Tucked subtly into an unassuming little red house at 22702 Route 66 in Clinton, Oklahoma, the 1892 Mohawk Lodge Indian Store and Trading Post can be easy to miss. Its faded hand painted sign calls quietly to passing motorists with the promise of Indian pottery, baskets and blankets, but inside, the tiny structure holds more treasures and far more stories than curious travelers can expect.
Intricately beaded cradleboards - some more than 100 years old - and colorful leather moccasins brush up against aging black and white historical photographs of Native Americans in full dress. Carved totems sit by handmade buckskin shirts, fringe leather pouches, ceremonial drums, woven baskets and Pendleton blankets of rainbow colors wait to be touched and admired. In Oklahoma’s oldest trading post, authenticity can be seen, smelled and felt like dusty memories and visceral glimpses into Oklahoma’s Indian Territory past.
In the back of the store, owner Patricia Henry sits quietly among a heap of antique and Victorian furniture. Patricia herself appears as though she is part of the store. Now 85, Henry and her late husband Charles (he passed during the writing of this story) took over the museum/trading post from her own mother 27 years ago, who bought it from the late N.B. (Napoleon Bonaparte) Moore.
Though Indian trading posts are touted brightly along Route 66 throughout western Oklahoma and beyond, The Mohawk Lodge Indian Store and Trading Post is arguably the oldest, longest running, and most authentic of them all. Henry continues to supply glass beads from the Czech Republic - prized among Native artisans - to tribal members throughout North America, and she still purchases hand- created items from them as well.
“I don’t sell cheap [stuff] or junk from China, she said. I sell quality items made from Indians. When they give you anything, honey, they give you the best they have, and they don’t make junk.”
A staple in Clinton,The Mohawk Lodge Indian Store and Trading Post has been a part of Route 66’s history even before Route 66 existed.
Part of Oklahoma’s Past
The Mohawk Lodge Indian Store and Trading Post was opened in nearby Colony in 1892 by The Dutch Reformed Church of New York as a way for Native Americans to buy supplies and make income from their wares.
“They wanted to help the Indians make some money, so they sold beads and other craft items. The church took what the Indians made to the East Coast to sell,” said Henry.
In the late 1800s, Indian Territory was home to traders and tribes, but the demand for Native American crafts and artifacts was fierce from those who lived back east and in far-away Europe. As it does today, the trading post sold beads, leather, beading needles, fur and other items that Native Americans used, and The Mohawk Lodge has continued to buy beads from the same company for more than a century now.
“The counters and the back bar on both sides are all original from 1892,” said Henry, pointing to the only slightly faded glass counters holding boxes of pinhead-sized beads, turquoise jewelry and beading supplies. “The store started in Colony next to an Indian agency and a school. They closed in 1939.”
The store, which was named the Mohawk Lodge Indian Store after a lake in New York, moved to its present location in 1940, just on the outskirts of Clinton. Originally a railroad crossing four miles south of Arapaho known as Wahita Junction, Clinton was founded in 1903. The small community, which today boasts of about 10,000 residents, is surrounded by the wide plains and rolling hills of western Oklahoma, and its enviable position along Route 66 makes it a favorite stop for tourists.
A Living History
“The Dutch Reformed Church bought it (the land the store is built on) from the Indians. It was Heap of Bird land,” Henry said. “They had two caretakers until 1950, and then N.B. Moore - he was Creek Indian - he bought it
N.B. Moore was born in 1907 and was the son of a prominent judge, N.B. Moore (Sr.), a Creek member who moved to Indian Territory in the early 1800s. Growing up, Moore’s father worked on a farm and enlisted in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. After the war ended, he moved to Clinton and became Supreme Judge of the Creek Nation. In 1889, Judge Moore was selected to represent Creek interests as a delegate to serve in Washington.
N.B. was named after his father. He grew up in eastern Oklahoma on Muscogee Creek tribal land, but was an entrepreneur at heart. He opened an Indian trading post in Pawnee before World War II but closed it to serve as a soldier in the war.
After serving in World War II, Moore moved to Clinton and worked briefly at the Clinton Indian Health Center before buying the Mohonk Lodge in 1950. A widower with no children, Moore threw himself into making the Mohonk Lodge a repository for all things Native American. He added to the already impressive collection of Native American art and artifacts but became a sort of surrogate father to Henry’s mother, Nellie Stevens, who hailed from Hobart, Oklahoma.
