The Foundations of Glen Canyon Dam: Infrastructures of Dispossession on the Colorado Plateau 9781477326589

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t h e fou n dat ions of gl e n c a n yon da m

t h e fou n dat ions of gl e n c a n yon da m Infrastructures of Dispossession on the Colorado Plateau er ik a m a r ie bsumek

u ni v er sit y of te x a s pr ess Austin

Support for this book comes from an endowment for environmental studies made possible by generous contributions from Richard C. Bartlett, Susan Aspinall Block, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Copyright © 2023 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2023 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713-7819 utpress.utexas.edu/rp-form The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (r1997) (Permanence of Paper). Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress isbn 978-1-4773-0381-8 (hardcover) isbn 978-1-4773-2658-9 (PDF) isbn 978-1-4773-2659-6 (ePub) doi:10.7560/303818

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pr eface vii Family Foundations

a note on ter minology xiii introduction 1 The Many Foundations of Glen Canyon Dam

1. r eligious e x pa nsion 21 Latter-day Settlers, Dispossession, and Indentured Servitude, 1840–1880

2. instruments of dispossession 54 The Influence of Science and Scholarship, 1869–1920

3. structur es of er asur e 90 Engineering, Education, and Ecology, 1910–1960

4. politic a l m a neu v er ing 126 Reclamation and Termination in Diné Bikéyah, 1947–1980

5. leg a l pa r a digms a nd dispossession 156 Navajos, Environmentalists, and the Law, 1969–1980

epilogue. dispossession a nd possession 189 The Continued Fight over Sacred Land and Water on the Colorado Plateau

ack now ledgments 196 notes 200 bibliogr a ph y 240 illustr ation cr edits 259 inde x 262

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I am a reluctant settler. I would rather not be existing on someone else’s stolen land. But the fact of the matter is that I wouldn’t have had a university job if indigenous people hadn’t had their land stolen from them in Australia. patr ick wol fe, “set t l er col oni a l ism t hen a nd now: a con v er s at ion bet w een j. k h au l a ni k aua n u i a nd patr ick wol fe,” in polit ic a a nd societa , februa ry 2012, 237

There are many different histories that can be told about the building of Glen Canyon Dam. This book traces the growth of the Latter-day Saint population across the Colorado Plateau. It uncovers the development of science, scholarship, technology, and law in the region. It also focuses on dispossession of the Indigenous people who inhabited the region where the dam was built, especially the Utes, Paiutes, and Navajos, who despite being dispossessed of the majority of their former lands continue to live in the region today. It is a history of people, ideas, and actions as much as it is a story about a place and the construction of a dam because the dam could not be built until a social infrastructure existed to justify its existence. That social infrastructure was built on the dispossession of Indigenous people. How that was done by settlers, scientists, engineers, ecologists, the courts, and the state is the main focus of this book. My personal history is connected to the history that unfolds in what follows in ways that are complicated but also completely predictable if you know about the history of the US West. My personal ancestors did not participate in massacres or in the removal of Indigenous people from their lands. But I—and my family members—are settlers on Indigenous lands. We, and millions of others like us, are the beneficiaries of the dispossession vii

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of Ute, Paiute, Navajo, Hopi, and Puebloan people from their lands on the Colorado Plateau. I begin with that acknowledgment. Over the course of writing this book, I learned that the Navajo Nation (NN) made it possible for the government to build Glen Canyon Dam because they provided the land that became Page, Arizona—where workers lived and materials could be stored and manufactured—to the United States in a land swap. As a historian who has previously explored the history of how non-Indigenous people consumed Navajo material culture, I found myself considering how the government and white residents of the West consumed Indigenous resources on a massive scale. With that perspective in mind, the enormous impact of Glen Canyon Dam came into sharp relief. It is so much more than a concrete mega-structure, engineering marvel, or environmental abomination. The more I found out about the history of the region and dam, the more it came to embody all the different kinds of infrastructures that have been consciously layered throughout the region to shape the social and political contours of the American West. Archival documents, interviews, and intensive research revealed the dam, and the history behind it, manifested from all the different kinds of physical and social infrastructures that have been shored up by dispossessing Indigenous people of their knowledge as well as their land, their water, and other natural resources. The dam, as such, represents the “promise” of the region that settlers saw as well as the destructive processes of colonialization that occurred there. It may also now represent the hubris of those who built it. It, along with other settler infrastructure projects that preceded it, supported the growth of the non-Indigenous population across, and beyond, the region. But, as the book also shows, Glen Canyon Dam was also built with a degree of Indigenous support and labor. As I dug deeper into the history of engineering and the dam, it became apparent that I could not write another history of the dam without exploring the ways that the building of it was connected to the history of the Navajo Nation, Diné Bikéyah, other Indigenous peoples of the region, and to the longer history of the colonization and development of the West related to Utah’s own history—and, as it turns out, to that of my own family. As I conducted my research, I discovered that Glen Canyon Dam was the first engineering project my grandfather worked on as an immigrant seeking refuge in the United States after World War II. My paternal grandfather, Edwin Franz Bsumek (1909–1984), was born in Schwarzenberg, Germany. He was a civil engineer by training prior to WWII. His wife, Ella Bier wald Bsumek (1913–1991), was raised by her grandmother in Elbing and was an early convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints viii

