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Louisa Wade Wetherill collection, 1906-1936

MS-027

Biographical Note

Louisa Wade Wetherill (2 September 1877 – 18 September 1945) was born in Wells, Nevada to a U.S. Army Captain and his wife, Jack and Julia Wade. The Wade family eventually settled in Mancos, Colorado around the same time as a Quaker family, the Wetherills.

Louisa and John Wetherill married on March 17, 1896. They had two children, a son, Benjamin, and a daughter, Georgia Ida. The Wetherills took over the management at the Ojo Alamo trading post on the Navajo Reservation with Clyde Colville, which began a period of 45 years in which they traded and connected with the Navajo people. John was often away trading and Louisa and the children were left on their own to forge relationships with their neighbors. Louisa knew very little about Native Americans and, at first, believed many of the stereotypes. However, she soon began to see the Navajo in a new light and made a concerted effort to learn the Navajo language and their customs.

A drought caused the business to fail, so the Wetherills decided to establish a trading post of their own at Oljato, near the Arizona-Utah border. In 1910, the Wetherills moved their business to Kayenta and eventually built a lodge where many important visitors would stay—including Zane Grey and Teddy Roosevelt.

Beginning in 1906, Louisa began doing research on her own as well as collecting everything from plants to sandpainting reproductions. She had befriended a medicine man named Yellow Singer who reproduced his sandpaintings on paper for her. Louisa also began translating and transcribing Navajo legends and folk tales. And because she spoke Navajo fluently, Louisa eventually became an intermediary between the military, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Navajos.

Louisa became a popular lecturer on all things Navajo and began traveling extensively. She hypothesized that certain Navajo clans had migrated from Mexico and beginning in 1921, she began taking trips south to gather information. She had planned to write a history of the Navajo people but from the 1920s onward, Louisa suffered from multiple illnesses. John died in 1944 and less than a year later, in 1945, Louisa passed away in Prescott.

Scope and Content

This collection includes notes and typescripts of many Navajo myths, histories, and prayers, as well as notes on the Navajo language, ethnology, and ethnobotany. The collection also contains a number of Wetherill’s diaries from the early 20th century. Another aspect of MS-27 is Wetherill’s sandpainting reproductions and her notes and typescripts explaining the images and the stories behind them.

Arrangement

Restrictions

Conditions Governing Access

This collection contains culturally sensitive material (Navajo sandpaintings, descriptions of ceremonies and ceremonial items, stories and myths, language, and ethnobotany). Therefore, most of the MS-27 collection has been restricted. This restriction was placed by staff at the Navajo Nation Historic Preservation Department in 2001 and 2004. Contact the Museum of Northern Arizona archivist for more information.

Conditions Governing Use

Unpublished and published manuscripts are protected by copyright. Permission to publish, quote, or reproduce must be secured from the repository and the copyright holder.

Related Material

The Museum of Northern Arizona has related archival collections that contain sandpainting images; these have been collected, researched, and cross-indexed by Wyman with material in his sandpainting file:

Controlled Access Terms

Administrative Information

Custodial History

Records given to Clyde Kluckhohn by the Wetherills.

Preferred Citation

Louisa Wade Wetherill collection, MS-027 [Box Number]. Museum of Northern Arizona. Flagstaff, Arizona.

Acquisition Information

The collection was bequeathed to the Arizona State Museum in 1946, and was forwarded to L.C. Wyman in 1962 by its director, Dr. Emil W. Haury, at the request of Dr. Clyde Kluckhohn who, as editor of the Wetherill ethnological notes, had asked Wyman to analyze the material and prepare it for publication.

The collection came to the Museum of Northern Arizona by Florence Kluckhohn in 1962 after Clyde’s death, but remains on permanent loan from the Arizona State Museum.

Processing Information

Processed in August of 2010.

Bibliography

Arizona State Museum, John Wetherill, Louisa Wade Wetherill, Leland Clifton Wyman, and Stuart Kimball Harris. 1951. The ethnobotany of the Kayenta Navaho: an analysis of the John and Louisa Wetherill Ethnobotanical Collection. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

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