Canyon de Chelly Administrative History

1. Denis Foster Johnston, An Analysis of Sources of Information on the Population of The Navaho, BAE Bulletin 197 (Washington: GPO, 1966), p. 49.

2. Curator to Gen. Supt., July 15, 1974, Chaco Center, H30.

3. David M. Brugge, "Indian Control of Educational and Medical Institutions in Navajo Country," paper read at the Western History Association Conference, Rapid City, South Dakota, Oct. 3, 1974.

4. Robert B. Edgerton, "Some Dimensions of Disillusionment in Culture Contact," Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 21, no. 3, pp. 231-43. Edgerton, basing his theses on observations among the Menomini in North America and among four tribes in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanganyika in East Africa, holds a very pessimistic view of the durability of "European-Native" friendships. While much of what he writes is quite true, the implication that such relationships are impossible does not fit all Navajo-white relationships and may have been unintended on his part. He contrasts two extreme types of relationships, one in which both parties adhere rigidly to socially sanctioned roles based on the political subordinance of the native group and one that he calls "pseudo-friendship," in which the "European" makes condescendingly energetic efforts to befriend the "native," motivated by intense idealism but with neither party having a very realistic view of the cultural demands of such a relationship in terms of the other culture. Intermediate degrees of friendship that allow for greater flexibility and that build on creative modifications of socially defined roles rather than on either strict conformance or total rejection seem to be those that have the best prospects of success, at least between whites and Navajos at the present time (1974).