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(LDS) in Germany in the 1920s.¹ Edwin and Ella met in the early 1930s and married in 1935 after Edwin converted to Mormonism. They had four children, one of whom, Peter (1939–), is my father. Edwin applied for a visa to come to the United States in 1949, and the family immigrated to Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1952. They arrived with only what the family of six could carry in four suitcases. They had also amassed a debt of $1,000 to the LDS family who sponsored their trip. That meant my grandfather, who spoke very little English, needed to find work and learn English as soon as possible. After a series of odd jobs, Edwin found work as an engineer for Western Steel in the mid-1950s. His first real task was to engineer the rebar for a portion of Glen Canyon Dam. This sparked a lifelong love of the arid West, infrastructure, and the natural environment. Several times a year, he and Ella took their small camper on long road trips throughout the region. While Ella remained a devout member of the LDS Church for her entire life, Franz remained somewhat ambivalent about religion and their son, my father, left the Church in the 1960s. My mother’s family links my history to the story of the settlement of the region and dispossession—the second major theme of this book. None of my ancestors took part in any of the brutal massacres that loom so large in accounts of Native American dispossession. Their—our—involvement was less obvious and thus easier to deny, and in that regard it is emblematic of the ways that most white Americans are implicated in dispossession. My mother’s family, the Collabella-Cuglietta clan, also called Utah home, though they immigrated from Southern Italy in the early 1910s and were not LDS. Looking for a better life, they were laborers who settled in east-central Utah with hopes of taking advantage of the “free land” offered via the Homestead Act. The men initially worked as wagon masters, on the railroad, or in the coal mines of Carbon County, Utah, while the women did whatever they could do to contribute to the household economy. For instance, my maternal great-great-grandmother, Mary Teresa Biofora Tangaro (1882–1965) and her daughter, Mary Tangaro (1902–1983), came to the United States from San Giovanni in Fiore, Italy, in 1911 to join my greatgreat-grandfather, Nicola Tangaro (1880–1920), who had arrived the decade before. When Nicola died in 1920, my great grandmother, Mary, her mother, and her young siblings were left to fend for themselves. Mary married Beneditto Colobella (1887–1965) in 1920, and the two had a daughter and a son in quick succession, Vera (1921–2016) and Sam (1922–1993). Vera was my grandmother. Shortly after Sam’s birth, Beneditto abandoned the family. Mary Teresa and Mary raised young Vera and Sam along with Mary’s significantly younger siblings, Louise (1912–1989), Katherine (1913– ix

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2004), Tony (1914–1993), and Josephine (1917–1997). In essence, the women and children became the household. To make ends meet and begin to build a new life, Mary and Louise filed a homestead claim in Whitmore Canyon, near Sunnyside, Utah, in the 1920s. Like others in the area, and many of the region’s women before them, they became sheepherders. Interwoven into these family histories are stories of how the women survived with the help of surrounding immigrant communities, how the younger children (Vera, Sam, Kay, Tony, and Jay) worked desperately hard, and how they, as Catholics, faced daily conflicts with local LDS children and ranchers. It is also a story of how, when necessary, the women hired laborers to move the herd to market.² I grew up listening to my great-grandmother Mary, my grandmother Vera, my great-aunts Louise and Kay; and my great-uncle Tony tell stories about their lives herding sheep, goats, and pigs through Sunnyside, Utah. My mother, Maria J. Bsumek, also told me stories of visiting Sunnyside and Price to see her family. Among the stories, I heard accounts of how difficult life in Carbon County could be. Flash floods, droughts, food scarcity, and social tensions in the mining and railroad towns of Helper, Price, and Sunnyside dominate my family narratives. Water, or the lack thereof, played a key role in the history of the homestead that bordered the northern edge of a rugged landscape known as the Book Cliffs. Recently, my mother and my uncle Joe were able to pinpoint the exact location of the family’s homestead because they remembered that there had been a small spring on the property. We were able to find it on the 1934 Bureau of Land Management Land Survey with a little help from Dan Webb.³ It was also the water that made the land valuable to the Whitmore Oxygen Company, which, as my uncle Tony would say, “swindled the family out of the land” in the early 1960s. Though I have not been able to determine who occupied the land prior to my family members, it is not a stretch to say my relatives were probably not the first ones who felt they had been cheated out of the land. These stories map onto larger trends I have studied and taught about for years as a historian of the West; some of them make up the core of this book while others are only peripheral to it. My mother’s family history is part of the story of Southern Italian immigration to the United States in the early 1900s and the development of homesteading, mining, and union organizing in the region. It is also the history of conflicts over land, water, and religion as well as one of hardship, starvation, and loss of life. My father’s story is connected to the history of LDS settlement in Utah and the LDS Church’s efforts to proselytize on a global scale. One thing, however, that was rarely talked about in either family’s Utah-centric history was the fact x

