gallup
Jo u r n e y The Free Community Magazine
ST E W H
UT O S Y B T WES ING
Ern
ul ie B
ow
IN S L L L I NIA
PH M CAHE AT CEREMO T IFE L T H nial, NIG
eremo ineC f o r ea nn first y problem. I twenty y r e v a of he rom t g has been an average on any giv n housi wenty-two gh Gallup l Navajo, teen-t assed throu y House, E e lcars p med Harv g year. ar Ga al e a n f y i e e w h h o JACKALOPES co ot ollPITS y. T & SNAKE he fROUTE as als use of the t built en d& aWONDERS n tON w e MARVELS 66 o p o ’ w a t would en-twenty tial law bec town wasnsing for f e r Ninet under ma cho east o ortable hou n s f a a lup w . The El R rily as com s strike 937, prima until 1
F
small herd of llamas out back. Easily the most common critters on the road were the rattlesnakes. Between Albuquerque and Gallup there were close to a dozen “snake pits” and the owners would get down with the snakes and put on a little show. I can’t find even one alligator wrestler in the bunch. Some of the thrilling attractions were a little more suspicious. In the late sixties, there were two posts which sported a trail of billboards. Chief Yellowhorse out by the state line had signs that were meant to be funny. Continental Divide had advertising that was rather more “thrilling”. One billboard shouted “SEE LIVE SQUAW—WEAVING”, and several more promised “THE THING”. The ‘thing’ was the mummy of an Anasazi child—possibly a very small lady—pilfered from a local ruin. Personally, I didn’t buy the idea it was a space alien. Turns out, several posts had mummies, including the Mentmore store run by Mike Kirk. At least one writer suggested that all these animals, dead or alive, made the kids happy, and that pushed the happy parents to pull out cash. The only animal it seems with commercial value was the Jackalope. A small mount of this mythical creature could fit in the car and make it back to Illinois or somewhere as proof that the American West was, indeed, wild and wooly. And exotic. The Jackalope, as most everyone knows is a large jackrabbit with deer antlers on its head. I had a big one for many years, until the moths got it. It is hard to tell how the taxidermist stretched that bunny skin to such large proportions. Trade secret I suppose. They are still available. Some years ago, I came across a small article in the April 1949 issue of New Mexico Magazine by Amy Passmore Hurt. Even though it is a short piece, it has a lot of interesting information. Ms. Hurt tells the story of a Texas cowboy who moved to Albuquerque in 1941 and took up taxidermy. He came up with the idea of stuffing large animals associated with the cowboy west instead of big game for hunters. He would stuff anything, and his animals have been sent to every state and a few foreign countries. Large animal taxidermy requires special skill and he took advantage of another practice of the time. There were a bunch
WHO WERE THE NAVAJO CODE TALKERS AND HOW DID A BUNCH OF SHEEP HERDERS SAVE LIVES?
THE FIRST GROUP OF CODE TALKERS
G
allup is the home of the Navajo Code Talkers Association, though there aren’t many of these heroes of WWII still around. Their code in the Navajo language was never broken by the Japanese and undoubtedly saved thousands of lives in the Pacific. When the popular GI Joe action figures finally made it to the local Walmart they held a ceremony to honor these most interesting Marines. Later in the summer, the group marched in
of seasonal, itinerant photographers who would set up shop in parking lots during the busy time. They took pictures of the tourists with the backdrop of an outrageous trading post, wooden Indians, animals in pens and cages, wearing feather headdresses and other things. There was, for example, the donkey with a human head. It
FOLLOWING THE TRAIL OF A DE DIOS DESIGN of Zuni work is usually attributed to one of these fifty or so makers.
Ernie Bulow
After half a century of investigation, I can’t find posters for the first decade of Gallup Inter-tribal Ceremonial. This makes any sort of history problematic. The first poster using a Native American artist was for the seventeenth, 1938. It was done by a teenaged Ha So De, Narciso Abeyta of Gallup. In 1932 there was an iconic poster attributed to Louie Ewing, Santa Fe artist. He certainly holds the record for posters by the same art-
It puzzles me that a lot of second rate work receives this treatment. Poor work is often attributed to master craftsmen, notably Leo Poblano, who continues to turn out pieces fifty years after his tragic and untimely death. Daisy Poblano was the better artist, and far fewer of her pieces exist, so why does her work continue to be designated “made by Leo Poblano”? Juan De Dios is sometimes left in the shadow of Horace Iule in spite of the fact he did fine work. Even with slightly diminished status, De Dios is one of the greats and it is profitable to identify lesser pieces as his work.
ED PPOS E SUP HAN R E ELS W ER T WHE FTS BETT N O G I R A ED W ND D ERSIZ OUGH SA V O E R THES KE IT TH HEELS A TO M GULAR W RE THE
S
ince I started investigating Zuni jewelry work seriously, I have been forced to consider that some of the misattributions are done purposely to boost prices.
