my

brother and sister-in-law there, and helped him with

his chores.  Then I would run across the mountain,

which was about three miles away, to go to Gallup to

play football and basketball, and that kept me in

shape.  So I then graduated from Gallup and intended to

go to Mesa, Arizona, to go to college with a football

scholarship.  And by the way, that was the first year I

ever played football.  Ramah was small and didn't have

a football team or anything like that—they had a

basketball team.  We threw and kicked the football and

just played football.  When I went to Gallup to go to

school, I went out for the football team and made first

string and actually played on the first game that I

ever saw in my life, because Ramah didn't have any team

at all.  But anyhow, after graduation, I went back to

Ramah and I worked about a month with my dad, and I had

lots of ideas then, that I didn't like farming near as

much, and I wanted to go someplace that I could make a

little money and do something besides farm and see the

rear end of a horse.

   I told [my dad], "You know, since I've grown up, the

only thing I've ever seen about a horse is his rear

end," because, you know, you plow and you do everything

from the rear end of a horse.  He said, "Well, you do

whatever you want to do."  And so we were plowing one

day and I said, "Dad, I don't like this."  We were

plowing with one horse and I was holding the plow and

he was riding the horse.  I said, "Let's go hook up

three horses and I'll do all the plowing myself."  So

he said, "If you don't like the way I'm doing it, you

can go ahead and do whatever you want to."  I said,

"Yeah, I'm going to leave today."  So I went and jumped

the fence and went down home.  And of course in Ramah,

New Mexico, then, there was no running water, there was

no heat, and no electricity, and I had to heat water on

the stove, and took a bath in a number three tub and

put on my best hand-me-down clothes and went downtown

and luckily I caught a ride to Gallup that same

afternoon, and by five o'clock that afternoon, I was

officially signed up to the Marine Corps.

   We had to go to Denver, Colorado, to take

physicals and finish everything out.  We were in the

back of a pickup—five of us—and we got to Santa Fe that

same night, late.  When I left home, I only had fifty

cents in my pocket.  Of course fifty cents in those

days was a lot different than it is today, because a

nickel would buy a Coke, and a nickel would buy a hot

dog.  And so that wasn't too bad.  But we got to Santa

Fe and the Marine sergeant had forgotten his chit book.

It was the month of July, fairly warm, so he didn't

have any money and none of us had any money, so he

said, "Well, fellahs, we're gonna hafta sleep in the

park tonight."  That was all right with us, so we all

bedded down in the park, and pretty soon the police

came by and said, "You can't do that."  And he told 'em

the circumstances, and the policeman said, "Well, I

have an idea.  We'll let you sleep in the police

station, and they'll give you breakfast in the morning,

and this certainly won't go onto your records."  And

that's what we did, we went and slept in the jail that

night and they fed us breakfast the next morning and

sent us on our way to Denver.  We took our physicals in

Denver and then shipped to San Diego, California.

   Within the next year, I was at Pearl Harbor.  I

stayed there until the Japanese came.  I was at Pearl

Harbor when the Japanese bombed, and they extended my

tour of duty four-and-a-half years.  I'd have been paid

off in about six months when they came along.  So

during the war I went to officers' school and spent

about five years out in the Pacific.  I came back to

the States and went to officers' school and then spent

some more time in the Pacific, and came back to the

United States and trained men and were boarding a ship

to go for the landing on Japan, when they declared the

war over.  President Truman had dropped his two bombs,

then the war was over by then.  So we de-boarded the ship

and unloaded our men.

   We then had to decide what we were gonna do.  I

heard that the trading post at Fort Wingate was for

sale.  So we get back to our trading days, anyhow.  So

I got a thirty-day leave of absence and went to Fort

Wingate, and with Dick White and I together, we finally

came together on a purchase price of the Fort Wingate

Trading Post.  I went to the First State Bank in Gallup

and borrowed the money to buy it and made a deal, and

then went back to California and resigned my commission

and left the Marines and went to Fort Wingate and took

over the trading post January 1, 1946.  In doing so, I

became postmaster—that went along with it.  That was

the first time I'd ever run a trading post and the

first time I had ever been postmaster, and the first

time I'd ever been in the trading post to know any of

the customers.  So I had a lot to take on right quick

there, after I got out.

   I'd had some training at Pearl Harbor in the post

exchange.  I was a post exchange officer there, and the

post exchange steward, so I had quite a bit of

background in sales and things like that.  I got along

real well in the trading post business, became good

friends with the Navajos.  I started building the

trading post up, adding on things that the previous

owner, Dick White, didn't have.  I built a post office

from my wife's living room.  It was all in one

building, so I took her living room away from her and

built a post office.  Then I had to add a living room

on for her.

