Navaho Trading Days

Elizabeth Hegemann, born in Cincinnati in 1897, was an accomplished photographer and a woman who enjoyed adventure. These qualities along with her marriage to an Indian trader and living most of her adult life in Southern California, Arizona, and New Mexico allowed her to leave a significant record of the Southwest's American Indians during the 1920s and 1930s.

Hegemann's photographs document interaction between Anglos and Indians, ceremonial dances, trading post life, and archaeological monuments that have been altered by time. Her text recounts her travels around Navaho country, especially the northeastern portion of the Reservation. She comments on her meetings with John Galsworthy, Charles F. Lummis, William Randolph Hearst, and Will Rogers.

". . . Exceptional collection of photographs and personal recollections of life among the Navajos and Hopis during the 1920s and 1930s. . . . The scenes of Navajo and Hopi ceremonies are especially valuable because of the general paucity of such material. . . . A most valuable historical resource."- American Indian Quarterly

". . . The entire work is a fine relation of the Navajos' life in the period between the two world wars."- Library Journal