The Miller press. [volume] (Miller, S.D.) 190?-current, 1913-03-27

and partly in Arizona, over
laps the Continental divide
like a gigantic saddle blanket,
n may be briefly described further
as a great broken plateau of some
$4,000 square miles in area, semi-arid
in it's climatic features and overgrown
quite generally with a hardy growth Of
vegetation, including many valuable
forage plants unsurpassed for grazing
purposes resourc long since turn,
ed to account by it's interesting in
habitants, the Navajos, the owners of
100000 sheep, the income from which
renders them practically Independent
OF the whites and the benevolent pa
ternalism of the federal government.
At the time of the American occupa~
ton of New Mexico in 1S48, the Nava-
jos had become quite generally a pas
toral people, subsisting upon their
tocks, which were added to, accord
ing to accounts Of the times, by others
stolen from the Pueblos and the Mex
lean settlers with whom they were not
infrequently at enmity. During the
COS when the tribe was at war with
the United States their herds and
property were ruthlessly killed and
destroyed and the men, women and
children carried off in captivity to
Fort Sumner.
Children Belong to Mother.
Following their release and return
to the reservation, the United States
government, in 1869, gave them 3d.
900 sheep and 1000 goats, which by
careful outstanding they have increas-
ed to the present extensive dimen-
sons, becoming the principal posses
sion of each family and it's chief means
of support, the fiocks of the more
thrifty, in many instances, numbering
several thousand head, thus enabling
the possessors to live ing comparative
ease or ~affluence even. 1t is, indeed,
the exception rather than the rule to
find a family without a herd of sheep.
They, in fact, are the royal road to
poN 3r and influence in the tribe, ones
rank being automatically regulated
by the size of his flock, the greater
ones possessions the more exalted his
position.
AS among other primitive peoples,
woman's standing in the Navajo tribe
is high, descent and inheritance being
in her line, the children belonging to
the mother and her clan. By tribal
p~rerogative she is the principal prop
erty owner, the lands, houses, crops
and sheep being hers exclusively. ana
it is on her hat their care and man
agement largely deyolye.
The scarcity of water and grass ar
certain seasons, the difference in alti-
tude of the various sections, the conse-
quent attendant climatic variations
and the peculiar character of the plant
life on the reservation make it neces-
sary to move the fiocks during certain
seasons For these reasons, to which
must be coupled the itinerant pro-
clivities of the tribe, the Navajo has
no permanent abode, his movements
being regulated to a very great extent
by the waxing and waning of the pas
lures, a state of affairs that fits in well
with Navajo disposition to wander, In
herited from his forbears, who lived
BY hunting and plundering, the
change from a rowing hunter to a
nomadic herdsman being an easy and
perhaps a natural one.
Ranges Divided.
In the summer months the family
repair with their flocks to the high
mountainous areas, where thrive mag
nificent belts of timber consisting OF
yellow pine, fir, spruce, scrub oak,
pinon, juniper and cedar. Flourishing
within these timbered tracts are nu-
merous grassy stretches that furnish
excellent pasturage for the herds.
Then. too, the climate is more con.
genial and water more abundant than
on the lower semi-arid sections else
where.
AS a rule, whether on the summer
or winter pasture lands, the family oc-
cupy the same locality, in each case,
year after year, the range being d.
yided in some ann among the va
rious clans that constitute the Navajo
tribe, and again subdivided. among the
families. whergit is-haEdea -ecVra
through some system OF entail from
one generation to another. ~ Sh%s
cluded place remote from springs. wa
tering sites and trails near a small
arabic tract, the summer hogan Is SIT
uated. near which are the corrais for
the sheep and ponies.