   I was there forty-six years.  During that time, I

added on a complete line of hardware, dry goods, hay

and grain.  I finally bought a trucking business and

went into the trucking business, hauling hay and grain

and so forth; cattle and sheep for the local traders

and the business people in Gallup.  Then I added on car

sales.  I started a car sales business at the trading

post.  Then I bought sixteen cabins from a—well, they

would call them motels today, but I think they were

called "tourist courts."  But anyhow, they were just

cabins, and I bought the cabins from a Mr. Constant 

in Gallup, sixteen of 'em, and hauled 'em all to Wingate 

and started my first housing.

At that time, the Navajos didn't know anything about

housing.  They lived on the reservation or away from

the community.  And I set these little cabins up, and

they would come into the school to work, and I

furnished furniture and everything in these little

cabins, and an outside toilet and outside water,

because there was no running water.  That was my first

experience with housing.  Later on, I replaced those

with thirty houses that I bought surplus equipment from

the U.S. Army.  It was surplus equipment from housing

that had been in California.  And I built thirty houses

and then set up a trailer park.  So I did a little of

everything during this forty-six years, including

buying jewelry and rugs and sheep and cows, and trading

sheep for cows and jewelry for rugs, and rugs for

jewelry—a little of everything.

   But I really enjoyed the business with the Navajo

people and the Zuni people.  I had a lot of Zunis come

from Zuni Village.  I'd buy mostly inlaid jewelry from

them.  And then bought Navajo rugs and jewelry from the

Navajo people.  I helped improve the rug business at

Wingate because the Ivanbito people, who lived just

north of Fort Wingate—and that was my trade area, and

Church Rock—brought in very poor rugs and had very poor

wool.  Every time they would bring in a rug, I would

try to show them how to improve those rugs and use

better colors and finer weaving.

   Then there was a sheep breeding laboratory three

miles from Fort Wingate, and they would take the wool

and refine it and then bred a better grade of sheep.

They bred Rambouillet sheep with the Navajo sheep and

came with a better breed of sheep.  And I encouraged my

people to buy the rams and the ewes and breed better

sheep, and a lot of 'em did it—mostly the Zunis.  The

Navajos were pretty hard to convince about this

situation.  But also then, I bought the refined wool

that the sheep breeding laboratory had, and I would

sell it to the Navajos and the weavers.  That gave them

a better quality of wool.  By the time I left Wingate,

my people were weaving first-grade and much, much

better rugs, and receiving a much better price for

them, and had a better attitude in their weaving

process and their weaving condition.

   I could go on and on and on about my days there.  I

don't know just exactly how much you want here, but

that's a general description of my time with the Navajo

people in my trading post time at Fort Wingate, for

forty-six years.


   Cole:  Do you speak Navajo?


   Merrill:  Yes, I did speak pretty good Navajo at one

time.  I've forgotten a lot of it since.


   Cole:  Did you ever have a Navajo nickname?


   Merrill: They called me Siláo, that's "Soldier."

I went by Siláo most of the time.



   Cole:  Were there many Navajo soldiers in that area?


   Merrill:  Yes.  I had a good experience with a

Navajo soldier that came back from the service.  Most

of 'em had not finished their education when they

joined the service:  they'd just dropped out of high

school and joined the service as soon as the war came

on.  When they came back, they took 'em all back into

Wingate Vocational School to get their high school

education completed.  Peter McDonald and nearly all

those people that were involved in the Code

Talkers—they all came back and became customers of

mine, because they got a check and I would give 'em

credit.  And I think Peter McDonald borrowed his first

five dollars and bought his first set of new clothing

from me.  And I got to know a lot of the Navajos, and a

lot of 'em became permanent customers of mine from

there on.  So yes, it was a good experience.  And they

were the leaders.  I noticed during my trading time

that nearly all the servicemen that came back, Navajo

service people, they all became real good leaders, and

were involved in all the—got good jobs with the Bureau

of Indian Affairs, the Navajo Tribe—and they were

always very well-liked and took care of themselves real

well.


   Cole:  When you first bought the post, was it still

kind of a cashless economy at the post?


   Merrill:  No, it was strictly credit, very little

cash.  We gave credit to the working people for thirty

days, and we gave credit to the stock people for a six-

month period of time.  We'd give credit up until the

time the wool came on, and then they got paid for the

wool.  Then another six-month period, during the time

that the lambs came on.  And that was hard, because I

had lots of money on credit.  At one time, I had

$30,000-$40,000 worth of credit out to the Navajos.

And most of 'em were very good about paying.  Later on,

when the automobiles came along, and I began to sell

cars, the credit business was much tougher after that.

Because previous to this, the Navajos didn't have

automobiles.  As soon as they got the automobile, then

the automobile payment and the gasoline that they used

came before the grocery bills, and it created somewhat

of a problem, and we had to adjust our credit

accordingly.


   Cole:  Did you have a pawn operation also?


   Merrill:  Yes, I had a good pawn business.  It

worked out real well.  We kept pawn for the Navajos.

