I promised to talk about the Hubbell House today, and I've been looking forward to it. Some of the people I know are reading this won't know that I used to work as a historical research assistant at Colonial Williamsburg, but that is why I'm interested in old structures and the cultural context. When the Hubbell family sold the trading post, home, historic belongings and land to the NPS in 1965, it was a treasure-trove of hundreds of thousands of business records, artifacts and John Lorenzo Hubbell's personal library. All of this has been preserved and is available for researchers.
JL Hubbell purchased the business from a previous trader in 1878, just ten years after the Navajo were released from internment at Ft. Sumner, NM. It has been in continuous operation ever since, even today under NPS ownership. He began building the house shortly afterward, and I do wish I had taken notes on my tour, because I seem to remember that the guide said it took several years to finish. That may have been because at the time, people built for current needs and added on as required.
Today the house consists of a great hall, one large room that served as parlor, dining area and gathering place, flanked by two large bedrooms on the east and three slightly smaller ones on the west. I believe it would be approximately 27 feet square, and faces north. There is a veranda-style porch on the north side, complete with porch swing that may have been a later addition.
As we stepped into the porch, my guide lifted the seat of a wooden bench and handed me some shoe coverings, warning me not to absent-mindedly wipe my feet on the doormats and inadvertently tear the coverings. Then we stepped inside onto a Navajo rug. Now, having just seen prices for even small rugs in the thousands of dollars, I was horrified to be walking on one, even with shoe coverings. I mentioned to the guide that I couldn't believe people were allowed to walk on them. She replied that it was a reproduction, which made me feel better for a few seconds, until she added that it was forty years old! It was in amazing condition, as was the second one further toward the back of the main room, which had been reproduced at the same time. Understand, these reproductions were woven by Navajo rug-weavers in the traditional way, with the original hung behind the loom to serve as a pattern. We aren't talking about made in China, here.
All of the bedrooms were roped off, but the simple furnishings were easy to see and marvel over. The 'master' bedroom had a large brass bed in one corner, and a smaller one in another. It didn't look like a bed that one would place a baby in, so I asked about it. The answer was that the two boys of the family had been expected to give up their bedrooms to guests (one of whom, I later learned, was Theodore Roosevelt) and they slept in the smaller bed more often than in their own rooms for that reason.
One of the rooms had originally been the kitchen, a room of about 8 or 9 feet square, and had served up to 200 people a day as the family hosted many Indian travellers when they came to trade. At some point, it was decided that it could be a fire hazard, so a separate kitchen was built in back. I wasn't able to tour that as the snow was drifted quite deep and hadn't been cleared. Although the park is open, it is the slow season. In fact, I was the only person on this particular tour.
One of the remarkable things I noticed, first in the trading post and then in the home, was that there are hundreds of Indian baskets hung upside down on the ceiling. For some reason, it seemed wrong to me, but it wasn't until I mentioned that to the guide that the reason came out. Navajos, and I presume other tribes, don't hang baskets upside down for the same reason we don't hang horseshoes that way. Superstitiously, something that was meant to hold food and other good things shouldn't be allowed to hang in such a way that all the good things, including luck, would fall out. These turned out to be JL's personal collection that his daughters decided on a whim and in his absence to get off the walls so they could hang pictures and paintings instead. Collectors would be aghast, as they actually nailed these delicate woven baskets up. When the property was sold to the Park Service, it was with the stipulation that nothing be changed in the house. Of course, over the years, gravity would have taken its toll on the baskets also, so NPS did surround each basket edge with clear plastic clips to preserve them as much as possible.
Other artifacts in the house that I noticed were an old Singer treadle sewing machine, similar to the one my grandmother owned and one that I later purchased and sewed my own clothes on. No, I'm not so old that I couldn't have had an electric machine, I just liked the treadle. On a lovely old upright piano was a picture of Hubbell's daughters. They were beautiful, in the Gibson Girl style. I wondered aloud if people used to have thicker hair than we do now, and the guide laughed at me, saying there was padding under those rolls of hair. Funny what they thought should be padded versus what we think should be. Colorful quilts and woven Indian blankets of course were spread or folded on every bed, and one was hung in the doorway between the 'master' bedroom and the girls' room on the east side of the house.
On the west side, the bedroom furthest north was given at one point to the schoolteacher that Hubbell brought to teach the local children. I understand she later married the youngest Hubbell son. The last two rooms of course belonged to the boys, but were often given up to visitors. Every inch of the walls was covered with family photos or paintings, the most prominent being of an adorable 4 or 5 year-old in a beautiful white lace dress. The guide told me that this young lady, a granddaughter of JL Hubbell, was not as sweet and demure as the painting depicted, as the dress was destroyed by being worn into a mud puddle shortly afterwards. That was when I learned that Teddy Roosevelt had been a vistor, also, as he was a great admirer of the little girl. He purportedly told her to hurry and grow up so she could marry his son, a young man of about 20 at that time.
Another intriguing structure that is connected to the house by a rock walkway is a small stone building in the shape of a hogan, which appears to be furnished. I say in the shape of, because this one has glazed windows, and I haven't noticed windows in any of the hogans we've seen. The supervisor of this park had mentioned to Budd that there was a little guest hogan he could use if he wanted to stay for a week to work on their computers rather than travelling back and forth, so I wonder if that was it. If so, I may want to accompany him on this side trip, just for the novelty of staying there. I'd love to see Ruby's rug in progress, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment