TRADERS TO THE NAVAJOS: The Story of the Wetherills of Kayenta [SOLD]

TRADERS TO THE NAVAJO - The Story of the Wetherills of Kayenta
By Frances Gillmor and Louisa Wade Wetherill

The University of New Mexico Press, 1953. Hardback with slip cover, 265 pages, black and white photographs. Book in very good condition, slip cover shows some wear. A 1956 dedication to a mother from her daughters on first flyleaf page.

Foreword

"The death of John Wetherill in November 1944 and of Louisa Wade Wetherill in September 1945 closed a chapter in the history of Southwestern pioneering. Their graves on the desert above Kayenta command a wide sweep of the country with which their names are indelibly linked and which they loved. On that land the People still move with their flocks, still sing their chanted prayers of healing; but they move into increasingly complex relations with the life around them. The old isolation is gone. Hosteen John and Asthon Sosi would find their new life strange."

Testimonials: 

“…supplies information, interpretation, and sheer beauty . . . information concerning the Navajos and also the archaeological and geographical explorations of the Wetherill men . . . discoveries of the now much-visited Rainbow Bridge . . . and the great ruins of Mesa Verde.  The interpretation is of a distant folk and of the desert land . . . and I know of nothing more beautiful pertaining to the Indian life in America than the chapter “Dancing East of the Sunset.’”  J. Frank Dobie

“. . . it reads like a romance of the frontier; it has everything: Indian fights, desert storms, explorations, round-ups, Mormons, Quakers, and lost mines.  Miss Gillmor has done an important service in making this record.” Erna Ferguson

“Mrs. Wetherill not only knows the Navajos’ language; she knows their minds.  She has the keenest sympathy not only for their bodily needs, but with their mental and spiritual processes; and she is not in the least afraid of them . . . they trust her so fully that they will speak without reserve about those intimate things of the soul . . . ” Theodore Roosevelt

“. . . if the whites had dealt with the Indians as the Wetherills did, there would have been few Indian wars, and no ‘century of dishonor.’” New York Times

 “We, the undersigned, members of the Navajo tribe, have known Asthon Sosi, Louisa (Mrs. John) Wetherill, for a great many years.  We believe that there is no other living white woman who has as complete knowledge of our people, their customs and traditions, as she, and we have full confidence that she will not say or publish anything about our people but what are facts and truth. A tribal endorsement of Traders to the Navajos signed by 29 tribal members