This is Karen Underhill with Northern Arizona University . We 're here with Grace Herring . It 's Wednesday , February 11 , [ 1998 ] , about 1 : 15 p . m . In the room we have Brad Cole , who 's from NAU ; Elijah Blair ; and Lew Steiger is operating the camera ; Herring : I was born at Shiprock , August 4 , 1910 . Shortly after that , my father was working for the government service , and they sent him to Toadlena to build a school there . And he went out that first summer and I think it was 1910 or ' 11 . I have documents to back this up in storage . I think it was 1910 or ' 11 that the flood came down from up above and took Shiprock and everything away . And Mother had gone to stay with Dad at the [ school ] - - he was building it then . And he was out there building it , and when they were out there that summer , the flood came down through Shiprock and just took everything out of her house - - everything she had went down the river . So she never did go back to Shiprock . She picked up a few things and went back and then . . . . I 've got the documents here that show when . Herring : George and Lucy Bloomfield . ( pause while shuffling documents ) I feel like I 'd like to have had this in better order . I think this is the first one . This is when Merritt Smith and Bob Smith had the trading post . I have the story in some of this material they got , where Dad tells about Mr . Shelton , who was the superintendent at Shiprock . They went and applied to put a post at Toadlena , and Mr . Shelton said he would come out and help them pick the spot where they could put it . So he did , he went out to the trading post and he showed them where they could put it , and that 's where it is right today . And Dad was with ' em at the time . Then after the Smiths had been there for a while , they weren 't satisfied with staying there , so they sold the post to Dad , and that is in this paper here , and I 'm going to give you this , ' cause I 've made a copy . It tells a lot of _____ trading post was commenced and finished , following that time , which was 1910 . " Mr . Bloomfield commenced operations of the trading post under permit from Mr . Shelton , district supervisor , " and that was one - and - one - half years after they started it in 1910 , so it was 1911 , in the summer when Dad took it over . And this is the contract with the Smiths . Herring : Best place in the world . I wouldn 't pick a better place if I had children to bring up . It 's quiet , peaceful . Some of the younger children said they were bored - - I never was , there was always something to do . Mother always had something pleasant for us to do . I was never bored , I loved it . Herring : Oh , no ! Oh , no . There was my sister , Fern , and then Vernon , who still lives here , a sister , Genevieve , who died when she was twelve , and then I came along . And then Mother waited five years and then she had another group of four . She had Monk [ Marilene Blair pronounced his name Mott ( Tr . ) ] and Ruthie and Marilene and Paula , so there were eight of us . And Mother would more often tend the store and Dad was out doing other business . And Mother tended the store , took care of eight kids - - I don 't know how she did it , no water in the house , no electricity , no conveniences like we have ' em today , but we loved it . It was beautiful . When you read my story , it tells it much better than I tell it now . But the canyon was close by , there were always things to do that were fun . I remember especially that Mother just let us kinda do what we wanted to do . The one thing that she would say when we left the house was , " Don 't go on the right side of the canyon , ' cause it 's dangerous . And watch out for rattlesnakes . " And we did , because , oh , there were lots of ' em there at that time . One of the stories that I was reading yesterday tells about one of the brothers come tearing into the house one day to get Mother or Dad because Billie [ Genevieve 's nickname ? ( Tr . ) ] , the sister over me , had stepped on one . And she stepped on it so close to its head that he couldn 't bite her , but they went out and killed it . ( laughter ) There 's lots of good stories in this material I 've got that I won 't take time to tell you now , but you would enjoy reading them , I know . Herring : They were all so wonderful . We just really had a good life . The missionary who lived just across the road from us was the Christian Reformed Church . There was no Mormon Church there at that time . I remember as a child that Mr . Brink , who was a saint if ever lived one , he would gather up all the kids , and we would walk a half a mile over where he held church , and he would tell us stories and sing songs all the time we went , and when we come back home , we did the same thing , see , he would bring us all home . Now later , of course , the Mormon people did establish a church there , and Mother and Dad were called to be the missionaries there to begin with , and worked there for several years . I also worked as a missionary there for a good many years after that , after I had filled a mission . I 'm sure that this is in the story . Of course Charles , I met him down here at a carnival one day , and he wanted to bring me home , and I wouldn 't let him . ( laughter ) At last I told him , " Well , you can take me up to the end of the street if you want to , but at the end of the street , I won 't let you go the rest of the way , because Mr . Davies is very strict , and he won 't like that . " Charles came right up to the door and delivered me to Mr . Davies . After that , why , he said he was a good guy , he could come to see me . Then after that , Charles and I were engaged to be married . Mother was sick , and I had to put that off for a while . And there was some of the missionaries came out from Southwest Indian Mission , and Uncle Illick [ phonetic spelling ] was concerned , too , because I was going to marry somebody outside the Church . So Elder Orrin [ phonetic spelling ] came in here to see the [ present stalworthy ? ] and in less than a month I had a call to go on a mission . So I wrote Charles and I said , " Charles , I don 't know how you feel about it , but I 'm going to go . I 'll send your ring back , I 'll do whatever you want . " And he said , " You go ahead and go , I 'll wait till Hell freezes over . " ( laughter ) He did ! Herring : I served mostly in Illinois and in Chicago . I worked in the office there more than anyplace else . And while I was there , he contacted the missionaries and joined the Church . So he did become a member . Herring : No , Dad would not let his girls work in the store , that was a no - no . As we were growing up , he would not let the girls work in the store . The boys worked there , and Mott [ ? ] and Vernon are very fluent in the language , [ as ] a result of it . I didn 't work in it until after we bought the store and I had to learn because Charles was gone someplace and I had to run the store . Now , I 'm not fluent by a long ways yet , but I can talk a little . Herring : The customers were very wonderful people . We never ever had any trouble with them , they were good friends , they were good neighbors , they depended on Mother and Dad for everything . I don 't know what happened , why , they 'd come for advice - - to get the advice they needed - - in family matters or anything else . I remember one time - - whether you want to take time for this or not , I don 't know - - but there was a very good - looking man , and he had a very good - looking wife . And I remember one night she came tearing into the front room and said , " Hide me , quick , because Archie 's gonna kill me , he 's mad at me ! " So Dad took her downstairs under the store and put her into the basement , and put her to sleep . Wasn 't very long till here come Archie , drunk as a hoot owl and bent on getting to his wife . And Dad said , " Now , Archie , just calm down . I think you 'd better rest for a while . " And he took him out to the corn house , which is in that little picture of that house , and he locked him in the corn house , and he left him there all night . The next morning , he took ' em into the front room , sat ' em down and talked to ' em , and they went off just fine the next morning . It was things like that . If anybody died , they came for us . If anybody was sick , they came for us . Twice I went with Mother to help with births of people in their homes . There was nothing we didn 't do . Herring : Indian people ! ( laughs ) That 's all we had - - and the minister 's children . Of course , they were right next door with the Indian people . They were really my good friends . Herring : Very different than it is now . If an Indian told you he would do something , you could pretty much tie to it that he was gonna do it . They were very honest , they didn 't try to take advantage of you - - you had to be a little smarter than they were sometimes , but if you were on your toes , you were fine . And very few of ' em would take advantage of you . They ran the trading post on a business that they had their cattle and their sheep and their wool , and they would come in and get credit for against what it would come , and when they would sell their wool and their cattle and their sheep , and then they 'd clear up their accounts . They did a lot of pawning . And in the pawn work , they didn 't let their pawns go dead very often . They usually took care of ' em . They thought a lot of their jewelry and stuff . When we were there , later I think they did a lot of pawning of shawls and stuff like that . I don 't remember that as a youngster - - it was more their jewelry and things that was more valuable to them . Herring : Oh , they liked pretty cloth and they liked tomatoes and Wheaties and pork - and - beans . ( chuckles ) Shawls . And jewelry . They were good people . I remember Dad had a man who took his team with a four - horse team on it , and took - - Dad would give him his money and the grocery list to go to Gallup to Kirk 's and other places . The man would take the money and everything and go with and get everything and bring it back by team wagon . You never had to worry about it , everything was taken care of the way it should be . Herring : Well , they brought ' em to the trading post and they 'd buy ' em there . Isn 't that the way we 'd do it , Lij ? They 'd bring ' em to the big corrals at the trading post . Herring : No , Dad would buy ' em and then he 'd sell ' em later to whoever wanted ' em . With the sheep , the sheep season was in the fall , and that was a busy time because they 'd bring all their sheep , and then you had to herd ' em out every day to get ' em out to pasture . When you got all the sheep out , then they had to be taken to town or someplace to ship , and that was a big thing to do . In those days they herded them across . Later , they [ started ] taking ' em in trucks . As a child I can remember they 'd just treek [ trek ] across the Reservation , either to Gallup or Farmington , and ship ' em . Herring : Oh , a long time , two or three weeks . You didn 't do that in a hurry . If you went too fast , the sheep lost all their weight and they weren 't . . . . Now , as far as the cows were concerned , I don 't think they ever shipped ' em that way . They just came in and somebody would come and truck ' em from the trading post . Herring : Yes , they were , because that was about the 1929 's and ' 30 and ' 32 's . And that was when I went on my mission , and Mother and Dad ran the trading post . And because it was the Depression , they ran . . . . What would you call it ? They helped put the line in for the gas people from here to Albuquerque . And they had a commissary that they run so that they could make enough money to keep me on my mission . Don and Vernon run the trading post while they were on that treek [ trek ] and that was in 1931 and 1932 . Herring : Well , everybody was just poor , they didn 't have much to go on . Dad had a rough time for a while . He got real smart and was going to buy all the sheep up and sell ' em and somethin ' went haywire . He lost $ 16 , 000 , and that was a lot of money in those days . That was a lot to lose . So he was under debt a lot of the time after that . And until Charles and I bought the store in 1943 , he struggled with that debt all that time , to try to get out from under it . Herring : That 's right . And they call him that right now . They don 't like him . Why , he just wrecked it as far as the livestock is concerned . They aren 't like they used to be . There used to be herds and herds and herds out there - - they 're not there anymore . He really put a damper on that - - no good . Herring : No , he came from Texas , and his folks moved into New Mexico when he was quite young , and he went to school in Fort Sumner . And then after he was there , he came up here to help build the road between Gallup and Shiprock , and the one here and on up to the Colorado border . And that 's when I met him , was when he was working on the road between here and Gallup . Herring : He never even thought about that . He was working for the biological survey when we got married , and we moved to southern New Mexico , and he worked with . . . . Well , now they think that little prairie dogs and coyotes are real nice - - in that time they paid him to go out and take care of ' em and kill ' em . And when we first got married , we moved down to there , and I lived in a big army tent , and we moved every two weeks , because he had to move to a new location . And the first summer and year that we were married , I was down there with him . Then he came up and he worked on the Reservation with the same kind of a program for a while . It was while he was working with them , then , Dad sold him the store . But what happened - - and Marilene will tell you this - - it was during the war , and Raymond was - - well , he wasn 't in the Army , but he was in the Reserves , and evidently - - Marilene will tell you this better than I do - - but he was working over at Fort Wingate or someplace over there , but he was doing something that would have kept him out of the Army because it was vital , but somebody persuaded him to let that go and come back over to the trading post , and he hadn 't been at the trading post three months but what they drafted him . That left Marilene alone at Mancos Creek to run the trading post ; took Raymond to the Army . And so Dad , that 's one reason Dad sold the store to us , so he could go over and help Marilene with the trading post . And that 's when he and Mother moved from Toadlena to Mancos Creek . Herring : I was real happy to have it . It was still the best place , except it 's not that way now . I wouldn 't go back there and live now for anything . It isn 't the same . Herring : We did a lot of work with the people in the Army . Charles wanted to enlist , they wouldn 't let him . He said , " You 're doing more here with the Navajo people to help them than if we would put you in the Army . " He says , " You stay right here . " So he did . I can remember we did all kinds of projects . I can remember one time that all of the Indian women wanted to learn to knit for the Army , and golly , we made sweaters and socks and everything . I can remember my front room and bedroom and other bedroom being full of Indian people learning to knit . And by golly , those Indian women could learn to knit quicker than I could ! They 'd come in with those things quicker than I could even think of doin ' ' em . They really worked hard - - good people . And Charles and Mother both spent a lot of time writing between families and the boys that were in the Army . They kept the correspondence up with them , which was a good thing to be doing . Charles did that , too . In fact , just recently we sent some things to the Nez 's [ phonetic spelling ] family that they had given to Charles - - some money that this boy had got over when he was in Japan and Korea . I sent and gave that to them just recently , that they had given to Charles . Herring : After I had to run the trading post . ' Cause after Charles bought the trading post , he was out doing all kinds of things . The Indian people loved Charles , and they treated him just like one of themselves . He was just with them . Quite often they would come and get him to go with them to do their sand paintings and their ceremonies and things of that kind , which they don 't do with everybody . And very often I 'd have to stay at the trading post while he went to do those things . I remember one particular time that there was a big to - do up back of the store on the mountain a ways , and they wanted him to come . He had four different days to help make this sand painting for them , and I ran the trading post . The last day that they were doing it , I was in the trading post , and all of sudden I looked - - well , the trading post is way up on a hill , and you look down about a half a mile . On the way down , here came about twenty horses with Indians on ' em , dressed in their - - not their clothes , [ but ] feathers and paint and everything , and they tore up to the front door , didn 't even knock , come into the front room . They poured pollen all over everything , and went through a lot of ceremony and out the door they went and on up to the sand painting ! ( laughs ) So that was something that was interesting . Then Charles came back . Herring : He just had to learn it when he went into the trading post . I think he learned some when he was working with them , with the eradicating of the coyotes and the prairie dogs and all that stuff . He learned it after he went to the trading post . Herring : They use their hands , and he did . Quite often when he was sitting here so sick , he 'd try to talk , and I 'd say , " Honey , quit trying to talk with your hands . I don 't understand it . " ( laughter ) Herring : Tourists . . . The trading post never had its doors closed . Even when Mother and Dad were there , there were people who loved to come out to the trading post , ' cause it was different . And I can remember Mother got sick once , and Dad would just invite anybody that came in , " Come in and have some dinner . Come in and stay with us . " And Mother was ill one day , and a car drove out back of the corn house , and I remember my sister and I running out there to tell them that Mother was sick , so they wouldn 't come in . ( chuckles ) And my dad would have killed us if he 'd have known it . We didn 't let ' em come in that time . But people would come , and they 'd stay two or three weeks with us . It was just a fun place to come and see and do things . They went bear hunting , they had picnicking , they had all kinds of things , it was a fun place to go . And Mother and Dad were always ready to do things with ' em . Bear hunting - - didn 't like that . Herring : Oh , right in the house , oh yes . In those days , the trading posts were not built like they are now . There was a bar around here . Here was the place the Indians stood . The trading post was this way , behind the bar , behind the counter . And they didn 't go behind the counter unless you asked ' em to . So quite often , you 'd have to be careful that you didn 't let somebody in that you didn 't want behind there - - you got into trouble . ( Steiger adjusts microphone ; there is some discussion about a distracting sound . ) Now then , what else can I tell you ? Herring : Well , they 'd come and stay two or three weeks . Oh , you said where did we put ' em . Well , the trading post had those counters around like that , but you always have a lot of extra quilts and shawls up behind . And when all this company would come , they had to be put someplace , so Mother would give them our bed in the bedrooms , and we 'd take the quilts from the store and put ' em on the counter and sleep on the counter . And I can remember many times sleeping on the counter and sneaking over and getting some cheese and crackers and tomatoes ( chuckles ) and eating ' em . That was fun . Those quilts in the store smelled like no others . You just don 't get the smell out of any of ' em anymore . The salesmen used to come and stay . They wouldn 't come just one day , they 'd stay two or three days ' cause it was fun - - enjoyed it . Herring : Oh , everybody . They came to sell suit materials , cloth - - you name it . I think you [ Elijah ] ran into a lot of that , too , before you got through . Herring : The community there was nice . The Indian school was a nice place to be . They worked as a group of people together . We had picnics , we had fun , we had something going all the time . If it wasn 't at the boarding school , it was the missionary - - if it wasn 't that , it was Mother . There was something interesting always going . Herring : We never fussed at each other , we just got along . A little bit later in time , why , there was another missionary came who didn 't like us so well , but we never did fight with him . We liked him , he was a good man , but he wasn 't like Mr . Brink . Mr . Brink just gathered the whole community in as a family . His wife was a little bit different , but Mr . Brink just loved everybody . And Mother and him together , they just mothered and fathered the whole community . Herring : Oh , yes ! Oh , yes . The little schoolhouse - - the missionary put up the school building . And as I remember , when they first started the school , Mother had the first classes in her front room . And I can still remember sitting in there on the chairs , and her bawling me out ' cause I didn 't do something right . Later , he moved us over into the basement of his house , and then he built a little church there next to the mission , and that was the schoolhouse for a good many years . And that 's where we went to school with all of the white kids and all of the Indian kids that were in the community that could go to the school that wanted to . And it was a grade school , it had from primary through the eighth grade . It was a good many kids that went there . Now , I taught there myself , several years , later . Herring : Well , that was during the Depression , that was a hard time . The first year , I couldn 't go , so I studied at home . And then the last month I came into Farmington and took all the tests , and they passed me - - I don 't how , but they passed me . The next year , I did come to Farmington and boarded , the second year . The third year , the Depression hit worse than ever , and I couldn 't go anyplace , so I found a place in Gallup that needed - - a family who needed somebody to take care of their children , and I couldn 't go until November . I went in November , and the superintendent there let me take a test from September through November , so that I could place . Thank goodness Heavenly Father was good enough , he let me pass , and I went ahead and finished my high school in Gallup . Then I never did get to go anymore . Went on a mission , got married , and had kids . Now later , you said how did we feel about the Indian people ? Mother loved ' em just like they were her own people . If there ever was a stray child or somebody that needed help , she gathered ' em in and took care of ' em . I don 't know how many children she counted as her own adopted children , because she just loved ' em . And she took a little [ Tewa ? ] boy , and later he died . And she took a little Hopi girl and raised her . Even after she moved in here , the Indian people would come in and leave their children with her to take care of ' em , because she was good with ' em . She just loved everybody . They loved her , too . Herring : Well , they need to know that they 're just the same as anybody else . I like the older Navajo people better than I do the more modern ones . I 'll be perfectly frank with you on that . I think they 're taking their place . I think they 're eventually getting where they need to be to get the education so that they can take their place in the world . But back then , it was a little bit different . Now , Mother had the three girls at home , and they went to Shiprock to get their tonsils taken out . While they were there , the nurse brought in this little baby girl to amuse them . And Mother wanted her right away , because her mother had died at birth , and her little brother , who was a twin , had died about four months after they were born . So they brought this baby in to amuse Marilene and Paula and Ruthie , and when they were there , why , Mother wanted the baby right away . We knew their parents , and Mother said , " Grace , you 're looking for children , because you can 't have any of your own . Why don 't you take this little baby until I get to feeling better , and then I 'll take her back again . " So Charles said all right , we 'd do that . So we took Jill and took her home . Do you think Charles would give her up after he had her for three weeks ? ( laughs ) That was the end of that ! So she was ours from then on . And Jill has turned out to be a very good daughter . She went to the " Y " [ Brigham Young University ] , and she 's taught all over the Reservation , even in Alaska and everywhere , and retired from the BIA . And [ Derry ? ] , of course I had Jill and she was about eleven months old , and then I had had my application in for another child - - had for quite a while - - and they called me from Mesa and said they had one . So we went and got Derry . So I had two that were in diapers and on bottles and everything , for a while . ( Underhill : Of course . ) And that was enough . Herring : Jill would never learn to speak Navajo ! She wouldn 't even try . Derry did . Derry would try every time , and he still does . He still works with the Navajo people . Jill didn 't feel inferior to her people at all - - she just wouldn 't learn . She just didn 't want to do anything . Later , when she was in the BIA , they offered to send her to some big university in the East to train , and she could have come back and worked with all of the handicapped children on the reservation . But she couldn 't do it ' cause she couldn 't talk Indian . So she had to just give it up . She 's turned out to be a very good efficient young woman . We love her . Herring : Well , surely we had to have a lease . We had to have something to have it , didn 't we ? What was it , Lij ? Herring : I think that 's the way it was , too . Charles never had any trouble getting it . The Indian people liked him . Now , when we took Jill , the man at Fort Defiance , the superintendent , said , " Don 't adopt her . Get a guardianship for her . Because if you adopt her , it 'll take all of her Indian rights away from her . " So we didn 't , we just got a guardianship for her . And it has helped her over the years , her and her family , a lot . Derry was a little German boy , and he 's just Derry , that 's all . Herring : Well , it started back when Dad first moved to the trading post . He was immediately interested in the rugs . As I told you before , he never bought a rug in the store . He would take it to the front room - - and poor Mother , the mud that she put up with - - he put the rug down on the front room floor . I 've seen him on his hands and knees many times , showing them how they could make them better , how they could make them finer , and to use the patterns from the potsherds into the patterns of their rugs . Now , he and Mr . Davies did that together . They worked very close together . He had the trading post at Crozier , which is actually Two Grey Hills now , but it was called Crozier then . They were very good friends , and they worked close together . Now , when they first went there , the rugs were very rough . Well , they weren 't like this - - they were heavy . And they immediately started to try to tell them to make them finer and better and to keep them definitely within the range they did . Now , they did used to use some blue and red there , but Mr . Davies and Dad told them to keep it Two Grey Hills , which was the natural colors . And Dad and Mr . Davies are the ones who started to show them to not put any color into their rugs . Later , I think Bob Leighton did let them put some red and turquoise in - - it spoiled them . It wasn 't a Two Grey Hill rug at all , it just took it out of another class . So after Mr . Davies and Dad - - and that 's written up in Mr . [ Frank ( Tr . ) ] McNitt 's book - - did so much work with them ; then after Charles took over the trading post , he became very interested in the weaving . He was especially interested in Daisy Tauglechee . I wish Charles could tell this story , ' cause he could tell it so much better than I did , but he wanted some way to get Daisy to get her weaving to be finer and finer . And I can still see him sitting down with a ruler and saying , " Now , Daisy , don 't you think you could make it much finer than you have made it now ? " And so he marked off in grids here how many strings going this way , and how many this wUnderhill : And what was Daisy like ? Herring : She was a nice girl , nice woman , very pleasant to be around , very pleasant to talk to . She really was a good weaver , and she won a lot of prizes , I guess , all over . There 's other weavers coming up now that are , I think , matching her , ' cause they 're really getting - - this woman here in town is really doing beautiful work . Les said he would bring up the rug when she finishes it so I could see it . Herring : Well , that 's another story . Dad and Mr . Davies started right away to try to improve the kind of wool that they had . And I know Dad bought many rams and sold them to the Navajo so it 'd improve the wool , and Charles continued that all the time he was there , too , to improve the wool quality . Herring : Oh yes , carded and spun it . It was none of this commercial stuff . She 'd have nothin ' to do with that . I wish more of ' em wouldn 't . It puts their rugs in a different class , they 're just not the same . Now , I think they come out with some beautiful rugs , but they 're not on a par with these . Herring : At our trading post , we didn 't do much with silver . Charles did do a little bit of the silver work with several smiths , but not anything a great deal . We didn 't go . . . . Now , my brother - in - law , Don Smouse [ phonetic spelling ] at Borrego Pass really went in for the silver work and had a lot of silversmiths working for him . They did beautiful work over there , but we never did go for that too much . Charles had several things made then , and I have several pieces that I really treasure , because they 're special . Herring : I don 't know ! ( laughter ) He was one of the first ones in the outfield . You said he had a number . I don 't know that he ever had a number , Lij . I know he was one of the first ones that helped with whoever the man was in Gallup that ran so much of it . Herring : Oh , they 'd discuss all that they were gonna do . At one of the meetings they took up buying the silver that went through Woodard , and that 's what helped make a lot of the funds that you have , so I understand . I didn 't know too much about that , Lij . I did know that through that silver buying and selling , that they made quite a bit . Did you know about that at all ? I didn 't . Herring : Well , it wasn 't to get rich , because we didn 't do that . It was just to keep our families together and raise ' em the way they should be , and give ' em the right aims and qualities in life . I don 't think Dad or Charles , neither one , wanted to get rich . I had one of my nephews this week call me and he said , " Aunt Grace , I 'm going to call you every week , because you 're alone now . I was so amazed that the family that were there at Uncle Charles ' funeral . " He said , " I didn 't realize we had such a big wonderful family . The one thing that impressed me most was that [ some people ] " , he said , " [ A certain type ] always was out to make all the money he could and get all the money he could get in . Uncle Charles collected friends and people instead . " Now that is the kind of person that Charles was . Money was not the main issue in his life . He wanted to help the people , he loved them , and they loved him , too . Since he moved in here , I never , never have gone to town with Charles but what we meet some of the old people who just are so glad to see him and shake his hand and pat him and love him . The same with me . Now , that 's the older people . Now , I don 't know the younger people that well anymore . I 'm getting too old . Herring : In those days , they didn 't expect you to do anything . They were pretty independent themselves , and they were pretty trustworthy . There were very few of them that tried to take advantage of you , Lij . They were good people . Their standards were good , their aims in life were good . Nowadays I don 't know , some of these younger people ( chuckles ) got screwy ideas . I 'm sorry . . . But they 're all good people . The thing that bothers me most , and it 's a sad thing , when we first went to the trading post , they had that big boarding school there , and they would bring all these little kids in , three and four hundred of them . They wouldn 't let them talk one word of Navajo after they hit the school . Now , there 's a lot of these youngsters who don 't know how to talk Navajo , and it 's a shame . It 's a detriment to ' em , they need to know how to talk in their own language . I think they 're changing . Derry says down where he 's teaching now that they 're pushing learning their own language , and I 'm glad . Now , with Jill , she was just stubborn - - she just didn 't want to learn . Herring : Not too much . Not by the time I moved in here and brought the children to school . After the kids got through the eighth grade , I couldn 't see sending ' em away to school . That didn 't seem right , so that 's the reason I moved in here . I had the post office at Toadlena , and so I moved in here with the children . Charles stayed there . We got ' em through high school , I got ' em through college , and then when I got ' em through college , he was still out there , and I said one day , " Charles , either I move in or you move out ! I 'm tired of livin ' this way . " So that 's when he sold the trading post and moved in . Herring : Well , that 's a story , too . Marilene called me this week and said , " Grace , I found a letter here to Dad that was sent to Crozier , New Mexico . Where was that ? ! " I said , " Crozier was at Two Grey Hills , and that was the first post office that was there . " I think the reason they moved it to Toadlena was that they established the government school there , and that 's where all the people were . Crozier was just the trading post . So they changed it to Toadlena , and Mother got the post office . Now , Mother run the post office for , I think it was twenty - seven years . And then when she moved to Mancos Creek , I took it over , and I kept it for about ten or twelve years . And then when I moved in here with the kids , Charles took it over . I understand recently that they moved it from