How a Small Business in Reno’s Midtown District is Preserving Indigenous Art and Nevada History
Ariel Smith explores the literary and artistic roots of the West in one of Northern Nevada’s oldest bookstores.
On the outskirts of Midtown on Holcomb Ave is a muted yellow house with an abundance of arugula. The small off-white flowers cascade down the walkway. Like other homes in Midtown, this one has been converted into a shop, in this case a bookstore with an added bonus of rare Indigenous art.
“I have a bookstore in Reno called 5 Dog Books,” said Manuel Simpson. His home is what you would expect of a well-traveled collector. Beautiful rugs and paintings sit on the walls. Books and DVDs are stacked neatly.
Simpson is in his late 70s. He’s a little eccentric and very well-read. 5 Dog Books has been around since 1980.
“I deal mostly in rare books or hard-to-find books about Nevada history and Nevada Indians to include sometimes railroading and some mining,” said Simpson. “I have more books on Nevada history than anybody has ever had. Only because I’ve had so long to go around and buy them up.”
Simpson sees the value in having local books, which is part of his sales pitch.
“I’ve found and it may not be true anymore that the only way to get somebody to buy books was to make them feel guilty so when broaching a certain subject like Nevada Indians or the history of Pyramid Lake I would say what you don’t know this and they would buy the book. I couldn’t make them feel guilty enough to read William Faulkner… so it’s simply a local reason,” said Simpson. “I think other people oughta know what it is that’s going on where you live. Wallace Stevens starts a little poem with the lines ‘I am what it is around me.’ And if we are what it is around us. Then we should know something about what is around us.”
We walked between the yard connecting his home to the shop. It was full of arugula that had spread years and years ago. He picked some for me and with bundles of arugula in his hand told me his theory that older cultures must have come up with reincarnation after watching plants spread.
Simpson moved a stack of chairs that had been blocking the door. Inside it was dusty.
The artwork caught my eye immediately. Dozens of sand paintings were scattered across the rooms, some no bigger than a palm and others the size of laptops. Simpson explained their origin.
“They started doing sand paintings on boxes and other things. But, I was told that the sand paintings in frames were sold by art galleries. The sand paintings without frames were sold by the Indians themselves on a blanket on the street mostly in Arizona … Sand painting is basically a Navajo art that’s where they were,” said Simpson. “These are mostly Yei,… the females have oblong faces and the males have round faces. These things used to be done on the ground. They would do sand paintings and it was used as a healing process for somebody who was sick and when the patient recovered they would destroy the sandpainting.”
Simpson also showed me his collection of hand-woven Seri baskets. He also has one small Paiute basket, handwoven out of fallen pine needles.
“I first started collecting baskets when I was [visiting] with a group of Indians in Northern Mexico called Seri Indians. They have been called by many people the wildest people on earth and I met some women accidentally and we made fun of one another for about five hours on a blanket,” said Simpson. “Then they decided to take me home with them which was two hours north on a dirt road and I started going down there. I must have gone down there half a dozen different times and I would take them clothes and they would make me baskets and I loved it.”
The baskets are beautiful and intricate. Red, tan, and black fibers are woven to provide structure for their tapered shape. 5 Dog Books is a special world onto its own, full of treasures with a curator unlike any other in Reno.
Ariel Smith reports for the Reynolds Sandbox.