We never sold any unless they decided that they had to

sell it themselves.  They would get behind on their

credit, and we would have to carry the pawn.  That's

the way you kept your business, is with taking care of

their pawn, taking care of their credit, taking care of

their families.


   Cole:  How would you describe the Navajo-Anglo trade

relationship to somebody that didn't know anything

about it?


   Merrill:  Well, it was a good relationship.  We

became very close to the families.  We were the "loan

sharks," we had to loan 'em money.  If they had a death

in the family, we had to help 'em bury their loved

ones.  And give 'em credit, sometimes buy a casket, or

give 'em money to bury their families the Navajo way.

And we attended nearly all their funerals that we

could.  And if you went to a funeral, you nearly always

took a sack of flour, a sack of potatoes—ten pounds of

potatoes—salt and sugar and whatever it took—baking

powder—to make fry bread or bread that they made.  So

the relationship, whenever they had any kind of a

problem, they always came to me, and I tried to help

'em with it.  Sometimes you couldn't, sometimes you

could.  If you had a family that was drinking, it left

a bad flavor on their credit, and it also created a

problem between the trader and the Navajo's family.

Sometimes you'd have to cut their credit off

completely, and sometimes you didn't want to do that

because you knew that the family didn't have anything

to live on.  And sometimes you didn't cut it off

because you knew that.


   Cole:  What about trading with the Zuni?  Was it

similar to the Navajo?  Were there any differences

there?


   Merrill:  I found the Zunis a little different.

They were a little....  The Navajos were a very serious

people, and I got to where I would tell jokes and kid

with them a lot.  That created a better relationship,

when they knew I wasn't too serious.  And with the

Zunis, they were always full of fun.  They were always

kidding and joking and so forth.  You hardly ever got

very serious with 'em, but they were good people, and I

really enjoyed doing business with 'em.

   As soon as I went out of the car business, I really

stopped doing business with the Zunis, 'cause that

created my business with them, and their means of

coming over and doing business with me.  And I had one

experience with a Zuni family.  They used to bring in

small items:  rings and bracelets and earrings and

things like that.  In those days, those things only

brought fifty cents, or maybe seventy-five cents, or

less, even.  One boy bought a car and he paid for it,

but he lost the motor and he came in to get me to put a

motor in for him.  I said, "How are you ever going to

pay for a motor with fifty- and seventy-five-cent rings

and bracelets when I can only buy a certain amount?

Why don't I figure out something to do that would bring

you in some money?"  So I designed a punch bowl and

drew pictures of it and told him what I wanted, and

then I gave him silver to do that punch bowl.  I

thought it would only take him about thirty days, but

he was gone for three months and I thought, "Boy, I

really blew it!  He's taken that money and used the

money to build something, and then he's gone and sold

it and my money and the silver is probably gone."  But

after about three months, he walked in with this punch

bowl, and it was a big thing with a pedestal on it, and

eight goblets hanging on the side of it.  And he had to

make the goblets and everything.  I couldn't believe my

eyes, he did such a beautiful job of it, that I then

had him take it back to Zuni and have his wife inlay

it.  And that punch bowl won several prizes at the

Ceremonial in Gallup for the silversmiths.  And we

still have that punch bowl.  That was about 1957.  And

it's really a piece of artwork.  We sent it off to the

Museum of Man in San Diego, California, for a showing,

and it also got the silversmith a prize.  We have

pictures of that in the Museum of Man in San Diego,

California.  There's a lot of occasions, but this is

one of the main occasions that I can recall.


   Cole:  What would you say are the characteristics of

a good trader?


   Merrill:  Honesty—probably the very first

requirement.  Consideration of the people.  Love for

the people—which I had.  Believing in them, also.  You

had to believe in their honesty and family worth.  And

that's what I noticed about the servicemen that I was

telling you about a minute ago.  Nearly all those

servicemen came back and they were leaders and good

family men.  They were honest, they'd seen the white

man's way of living while they were in the service.

They knew what was going on, they knew that they had to

start someplace to make a living.  In order to do that,

they had to be honest and trustworthy and not have a

drinking problem.  Some of them did later on, but most

of 'em didn't.


   Cole:  So maybe tell us a little bit about the

changes that happened over the time that you were in

the trading post.


   Merrill:  Well, the Navajo Tribe, when I first

started there in 1946, their population was about

50,000.  It kept growing rapidly.  I understand it's

between 150,000 and 180,000 now.  I guess that's the

main thing I noticed during this period, that the

Navajo Tribe was growing.  They were taking on more

obligations with their people.  They were also hiring a

lot of Navajos to go to work for 'em.  They were

building.  The Navajos themselves were building hogans

and borrowing money to build with all that time.  And

their families, of course, the Navajos that I dealt

with had families and they were growing.  Before I left

Wingate (47 yrs), I had dealt with about four different generations.