Toadlena down to that trading post on the highway . Herring : Why was it at the trading post ? I guess ' cause Mother applied for it , I don 't know . ( laughter ) But the people at the school were here and gone and here and gone , and she was permanent . That may have been a reason . I know some of the postal inspectors came and visited Mother there . I can remember one of ' em came , and there was a complaint from the school at that time , and he came in and investigated the whole thing . And when he got through , why , he told Mother he 'd write ' em a letter . And he wrote a letter to whoever had made the complaint to straighten it out . After he left , why , Mother invited him to stay the night , and when they came in . . . . Dad always had prayer in the morning . He never would start the day without kneeling down and having prayer . So that morning he knelt down and had prayer before he had breakfast . And I guess that really opened that inspector 's eyes that Dad was a good person , ' cause later he wrote Mother a letter and he said that he 'd never been in a family that he felt like that with before . That 's in these stories , too . When I get that to you , you 'll have the whole story on that . But he wrote a very beautiful letter to Mother and said how much he had enjoyed meeting her . . . [ comment about another trader 's trouble w railroad retirement checks ] . . . Herring : They were Social Security and railroad checks they would get each time . I don 't think there was so much while we were there of this welfare that they 're . . . . I don 't think there was a lot of that then . It was mostly railroad retirement . I don 't know when Social Security started . I really don 't know . Herring : Well , I can 't tell you very much about it , except every so often they 'd recruit a bunch of ' em , take ' em into Gallup and turn ' em over to the railroad . And they depended a lot on the railroad help for ' em . It was a good means of supporting their families better . Lij knows more about that than I do . I didn 't have much to do with that part of it . Herring : I don 't remember it changing much , except we had milk and butter and cheese and things like that which we didn 't have when we were younger , or when we first went in there . I remember Mother said at one time when she first moved there they bought a case of laundry soap and it lasted I don 't know how many months . " But before she left , " she said , " we were selling cases and cases . " In that same length of time they had learned to be more clean and take care of things . And the Church helped a lot , too . Now , I know that a lot of the trading posts are wound up with the Mormon Church , because it just works that way . So we taught a lot of the Indian women how to sew , how to can , how to keep house - - all of those things we taught ' em in classes what to do with it , and it helped ' em . It give ' em a better way of life . In fact , once a week we 'd hold a meeting where we 'd either make quilts or can or something so that they learned how to do things . And that was under the Relief Society program . Mother was really active in that . Herring : No difference . No difference , we loved ' em all . Some of my best friends are not members of the Church - - even yet . They belong to the Christian Reform Church , or they belong to the Catholic Church . They 're all my people . I think I 'm half Navajo ! ( laughter ) Herring : I learned to be patient , I learned to love families , because they are so close - knitted as families . I think the more important things in life is what they hang to . They don 't count being rich or famous or any of those things as important . That isn 't the important thing . To be the right kind of people . . . . And if I knew them , they were that kind of people . I don 't know the younger people , I can 't speak for them now , I don 't know . I meet lots of wonderful young people now , and they 're very intelligent and very versed . They amaze me that they know so much , but I 'm not that close with ' em anymore . I 'm too old . ( laughter ) Herring : The way the people loved us and depended on us . The times when the missionary and the school and everybody would get together and we 'd have a big outing on the mountain and everybody would go and enjoy themselves and play games and be just like one big community . The work in the missionary work , of course , became a lot to me , because after I went on a mission , then I did a lot of that kind of work with the people . And then when they established the churches on the Reservation , Charles had a lot to do with that . First , they wouldn 't let us build a church , and yet he went with Ralph Evans and got the permission from Window Rock to start building different chapels , and that helped . And Charles worked a lot with that kind of work . For the church at Toadlena , he went with the chapter officer head and they picked a spot and everything that should have been - - and what do you do when you put lines out ? - - surveyed it , and decided where it was to be . So Charles really worked a lot with the Indian people and with Window Rock . He got along real well with Window Rock . Some way , he had something to do , Lij , with that tax that they were trying to impose on the traders . Now , I can 't tell you about that , ' cause I don 't know about it , but I know we went to Santa Fe one night , and it was an awful trip , and I remember he got ' em to rescind it some way , but I don 't know the story on that . Do you ? Some way there had to be a tax that they had to pay , and he got it so they didn 't . . . . Blair : ( at same time as narrator ) This is the Arizona State tax versus the Warren Trading Post , which the Traders Association won . This store was in New Mexico , so then all they did [ was say ] , " Hey , you know , we 've already won it in Arizona . " So Charles , I 'm sure , went to Santa Fe and said , " Hey , you can 't do this , " and they did rescind it . Herring : ( laughs ) Transportation ! Well , I 'll tell you , when we first went out there , the roads were all mud , the wind blew , the rains came , and you didn 't go . If it rained , you just didn 't go , because the washes get so full you didn 't dare to . The roads were so terrible you couldn 't ride on ' em . I can remember Mother at one time saying that she went to Gallup and it took her two days with the buggy to get to Gallup because it was so slow . You didn 't travel fast in those days . The roads were not there . Later , the roads got a little bit better and a little bit better . I can remember when I got in the trading post , I did a lot of driving back and forth between Farmington and Gallup and I even did a lot of the trucking of the sheep and the cows . I couldn 't do that anymore ! I remember ( chuckles ) one time I took a big bunch of sheep to Gallup in a truck , and the darn things would keep falling down on me and smothering . Oh ! that was awful ! I had an Indian boy with me , he 'd get out and punch ' em up . I wouldn 't dare drive a big truck like that anymore , I couldn 't do it . In those days , you had to . You did lots of things you had to do . Herring : Durned if I know ! ( laughter ) I don 't know . After Charles went in the trading post , I know he was quite ill , the two children were quite ill , and we had a little car and we turned it to Dad , so he paid us for it , so we paid the hospital bill with it . So it had to be about 1935 or ' 40 before we got the truck . Charles did a lot of trucking after . . . . He was on the road . That 's the reason I had the trading post to take care of , he was out doing other things - - taking the cows and taking the sheep and taking the wool , those big ol ' bags of wool . Did you ever do that ? those immense bags of wool that we pounded down in there ? Derry was tellin ' me a story about that . He said in the back wareroom they piled big sacks of wool like this , so that they were just a big stack of ' em . He said it was such fun to get back there on those wool sacks and jump down to the bottom . It was just like a nice slide . He said they went out there one day and really was havin ' a good time , and when they got through , why , Charles came out and caught ' em at the bottom end of a case of bananas . They 'd smashed ' em flat ! ( laughter ) Oh , dear . Another thing really interesting happened . Paula was the baby and she was spoiled - - that I will admit . And Dad was a kind , gentle man . He never scolded us that I remember of . They will say about us that " it 's the Bloomfields showing out . " I 'm sorry , Lij , if the Bloomfield shows out , that 's not true . Dad was a kind , gentle man . Mother was the firebrand . And she would really smack - - all she had to do was look at us , and we would behave . But one time Paula went with one of her little friends . Have you been at the trading post ? The warehouse is here , and there 's the steps going down into the cellar ? Well , they used to put Cracker Jack out in big boxes like this . I don 't know how many of those little Cracker Jack boxes were in those cases , but they had good prizes in there at that time , things that were worth having . They were fun . So one day Paula and her friend went out and they got at the top part of these steps , and they opened a whole case of Cracker Jack , dumped the Cracker Jack down and put the little prizes up on the top step . And Dad caught ' em . And that 's the only time I ever heard him bawl Paula out , and he really gave her fits . Then after , he was so sorry , because he 'd lost his temper , he took her in and cut a watermelon and gave it to her . ( laughter ) Now what else could I tell you that 's fun ? Blair : Not every morning ! I said , " Gosh , Grace , George just won 't admit two . " I thought , " That 's a piece of cake ! I can milk two cows anytime ! " ( laughs ) Herring : Really did . I can remember after Charles and the kids had been so sick , we had to make money some way , so he went into the chicken business . ( chuckles ) I remember one time he would clean and pick the chickens and take ' em to Gallup to sell ' em . One time he made me pick a hundred of the things . And I never wanted to pick another chicken ever in my life . But then he built a great big shed , and he must have had 500 hens in there . And he went out one night to check to see if the mites had got in there , and he painted all over with creosote and stuff under the roosts , and he lit a match to see if they were - - and , fssttt ! , he burned all of his hands up , and the brooder house - - it burned everything up . ( laughter ) Oh , shoot ! Quite a life . Underhill : This is Tape 2 of two , with Grace Herring , and it 's Wednesday , February 11 , 1998 , and it 's about 2 : 30 . We 're talking about the trading post . Grace , when did you have people who worked with you ? Herring : Well , Charles was out seein ' about the outside work , and seeing about lambs and the cows and going to Gallup and getting the freight and all of that . So I had the trading post . I had an old Indian by the name of Joe . He was a prince . He was right there for me all the time . I remember one time we had one lady who was a stinker . That 's the only name you can call her . She would come in and she would make trouble every time she came into the trading post . One day I was there by myself and she came in and she threw one of her tantrums and I tried to handle it the best I could , but I went back into the wareroom and I went back there and I was crying . And this man came back in and put his arm around me , he said , " Don 't pay any attention to her . She 's just no good . " ( laughter ) So people were good to us . The Indian people , as a rule , were good . We never had any trouble with them at all . She was just a firebrand . She was one of the ones . . . . And yet , she 's our good friend - - her children are our good friends right now . The story about the milking - - and that 's one reason you got to do it . Vernon was a stinker sometimes . He had to milk the cows , so one day he said , " Grace , I 'll bet you can 't milk . " I said , " I 'll bet you I can ! " He said , " I 'll bet you a dime you can 't milk those cows . " So I went out and I milked the cows . And you know who milked the cows from then on - - I did it ! , he didn 't . ( laughter ) So Lij took over for me . ( laughter ) Herring : Who else worked with us ? ( Underhill : Uh - huh . ) Oh , we had different people at different times . Some of the Jacks worked with us at times , some men from Shiprock worked a fall . I can 't remember all of ' em . Herring : Not more than one family - - except the Indian people that we would have help us . And this one Indian man was especially good , he was a special person . Old Jumbo [ phonetic spelling ] was a good guy , and he was always there to help us . Old Jumbo , that was another story . You 've seen my little house at Toadlena , where Mother built a little tent house first , because she couldn 't stand the kids in the main part of the house , they were making too much noise and she couldn 't get any rest . So she had Dad build this little tent house , and she would go out there so she could rest . After Charles and I went to the trading post , we took that tent house , converted it into a kitchen , and built a porch . And we took the chicken house behind it and that was our front room . And then we built other bedrooms behind . And one night - - we never locked our doors then . You never locked your doors . You never , ever would think of locking your doors . And one night in the middle of the night something hit that front porch , came through the kitchen , through the front room and into the bedroom , and the first thing I knew , they were shaking Charles and said , " Charlie , wake up ! wake up ! come and help me ! " Charles said , " What in the world 's the matter with you ? " He said , " My daughter 's havin ' a baby , and she 's havin ' a hard time , I gotta have some help . " Well , Charles got up and got his clothes on and went way up the hill to where the daughter was havin ' the baby . They made a big thing on some poles and a blanket and brought her down , got her to Shiprock , she had the baby all right . So it was always something that they would - - they would come to you with everything , wanted the help . And anybody was sick , they 'd ask Charles to come . Very often I 've known him to be called to somebody that was ill , because they wanted him to talk to them . He keeps telling a story about some man , and since he got so sick himself , he said " I could take my own advice now , " but this man had just given up . He wouldn 't get up , he wouldn 't even try . And Charles said he weI remember one time Mrs . Jumbo had a baby , and she came and got Mother and I to go over and help her . And if you think primitive ways are primitive , you should see that ! But that was when she had the little baby that they called Charlie - - and they called him after Charles after that . Then there 's people out there named for me and for Charles and for Dad . If they liked people , they gave ' em their names . You 'll find ' em all over out there . They liked us . I think they felt like we were one of ' em . And I feel like they 're one of us , they 're my people . Herring : When I was growing up , it was Tsii » gaii , which meant " white hair , " ' cause my hair was just snow white . After I got in the store , they called me ' Asdzání Hashké ( laughs ) ' cause they said I was always cross with ' em , I wouldn 't let ' em get away with anything , I 'd bawl ' em out . So they called me " the cranky woman . " Herring : I never remembered them giving the kids particular names . I don 't remember that . Derry might be able to tell you , because he probably did , because he worked with the little ones . I don 't know . Herring : Just Wóshk ' alii and Wóshk ' alii Be ' esdzáá . Wóshk ' alii meant " teeth out . " Dad never had any teeth , and it was just Wóshk ' alii for him and Wóshk ' alii Be ' esdzáá , which meant his wife . Vernon was Wóshk ' alii Biye ' , and we were Wóshk ' alii . . . What is " daughter " ? Herring : Bitsi ' . That 's what they usually called us . But it was after I got to trading with them they called me the " angry woman . " And I guess I deserved it , ' cause they pulled some big ones , and I wouldn 't let ' em do it . Herring : Oh , they just tried to boss me around and tell me how to do their work , and I wouldn 't do it . ( An aside about buzzing noise ) All those stories I 've got that I know you 're gonna want : the ones that Mother wrote , the ones that Dad wrote , the ones that I wrote , the one that Charles wrote . All I can do is get copies of those for you . Herring : You 'd just add it to the price on it , that you had on the pawn . You had to be careful sometimes , they 'd get a little bit too much for it , and then not take it out . But we never had too much trouble with our pawn , they usually came and got it . Herring : ( chuckles ) About every time they had one . I tended the store a lot of times so he could go out and do the things they wanted him to do . They just thought of him as one of them . In fact , they still did . So many of ' em , since he 's been ill , have come in to see him , or called him , or something , since he 's been feeling badly . And he loved ' em , he really loved the Indian people . Herring : Oh , in the early days , you really saw some beautiful things . Now , the fire dances , they used to have ' em , you just can 't understand