Adams] SHONTO I ROLE OF NAVAHO TRADER 49 



for the benefit of the neighboring Hopi colony of Moencopi. The 

 Hopi village remains Mormonized to this day and has its own L.D.S. 

 church, but the original mission went out of existence along with the 

 Mormon settlement. It was replaced by a small Presbyterian mission, 

 consisting of a chapel and social room, when Tuba City became the 

 Western Navaho Agency in 1906. The latter survives to the present 

 day, and is staffed by a single pastor and his family. In the 1920's 

 a similar Presbyterian establishment was set up at Kayenta. 



Until 5 years ago these remained the only missionary activities 

 among the northwestern Navaho. A subsidiary of the Kayenta mis- 

 sion, with its own resident pastor, was set up at Oljeto in 1952, on 

 deeded land donated by the trader. Two years later the Navaho 

 tribe lifted many restrictions on missionary activity, and a flood of 

 semi-itinerant missionaries entered the reservation. Missionaries who 

 are so far without permanent establishments are now resident at 

 Navajo Mountain, Kaibito, and Shonto. The Shonto missionary ar- 

 rived early in 1955, representing the Assembly of God sect, and set 

 up a house trailer adjacent to the Shonto trading post and school 

 premises, where he and his family now reside. Services are held 4 

 days a week at various Navaho residences. 



THE OUTSIDE WORLD 



The Santa Fe Eailroad brought permanent American settlement 

 and a measure of prosperity to northern Arizona in the ISSO's, 

 though the region remains to the present day one of the least de- 

 veloped areas in the United States. An additional boost was given 

 in later years by U.S. Highway 66, paralleling the railroad. The 

 highway was paved during the 1930's, and in that decade became 

 perhaps the most celebrated tourist route in the United States, giving 

 access to the West Coast by way of the Indian Country and the Grand 

 Canyon. By 1940, tourist business was the largest single industry in 

 northern Arizona, and was especially important to Flagstaff, with its 

 favored location at the junction of U.S. 89. Flagstaff was, in addi- 

 tion, a lumbering and cattle center with a population of about 7,000 ; 

 Winslow was a roundhouse town of about 4,000; Holbrook was a 

 somewhat smaller livestock and agricultural center, and Gallup was 

 the center of a coal-mining area serving the railroad, with about the 

 same population as Flagstaff. These, together with the little Mor- 

 mon communities farther north, which are virtually unchanged since 

 the turn of the century, represented most of the outside world to pre- 

 war Navahos. 



The world beyond Tuba City was remote and unimportant to 

 Shonto prior to World War II. With development projects every- 

 where and stock reduction in progress, the community's attention was 

 focused upon itself and not upon the distant and incomprehensible 



