When first, as an employee of the Government, I answered the
grave salutation of the red man, the buffalo roamed at will
over the great plains of the Sioux country; the iron horse
had not crossed the Minnesota boundary; the dull, plodding
ox was the courier and herald of the culture that was stowed
in embryo in the prairie schooner; Chicago was just beginning
to throw off its swaddling-clothes under a blanket of smoke;
St. Paul was the frontier to the Northwest ... and that was
only a generation ago.—McLaughlin: My Friend, the Indian
The work of this reservation was that of a frontier. Until the late
nineties, army officers, acting as agents, had administered affairs
from Fort Defiance, distant about eighty-five miles from the First Mesa
of the Hopi. The country between these points is rough, and in winter
often impassable. The commanding officer did not make the two days’
journey frequently, and when he did, entertainment at trading-posts
would occupy most of his time. There were no other local stations.
Until 1887 no official of this Government resided permanently within
the Hopi territory; so that, from Spanish times until that date, these
Indians had received little attention.
In 1886 a petition, signed by twenty Hopi head-men, requested
Washington to give them a school, that their children might “grow up
good of heart and pure of breath.” But one of these men, Honani of
Chimopovi, always a friendly chief, is now alive. Shupula, who signed
as Second Chief of the Moki, died, a benign old man, in 1917.
So in 1887 a school was started in Keams Cañon, at the site of one of
Carson’s old camps, a picturesque alcove of the walls having a group of
springs, and where Tom Keams, a trading Englishman, had long kept a
post. Twelve years later a resident Agent, having authority to act as
one in complete charge, was appointed.
Between the years 1890 and 1916, sub-Agents and the later Agents
accomplished much permanent work for the people. The first school was
succeeded by a modern training school in the lower Cañon. An Agency
radiated orders and the tools of civilization. In the field at the
pueblos were six day-schools to care for the younger children. Five
hundred pupils attended regularly. The Indian youngsters advanced from
the kindergarten and primary day-schools to the training school, where
they received some knowledge of trades, and from thence to the larger
non-reservation schools, patterned after Carlisle, such as are at
Albuquerque, New Mexico; Phœnix, Arizona; Riverside, California.
But not only in point of education had there been progress. Tracks of
the reserve had become roads, as the Indians were supplied wagons and
implements; and ascending the rocky mesas, linking the different
villages, were highways that had been cut from the solid rock, and
that, considering the means and cost, were fair pieces of engineering.
The Agents had built and enlarged the schools, and had opened mines to
supply the winter fuel. The live stock of both tribes—for the Navajo
came to this Agency—showed improvement. A most important advance had
been made in medication. Three physicians attended the several
districts. Trachoma had been greatly reduced. There was no longer the
dread of uncontrolled epidemics, such as that one of smallpox that
nearly wiped out the Hopi in 1780. And after 1913 a well-appointed
hospital received the serious cases, especially those requiring
surgical treatment. Between 1911 and 1919 vaccines were freely used to
combat smallpox, typhoid, tetanus, pneumonia, and influenza. The
Pasteur treatment was given. Surgery, minor and major, was a matter of
routine, and with low mortality.
Whereas in 1900 the first Agent had but twenty-one employees, in 1915
there were above one hundred serving the various activities of the
Empire. A force of water-development men, locally known as “witches,”
had greatly augmented the water-supply to the pueblos and their stock,
through enlarging mesa-springs and the drilling of shallow wells in the
washes. The supreme water-witch of the Empire, Mr. A. H. Womack, in
later years discovered artesian flows. And by far the most of this work
was accomplished after 1910.
But of troubles there had been no end. It not only was necessary to
conquer frontier handicaps,—the distance from supplies, the bitter
winters that blighted transportation, and the frequent changes of a
restless and dissatisfied employee-force,—but was also necessary to
fight the superstition and not always negative resistance of a
fanatical and unreasoning people. Five times between 1899 and 1911
troops were sent to this reserve to quell disturbances or to enforce
Governmental regulations.
One of the great reasons for Indian unrest had been that few Agents
remained in charge long enough to influence the people. It requires at
least four years of patient work to know the Hopi, to gain his
confidence, if indeed one ever gets it. And in the thirty-two years
after 1887 there were eleven different officers in charge. Prior to
1911, the longest period of service had been a little more than four
years. Men quit or were transferred before they had made a beginning.
Twenty years of the time were divided among nine officials, little more
than two years for each, scarcely long enough to learn the country and
its divisions. I recall some lonely years in the Desert, when the Cañon
walls seemed a prison, but I am now glad to write that I directed its
Hopi-Navajo population for more than eight years, twice the time of any
other Governmental officer.
Of those who had the early work, there were two who exerted a strong
personal influence: Mr. Ralph Collins, who was twice appointed a
sub-Agent, and Mr. Charles E. Burton, who was the first Indian Agent.
Collins had not complete authority, and his efforts were not always
supported, but much of suspicion among the Hopi could have been avoided
if he had been listened to. Burton, having carried out certain fool
orders, was hounded by sentimentalists during most of his service. But
both these men accomplished things for the Hopi people, and are kindly
remembered among the elders. Their improvements have not entirely
disappeared, and wherever one finds an English-speaking Hopi of middle
age, the credit may be given to one of these men.