what they are . They are not the same now . I remember one fire dance we went to , that I never saw such magnificent performances . They had every hour on the hour , the dancers would change , and they would always - - always when you went to a ceremony , you didn 't go empty - handed . You either took a sack of flour or sugar or lard or something to give them . But they would give us a seat right up close so that we could see . I remember this particular fire dance went on for I don 't know how many days they had it - - ten or eleven , wasn 't it ? It was a long time that it took to finish ' em . Herring : This particular lady who had the fire dance for , actually got better afterwards . Mother said they do have a prayer channel up there some way , ' cause she got better . But that was fun . I remember taking Charles ' mother to a ceremony one night , and they 'll give us a seat right up at the front . Another time I went with Charles to a ceremony up above the trading post , and they gave us a seat right down in front where the medicine men were working . And I swear I don 't know how they did it , Lij , but I watched this as closely as I could , and they actually made the feathers dance . You could see ' em out here on the basket , dancing . Now , I don 't know how they did it . Charles said he thought they had strings attached to ' em , maybe they did , I don 't know . Herring : Now , Dad tells of going up on top of the mountain one time , and going to a ceremony , and he said that they planted the corn in the ground and he said they actually saw the corn grow and get ears on it before it quit . I don 't know how they did it . I don 't know how . They have a knowledge that we don 't know of a lot of things . They know things we don 't know . And as far as their medicine is concerned , I wish we had all the knowledge that those old medicine men have . I wish they 'd give it to us , because they help a lot of their people . I don 't know why they won 't let go of it . And the old medicine men are getting ( phone rings , tape turned off and on , discussion regarding copying of documents ) Now then , what else can I tell you that 'll help you ? Herring : Well , we had a telephone , and we had radio . I don 't know when those came into being . Other than that , we didn 't need it . We had enough to take care of with our own little lives . You had to carry all your water , you had to do the washing this way ( demonstrates using scrub board ) . Life was not easy in those days . I can remember when Mother got her first washing machine , and it was one that you went this way ( demonstrates ) with . You washed there . Other than that , we got up at four o ' clock in the morning and did it on the washboard . And every Monday morning was wash day . Tuesday morning was ironing day . Wednesday morning was something else . The week was divided up . We had duties each day of the week and Mother saw we did it . She couldn 't have survived without it . Herring : We had lots more time in those days than we have now . We 'd get up early in the morning and do our work . In the afternoon , I can remember whole afternoons we had nothing to do but quilt and do what we wanted to do . I don 't know where the times changed . The gears of the whole world have gone too fast . I don 't like this world , it 's too hectic . I 'll go back to the old days . Herring : I always liked to paint . I had a teacher who was interested enough that she helped me . I guess I was about twelve or thirteen when I started in oil . Other than that , it was just drawing . But I 've always liked to paint . It 's fun , something I can do . I like to quilt . I like to sew . Mother always had a quilt on . I can remember as we grew up that on the big porch - - and they destroyed a lot of that , Lij . They built a bedroom here and a bathroom here . The porch that used to be clear along it , is gone . Mother would put a quilt out there and I can remember playing under the quilt , because it was such a fun place to be as a child . She had ropes to the ceiling , and she just put it up and down so that she could quilt when she wanted to . She always had a quilt on . Herring : That burned . One time they got a fire in the ceiling of our little house , and I went up through the attic and we got it put out . Another time , there was a fire in the bottom of the trading post where we kept the power plant for the electricity . So we moved it down below the store in another shed , after that fire . We had quite a few fires . And then the fire , when it burnt the barn and all his chickens up . Charles still tells about those chickens . He said he got three of ' em to get out . He tried to chase ' em out , and he couldn 't get ' em out . So he said as those chickens burned , he could hear ' em pop , because they 'd get so hot they 'd just burst . And all that brooder house and all those little tiny cute chickens in there , it burnt . We had an old pig that was in the pen right next to the chicken house , and the Indian people tried to make him get out , and they beat him and beat him . He was the biggest pig I think I ever saw , and they beat him till the time when that fire was over . He was just down to nothin ' but skin and bones . And after that , he wasn 't a very good pig after that . He was kind of ornery . And this is a long story . Whether you want to listen to it I don 't know . Herring : It 'll be in some of this material yet . But Charles went out one morning to feed them , and he went to the barn and he had a lot of squash in there . He opened the doors to the squash to get the squash out , and fed it out to this old pig . And the pig hit him in the back and caught him in the back of his legs and almost knocked him down . So Charles was cross with him and he got out and he chased the pig , and the pig chased him down into the lot a ways , and the pig hit him again . So he had a big hole in both legs of his back [ big holes in the back of both pant legs ? ( Tr . ) ] . And he got up on an old platform of a truck that was down there , and the pig got over him like this , and he couldn 't get up . And he kept pushing the darned pig away from him , and he had big long tusks , and at last he yelled at his dogs to come and help him , and old Tinker came and he kept biting on the pig at the bottom end , so Charles could get relief enough , and he pushed him off . And after he got him off , why then Tinker ran him off down the lot , and Charles came in the store . That 's the only time - - that 's what Jill said , " [ Until ] this time , I never heard Dad swear , until that . " He came in and he was swearing . He said , " Damn it to hell ! " And Jill said , " What in the world 's the matter ? " And he said , " That D - A - M - N pig almost got me ! " So Dad said , " What you gonna do about it ? " And Charles said , " I 'm gonna kill him . " So he went and got a gun and they went out and they did shoot the pig . This is something I shouldn 't tell , but the pig weighed , dressed out , 900 and some pounds . ' Cause he 'd got back to normal after the fire . And so I said , " What you gonna do with him ? " Charles said , " I 'm gonna drag him off in the ditch . " I said , " You 're not either . You 're gonna dress him out . " So he dressed him out , and he dressed out over 900 pounds . And we put the meat in the store . That was the best meat I ever ate , as far as pork was concerned , it was really good . So we sold quite a bit of it . The Indians found out what we had done , and no more would theyUnderhill : They didn 't get meaner , huh ? Herring : No , they didn 't get any meaner . ( laughter ) But that 'll be in that story of his , too . You 'll have all the details on that . Now , what else ? So many things happened . I remember one time he had an old bull that hated me , and I didn 't even have to walk out by the gate where that bull was . He 'd just drop on his knees and just bellow and rip this up and throw dirt all over . Ornery old stinker ! I didn 't go out there very much , but one day he went out and he got mad and he took the wheelbarrow and he just tipped it clear over his head . Later , the darned thing , they put it in a truck to take him off , and he killed one of the cows before they got him into Gallup . He was just ornery . That 's not anything to do with this story , but it was all . . . . Another thing that happened that was interesting is that we raised a lot of pigs . This one old pig had nine little ones . They were the cutest little stinkers you ever saw ! A little pig is really cute . I went out to see about ' em , and the mother had stepped on the stomach of one of those little pigs and cut it clear through to his insides . His little insides were all dragging on the ground , and I said , " I can 't stand that ! " So I picked the little stinker up and took him into the house , and the doctor in Gallup had given me some soap and diazine , and I took and washed that all out , and pushed his insides back inside of his stomach , and took some nylon thread and sewed the inside stomach , and then I sewed the outside stomach , and put him in a little bed by the coal stove . And that little stinker yelled all night long ! And as I got up in the morning , I said , " Charles , I cannot stand this . He 's going back with his mother . " So I took him out and I put him in the pen with his mother , he went right over and went to nursing , and he grew to be a great big pig . ( laughter ) All kind of experiences you had that were fun , it was good for you . I could also undo any darned sewer that went and got stopped up , too . ( laughter ) You learn all those kind of things . That wasn 't the fun part . Herring : Oh , yes ! When we first moved there , the wash was just a little ways below the store , and the water came down over a big waterfall for a whole half a mile , and there was lots of water in the wash then . Dad had a huge garden , he had all kinds of vegetables , he had every kind of fruit that grew . Dad was a person who loved plants . All over the trading post he had a huge rose garden , all of his flowers and everything . We had lawn and everything around the place at that time . That 's all gone now , there 's none of that left . Dad was a person who loved to grow things . I can remember he had all kinds of pears and plums and peaches and cherries and every vegetable that grew . But after that , the government sidetracked our water for a while , from up above the falls , and took it over to the school . And that cut down the flow here , and that really cut down what we could grow , because below the trading post they used to have huge alfalfa fields . I don 't even known whether they 're there anymore . I haven 't gone out for so long I don 't know what 's there . But Marilene says that there is water coming down the wash now . Herring : And what fun we had , goin ' up the canyon . Now , that 's all in my story , too , telling about the canyon , what a wonderful place it was . I 'll get you a copy of all that - - tell it better than I 'm telling you now . Herring : The garden stuff ? We ate it , or else Dad gave it to people . He was always giving people away stuff [ i . e . , giving stuff away to people ( Tr . ) ] , Indian people . I think I inherited that , I love to give people things , and Dad loved to give people things , too . Herring : Oh , he always gave ' em that . At his funeral , one of the girls - - she wasn 't scheduled to speak at Dad 's funeral , but she came up and asked Mother , could she please speak ? So they gave her time at the funeral , and she got up and told how Dad always gave ' em candy and took care of ' em . He was good to ' em . He loved the little kids . He loved all the people , and that . In fact , Dad and Mother really loved the Indian people - - so do we . Herring : ' Cause I liked it ! ( laughter ) I 'd have went back if Charles had went back and stayed there , but he wouldn 't . And I had the kids to take care of , too . They came first . After I got in here and got workin ' for the post office , I kinda stayed put . Then he decided he wasn 't gonna stay out there anymore , why , he just had to come and live with me . ( laughter ) Herring : I don 't know , I don 't know . Ask Lij , he knows more about the trends than I do now . I 've been away too long . I can 't say . I think the Indian people are gonna gradually take their place in the world . I hope they do . I hope they get over this idea like , this Hale [ Albert Hale , a former president of the Navajo Nation ] bit of closing the Reservation off , and all that stuff . I think that 's a bunch of garbage ! I think he 's being stupid ! They 're gonna grow up . I wish they would turn the Reservation just into part of the United States , and let ' em be one , but they 'll never do that . The Indian people will never allow that , I don 't think . I wish they would . They should be just like this with us . We 're just all American . Like somebody said , they call themselves ( chuckles ) Native Americans , and she said , " Well , I was born here , too . I 'm a native American , too . " Herring : Nothin ' . I just love the Indian people , I think they have a wonderful heritage , if they 'll just handle it right , if they 'll go about it in the right way and not get sidetracked by some of these crazy ideas that are coming along with our government . If they 'll just keep their heads about ' em , I think they 'll take their place . I think they 're a lot of smart people . And there 's a lot of ' em growing up that are smart and not prejudiced and pig - headed like some of ' em . Is that a nasty word ? ( laughter ) But they 're good people . They 're my friends . I don 't want any better ones . They 're better than a lot of the white people , as far as friends are concerned . That 's true . We never felt any prejudice . And I don 't think Jill ever felt any difference , being a Navajo . Even in school here , she never felt like she was different than the rest of ' em . They accepted her very well . And her husband was very good to Jill . He made her proud of what she was , and I 'm grateful to him for that , because he could have put her down , but he didn 't . He 's a pain in the neck ( laughter ) , but he 's a pretty good guy . Herring : Oh , no , he 's an Irishman . They 're a good bunch of kids . And right now , the latest thing is that Derry 's youngest son - - did you hear about him ? Blair : Oh , really ? ) They were just a week old . I think he 's nuts ! ( laughter ) So Derry has three children . Each one of them have three children . Jill had two children , and there 's nine or ten grandchildren on that side . Herring : I 'd go back to the Reservation like it used to be . But it 's not that way anymore . You don 't find it like that anymore , it 's not the same . If I could do anything for children that would be good for ' em , it would be put ' em into the atmosphere that I had growing up . Now , Paula and Marilene said they were bored at Toadlena . I was never bored there . There was always something fun to do or something to see - - either picnic to the falls or the Two Grey Hills or arrow hunting or potsherd hunting . There was always something fun to do , and Mother always saw that we had plenty to do . It was a good life . I wouldn 't trade it , I 'm glad I had it . I never felt deprivileged because I was out there . If you wanted to do something , you could do it . Mama always said , " If you want something , go after it . If you work for it , you 'll get it . " It 's that way . Now , Paula was spoiled . I 'm sorry , Paula was spoiled . She came later in life , when life wasn 't so hard for Dad and Mother too . She was a good person , too . Paula was special . Underhill : Well , Grace , I think we 've worn ourselves out . ( laughs ) I don 't know about you . It 's been wonderful , thank you , very much . Herring : I don 't know whether that would be anything that you want a copy of or not . This tells about the area history and how Bloomfield got its name . It was from my grandfather . He came out from Raymond to show ' em how to put in that ditch over there , and when he got through , they wanted him to move over here and they 'd give him land . And he said no , so they named Bloomfield for him instead . Now , this is the agreement between Freddie Carson and his wife . . . . Now , I called her up and tried to get some information from her , Lij . She didn 't know anything . So I went to look through all my old files , and I found where we had sold the store to them . And there 's a copy of everything on that , and over on that . Here is the agreement , I think , between Dad and I and Charles , for the trading post . So that might be . . . . Here 's the sales contract . Now , this was between Dad and I , too . That goes along . And then this other , you will find a lot of good information in here , Lij . So I 've saved this book , and give it to you . . . Description Rating Call number NAU . OH . 75 . 