The Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute: An American Tragedy

665 Pages·1999·2.68 MB·English

by  David M. Brugge

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Page i
The Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute
Page ii
Page iii
The Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute
An American Tragedy
David M. Brugge
UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO PRESS
ALBUQUERQUE
© 1994 by the University of New Mexico Press
All rights reserved. First Edition
First paperbound printing, 1999
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brugge, David M.
The Navajo-Hopi land dispute : an American tragedy / David M. Brugge.1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents; Friends and enemies, the history of an ambiguous relationshipPeace
and strifePreparation, the road to PrescottPrescottThe long waitProgress (of
sorts)False hopesConfrontationThe end of the lineFinal thoughts.
ISBN 0-8263-1513-5 (cloth)
ISBN 0-8263-2156-9 (pbk)
1. Navajo IndiansLand tenure. 2. Navajo IndiansLand transfers. 3. Hopi
IndiansLand tenure. 4. Indians of North AmericaArizonaLand transfers. 5. Indians
of North AmericaGovernment relations1934-I. Title.
E99.N3B757 1994
979.1'3'0047972dc20
93-46954
Frontispiece by Tony Hood.
Page v
To Ruth
Page vii
Contents
List of Maps viii
Introduction ix
1. Friends and Enemies 3
The History of an Ambiguous Relationship
Apache-Pueblo Dynamics 4
Spanish Exploration 5
Spanish Colonial Period 5
Mexican Independence 16
Summary of Hispanic Times 18
Anglo Rule 19
2. Peace and Strife 24
3. Preparation: 40
The Road to Prescott
4. Prescott 67
5. The Long Wait 93
6. Progress (of Sorts) 134
7. False Hopes 161
8. Confrontation 197
9. The End of the Line 217
10. Final Thoughts 241
Afterword 258
Notes 259
Sources 285
Index 295
Page viii
Maps
1. Navajo Country Prior to 1974 2
2. 1882 Executive Order Reservation 26
3. Archaeological Subareas 41
Page ix
Introduction
When I first went to work for the Navajo Tribe in 1958 to assist in
research for their land claim case against the U.S. government and
eventually for other land disputes, I already had many Navajo friends
whom I could easily accept as people, each with his or her own unique
personality. I entered into the work with a firm belief that our system
of courts was also a system of justice and that if we could demonstrate
fairly that Navajos had long occupied certain tracts of land, their
claims would be upheld.
When I was assigned to work on Healing v. Jones (the by-now
infamous Navajo-Hopi land dispute case), I believed there was some
small risk that the tribe might lose, but as the work progressed and I
came to know the Navajo people living in the 1882 Executive Order
Reservation, to learn their history as revealed by their traditions, by
our archeological investigations, and by the archival accounts written
by white observers, I found that I could fully sympathize with their
cause. I could not believe that my own government, which I had been
raised to trust, would ever dispossess so many poverty-stricken and
thoroughly traditional people from a land upon which their lives and
well-being were so completely dependent. I was aware of the bias
against the Navajos that was, and still is, widespread in the Southwest,
but again I had been so convinced of the basic fairness of our society
that I could not conceive of such prejudice influencing official
government decisions. I even prided myself that I was helping the
Navajos find a way within the legal system of the United States to
settle peacefully a boundary problem that would be a proper fence to
make good neighbors for a long a time to come.
I was still in many ways the naive young man who, as a draftee in the
army not too many years before, had given up my seat on a bus in