20 - HOMOLIVI STATE PARK AND THE NAVAJOS

About 30 minutes from our RV park, outside of Winslow, Arizona, was a location called Homolovi (Hopi word for "Place of Little Hills") State Park. 

In the 14th century ancient people found a home here along the Little Colorado River.

These people, the Hisat'sinom, (Hopi word for "long ago people") also known as the Anasazi, paused in their migrations to till the rich flood plain and sandy slopes before continuing north to join people already living on the mesas, people who are today known as the Hopi.

However, "Anasazi" is a Navajo word for "enemies of our ancestors," and the present day Hopi population prefer to refer to them as the Hisat'sinom (Just don't ask me to pronounce it!)

Anyway, we parked our car next to an apparently handicapped raven and walked up toward the ruins.

Out of seven Homolovi ruins, two are open to visitors. We visited only Homolovi II, the largest and most excavated site. It had had about 1200 rooms. 

Unfortunately, most rooms in all the ruins we have visited have collapsed. 


Here many have been excavated and many others are just piles of rocks with holes in the middle, the result of "Pot Hunters" from the 1950-60's who stole many of the artifacts before they were protected.

One of the really surprising things here is that there are literally piles of potsherds ALL OVER the park, many with painted designs on them...along with posted signs saying that it is a Federal offense to take any of them. Oh, the temptation they are putting in front of us all who visit here!

There are also petroglyphs at a couple locations here. We probably have you on 'petroglyph overload' by now, so we chose not to go see them here. If we did, we would have to take pictures and show them to you, so we are letting you have a 'glyph break.'

After Homolovi, we headed on further north into the Navajo

Reservation. We were actually on a hunt for a Navajo rugs, Hopefully a Ganado Red.

We first got to the village of Wide Ruins. We drove slowly through the dirt roads and finally came across an Indian school where the kids stay in dorms for one week, then go back home for a week.

One lady we met said she had gone to the school and had a lot of bad memories from there mixed with some good. At the time she attended, they were not allowed to speak there native language.

Now the native tongue is encouraged and taught, as it is close to being lost among the young.

We stopped at the Community Governmental Center. Since we decided that to find rugs we would just ask people we met, so I asked the ladies inside if they knew of any weavers.

One said her older sister was a weaver and promptly called her on her cell phone. 

The approximately 80 year old lady arrived with a large and totally beautiful rug woven in Wide Ruins design. She was nearly blind. Her son and sister said it was "from weaving".  

She sold it to us for about 10% of what she said she usually sold her rugs for. We are happy with it and decided we didn't need a Ganado Red rug after all.

This shows a small part of the rug and the overall rug design. My main focus here was to photograph the weaver.

Driving through the Reservations can have unexpected surprises. When coming over a hill we were greeted with a flock of sheep casually crossing the road.

The dog that was herding them was smart enough to stay on the right side of the road while the sheep walked across right in front of our car. I guess he waited to see how many would be left for him to herd when the car (us) finally passed.

Next we visited the historic Hubble Trading Post in Ganado, Arizona. It has been serving the Navajo people since 1876. We entered the store to unbelievable squeaky floors. They have been that way for a long time. 

They sell various goods to the local Navajo and Navajo crafts to the visitors. There were lots of rugs, jewelry and baskets for sale. It's a good place to visit, if for nothing else, the history here.

We only visited a very small portion of the Navajo Rez (as the locals refer to the Reservation) and want to come back at some later time.

Next posting, The Grand Canyon.