Tag Archives: Native America

The tourist trade

This post is part of an ongoing series called 66 Fridays, which explores the wonders of old Route 66. Click on the preceding “66 Fridays” link to view all posts in the series, or visit the initial overview post here.

One of the grandest Route 66 traditions is the souvenir shop—or as it is more frequently named here, the trading post. And few Mother Road icons have such a long history. Starting as supply hubs and early post offices for fur traders, wagon trains, survey expeditions, gold prospectors and the like, trading posts were bastions of commerce and news in remote places.

The contemporary version of the trading post has sprung out of twentieth-century myths of the Old West: modern tourists wanted to experience a slice of the Pony Express, or send postcards from Boot Hill, or bring home a piece of Navajo jewelry—in air-conditioned comfort, of course.

And nobody has cashed in on trading posts quite like Route 66: the Jackrabbit, the Continental Divide, Tee Pee Curios, the list goes on. On the Mother Road, the term “trading post” has become synonymous with “tourist trap”—many of these places combine commerce, entertainment and the flavor of the Wild West (or in the case above, the Hillbilly Ozarks). Far beyond a simple pit stop or junk store, some have more in common with theme parks.

And while some have their roots in the actual Old West, many of these pit stops were built after Route 66 was run through. (Subsequently, in places where the modern Interstate diverted traffic away from 66, many of these trading posts are crumbling or closed altogether.)

Thanks to historical examples like Hudson’s Bay Company, or the Hubbell Trading Post on the Navajo Nation, which has operated on the pawn (barter) system since the 1870s, we tend to associate trading posts with Indian Country. Route 66 is a prime example: half of the route (over 1300 miles) crosses through Native America, connecting more than 25 Indigenous nations. And since the vast majority of the Mother Road’s trading posts (and nearly all of those west of the Texas-New Mexico line) deal in Native goods, it’s no wonder a road trip through the Southwest makes us think of kachinas and beadwork.

Though many of these shops are run by white owners, some are owned and operated by tribal members themselves.

Regardless of who owns them, the overall effect of these places can run the gamut between eye-frying…

…and downright melancholy.

Gallup, New Mexico, has a little of both. Known as the “capital” of Indian Country, the town of 20,000 or so is the gateway to many American Indian nations, home to nearly a quarter of a million Indigenous people. As a result, Gallup is chock-a-block with trading posts and pawn shops, where local Navajo, Hopi, Zuni and others pawn their jewelry and other handmade goods in exchange for cash, staples or dry goods—and the shop owners then sell the jewelry to tourists. Nearly all of these shops are run either by white or, increasingly, Middle-Eastern owners.

Gallup’s pawn shops have a controversial history, with some establishments accused of dealing in fake goods or cheating Indigenous makers out of a fair price for their work. So I did a little homework before we arrived, and chose Richardson’s as the place we’d visit. The shop has been in operation for over a hundred years, and though the Richardson family is white, they have a long reputation of being reputable dealers with a good relationship with the nations it represents. We marveled at the beauty on display there—some of the jewelry were incredible “old pawn” antique pieces.

Still, my favorite trading experience on our Route 66 trip was when we had the chance to buy goods directly from the makers. In Santa Fe we shopped at the famous market at the Palace of the Governors, where artisans representing all of the region’s Indigenous cultures sell handmade jewelry, pottery, textiles, etc. at fair-trade prices. Each artist has to apply to the Native American Vendors Program to be included in the market, and the museum at the Palace of the Governors monitors each vendor to make sure the goods are authentic and the prices fair to the makers. (And bonus for history nerds like me: it’s really something to know you’re standing in the oldest continually-occupied public building in the country while you’re at it.)

In the end, I could only afford a couple of small items, but I was happy to know I was paying what they were actually worth (I don’t haggle, especially not with fellow artists), and that the proceeds would go directly to the maker. And best of all, I got to hear the stories behind each piece, from the person who made it.

That seems like a fair trade to me.

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Desert dancer

Speaking of seeing actual, authentic Indigenous culture on the road (as opposed to the fake stuff), I had a surprise waiting for me when I visited the Grand Canyon. I was perched on a stone wall, sketching something else, when I heard a crowd gather behind me. I turned around to discover my perch was a front-row seat for the performance.

Poles for the people

I need a little palette cleansing after all those fake Midwestern totem poles—this is much better. Besides, this week Canada is celebrating its sesquicentennial, and it’s nice to see that the festivities there are including all Canadians.

Happy 150th, Canada—and happy Canada Day later this week!

Art-ifacts

Another place I tend to spend hours poring over American Indian artwork is the fabulous Denver Art Museum. In addition to things like beadwork, the museum devotes two entire floors to an astonishing range of Indigenous art, from Pre-Columbian pottery to Plains paintings to Salish heritage poles, and everything in between. The collection includes at least one example from nearly every American and Canadian culture—I had no hope of sketching them all, but I was determined to make a respectable start, in any case.

