42 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuU. 188 



The Atlantic and Pacific Railway (now A.T. & S.F.) actually laid 

 track between the Rio Grande and Flagstaff in 1883, and the line was 

 opened to the Pacific Coast 2 years later. Along its right-of-way 

 developed a string of typical frontier railroad towns ; notably Gallup, 

 Holbrook, and Winslow. Both Flagstaff and the railroad were des- 

 tined to play an important role in the future life of Shonto. 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN COMMUNITY 



Coincident with the building of the railroad came official recogni- 

 tion of Indian sovereignty in the western Navaho country. An enor- 

 mous block of land immediately south of Shonto, and including the 

 area now occupied by the Red Lake and Cow Springs stores, was set 

 aside as Plopi Reservation by executive order at the end of 1882. 

 Two years later Shonto itself, and the region northward to the state 

 line and westward to Kaibito, was added to the reservation originally 

 granted to the Navaho by treaty in 1868. Another executive order 

 added the territory as far west as the Colorado River in 1900. Shortly 

 thereafter the remaining Mormon holdings on Moencopi Wash were 

 bought out, and the site became Tuba City, agency for the newly 

 established Western Navajo Indian Reservation. North of Shonto, 

 the so-called "Paiute Strip" between the Utah-Arizona line and the 

 San Juan River was originally granted to the Navaho before the turn 

 of the century, but later restored to public domain. It was finally 

 returned to the Navaho Reservation by an act of congress in 1934. 



TBADING 



Systematic American penetration of the Shonto country finally 

 began in the last years of the 19th century, with the tireless explora- 

 tions of the Wetherill family. John and Louisa Wetherill established 

 themselves at Kayenta in 1909, after a brief sojourn at Oljeto, and 

 their Tyende (later Kayenta) Trading Post became one of the most 

 celebrated outposts in the Southwest. The Wetherill brothers had 

 pretty well completed their reconnaissance of the territory north and 

 west of Kayenta by 1910, and had discovered most of the principal 

 features of the region. As of 1910 a passable wagon road already 

 extended from Kayenta via Marsh Pass and Klethla Valley to Tuba 

 City, and there can be no doubt that Navahos from the Shonto area 

 traded extensively at Kayenta until 1915. 



Shonto Trading Post, like so many other stores in the same region, 

 began as an outpost of the Kayenta store. John Wetherill, in the 

 course of his repeated expeditions west of Marsh Pass, had found a 

 concentrated Navaho settlement farming the permanently watered 

 floor of Shonto Canyon, a "lush meadow with many small lakes" (Van 

 Valkenburgh, 1941, p. 145). In 1915 he and Joe Lee (a descendant 

 of John D.) brought over a wagonload of supplies and a tent, and 