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that neither the German nor the Italian immigrants who settled in Utah were the original inhabitants of the land. The area where both my parents’ families settled, from Salt Lake County to Carbon County, was, and remains, home to Ute and Paiute peoples. While it is true that Southern and Northern Utes and Paiutes were pushed off, or otherwise violently removed from, their homelands by LDS and other white settlers a few generations before the arrival of my family, the fact that my family was not immediately involved in that process does not mean they did not benefit from such actions. Mary and Louise were able to file a homestead claim because the land was considered “empty.” Edwin was able to get a job building Glen Canyon Dam on former Diné (Navajo) lands because of the processes of settler colonialism and regional development that fostered and funded the building of the dam, including the land swap. This book is my attempt to add missing layers to Western history, explore a deeper context to my own families’ histories, and illustrate how white settlers and immigrants like those in my family—and many, many others—both participated in and have benefitted from the infrastructures of dispossession that went into building the foundations of the modern American West. These infrastructures of dispossession laid the foundation on which Glen Canyon Dam was built. Only with such an acknowledgment can we begin to face the force of the past.

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As historians and scholars know, names and the terms we use to describe people and places change over time, usually with good reason. In the book that follows I try to approach the issue of terminology with care. When discussing specific groups of people, I generally use the terms or signifiers that people call themselves. For instance, I use Diné and Navajo, sometimes interchangeably, to refer to citizens of the Navajo Nation. When discussing representatives of tribal governments, such as a Tribal Chairman, I use their nation’s preferred tribal name (for instance, Navajo Nation, Ute Tribe) as a primary signifier. I also try to include the terms that specific Indigenous individuals used when they identified themselves in the historical record. On occasion, I also use the terms American Indian, Native American, or Indigenous when referring to the larger population of groups who inhabited the Colorado Plateau prior to colonization. I realize there are tensions regarding these terminologies and each term is imperfect for different reasons. I do, on occasion, use the term “Indian” when the term itself appears in the historical record. In such cases, I usually place it in quotations to demark historical usage. However, I also use it when discussing what was, and still is called, US Indian policy. I also use the terms Latter-day Saints and Mormons throughout the book. I usually use the term Mormon in historical context. People who identified as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and followed the Book of Mormon, often called themselves Mormons. For many, Mormonism is and was a way of life, not just a faith. I also use the term Latter-day Saints as a historical and contemporary signifier of members of a shared faith. Glen Canyon Dam straddles the Colorado River and stands as a tangible symbol of settler colonialism and ideas about the use of the natural environment. The dam appears on the cover of the first edition of this book. The text that follows invites you to look beyond the structure itself and to discover the complicated story leading up to its construction. xiii

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n June 17, 1960, thousands of visitors gathered near Glen Canyon on the Utah-Arizona border and watched as a giant bucket hanging from a “traveling tower cableway” poured concrete into the first section of a frame that would become “the great dam.” An all-Navajo band played as the massive physical foundation for the seventystory dam designed to regulate the flow of the Colorado River began to take shape. Young and old, Navajo and white, the visitors marveled at the spectacle around them. They gawked as the elaborate machinery moved in the canyon below them and observed the “ant like” workers scurrying to spread the newly poured concrete into manufactured forms.¹ Six years later, a host of national and local dignitaries gathered at the newly completed Glen Canyon Dam to celebrate the massive project. Those in attendance included First Lady Lady Bird Johnson; Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall; Chairman of the Navajo Nation (NN) Raymond Nakai; representatives from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS); Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) officials; and regional politicians. In the remarks he penned for the dedication ceremony, titled “Equality of Opportunity,” Nakai sought to celebrate the “development of our natural resources, such as the mighty Colorado River; and the development of our human resources, such as the workmen, of whom many were American Indians, who helped build the Dam.”² As other speakers’ remarks went on longer than expected, however, Nakai’s speech was cut from the program. The chairman of the NN, and the only Indigenous person on the program, was silenced. On June 19, 1969, Nakai took the stage at yet another celebratory dedication, and this time he would speak. This time, he was there to help honor Lake Powell, Glen Canyon Dam’s rapidly filling reservoir. Looking out over the growing body of water, an optimistic Nakai contemplated the lake’s inherent beauty and its economic potential. He then reflected on the land1

