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Spider Woman's Granddaughters

The Master Weavers of Toadlena/Two Grey Hills

By Andrew Gulliford

Of all the arts and crafts associated with the American Southwest, none is more widely known and valued than Navajo blankets, yet today on the sprawling 17-million-acre Navajo Reservation only a few trading posts remain where the blankets were bought and sold. Most old trading posts have been replaced with rural gas stations and convenience stores, and families of longtime traders have left. But one trading post, built in 1909 out of stone with shelves still stocked with canned goods, horse liniment and stewed tomatoes, stays in business, tucked against the shoulder of the Chuska Mountains between Gallup and Shiprock, N.M., in a place named Toadlena. Just west of a Navajo natural landmark named Two Grey Hills, Toadlena is one of the last true trading posts in the Southwest.

Mark Winter is the trader, and though he has dealt in historic Southwestern textiles for over 35 years, he made an audacious move from the cosmopolitan comforts of Santa Fe to the hinterland near Newcomb, N.M. It's an easy drive from Durango or Gallup, but the last mile tends toward dirt and spring ruts. Winter is on Narbona's old turf, which is the homeland of the famed Navajo headman who ran thousands of sheep and had multiple wives and children close to where the Toadlena Trading Post stands today.

In 1997, why did Winter take on obligations and headaches associated with being a white man, a bilaganna, leasing a trading post in the heart of Navajoland? Because he fell in love with the distinctive Toadlena/Two Grey Hills style of weaving and the old grandmothers who weave these fine blankets. He has become a family member, having to make cash loans, extend credit for groceries and feed unexpected guests who arrive at meal times. For any elderly Navajo who walks through the trading post door, he provides $20 worth of free food.

After years of selling historic Navajo blankets, Winter wanted to learn more about contemporary Native Americans. He explains, "When I sold a 50- or 75-year-old Two Grey Hills rug, I wanted to know who made it. Selling a historic Chief's Blanket for $250,000 was great, but the maker was anonymous. I wanted to know more, to give back to the culture that has given me so much."

With a Western mustache, shoulder-length light brown hair and jeans, Winter is the perfect early 20th-century Indian trader doing business in the 21st century. Wearing a necklace under his shirt, but no heavy rings, he's as comfortable talking to the Santa Fe millionaires who drive out to look at his weavings as he is patting the hand of an aged grandmother and asking, "How much longer on the loom, Grandmother? When will you finish that beautiful rug?"

The best local weavers are in their 70s or 80s, and they've come to see Winter as an adopted son who has revitalized Toadlena/Two Grey Hills weaving and recorded the genealogy of weavers' families. About one-third of the older weavers speak no English.

As a younger man working with the distinguished Durango trader Jackson Clark Sr., who started Toh-Atin Gallery in Durango in 1957, Winter amassed the finest collection of one-of-a-kind Southwestern weavings ever assembled. Known as The Durango Collection �, this fabulous collection of Navajo, Hispanic and Pueblo textiles is housed at the Center of Southwest Studies at Fort Lewis College. After creating the collection, and making a sizable donation of rugs to the college, Winter turned his attention from trading in antique rugs to searching for the best weavers working on the reservation. Eventually, he made his way to Toadlena at 6,800 feet.

To the east of Toadlena stretch plains and desert grasslands, but to the west rise the Chuskas, perfect summer pastures for generations of Navajo sheep. Springs and creeks flow out of the mountains and are as distinctive as the Toadlena/Two Grey Hills weaving style with its palette of white, black, grays and browns. No synthetic dyes are used by local weavers. The colors of a Toadlena/Two Grey Hills blanket are the colors of the wool from local sheep, and as the sheep age and their wool changes color, so too do the blankets take on different hues. Arizona Highways Magazine once wrote, "Toadlena is to Navajo rugs what Paris is to haute couture." Winter explains, "Our masterpieces take a year or two to weave."

Toadlena is a vintage trading post complete with a pot-bellied wood and coal burning stove, a nickel-plated barber's chair for lounging, brass cash register, and plenty of time for local Navajos to trade and barter with Winter. He loves the give and take of a good trade, and to support and strengthen local weaving traditions, he always buys the first blanket from weavers as young as 10 or 12. Whole families come to the store when it's time to sell a child's first weaving.

Winter talks to the child seriously, though with always a chuckle or two. He comments on their technique and the colors and texture of the blanket, and then he takes the weaver's picture and pays in cash. Smiling broadly, the young weavers like the feel of money in their hands, and they usually try to buy candy or sodas for their brothers and sisters, but Winter just gives it to them anyway. He's like that. He gives ice cream to kids. Anything to make a deal. Anything to keep this rich weaving tradition vibrant and alive.

