Whereas in 1900 the first Agent had but twenty-one employees, in 1915 there were above one hundred serving the various activities of the Empire. A force of water-development men, locally known as “witches,” had greatly augmented the water-supply to the pueblos and their stock, through enlarging mesa-springs and the drilling of shallow wells in the washes. The supreme water-witch of the Empire, Mr. A. H. Womack, in later years discovered artesian flows. And by far the most of this work was accomplished after 1910.
But of troubles there had been no end. It not only was necessary to conquer frontier handicaps,—the distance from supplies, the bitter winters that blighted transportation, and the frequent changes of a restless and dissatisfied employee-force,—but was also necessary to fight the superstition and not always negative resistance of a fanatical and unreasoning people. Five times between 1899 and 1911 troops were sent to this reserve to quell disturbances or to enforce Governmental regulations.
One of the great reasons for Indian unrest had been that few Agents remained in charge long enough to influence the people. It requires at least four years of patient work to know the Hopi, to gain his confidence, if indeed one ever gets it. And in the thirty-two years after 1887 [[213]]there were eleven different officers in charge. Prior to 1911, the longest period of service had been a little more than four years. Men quit or were transferred before they had made a beginning. Twenty years of the time were divided among nine officials, little more than two years for each, scarcely long enough to learn the country and its divisions. I recall some lonely years in the Desert, when the Cañon walls seemed a prison, but I am now glad to write that I directed its Hopi-Navajo population for more than eight years, twice the time of any other Governmental officer.
Of those who had the early work, there were two who exerted a strong personal influence: Mr. Ralph Collins, who was twice appointed a sub-Agent, and Mr. Charles E. Burton, who was the first Indian Agent. Collins had not complete authority, and his efforts were not always supported, but much of suspicion among the Hopi could have been avoided if he had been listened to. Burton, having carried out certain fool orders, was hounded by sentimentalists during most of his service. But both these men accomplished things for the Hopi people, and are kindly remembered among the elders. Their improvements have not entirely disappeared, and wherever one finds an English-speaking Hopi of middle age, the credit may be given to one of these men.
But in 1911 two things had not been finished, and one important thing was only vaguely planned. There was no fixed policy for the development of the reserve, and no one had succeeded in breaking the power of Youkeoma, that hostile witch-doctor who had made trouble since 1887. One could not hope to succeed without the first, and the success of the first depended largely on the second. The health work had been sporadic, and was ineffective [[214]]without a hospital. My predecessor had procured an allotment of eight thousand dollars with which to construct one, whereas thirty thousand—considering Service methods—would not have been too large a sum.
I felt that a consistent policy of control was vitally necessary; that the country and the people in it, both whites and Indians, must be brought under strict regulation; that Youkeoma’s influence must be broken; and I proposed to use the eight thousand dollars, plus whatever additional sum I could talk out of Washington, plus the resources of the reserve in cheap labor, stone, sand, and equipment, mixed with something approximating brains, to have a hospital that would be a benefit to the Indians and a credit to the Service, which too often has constructed buildings that were neither.
Regulation and control required only horse-sense and a little vision. Resolution and earnestness, accompanied by justice and fair-dealing, make a combination that few Indians can resist. The man who fails in the Southwest Indian country is the one who ignores his people’s conception of fair play, and who forgets to keep his word. There have been white men among the Hopi-Navajo who, unmindful of their own two thousand years of background, proposed to correct everything in an afternoon. Discovered in 1540, brought under supervision in the recent eighties, it was and is too big a job for an afternoon.
And why not view with sympathetic consideration the problems of the Indian who, having little education and no vote, being practically as inarticulate as a deaf-mute, childish and incompetent, must trust someone, and is inclined to trust the only official he knows?
Why not be a decent Indian Agent, out of respect for one’s self? [[215]]
There are relatively few people who know that the United States Indian Service has a history, a tradition as it were, to be honored and lived up to. Few men in the service have the lively curiosity and interest in their charges that is necessary for success among primitive peoples, few who rise above personal prejudice, who can resist feeble enmity. There have been the early-day McLaughlins, Sheltons, and Carrolls, each of whom built himself a Service name by one efficient means or another; but those men have been in the minority.