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scape in and around the dam and told the gathered audience about his many excursions across the Navajo Reservation as politician and amateur nature photographer. He encouraged his audience to “rejoice” in the existence of the “beautiful expanse of water” they saw before them. The more Nakai traveled throughout the region, the more he became convinced that Lake Powell enhanced the grandeur—and economic value—of the Navajo Reservation.³ In his remarks he also addressed the environmental controversy sparked by the dam’s construction. In particular, he disagreed with an unnamed conservationist “friend”—perhaps the Sierra Club’s David Brower—who had described the dam as the “crime of the century.” For Nakai, Lake Powell did not represent environmental degradation; rather, it was “a prize worth having.” The Diné leader simply refused to believe that anyone had “deliberately [taken] it upon himself to destroy the beauty of this area.”⁴ Instead of describing the dam as destructive, Nakai anticipated the Colorado River’s “treasured” waters being “put to use” by and for Navajos. This piece of water infrastructure offered the region economic development. Referencing a 1965 BOR publication that celebrated Lake Powell as the “Jewel of the Colorado,” Nakai declared that Navajos were “excited with the prospect of building up [their] tourist trade through these prospective recreational areas.” Both Navajo leaders and non-Navajo experts anticipated a dramatic rise in the number of tourists who would come to the area by car and boat as a result of the dam’s reservoir. For instance, the pro-dam biologist and ecologist Angus Woodbury anticipated that due to “regional developments” the number of tourists would “increase . . . from 4,600 visitors in 1962 to an anticipated 115,000 in 1972.”⁵ Nakai hoped those tourists would bring much-needed revenue to the Navajo Reservation, whose inhabitants would gain control of shoreline concessions, bringing “employment for the Navajo people.” Furthermore, he anticipated that a new regional power plant would also hire many Navajo residents and deliver much-needed electricity to the region.⁶ Just six weeks after delivering his talk at the dedication, however, Nakai’s enthusiasm about the dam and its reservoir began to dissipate. On August 1, 1969, he stood before the chamber of commerce in Page, Arizona, the city adjacent to the dam that had been built on land the Navajo Nation had given to the government in exchange for another parcel of land in Utah, and decried the fact that the dam had not helped improve the regional relationship between the NN and the state of Arizona. Moreover, he claimed that the government had failed to grant the promised concessions to local Navajos.⁷ Between 1960 and the early 1970s, Nakai and other mem2

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bers of the NN periodically voiced concerns about the changes the dam had wrought and reflected on whether or not they were the changes that they had expected. The three moments described above—Navajo and white residents of the region gathering to watch the spectacle of the first concrete pour, Nakai’s speech being cut from the Glen Canyon Dam ceremony in favor of remarks by white dignitaries, and Nakai’s rapid disillusionment with the promise of the dam—represent just a few of the complicated moments when the meaning of Glen Canyon Dam shifted for residents in the region. Those meanings ranged from the excitement that both Navajos and non-Navajos initially felt to Nakai’s feelings of betrayal, which were rooted in the complex social and political history of the region. That history includes a legacy of unequal access to resources, efforts to erase Indigenous knowledge and people from the reconfigured landscape, the silencing of Native voices at key moments, and a variety of promises that the government made to the Indigenous peoples that remain only partially fulfilled—or even completely unfulfilled. In The Foundations of Glen Canyon Dam, I argue that although Glen Canyon Dam is anchored in the pink-hued walls of Navajo Sandstone near the Utah-Arizona border, it was built on some deeply rooted metaphorical foundations that were just as critical to its construction as its physical base. There has long been interest in the engineering marvel built on a threehundred-foot-thick foundation of concrete and steel rebar, which came to support the second-tallest concrete arch-gravity dam in the United States. Scholars have explored how teams of engineers and construction workers diverted the river, readied the bedrock and canyon walls, and then poured almost five million cubic yards of concrete into the canyon to make a 710foot structure rise from the riverbed. Yet Glen Canyon Dam sits on more than its physical foundation; it rests on layers of social and political regional development that demand our attention as well. What were the social and political foundations that have been overlooked in past discussions about the dam? Indigenous people and their knowledge about the region’s land and water supply are rarely mentioned when people contemplate the dam. Yet, as I show, their history and knowledge helped make the dam possible even if they did not intend for their knowledge to be used in that fashion. Similarly, Latter-day Saint religious beliefs informed early regional colonization and development efforts and created the social context in which the dam would later be built. Beginning in the early twentieth century, surveyors, scientists, and scholars followed the paths of early LDS settlers when they studied and measured the region’s land and water 3

