TEEC NOS POS, Ariz. — There are a lot of places that call themselves "trading posts" along the roads of the Navajo Nation. Many are filled with key chains, bumper stickers and shot glasses made in China.
And then there are the real trading posts, like the one in Teec Nos Pos, which has been there for over 100 years. It is among a handful of places left in the Southwest where Navajo weavers can walk in with a handmade rug and leave with a few thousand dollars.
Owner John McCulloch once paid a woman $30,000 for a 9-foot by 15-foot rug which she spent two years of her life working on.
“They are very labor intensive,” McCulloch said. “If you put per-hour and a dollar sign for what they are worth, what that labor is worth per hour, they are a fabulous bargain.”
But trading posts like McCulloch’s are becoming increasingly rare, and soon, his could be for sale. The times have changed and so have the needs in the Navajo nation.
“They have a lot more choice than they used to. They have wheels,” McCulloch said. “[Trading posts] are far less important than they were back 30 or 40 or 50 years ago.”
Many of McCulloch’s customers would beg to differ. If someone in town needs a gallon of milk, they don’t have to drive 45 minutes each way to the next, closest store. Walmart also doesn’t sell the herbs traditional Navajo medical practices demand.
Key chains and coffee mugs don’t keep these doors open. Convenience and Navajo culture do — and have since 1905 when Hamblin Noel, a Civil War and tuberculosis refugee first opened the trading post.
Teec Nos Pos (pronounced “tease nahs pos”) translates to “trees in a circle,” but you won’t find many here.
“The original store was located closer to the mountain just south of here,” McCulloch said.
The original trading post burned to the ground in the late 50s and was soon rebuilt nine minutes south of the Four Corners Monument in Arizona’s extreme northeast corner. McCulloch became owner in 1994. That’s when his education started.
He still remembers the time he was fooled by a phony rug.
A Navajo woman was desperate for cash and McCulloch was in a hurry to close that day. He later realized the rug he bought for several hundred dollars was made by an Indian — in India.
“That’s the best way to learn, is to get burned from time to time,” McCulloch said.
The 72-year-old learned the ins and outs of trading while working in a Beverly Hills, California pawn shop. He doesn’t bump into many celebrities anymore, although Tanya Tucker and Sharon Stone stopped by the trading post several years ago.
Like a lot of places on the sprawling reservation, the trading post serves many functions. It’s a commissary, a retail store and a launch point.
There’s a free children's library in a corner. McCulloch said books from it are often the first books kids living on the reservation ever own, and he’s proud of that. The trading post also boasts a selection of books written in the native Navajo language.
Many of them are picture books for toddlers, but McCulloch said they are often purchased by Navajo teenagers and young adults trying to lean basic Navajo vocabulary.
It’s also a place where someone can enter into the old ways.
Near the cash registers up front, you’ll find Ziploc bags full of medicinal herbs prepared by a Navajo medicine man. The different blends are used to treat everything from acne, high blood pressure and baldness. There is even a mixture to keep snakes away.
That is not to say McCulloch and the products on his shelves have not adjusted with the times. He no longer sells coal and kerosene like he did 30 years ago.
“It’s electrified out here pretty much now,” McCulloch said. “We used to have a bulk tank that we could fill jugs with kerosene for their lamps. They quit selling bulk kerosene. The sellers of fuels recognized the change before the retailer did.”
Today, a 15,000-gallon vertical propane tank serves as a local landmark.
“I wanted to get a large tank so I could get a better price on my propane,” McCulloch said. “I thought this would be kind of an eye-catcher.”
Walking around the trading post feels like shopping at a museum and grocery store at the same time. McCulloch can pick up a Navajo rug and tell you where the weaver lives and what it’s made from.
“This may be the finest weaver ever,” McCulloch said holding up a small rug. “Her name is Laura Tom and she does a fabulous job. Very intricate, dyes a lot of her own yarns to get more color, uses things like red cabbage and peyote.”
The trading post is also a hub for jewelry. Not just for tourists.
“Navajo probably buy more jewelry than anybody,” McCulloch said.
Rosalita Chatter drove two hours from Tuba City with her sister and nephew to shop for rings.
“I’m very particular,” Chatter said. “Everything has to match.”
“We’ll give you 10 percent off if you can prove you are Navajo,” McCulloch told her, laughing.
Chatter began speaking Navajo — it was more than enough to convince McCulloch — as he pulled out a display of silver and turquoise rings. He buys the turquoise from miners and gives them to Violet Nez, who lives 80 miles away in Lukachukai. McCulloch considers her to be one of the best silversmiths in the Southwest.
Nez’s jewelry is a popular seller; so are the colorful Pendleton blankets. The Navajo receive them on special occasions like birth, birthdays, womanhood, graduation, and marriage, McCulloch and Chatter said. Bodies are often wrapped and buried with them.
“What my grandmother told me, was on The Long Walk, it saved them,” Chatter said. “They used it for cover, whatever they could use to cover themselves.”
The trading post also accommodates the Navajo palate, McCulloch said. McColloch buys wholesale mutton carcasses for $5 per pound and butchers them in-store. He said mutton has always been a Navajo staple; now it’s more of a delicacy.
“The prices escalated so much,” McCulloch said. “It’s hard to believe, really. It is more expensive than beef.”
McCulloch said he does not earn much of a profit off the mutton, or from his gas pumps, but both keep people coming through the door.
Times, like the taste for mutton, change. And McCulloch may be looking for a change, as well.
Now in his early 70s, McCulloch has started thinking about retirement, and how he will sell a half-million million pounds of wool he’s storing in a Roswell, New Mexico warehouse. McCulloch wants to pass the unique store on to the next generation of traders.
“I have been here for 30 years and I am 72 and I don’t have a son to take over for me,” McCulloch said. “It would be great to find somebody who is capable of doing it.”
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