Toadlena Trading Post

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REWEAVING CULTURE'S FABRIC By Ron Franscell Denver Post Staff Writer Sunday, June 09, 2002 - TOADLENA, N.M. - Back when Indian weaving first splashed earth tones on New York's gaudy art scene, a rug trader visited Virginia Deal's loom in a remote corner of the Navajo Nation and made her an offer. "How much for this rug?" he asked her. Virginia pondered. She had learned her craft from Daisy Taugelchee, the Picasso of Navajo weavers. Virginia's rugs were among the finest in the Two Grey Hills region, where the reservation's best textiles had been woven for centuries. Her threads were as fine as silk, her designs startlingly intricate. But it wasn't difficult to put a price on her rug."A truck," she told the trader. A week later, a new pickup arrived at her hogan. Her rug went East. Mythology weaves through Navajo culture like the fine spirit thread that leads a weaver from one blanket to the next. Once upon a time, when a baby girl was born, her mother would wrap her tiny hands in spider webs, a ceremony to invite the blessing of the Spider Woman, who first taught the Navajo to weave. But neither culture nor mythology has been able to sustain the traditional art of Navajo weaving in a modern world, where distractions and dilutions have taken their toll on most aspects of native life. For once, the outside world might help rescue Navajo weaving traditions. And it's a white man, a trader, who is opening doors to young Navajo women, swaddling their hands with new tools, new markets, money—and a little hope—by almost single-handedly underwriting the resurrection of a dying art. Mark Winter is not as complex as he seems. A military brat and a shrewd businessman, he's also a wisecracking ex-hippie who still believes one man can change the world - or at least that part of the world he can touch with his hands. At 52, he's already made his fortune buying and selling rare 19th-century Indian textiles, but now he's spending it: Five years ago, he invested in the historic Toadlena Trading Post, which is little more than a frontier convenience store in the heart of the Navajo Nation's Two Grey Hills region between Gallup and Shiprock, in the shadow of the Chuska Mountains. And in a backroom there, he doles out loans, praise, groceries, mortgage payments, marketing advice, encouragement and, most important, cash to a growing cadre of weavers. Winter doesn't tell the weavers what to weave, he simply pays more for bigger and better. So he gets it. What's better? Cleaner designs, softer wool, truer natural colors and a finer "weft," the number of horizontal threads per inch. A typical Navajo rug has about 30 wefts to the inch. A Two Grey Hills from Toadlena averages 45. The legendary Daisy Taugelchee wove more than 115 wefts per inch, the most finely woven Navajo tapestries anywhere. The roots of Navajo weaving are deep. They go back 1,000 years to the Anasazi, who wove on upright looms. Their descendants, today's Pueblo Indians, grew their own cotton and further refined the art. Then came Spanish settlers in the 17th century, introducing the Pueblos to wool from churro sheep they brought with them.

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