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supply as part of an effort to evaluate its resources for future development. Their actions led, predictably if not inevitably, to the building of the dam. These men—and they were almost all men—decided that a monumental dam could provide water for the Upper Basin states in keeping with the 1922 Colorado River Compact. The engineers who subsequently followed the first white explorers down the river, stopping to plot, survey, and design a dam—and to map the whole region in the process—benefitted from those earlier studies, which had relied heavily on Indigenous guides, adding another tier to the foundation of the dam. Yet another stratum of the dam’s foundation involved political maneuvering within and beyond the region. The governments of the Navajo Nation, the different states, and the United States engaged in intricate negotiations with one another as well as with environmentalists in order to come to an agreement that would enable the building of the dam. Finally, the physical structure of the dam also rests on court rulings that established the legal primacy of the region’s white residents in determining the water level of the reservoir. This occurred at the cost of flooding a sacred site that Navajos had been told would be protected. I uncover these stories in order to illustrate how such histories are intricately tied to Indigenous people and their experiences. I also analyze key moments and movements that were foundational to the construction of Glen Canyon Dam itself as well as to the reconfiguration of the social and physical landscape of the Colorado Plateau that took place before, during, and after the dam’s construction. I show that the dam is not just the feat of engineering that many have come to admire or a monument to environmental destruction that many still view with disdain; it is also a product of the region’s colonization and its religious, political, scientific, and legal histories. At the center of the story is one important fact overlooked in almost all other studies of the dam: the dam’s construction rests on the foundation of Indigenous dispossession. A larger and multifaceted infrastructure of dispossession laid the foundation of both Glen Canyon Dam and much of the modern American West. The silencing of Nakai at the dam’s dedication is emblematic of the longer history of Glen Canyon Dam as it relates to Native American dispossession and erasure. It is fair to say that a river of ink has been spilled on the dam. It has been called a “deadbeat dam,” a “cash-register dam,” a “mega-dam,” and a “marvel.” Almost since it was built, there has been a movement to “drain the dam,” which environmental activists, and even some of the key engineers who worked on the project, have since claimed destroyed a pristine environment. The dam’s detractors maintain that the dam was (and remains) unnecessary. In years to come, climate change and increasing temperatures 4

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may render Glen Canyon Dam useless as a hydropower facility, turning it into a water storage facility for another dam: Hoover Dam. The movement to bypass the dam and restore the Colorado River and Glen Canyon is gaining supporters.⁸ If there is one thing that is true about Glen Canyon Dam, it is that its very existence remains controversial. This book aims to tell a different story about the dam, one that posits that the dam’s strongest foundation may be one of dispossession—a crucial part of Glen Canyon Dam’s story that should not be overlooked in discussions about the dam’s past, present, or future.

settler coloni a lism, infr astructur e, a nd dispossession Glen Canyon Dam rests on the processes through which white settlers laid claim to the region, namely through settler colonialism. Settler colonialism is a form of colonialism that aims to transfer territory and resources from Indigenous people to the dominant society in order to foster permanent settler societies. Settler colonialism “destroys to replace” through the transformation of the colonized land. Settlers thus seek to replace Indigenous people on the land and take Indigenous resources as their own. Across the Colorado Plateau, settlers worked to establish their religions and laws and build roads, dams, and irrigation projects as a way of replacing Indigenous societies with their own culture. As Patrick Wolfe has noted, “settler colonizers come to stay: invasion is a structure not an event,” which is meant to convey that settler colonialism is an ongoing process that unfolds over time.⁹ On the Colorado Plateau, settler colonialism had an infrastructural component as well, one that combined both social and physical infrastructures. The establishment of different forms of infrastructure reinforced not just where or how colonizers stayed but how dispossession unfolded through the ongoing displacement of Indigenous people. The term social infrastructure is useful here to refer to the key social systems that dominant society impressed upon the land and people. White settlement was secured by the threads of religion, science, politics, and law— all of which reflected racial and social hierarchies of power—that were essential to the weft of the societies that created them. The creation of social infrastructures deeply influenced the design, planning, and implementation of the physical infrastructure—the buildings, roads, ditches, and dams needed to support the operation of the dominant society—which altered the landscape in the name of civilization. Further, social infrastructure in5

