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Page Number: 27.0

6 

ARIZONA v. NAVAJO NATION 

GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

to drift away from the encampment.  Id., at 260.  And the 
Navajo  flatly  refused  to  move  to  some  other  unfamiliar
place.  Ibid. 

Arriving at that conclusion proved simple enough; arriv-
ing upon a treaty proved more challenging.  There was, of 
course, no small power asymmetry.  As one Senator noted 
at the time, it was a curious feature that the Commissioners 
set  out  to  “ ‘conclude  a  treaty  with  Indians’ ”  who  were  at 
that  very  moment  being  “ ‘held  on  a  reservation  against
their will.’ ”  Id., at 259.  Language barriers presented com-
plications too.  Messages had to be translated twice—first 
from English to Spanish, and then from Spanish to Navajo. 
Id., at 261.  Aggravating matters, the parties saw the world 
very differently.  The United States’ representatives “spoke
of artificial lines on maps, of parallels and meridians”; the
Navajo spoke “of geographical features, of canyons, moun-
tains,  and  mesas.”  Ibid.    The  United  States’  representa-
tives “talked about ownership and a claim to the land”; the 
Navajo talked about “using the land.”  Ibid.  As a result, the 
parties  often  “misunderstood  each  other.” 
Ibid.  And 
whether intentionally or inadvertently, Sherman “misled” 
the Navajo about, among other things, the size of their res-
ervation.  Id., at 263.  He promised twice the land that they 
received in the final accounting.  Ibid. 

In the end, the Treaty of 1868 provided the Navajo less 
land per capita—two-thirds less—than the other Tribes the 
Indian  Peace  Commission  would  go  on  to  negotiate  with. 
Id.,  at  268.    It  seems  that  owed,  in  no  small  part,  to  the
negotiators’  understanding  that  the  Navajo  had  “already
experienced irrigation agriculture” and could plausibly get 
by with less.  Ibid.  Indeed, when providing instructions to
the Indian Peace Commission about how they should nego-
tiate  with  the  Navajo,  the  Secretary  of  the  Interior  dis-
cussed the possibility of agriculture as bearing on the ap-
propriate size of the Tribe’s reservation.  Unlike the Navajo, 
he thought, “ ‘[w]ild Indians cannot at once be transformed