Glass pixels

Whenever I’m in Tulsa I try to make time for the Gilcrease Museum, a place devoted to the art of the American West. Yet as much I love perusing the galleries of Russells and Remingtons and Catlins, what I’m really there for is the beadwork. The Gilcrease, whose namesake was himself a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation through his mother’s side, boasts a collection of around 25,000 ethnographic objects. Many of these are artistic pieces created by Plains peoples of the first half of the 19th century—a time of wealth and prosperity for many Indigenous nations, which generated some of the finest design and craftsmanship this continent has ever seen. The beadwork is my favorite because it still looks so fresh and contemporary. With each seed bead acting like a pixel on a screen, there are infinite possibilities for each hand-sewn grid of colors and shapes. And the glass beads will never fade the way prints or paintings will over time. Every bandolier bag, every moccassin seems as if the person who made it had just stepped out of the room—as if all I had to do was wait a moment to have a chat with them.

Wigwam-a-rama

Route 66 wouldn’t be Route 66 without its bevy of American-Indian cultural appropriation kitsch. The sheer number of faux teepees, tomahawks, totems and trading posts along the Mother Road is staggering—the number of details they get wrong even more so (like, ahem, teepees in the desert Southwest). Still, these wrongheaded landmarks are a huge part of the route’s history, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention them here.

Most famous of all are the two (two, I say!) Wigwam Villages that still beckon travelers from the roadside—and these were actually part of a chain of seven motels that stretched from Florida to Kentucky to California in the 1940s and 50s.

The one in Holbrook, Arizona is the most well-kept of the two remaining villages, and is decked out with a ring of restored vintage cars and its original “Sleep in a Wigwam” billboard.

Its sister site in California once displayed a much earthier sign: “Do It in a Teepee,” (actually, the sign is still there, just tucked away in the back of the property) which contributed to a seedy reputation that the current owners are trying hard to overcome.

If these motels seem oddly familiar to you, imagine this sketch displaying a ring of giant traffic cones instead of teepees, and it’ll click: the San Bernardino Wigwam Village was the inspiration for the fictional Cozy Cone Motel in the Pixar film Cars.

I didn’t get a chance to “sleep in a wigwam” on this trip, but it’s just as well. As much as I love themed roadside kitsch, I don’t love cultural appropriation—particularly the American Indian variety.(Don’t even get me started on fashion models wearing war bonnets, or kid’s-room teepees at the Baby Gap.) Still, I’m glad to see these motels being preserved—Route 66 doesn’t need to lose any more of its landmarks.

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Gallery of wonders

Of course, there’s the kind of “museum” founded by snake-oil salesmen…and then there’s the real thing. If you really want to get a taste of Northwest art and anthropology, there’s no better place to start than the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria.

The museum is huge, with natural history dioramas, city artifacts, an IMAX theater, the works—but I always head straight for the First Peoples Gallery and spend hours and hours there.

Like most museums, the RBCM doesn’t allow you to bust out a paintbox in the gallery, so when I’m there, I stick to my museum routine: do the line drawing on-site, make a few pale pencil notes about color details, and fill in with a bit of watercolor later.

I’m sure my sketches aren’t entirely faithful to their subjects, since I have to simplify and fill in details from memory later… but it’s still the best way I know how to get in a good art history lesson.

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Treasures through time

Last week’s Nature Lab post put me in an “educational” frame of mind this weekend—so I thought I’d devote this week to museum sketches. First up are some brand new ones from just a couple of days ago, when I finally had the chance to see the spectacular exhibit of Peruvian art and artifacts at the Seattle Art Museum. The show covers 3,000 years of Peruvian history, so it’s a lot to take in—but it’s worth every scrap of attention you’ve got. That’s where a sketchbook comes in handy, actually—for me, it helps process all that sensory overload, so I can look back later and remember the experience as more than just an art blur.

(A word to fellow sketchers, if you go: museum rules allow sketching only with a pencil inside the galleries—which are pretty dimly lit. So I had to rough these out quickly, squinting with my nose an inch from the book, and then sprint for the nearest coffee shop afterward to ink and paint while I could still remember any color details.)

My favorite part of the show was the fact that it covered both pre-Columbian cultures and art done during and after the Conquista—so even though the sudden switch in subject matter was jarring, it was easy to see how the cultural influence—surprisingly—went in both directions.

So if you find yourself in Seattle over the holidays, grab a sketchbook and take yourself out on an art date. The show is only up through January 5, but if you make the effort to get there, you won’t be disappointed.

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