NAVAHO TRADING DAYS [SOLD]


C3773P-book.jpg + Add to my watchlist Forward to Friend
Elizabeth Compton Hegemann (1897-1962)
  • Subject: Diné - Navajo Nation
  • Item # C3809W
  • Date Published: Hardback with jacket, first edition, 1963
  • Size: 388 pages, 318 rare photographs
  • SOLD

NAVAHO TRADING DAYS by Elizabeth Compton Hegemann

The University of New Mexico Press

Hardback with jacket, first edition, 1963

388 pages, 318 rare photographs, a remarkable narrative

 

“Gathering authentic ‘inside’ information about life among the Hopis, Navahos, and Grand Canyon tourists came naturally to Elizabeth Hegemann.  Blessed with great curiosity and a remarkable memory, in the 20’s and 30’s she focused camera and notebook on almost everything that came her way.  She did not guess how priceless this information would become with the passing of time and consequent great changes in then-remote northeastern Arizona.

 

“For this book 318 of Mrs. Hegemann’s photographs have been chosen which provide an unvarnished record of people and places, Indians and white men, ceremonial dances, trading posts, roads and archaeological monuments, all of them now altered by time.  Each photograph, reproduced without retouching, is identified with an informative caption and a date.

 

“In addition, Mrs. Hegemann has supplied one hundred sixty pages of informal text, recounting her unusual experiences as a Navahopi country traveler, resident, and Indian trader at Shonto in the almost inaccessible northeastern Navaho Reservation.  She was in a position to encounter most of the important visitors attracted to the area, among them John Galsworthy, Charles F. Lummis, William Randolph Hearst and Will Rogers.  Despite primitive conditions, she maintained many of the amenities of civilization, including the acquisition of a collection of rare Southwestern books.  She learned the Navaho language, the intricacies of trade in wool, blankets, and piñon nuts, and even how to spin and weave.

 

“Yet she undertook hardships and welcomed danger.  For many years she was one of the few white women in an area where traders kept a gun and a billy-club handy.  To obtain supplies at Flagstaff, she regularly drove a truck, alone, across scores of miles of nearly non-existent road.

 

“From the photographs, their captions, and the author’s intimate, often humorous, narrative, the reader will emerge with a fully rounded picture of life as it was lived in Navaho Trading Days.”

  

AUTHOR’S BIOGRAPHY - Elizabeth Compton Hegemann (1897-1962)

 

Elizabeth Compton was born in 1897 near Cincinnati, where she attended preparatory schools, afterwards studying at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.  Aside from extended trips abroad, she spent most of her life in Southern California, Arizona and New Mexico.  Of her four marriages—to a Navy aviator, 1916; a Park Service employee, 1925; an Indian Trader, 1929; a ship’s radio officer, 1939—three ended in divorce and the last with the death of her husband, Anton Hegemann, in 1957.

 

“A determined collector of American Indian and Spanish Colonial crafts, the fruits of her discriminating taste and careful records are owned by several museums.  Always an ardent camera user, she studied professional photography late in life, and devoted much of her energy during a fatal illness to writing the text and preparing fresh negatives and prints from her earlier photographs for use in [the book Navaho Trading Days].  Mrs. Hegemann died in Albuquerque in April 1962, a few days after she had read proofs and approved the sequence of photographs planned for Navaho Trading DaysThe University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque

Example image from book: NAVAJO TRADING DAYS by Elizabeth Compton Hegemann

 

 

Elizabeth Compton Hegemann (1897-1962)
  • Subject: Diné - Navajo Nation
  • Item # C3809W
  • Date Published: Hardback with jacket, first edition, 1963
  • Size: 388 pages, 318 rare photographs
  • SOLD

Publisher:
C3773P-book.jpgC3773P-large.jpg Click on image to view larger.