Mr. Allen’s report may be summed up as follows:—There should be a commission appointed composed of engineers and stockmen to thoroughly investigate the possibilities of the reservation, both through means of storage dams to conserve the mountain freshets in the springtime, and also to divert the water from the rivers as is being done along the San Juan river to the north. This stream carries a large volume of water, and although there are many white persons living north of the river in Utah and New Mexico and much water is used, the river is very high from May 1st to July 1st. It therefore affords great possibilities in the way of water storage.
He recommends a detailed study of the coalbeds and timber tracts on the reservation, and the improvement of the Navaho sheep, by the introduction of better stock.
NAVAHO WINTER HOGAN
Photographed by E. R. Forrest; 1902
While tuberculosis is found in about 10% of the Navaho, trachoma is much more prevalent, and he records the usual story of afflicted Indian children, men and women. The hospital facilities are totally inadequate. There is a hospital at Indian Wells, Arizona, maintained by the National Indian Association, an Episcopal hospital near Fort Defiance, while another is maintained by the Presbyterians at Ganado. The only large hospital with adequate equipment is at the Government school at Fort Defiance. Doctor Wigglesworth, physician in charge, who has won the confidence of these Indians by long years of constant labor among them, does all in his power to alleviate distress, but the field is entirely too extensive to be covered by one man. Mrs. Mary L. Eldridge, for many years in charge of a mission near Farmington, N. M., does medical work among the Indians. There is a small Government hospital at Shiprock.
The medicine men cause the Government officials and missionaries a great deal of trouble. Mr. Allen presents a number of incidents in his reports explaining their activities. Many Indians will not take treatment in the hospitals through fear of the shamans, and in more than one instance a sick Indian has been removed by his friends from the mission hospital during the night, and carried off to the village where he might be treated by the shaman.
MODERN INDIAN HOUSE, SYLVIAN, OKLAHOMA
This type is inferior in construction to the houses built in pre-statehood days.
Educational facilities are inadequate to care for half the children of school age. In many of the schools, trachoma has afflicted numbers of the children. When tuberculosis develops among the school children they are sent home from the school to die without medical attendance. Mr. Allen suggests that more physicians, qualified to treat trachoma and tuberculosis, be appointed to service among the Navaho, and that each one be assigned a territory fifty miles square, with a field sanitarium located near the center of the territory. He also suggests that young Navaho women, selected from the larger boarding schools, be trained as nurses, since many of these Indians do not take kindly to treatment by white persons, and it is difficult to secure competent nurses who are willing to remain long in the small frontier hospitals of the Navaho desert.
At Shiprock, Superintendent Shelton has developed a large school with extensive farms and industrial buildings. The settlement at Shiprock is justly considered one of the show places in the Indian Service. Here the desert is made to blossom as the rose. Mr. Shelton admits few small children in his school and keeps his scholars until they reach adult age. He is thus able to make a better showing in his farms and gardens than do those who receive the children at an earlier age, and return them to their homes after four or five years of training. Mr. Shelton’s work at Shiprock could now be carried on by some one else, and his recognized ability used in a new field to develop another section of the reservation further west. By creating another Shiprock, he could do more to raise the standard of living among his people.