ANTHKOP. PAP. rjijjE RAMAH NAVAHO — KLUCKHOHN 335 



twenties, Texan homesteaders had begun to settle in the El Morro 

 area and by 1930 the founding of Fence Lake was well under way. 



The Ramah Navaho are not only an off-reservation group but are 

 separated from Navahos contiguous to the reservation by intervening- 

 Pueblo Indian, Spanish-American, and Anglo-American populations. 

 Hence Ramah Navaho contacts with the Government, and specifically 

 with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, were sporadic and slight until 

 1942. Some of the "founders" of the Ramah band had, of course, 

 been prisoners at Fort Sumner and participated in the tremendous 

 shock of that experience (Underhill, 1956, pp. 119-143). After 

 locating or relocating at Ramah after Fort Sumner, a number made 

 one to three trips to Fort Defiance, Ariz., to obtain the free Govern- 

 ment distribution of seed, livestock, cloth, and tools for weaving and 

 agi-iculture. Otherwise, apart from an occasional brush with the 

 soldiers at Fort Wingate over alleged livestock thefts (Navaho 

 Indian Agency letter books for April 11, 1882), the Government was 

 a distant and rather nebulous authority for many years. 



Land Office USGS surveys were carried out in the Ramah area 

 from 1881 on,^ but the first allotment to a Navaho of an individual 

 160-acre plot from public domain under the Dawes act of 1887 was 

 not made until 1908; no others were made until 1920, and the majority 

 in the 1930's. Meanwhile, the Ramah Navaho had been pushed off 

 most of their best lands by Mormons and others. By 1921, the crisis 

 over land had reached such intensity that the Ramah Navaho leader, 

 Bidaga (Kluckhohn and Vogt, 1955) made a trip to Washington, 

 D.C., with Navaho leaders from the reservation and Franciscan 

 missionaries (Young, 1949). 



In spite of the research of Dr. TeUing and others on Government 

 publications and documents, the official relations of the Bureau of 

 Indian Affairs with the Ramah Navaho are obscure until 1927. This 

 may well be because jurisdiction was never clearly defined. Prior to 

 about 1900 there is mention of occasional contact with Fort Defiance 

 and Fort Wingate. After 1900 the Zuni Agency appears to have 

 intervened from time to time, although its official responsibihty was 

 for Pueblo rather than Navaho affairs. Until 1905 the picture seems 

 to have been that of leaving the Ramah Navaho severely alone except 

 for rare incidents when Anglos or Spanish-Americans demanded 

 intervention on land matters or disturbances of law and order. Be- 

 ginning in 1905, Ramah Mormons were employed intermittently by 

 the Black Rock Agency to round up Navaho children for school. 



In 1927 the Eastern Navaho Agency was established at Crownpoint, 

 N. Mex., and the Ramah Navaho were placed under the control of 



» But were not complete 32 years later, for the Gallup Independent for May 15, 1963, speaks of surveys still 

 going on. 



