Adams] SHONTO : ROLE OF NAVAHO TRADER 153 



In 1890 and increasingly in subsequent years weaving came back 

 into its own as the basis of the Navaho trade. It was during this 

 period that traders began to organize with the idea of deliberately 

 developing a market for Navaho weaving. New methods, designs, 

 and dyes were introduced and virtually forced upon the native weav- 

 ers; unheard-of prices were offered; and the Navaho blanket, under 

 the careful nurturing of traders, evolved into an ornate, brightly 

 colored rug, slightly suggestive of oriental models for which a large 

 Eastern market existed (see especially Underbill, 1956, pp. 185-190). 

 The period from about 1890 until the beginning of World War I was 

 the heyday of the rug trade, and in many ways marked the climax of 

 the old style barter trading system. Later years saw a steady decline 

 in the quantity market for Navaho rugs, a reemergence of raw wool 

 as the basic trade commodity, and the ever-widening institution of 

 credit as an essential feature of the economy. 



Undoubtedly the building of the Santa Fe railroad and subsequent 

 development of trading posts revolutionized Navaho life, as Underbill 

 suggests. The change did not by any means take place overnight, 

 however. So gradual was the evolution toward a market economy, 

 in fact, that it went largely unnoticed by Wliite observers (cf. Under- 

 bill, 1956, p.l81), and many of its details remain shrouded in un- 

 certainty to the present day. 



It is clear from the narratives recorded by Dyk (1938, 1947) that 

 in the early reservation years trading continued to be a sporadic and 

 higlily irregular occurrence preserving most of the features of the 

 old expeditionary pattern. When luxury goods were desired, or when 

 it was deemed necessary to supplement existing subsistence resources, 

 a sufficient quantity of wool would be sheared and an expedition to the 

 then remote trading post organized. There is no suggestion of regular 

 or even seasonal dependence upon such trade, and it appears that 

 the families studied by Dyk sometimes went for years without visiting 

 a trading post. In many respects the newly arrived White traders 

 seem to have stepped into the role already occupied by the Hopis, as 

 an optional and, to some degree, an emergency source of trade goods. 

 The family of "Left-Handed" traded about equally with both, under 

 very similar circumstances (see Dyk, 1938) . 



Apparently between 1870 and the begimiing of the present century 

 both the Navahos and the trading posts "settled down." In all proba- 

 bility the two processes contributed to each other. Increasing de- 

 pendence upon imported manufactured goods, hence upon the trading 

 post, may well have been an important factor in the development of 

 a sedentary Navaho society. At the same time with the growth of a 

 stable and developed consumer market the trading post lost much of 

 its speculative, frontier character. It became a permanent operation 

 geared to a well-defined, protected market, offering moderate but sus- 



