The Navajo Indians A Statement Of Facts

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Excerpt from The Navajo Indians: A Statement of Facts Let us also assume 12,000,000 acres as constituting the Navajo Treaty Reservation and the various Executive Order Reservations, and a simple example of arithmetic will show that, instead of 1,100 acres, each member of the tribe would have but 534 acres. However, to be more accurate: The Navajo Reservation embraces 11,887,793 acres, of which approximately 719,360 acres belong to the Santa Fe Pacific Railroad Company, and approximately 55,400 acres to the State of Arizona, leaving 11,113,033 acres. Consequently, if you take the very conservative figure of 25,000 Navajos and 11,113,033 acres really belonging to them, you would have 444 acres to the person. "These137 Indians (of Socorro County) happen to represent the renegades of the tribe, who would not stay home and work, but have been leading a nomadic life for several years in the mountains of New Mexico, existing by fishing and stealing. Those are the Indians who have been located among the citizens who are compelled to pay the taxes." It is true, some of these 137 Navajos are renegades, or rather descendants of renegades, but in a peculiar acceptation of the word. The Navajos call them "Dine Ana'i," i.e., "Navajo enemies." Years ago, before the Navajos were subdued and taken to Fort Sumner, in 1862, when raids between Mexicans and Navajos were of frequent occurrence and about 1,500 Navajos were held captives by the Mexicans, the Mexicans employed "renegade Navajos," "Dine Ana'i," as their guides in raiding the Navajos; some of those 137 are descendants of such, and the Navajos would not care to receive them on the reservation. "For several years in the mountains." Why, many of them have been born right there in Socorro County; at any rate, I have a paper before me, dated June 23, 1894, written by the Archbishop of Santa Fe, signed by forty-three persons of Socorro County, testifying to the good character and good intentions of these Navajos of Socorro County. Furthermore, the records of the Santa Fe Land Office show that settlement was made by some of these Indians in 1870, and homestead entries in 1883 and 1888. As early as 1886 Judge McComas of Albuquerque tried to dispossess the Navajo, David Torres, claiming the land to be coal land. "Existing by fishing and stealing." They have small herds of sheep and goats and work as herdsmen for the Mexicans. The records of the District Court for Socorro County for the last fifteen years does not show that any Navajo was indicted for any crime during that period. Fishing! I doubt if there is a live fish within fifty miles of their habitat. Besides, fish are tabooed by the Navajos. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

In their efforts to convert the Navajo to Catholicism, the Franciscans at the St. Michael mission in Arizona, lived among the Navajo to study their language and culture. This sourcebook collects the friars' observations from the early period of the mission, 1898 to 1921, as recorded in their correspondence, journal entries and administrative reports.