Navajo Administrative History

But that appropriation was the only allocation of federal money for Navajo for more than another decade. The monument remained far outside the mainstream of Park Service efforts. During the 1920s, the agency developed its focus on the "crown jewel" national parks, places such as Yellowstone and Yosemite. The agency spent the 1920s developing facilities for visitors at these flagship parks, and a two-tiered park system developed. The places with the most attractive and spectacular scenery also had roads, hotels, and amenities; the rest of the system lacked comfortable trappings and appropriations. [19] Generally national monuments were low on the list, and few places were lower than Navajo National Monument. Located in a remote and seemingly inhospitable corner of the Navajo reservation, it had few of the attributes that Americans sought when they looked at their park system.

Even the advent of a system of management for park areas in the Southwest did little to help Navajo. In 1924, Frank "Boss" Pinkley, the custodian of Casa Grande National Monument in south central Arizona, became the superintendent of the southwestern national monuments. Self-trained, aggressive, folksy, and an avid fan of archeology and archeologists, Pinkley shaped a domain by the force of his will. Between 1924 and the early 1930s, he developed a strategy to promote the national monuments under his jurisdiction, brought hundreds of thousands of visitors to the region, began the professionalization of park management in the Southwest, and brought a spirit of camaraderie to the volunteer custodians in his far-flung domain.

Pinkley was an archeology buff, and the monuments with prehistoric themes benefited most from his administration. He knew most of the first and second generations of southwestern archeologists, from Fewkes and Hewett to Kidder, and had great respect for their work. With so many prehistoric areas in his domain, Pinkley directed much of the attention of southwestern national monuments group toward them.

Among his many important programs, Pinkley focused on standardizing service for visitors and creating a permanent paid professional staff. From his headquarters at Casa Grande, Pinkley provided leadership and guidance, holding seminars, evaluating interpretation programs, and training his staff to work at other park areas. By the late 1920s, small amounts of money for custodians began to appear in the annual budget, and Pinkley slowly replaced "dollar-a-year" volunteers with people he had trained himself. Most of them administered small archeological areas such as Aztec Ruins National Monument in New Mexico. In line with Pinkley's philosophy, these areas were usually close to the main arteries of travel through the region. [20]

But at Navajo National Monument, little changed throughout the 1920s. John Wetherill remained as volunteer custodian. He lived in the tent he pitched there each spring and spent as much time as he could at the ruins, but found himself eternally distracted by the trading post and his guide business. While many of the southwestern monuments were developed and prepared for an onslaught of visitation, Navajo National Monument remained as it had always been: a far-away place that attracted mostly those already aware of its attributes.

Despite Frank Pinkley's desire to promote archeological areas, Navajo National Monument remained peripheral even to the southwestern monuments group. Long after development became common among the archeological areas of the Southwest, Navajo lacked any of the amenities Pinkley and the Park Service had elsewhere for visitors. Pinkley had little reason to invest his few resources in a plan without the infrastructure to attract visitors. As a result, it had no link to the modern world, a reality that was both an advantage and a disadvantage.

One factor that made Navajo unwieldy was that for administrative purposes, the monument was an artificial construct. There were three ruins at Navajo, and the long travel between the ruins crossed reservation land and made simultaneous care of the three impossible. No matter how effective the Navajo grapevine, John Wetherill could not be in all three places at once. Often he was not at any of them. Each of the three ruins was an attraction in its own right, and there was no individual primary feature at the monument. Travelers might focus on any of Betatakin, Keet Seel, or Inscription House. There were no resources to support administration, and a visitor might never realize that each ruin was part of a national monument.

Nor was the monument divorced from its surroundings either figuratively or literally. The area around the monument and Navajo Mountain was considered the most traditional part of the reservation. Conservative Navajo "long-hairs" dominated in the area, and their contact with the Anglo world was limited. As late as 1909, many had never met a white; into the 1910s there were still Indian "attacks" on trading posts and Indian agents. [21] Navajos avoided contact with the outside world, and as a result roads and maps of the area were limited. William B. Douglass had surveyed the area, but most of his markers were lost. As late as the end of the 1910s, there were no accurate cartographic descriptions. The tenor of the region in which it was located greatly influenced the growth of the monument. Its isolation prevented the kind of travel that usually generated dollars from Washington, D. C.

Access also remained a major problem. No roads had been built through the area, limiting travel to the existing trails. The trail through Marsh Pass was purported to be an old military wagon road from the 1850s; wags felt it was still in about the same condition seventy-five years later. The most commonly used way to arrive at Navajo National Monument was to follow the path from Marsh Pass that Richard Wetherill first took in the 1890s. This approach followed Laguna Creek to Tsegi Canyon, which wound its way toward Betatakin up one branch and to Keet Seel along another. Coming first from Oljato and later from nearby Kayenta, both north of the monument, John Wetherill institutionalized the path. He took Cummings, Judd, and others that way; in turn they showed others such as William B. Douglass, who Judd took to the area after the discovery of Rainbow Bridge. By 1910, this was the way nearly every Anglo-American arrived at Betatakin or Keet Seel. [2]