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formed the processes of dispossession that were woven into place during a period of settler colonialism that became increasingly robust in the 1840s and continued through the end of the twentieth century. None of this can or should be separated from the building of the dam.¹⁰ Together, the social and physical infrastructures of the region created an expression of settler colonialism I call infrastructures of dispossession. The irrigation ditches, dams, roads, bridges, and other projects built by settlers, sometimes through state or federal agencies, erased or appropriated a robust system of Indigenous infrastructure. Indigenous infrastructure— in its social and physical forms—had supported many different societies in the region prior to the arrival of colonists. Once Indigenous infrastructures had been appropriated or eliminated, and the social and physical infrastructures of the dominant colonizing society had been constructed, Indigenous communities often lost access or control of the land and natural resources that had long sustained their communities. This was often consciously done. For instance, in many cases, white settlers, surveyors, and engineers first located Indigenous irrigation ditches in order to find the most promising sites on which to build their own communities. They believed that their “updated” technologies would allow the region to support an ever-growing number of non-Indigenous people. As the geographer Andrew Curley (Diné) has shown, such behavior was part of the larger process of dispossession.¹¹ According to Curley, “The building of infrastructures across space and time serve as colonial beachheads, establishing the conditions for future dispossession, displacement, and marginalization.” As the scale and scope of physical infrastructure projects increased, they tied Indigenous and non-Indigenous “communities to modernization, urbanization, and capitalist circulations of wealth.”¹² Physical infrastructure projects were designed to reshape the region in dramatic and foundational ways that benefitted the dominant society and fostered teleologic versions of civilization. Water infrastructure, in particular, was designed to support the future growth of non-Indigenous settlements in the extremely arid region. Those with access to water and the energy it could generate would become the healthiest and wealthiest communities. This circular logic continues to divide white and Indigenous communities from each other today. The social and physical infrastructures that culminated in Glen Canyon Dam physically transformed the canyon and surrounding areas by providing water and energy to millions of contemporary residents in Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado, but they did not alter the deeper meanings Indigenous people attach to land, water, and place on the plateau. 6

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The account that follows takes the well-known story of Glen Canyon Dam and tracks backward to illustrate how the 710-foot-high structure came to be built and how it represents 150 years of white settlers taking and/or removing natural resources, and human ones, from Indigenous peoples by appropriating Indigenous infrastructure, labor, knowledge, land, and water. As such, it is not a comprehensive history of the Colorado Plateau during those years. Rather, it is a representative one that illustrates how infrastructures of dispossession take form. Often such “takings” occurred without consultation or permission. Sometimes, as in the case of the land swap that yielded the acreage the government needed to build Glen Canyon Dam, they happened with Indigenous cooperation. Over the course of a century and a half, the longer-term residents of the region interacted with newcomers in ways that ranged from stories of different peoples cooperating in pursuit of their own communities’ goals to stereotypical tales of Western adventure. Such interactions usually did not create a blueprint for either harmony or equity. Because they occurred within a legal, political, scientific, and cultural framework designed to benefit the dominant society, they often did so at the expense of the original inhabitants of the land and have perpetuated regional inequities.

utes, pa iutes, navajos, a nd settlers on the pl ate au The Colorado Plateau encompasses about 130,000 square miles across the Four Corners region of the American Southwest. The landscape includes high plateaus, mesas, deserts, rivers, basins, tall mountains, and deep canyons. The highest peak of the La Sal Mountain range, for instance, is over twelve thousand feet high while the Grand Canyon plunges to a depth of six thousand feet. For thousands of years, humans and animals have relied on the riparian areas along the Colorado River and the vegetation throughout the region to support life. By 2005, the region was home to over two million people, including members of thirty-one federally recognized tribes, including the Nuchu (Southern Ute), Nuwuvi (Southern Paiute), and the Diné (Navajo), among others. All are key groups in the chapters that follow. The Southern Ute, including the Capote, Muache, Uncompahgre, Weeminuche, and White River Utes, originally inhabited the region that encompassed most of present-day Colorado, eastern Utah, and a swath of Northern Arizona and New Mexico. Tribal historians note that Sinaway, their creator, placed them in the region, and they see themselves as protec7