5 Item number 80396 Creator Herring , Grace Title Oral history interview with Grace Herring [ with transcript ] , February 11 , 1998 . Date 1998 Type MovingImage Description CONTENT : This oral history with Grace Herring is very episodic , and covers trading and trading post life from the early 1900s forward . Includes information on Charles Herring , reservation conditions , rugs and weaving , sheep and domestic animals , and more . Elijah Blair also participates in this interview . Collection name United Indian Traders Association Oral History Project Finding aid http : / / www . azarchivesonline . org / xtf / view ? docId = ead / nau / United _ Indian _ Traders . xml Language English Repository Northern Arizona University . Cline Library . Rights Digital surrogates are the property of the repository . Reproduction requires permission . Contributor Underhill , KarenCole , BradSteiger , LewisBlair , Elijah Subjects Indian traders - - New MexicoTrading posts - - New MexicoIndian textile fabrics - - Southwest , NewRugs - - Southwest , NewHerring , CharlesUnited Indian Traders Association Places Shiprock ( N . M . ) Two Grey Hills ( N . M . ) Toadlena ( N . M . ) Oral history transcripts GRACE HERRING INTERVIEW This is Karen Underhill with Northern Arizona University . We 're here with Grace Herring . It 's Wednesday , February 11 , [ 1998 ] , about 1 : 15 p . m . In the room we have Brad Cole , who 's from NAU ; Elijah Blair ; and Lew Steiger is operating the camera ; Herring : I was born at Shiprock , August 4 , 1910 . Shortly after that , my father was working for the government service , and they sent him to Toadlena to build a school there . And he went out that first summer and I think it was 1910 or ' 11 . I have documents to back this up in storage . I think it was 1910 or ' 11 that the flood came down from up above and took Shiprock and everything away . And Mother had gone to stay with Dad at the [ school ] - - he was building it then . And he was out there building it , and when they were out there that summer , the flood came down through Shiprock and just took everything out of her house - - everything she had went down the river . So she never did go back to Shiprock . She picked up a few things and went back and then . . . . I 've got the documents here that show when . Herring : George and Lucy Bloomfield . ( pause while shuffling documents ) I feel like I 'd like to have had this in better order . I think this is the first one . This is when Merritt Smith and Bob Smith had the trading post . I have the story in some of this material they got , where Dad tells about Mr . Shelton , who was the superintendent at Shiprock . They went and applied to put a post at Toadlena , and Mr . Shelton said he would come out and help them pick the spot where they could put it . So he did , he went out to the trading post and he showed them where they could put it , and that 's where it is right today . And Dad was with ' em at the time . Then after the Smiths had been there for a while , they weren 't satisfied with staying there , so they sold the post to Dad , and that is in this paper here , and I 'm going to give you this , ' cause I 've made a copy . It tells a lot of _____ trading post was commenced and finished , following that time , which was 1910 . " Mr . Bloomfield commenced operations of the trading post under permit from Mr . Shelton , district supervisor , " and that was one - and - one - half years after they started it in 1910 , so it was 1911 , in the summer when Dad took it over . And this is the contract with the Smiths . Herring : Best place in the world . I wouldn 't pick a better place if I had children to bring up . It 's quiet , peaceful . Some of the younger children said they were bored - - I never was , there was always something to do . Mother always had something pleasant for us to do . I was never bored , I loved it . Herring : Oh , no ! Oh , no . There was my sister , Fern , and then Vernon , who still lives here , a sister , Genevieve , who died when she was twelve , and then I came along . And then Mother waited five years and then she had another group of four . She had Monk [ Marilene Blair pronounced his name Mott ( Tr . ) ] and Ruthie and Marilene and Paula , so there were eight of us . And Mother would more often tend the store and Dad was out doing other business . And Mother tended the store , took care of eight kids - - I don 't know how she did it , no water in the house , no electricity , no conveniences like we have ' em today , but we loved it . It was beautiful . When you read my story , it tells it much better than I tell it now . But the canyon was close by , there were always things to do that were fun . I remember especially that Mother just let us kinda do what we wanted to do . The one thing that she would say when we left the house was , " Don 't go on the right side of the canyon , ' cause it 's dangerous . And watch out for rattlesnakes . " And we did , because , oh , there were lots of ' em there at that time . One of the stories that I was reading yesterday tells about one of the brothers come tearing into the house one day to get Mother or Dad because Billie [ Genevieve 's nickname ? ( Tr . ) ] , the sister over me , had stepped on one . And she stepped on it so close to its head that he couldn 't bite her , but they went out and killed it . ( laughter ) There 's lots of good stories in this material I 've got that I won 't take time to tell you now , but you would enjoy reading them , I know . Herring : They were all so wonderful . We just really had a good life . The missionary who lived just across the road from us was the Christian Reformed Church . There was no Mormon Church there at that time . I remember as a child that Mr . Brink , who was a saint if ever lived one , he would gather up all the kids , and we would walk a half a mile over where he held church , and he would tell us stories and sing songs all the time we went , and when we come back home , we did the same thing , see , he would bring us all home . Now later , of course , the Mormon people did establish a church there , and Mother and Dad were called to be the missionaries there to begin with , and worked there for several years . I also worked as a missionary there for a good many years after that , after I had filled a mission . I 'm sure that this is in the story . Of course Charles , I met him down here at a carnival one day , and he wanted to bring me home , and I wouldn 't let him . ( laughter ) At last I told him , " Well , you can take me up to the end of the street if you want to , but at the end of the street , I won 't let you go the rest of the way , because Mr . Davies is very strict , and he won 't like that . " Charles came right up to the door and delivered me to Mr . Davies . After that , why , he said he was a good guy , he could come to see me . Then after that , Charles and I were engaged to be married . Mother was sick , and I had to put that off for a while . And there was some of the missionaries came out from Southwest Indian Mission , and Uncle Illick [ phonetic spelling ] was concerned , too , because I was going to marry somebody outside the Church . So Elder Orrin [ phonetic spelling ] came in here to see the [ present stalworthy ? ] and in less than a month I had a call to go on a mission . So I wrote Charles and I said , " Charles , I don 't know how you feel about it , but I 'm going to go . I 'll send your ring back , I 'll do whatever you want . " And he said , " You go ahead and go , I 'll wait till Hell freezes over . " ( laughter ) He did ! Herring : I served mostly in Illinois and in Chicago . I worked in the office there more than anyplace else . And while I was there , he contacted the missionaries and joined the Church . So he did become a member . Herring : No , Dad would not let his girls work in the store , that was a no - no . As we were growing up , he would not let the girls work in the store . The boys worked there , and Mott [ ? ] and Vernon are very fluent in the language , [ as ] a result of it . I didn 't work in it until after we bought the store and I had to learn because Charles was gone someplace and I had to run the store . Now , I 'm not fluent by a long ways yet , but I can talk a little . Herring : The customers were very wonderful people . We never ever had any trouble with them , they were good friends , they were good neighbors , they depended on Mother and Dad for everything . I don 't know what happened , why , they 'd come for advice - - to get the advice they needed - - in family matters or anything else . I remember one time - - whether you want to take time for this or not , I don 't know - - but there was a very good - looking man , and he had a very good - looking wife . And I remember one night she came tearing into the front room and said , " Hide me , quick , because Archie 's gonna kill me , he 's mad at me ! " So Dad took her downstairs under the store and put her into the basement , and put her to sleep . Wasn 't very long till here come Archie , drunk as a hoot owl and bent on getting to his wife . And Dad said , " Now , Archie , just calm down . I think you 'd better rest for a while . " And he took him out to the corn house , which is in that little picture of that house , and he locked him in the corn house , and he left him there all night . The next morning , he took ' em into the front room , sat ' em down and talked to ' em , and they went off just fine the next morning . It was things like that . If anybody died , they came for us . If anybody was sick , they came for us . Twice I went with Mother to help with births of people in their homes . There was nothing we didn 't do . Herring : Indian people ! ( laughs ) That 's all we had - - and the minister 's children . Of course , they were right next door with the Indian people . They were really my good friends . Herring : Very different than it is now . If an Indian told you he would do something , you could pretty much tie to it that he was gonna do it . They were very honest , they didn 't try to take advantage of you - - you had to be a little smarter than they were sometimes , but if you were on your toes , you were fine . And very few of ' em would take advantage of you . They ran the trading post on a business that they had their cattle and their sheep and their wool , and they would come in and get credit for against what it would come , and when they would sell their wool and their cattle and their sheep , and then they 'd clear up their accounts . They did a lot of pawning . And in the pawn work , they didn 't let their pawns go dead very often . They usually took care of ' em . They thought a lot of their jewelry and stuff . When we were there , later I think they did a lot of pawning of shawls and stuff like that . I don 't remember that as a youngster - - it was more their jewelry and things that was more valuable to them . Herring : Oh , they liked pretty cloth and they liked tomatoes and Wheaties and pork - and - beans . ( chuckles ) Shawls . And jewelry . They were good people . I remember Dad had a man who took his team with a four - horse team on it , and took - - Dad would give him his money and the grocery list to go to Gallup to Kirk 's and other places . The man would take the money and everything and go with and get everything and bring it back by team wagon . You never had to worry about it , everything was taken care of the way it should be . Herring : Well , they brought ' em to the trading post and they 'd buy ' em there . Isn 't that the way we 'd do it , Lij ? They 'd bring ' em to the big corrals at the trading post . Herring : No , Dad would buy ' em and then he 'd sell ' em later to whoever wanted ' em . With the sheep , the sheep season was in the fall , and that was a busy time because they 'd bring all their sheep , and then you had to herd ' em out every day to get ' em out to pasture . When you got all the sheep out , then they had to be taken to town or someplace to ship , and that was a big thing to do . In those days they herded them across . Later , they [ started ] taking ' em in trucks . As a child I can remember they 'd just treek [ trek ] across the Reservation , either to Gallup or Farmington , and ship ' em . Herring : Oh , a long time , two or three weeks . You didn 't do that in a hurry . If you went too fast , the sheep lost all their weight and they weren 't . . . . Now , as far as the cows were concerned , I don 't think they ever shipped ' em that way . They just came in and somebody would come and truck ' em from the trading post . Herring : Yes , they were , because that was about the 1929 's and ' 30 and ' 32 's . And that was when I went on my mission , and Mother and Dad ran the trading post . And because it was the Depression , they ran . . . . What would you call it ? They helped put the line in for the gas people from here to Albuquerque . And they had a commissary that they run so that they could make enough money to keep me on my mission . Don and Vernon run the trading post while they were on that treek [ trek ] and that was in 1931 and 1932 . Herring : Well , everybody was just poor , they didn 't have much to go on . Dad had a rough time for a while . He got real smart and was going to buy all the sheep up and sell ' em and somethin ' went haywire . He lost $ 16 , 000 , and that was a lot of money in those days . That was a lot to lose . So he was under debt a lot of the time after that . And until Charles and I bought the store in 1943 , he struggled with that debt all that time , to try to get out from under it . Herring : That 's right . And they call him that right now . They don 't like him . Why , he just wrecked it as far as the livestock is concerned . They aren 't like they used to be . There used to be herds and herds and herds out there - - they 're not there anymore . He really put a damper on that - - no good . Herring : No , he came from Texas , and his folks moved into New Mexico when he was quite young , and he went to school in Fort Sumner . And then after he was there , he came up here to help build the road between Gallup and Shiprock , and the one here and on up to the Colorado border . And that 's when I met him , was when he was working on the road between here and Gallup . Herring : He never even thought about that . He was working for the biological survey when we got married , and we moved to southern New Mexico , and he worked with . . . . Well , now they think that little prairie dogs and coyotes are real nice - - in that time they paid him to go out and take care of ' em and kill ' em . And when we first got married , we moved down to there , and I lived in a big army tent , and we moved every two weeks , because he had to move to a new location . And the first summer and year that we were married , I was down there with him . Then he came up and he worked on the Reservation with the same kind of a program for a while . It was while he was working with them , then , Dad sold him the store . But what happened - - and Marilene will tell you this - - it was during the war , and Raymond was - - well , he wasn 't in the Army , but he was in the Reserves , and evidently - - Marilene will tell you this better than I do - - but he was working over at Fort Wingate or someplace over there , but he was doing something that would have kept him out of the Army because it was vital , but somebody persuaded him to let that go and come back over to the trading post , and he hadn 't been at the trading post three months but what they drafted him . That left Marilene alone at Mancos Creek to run the trading post ; took Raymond to the Army . And so Dad , that 's one reason Dad sold the store to us , so he could go over and help Marilene with the trading post . And that 's when he and Mother moved from Toadlena to Mancos Creek . Herring : I was real happy to have it . It was still the best place , except it 's not that way now . I wouldn 't go back there and live now for anything . It isn 't the same . Herring : We did a lot of work with the people in the Army . Charles wanted to enlist , they wouldn 't let him . He said , " You 're doing more here with the Navajo people to help them than if we would put you in the Army . " He says , " You stay right here . " So he did . I can remember we did all kinds of projects . I can remember one time that all of the Indian women wanted to learn to knit for the Army , and golly , we made sweaters and socks and everything . I can remember my front room and bedroom and other bedroom being full of Indian people learning to knit . And by golly , those Indian women could learn to knit quicker than I could ! They 'd come in with those things quicker than I could even think of doin ' ' em . They really worked hard - - good people . And Charles and Mother both spent a lot of time writing between families and the boys that were in the Army . They kept the correspondence up with them , which was a good thing to be doing . Charles did that , too . In fact , just recently we sent some things to the Nez 's [ phonetic spelling ] family that they had given to Charles - - some money that this boy had got over when he was in Japan and Korea . I sent and gave that to them just recently , that they had given to Charles . Herring : After I had to run the trading post . ' Cause after Charles bought the trading post , he was out doing all kinds of things . The Indian people loved Charles , and they treated him just like one of themselves . He was just with them . Quite often they would come and get him to go with them to do their sand paintings and their ceremonies and things of that kind , which they don 't do with everybody . And very often I 'd have to stay at the trading post while he went to do those things . I remember one particular time that there was a big to - do up back of the store on the mountain a ways , and they wanted him to come . He had four different days to help make this sand painting for them , and I ran the trading post . The last day that they were doing it , I was in the trading post , and all of sudden I looked - - well , the trading post is way