Many of the most important collections in America were accumulated by rich people who simply took the word of a dealer for the provenance of a certain piece. I assume both the collector and the museum were acting in good faith, though someone earlier in the chain was not.
Since there are not more than a dozen first tier silversmiths, and only two dozen or so second tier artists known by name by the majority of dealers and collectors, any better piece
JACKALOPE-HEAD?
IMAGINING CEREMONIAL A VERY SHORT HISTORY OF POSTERS By Ernie Bulow
Regular Marines leapfrogged over the Pacific, landing on every island. The Navajos landed on every island because of the importance of their communication. Using code words in Navajo, a secure message could be sent from the front lines to command positions without time-consuming coding and decoding.
DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU’RE TOLD
GILBERT JONES ON THE BACK OF ONE OF OWN HIS CREATIONS. WHERE DOES THE SADDLE FIT ON A TWO THOUSAND POUND BUFFALO? When I came to Fort Wingate in 1966, there were still a number of old-time trading posts along Route 66. They weren’t really trading posts because there was little trading being done with Indians. They were tourist traps in every sense of the word. But they promised gawking tourists from every state in the Union “kicks”, and they did their best to deliver. Apparently, the city folk were thrilled by exotic animals, dead or alive. Every post sported mounted heads on the walls and every western animal imaginable plunked on cases and stands throughout the store. It probably was a thrill to come face-to-face with a big, snarling mountain lion. If the stuffed animals didn’t do it for you, the live ones were in cages outside: buffalo, livestock, bears [two were taught to drink pop from bottles purchased inside], bobcats, mountain lions, coyotes, you name it. One store had a
the annual Gallup Inter-Tribal Ceremonial parade. Dr. Samuel Billison, who did the voice for the Navajo GI Joe, speaks several phrases in both languages. Sadly, he passed soon after.
THE IRON HORSE
SOME PERSONAL THOUGHTS ON RAILROADS
I
have always enjoyed folk definitions of words—the sillier the better. I once read that the Natives used to call an automobile the “thing that runs by itself.” Crazy-no? Today I take on “iron horse,” or the more general iron trail, iron road, metal road, etc.
ists, and by a wide margin. On some of his later posters there is an attribution to a Native artist—adapted by. Ewings posters were sometimes silkscreens, his favorite medium. Starting in the Nineties there was an effort to use Indian artwork, but many of those artists did not really reflect the nature of Gallup Ceremonial. There were winners, of course, like the 2004 poster by Irving Bahe. It definitely attracts attention. Good copies of Ceremonial posters, especially for the first half century, are quite pricey.
GS LO Y SON A W Y
EM
G EN INGIN S S Y E GU THES PPY A H TY
laid thick metal plates to rest the rail on. Those big iron rails were laid into place and the plates adjusted for alignment. Another guy moved along the track setting the spikes. They had to be precisely placed so they stood perfectly straight up. One man stood on each side of the rail and wielded a “spike maul.” This is essentially a pick with both ends ground off flat. That small face doesn’t allow for any mistakes. The two “gandy dancers” SPIKE MAULS MAKE GOOD DOOR HANDLES. would swing from alternating sides; when the spike was driven, ask? Simply a track worker. But the folk then took one step to the right and the etymology is unusually fictional. I was whirling mauls never missed a stroke. told at the time it came from the brand of There were rarely any misses, for obvious shovel used. reasons. And what’s a gandy dancer you Over the years this has been expanded to
RETOK P
A SELECTION OF DATE NAILS
1937
ONS WAG
2022 February #211
In 1962 I got to see tracks up close and personal. I went to work that summer at the copper smelter in McGill, Nevada— one hundred twenty miles from the nearest town, not counting the nearby village of Ely, which actually provided the services. There were two big constructs—the mill which crushed and concentrated the copper ore, and the smelter where it was melted down to extract the copper. The air was so bad it would turn sagebrush into copper sculptures. The short track spur was used to move ore between the two locations. That summer they decided to replace the little section with new ties and rails. In those days this was still hand work, sorry to say. Cross-ties are heavy when new, but saturated with minerals, they were literally petrified. Of course I got the worst of the bad jobs. The good thing was seeing the skill of these tobacco-chewing characters; cross ties were laid, then a big crew used something like the tongs they carried big blocks of ice with, and a couple of fellows
MAP OF NEARBY LAND GRANTS
refer to a Chicago company which made lots, maybe all, the tools used in track work. In actuality there appears to never have been such a company. It’s moot now because virtually nothing is done with hand tools. One of the great moments was the meeting of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific at Promontory Point, Utah, at the north end of the Great Salt Lake, once again popular knowledge and the real event only had the word Promontory in common. Promontory is just what it sounds like. It is a spur of low mountains that extends mile into the lake from the north. Technology of the time didn’t allow for rails across the huge lake. But that’s not the most interesting part. My wife’s grandfather had homesteaded on
