Navajo Administrative History

Again the disadvantages of a non-contiguous monument without full-time staffing were apparent. Richardson spent more time at Inscription House than did anybody in the Park Service, and even John Wetherill, with all his knowledge of the region, could do little to prevent Richardson's actions. To people like Richardson, the fruits of prehistory were theirs to harvest; their value system reflected the first-come, first-served ethos of the settlement of the West. Despite the existence of laws like the Antiquities Act, there was little that could be done without an investment of capital and workpower. But the agency still had far too few resources to adequately protect every park and monument, and there were many other park areas ahead of Navajo on the list of NPS priorities.

At this time, national park status was the prize that assured the survival of a park area, and during Horace Albright's administration, acquisition of new park lands was the critical feature of NPS policy. The best way to improve the chances of Navajo National Monument was to elevate it to park status, acquiring new land in the process. During the early years of the depression, Albright successfully made an efficient-management-by consolidation argument on a number of occasions. A number of new and enlarged park areas resulted. By the early 1930s, Navajoland, as the reservation area had been labeled, and the Navajo National Monument area looked like good candidates for such a proposal.

There were major problems to be surmounted in this process, the most significant of which was the presence of Navajo people in the area sought for a national park. Since its inception, the Park Service had focused on scenic parks. The acquisitions of the 1910s and 1920s, from Zion to Grand Teton national parks, all had spectacular natural features. Most were isolated, high mountain areas, where few people lived. But with the authorization of eastern parks areas in the mid-1920s, the NPS found itself displacing people in the Great Smoky Mountains and the Shenandoah region. In one instance at Cades Cove, Tennessee, park rangers and local people engaged in a pitched gun battle when the NPS tried to take over land it acquired through the power of eminent domain. The situation reflected poorly on the NPS, and influential people tried to persuade Albright to change policy. By 1930, Albright had adroitly switched his goals, considering the incorporation of people native to a region in new parks. [33]

The result was an attempt to create a national park in the vicinity of Navajo National Monument. Early in 1931, Roger Toll, the superintendent of Yellowstone National Park and the primary inspector of proposed park areas in the West, arrived to inspect the Navajo reservation. Toll spent a night at Shonto with the Roricks, visited numerous park areas, and produced a report recommending the establishment of Navajo National Park. His proposal suggested that the park should encompass Monument Valley, Canyon de Chelly, and a number of other features in the region. Navajo and Rainbow Bridge national monuments were to be included in a detached section of the proposed park. Toll believed the State of Arizona would support the idea and the Indian Service could be persuaded. Typical of the attitudes of the time, he made no mention of the desires of the Navajo people. [34]

The Park Service geared up for a push to create a new national park. Albright gave Toll's report to Charles Rhoads, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, contacted Robert S. Yard, the driving force behind the National Parks Association, and made plans for a western swing. During the 1920s and early 1930s, this approach typified the acquisition efforts of the Park Service. [35]

Rhoads instantly decided against the project, but that did not thwart the NPS. Rhoads felt that the Navajos needed more, not less land, to offset the growing problem of overgrazing on the reservation. The reservation lands given them after Bosque Redondo did not encompass the traditional boundaries of Navajo inhabitation, and in the 1880s, Navajos began to live on public domain land. Initially this posed little problem, but by the 1930s, a number of changes had come together to create an untenable situation. Some of the best land around the reservation fell into the hands of Anglo and Mexican-American cattlemen and sheepmen. Simultaneously, the Navajo population increased, as did the quantity of their stock. By 1930, a larger number of Navajo and their animals had to subsist on a smaller, more thoroughly used area of land. From Rhoads' perspective, to give up some of that land base for a national park was folly. [36]

This failed to deter Albright, who persisted with the park plan. Albright intended to incorporate the Indians in the park, not expropriate their land, and the proposal was important enough to pursue. Conrad L. Wirth, who entered the Park Service through the New Deal and served as its director from 1951 to 1964, wrote a strong memo supporting Toll's proposal, and despite opposition from Harold C. Bryant, the head of the NPS Division of Education, and Washington B. Lewis, Albright continued. The proposal gathered momentum in the NPS after agency counsel George A. Moskey suggested an agreement with the Navajo similar to the one that helped establish Canyon de Chelly National Monument. In that instance, the Navajo Council sought to manage concessions at the monument. Albright contacted Rhoads again in December 1931, but Rhoads immediately asked him to forgo the project until the Navajo were in a better situation. Albright retreated, but only temporarily. In classic Park Service style, he waited for a better moment. [37]