In other words, the family I first started

dealing with would have children and grandchildren,

great-grandchildren—and then I would start doing

business with the grandchildren or their children and

grandchildren.  Today I know nearly all of their

grandchildren and dealt with them enough to have nearly

four generations of people.  And the same people would

come back to you—you know, the original families would

come back and want to get credit and deal with you, and

that was good business, because that was a steady

growth of customers.


   Cole:  I imagine your trading post, when you started

out, was it a bullpen operation?


   Merrill:  It was a one-room operation.  And then, as

I explained, I took my wife's living room away from her

and built a post office.  Then I added on a basement to

the back of the trading post which was for

refrigeration.  We had no refrigeration and no

electricity at that time.  Then I built a front on the

store to increase the size, and finally got electricity

which we brought up from Gallup, New Mexico.  After

getting electricity and things like that, we were

really able to do a lot more, because we took on

refrigeration at that point, where we'd have fresh meat

and fresh vegetables and so forth.  At first I'd have

to go up to the power plant, which was at Wingate, and

get ice and put on our meat and put on any meat that I

would have, and put on the vegetables, before we got

our refrigeration in.  And then I killed rabbits and

lambs and I would try to sell those out every day.  But

I would butcher those myself.  Later on, when we got

the electricity in, why, we got the refrigeration and I

built a front on the store, added hardware and dry

goods.  Later on I built a cafe on top of the store, we

called The Crow's Nest Cafe.  And that didn't work out

too well because we didn't have enough people to deal

with.  We made that then into apartments.  And the

basement in the back, I built a top on that and made

that into an extended grocery department.

   And that became too small, so about 1957-58, the

school was building a new high school and I knew that I

had to expand in order to take care of the employees

there.  So I built a new supermarket, a 12,000 square

foot building, completely separate from this building

that we started with.  I had everything in that:

hardware, dry goods, groceries, nearly everything like

a general store would have—boots and saddles and

refrigerators and stoves and radios and TVs and things

like that when they came along.

   Then the old store, I redid it and made it into

apartments.  At that time, I rebuilt the houses.  I was

telling you I got the surplus material from the

Department of the Army.  And I built thirty houses

there, and then I built more apartments out of this old

store.  So that all worked out real good for employees

of the school, because they had not enough housing for

the employees, so it worked out real good for me.


   Cole:  Did you have to have a lease from the Navajo

Tribe?


   Merrill:  I had a lease from the Navajo Tribe at

first, and I don't know how it became Navajo Tribe,

because that was Army depot when this trading post

started in 1925, and it was under the War Department.

But by the time I bought it from Dick White, he was

leasing from the Navajo Tribe, and that's where my

leases finally came through the Bureau of Indian

Affairs, not through the Tribe, because it was on

Interior land.  But I dealt under the Navajo Tribe and

paid the lease to them until about 1960 or something

like that.  And finally the Bureau of Indian Affairs

took over the lease, and then I leased from the Bureau

of Indian Affairs and paid the lease to them.


   Cole:  Was that an annual?


   Merrill:  That was an annual fee, yes...25 year lease.

And then I did that until about 1987.  The Bureau of Indian

Affairs decided they were going to cancel my lease.

And by that time I was renting to about a hundred

families that worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Their idea was that they could no longer lease, they

had to declare this surplus property.  And so they gave

me a sixty-day cancellation of the lease, and advised

me to cancel my rentals with all the hundred families

and close down the business and tear down all of the

buildings and revert it back to the original

[condition], like it first started from, and that was

nothing but wild land.  I decided I didn't want to do

that, so I got a lawyer.  The Bureau of Indian Affairs

told me to put all the money that came in from the rent

in a separate bank account under their name and my name

both.  And after thinking about all of this, I refused

to do all of it.  I got a lawyer and the lawyer advised

me that we'd better not go the court direction, because

it would take all the money I could rake up and brake

me.  It would take fifteen or twenty years to do this.

So what I did was have the lawyer go through Senator Domenici,

our state senator, and we decided then to make the 

Bureau of Indian Affairs surplus this

property, and that's the way we went.  We forced 'em

into surplusing the property, and then we had to turn

around then, after they put it on surplus, and make a

bid on our own property, and other people were able to

bid on it also.  That took about a year-and-a-half, two

years.  So finally when they put it on surplus

property, we had to make a bid on our own buildings and

property.  And that was a very difficult situation.

After bidding on it, we had to go to Fort Worth, Texas,

to make our bid, and we were the winning bidder, and

bought our own buildings and property, and became

private property then.  And today it is private

property.


   Steiger:  Was there somebody that had it out for

you?  Or was that a general directive that came down

from way above or something?


   Merrill:  Well, I think there was somebody....

