Condition of the Navajo Indian Country, page 28

OS7000, 8 bit, 400 dpi, 8,260,000 bytesDEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR,OFFICE OF INDIAN AFFAIRS,Washington, D.C., February 10, 1893.SIR: The relations between the Navajo Indians of New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah and their white neighbors have been much strained for some time. The Navajos, on account of a lack of water and grass upon their reservation, located in the Territories named, have been forced to go beyond its boundaries to sustain their flocks and herds. A few have settled upon the public domain with a view of securing title to their homes under existing public land laws. The whites have sought the use of the public lands in the vicinity of the reservation mainly for grazing purposes and the interests of the two races have thus conflicted. Difficulties have occurred between them, resulting now and then in the loss of life both to Indians and whites. This office has endeavored to maintain peace and harmony among the Indians and whites and to return the non-reservation Navajos to their reservation have hindered their return thither; notwithstanding these needs the Navajo Indians are self-supporting. In a letter dated July 16, 1892, Gen. Alexander McD. McCook, U. S. Army, commanding the department of Arizona, in reference to the condition of affairs on the Navajo reservation, submitted for my consideration certain recommendations based upon what he deemed an immediate necessity with a view to settling the differences between the Navajos and the whites upon the borders of their reservation, with the statement that it was reported by the Navajo agent that 9,000 of these Indians were without the limits of the reservation from necessity; that they had large flocks and herds; that there was no water or grass within the official limits of the reservation to maintain them, and give sufficient water even for limited agricultural purposes to the 18,000 Indians said to constitute the Navajo nation. Gen. McCook's recommendation for a quick solution of this question was a division of the Navajo Reservation into six or eight districts; the appointment of as many engineering parties to be sent into the reservation, each party being assigned a district to make a survey and a contour map of the district of the country assigned to it, and to submit an early report to this office as to where artesian wells might be located, where bore wells worked by windmills might be placed, or where points in ca±ons or mountains might be selected with a view of constructing storage reservoirs, with the statement that if the surveying and mapping proposed could not be done otherwise he would. If approved by the War Department, detail young and efficient officers in the Army to take charge of these different surveys, each survey being conducted on the same scale, so that a proper and correct map could be made of the 12,000 square miles constituting the Navajo Reservation. The general stated in his said letter that it would, in his judgment, be inhuman to drive the Navajo Indians, with their large flocks and herds, black to the reservation as it now is ; that, should the results of these surveys warrant the same, with slight expense wells could be bored and water developed to such an extent on the reservation as to justify this Department in requiring the Navajoes living now outside of the public lands to confine themselves and their flocks and herds within the limits of the reservation possessed by them. In view of the fact that the situation among these Indians was one of great difficulty, perplexity, and possible peril to the public peace