The need for more land for the Navajo was acute, and Rhoads made a boundary extension of the reservation his priority. At the end of the Hoover administration in the midst of the depression, Congress voted to add the "Paiute Strip" in southern Utah to the reservation. The addition included Rainbow Bridge and much of the Navajo Mountain area. The bill itself was a compromise, passed after negotiation between the state of Utah and Bureau of Indian Affairs. It contained one clause important to the Park Service: "It is agreed that the scenic tracts [in the addition] are to be developed by the National Park Service with the cooperation of the Indian Service." [38]

Albright and the Park Service interpreted this clause as a signal to proceed. By early 1933, the proposal again had life as the NPS tried to capitalize on the activist role of government that was the hallmark of the New Deal. The ascension of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency played a major role in the rebirth of the proposal. Albright was close to Harold L. Ickes, Roosevelt's crusty Secretary of the Interior, and was able to develop high-level support for his projects. Efficiency was the watchword in the federal government. The glib Albright easily convinced many people that consolidating a number of small monuments in one park would trim expenses. In addition, the success of nearby Grand Canyon and Zion national parks strengthened his argument. Navajo people could benefit economically and have their way of life protected simultaneously. Indian Service officials told Wirth that the Navajo would approve as long as the conditions under which the park was established were similar to those at Canyon de Chelly. [39]

During the summer of 1933, the park seemed a certainty. The Bureau of Indian Affairs supported the proposal, and its officials believed that the tribal council would pass the bill at its next meeting. But on July 8, the Navajo Council postponed consideration of the bill until the fall meeting. Park Service officials anxiously awaited the meeting. Minor R. Tillotson, superintendent at Grand Canyon, even volunteered to attend the meeting to present the proposal. [40]

At the meeting in Tuba City in October, the new Commissioner of Indian Affairs, noted reformer John Collier, put forward a comprehensive set of programs to change the basic nature of the Navajo economy. Under a program to protect rangelands from overgrazing, Collier mandated a stock reduction program for the Navajo. Despite opposition, Collier persuaded the Tribal Council to acquiesce. In return, he promised to deliver a boundary extension for the Navajos that would encompass at least part of the railroad checkerboard lands and other parts of the public domain where Navajos lived.

These programs were well-intentioned, but in the end they did vast damage to the Navajo economy. Collier's stock reduction program started as soon as the funds arrived. The number of livestock Navajos owned was dramatically reduced as the BIA sought to make policy that assured the long-range health of the Navajo economy by protecting grazing land for the future. Unfortunately, the program impoverished many Navajos in the short-term, putting many of them in desperate straits. Most were destitute, some starved, and many had to alter their lifestyle in response to the program.

The stock reduction was supposed to assure further expansion of the reservation, but in this effort, Collier failed. In 1933-34, he pushed for an extension of the reservation. The historic roots of the extension dated from the first decade of the twentieth century, when similar efforts to expand the boundaries had been initiated. But in the 1930s, vocal constituencies, generally local Anglo sheep and cattle interests, protested the proposal. The legislative delegations from New Mexico and Arizona fought the bills, and the extension was never granted.

The Navajos were confounded. No event since the exile to the Bosque Redondo in the 1860s was more demoralizing than the enforced stock reduction plan. Collier had been their advocate for more than a decade, but in one seemingly capricious and poorly communicated action, he destroyed all the good will he previously established. The Navajos became suspicious of any government program as the effects of the stock reduction and the failure to gain land in New Mexico loomed as a threat to the Navajo way of life.

The NPS tried to ride on the tails of increased federal involvement on the reservation to get the park established. The New Deal gave federal agencies greater power than they previously had and agencies such as the Park Service sought to convert that power into tangible gains. Navajo National Park was not designed to create a landscape without people as had earlier national parks; instead it proposed to incorporate the Navajo into a living, breathing national park that would use the largess of the modern world to protect the Navajo way of life.

This seemingly patronizing approach typified the paradox for Indians and other minorities contained within the New Deal. Federal programs proposed the use of science to restore degraded environments, but simultaneously insisted that Navajos and others use those environments in a limited way. Similar programs for Anglo-American farmers had no such requirement. Instead they promoted a wise technologically based use for the twin objectives of yield and profit. For Navajos, science was to allow a return to old ways. The park proposal would only add a formal structure that froze the Navajos in a moment in time.

The park project failed. Navajo suspicion of federal actions first stymied the proposal and finally squashed it. Collier's efforts to help the Navajo retain subsistence through federal programs aroused anti-park sentiment. When he could not deliver the promised boundary extension, the trust the Navajo had in him diminished. Nor could Collier himself support the park proposal. After failing to deliver on his promise, he could not be party to further restrictions on Navajo land. Without affirmation from either the Navajo people or Collier, the NPS had no chance of success. [41]