Kaibeto Memories: A trader's daughter remembers growing up on the Navajo Reservation at Kaibeto Trading Post in remote northern Arizona

Kaibeto Memories

ELIZABETH ANNE JONES DEWVEALL

A trader's daughter remembers growing up

on the Navajo Reservation at Kaibeto Trading Post

in remote northern Arizona

1936 - 1960

TRADERS TO THE NAVAJO

RALPH AND JULIA JONES, parents of author Elizabeth Anne Jones

Dewveall, operated the Kaibeto Trading Post on the Navajo Reservation for

28 years, from 1934 to 1962, in remote northern Arizona. Theirs was a time

when roads in the area were more like paths in the sand, over rocky ridges-

-snow-covered in winter, and across washes that could and did become

flash floods without warning. The

Native population was transitioning

from horseback and wagon travel

to pickups. The post's role was to

provide goods that were needed by

the local population to supplement

the meager resources this harsh

land could provide. Canned fruits

and meats were important articles,

as were tobacco, knives, and

ammunition. The Natives traded

sheep hides, wool, woven blankets,

and turquoise-laden silver jewelry for

goods from the post. Their jewelry

often was provided as collateral,

"pawn", to pay for purchases. Ralph

and Julia and daughter Elizabeth Anne were often the only people of their

"white-person" race in the entire region.

It was in this environment that this book's author Elizabeth Anne lived

her childhood years. Her playmates were often from the local population.

In her later childhood years her school times were spent in distant Leupp

or Winslow, Arizona, but coming back to what she calls, affectionately it is

believed, the "Rez" for holidays and summer vacations.

Told as an adult in the year 2020 while living at Mesa, Arizona, Elizabeth

Anne points out her purpose in recording her story is more for it to be

her parents' story, for there is scant recorded material about their lives at

Kaibeto Trading Post and how they operated this out-of-the-way and nowhistoric

post for many years as a life-hub for a receptive Native population.