up on a hill , and you look down about a half a mile . On the way down , here came about twenty horses with Indians on ' em , dressed in their - - not their clothes , [ but ] feathers and paint and everything , and they tore up to the front door , didn 't even knock , come into the front room . They poured pollen all over everything , and went through a lot of ceremony and out the door they went and on up to the sand painting ! ( laughs ) So that was something that was interesting . Then Charles came back . Herring : He just had to learn it when he went into the trading post . I think he learned some when he was working with them , with the eradicating of the coyotes and the prairie dogs and all that stuff . He learned it after he went to the trading post . Herring : They use their hands , and he did . Quite often when he was sitting here so sick , he 'd try to talk , and I 'd say , " Honey , quit trying to talk with your hands . I don 't understand it . " ( laughter ) Herring : Tourists . . . The trading post never had its doors closed . Even when Mother and Dad were there , there were people who loved to come out to the trading post , ' cause it was different . And I can remember Mother got sick once , and Dad would just invite anybody that came in , " Come in and have some dinner . Come in and stay with us . " And Mother was ill one day , and a car drove out back of the corn house , and I remember my sister and I running out there to tell them that Mother was sick , so they wouldn 't come in . ( chuckles ) And my dad would have killed us if he 'd have known it . We didn 't let ' em come in that time . But people would come , and they 'd stay two or three weeks with us . It was just a fun place to come and see and do things . They went bear hunting , they had picnicking , they had all kinds of things , it was a fun place to go . And Mother and Dad were always ready to do things with ' em . Bear hunting - - didn 't like that . Herring : Oh , right in the house , oh yes . In those days , the trading posts were not built like they are now . There was a bar around here . Here was the place the Indians stood . The trading post was this way , behind the bar , behind the counter . And they didn 't go behind the counter unless you asked ' em to . So quite often , you 'd have to be careful that you didn 't let somebody in that you didn 't want behind there - - you got into trouble . ( Steiger adjusts microphone ; there is some discussion about a distracting sound . ) Now then , what else can I tell you ? Herring : Well , they 'd come and stay two or three weeks . Oh , you said where did we put ' em . Well , the trading post had those counters around like that , but you always have a lot of extra quilts and shawls up behind . And when all this company would come , they had to be put someplace , so Mother would give them our bed in the bedrooms , and we 'd take the quilts from the store and put ' em on the counter and sleep on the counter . And I can remember many times sleeping on the counter and sneaking over and getting some cheese and crackers and tomatoes ( chuckles ) and eating ' em . That was fun . Those quilts in the store smelled like no others . You just don 't get the smell out of any of ' em anymore . The salesmen used to come and stay . They wouldn 't come just one day , they 'd stay two or three days ' cause it was fun - - enjoyed it . Herring : Oh , everybody . They came to sell suit materials , cloth - - you name it . I think you [ Elijah ] ran into a lot of that , too , before you got through . Herring : The community there was nice . The Indian school was a nice place to be . They worked as a group of people together . We had picnics , we had fun , we had something going all the time . If it wasn 't at the boarding school , it was the missionary - - if it wasn 't that , it was Mother . There was something interesting always going . Herring : We never fussed at each other , we just got along . A little bit later in time , why , there was another missionary came who didn 't like us so well , but we never did fight with him . We liked him , he was a good man , but he wasn 't like Mr . Brink . Mr . Brink just gathered the whole community in as a family . His wife was a little bit different , but Mr . Brink just loved everybody . And Mother and him together , they just mothered and fathered the whole community . Herring : Oh , yes ! Oh , yes . The little schoolhouse - - the missionary put up the school building . And as I remember , when they first started the school , Mother had the first classes in her front room . And I can still remember sitting in there on the chairs , and her bawling me out ' cause I didn 't do something right . Later , he moved us over into the basement of his house , and then he built a little church there next to the mission , and that was the schoolhouse for a good many years . And that 's where we went to school with all of the white kids and all of the Indian kids that were in the community that could go to the school that wanted to . And it was a grade school , it had from primary through the eighth grade . It was a good many kids that went there . Now , I taught there myself , several years , later . Herring : Well , that was during the Depression , that was a hard time . The first year , I couldn 't go , so I studied at home . And then the last month I came into Farmington and took all the tests , and they passed me - - I don 't how , but they passed me . The next year , I did come to Farmington and boarded , the second year . The third year , the Depression hit worse than ever , and I couldn 't go anyplace , so I found a place in Gallup that needed - - a family who needed somebody to take care of their children , and I couldn 't go until November . I went in November , and the superintendent there let me take a test from September through November , so that I could place . Thank goodness Heavenly Father was good enough , he let me pass , and I went ahead and finished my high school in Gallup . Then I never did get to go anymore . Went on a mission , got married , and had kids . Now later , you said how did we feel about the Indian people ? Mother loved ' em just like they were her own people . If there ever was a stray child or somebody that needed help , she gathered ' em in and took care of ' em . I don 't know how many children she counted as her own adopted children , because she just loved ' em . And she took a little [ Tewa ? ] boy , and later he died . And she took a little Hopi girl and raised her . Even after she moved in here , the Indian people would come in and leave their children with her to take care of ' em , because she was good with ' em . She just loved everybody . They loved her , too . Herring : Well , they need to know that they 're just the same as anybody else . I like the older Navajo people better than I do the more modern ones . I 'll be perfectly frank with you on that . I think they 're taking their place . I think they 're eventually getting where they need to be to get the education so that they can take their place in the world . But back then , it was a little bit different . Now , Mother had the three girls at home , and they went to Shiprock to get their tonsils taken out . While they were there , the nurse brought in this little baby girl to amuse them . And Mother wanted her right away , because her mother had died at birth , and her little brother , who was a twin , had died about four months after they were born . So they brought this baby in to amuse Marilene and Paula and Ruthie , and when they were there , why , Mother wanted the baby right away . We knew their parents , and Mother said , " Grace , you 're looking for children , because you can 't have any of your own . Why don 't you take this little baby until I get to feeling better , and then I 'll take her back again . " So Charles said all right , we 'd do that . So we took Jill and took her home . Do you think Charles would give her up after he had her for three weeks ? ( laughs ) That was the end of that ! So she was ours from then on . And Jill has turned out to be a very good daughter . She went to the " Y " [ Brigham Young University ] , and she 's taught all over the Reservation , even in Alaska and everywhere , and retired from the BIA . And [ Derry ? ] , of course I had Jill and she was about eleven months old , and then I had had my application in for another child - - had for quite a while - - and they called me from Mesa and said they had one . So we went and got Derry . So I had two that were in diapers and on bottles and everything , for a while . ( Underhill : Of course . ) And that was enough . Herring : Jill would never learn to speak Navajo ! She wouldn 't even try . Derry did . Derry would try every time , and he still does . He still works with the Navajo people . Jill didn 't feel inferior to her people at all - - she just wouldn 't learn . She just didn 't want to do anything . Later , when she was in the BIA , they offered to send her to some big university in the East to train , and she could have come back and worked with all of the handicapped children on the reservation . But she couldn 't do it ' cause she couldn 't talk Indian . So she had to just give it up . She 's turned out to be a very good efficient young woman . We love her . Herring : Well , surely we had to have a lease . We had to have something to have it , didn 't we ? What was it , Lij ? Herring : I think that 's the way it was , too . Charles never had any trouble getting it . The Indian people liked him . Now , when we took Jill , the man at Fort Defiance , the superintendent , said , " Don 't adopt her . Get a guardianship for her . Because if you adopt her , it 'll take all of her Indian rights away from her . " So we didn 't , we just got a guardianship for her . And it has helped her over the years , her and her family , a lot . Derry was a little German boy , and he 's just Derry , that 's all . Herring : Well , it started back when Dad first moved to the trading post . He was immediately interested in the rugs . As I told you before , he never bought a rug in the store . He would take it to the front room - - and poor Mother , the mud that she put up with - - he put the rug down on the front room floor . I 've seen him on his hands and knees many times , showing them how they could make them better , how they could make them finer , and to use the patterns from the potsherds into the patterns of their rugs . Now , he and Mr . Davies did that together . They worked very close together . He had the trading post at Crozier , which is actually Two Grey Hills now , but it was called Crozier then . They were very good friends , and they worked close together . Now , when they first went there , the rugs were very rough . Well , they weren 't like this - - they were heavy . And they immediately started to try to tell them to make them finer and better and to keep them definitely within the range they did . Now , they did used to use some blue and red there , but Mr . Davies and Dad told them to keep it Two Grey Hills , which was the natural colors . And Dad and Mr . Davies are the ones who started to show them to not put any color into their rugs . Later , I think Bob Leighton did let them put some red and turquoise in - - it spoiled them . It wasn 't a Two Grey Hill rug at all , it just took it out of another class . So after Mr . Davies and Dad - - and that 's written up in Mr . [ Frank ( Tr . ) ] McNitt 's book - - did so much work with them ; then after Charles took over the trading post , he became very interested in the weaving . He was especially interested in Daisy Tauglechee . I wish Charles could tell this story , ' cause he could tell it so much better than I did , but he wanted some way to get Daisy to get her weaving to be finer and finer . And I can still see him sitting down with a ruler and saying , " Now , Daisy , don 't you think you could make it much finer than you have made it now ? " And so he marked off in grids here how many strings going this way , and how many this wUnderhill : And what was Daisy like ? Herring : She was a nice girl , nice woman , very pleasant to be around , very pleasant to talk to . She really was a good weaver , and she won a lot of prizes , I guess , all over . There 's other weavers coming up now that are , I think , matching her , ' cause they 're really getting - - this woman here in town is really doing beautiful work . Les said he would bring up the rug when she finishes it so I could see it . Herring : Well , that 's another story . Dad and Mr . Davies started right away to try to improve the kind of wool that they had . And I know Dad bought many rams and sold them to the Navajo so it 'd improve the wool , and Charles continued that all the time he was there , too , to improve the wool quality . Herring : Oh yes , carded and spun it . It was none of this commercial stuff . She 'd have nothin ' to do with that . I wish more of ' em wouldn 't . It puts their rugs in a different class , they 're just not the same . Now , I think they come out with some beautiful rugs , but they 're not on a par with these . Herring : At our trading post , we didn 't do much with silver . Charles did do a little bit of the silver work with several smiths , but not anything a great deal . We didn 't go . . . . Now , my brother - in - law , Don Smouse [ phonetic spelling ] at Borrego Pass really went in for the silver work and had a lot of silversmiths working for him . They did beautiful work over there , but we never did go for that too much . Charles had several things made then , and I have several pieces that I really treasure , because they 're special . Herring : I don 't know ! ( laughter ) He was one of the first ones in the outfield . You said he had a number . I don 't know that he ever had a number , Lij . I know he was one of the first ones that helped with whoever the man was in Gallup that ran so much of it . Herring : Oh , they 'd discuss all that they were gonna do . At one of the meetings they took up buying the silver that went through Woodard , and that 's what helped make a lot of the funds that you have , so I understand . I didn 't know too much about that , Lij . I did know that through that silver buying and selling , that they made quite a bit . Did you know about that at all ? I didn 't . Herring : Well , it wasn 't to get rich , because we didn 't do that . It was just to keep our families together and raise ' em the way they should be , and give ' em the right aims and qualities in life . I don 't think Dad or Charles , neither one , wanted to get rich . I had one of my nephews this week call me and he said , " Aunt Grace , I 'm going to call you every week , because you 're alone now . I was so amazed that the family that were there at Uncle Charles ' funeral . " He said , " I didn 't realize we had such a big wonderful family . The one thing that impressed me most was that [ some people ] " , he said , " [ A certain type ] always was out to make all the money he could and get all the money he could get in . Uncle Charles collected friends and people instead . " Now that is the kind of person that Charles was . Money was not the main issue in his life . He wanted to help the people , he loved them , and they loved him , too . Since he moved in here , I never , never have gone to town with Charles but what we meet some of the old people who just are so glad to see him and shake his hand and pat him and love him . The same with me . Now , that 's the older people . Now , I don 't know the younger people that well anymore . I 'm getting too old . Herring : In those days , they didn 't expect you to do anything . They were pretty independent themselves , and they were pretty trustworthy . There were very few of them that tried to take advantage of you , Lij . They were good people . Their standards were good , their aims in life were good . Nowadays I don 't know , some of these younger people ( chuckles ) got screwy ideas . I 'm sorry . . . But they 're all good people . The thing that bothers me most , and it 's a sad thing , when we first went to the trading post , they had that big boarding school there , and they would bring all these little kids in , three and four hundred of them . They wouldn 't let them talk one word of Navajo after they hit the school . Now , there 's a lot of these youngsters who don 't know how to talk Navajo , and it 's a shame . It 's a detriment to ' em , they need to know how to talk in their own language . I think they 're changing . Derry says down where he 's teaching now that they 're pushing learning their own language , and I 'm glad . Now , with Jill , she was just stubborn - - she just didn 't want to learn . Herring : Not too much . Not by the time I moved in here and brought the children to school . After the kids got through the eighth grade , I couldn 't see sending ' em away to school . That didn 't seem right , so that 's the reason I moved in here . I had the post office at Toadlena , and so I moved in here with the children . Charles stayed there . We got ' em through high school , I got ' em through college , and then when I got ' em through college , he was still out there , and I said one day , " Charles , either I move in or you move out ! I 'm tired of livin ' this way . " So that 's when he sold the trading post and moved in . Herring : Well , that 's a story , too . Marilene called me this week and said , " Grace , I found a letter here to Dad that was sent to Crozier , New Mexico . Where was that ? ! " I