Things were changing then, and the trading business was

changing.  And I think there was somebody in the Bureau

of Indian Affairs, the area office at Gallup, that had

something to do with it.  But in the long run, it was,

of course, the best thing that ever happened.  But it

was a black day.  When my wife, Patti, and I got the

notice about cancellation of our lease, and they

canceled the rental and everything of a hundred

families, that was a very dark day.  And it was a dark

year, because everything looked bleak for getting

anything done.  And then after going to Senator

Domenici, he said, "This is the way to do it.  And

we'll make them toe the mark, just like [they] made you

toe the mark.  If it's feasible, you'll buy that place.

If it's not feasible, then we've done everything we can

do."  It all worked out real well, and I was able to

get it bought.


   Cole:  Interesting.  You mentioned earlier that at

one point in time you were a member of the United

Indian Traders Association?


   Merrill:  Yes, I was for, I think, about a ten- or

fifteen-year period there that I was a [member].


   Cole:  Do you remember what years those might have

been?


   Merrill:  It was probably about—I would imagine

between '55 and '65, along in that area, maybe a little

later than that.  But it's hard for me to go back and

remember those dates.  And this was during the time

that all the traders were having trouble with the

Navajo Tribe, and with their leases on the reservation.

And I think that had something to do with my problem

later on at Wingate, that somebody had maybe a little

hard shell about our situation there, that we were

still hanging on and leasing.  But a lot of the traders

lost their lease on the reservation during this period,

and we were still hanging on out there.  After I bought

the land at Fort Wingate, was able to get the land as

private property, a lot of 'em were still fighting the

situation, and a lot of 'em still lost their leases and

so forth with the Navajo Tribe.  Peter McDonald—I'm not

afraid to say this—Peter McDonald is the one that

started the problems with the Navajo Tribe with the

traders.  He wanted to see big money on the

reservation.  He wanted to see big businesses on the

reservation.  Whether he was looking to see money come

in personally on that, I do not know, and I wouldn't

venture to guess.  But I think that's about what it

amounted to.


   Steiger:  Rather than a bunch of small businesses,

he would have rather had one big outfit?


   Merrill:  In other words, the Navajo traders were

charging more money.  They naturally had to charge more

money because they were giving credit.  They were

carrying credit for six months to a year for the Navajo

people.  During this period, he sent people around to

check the prices of the traders' merchandise, and we

were always higher, and we had to be, until I got in

the supermarket business, and I was still doing credit

business, but it was a fast operation at that point,

and we got our money a lot faster, we could compete.

But the old Indian trader and the old-style trading

post, no way that they could compete with a supermarket

in Gallup that didn't give any credit, they didn't bury

the family, they didn't have to worry about the

families—you know, anything like that.


   Cole:  Do you remember anything about the whole

issue with pawn on the reservation—the Federal Trade

Commission hearings?


   Merrill:  Yes, I remember about [that].  I had a

license with the Navajo Tribe, and I also had a county

state license, 'cause I was not only in the county, I

was not on the reservation.  I wasn't on the

reservation, as such, but I was in the county, and I

had to pay county tax, and I also had to pay tax to the

Navajo Tribe.  So that was what you might call double

taxation, but neither one of 'em cared.  McKinley

County required that we pay a tax on our sales, and we

also had to pay our lease to the Navajo Tribe and the

Bureau of Indian Affairs.  The pawn, you had to have a

special license to carry it.  And at first, it was no

problem until this appeal with the traders on the

reservation came along, and the same period that the

traders began to have problems with the Navajo Tribe.

And then they brought in what they called the DNA, the

lawyers that the Navajos could go get free of charge.

If we got a lawyer, we had to pay 'em out of our own

money, but if they went and got a DNA lawyer, they got

'em free.  And they caused a lot of trouble.  They

created problems between the trader and their old

customers.  I guess it still happens today, they get

that free lawyer's fee.  And I understand that's still

a problem, people taking automobiles or anything like

that off the reservation.


   Cole:  Would you ever attend any of the UITA events,

like their annual meetings or anything like that?


   Merrill:  Yes, I went to several of 'em, but I

wasn't as close.  I was off the reservation, I wasn't

quite as close to the organization that some of 'em

were on the reservation.


   Cole:  What were their annual meetings like, do you

remember?


   Merrill:  Well, they were talking about these

problems all the time, and about the DNA, and about the

problems with the Navajo Tribe.  They had a fellow come

from New York City one time, and I don't remember his

name, but they went around to all the trading posts and

checked all the prices, and this was all fed back to

Peter McDonald and the other people.  They couldn't

understand why the traders would have a different price

than the local store in Gallup or Holbrook or Grant,

places like that.  And they didn't care about checking,

didn't care about the problems that the Navajo traders

had, because they didn't care what the problems [were].

If they wanted to go spend time with the families and

run credit, it didn't matter to them.


   Cole:  If you were going to tell an Anglo person

about Navajos, what do you think would be the most

important thing you could tell 'em about the culture?


