Cave Creek

A Hohokam site.

Tonto National Forest, Cave Creek, Arizona.

Going Native? - Pendleton and Opening Ceremony

There's a lot good to say about Pendleton Woolen Mills. They're a family owned company and their clothes are made in the U.S.A. Their distinct styles and patterns are easily recognized. If you've own a Pendleton garment, you know that their stuff is very well made. As a vegan, I don't buy wool products, but I have a few old Pendleton shirts and flannels that I really like. I doubt that a woolen mill will ever make a cotton or synthetic line, but we vegans can dream, right Pendleton?

In any case, Pendleton has recently done some interesting collaborations with Levis and with Opening Ceremony, both of which accentuate Pendleton's famous Native American style prints. Some of it looks pretty cool, some is a little too busy for my taste.  Looking at these lines, particularly the Opening Ceremony collaboration, I started wondering if the patterns were authentically Native American or if Native American people had any stake in clothes designed to express or imitate their traditional patterns. Put a different way, I wondered if is it problematic to have a major purveyor of a style modeled upon Native American culture designing clothes and accessories for a market (rich hipsters) that excludes many Native Americans?

I started researching Pendleton's relationship with Native Americans and I found a couple of great articles on the Pendleton collaborations by Native American scholars who study Native American fashions. Here are their posts - Native Appropriations' piece "Let's Talk About Pendleton" and Beyond Buckskin's "Pay No Attention to the Man Beneath the Indian Blanket" both acknowledge that the relationship between Pendleton and Native Americans is traditionally positive, but they find it problematic when Pendleton uses Native American designs to produce very high-end fashions marketed to non-Native people and unaffordable to many Native Americans. Read their posts. Neither is what I would call radical - both are very thoughtful and revealing.

Terry Eiler's Documerica - Arizona, 1972

Early in the summer of 1972, photographer Terry Eiler traveled to Arizona to photograph on the Hopi and Navajo reservations as part of the Environmental Protection Agency's "Documerica" program. If you're not familiar with Documerica, it was a government funded photography program that ran from 1972 until 1977. The goal was to "capture images relating to environmental problems, EPA activities, and everyday life in the 1970s." The program was eventually discontinued because the government thought it was a flimsy way to spend EPA money. Still, the photographs are wonderful, in the public domain, and available on Flickr. Here are a few samples from Eiler's Arizona set, but I suggest looking at more of his photos and photos from other Documerica photographers and locations here.

The Wickenburg Massacre

This monument commemorates the Wickenburg Massacre. On November 5, 1871, a group of Yavapai Native Americans attacked a stagecoach bound for California outside the town of Wickenburg in what was then the Arizona Territory. They killed six men on board and injured a woman and another man. The attack was likely in response to any number of injustices committed against the Native Americans, most likely the recent killing of 135 Arivaipa Apache at Camp Grant near Tucson.

Some famous names come into play in relation to the Massacre. Up-and-coming Boston writer Frederick Wadsworth Loring was among those killed; the incident was also known as the Loring Massacre. Some in the northeast had been inclined to sympathize with the southwestern Indians, but, in killing a Bostonian, national sentiment turned against the Yavapai.  Initially, people questioned whether they were really Indians or Mexicans in Indian costumes. The killers used guns, but P.M. Hamel was also scalped. Here's an excerpt from The November 11, 1871 Journal-Miner:

"Five men, Messrs. Loring, Shoholm, Lanz, Hamel, and Salmon, who, eighteen hours previous left Wickenburg full of life and hope in the happy anticipation of soon again greeting their friends after a prolonged absence, lay side by side rigid in death and drenched in blood; the unavenged acts of a murder as dark and damnable as ever stained the hands of an assassin."

Famed Indian hunter, General George Crook, investigated the incident, but when he couldn't identify the actual perpetrators, he resorted to the usual form of frontier justice and sent Captain J.W. Mason to attack the Yavapai near Burro Creek. Many Native Americans died in the ensuing battle.

You can read a lot more about the Wickenburg Massacre here or here. The monument sits on Route 60 outside of Wickenburg, but apparently the actual site is off 60 down a dirt road.

Walnut Canyon

Erin and I headed north up to Flagstaff last weekend and took advantage of the National Park Service "Fee Free Weekend" by hitting up Walnut Canyon, a cliff dwelling site, and Sunset Crater, an extinct but impressive volcano. We also visited Meteor Crater. More on Sunset and Meteor craters to come.

