Priscilla, and the Apple

Earlier today I was talking with Priscilla Sagg about something that had happened this week. The incident was very funny, and will not be directly related in this story because we don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. Since she has been at the trading post with me since we opened the doors in the fall of 1989, Priscilla is my number one employee and number one buddy. We go all the way back to when she and I would open the doors in the morning, clean the showcases, vacuum the floor and wait the rest of the day for customers who never arrived. Anyway, as a result of the story I told her, she reciprocated with a very interesting tale of her own. She said she had been visiting with some tourists who very nicely gave her an apple. After she finished eating it they asked whether she had ever had one before. Once we all stopped laughing, I began to realize just how complicated the question really was.


Priscilla Sagg at Twin Rocks Trading Post

The apple givers obviously assumed a certain lack of availability, and a certain lack of development, this far out of the main stream. That really was not such a bad assumption. I have often thought that Bluff is located at a cultural cross road and a cultural divide. I have also often thought that it lags approximately 50 years behind the rest of the world. The town is situated just two miles north of the northern boundary of the Navajo Reservation. Although it is a very small town of three hundred people, it has most of the modern conveniences, such as running water, telephones and electricity. Just across the river, however, many Navajo people live without these necessities. They have to haul their water in tanks carried in their pick up trucks or on trailers. They do not have access to electrical lines, so power is obtained by portable generators or batteries. Only recently cell phones have compensated for the lack of telephone lines. I have often seen a pick up truck parked very close to the window of a home, with a cord running into the television set. The MTV culture was being piped directly into the inhabitants through means of a truck battery.

For several years Damian Jim worked at the trading post. Damian is a very talented artist, graphic designer and computer technician. After working at the trading post all day maintaining our web site (which he initially created), keeping our computers alive and a variety of other highly technical activities that Barry and I can't even begin to comprehend, he would go home to his one room house which did not have water, electricity or telephones. I often marveled at him carrying his lap top computer out the door, since it was completely incompatible with where he was going; or so I thought. I ultimately came to realize that Damian had been successful in neatly fitting his two worlds together. It is amazing what can be accomplished with a fully charged battery and a gas light. The culture that referred to computers as "the talking metal" was being revolutionized by Damian's generation.

It is these dichotomies that make being at the trading post so interesting. We get to see the remains of a very rapidly changing Native American culture, on an every day basis. We also see how that change is impacting the people and how the outside world views this change. Questions as simple as, "Do Navajo people sing?" and "Where do we find real Indians?" often show deep interest and compassion for the people, along with a certain lack of understanding. The trading post is frequently the interface between the people who want to understand the Navajo and the Navajos themselves.

In the early days, trading posts developed as commercial and social centers. The Navajo patrons came in to hear the news of the day, to meet friends and to engage in a variety of other social and economic activities. Modern trading posts still function in much the same way. The artists come in to see what is happening in the larger world, and the patrons come in to see what is happening in the Navajo culture. In a sense we are a broker of information, or a learning institution. Information passes both ways through the post and we are able to experience both sides of the equation. We have a window on the changes that are quickly coming to the Navajo people, and it is a very interesting and enjoyable position from which to view the evolution. We also get to hear Natalie sing and Priscilla eat an apple from time to time.

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