N.B. had a memory like a steel trap. Despite the thousands of items lying about or tucked away in boxes, he knew exactly where everything was
“He had a memory like you wouldn’t believe,” said Henry’s daughter, Stacey Henry. “He could see someone, and they would come back 20 years later, and he would know them. He had a way of finding out everything about you. He wasn’t prying about it. He just had a way of talking. By the time you left, he would know you.
Nellie was born April 2, 1915, in McNabb, Arkansas, to W.L. and Callie Mae Self. Her father was part Cherokee and Comanche, though the family kept the Native heritage secret. Growing up, Nellie didn’t tell people her heritage because neighbors still had harsh feelings for the tribes. Instead, Nellie’s family let people think they were Italian.
“Today, most people are proud to be an Indian, but it wasn’t good to be one back when my mother grew up because the Comanche had done a lot of bad things,” Henry said. Nellie and her family moved east of Roosevelt, Oklahoma, in 1923, when she was just eight years old. She married Guy Stevens on October 2, 1933, at Indiahoma at the young age of 18. The two were farmers at Cold Springs, but eventually opened a commercial laundry in Hobart.
Their daughter Patricia was born a year later in 1934. The little family lived in Hobart for over twenty-five years, until they decided to open an antiques store in Clinton, in 1960. Sadly, Nellie’s husband Guy died in 1961, shortly after the move, but Nellie chose to stay on. She was a natural collector.
“N.B. put her in this little building next door, fixed it up and she had an antique shop. My mother loved antiques and collected them and always dreamed of a store on Route 66,” Henry said. “When N.B. turned 65, he wanted to sell the Lodge and mama said, ‘Well, I can’t afford it.’ So, he leased it to her for 10 years. Then she bought it and she ran it for 30 years,” said Henry.
N.B. moved into the house where Nellie sold her antiques while Nellie took over the trading post and renamed it “Mohawk Lodge Indian Store and Trading Post.” He and Nellie became close, and she cared for him until she passed away in 1993.
“After my mother died,” said Henry, “He came in and said, ‘Well, I guess you’ll want me to be moving on?’ I said, ‘Move on, the devil! You’ve got a new kid to teach, so get over here and teach.’ He laughed and we never had another word about him leaving. He stayed in that little house until he died in 1994, a year after my mother.”
Henry and Moore often had lunch together after she inherited the Mohawk Lodge. During one of those lunches, Moore suddenly fell over in his chair. Henry called an ambulance, but Moore didn’t even make it to the hospital.
“N.B died of old age,” said Henry. “He just fell over one day and died.”
A New Owner
Nellie was a natural at running the store. She continued to trade and buy from Native Americans, collecting priceless artifacts to display.
“She ran the store during the heydey of Route 66,” Henry said. “She was famous for the moccasins that she sold. People came from all over to buy those moccasins.”
While her mother traded with Native Americans, Patricia Henry stayed in Snyder, Oklahoma. Henry and her husband Charles married in 1953 and assumed operations of the commercial laundry business Nellie and Guy owned in Hobart. They raised their daughters, Stacey and Stephanie, in Snyder, a small town tucked into the Ouachita Mountain foothills in far eastern Oklahoma.
“It was a small town, but we were free to roam wherever we wanted,” said Stacey. “No one really worried back then, but everyone knew everything you did. There was a mountain right in the middle of the town, and we had your typical small-town upbringing.”
However, growing up, Stacey spent her summers in Clinton with her grandmother at the Lodge, and surrounded by old photographs and rich buckskin, the magic of the area and historical store became her summer playground.
“There would be a bunch of Indian kids who would come over to play. Their grandmothers would come to get them around 1 o’clock so they could go home and learn to bead,” said Stacey. “At the time, I thought I was lucky I didn’t have to go learn to bead, but now I wish I had.”
Stacey and her little friends were not allowed into her grandmother’s antique shop or N.B.’s store when they were little, so they spent their days playing on the old Conestoga wagon that sat in front of the Mohonk Lodge Indian Store.
“We played outside all the time. We would climb up on that wagon and pretend we were going places. Someone would be a driver, and the rest of us played like we were pioneers,” said Stacey. “N.B. never let us kids in the store. When my grandmother took over and I was a little older, I could go inside and help. All the people who came to [the] store to buy or sell just loved my grandmother,” Stacey said. “They were all her best friends.”