This principal access route was neither dependable nor easy. The trip along the main trail from Flagstaff could take as much as six days--under the best of circumstances--and any inclement weather made the ordeal even worse. Marsh Pass could be as much as a day from Kayenta alone, although Wetherill and Clyde Colville improved much of that stretch after 1910. As late as 1910, there was no road into the Tsegi at all. The Fewkes party had to build its own through one of the washes, then about fifteen or twenty feet deep. Fewkes had his men use a slip scraper to construct this trail to convey the buckboard wagon in which his wife rode. She was "not one to walk," Fred S. Garing, who worked as a laborer on the expedition, later recalled. The party went first to Betatakin, then to Keet Seel, and later made the forty-mile trip to Inscription House. [23]

Fewkes' trail cemented the main route to reach the ruins. It certainly suited John Wetherill. The trail led almost directly from his trading post at Kayenta, and as a result, he could keep a close watch on Betatakin and Keet Seel. It also helped his guide business, although his style of driving did not. Wetherill was known to stop his car at the bottom of every steep rise, put it in low gear, push the accelerator to the floor, and never slack off until he reached the top. Cummings also used this trail for his frequent trips to the area, and it became the favored way selected by archeologists. By 1914, it was clearly if roughly demarcated. Although in earlier accounts, the difficulty of the trip elicited comment, by 1914 it seemed no more difficult than any other part of the journey to a remote corner of the reservation.

The old entrance road could be difficult to traverse.

Small developments in the area began to create new ways to reach the ruins. A closely regulated network of trading posts grew, some independent, others belonging to the Babbitt brothers of Flagstaff. One of these was at Shonto, about ten miles southwest of Betatakin. In the winter of 1929-30, Harry and Elizabeth Rorick took over the trading post. Unlike the previous inhabitants of the trading post, they were attracted to it in part because of the proximity to Betatakin. Friends of the Wetherills, they planned a future guide service to the ruins. The Roricks hired two local Navajos, Cap Wolf and Bob Black, who later worked at the park for many years, to build new guest hogans for visitors, entertained a number of important Park Service officials, and tried to attract people to their trading post.

But the trading post needed better access. The first step was some sort of road. The Roricks engineered a road to the west toward Begashibito, which was soon washed out by unusually bad flooding in the fall of 1930. Harry Rorick had some road surveying experience, and together with a crew of Navajos and some equipment from the Indian agent in Tuba City, he built a new road to the east that went near Betatakin and linked up with the main road to Flagstaff. Via Shonto, there was now a new way to reach Betatakin. [24]

The Roricks worked to promote Shonto as an alternative route to reach Betatakin. Elizabeth Rorick had ties to the National Park Service and Harry Rorick at one time worked for Fred Harvey's tourist service operation. In late April or early May 1931, Harry Rorick started his push to bring Shonto to the attention of the Fred Harvey Company. He took E. M. Ennis, second-in-charge of the Harvey operation at the Grand Canyon, and Ray Williams, the official photographer for the Harvey company, to Betatakin for a camping trip. Rorick was trying to sell them on the idea of a Shonto-based Indian Detour side trip from the Grand Canyon.

The trip was enjoyable, but it had serious consequences. After the party left, John Wetherill found the campsite covered with trash. Worse, Ennis had carved his name into a tree on the approach to Betatakin. Wetherill communicated this to Frank Pinkley at Casa Grande, who promptly exploded.

Pinkley had spent more than twenty years trying to teach the traveling public to behave, and wanton behavior like this from ostensibly responsible people was too much. In typical fashion, Pinkley fired off a missive to Rorick demanding an apology, threatening legal action, and generally assailing the character of anyone who would behave in this fashion. Pinkley often overreacted in such situations, for he had an evident proprietary feeling for each of the southwestern monuments, a lack of regard for those who had no respect for government property, and a quick temper. [25]

But Pinkley had not counted on Elizabeth C. Rorick's response. Before her marriage to Rorick, she had been married to Michael Harrison, who worked for the Park Service at the Grand Canyon. She knew a number of influential bureau people, including Horace Albright, who became director of the NPS in 1929. Elizabeth Rorick contacted Albright, explaining that Pinkley made a mistake attributing the mess in the canyon to Harry Rorick's party and acknowledging Ennis' name carving. She also stressed the Roricks' desire to work closely with the Park Service to promote the region, using the magic Harvey name. [26] The Park Service relented, and the new approach to Betatakin became acceptable to the agency.

Clearly the road from Shonto worried John Wetherill. It intruded on his dominance of hospitality in the region and made the level of protection he could offer the monument inadequate. The trading post at Kayenta would cease to be a necessary stop for visitors to Tsegi Canyon. The new road had the potential to threaten John Wetherill's livelihood, and his response showed how clearly he recognized the challenge. Wetherill suggested that the road would encourage more grazing of the canyon floor, and made it a point to alert the agency to every instance of vandalism that occurred when travelers came from Shonto. Park Service officials recognized Wetherill's position for what it was, and the road from Shonto grew in importance.