Prior to the arrival of the Spanish in 1540, Pueblo Indian men had woven blankets and shawls from cotton fibers, but the Spanish Conquistadors brought Churro sheep, and nomadic Navajos realized the value of having both a meat source and a clothing source that traveled on its own four legs. Unlike the Puebloans, Navajo weavers were predominantly female and many a baby was lulled to sleep by the soft sibilant sounds of a grandmother weaving and passing the shuttle through the long vertical or warp threads and then pounding it down with a wooden comb to make the weaving tight.

Historically, female Navajos learned to weave from the Pueblos after the revolt of 1680 when Pueblo Indians fled the Spanish as they returned to reclaim New Mexico. But according to legend, it was not their tribal neighbors who taught the Navajos to weave; rather it was Spider Woman who explained the virtues of weaving and sitting before a cottonwood loom under a crystalline sky. She cast her web down from a high rock and raised up two Navajo women who sought help for their people, who suffered from cold. So Spider Woman taught the women to shear sheep, clean the wool, spin it into yarn and weave blankets while focusing on beautiful thoughts. They say she's still there atop Spider Rock, a magnificent 900-foot-tall tower of red sandstone in the bottom of Canyon de Chelly, a National Monument and a sacred place to Navajo people.

Rug designs are never sketched in advance, though patterns and styles may be passed down as family traditions. From the first moment on the loom, a Navajo weaver visualizes the intricate pattern she will produce, though it may take months or even years to complete the design. Rugs are woven horizontally, though they are woven on upright, vertical looms. The beautiful symmetry of a Navajo Two Grey Hills weaving begins in the first inch or two of the rug and is patiently completed from the bottom up after miles of hand carded and spun woolen thread has been pounded into place by a wooden comb. That patience and clarity of vision, that ability to see a finished product in one's mind, is the true gift from Spider Woman who taught her children well.

Durango gallery owner Jackson Clark II explains that "weaving was the most important social skill that a Navajo woman could have." Grandmothers taught granddaughters for several generations, and now at Toadlena the distinctive Two Grey Hills weaving style is carried on by women who are themselves grandmothers. They love to tease Winter as they tell him stories of all the traders who failed because they were not kind and generous.

The heyday for Indian traders lasted from the coming of the railroads into the Southwest in the 1890s to the advent of automobiles in the 1930s. Traders proliferated as they swapped goods from back East like coffee pots, buckets, bowls, horse harness, and food items like coffee and canned peaches for raw materials like wool. But wool was greasy and heavy to ship, so traders encouraged Navajo women to weave floor rugs for an eastern market. As the first downtown department stores opened in Boston, New York and Philadelphia, Navajo traders in distant New Mexico and Arizona realized a market existed for floor rugs. Traders encouraged quality weavings in distinctive styles associated with local trading posts like Ganado, Wide Ruins, Two Grey Hills, Crystal and Teec Nos Pos.

An interest in Navajo rugs coincided with a change in American architectural styles. Instead of Victorian clutter and the excessive carpeting and draperies found in Queen Anne style houses of the Gilded Age, Craftsman-style homes from the 1900s to the 1920s emphasized natural, warm materials, earth tones, hardwood floors, lower ceilings, window seats, modest interior fireplaces and handmade furniture. No better setting existed for Navajo rugs than to be placed on oak dining room floors or in one's private library or study.

The rugs had been woven by Navajo women sitting quietly in the desert, using cottonwood looms, their legs tucked beneath velveteen skirts. A change in American culture in the early 20th century created a successful revival of Native American arts and crafts with an emphasis on quality, local designs and vegetal rather than synthetic dyes. As people became fascinated by the prehistory of our original inhabitants, traders on the Navajo Reservation sought a larger market for Navajo weavings, sometimes copying oriental rug motifs. Anglo traders standardized regional rug styles.

The Santa Fe Railroad encouraged eastern tourists to visit the sunny Southwest in Arizona and the Land of Enchantment in New Mexico. Los Angeles was growing and everyone wanted Native American handicrafts for their homes. Wealthy Americans like William Randolph Hearst collected dozens of fine Nativa American blankets in connection with the Fred Harvey Company that bought from reservation traders and had extensive gift shops in Southwestern railroad depots. Indians met arriving trains and sold pots and blankets along railroad tracks.

