Navaho Trading Days by Elizabeth Compton Hegemann

These stores were scattered across the Navajo Reservation and the surrounding off-reservation areas inhabited primarily by Navajos in New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. The Carsons ended up having four daughters, all of whom grew up, married, and went on to own trading posts of their own. It is very close to Huerfano Mountain, one of the most sacred mountains to the Navajos and the site of many events recounted in the Navajo origin story. Their last name was Carson, so the store came to be known as Carson Trading Post and the community surrounding it is often called Carson. So my great-grandfather bought the store, moved his wife and two daughters to the site, and finished building it.

By then they had had a falling out, and according to local lore were even running around shooting at each other, and they were quite happy to sell. He found it much less impressive and decided not to buy it, but on his way back he encountered the brothers again at their much better location. He offered to buy the store from them, but they were not interested in selling, so he continued on to the store he was headed towards. The Navajo name for the area is Hanáádlį́, which means something like “the place where it flows out again,” which presumably refers to something about the confluence of the two washes. The story goes that my great-grandfather was heading out to look at a store that was being offered for sale and on his way over happened upon two brothers who were building a store at a very promising location at the confluence of a small side wash with the Gallegos Wash, one of the main drainages in the region. They found that they liked it and began looking around for a store of their own to buy. Some other members of their families were beginning to go out into the vast rural areas nearby occupied by the Navajos to establish trading posts, and they were curious enough about this to move out to one of these stores to help out for a while.

They had both grown up in Farmington and married in 1908, after which they spent a few years emulating the farming and small-scale ranching lifestyle of their parents and most other local residents, but they were unsatisfied with this and began to look for other opportunities. In 1918 my great-grandparents built a trading post in the San Juan Basin of northwestern New Mexico, between Chaco Canyon and the town of Farmington, which was then and is now the main town in the area.

Navaho Trading Days by Elizabeth Compton Hegemann