Walnut Canyon was inhabited by a group of Native Americans that archeologists call the Sinagua people. The Sinagua and other tribes left other cliff dwellings around the southwest. They lived in the area north of the Mogollon Rim (which is the edge of the Colorado Plateau) between the Colorado and the Little Colorado Rivers. Walnut Canyon was inhabited around 1100 A.D. No one is certain why they left or where they went, but some modern Hopi clans are the ancestors of the Sinagua.

Here are some more pictures of Walnut Canyon.

Walnut Canyon

I think this is some sort of aster. If you're a better botanist, please help me out.

Smoke marks from Sinagua fires are still visible on the walls of the cliff houses. Erin also pointed out some fossil sea sponges in many of the rocks.

King Philip's War Boardgame - Seriously? What the....?

Image from MultiManPublishing.

The year from 1675 to 1676 presented one of the darkest periods in New England, and American, history - a episode that set the precedent for European colonial conquest of North America in the coming centuries. After years of tenuous relations, sustained largely through the efforts of the Wampanoag Sachem, Massasoit, the Native Americans were running low on trade goods and the British colonies were growing more established and entrenched. Finally, Massasoit's son, Metacom (a.k.a. "King Philip"), saw the writing on the wall and decided to take a stand for his people against the expanding colonies. What ensued was an all-out war between a confederacy of Native American tribes, led by Metacom, against the New England colonists and their Native American allies, including the Pequot (who had been their enemies a generation before) and the Mohawks.

The Native Americans won some early victories, but they were surrounded and outnumbered. They were weakened by years of introduced European diseases. They were at a technological disadvantage. The war ended when the colonists, aided by sympathetic Native Americans, tracked Metacom to Assowamset Swamp, shot him. His body was drawn and quartered and beheaded. His head went on display in Plymouth.

The War remains in the popular conscious throughout New England. Markers call our attention to battles, such as the burning of Mendon, and various natural landmarks are named after Metacom, such as King Philip's Rock in Mendon and Lookout Rock in Uxbridge. Perhaps nothing has carried the conflict into our current moment so much as Mary Rowlandson's captivity narrative. That is, until now...

A Maryland company is set to release a board game called King Philip's War. Designed by a Maryland teacher, the two player game pits colonists against Native Americans in a battle game that appears to resemble Risk.

Some Native Americans are unhappy with the game, which they feel trivializes the conflict. It seems likely to me that Euro-American victor-consciousness will make the colonists the good guys and the Native Americans the villains to most players. There have been WWII games in which some players can opt to be German, but that doesn't level the moral/historical playing field; history is written by the winners and it's awfully hard for others to re-write it. The Native Americans who oppose the game are upset by this trivializing of a brutal colonial massacre, and also upset that they were not consulted in the game's creation. Some who are protesting the game are asking (I think rather magnanimously) that they be allowed to give their input in hopes of making it a valuable teaching tool. I don't believe that a game that is essentially whites vs Indians has any place in education or popular culture, but what do I know? Curt Schilling, the Red Sox pitcher who owns part of Multiman, thinks it's just fine. This AP article quotes him as saying,

"...historical events should not be whitewashed for fear of offending someone. King Philip's War helped forge early American identity, even if it "clearly exposed the horrible side of humans in some cases"
...and...
"If everyone intent on keeping historical events stopped at content that might seem offensive, we'd lose sight of the horrific mistakes this nation, the world and the human race are capable of, and that would be a horrific thing."

While these might be true statements about a book, or a film, or an exhibit, this doesn't extend to a board game.  There is something inherently trivial about games and Schilling's decision to ignore the genre clearly demonstrates either his ignorance about, or financial interest in, this situation. Historians have spent years trying to come to terms with the our colonial past and our conquest of native people. A major part of our identity, indeed, our nationhood, is unjustifiable; we stole our land by force from its legitimate owners because their military technology was less advanced. So, Schilling is saying the right things, just about the wrong subject. We do need to examine the darker parts of our history, but not by playing fun games based on bloody colonial conquest. In fact, it's pop culture trivializations of history, such as this game, that keep the true nature of history safely tucked behind a veil of years and that inoculates modern Americans against the stress, harm, and pain of having to critically examine who we are and where we came from.

Souvenir of the Wonders of Arizona Part 2 - The Collector's Dilemma

In my second installment on the Curt Teich & Co. postcard book, "Souvenir of the Wonders of Arizona" I want to address a topic that is sometimes troubling for collectors of old things. When we buy old things, we give an object a new chapter in its history - as a collectible or artifact - but that object remains an expression of its creator and has inscribed upon it that creator's values and beliefs, not the current owner's. They express values that were socially acceptable (or, if not acceptable, widespread) at the time they were created.Oftentimes, these objects present racism, sexism, or environmental exploitation. For example, the postcard above displays the caption "Typical Mexican Peon Home and Family." Obviously, using the term "peon" to describe a rural farming family is inappropriate and offensive. The fact that the family displayed is Mexican, makes race/ethnicity/nationality an issue as well. It seems unlikely that they would be featured as a some sort of anthropological tourist attraction if they were American, and they certainly wouldn't have been referred to as "peons." Are rural Mexican farmers really a "Wonder of Arizona?"