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tors of the land. Already expert hunters, upon contact with the Spanish they acquired horses and became skilled equestrians. Their widespread use of the horse led them to trade with other Indigenous peoples and different settlers—first the Spanish, then Mexicans, then Americans—for goods, food, and people.¹³ They assembled in large bands divided into family groups. Following conflicts over land with LDS settlers, the Utes signed the Treaty of Spanish Fork in 1865, and the tribe was forcibly moved to the Uintah Basin. In 1881, “the U.S. government forced the White River Utes from Colorado to the Uintah Reservation, and the following year they created the Ouray Reservation next to it.” In 2017, there were approximately thirteen thousand members of the Southern Ute Indian tribe living in Southern Colorado and an additional two thousand members affiliated with the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation near Fort Duchesne, Utah.¹⁴ Prior to their contact with Europeans, the Paiutes were dispersed from Southern California through Nevada to southern Utah and northern Arizona—a territory spanning thirty million acres. Southern Paiutes, including the Paiute Tribe of Utah (PITU), consist of five bands: Cedar, Indian Peaks, Kanosh, Koosharem, and Shivwits. Tribal historians note their creator, Tabuts, carved them out of sticks and “put them in the very best place”: their homeland. Their different communities have individual histories that date back a thousand years in parts of present-day Utah.¹⁵ Sophisticated botanists, the Paiute grew squash, beans, and melon and also hunted regional game to sustain their communities. They built irrigation ditches and used local willows to make baskets and housing. The highest number of Paiutes in Utah lived around or near the Santa Clara River near presentday St. George. Like the Southern Utes, they too considered the land sacred and have sought to safeguard and care for their homelands, even as colonization, disease, and competition over land and resources threatened the future of the tribe. Currently, there are approximately one thousand enrolled members of the PITU.¹⁶ Like the others, Navajos have also lived in the Four Corners region for centuries. Created by the Holy People, the Diné emerged into this world to make a thriving home for themselves. Their homeland is roughly defined by four sacred mountains: Tsisnaajinii (Blanca Peak) in south central Colorado, Tsoodził (Mount Taylor) in northern New Mexico, Dook’o’oosłííd (San Francisco Peak) in northeastern Arizona, and Dibe’ Ntsaa (Mount Hesperus) in southwestern Colorado. Together, these mountains bound Dinétah, the Navajos’ homeland. Navajos originally interacted with ancestral Puebloan peoples and thrived until the Spanish destabilized regional relationships. Like the Utes, Navajos acquired horses from the Spanish, and 8

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they, too, began to participate in the “raiding and trading” economy. They also became successful herdspeople, agriculturalists, skilled weavers, and silversmiths. Further destabilization occurred during the Mexican and American periods, especially during the Long Walk era, when up to ten thousand Navajos were imprisoned by the US government at Fort Sumner (Hwéeldi) in New Mexico from 1863 to 1868. Today, there are almost four hundred thousand enrolled members of the Navajo Nation, roughly half of whom live on the Navajo Reservation at least part of the year.¹⁷ As these brief accounts demonstrate, Utes, Paiutes, and Navajos consider the region to be of historical, spiritual, and cultural significance. Sites located within the larger geographic area of the plateau, such as Tsé Naní’ áhígíí (Rainbow Bridge) and Shash Jaa’ (Bears Ears), are of special significance for Navajos, Utes, and Paiutes. These two sites, and many others, are located along the north-south border that separates the current states of Utah and Arizona and are central to the history of the development of natural resources and dispossession in the region. The Colorado River, or Bits’íís Ninéézi (the River of Never-Ending Life in Diné), cuts through parts of the present-day Navajo Nation and is revered by Indigenous people throughout the region, including Navajos. Alfred W. Yazzie (Diné), for instance, notes that different ceremonies, such as the Nightway, are associated with the river itself. Other Navajo hatałii (Navajo singers/healers) celebrate deities that “make their home in the canyons” etched out by the river.¹⁸ Diné systems of knowledge, land use practices, and religious practices became increasingly central to the story of Glen Canyon Dam and its connection to Rainbow Bridge National Monument (RBNM). As a result, in the latter half of this book, I highlight key Diné historical actors whose stories and histories are connected to the development of both the physical and social infrastructures in the region. In the first part I analyze interactions between settlers, government officials, scientists, and Indigenous peoples that laid an earlier foundation for those disputes. The fact that the land was sacred to so many different groups did not dissuade settlers from displacing Utes, Paiutes, or Navajos from much of the region. In particular, white settlers, primarily but not only Latter-day Saints, began to populate Utah and the greater region in the 1840s and viewed Indigenous people as a “problem” to be solved through conversion or removal. Angelo Baca (Diné), a cultural anthropologist, filmmaker, and cultural resources coordinator for Utah Diné Bikéyah (UDB), characterizes the process of LDS colonization of the region as one in which “displaced people displace[d] people.”¹⁹ Although fleeing from persecution and considered outsiders from mainstream Protestant America, LDS leaders and settlers saw 9

