Utah. It embraces parts of San Juan and McKinley Counties in New Mexico, the Navajo and Apache Counties in Arizona, part of Coconino County in Arizona, and the southern part of San Juan County in Utah.

For the purpose of administration the Navajo country is divided into the superintendencies I have mentioned, but all this area, with a population of over 32,000 Navajos, may properly be handled for the purpose of a survey as a single unit. This great area includes vast stretches of practically worthless desert lands, millions of acres covered by mountain ranges and cut and slashed by canyons, dry washes, and valleys; but a large proportion of the land, semiarid though it be, is rough grazing land which is used by the Navajo Indians for raising their sheep, goats, horses, and cattle. Navajo country is the largest undeveloped area of land under the supervision of the Indian Office and is peopled by the largest tribe of American Indians. Although I traveled hundreds of miles through this country I saw but small parts of it and I doubt if the superintendent of any Navajo Reservation, excluding Leupp, has seen or ever will see all the land under his supervision.

The

The Navajos are shepherds; sheep is the economic basis of Navajo life. The sheep must be moved to find grass and water and to adjust the flocks to seasonal changes. Because of necessity the Navajo families live wide apart from each other. Their hogans, as they call their beehive-shaped habitations of logs, branches, stones, and dirt, are located with reference to convenient access to water and wood. Each family has two or more hogans which are used for summer and winter and as the demand for grass and water for their sheep compels them to move from place to place they occupy during the year their several hogans.

This family isolation, together with the nomadic habit of the Navajos and the difficulty in traveling over the country caused by mountains, canyons, quick sands, and precipitous bluffs which edge high mesas, have made it well-nigh impossible to take an accurate census of the entire Navajo people.

In 1915, under the supervision of Father Weber, Superior of the Franciscan Fathers at St. Michaels, Ariz., an accurate, scientifically planned census of the Navajo Reservation, whose scat of government is at Fort Defiance, Ariz., was made. This census was so comprehensive and complete that it offers a sound basis for estimating the entire population of the Navajo country. The best authorities agree there are over 32,000 Navajo Indians in that part of the United States and that between 7.000 and 9,000 are children of school age.

The Navajos are a prolific race: I found children in almost every hogan and families with four and five children are common. There is every evidence that the Navajos, who are over 95 per cent full bloods, are increasing in population to a degree which indicates that within a generation their country will not be able to sustain them unless the water supply for stock and domestic purposes is increased. Water is the prime essential for the economic and social development of the Navajo people.

The irrigation division of the Indian Office has done the seemingly impossible in the development of underground water for stock and domestic purposes; the lines of wells which were sunk 6 to 8

66

miles apart were equipped with pumps operated by windmills, and the numerous seeps" which have been developed into real springs bear testimony to the achievements, accomplished under remarkably adverse conditions, of the staff of the irrigation division. The Indians have a saying "where water is there is no grass, where grass is there is no water." This epigram states the case completely for there are great areas of grass land in which there is no water for stock and there are good springs so far remote from grass lands that they are useless so far as the sheep are concerned.

The irrigation division with its wells has brought water to waterless grass areas and thus has greatly increased the range and this increased grazing area makes it possible for more Indians to live and sustain themselves in the Navajo country. I doubt if any money appropriated for Indians by Congress has reached the high efficiency of the few thousand dollars appropriated for developing the water supply in the Navajo county.

There are something like 14,000,000 acres of land, of all kinds, that have an economic value in this country. Of this acreage 51,000 acres are classed as agricultural (an eastern farmer would call almost all of such land worthless) and the Indians farm less than 25,000 acres but use all of the 13,800,000 acres of grazing land for their flocks which aggregate nearly 1,300,000 sheep and goats; their herd of scrub ponies numbering 80,000 and their cattle which total about 38,000 head. An agricultural survey of this country has never been made; the estimate of 51,000 acres of agricultural land is based on the known area which might be irrigated. Undoubtedly there are large tracts of soil which need only water to make them productive but such lands lie so far from the present available water sources that the cost to irrigate them is prohibitive.

I found three problems pressing for solution, land, school, and water. The land problem involves over 100 townships in the public domain east and south of the Navajo, Moqui, and Leupp Reservations. These townships are occupied and, in common with white stockmen, used by some 6.000 nonreservation Navajo Indians. The solution of the land problem calls for congressional legislation and negotiation between the Department of the Interior and the railroad companies. The water and school problems affect the whole Indian population. The water supply can be increased through larger appropriations, and a school census and new school policy are necessary to arrive at a satisfactory solution of the school problem.