"Wonders of Arizona" also presents Native Americans as tourist attractions and, in my opinion, reduces their humanity by contextualizing them among natural wonders (Grand Canyon and Thumb Butte) and architectural wonders (San Xavier and the State Capital). One might argue that Native American culture and history is an important aspect of Arizona that visitors benefit from exploring, but it's not THAT the Native Americans are displayed here that should make it offensive to our contemporary sentiments, but HOW. It's not the richness of their heritage or art that's foregrounded; rather, what visitors to Arizona can see is the castrated and contained natives, such as this "Indian Squaw" weaving.

"Wonders of Arizona" celebrates Native American provincialism. The message is "come see something harmless; strange people who aren't us and aren't modern." They're colored very darkly, so darkly that their features become obscured. The irony above is that this Apache family is seated next to the newly constructed Roosevelt Lake. Their old way is set against the backdrop of a modern marvel.

As with the Apache by Roosevelt Lake, this Native American woman appears in the postcard of petrified forest to add an element of exoticism to the scene. She, like the petrified tree she stands by, are relics of past times. Both are on display to the visitor of Arizona.

Out of all the postcards, only this depiction of "Elle of Ganado" (there's a real authentic Navajo name for you) presents an individual with her humanity intact. Her features are visible, she sits on something other than the ground, and, most importantly, she is named. Her context remains troublesome, though admiration is clearly expressed for her craft.

So I suppose the concluding question is, "If your collectible evokes such strong negative feelings, why collect it? Why not sell it or destroy it?" Here's my answer and I doubt it will be entirely satisfactory. The object and the message inscribed in it can be recontextualized. The collected antique or relic necessarily changes from it's original purpose. I don't own the "Wonders of Arizona" postcard book for the same reason it Carl Teich & Co. created it. I didn't buy it and send it, like L.T. Brookman did to Myrtle Harnett, as a representation of the wonders of Arizona.  As the owner of this postcard book, I can redefine the messages contained within. I can do something as drastic as post this discussion, or I could do something as subtle as inform my future daughter or son (if s/he ever comes along) that "This is one hundred years old. We don't call Native American women squaws anymore. It's disrespectful." The power lies in the collector, not the collectible. In fact, I think it's responsible when modern collectors save troublesome objects precisely because it keeps the past in the present and allows for discussion of changing values and past mistakes.

For a perhaps more troublesome and moving discussion on this topic, visit Without Sanctuary, a website run my James Allen, a collector of lynching postcards.

Souvenir of the Wonders of Arizona Part 1

I purchased this postcard book a while back and I've put off writing on it until now. If you read this blog consistently, you may have noticed that I get a lot of mileage out of a single postcard. Well, this postcard book contains many, so I had to think of some way into a discussion of the book without just posting individual pictures and writing about them.

What I thought I'd do is thematically post on the various conversations that can arise from such an apparently simple object as this postcard book. I'll begin today with a historical exploration of the book. As a student of print culture and material culture, I frequently approach texts from a viewpoint that seeks to reclaim historical information, but also to explain how the text fit into its particular historical moment; I study 18th century American crime and punishment, so I'm used to older texts with less to go on. Am I getting too abstract here? Sorry...I'll regroup and get to the history. 

O.K. While the postmark is a bit hard to read,  it appears to read Aug. 1, 1912. Though there is no date of printing on the postcard book, I would place it before 1918 for several reasons. 1. None of the postcards depict structures built after 1912 (for example the Roosevelt Dam and El Tovar Hotel) and 2. additions were added to the west side of the State Capital in 1918 that are not pictured in the postcard of the Capital.  The photo of a car and the dress of the men appear early 20th century as well. The description from the inside flap states that Arizona had 204,354 in the 1910 census. The 1920 census found 350,000 residents in Arizona. Finally, one of the cards has a C on it. The booklet was printed by Curt Teich & Co. Teich and Co put letters and codes on their postcards to indicate when they were printed. The C series was between 1905 and 1926, though dates for cards marked with C were not as well recorded as some other series.

The postcard book was sent from "L. Brookman c/o N.Y. Life Ins. Co, Phoenix, Ariz." to "Mrs. Myrtle Harnett 1007 McCullough St., Lansing Michigan." I couldn't find out much about these folks except that it looks like Mrs. Harnett passed away in 1975.