In the 1920s, Bungalow-style houses featured Native American rugs, shiny black-on-black pots by Maria Martinez from San Ildefonso Pueblo, and sepia-toned portraits of Native Americans by photographer Edward Sheriff Curtis. Railroad tourism in the Southwest created a market for Southwestern Indian Arts as Native Americans produced pots in New Mexico and tightly woven, natural-dyed baskets in California. By 1925, the unmistakable Toadlena/Two Grey Hills style and color palette had emerged, and the area was being touted as home to the best-made rugs on the reservation. Winter explains, "It's been that way ever since."

Some of the best weavings at Santa Fe's Indian Market come from Toadlena/Two Grey Hills. Winter has rows of blue ribbons won there and at the prestigious Gallup Intertribal Ceremonial by his "grandmothers" from Toadlena. Collectors can buy in Santa Fe or at the rug auction in Crownpoint, N.M., or they can come to Toadlena and visit a real working, trading post where Winter pays the weavers well "so they'll keep weaving."

One of the finest living weavers is Virginia Deal, who began at age 13 and says, "I always use the same designs, just in different places." Her rugs are so tightly woven that they are known as the Toadlena/Two Grey Hills tapestry style with more than 100 threads per inch or as tight as anything machine-made. Her tapestry pieces are often two years on the loom, and Winter explains that in the United States, "tapestry weaving is the highest example of textile art." Deal's superior rugs use nine colors and between 8 to 10 miles of yarn with her juniper-wood comb passing 100 times back and forth per inch. For Winter, watching Deal weave is like "seeing Mozart play a piano." Though master weavers produce irreplaceable art, they've often done so out of necessity. Proceeds from Deal's weaving raised her nine children and many grandchildren.

Another master weaver is Clara Sherman, age 93, who took second place at the Gallup Intertribal Ceremonial in 1931 and has woven so consistently that she took first place and Best of Category for Navajo weaving in 2000. She tells visitors to Toadlena, "You buy one of these rugs. Mark helps us out a lot."

The Historic Toadlena Trading Post features handmade items from 45 to 50 local extended families and during the last 10 years Winter has bought an average of one rug a day from area weavers. He explains, "Our average weaver is as good as the best weavers on the reservation, and our best weavers are in a class all their own." Part of the post is also a museum with exceptional historic rugs from the area. "We have the coolest museum in the Southwest," Winter notes, "but that's because we don't heat it." Tour groups have come from the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, the Museum of Northern Arizona, the Heard Museum, Santa Fe's Museum of Indian Arts & Culture, the Wheelright Museum's Collector's Circle, the Southwest Museum from Los Angeles and the Durango Arts Center.

Collector Gil Mull states, "Mark has done a superb job of encouraging high-quality weaving, using local sheep that produce quality wool for handspun yarn. He is following in the tradition of early traders J. Lorenzo Hubbell at Ganado and J. B. Moore at Crystal." Mull adds, "Mark's sincere interest in the weavers and in the history of weaving on the east side of the Chuska Mountains is clearly illustrated in the museum collection of extraordinary weaving by virtually all of the mid-20th century weavers who were part of the flowering of the Toadlena/Two Grey Hills tradition."

Visitor Philip Essig from Santa Fe has traveled to Toadlena five times. He says, "There's no other place in the Southwest that can provide such superb examples of weaving and such immediate proximity to weavers." Winter laughs and comments, "People love buying rugs that are hot off the loom. We call it the catch of the day." In one month last summer, visitors filled 35 pages in the trading post guestbook.

Depending on size, quality and the weaver's skill, modern Toadlena/Two Grey Hills rugs can cost anywhere from $300 to $500 up to $20,000 for a master weaver's finest work. A Virginia Deal rug woven and sold in 1957 is now worth $10,000 to $12,000. Purchasing rugs made by young weavers whose talents will increase with age can be a wise investment.

The Toadlena Trading Post actively supports 125 weavers within a 12 mile radius. Because the best weavers are aging, Winter encourages the young. At nearby Newcomb High School, he started a weaving class in the art department with three students. Now three classes of 18 students each are held during the school year, including summer classes at the old boarding school. He has also used a Santa Fe-based non-profit foundation called Southwest Learning Center to funnel donations to support new weavers. Winter treats the weavers with respect and sends them home with a good price. On an hourly basis, even the best weavers work below minimum wage.

Because of their high-dollar value, Navajo rug designs are now copied around the globe. Knock-offs are imported from Mexico, Eastern Europe and China. Winter explains, "It's so important for people to know that when they're buying authentic Navajo rugs they are preserving a culture that includes some of the best hand spinners and weavers the world has ever known." So take a trip to Toadlena, visit a historic trading post, and Winter will introduce you to master weavers, women who learned from Spider Woman to create beautiful art.

Andrew Gulliford is a historian, photographer and professor of Southwest Studies and History at Fort Lewis College in Durango.