The Santa Fe Railroad skirts the southern edge of this country, and for 50 miles on each side of its right of way the public domain is a checkerboard, for the odd-number sections belong to the Santa Fe and Frisco Railroad Cos.. and the even-number sections are the public domain. Almost all of the nonreservation or public domain Navajos live north of the Santa Fe right of way. The railroad lands in the Navajo country have been sold or leased. Indians have leased some of the townships. The railroads not only have the legal right to sell their lands, but such sales would be in line with the best business practices, for the railroads have been paying taxes on these lands for years. The Santa Fe Railroad for a number of years refused to sell its lands because it hoped that some way would be 140923°- -INT 1919-VOL 2- -16

opened which would allow the Indians to acquire the railroad sections, but, apparently, the Santa Fe Railroad has come to the conclusion the Government can not or will not develop a practical method by which the railroad lands can be secured for the Indians, and such lands now are offered for sale. If the railroad sells the railroad sections to white cattlemen the Navajo Indians, now occupying and using the lands, practically will be evicted, and the land problem will cease to trouble the Government, for it will be transformed into an ordinary problem of caring for several thousand destitute men, women, and children.

The public domain to the east and south of the reservation is occupied, as I have said, by some 6,000 nonreservation Navajo Indians. Several thousand Indian allotments of 160 acres each have been selected, but the allotments have not been approved, nor have any trust patents been issued to the Indians. A few of the white men have homesteaded. The white homesteads are of 640 acres each, four times the size of an Indian allotment. Every useable square foot of all the public domain area under consideration is grazed by sheep, goats, horses, and cattle; there is not an idle acre in the country, except desert and rock-clad lands which are of no use and can not be used for any purpose.

The 6,000 nonreservation Navajos on the public domain were born on the land, as were their ancestors; in every respect, except actual ownership, it is their land, but not an Indian owns a foot of it. Although they do not live on reservations and, therefore, are nonreservation Indians they belong to the Navajo tribe and retain their tribal relations. Although they are nonreservation Indians, receiving nothing from the Government in the shape of money or land, they are wards of the Government, for the Government has assumed supervision over them. The Pueblo Bonito jurisdiction is entirely on the public domain; the agency seat is at Crownpoint, N. Mex., where a reservation boarding school is located. This jurisdiction is called a reservation, but actually it is an agency.

These Indians are self-supporting they get no money or rations from the Government-they neither ask nor want anything from the Government. Like all Navajo Indians they are herdsmen, each family owning sheep, goats, horses, and some cattle. The Pueblo Bonito Indians are typical Navajos and conditions on the Pueblo Bonito jurisdiction are typical of a very large part of the whole Navajo country. This jurisdiction covers an area, approximately, of 60 by 50 miles and 60 of the 100 townships under consideration are in the Pueblo Bonito area. Thirty-three townships (that is the railroad lands in 33 townships) are leased to white men and 7 to Indians who pay from $230 to $280 rental for a township a year. There are but 34 white homesteaders in this area. According to the best information obtainable about 90 sections of railroad lands have been sold. In all the Pueblo Bonito jurisdiction there is not one living stream of water. There are 9 artesian wells, the largest of which is on a white man's land and is fenced off so that the Indians can not use the water. There are about 20 stock wells equipped with windmills, 6 shallow lakes (mere drainage ponds) which, with the exception of one, are dry most of the year, and a number of so-called springs which are really "seeps" from which the water oozes out from the sand, and that spring is considered an important source of water

supply if a gallon of water can be collected from it inside of five

minutes.

White stockmen figure that 640 acres, a square mile, will support from 10 to 20 steers or from 20 to 60 sheep, depending upon the For two years there has been an abnormal drought and a number of white lessees have moved their cattle from the ranges in this country. All the range is overgrazed and white men and Indians agree that it will take several years of good grass seasons and careful grazing to renew the range.