As mentioned above, the postcard book was printed by Curt Teich & Co. of Chicago, Illinois. Curt Teich is most famous for the "Greetings from..." postcard series that feature the name of a city or state in big, bold letters. Each letter usually contains a picture of a landmark of the city or state.

So there are the facts about the object. Tomorrow I'll get into further discussions of the content.

Dook'o'oosliid (San Francisco Peaks, Arizona)

The San Francisco Peaks surround the city of Flagstaff, Arizona. It's about two hours drive north of Phoenix, but it feels like a completely different world from the Sonoran Desert. Here's what the postcard has to say about the mountains: "Snow-capped the greater part of the year these majestic peaks rise to 12,600 feet, dominating the horizon for well over a hundred miles. Humphrey's Peak in the San Francisco Range is the highest point in Arizona."

The hike up Mt. Humphrey is fairly difficult, but not so arduous as to discourage one from climbing up and having a look around. The day I went, the clouds were rolling in quite ominously and we had to make a decision about a mile or so before the summit whether or not to continue. Obviously, we continued. The view wasn't what it could have been, on account of the clouds, but impressive nonetheless. On a clear day, you can see the Grand Canyon and the Painted Desert from on top.

The San Francisco Peaks figure prominently in to Diné (Navajo) Kieje Hatal or Night Chant. The dramatic acts or dramatic rituals of the Night Way were first translated by Washington Matthews and published in English in 1902 as "The Night Chant." Mt. Humphrey's (and the San Francisco Peaks') Diné name is  Dook'o'oosliid and is one of four holy mountains. It represents the west in the Kieje Hatal. The ritual takes nine nights to perform and begins with the beautiful opening "Biké hatáli hakú" or "Come on the trail of song." An opening stanza is repeated four times, referencing the four mountain markers of east, south, west, and north. Dook'o'oosliid is referenced third:

In a holy place with a god I walk, 
In a holy place with a god I walk,
On Dokoslíd with a god I walk,
On a chief of mountains with a god I walk,
In old age wandering with a god I walk,
On a trail of beauty with a god I walk.

In recent years the Diné have protested how Mt. Humphrey has been used for a ski resort. The resort, called the Arizona Snowbowl, want to use reclaimed sewer water to make snow. For the Navajo Nation, as well as the Apache, Hopi, and others who also consider the San Francisco Peaks a holy site, spraying them with sewer water is desecration. The Native Americans have failed in other attempts to stop the practice, but they're still fighting. Read their resolution here. Even with the little I know of U.S. relations with southwestern Native American tribes, this seems like adding insult to injury to me. Who cares if people need to wait for real snow to ski; skiing isn't nearly as important as respecting the traditions of a sovereign group of people who we disenfranchised in the first place.

I'd like to see how many Catholics would like to use treated sewer water for holy water.

The Great Horned Owls of Casa Grande

We recently visited Casa Grande Ruins National Monument in Coolidge Arizona. Casa Grande ruins of multiple Hohokam buildings and walls. The Tohono O'odham, who are descended from the residents of Casa Grande, call the place "Siwan Wa'a Ki." The main building and namesake of Casa Grande was abandoned by the Hohokam nearly 700 years ago. It's made of caliche, which is made from calcium carbonate, and works like a type of cement. In 1932 the parks service constructed the massive roof to protect the abused and suffering building from the elements.

Interestingly, though the building has been abandoned for generation, others now occupy the roof structure and call it home. Who are these new residents of Casa Grande?

Casa Grande is the home of a nesting pair of great horned owls! We noticed them before our tour guide even pointed them out. I guess I just have that extra sense for seeing owls.

I sent a quick email to the staff at Casa Grande and asked for some more history or information about the owls.  Ashley McCabe, who's a biological science technician, was kind enough to respond. Here's what she wrote about the owls:
"The two current Great Horned Owl occupants of the "Great House" at Casa Grande Ruins National Monument are a nesting pair. One of the pair was first recorded here in 2004 and the other has been here since 2006. The owl that has been here since 2004 had a previous mate that was hit by a car in October 2006. The second mate came in November 2006, apparently to take the place of the one that died. In January 2009, our resource management staff relocated a Great Horned Owl nestling from the west wall of the Great House to a nesting box on the southwest corning of the ruins shelter in order to avoid continuing damage to the prehistoric structure. The nestling successfully fledged from the nesting box. We expected the nestling to leave around August 2009, but the bird did not leave until December. Because of the curiosity the nestling displayed, it was the most interesting of the three owls to monument staff and visitors. The bird was often heard screeching during the day."

 If you ever visit Casa Grande, don't forget to look up!