Adams] SHONTO I ROLE OF NAVAHO TRADER 41 



contacts for northwestern Navahos until after the turn of the present 

 century were with the encroaching Mormon population west of the 

 Colorado Kiver. Colonies along Kanab Creek and in House Rock 

 Valley, just over the river, were established in the 1860"s. Navahos 

 raided these frontier settlements repeatedly mitil 1871, when a kind 

 of truce line was established at the river (McClintock, 1921, p. 79). 

 Thereafter they continued to visit them for manj years, trading for 

 supplies and especially horses. It is notable that the Navahos from 

 Shonto, Navajo Mountain, and Oljeto continue up to the present day 

 to trade for horses, usually offering rugs in exchange, in the Mormon 

 communities to the north and west. 



In 1871 Jolin D. Lee, in his enforced exile from Utah, settled on 

 the Colorado at the mouth of the Paria River, where he had a small 

 ranch and operated sporadically the little ferry which has perman- 

 ently given his name to the site. Lee's Ferry became an important 

 link in the Mormon Road connecting the Utah settlements with 

 newly founded colonies along the Little Colorado. Lee and liis family 

 carried on a considerable Navaho trade during their two years' sojourn 

 at the ferry (see Lee, 1955, vol. 2, pp. 197-262; Van Valkenburgh 

 and McPhee, 1938, pp. 43-44) . 



In 1873 the ever-present threat of retribution for his complicity 

 in the Mountain Meadows Massacre forced Lee and two of his wives 

 to flee still further into the wilderness, abandoning the river site. 

 In the words of his own journal, "I swam my horse over the foaming 

 Colerado by a skift & bent My way for the Mowencroppa [Moencopi], 

 there to take up My abode with the House of iseral — Mokies, Orabias 

 [Oraibis], Piutes, & NavaJoes" (Lee, 1955, vol. 2, p. 263). The 

 "lost children of Israel" actually awaiting him on the Moencopi were 

 a large encampment of Havasupai. 



The Lees located first at Moenave Spring and later near the present 

 site of Tuba City, where a tall, typically Mormon stone homestead 

 still stands beside Moencopi Wash. The long-delayed forces of justice 

 finally overtook John D. Lee in 1875, and he was executed in the 

 following year. Surviving members of the family remained on the 

 IMoencopi until after the turn of the century, and were later joined 

 by other Mormon homesteaders. This was the first American settle- 

 ment within the western Navaho country, and the little community 

 seems to have carried on a thriving trade with both Navahos and 

 Hopis. 



Meanwhile, an entirely different species of American colonization 

 was beginning to push westward from the Rio Grande. Rumors of 

 an impending transcontinental railroad aroused a flurry of interest 

 in Northern Arizona, and led indirectly to the establishment, in 1876, 

 of the little town of Flagstaff (see McClintock, 1921, pp. 149-151), 

 far to the southwest of Shonto at the foot of the San Francisco Peaks. 



