Navajo Administrative History

The situation at Navajo was typical for national monuments during the 1910s. No agency had specific responsibility for such places, and administration remained piecemeal. Special agents visited when they could, but many other responsibilities fell their way. Once or twice a year was all they could manage. Recognizing this, Lewis recommended that John Wetherill be designated a U.S. Deputy Marshal as acknowledgement of the level of responsibility the famed Indian trader accepted. Without funding, staff, or protection, most of the early national monuments simply wallowed, vulnerable to natural and human depredation. [7]

The creation of the National Park Service in August 1916 seemed a remedy for the predicament. After four years of active lobbying, the new bureau came into existence to manage the existing national parks and the national monuments under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior. Stephen T. Mather, a graduate of the University of California and a Chicago public relations wizard who made a fortune in borax, became its first director. It seemed that the conditions for park areas such as Navajo National Monument would improve. [8]

The Park Service took on the personality of its new director and his alter ego, a young Californian named Horace M. Albright. As befitting an entity tied more to the emerging consumer culture than the receding Progressive era, the bureau was aggressive from the start. To survive, it had to carve a niche among the other agencies that administered natural resources. Foremost among these was the United States Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture. The Park Service and the Forest Service became instant rivals, for they shared elements of their missions and most of their constituencies. As a result, Park Service policy until the New Deal was shaped by the reality of its conflict with the Forest Service. [9]

The conflict prompted the NPS to become a dynamic, promotion-oriented agency. Mather recognized that national parks had strong symbolic connotations for Americans and he worked to bring the attributes of the system to the attention of the public. Almost instantly, the Park Service began to distribute pamphlets, photographs, and books about the national parks. Mather pressed for better campgrounds and more comprehensive railroad service, and the American public took notice. The preservation/use dichotomy was inherent at the founding of the Park Service, and Mather leaned heavily toward use. [10]

Mather's commitment to visitation meant that areas with considerable public appeal and tied into networks of transportation were the most likely candidates for development. The railroads were the primary means to bring visitors to parks, and Mather quickly began to develop a park-to-park highway that would include all of the major national parks in the West. The result was a dramatic fifteen-year period of growth that saw the acquisition of most of the major national parks in the Southwest. Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce Canyon, and Carlsbad Caverns national parks were all established during Mather's tenure, as were numerous national monuments that furthered this strategy. [11]

Navajo National Monument was not among the parks promoted by the Park Service before the advent of the New Deal in 1933. Far from any of the passenger railroads in the Southwest and not fortuitously located between any of the major national parks, Navajo remained outside the scope of agency development. Despite a growing emphasis on development throughout the system in the 1920s, only the structure of the Park Service reached Navajo. Its resources did not. "Hosteen" John Wetherill learned to cope with what must have seemed a flood of paperwork to a man who chose to live far from the reach of bureaucracy. Beginning in the spring of 1917, the Park Service requested information on him for its personnel file, an annual report on conditions, and estimates for essential projects. [12]

To a man who not only lacked a budget or quarters and had never been paid even the dollar per month to which he was entitled, this new agency seemed impressive. Wetherill strove to respond, reporting that Cummings had done some excavating in the past year under his permit, as had a number of unauthorized Bureau of Indian Affairs employees from Tuba City, about fifty miles to the south. The conditions of the ruins remained "much the same," he laconically reported, adding that the only improvement he required was a register for visitors to sign. [13] Despite his savvy nature, Wetherill had yet to learn the importance of stating his case for the budget process.

Throughout the first decade of National Park Service administration, the only funds appropriated for Navajo National Monument came from the Smithsonian Institution and the Bureau of American Ethnology. W. J. Lewis' recommendations for further excavation received the attention of high level staff at the Department of the Interior, where officials referred it to the Smithsonian. A $3,000 appropriation that had to be expended by the end of fiscal 1916-17 resulted. Neil Judd had gone to work at the National Museum in 1911, and he became the leading candidate in place of Lewis's suggestion of Cummings. The anti-university bias that Douglass had helped to instill in Department of the Interior nearly a decade before remained strong. Smithsonian officials were not sure that they could allow anyone who was not directly affiliated with the federal government to head a government-financed expedition. As an employee of the National Museum, Judd had the appropriate credentials. Yet Charles D. Walcott, an internationally known geologist and Secretary of the Smithsonian, wanted Cummings to be involved in the project. [14]

Despite the efforts at compromise, Cummings avidly sought the position. He asked both Arizona senators, Marcus A. Smith and Henry Ashurst, to lobby on his behalf. Ashurst was particularly influential; he sat on the Senate Indian Affairs committee, through which the appropriation had come in 1916. As the pressure mounted, Smithsonian officials turned to Judd. He was both Cummings' former student and nephew, and he seemed a perfect selection. The choice of Judd would not offend Cummings or anyone else in western archeology. [15]

Smithsonian officials had to act quickly. The appropriation had to be spent before June 30, 1917, and Cummings clearly had influential backers. They had to choose quickly or risk losing the funding. By the end of February 1917, they were out of time. Walcott selected Judd, who later recounted that he was surprised to be selected. [16]

Judd had about two weeks notice to pack and head west. In early March 1917, he was informed by a bureau representative full of demands about reports and procedures that he was to head the expedition. Judd barked at the man, who "had never been west of the Alleghenies," to tell him that one report would have to suffice. It did. Judd left Washington, D.C., by train on March 16, arriving in Flagstaff three days later. He hired three laborers off the street, piled them into an automobile, and drove to Tuba City, about seventy-five miles from the railroad depot. John Wetherill and his teamster, Chischili-begay, met them there with a four-horse freight wagon. A two-day trip to Kayenta ensued, and from there the party rode to Betatakin on horseback with a pack team. They arrived at the ruin on March 27 to find two feet of snow.

Judd made the decision to limit the excavation to Betatakin. Although the appropriative legislation indicated work should be performed on all three ruins, Judd recognized that since he had to expend the funds by the end of the fiscal year on June 30, he could not do a credible job on all three. As a result, he chose Betatakin because he perceived it as the most accessible to visitors. [17]

Despite American entry into World War I, Judd and his crew continued to work until June. A few days after Woodrow Wilson's declaration of war, a Navajo agency policeman from Tuba City arrived in Betatakin with induction notices from the draft board. Judd and his crew were the only strangers in the county, and made excellent targets. Yet temporary work did not an address make, and after considerable explanation, the work continued. Food was in short supply that spring, and the weather was often bad. The temperature dropped well below freezing every night for the first three weeks, snow and hail storms occurred commonly until the start of June, and sandstorms followed them. Even Wetherill's trading post was low on provisions. Judd had to walk the twenty miles to Kayenta to scrounge food on three separate occasions. By early June, the work was completed, and the crew returned to Flagstaff. [18]