   Merrill:  Oh, I think the culture was a wonderful

thing.  The culture is still there.  It isn't near as

strong as it used to be, but we had to go along with

their thoughts and their beliefs and their

religion—even though sometimes we thought we didn't

understand it, we went ahead with the Navajo

people—that was their religion, I didn't try to change

'em, and it wasn't my business of changing their

religion or getting them to join another religion.

That was between them and me.  I thought they were very

serious about it.  In fact, I thought they were more

serious in their religion than most Anglos were.  Most

of us didn't understand a lot of it, but they were very

serious about it, and I respected their religion and

their honesty about their religion.


   Cole:  What about unusual experiences?  Did you ever

have any?  We've heard stories about not necessarily

medicine men, but almost like seers and things like

that.  Did you ever have any unusual experiences?


   Merrill:  Well, the experiences I had were real,

nothing unreal about it.  The experiences I had with

the Navajo and their religion and their thoughts about

ch’íindi and their bad omens.  Mine were all very serious, 

that I could understand, going

to their maybe burials.  In fact, I was a pall bearer

for a young Navajo boy that committed suicide—the first

suicide in my trading experience with my trading

people.  It was a wonderful family, and they trained

their children well, they weren't drinkers.  They did

belong to the peyote clan, but they weren't drinkers as

such—the older families weren't drinkers, and they

taught their kids not to drink.

   This one boy, I don't know whether he got connected

with a young bride or not, but he committed suicide,

and they came and wanted me to be—I had to help them,

of course, financially.  And they came and asked me to

be a pall bearer and my wife Patti and I went to the

service, and it was a very touching service.  I had

been to many of 'em before—most of 'em outside—but this

was inside, and it was about half regular religion

ceremony, and about half Navajo ceremony.  They had a

preacher there, and they also had their medicine man.

After everybody left, they asked me to stay, and I

stayed, and the grandmothers and aunts and uncles and

everybody were inside of this one room.  I think it was

the most touching funeral I have ever been to in my

life.  I mean, they were open with their feelings, and

crying and carrying on.  They were very serious about

it, and very open, and I was very touched.  Then we

went to the burial, and they, of course, put their food

and so forth in the casket, and the boots and saddles

and spurs and clothing of this young boy, in the

casket.  And then when they put the casket in the

ground they put food, more clothing, all kinds of food

and cornmeal and things like that.  And of course the

last thing was to kill his horse.  They didn't put it

in the same burial as I had seen before.  Most of 'em

they had buried the horse in the same [grave].  But in

this particular one, they dug a separate hole and

killed the horse and buried him separately with the

saddle on, and everything that went with a young boy.

And that was very touching.  And they love horses, and

you see them kill their own horse and put it in a grave

with their family, that's really touching.

   I guess that was some of my most....  I heard 'em

talk about the ch’íindi and peyote and all those kind

of words, and they were serious about it, but I never

had too much experience with that—bad experiences.


   Cole:  What do you think you learned from the

Navajo?


   Merrill:  I got all my education from the Navajo.

How to love and how to treat your neighbor, how to

treat your customer.  At first, I was strictly

business.  Money was money and you had to have your

money back in order to pay the bank, and bills and

things like that.  But I learned to be very passionate

and thoughtful about my people, and if they came and

told me a story, I would have to believe what they told

me.  Of course some people, just like the Anglos, they

would lie to you to get what they wanted.  Some white

people, not all white people.  And what I'm saying is,

there are some good people and some bad people, no

matter whether they were Zunis or Navajos or whatever.

But I think the Navajos taught me much.  And what I

have today, I made from the Navajo, being good to them

and honest with them.  I still walk into Wal-Mart or

into businesses in Gallup, and I'll see ten or fifteen

families.  My wife says she won't leave me there,

because I'd never come out, I'd stay there.  It becomes

a family gathering place.  And they never go by you

without talking and giving you a big bear hug or

something like that.  And those are the things I

learned from them, too.

   I had, you know, the love for my family and my loved

ones and my wife, but the love for a friend and people

you love is a little bit different thing.


   [END SIDE A; BEGIN SIDE B]


   Cole:  This is Brad Cole from Northern Arizona

University.  It's January 26, 2000.  We're visiting

with Paul D. Merrill in Gallup, New Mexico.  Also

present in the room is Lew Steiger.


   Paul, you've mentioned your wife several times.

What is her name?


   Merrill:  Her name was Patricia Vogt. Her family was 

one of the pioneers of Ramah.  Her father came 

from Chicago, came out to this

country with TB, and he came out here purposely to try

to cure himself of TB, which he did.  Patti was just a

little girl when I left Ramah—tiny girl, in fact.  I

always tried to go with her older sister, but my older

brothers would beat me out.  But I went to the Marines,

and when I came back, she had grown up—well, not too

much, but she'd grown up quite a bit.  She says she's

five feet, but I doubt it.  We got married five months

after I bought the trading post—May of 1946.  We have

three children and thirteen grandchildren and about

thirteen great-grandchildren.  And then I had one son

that was born during the war, and I'm including his

children also in that.  But Patti has been a very good

partner.  She stuck by me, all those problems, during

all those years when you had credit problems and trying

to make a living and trying to catch up, and being in

the service eight-and-a-half years.  She's been a

wonderful partner.  We've been married fifty-three

years, and it's been a wonderful time.  And it gets

better all the time.


