Man who changed local Indian trading dies

Copyright © 2008
Gallup Independent
By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — For more than 50 years, J.B. Tanner, who died Sunday in a Farmington hospital at the age of 84, was an inspiration for thousands of Native Americans in the Gallup area who credit him with helping them conquer alcoholism

Along the way, he revolutionized the Indian trading business, became a radio celebrity and one of the handful of non-Navajos who managed to speak Navajo like a native. He was also instrumental in the building of the Navajo Shopping Center north of Gallup and for more than 25 years was the heart and soul of Yahtahey, a community north of Gallup that he named himself.

But most of all he was part of a trading post dynasty that still sees two of his brothers, Ellis and Joe, active in the business.

When he came into this world on Aug. 24, 1924, according to his family, he didn’t make much of an impression, weighing only 3 1/2 pounds. The plans were to name him after his grandfather, Joseph Baldwin Tanner, but he was so small that the name even seemed too big for him so they just named him J.B., which he would use the rest of his life.

He was fortunate, said Joe Tanner, that his parents — Ruel Lehi and Stella McGee Tanner — were living in Scottsdale trying to raise money to buy their own trading post “because if he was born on the reservation, he probably wouldn’t have lived because they did not have the equipment to handle premature births here at that time.”

He grew up in Farmington and it was obvious by the time he entered his teenage years that there would be two dominating forces in his life — Indian trading and alcohol.

The alcohol abuse came first with J. B. finding himself kicked out of school at the age of 16 in the ninth grade because he came to school drunk and, with a friend, brought liquor onto school grounds. When his grandfather learned of his expulsion, he traveled three days to get to Farmington and talked to school officials who agreed to allow J.B. back if he promised not to repeat the behavior.

J.B. thought it over and decided then and there that his formal education was over and that it was time to get on with learning the family business so he immediately traveled to Lower Greasewood where the McGees had a trading post and needed help.

Eventually, at the age of 18, he was drafted and went into the Air Force, became a gunner on a B-29 and learned a little about war and a lot more about drinking and gambling, he would say later. After the war, he married Lorain Schamp, who he had met in Farmington and the two went off for the next decade to work at a number of trading posts on the reservation in places like Keams Canyon and Ganado.

In 1963, he joined his brothers and parents in building a shopping center in Gamerco, just north of Gallup, a business that would revolutionize the Indian trading business.

Before that, said Ellis, Navajos would go into a trading post and point to what they wanted and a trader would come out and get it for them. And the whole transaction was done through bartering. The Navajo would bring in something like a piece of jewelry or a rug and pay for the item or the trading post operator would put in on his tab and it would be paid off at lambing or shearing season.

But the Tanners would pay cash for everything the Navajos brought in, whether it was crafts, pinons or livestock, and they could use this cash to go around and pick up items and bring them to the counter to purchase. This was a first in the trading business and it completely changed the way trading posts treated their Navajo customers.

Navajos were no longer at the mercy of bartering only with one trader who would dictate the terms and the customer would either have to accept it. Now they were paid outright with cash and had the freedom to shop wherever they chose.

Many Navajos chose the Navajo Shopping Center not only for its new way of treating Navajo customers but also because of J.B.’s ability to speak Navajo. For this, J.B. could thank his grandfather, said Joe, because his grandfather refused to speak to him in anything but Navajo. Realizing that he needed to publicize the family’s new business, J.B. joined with Ed Lee Natay and Robert E. Lee and the three of them created the first Navajo live remote that they aired on KGAK from the “crow’s nest” at Navajo Shopping Center.

“Once they started doing the program, our customer base mushroomed overnight,” Joe said.

J.B. also used the Navajo Hour to broadcast his personal fight to remain sober after 20 years of abusing alcohol and pledged his support to anyone out there in the listening area who needed someone to talk to or a shoulder to cry on. And he was there for thousands of Navajos, Zunis and Hopis. In his later years, it would be impossible for J.B. to go anywhere, said Joe, without someone coming up to him and thanking him for helping them overcome their addiction to alcohol.

After five years, the Tanner family grew tired of operating the Gamerco store and over a period of a year or two, they each dropped out and went their own way.

J.B. would move north to Yahtahey and set up several businesses, including a grocery store and a gasoline station as well as a Navajo trading post, where over the years he would probably, said Joe, buy and sell more Navajo rugs than any other individual in the United States.

He retired in 1994 and moved to Farmington with his wife, Mary Ann, who he married after Lorain passed away in 1983, and his son.

He is survived by three of his brothers and sisters, Joe and Ellis who live in Gallup, and Dorothy Campbell, who lives in Mesa, Ariz., and by his four children, Kay Bennett, Sherry Elkins Tanner and John Tanner, all of whom live in Farmington, and Kathy Tanner, who lives in Gallup, along with numerous grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces and nephews.

Funeral arrangements are pending.