It is quite certain if it had not been for the drought and the effect of war on labor and man power much, if not all, of this public domain would now be under the complete control of white men and the Indians would have been evicted simply because they would not have been able to compete with the white stockmen. By leasing and buying railroad sections, homesteading and leasing State school sections, a white man can control a grazing unit which would give him the absolute monopoly of from one to three townships. If this railroad land is sold it will be sold to white men and there will be a reversal of economic conditions for a few white stockmen and their white employees will take the place of 6,000 producing and purchasing Indians; and instead of 6,000 Indian customers the stores at Gallup, Holbrook, Thoreau, Winslow, and other railroad centers, will have but a mere handful of cow boys and stock bosses; instead of 6,000 men, women, and children buying food, clothing, supplies, and even some of the smaller luxuries, there will be several thousand Navajo men, women, and children to be cared for by the State or Government or both.

The effect of this reversal of economic conditions upon the towns along the railroad would be serious to local merchants and the increase of live-stock shipments over the railroad would not amount to much. This is the opinion I found among a number of business men who formerly opposed doing anything which might tend to secure the public domain for the use of the nonreservation Navajo Indians. The citizens of Arizona and New Mexico are outspoken in their opposition to any increase of the present great area of nontaxpaying lands in those States by the extension of Indian reservations or the making of new ones. When it is considered about 36,500 square miles of New Mexico and Arizona are Indian lands, which do not pay taxes; that the total area of both States is around 336,000 square miles; that enormous forest areas are set apart in National Forest Reserves; that thousands of acres are in national monuments and tens of thousands of acres are still public domain, it is small wonder the taxpaying citizens of the two States are opposed to giving more land to nontaxpaying Indians.

This public sentiment must be taken into account in any attempt to secure the public domain for the permanent use of the Indians. It was this sentiment which stopped the efforts of the Government to exchange some of the railroad lands for lands in other parts of the country and to turn these railroad lands over to the Indians by covering them with an Executive order. As a basic proposition, on which to build up plans to secure lands to the public-domain Navajos, the payment of taxes by the Indians must be considered. I am strongly of the opinion from my talks with the

nonreservation Navajos that most of them will willingly pay taxes if they are given that confidence in their future which comes with the assurance of permanent land occupancy.

As I have shown, public-domain sections and railroad sections alternate, forming a checkerboard. This arrangement, made in the early days of railroad land grants, was a wise and far-sighted precaution of the Government, designed to prevent the railroads from withholding large blocks of good agricultural lands from settlement for future profit. In those days little thought was given to the arid and semiarid lands in Arizona and New Mexico, useful only for rough grazing and usable only in large units. In Arizona and New Mexico men do not talk of grazing land in terms of sections or acres; about the smallest unit of rough grazing land they consider is a township of 23,000 acres. In the east, where 40 acres of good land are enough for a profitable farm, it was well that sections should be regarded as large units, but 610 acres, a square mile, of Arizona and New Mexico public domain are not enough to feed more than 16 steer or 75 to 80 sheep. It is not agricultural land, for there is no water for irrigation. It only can be used for rough grazing and much of it can not be used for even that. The checkerboarding of this land is an embarrassment to the development of the country, an unfair arrangement, and no longer can be justified. It is unsound economically and no one can offer a valid reason for the continuance of the system.

This is the way representatives and business men of that country are talking to-day. They are seriously considering the urging of legislation which will enable the Secretary of the Interior to negotiate with the railroads and other parties in interest for rearranging the public domain on each side of the Santa Fe Railroad in Arizona and New Mexico, so that all the Government lands will be blocked in solid townships or parts of townships and all the railroad sections likewise. The idea is not new; it has been brought to Washington several times but the white people of Arizona and New Mexico could not get together on the proposition. It lacked influential local backing. Public sentiment favoring what is known as "blocking" the land is increasing and the time seems ripe for bringing this matter to the attention of the Department of the Interior and Congress in the interest, not only of the Indians, but the white people.

It might be asked "in what way would blocking the public domain and railroad lands benefit the nonreservation Indians?" It must be borne in mind that the white people who are beginning to favor this proposition are not considering the Indians at all; they have in mind all of the railroad land-grant belt contiguous to the Santa Fe right of way in both States, Arizona and New Mexico. The Navajo Indians occupy only about 100 townships in this belt, a relatively small area.' If the proposed rearrangement of the public and railroad sections went no further than merely blocking the land the Indians would be but little better off than they now are. It is probable there would be less friction with white stockmen but their future would be as uncertain as it now is.

To benefit the Indians through this proffered plan it would be necessary to secure the public domain for their permanent use and this only can be done through appropriate legislation and depart