   Cole:  Did she work in the trading post, too, then?


   Merrill:  No, she raised a family and took care of

'em, with the exception of the last four or five years.

I retired from the Post Office Department, and she was

my clerk.  In those days, you could do that, because

nobody would have had a post office unless they had a

trading post, because it only paid about—I think it was

$250 a year, and it was a big headache, but it also

brought people into your trading post.  And if I needed

help, she would help out and take care of the business

when I was busy or something—take care of the post

office.  And then when I retired from the post office,

she became postmaster after me.  She didn't want to do

that, but I talked her into it, "You'll enjoy that."

And she did.  But her children were fairly well raised

then, and off to school or married or whatever.  She

was a good postmaster, and then she worked in the

trading post as my bookkeeper the latter part of my

time.

   We sold our business to our son, Scott—our youngest

son.  He worked in and out of the trading post and

became a mechanic and learned to be a plumber and a

carpenter and an electrician and everything like I was.

So when I decided to retire, we sold to him.  He has

been a very good trader since then.  It isn't a trader

anymore, it's a business, it isn't trading.  He has

never required any coaching, or hasn't had any problems

in nine years that he's had the store.


   Cole:  You said you had a question, Lew.


   Steiger:  Yeah.  You mentioned as soon as you got

out of the service you came right back to that country

and bought that.  Now this was the trading post that

you had worked in before?


   Merrill:  That's the one that I hated so bad, yes.


   Steiger:  Yeah.  Now, if you had hated that so bad,

I'm curious, it seems like you had it pretty clear in

your mind that you wanted to come back and buy it.


   Merrill:  I didn't like the way it was run.  I

didn't think it was run properly, and I think that's

what gave me an idea to come back.  And that's why I

quit, actually—I didn't like the way it was being run.

Of course, when I came back I had a lot of surplus

energy.  I enjoyed every bit of it from then on.  I

enjoyed every day of that trading post.  Of course

there was a lot of headaches, and a lot of black days,

but as a business, I couldn't have found anything in

the world I liked better and enjoyed more.  But I kept

building, and I was building every day.  Not only my

family, but the trading post and building customers and

building [a business].


   Cole:  What was it—and maybe you don't want to get

into this—as far as how it was being run, what was it

that you thought–that the guy was so tight-fisted?


   Merrill:  Well, everything was too high, for one

thing—everything was overpriced.  I didn't think there

was much—probably the less I say about it, the better.


   Steiger:  Okay.


   Merrill:  But I'll just say that I didn't like the

way it was being run.  I proved that it was a good

purchase, and I proved that I did right, because of the

growth of the business—so I proved my point, anyhow.


   Cole:  And one thing I remember I wanted to ask:

what were your parents' names?


   Merrill:  Thomas Merrill and Mamie Merrill, and they

were Mormons that came out of Old Mexico.  They came

from Salt Lake City originally, and then through

Holbrook-St. Joseph, Arizona; and then went to Mexico,

down Dublan and Casa Grande, with a Mormon group that

were being persecuted for plural marriage.  And they

were down there twenty-five years until Pancho Villa

came along.  He decided that he wanted their guns, he

wanted to come in and take their food and stock and

whatever, so the whole Mormon community decided to move

out one night.  My father had seven children at that

point, had been in Mexico for twenty-five years, and

they put all of his family plus two widow women and

their children on the hayrack of a wagon and drove out

eighty miles to Columbus, New Mexico.  They never got

to go back at all.  They left everything they owned

there, never got to go back.  They finally went into

Arizona and then as soon as he could get enough money,

he moved into Ramah, New Mexico, by wagon team with

seven children.  And they stayed all one winter in the

wagon box of a wagon, next to my grandmother's house,

and lived out of that wagon until he traded one of his

wagons and some teams on a down payment of a house.  He

couldn't get the house until the next spring, so they

lived all one winter in that wagon.


   Steiger:  So that was a covered wagon?


   Merrill:  A covered wagon.


   Cole:  So is Ramah a Mormon community?


   Merrill:  Yes, it was originally strictly Mormon.

And Patti's family came in, they were non-Mormons, and

some of the original families that weren't Mormon.  But

the community accepted all of 'em.  Kind of a little

bit pushy-off a little bit, biased at first, but I

think everything worked out real good there.  There was

German traders came in there, the Master brothers, that

set up a trading post there, and they were non-Mormon.