said , " Crozier was at Two Grey Hills , and that was the first post office that was there . " I think the reason they moved it to Toadlena was that they established the government school there , and that 's where all the people were . Crozier was just the trading post . So they changed it to Toadlena , and Mother got the post office . Now , Mother run the post office for , I think it was twenty - seven years . And then when she moved to Mancos Creek , I took it over , and I kept it for about ten or twelve years . And then when I moved in here with the kids , Charles took it over . I understand recently that they moved it from Toadlena down to that trading post on the highway . Herring : Why was it at the trading post ? I guess ' cause Mother applied for it , I don 't know . ( laughter ) But the people at the school were here and gone and here and gone , and she was permanent . That may have been a reason . I know some of the postal inspectors came and visited Mother there . I can remember one of ' em came , and there was a complaint from the school at that time , and he came in and investigated the whole thing . And when he got through , why , he told Mother he 'd write ' em a letter . And he wrote a letter to whoever had made the complaint to straighten it out . After he left , why , Mother invited him to stay the night , and when they came in . . . . Dad always had prayer in the morning . He never would start the day without kneeling down and having prayer . So that morning he knelt down and had prayer before he had breakfast . And I guess that really opened that inspector 's eyes that Dad was a good person , ' cause later he wrote Mother a letter and he said that he 'd never been in a family that he felt like that with before . That 's in these stories , too . When I get that to you , you 'll have the whole story on that . But he wrote a very beautiful letter to Mother and said how much he had enjoyed meeting her . . . [ comment about another trader 's trouble w railroad retirement checks ] . . . Herring : They were Social Security and railroad checks they would get each time . I don 't think there was so much while we were there of this welfare that they 're . . . . I don 't think there was a lot of that then . It was mostly railroad retirement . I don 't know when Social Security started . I really don 't know . Herring : Well , I can 't tell you very much about it , except every so often they 'd recruit a bunch of ' em , take ' em into Gallup and turn ' em over to the railroad . And they depended a lot on the railroad help for ' em . It was a good means of supporting their families better . Lij knows more about that than I do . I didn 't have much to do with that part of it . Herring : I don 't remember it changing much , except we had milk and butter and cheese and things like that which we didn 't have when we were younger , or when we first went in there . I remember Mother said at one time when she first moved there they bought a case of laundry soap and it lasted I don 't know how many months . " But before she left , " she said , " we were selling cases and cases . " In that same length of time they had learned to be more clean and take care of things . And the Church helped a lot , too . Now , I know that a lot of the trading posts are wound up with the Mormon Church , because it just works that way . So we taught a lot of the Indian women how to sew , how to can , how to keep house - - all of those things we taught ' em in classes what to do with it , and it helped ' em . It give ' em a better way of life . In fact , once a week we 'd hold a meeting where we 'd either make quilts or can or something so that they learned how to do things . And that was under the Relief Society program . Mother was really active in that . Herring : No difference . No difference , we loved ' em all . Some of my best friends are not members of the Church - - even yet . They belong to the Christian Reform Church , or they belong to the Catholic Church . They 're all my people . I think I 'm half Navajo ! ( laughter ) Herring : I learned to be patient , I learned to love families , because they are so close - knitted as families . I think the more important things in life is what they hang to . They don 't count being rich or famous or any of those things as important . That isn 't the important thing . To be the right kind of people . . . . And if I knew them , they were that kind of people . I don 't know the younger people , I can 't speak for them now , I don 't know . I meet lots of wonderful young people now , and they 're very intelligent and very versed . They amaze me that they know so much , but I 'm not that close with ' em anymore . I 'm too old . ( laughter ) Herring : The way the people loved us and depended on us . The times when the missionary and the school and everybody would get together and we 'd have a big outing on the mountain and everybody would go and enjoy themselves and play games and be just like one big community . The work in the missionary work , of course , became a lot to me , because after I went on a mission , then I did a lot of that kind of work with the people . And then when they established the churches on the Reservation , Charles had a lot to do with that . First , they wouldn 't let us build a church , and yet he went with Ralph Evans and got the permission from Window Rock to start building different chapels , and that helped . And Charles worked a lot with that kind of work . For the church at Toadlena , he went with the chapter officer head and they picked a spot and everything that should have been - - and what do you do when you put lines out ? - - surveyed it , and decided where it was to be . So Charles really worked a lot with the Indian people and with Window Rock . He got along real well with Window Rock . Some way , he had something to do , Lij , with that tax that they were trying to impose on the traders . Now , I can 't tell you about that , ' cause I don 't know about it , but I know we went to Santa Fe one night , and it was an awful trip , and I remember he got ' em to rescind it some way , but I don 't know the story on that . Do you ? Some way there had to be a tax that they had to pay , and he got it so they didn 't . . . . Blair : ( at same time as narrator ) This is the Arizona State tax versus the Warren Trading Post , which the Traders Association won . This store was in New Mexico , so then all they did [ was say ] , " Hey , you know , we 've already won it in Arizona . " So Charles , I 'm sure , went to Santa Fe and said , " Hey , you can 't do this , " and they did rescind it . Herring : ( laughs ) Transportation ! Well , I 'll tell you , when we first went out there , the roads were all mud , the wind blew , the rains came , and you didn 't go . If it rained , you just didn 't go , because the washes get so full you didn 't dare to . The roads were so terrible you couldn 't ride on ' em . I can remember Mother at one time saying that she went to Gallup and it took her two days with the buggy to get to Gallup because it was so slow . You didn 't travel fast in those days . The roads were not there . Later , the roads got a little bit better and a little bit better . I can remember when I got in the trading post , I did a lot of driving back and forth between Farmington and Gallup and I even did a lot of the trucking of the sheep and the cows . I couldn 't do that anymore ! I remember ( chuckles ) one time I took a big bunch of sheep to Gallup in a truck , and the darn things would keep falling down on me and smothering . Oh ! that was awful ! I had an Indian boy with me , he 'd get out and punch ' em up . I wouldn 't dare drive a big truck like that anymore , I couldn 't do it . In those days , you had to . You did lots of things you had to do . Herring : Durned if I know ! ( laughter ) I don 't know . After Charles went in the trading post , I know he was quite ill , the two children were quite ill , and we had a little car and we turned it to Dad , so he paid us for it , so we paid the hospital bill with it . So it had to be about 1935 or ' 40 before we got the truck . Charles did a lot of trucking after . . . . He was on the road . That 's the reason I had the trading post to take care of , he was out doing other things - - taking the cows and taking the sheep and taking the wool , those big ol ' bags of wool . Did you ever do that ? those immense bags of wool that we pounded down in there ? Derry was tellin ' me a story about that . He said in the back wareroom they piled big sacks of wool like this , so that they were just a big stack of ' em . He said it was such fun to get back there on those wool sacks and jump down to the bottom . It was just like a nice slide . He said they went out there one day and really was havin ' a good time , and when they got through , why , Charles came out and caught ' em at the bottom end of a case of bananas . They 'd smashed ' em flat ! ( laughter ) Oh , dear . Another thing really interesting happened . Paula was the baby and she was spoiled - - that I will admit . And Dad was a kind , gentle man . He never scolded us that I remember of . They will say about us that " it 's the Bloomfields showing out . " I 'm sorry , Lij , if the Bloomfield shows out , that 's not true . Dad was a kind , gentle man . Mother was the firebrand . And she would really smack - - all she had to do was look at us , and we would behave . But one time Paula went with one of her little friends . Have you been at the trading post ? The warehouse is here , and there 's the steps going down into the cellar ? Well , they used to put Cracker Jack out in big boxes like this . I don 't know how many of those little Cracker Jack boxes were in those cases , but they had good prizes in there at that time , things that were worth having . They were fun . So one day Paula and her friend went out and they got at the top part of these steps , and they opened a whole case of Cracker Jack , dumped the Cracker Jack down and put the little prizes up on the top step . And Dad caught ' em . And that 's the only time I ever heard him bawl Paula out , and he really gave her fits . Then after , he was so sorry , because he 'd lost his temper , he took her in and cut a watermelon and gave it to her . ( laughter ) Now what else could I tell you that 's fun ? Blair : Not every morning ! I said , " Gosh , Grace , George just won 't admit two . " I thought , " That 's a piece of cake ! I can milk two cows anytime ! " ( laughs ) Herring : Really did . I can remember after Charles and the kids had been so sick , we had to make money some way , so he went into the chicken business . ( chuckles ) I remember one time he would clean and pick the chickens and take ' em to Gallup to sell ' em . One time he made me pick a hundred of the things . And I never wanted to pick another chicken ever in my life . But then he built a great big shed , and he must have had 500 hens in there . And he went out one night to check to see if the mites had got in there , and he painted all over with creosote and stuff under the roosts , and he lit a match to see if they were - - and , fssttt ! , he burned all of his hands up , and the brooder house - - it burned everything up . ( laughter ) Oh , shoot ! Quite a life . Underhill : This is Tape 2 of two , with Grace Herring , and it 's Wednesday , February 11 , 1998 , and it 's about 2 : 30 . We 're talking about the trading post . Grace , when did you have people who worked with you ? Herring : Well , Charles was out seein ' about the outside work , and seeing about lambs and the cows and going to Gallup and getting the freight and all of that . So I had the trading post . I had an old Indian by the name of Joe . He was a prince . He was right there for me all the time . I remember one time we had one lady who was a stinker . That 's the only name you can call her . She would come in and she would make trouble every time she came into the trading post . One day I was there by myself and she came in and she threw one of her tantrums and I tried to handle it the best I could , but I went back into the wareroom and I went back there and I was crying . And this man came back in and put his arm around me , he said , " Don 't pay any attention to her . She 's just no good . " ( laughter ) So people were good to us . The Indian people , as a rule , were good . We never had any trouble with them at all . She was just a firebrand . She was one of the ones . . . . And yet , she 's our good friend - - her children are our good friends right now . The story about the milking - - and that 's one reason you got to do it . Vernon was a stinker sometimes . He had to milk the cows , so one day he said , " Grace , I 'll bet you can 't milk . " I said , " I 'll bet you I can ! " He said , " I 'll bet you a dime you can 't milk those cows . " So I went out and I milked the cows . And you know who milked the cows from then on - - I did it ! , he didn 't . ( laughter ) So Lij took over for me . ( laughter ) Herring : Who else worked with us ? ( Underhill : Uh - huh . ) Oh , we had different people at different times . Some of the Jacks worked with us at times , some men from Shiprock worked a fall . I can 't remember all of ' em . Herring : Not more than one family - - except the Indian people that we would have help us . And this one Indian man was especially good , he was a special person . Old Jumbo [ phonetic spelling ] was a good guy , and he was always there to help us . Old Jumbo , that was another story . You 've seen my little house at Toadlena , where Mother built a little tent house first , because she couldn 't stand the kids in the main part of the house , they were making too much noise and she couldn 't get any rest . So she had Dad build this little tent house , and she would go out there so she could rest . After Charles and I went to the trading post , we took that tent house , converted it into a kitchen , and built a porch . And we took the chicken house behind it and that was our front room . And then we built other bedrooms behind . And one night - - we never locked our doors then . You never locked your doors . You never , ever would think of locking your doors . And one night in the middle of the night something hit that front porch , came through the kitchen , through the front room and into the bedroom , and the first thing I knew , they were shaking Charles and said , " Charlie , wake up ! wake up ! come and help me ! " Charles said , " What in the world 's the matter with you ? " He said , " My daughter 's havin ' a baby , and she 's havin ' a hard time , I gotta have some help . " Well , Charles got up and got his clothes on and went way up the hill to where the daughter was havin ' the baby . They made a big thing on some poles and a blanket and brought her down , got her to Shiprock , she had the baby all right . So it was always something that they would - - they would come to you with everything , wanted the help . And anybody was sick , they 'd ask Charles to come . Very often I 've known him to be called to somebody that was ill , because they wanted him to talk to them . He keeps telling a story about some man , and since he got so sick himself , he said " I could take my own advice now , " but this man had just given up . He wouldn 't get up , he wouldn 't even try . And Charles said he weI remember one time Mrs . Jumbo had a baby , and she came and got Mother and I to go over and help her . And if you think primitive ways are primitive , you should see that ! But that was when she had the little baby that they called Charlie - - and they called him after Charles after that . Then there 's people out there named for me and for Charles and for Dad . If they liked people , they gave ' em their names . You 'll find ' em all over out there . They liked us . I think they felt like we were one of ' em . And I feel like they 're one of us , they 're my people . Herring : When I was growing up , it was Tsii » gaii , which meant " white hair , " ' cause my hair was just snow white . After I got in the store , they called me ' Asdzání Hashké ( laughs ) ' cause they said I was always cross with ' em , I wouldn 't let ' em get away with anything , I 'd bawl ' em out . So they called me " the cranky woman . " Herring : I never remembered them giving the kids particular names . I don 't remember that . Derry might be able to tell you , because he probably did , because he worked with the little ones . I don 't know . Herring : Just Wóshk ' alii and Wóshk ' alii Be ' esdzáá . Wóshk ' alii meant " teeth out . " Dad never had any teeth , and it was just Wóshk ' alii for him and Wóshk ' alii Be ' esdzáá , which meant his wife . Vernon was Wóshk ' alii Biye ' , and we were Wóshk ' alii . . . What is " daughter " ? Herring : Bitsi ' . That 's what they usually called us . But it was after I got to trading with them they called me the " angry woman . " And I guess I deserved it , ' cause they pulled some big ones , and I wouldn 't let ' em do it . Herring : Oh , they just tried to boss me around and tell me how to do their work , and I wouldn 't do it . ( An aside about buzzing noise ) All those stories I 've got that I know you 're gonna want : the ones that Mother wrote , the ones that Dad wrote , the ones that I wrote , the one that Charles wrote . All I can do is get copies of those for you . Herring : You 'd just add it to the price on it , that you had on the pawn . You had to be careful sometimes , they 'd get a little bit too much for it , and then not take it out . But we never had too much trouble with our pawn , they usually came and got it . Herring : ( chuckles ) About every time they had one . I tended the store a lot of times so he could go out and do the things they wanted him to do . They just thought of him as one of them . In fact , they still did . So many of ' em , since he 's been ill , have come in to see him , or called him , or something , since he 's been feeling badly . And he loved ' em , he really loved the Indian people . Herring : Oh , in the early days , you really saw some beautiful things . Now , the fire dances , they used to have ' em , you just can 't understand what they are . They are not the same now . I remember one fire dance we went to , that I never saw such magnificent performances . They had every hour on the hour , the dancers would change , and they would always - - always when you went to a ceremony , you didn 't go empty - handed . You either took a sack of flour or sugar or lard or something to give them . But they would give us a seat right up close so that we could see . I remember this particular fire dance went on for I don 't know how many days they had it - - ten or eleven , wasn 't it ? It was a long time that it took to finish ' em . Herring : This particular lady who had the fire dance for , actually got better afterwards . Mother said they do have a prayer channel up there some way , ' cause she got better . But that was fun . I remember taking Charles ' mother to a ceremony one night , and they 'll give us a seat right up at the front . Another time I went with Charles to a ceremony up above the trading post , and they gave us a seat right down in front where the medicine men were working . And I swear I don 't know how they did it , Lij , but I watched this as closely as I could , and they actually made the feathers dance . You could see ' em out here on the basket , dancing . Now , I don 't know how they did it . Charles said he thought they had strings attached to ' em , maybe they did , I don 't know . Herring : Now , Dad tells of going up on top of the mountain one time , and going to a ceremony , and he said that they planted the corn in the ground and he said they actually saw the corn grow and get ears on it before it quit . I don 't know how they did it . I don 't know how . They have a knowledge that we don 't know of a lot of things . They know things we don 't know . And as far as their medicine is concerned , I wish we had all the knowledge that those old medicine men have . I wish they 'd give it to us , because they help a lot of their people . I don 't know why they won 't let go of it . And the old medicine men are getting ( phone rings , tape turned off and on , discussion regarding copying of documents ) Now then , what else can I tell you that 'll help you ? Herring : Well , we had a telephone , and we had radio . I don 't know when those came into being . Other than that , we didn 't need it . We had enough to take care of with our own little lives . You had to carry all your water , you had to do the washing this way ( demonstrates using scrub board ) . Life was not easy in those days . I can remember when Mother got her first washing machine , and it was one that you went this way ( demonstrates ) with . You washed there . Other than that , we got up at four o ' clock in the morning and did it on the washboard . And every Monday morning was wash day . Tuesday morning was ironing day . Wednesday morning was something else . The week was divided up . We had duties each day of the week and Mother saw we did it . She couldn 't have survived without it . Herring : We had lots more time in those days than we have now . We 'd get up early in the morning and do our work . In the afternoon , I can remember whole afternoons we had nothing to do but quilt and do what we wanted to do . I don 't know where the times changed . The gears of the whole world have gone too fast . I don 't like this world , it 's too hectic . I 'll go back to the old days . Herring : I always liked to paint . I had a teacher who was interested enough that she helped me . I guess I was about twelve or thirteen when I started in oil . Other than that , it was just drawing . But I 've always liked to paint . It 's fun , something I can do . I like to quilt . I like to sew . Mother always had a quilt on . I can remember as we grew up that on the big porch - - and they destroyed a lot of that , Lij . They built a bedroom here and a bathroom here . The porch that used to be clear along it , is gone . Mother would put a quilt out there and I can remember playing under the quilt , because it was such a fun place to be as a child . She had ropes to the ceiling , and she just put it up and down so that she could quilt when she wanted to . She always had a quilt on . Herring : That burned . One time they got a fire in the ceiling of our little house , and I went up through the attic and we got it put out . Another time , there was a fire in the bottom of the trading post where we kept the power plant for the electricity . So we moved it down below the store in another shed , after that fire . We had quite a few fires . And then the fire , when it burnt the barn and all his chickens up . Charles still tells about those chickens . He said he got three of ' em to get out . He tried to chase ' em out , and he couldn 't get ' em out . So he said as those chickens burned , he could hear ' em pop , because they 'd get so hot they 'd just burst . And all that brooder house and all those little tiny cute chickens in there , it burnt . We had an old pig that was in the pen right next to the chicken house , and the Indian people tried to make him get out , and they beat him and beat him . He was the biggest pig I think I ever saw , and they beat him till the time when that fire was over . He was just down to nothin ' but skin and bones . And after that , he wasn 't a very good pig after that . He was kind of ornery . And this is a long story . Whether you want to listen to it I don 't know . Herring : It 'll be in some of this material yet . But Charles went out one morning to feed them , and he went to the barn and he had a lot of squash in there . He opened the doors to the squash to get the squash out , and fed it out to this old pig . And the pig hit him in the back and caught him in the back of his legs and almost knocked him down . So Charles was cross with him and he got out and he chased the pig , and the pig chased him down into the lot a ways , and the pig hit him again . So he had a big hole in both legs of his back [ big holes in the back of both pant legs ? ( Tr . ) ] . And he got up on an old platform of a truck that was down there , and the pig got over him like this , and he couldn 't get up . And he kept pushing the darned pig away from him , and he had big long tusks , and at last he yelled at his dogs to come and help him , and old Tinker came and he kept biting on the pig at the bottom end , so Charles could get relief enough , and he pushed him off . And after he got him off , why then Tinker ran him off down the lot , and Charles came in the store . That 's the only time - - that 's what Jill said , " [ Until ] this time , I never heard Dad swear , until that . " He came in and he was swearing . He said , " Damn it to hell ! " And Jill said , " What in the world 's the matter ? " And he said , " That D - A - M - N pig almost got me ! " So Dad said , " What you gonna do about it ? " And Charles said , " I 'm gonna kill him . " So he went and got a gun and they went out and they did shoot the pig . This is something I shouldn 't tell , but the pig weighed , dressed out , 900 and some pounds . ' Cause he 'd got back to normal after the fire . And so I said , " What you gonna do with him ? " Charles said , " I 'm gonna drag him off in the ditch . " I said , " You 're not either . You 're gonna dress him out . " So he dressed him out , and he dressed out over 900 pounds . And we put the meat in the store . That was the best meat I ever ate , as far as pork was concerned , it was really good . So we sold quite a bit of it . The Indians found out what we had done , and no more would theyUnderhill : They didn 't get meaner , huh ? Herring : No , they didn 't get any meaner . ( laughter ) But that 'll be in that story of his , too . You 'll have all the details on that . Now , what else ? So many things happened . I remember one time he had an old bull that hated me , and I didn 't even have to walk out by the gate where that bull was . He 'd just drop on his knees and just bellow and rip this up and throw dirt all over . Ornery old stinker ! I didn 't go out there very much , but one day he went out and he got mad and he took the wheelbarrow and he just tipped it clear over his head . Later , the darned thing , they put it in a truck to take him off , and he killed one of the cows before they got him into Gallup . He was just ornery . That 's not anything to do with this story , but it was all . . . . Another thing that happened that was interesting is that we raised a lot of pigs . This one old pig had nine little ones . They were the cutest little stinkers you ever saw ! A little pig is really cute . I went out to see about ' em , and the mother had stepped on the stomach of one of those little pigs and cut it clear through to his insides . His little insides were all dragging on the ground , and I said , " I can 't stand that ! " So I picked the little stinker up and took him into the house , and the doctor in Gallup had given me some soap and diazine , and I took and washed that all out , and pushed his insides back inside of his stomach , and took some nylon thread and sewed the inside stomach , and then I sewed the outside stomach , and put him in a little bed by the coal stove . And that little stinker yelled all night long ! And as I got up in the morning , I said , " Charles , I cannot stand this . He 's going back with his mother . " So I took him out and I put him in the pen with his mother , he went right over and went to nursing , and he grew to be a great big pig . ( laughter ) All kind of experiences you had that were fun , it was good for you . I could also undo any darned sewer that went and got stopped up , too . ( laughter ) You learn all those kind of things . That wasn 't the fun part . Herring : Oh , yes ! When we first moved there , the wash was just a little ways below the store , and the water came down over a big waterfall for a whole half a mile , and there was lots of water in the wash then . Dad had a huge garden , he had all kinds of vegetables , he had every kind of fruit that grew . Dad was a person who loved plants . All over the trading post he had a huge rose garden , all of his flowers and everything . We had lawn and everything around the place at that time . That 's all gone now , there 's none of that left . Dad was a person who loved to grow things . I can remember he had all kinds of pears and plums and peaches and cherries and every vegetable that grew . But after that , the government sidetracked our water for a while , from up above the falls , and took it over to the school . And that cut down the flow here , and that really cut down what we could grow , because below the trading post they used to have huge alfalfa fields . I don 't even known whether they 're there anymore . I haven 't gone out for so long I don 't know what 's there . But Marilene says that there is water coming down the wash now . Herring : And what fun we had , goin ' up the canyon . Now , that 's all in my story , too , telling about the canyon , what a wonderful place it was . I 'll get you a copy of all that - - tell it better than I 'm telling you now . Herring : The garden stuff ? We ate it , or else Dad gave it to people . He was always giving people away stuff [ i . e . , giving stuff away to people ( Tr . ) ] , Indian people . I think I inherited that , I love to give people things , and Dad loved to give people things , too . Herring : Oh , he always gave ' em that . At his funeral , one of the girls - - she wasn 't scheduled to speak at Dad 's funeral , but she came up and asked Mother , could she please speak ? So they gave her time at the funeral , and she got up and told how Dad always gave ' em candy and took care of ' em . He was good to ' em . He loved the little kids . He loved all the people , and that . In fact , Dad and Mother really loved the Indian people - - so do we . Herring : ' Cause I liked it ! ( laughter ) I 'd have went back if Charles had went back and stayed there , but he wouldn 't . And I had the kids to take care of , too . They came first . After I got in here and got workin ' for the post office , I kinda stayed put . Then he decided he wasn 't gonna stay out there anymore , why , he just had to come and live with me . ( laughter ) Herring : I don 't know , I don 't know . Ask Lij , he knows more about the trends than I do now . I 've been away too long . I can 't say . I think the Indian people are gonna gradually take their place in the world . I hope they do . I hope they get over this idea like , this Hale [ Albert Hale , a former president of the Navajo Nation ] bit of closing the Reservation off , and all that stuff . I think that 's a bunch of garbage ! I think he 's being stupid ! They 're gonna grow up . I wish they would turn the Reservation just into part of the United States , and let ' em be one , but they 'll never do that . The Indian people will never allow that , I don 't think . I wish they would . They should be just like this with us . We 're just all American . Like somebody said , they call themselves ( chuckles ) Native Americans , and she said , " Well , I was born here , too . I 'm a native American , too . " Herring : Nothin ' . I just love the Indian people , I think they have a wonderful heritage , if they 'll just handle it right , if they 'll go about it in the right way and not get sidetracked by some of these crazy ideas that are coming along with our government . If they 'll just keep their heads about ' em , I think they 'll take their place . I think they 're a lot of smart people . And there 's a lot of ' em growing up that are smart and not prejudiced and pig - headed like some of ' em . Is that a nasty word ? ( laughter ) But they 're good people . They 're my friends . I don 't want any better ones . They 're better than a lot of the white people , as far as friends are concerned . That 's true . We never felt any prejudice . And I don 't think Jill ever felt any difference , being a Navajo . Even in school here , she never felt like she was different than the rest of ' em . They accepted her very well . And her husband was very good to Jill . He made her proud of what she was , and I 'm grateful to him for that , because he could have put her down , but he didn 't . He 's a pain in the neck ( laughter ) , but he 's a pretty good guy . Herring : Oh , no , he 's an Irishman . They 're a good bunch of kids . And right now , the latest thing is that Derry 's youngest son - - did you hear about him ? Blair : Oh , really ? ) They were just a week old . I think he 's nuts ! ( laughter ) So Derry has three children . Each one of them have three children . Jill had two children , and there 's nine or ten grandchildren on that side . Herring : I 'd go back to the Reservation like it used to be . But it 's not that way anymore . You don 't find it like that anymore , it 's not the same . If I could do anything for children that would be good for ' em , it would be put ' em into the atmosphere that I had growing up . Now , Paula and Marilene said they were bored at Toadlena . I was never bored there . There was always something fun to do or something to see - - either picnic to the falls or the Two Grey Hills or arrow hunting or potsherd hunting . There was always something fun to do , and Mother always saw that we had plenty to do . It was a good life . I wouldn 't trade it , I 'm glad I had it . I never felt deprivileged because I was out there . If you wanted to do something , you could do it . Mama always said , " If you want something , go after it . If you work for it , you 'll get it . " It 's that way . Now , Paula was spoiled . I 'm sorry , Paula was spoiled . She came later in life , when life wasn 't so hard for Dad and Mother too . She was a good person , too . Paula was special . Underhill : Well , Grace , I think we 've worn ourselves out . ( laughs ) I don 't know about you . It 's been wonderful , thank you , very much . Herring : I don 't know whether that would be anything that you want a copy of or not . This tells about the area history and how Bloomfield got its name . It was from my grandfather . He came out from Raymond to show ' em how to put in that ditch over there , and when he got through , they wanted him to move over here and they 'd give him land . And he said no , so they named Bloomfield for him instead . Now , this is the agreement between Freddie Carson and his wife . . . . Now , I called her up and tried to get some information from her , Lij . She didn 't know anything . So I went to look through all my old files , and I found where we had sold the store to them . And there 's a copy of everything on that , and over on that . Here is the agreement , I think , between Dad and I and Charles , for the trading post . So that might be . . . . Here 's the sales contract . Now , this was between Dad and I , too . That goes along . And then this other , you will find a lot of good information in here , Lij . So I 've saved this book , and give it to you . . .