The Promise

On a warm spring day, as twelve Navaho chiefs looked on, Lieut. General William Tecumseh Sherman dipped a pen and solemnly squiggled his name on the document before him. With that act in 1868, the U.S. formally promised that in return to the Navahos for keeping the peace, the Government would provide the tribe with a reservation (now extending into Arizona, Utah and New Mexico), schools, and at least one teacher for every 30 children. The promise has been badly kept. As recently as 1951, Mrs. Annie Wauneka, daughter of the last great Navaho chieftain, Chee Dodge, said sadly: "We will forever be like monkeys in a cage, for other Americans to look at."

Last week both Government officials and Navahos could agree that the monkey Business was just about over. The illiteracy rate among Navaho children is down from 75% ten years ago to 25%, and more little Indians than ever before are now attending school. One reason for the change: the Navahos have at last been sold on education. But perhaps more important: largely because of the work of Indian Affairs Commissioner Glenn L. Emmons, they have at last become convinced that the U.S. really intends to live up to the treaty of 1868.

The Change. A longtime friend of the Navahos ("I sorta grew up with them"), Banker Glenn Emmons of Gallup, N. Mex. was the tribal council's personal choice for commissioner, and new President Eisenhower heeded their advice. When Emmons took the job in 1953, there were 28,000 school-age Navahos, but half of these had yet to see the inside of a classroom. Though Emmons got a congressional appropriation to build scores of new schools, he decided that the shortage was too acute to wait. "The important thing," said he, "is to get every child into school as fast as possible. We can build the nice buildings later." The Bureau of Indian Affairs began to refurbish old classrooms. It added new wings to buildings already standing, put up Quonset huts, sent out trailers, arranged for some children to attend nearby public schools off the reservation. By 1954, Navaho enrollment was up 8,000.

Meanwhile, the Navaho Tribal Council was hard at work. Its biggest problem: to persuade all parents that their children must go to school.

The Reality. During World War II, when so many of their young men were rejected by the Army as illiterates, many Navahos learned what it means to have too little education. But there were still some who distrusted the white man's ways, and there were others who liked to have their children help out at home. To keep their children away from school, such parents often used the excuse that they had nothing to wear. The council appropriated $350,000 from its new oil and uranium royalties, announced that clothes would be given to any needy child who went to school. The bureau added a further incentive by providing free hot lunches. The tribal council has also turned its attention to higher education. In 1953 it set aside $30,000 for college scholarships. This year it upped the sum to an annual $100,000.

Last week a record 23,000 Navaho children were in school. By December, enrollments are expected to be 2,500 over last year. The hopes of 1868 were at last to be fulfilled.

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