   Cole:  So were they strictly trading with the Anglo

community?


   Merrill:  With the Anglo community and with the

Navajo too.  Later on it became more of a Navajo

business, Indian trading business, than it was locally.

But at that time, my family never had an automobile.

The Master brothers brought one of the first

automobiles in with the trading post business.  And

Patti's family had an automobile.  There was two or

three automobiles in Ramah, but most of us went where

we wanted to go in a wagon, or by horseback.  And if we

wanted to go to Gallup, like the day I joined the

Marines, I had to catch a ride in there to join the

Marines.  Sometimes the dirt roads, it would take you

ten or twelve hours to go to Gallup because of the mud

and snow and whatnot.


   Cole:  It sounds like it was an agrarian community.

Did the Mormon people build canals and stuff, or was it

dry farm?


   Merrill:  It was really all dry farming at first,

but then they built a dam, and it washed out twice, and

they rebuilt it—once with the help of the Church, and

once with the help of the trader there at Ramah.  But

it's a beautiful lake there now, and that lake is still

there and they still prosper under that dam—the lake.

A beautiful lake.  And I worked on building that dam

when I was thirteen years old, seeing the rear end of a

horse again!  (laughter)


   Steiger:  Was that a CCC or WPA [project]?


   Merrill:  WPA, later on.  That was during the

Depression, in the thirties.  But they built the dam

all by themselves up until that time.  Then when it

washed out, they got help with the WPA.  I don't think

the CCCs ever worked there, but the WPA did.


   Cole:  Do you remember anything about what happened

with the Stock Reduction Act in the 1930s, with John

Collier?


   Merrill:  Oh, yes!  Yes, I do remember that.  The

Navajos, if you talk about it today, they remember

that.  They'll talk about it today.  I don't think it

was a bad thing, but they thought it was a bad thing.

They needed the stock reduction, because that's

something the Navajos never did learn, and haven't

learned today, is stock reduction to take care of the

land.  And I don't care who hears that.  I think they

always overgraze, and overtax their land.


   Cole:  What about the Zuni Tribe?


   Merrill:  The Zunis are very good about that.


   Cole:  Better managers?


   Merrill:  Very good.  They had better sheep all the

time, than the Navajos—and still do.


   Cole:  Why do you think that is?  Any ideas?


   Merrill:  Well, they're a close-knit group.  Zunis

had a community, and the Navajos never did have a

community.  They were separated from their people by

miles and miles.  I think each one is kind of an

individualist.  You know, they had to make up their own

minds; and it's hard to get to their neighbors or their

families.  There are clans that were close together—you

know, maybe lived right next to 'em—but they had just

one thought, and that thought came from that clan,

whatever they decided to do, the whole clan did the

same thing.  The Zunis have all of their people to talk

to and make decisions about their problems and things

they should do, so they were very good stockmen.  And

they came and bought those sheep and ran 'em, from me,

and from the sheep breeding laboratory, all the time.

And you can see the effects of those with the Zuni

sheep today.  That was thirty or forty years ago.


   Steiger:  Was that laboratory connected with Bruce

Bernard?


   Merrill:  No.


   Steiger:  That was a different deal?


   Merrill:  That was through the Agriculture

Department.


   Cole:  USDA.


   Merrill:  Agriculture division.  And we knew the

stockmen there, all those people that worked for them

all those years.


   Cole:  What was the stockman's name, do you

remember?


   Merrill:  The first one that was there when we went

to Wingate was....


   Patti:  Grandstaff.


   Merrill:  James O. Grandstaff.  And then later on,

he was replaced by Stanley Smith, and he was there up

until the time that they closed it down.  He was a

wonderful stockman.  It was a good program—the Navajos

just didn't accept it, and I think that's the reason

they closed it down.


   Cole:  Anything else, Lew?


   Steiger:  I know there would be, but I feel like

we're holding these guys up.  This has been great.


   Cole:  Yeah.  Is there anything else you'd like to

add, Paul?

....

   Merrill:  Well, we think the Navajo Tribe made a big

mistake in getting rid of the traders, the way they did

it.  I think the traders' time was limited because of

the growth of the world.  You know, later on the

Navajos had their pickups and horses and built their

own homes and everything—could get along a lot easier

without the traders.  But a lot of the Navajos still go

to the traders today.  I have people that come to me to

get loans at this point, after trading with them for

fifty years.  And there was a certain touch there that

the traders had, and the Navajos that dealt with the

traders, there was a relationship there that you just

can't explain.  It was just a family sort of a deal,

and it was a very close relationship.  And if you did

bad with the Navajos, you didn't do good in the trading

business—that's all there was to it.  So I think it was

a wonderful thing, and it really created a lot of good

friendships.


   Cole:  Well, thanks a lot for doing that.


   Merrill:  Thank you, I enjoyed it.


   [END OF INTERVIEW]