Taking Up the Mission
Nellie died in 1993, and Henry and her husband inherited the store, leaving their long-time home in Snyder. Henry didn’t know anything about running a business like the store, and she missed her mountains of eastern Oklahoma but she embraced the new challenge.
“I had to learn by hook and crook and by making mistakes. That’s the way I’ve learned. And the Indian people have been really good to me,” she said. “They don’t write down their histories. It’s word of mouth. And they liked me enough that they told me things. They take care of me, and they’re just like good friends.”
Today, those good friends come from all over the nation - Comanche, Arapaho, Navajo, Apache and more come from Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona and beyond to buy supplies and trade. Because so many other trading and supply stores have shut down over the years, The Mohawk Lodge is one of the last remaining trading posts.
“Many people from all over the world stop in to her shop,” said Pat Smith, director of Clinton’s Route 66 Museum. “They come in here asking about it too. It’s amazing how many people from around the world know about her store.”
In addition to the tourist trade, Henry still sells hand-crafted moccasins to Native Americans, who use the footwear during Powwows and other festivals and ceremonies.
“They need to buy them for their children and for dances. They dance on them so much that the soles wear out,” Henry said.
“I used to have a lot more people, but a lot of your old beaders have died and there’s not a younger generation to pick it back up. In a couple of generations, you won’t see anybody who can do crafts like that.”
The Mohawk Lodge is still the top and oldest buyer of Pendleton Native American trade blankets in the nation and visitors from all over the globe stop in to buy them. Trade blankets have been used by Native Americans since 1895 as gifts and at powwows or other events, becoming the most common and prized of the gifts that can be given.
The quirky and unique nature of the Mohawk Lodge Indian Store and Trading Post only adds to the lure of Route 66.
“Travelers are really interested in anything on Route 66, but especially actual artifacts,” said Julie Caldwell, president of the Clinton Chamber of Commerce. “Not only do people travel here to visit her store, but she also sends things out all over the nation. We get lots of requests for Native American items, and she is our number one source.”
Preserving the Past, for the Future
A big part of The Mohawk Lodge is dedicated to artifacts of historic importance. In one case, a hand-beaded cradleboard dating back decades sits next to an Arapaho 1892 cradleboard. A buffalo-hide vest and an 1840 Crow saddle share space with a drum from 1915 that was used in Pawnee Bill’s Wild West Show
Henry has dozens of trunks left over from when N.B. owned the store that she hasn’t even opened yet. The one trunk she did open had a man’s full buckskin beaded outfit in it. She has no idea how old it is.
But Henry doesn’t sell these artifacts - she treasures them
“It’s the coolest place. It’s amazing. It’s a place that makes you think about the past when it was your cowboy and Indian days,” Caldwell said. “But the tribes are still using her to make their moccasins and to make their jewelry and to make all of those things.”
“I’m going to keep the store open. Some days, I have no one come in. Some days, a bunch of people come in. As I like to say, some days are a turkey day and some days are a feather day. I imagine my daughter will sell it all eventually,” Patricia said. “But I do hope someone comes and keeps the store open. It would be a shame to see it all broke up.”
The Lodge, rooted in tradition and history that pre-dates Oklahoma statehood, has an uncertain future. Henry’s two daughters, Stacey and Stephanie, have lives of their own in Texas.
“I prefer not to think about what will happen when my mother passes,” said Stacey. “I prefer to think mom will go on forever.”
Henry hopes the artifacts and art, which grabbed the respect of The Smithsonian, will continue to be on display.
“When my mother bought this place and she started getting older, I knew that I would inherit and take over the store,” said Henry. “But I have two daughters and I don’t know whether either one of them will run the store when I’m gone. I don’t know what will happen to it, but for it to be as old as it is, it is such a treasure.”
These days, it takes a little longer for Henry to get to the door. A little note tucked under her doorbell warns visitors to keep ringing as age makes her a little slower on her feet. She knows one day she won’t be able to keep working. But until that day, however, The Mohawk Lodge Indian Store and Trading Post will remain open, displaying the history, crafts and artifacts that still makes the Old West come alive in little ole’ Clinton.