Ironically, the change in direction of approach provided Keet Seel with de facto protection that it never before enjoyed. Coming from the west to the closed end of Tsegi Canyon above Betatakin made Keet Seel a remote destination. Not only did visitors have to descend from the mesa, they had to ride another seven miles and successfully negotiate a change in canyon branch. Most of the travelers who reached Shonto were not equal to the task. In contrast the trip from Kayenta gave travelers a nearly equal chance to see Betatakin or Keet Seel. Coming from Marsh Pass, they faced two different forks of the same canyon and could visit either ruin with equal difficulty. The change in direction made Keet Seel more remote, and for some visitors, it was less impressive than Betatakin. In the 1920s, one remarked, it "was a let-down to me after Betatakin." [27] Less spectacular and more thoroughly excavated, Keet Seel began to recede from the primary position it occupied beginning in the 1890s.

Yet the emergence of the Shonto route as the primary approach to Betatakin was fraught with problems. The trail was poorly marked, and a number of visitors, including Agnes Morley Cleaveland, who later became a noted southwestern author, lost their way. The increase in visitation that John Wetherill did not supervise or know of led to instances of vandalism, and clearly more protection was essential. Stock also wandered into the Betatakin area, damaging the ruins and accelerating existing erosion. The Roricks wanted trail markers between Shonto and the ruins, and visitors such as Cleaveland echoed their sentiments. [28]

Frank Pinkley found himself in a difficult situation. The Roricks had created a new approach that bypassed John Wetherill, and in fact was a far more convenient to way to reach Betatakin. Pinkley felt he needed to carefully address this situation, for Wetherill and the Roricks were in economic competition. Pinkley did not want to create any appearance that the Park Service favored Wetherill because he served as custodian of the ruins. Pinkley also appreciated the hospitality that the Roricks offered visitors and felt that their activities helped promote the monument. Their service was far less expensive than Wetherill's and the trip was shorter as well. Pinkley opted to study the situation before committing NPS resources to fence trails. [29]

The situation was further complicated by the construction of a new road to the rim of Tsegi Canyon by the Forestry Service of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The road stretched from the Shonto Trading Post to what is now called Tsegi Point, and Park Service engineers planned a trail to Betatakin. Its construction meant that visitors could bring their cars within a mile of the ruins. John Wetherill misunderstood the descriptions given him by BIA and the NPS engineers. He thought the road would end above Betatakin at the south end of the canyon and the trail would proceed to the ruin from there. Walter Atwell, one of the leading NPS field engineers, visited the region. He and Wetherill traversed the canyon and found the new road and stakes for the trail. The location posed fewer problems for Wetherill. It did not offer an easier way for stock to reach the ruins, nor did it favor the Roricks' enterprise over his own. [30]

But the new approach and the embryonic development program suggested the inauguration of major change in the patterns of visitation at the ruins of Tsegi Canyon. While accommodating visitors had been an objective for Navajo even during GLO administration of the ruins, the numbers had never seemed a threat. Despite the rugged conditions, the advent of tourism at Shonto required a response, particularly because the Park Service emphasized service in the 1920s and the New Deal made creating an infrastructure possible. Faced with growing numbers of visitors, the agency needed to take action.

Farther to the west at Inscription House, a similar process occurred. In 1926, Samuel I. Richardson left Rainbow Lodge to build a new trading post on Red Mesa. Called Inscription House Trading Post after the ruins in the canyon below, the new post replicated the advantages of Oljato, Kayenta, and Shonto before it. It was distant enough from the nearest posts to have an intrinsic local trade of its own and it held the added attraction of the ruin in the canyon. Richardson blasted out a four-foot wide trail through stone from the mesa to the ruins below and began to set up a cottage industry similar to that of Richard Wetherill in the late nineteenth century. Numerous parties of archeologists and buffs, some from respected museums, packed down the trail, and in the late 1920s, at least one hundred mule-loads of artifacts came out. Yucca sandals, pottery and baskets, turquoise, shellbeads, and bracelets, fabrics woven of human and dog hair, wooden fetishes, and many other artifacts were taken for public and private collections. [31]

Richardson's activities attracted the attention of Park Service personnel. Richardson was open about his actions, and visiting agency people heard rumors of numerous unauthorized collections. In early 1930, Ansel F. Hall, Chief Naturalist of the Park Service, brought the situation to Frank Pinkley's attention. According to Hall, who spent the summer of 1929 in the Navajo National Monument area, Richardson had been involved in pot-hunting since his days at Rainbow Lodge and had sold much of what he found to the Heard Museum in Phoenix. Hall acquired the information in confidence and had not been able to confirm it. Pinkley checked out the rumor with the Heard Museum, where officials unequivocally denied the charge. Pinkley was inclined to believe them, for he thought Richardson knew well the rules governing illegal pot-hunting. Tourists comprised a large percentage of his business at both Rainbow Lodge and Inscription House, and Pinkley thought that Richardson recognized that he depended on Park Service cooperation. Pinkley promised to remain vigilant, but found little to confirm Hall's suspicions. [32]