But in 1911 two things had not been finished, and one important thing
was only vaguely planned. There was no fixed policy for the development
of the reserve, and no one had succeeded in breaking the power of
Youkeoma, that hostile witch-doctor who had made trouble since 1887.
One could not hope to succeed without the first, and the success of the
first depended largely on the second. The health work had been
sporadic, and was ineffective without a hospital. My predecessor had
procured an allotment of eight thousand dollars with which to construct
one, whereas thirty thousand—considering Service methods—would not have
been too large a sum.
I felt that a consistent policy of control was vitally necessary; that
the country and the people in it, both whites and Indians, must be
brought under strict regulation; that Youkeoma’s influence must be
broken; and I proposed to use the eight thousand dollars, plus whatever
additional sum I could talk out of Washington, plus the resources of
the reserve in cheap labor, stone, sand, and equipment, mixed with
something approximating brains, to have a hospital that would be a
benefit to the Indians and a credit to the Service, which too often has
constructed buildings that were neither.
Regulation and control required only horse-sense and a little vision.
Resolution and earnestness, accompanied by justice and fair-dealing,
make a combination that few Indians can resist. The man who fails in
the Southwest Indian country is the one who ignores his people’s
conception of fair play, and who forgets to keep his word. There have
been white men among the Hopi-Navajo who, unmindful of their own two
thousand years of background, proposed to correct everything in an
afternoon. Discovered in 1540, brought under supervision in the recent
eighties, it was and is too big a job for an afternoon.
And why not view with sympathetic consideration the problems of the
Indian who, having little education and no vote, being practically as
inarticulate as a deaf-mute, childish and incompetent, must trust
someone, and is inclined to trust the only official he knows?
Why not be a decent Indian Agent, out of respect for one’s self?
There are relatively few people who know that the United States Indian
Service has a history, a tradition as it were, to be honored and lived
up to. Few men in the service have the lively curiosity and interest in
their charges that is necessary for success among primitive peoples,
few who rise above personal prejudice, who can resist feeble enmity.
There have been the early-day McLaughlins, Sheltons, and Carrolls, each
of whom built himself a Service name by one efficient means or another;
but those men have been in the minority.
Now the Army officer has a tradition, and the Naval officer has one.
Why ought not other Government officials to view their commissions on
as high a plane? Should a reader interpose to mention “scandals”—why,
to be sure; there have been many; but they have not destroyed the
Indian, and they have not ruined the Service. All Departments of the
Government have had scandals of greater or less degree. There was a
certain Arnold, an army officer of very high rank; but we need not go
back so far. There was enough doing in the year of grace, nineteen
hundred and twenty-four, and enough is sometimes too much. There have
been timber scandals, and land scandals, and oil scandals, as the
wealth of the Indian country has been exploited. And there is the
scandal—or should be—of manipulation of individual Indian moneys. And
the scandal of keeping inefficients in office. And some Indian Agents
have gone to jail, and some should be there, accompanied by those who
have protected them. All true, and granted. Nevertheless, the body of
them have an honorable tradition as old as the United States itself.
In 1786, in the Articles of Confederation, consideration was given to
Indian affairs. Two superintendents were provided for, who had the
“comprehension” of all nations of Indians south of the Ohio River and
all west of the Hudson. Their exact “comprehension” was no doubt much
smaller than their outlined territories.
The Federal Constitution of 1788 deemed it important that the Central
Government should have exclusive power over intercourse with Indian
tribes. The Supreme Court of the United States later amplified this to
include everything that may arise out of our relations with the
Indians.
Congress in 1789 appropriated the first moneys to defray expenses of
negotiating and treating with the Indians. While the Commissioners were
referred to as “agents,” their authorities did not extend beyond
treating with the native.
George Washington, in a letter dated August 29, 1789, instructed
Messrs. Benjamin Lincoln, Cyrus Griffin, and David Humphrey as
“commissioners plenipotentiary for negotiating and concluding treaties
of peace with the independent tribes or nations of Indians within the
limits of the United States south of the Ohio River.” This commission
made a report to the Secretary of War, and from its suggestions grew
the licensed-trader system, although the first traders acted as
factors, and to some extent as agents, for the tribes with which they
were affiliated.
Congress in 1790 provided a method for trading with the Indian tribes
under license, but no Indian Agents would appear to have been
authorized, as such, by law prior to 1796, when were established the
trading-houses on the western and southern frontiers, or in the Indian
country, and the appointment of men to manage them under the direction
of the President.
The factors were the first real Agents for routine Indian business.
This was the first experiment. The law limited it to two years, but its
life was extended from time to time until 1822, when the system of
Government trading-houses was abolished.
Acts of 1800, 1802, and 1806 provided for other experiments; and after
1806 there were actually four types of Indian officials:
1. Governors of the various Territories, who were ex-officio
superintendents of Indian Affairs within their jurisdictions.
2. Certain Agents who were primarily under the direction
of these Governors.