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themselves as part of a divine mission to settle a new holy land, or Zion, while spreading civilization in the West. Upon arrival in territorial Utah, Brigham Young worked to develop a thriving community, sending followers to build satellite communities throughout the region and overseas. On the Colorado Plateau, he called on members of the faith to live with, work in close proximity to, and convert Indigenous people—Lamanites in the eyes of the Church at that time. Groups of settlers went to live among Ute, Paiute, and Navajo communities in southern and eastern Utah and in northern Arizona. LDS settlers sought to develop agricultural and mercantile strongholds from Idaho to Arizona that would safeguard members of the Church from the US federal government, from others hostile to members of the faith, and from any Native American violence that might occur. ²⁰ As LDS settlers moved into the area, they entered a space that had given, and continues to give, shape and meaning to Indigenous life for centuries or longer. For instance, as historian Farina King (Diné) has shown, “Diné children received lessons at home, during which they developed their identity and relationship with their family, community, and natural environment.”²¹ The scholar Lloyd Lee (Diné) emphasizes that Nihi Kéyah (Diné land) “means the world to the people.” This, for Lee, is not simply a turn of phrase. For “each Diné person, the land is home, and home is the land.” Summarizing numerous scholars, poets, and tribal elders, he notes that “land is an integral system. . . . The land is interwoven with each living being.”²² The homeland “is more than a commodity and property for the Diné; it is strongly connected to their identity.” The family matriarch and weaver Mae Tso from Mosquito Springs, of the Black Mesa region of northern Arizona, makes the point clearly and concisely when describing her fight to remain on her ancestral land: “We have become this land of ours.”²³ In other words, land is not a commodity; it is part of Navajo identity. Much of the landscape of the Colorado Plateau is also central to Navajo religion, cosmology, and history.²⁴ As the scholar Jennifer Denetdale (Diné) points out, creation narratives are connected to specific locations. In turn, those narratives “are a vital part of [Diné] oral tradition and the foundation in which Navajo historical perspectives are embedded.”²⁵ As devout LDS settlers and the government displaced or forcibly removed Indigenous people from their land, they thus took control of the natural resources that had sustained Native Americans and their culture for generations. Indigenous people felt, and feel, those losses acutely. Malcolm Lehi (Ute), a lawmaker and member of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Council, explained the experience of dispossession to me during a visit to Comb Ridge in Bears Ears National Monument in 2019: 10

i n t r oduc t ion Imagine that you spend years and years getting your house just the way you want it. The bed is where you want it, your kitchen is fully stocked with the nourishing foods you want to eat, your medicine cabinet is full of everything you need to heal your family, the window is placed to let the sun in, your church is nearby, you’ve got all your books with knowledge in them that you need readily available in your library, and all the pictures of your ancestors on the wall. Then imagine someone comes and kicks you out of your home. Tells you that you can no longer have the food you’ve stockpiled or the medicine you’ve been using for years. How would you feel?²⁶

When Indigenous people lost control of resources in the region—and lost their land, fields, and homes—those areas and resources did not lose their significance. It is, in part, due to this fact that UDB, a key coalition of five tribes—the Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Ute Mountain Ute, and Uintah Ouray Ute—have lobbied for, and supported the creation of, Bears Ears National Monument. They explain why a national monument needed to be created on Indigenous terms: For Native people from the Four Corners region, Bears Ears is a sacred landscape where the spirits of the ancestors still dwell. Certain medicinal plants grow only in this area, and important ceremonies are performed here. Because of its diverse terrain ranging from red rock canyons to alpine mountains, local Ute and Navajo people also depend on this area for firewood collection and subsistence hunting—crucial sustainable resources in a notably arid region. Bears Ears was also the birthplace of Navajo hero Chief Manuelito who led the resistance to tribal relocation, making it an area of special significance for Navajo people.²⁷

Indigenous people have continually fought to maintain possession of their lands through a variety of actions, using the law, purchasing important tracts of land, lobbying for Bears Ears National Monument, putting their bodies on the line, and fighting against destructive infrastructure projects and for fair and equitable treatment in the region. They continue their struggle to dismantle the infrastructures of dispossession.

building on pr ev ious schol a rship Although LDS settlers played an immediate role in forcing Utes, Navajos, and Paiutes off their land beginning in the 1840s, they were far from the 11

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only people involved in the removal process. A number of different entities contributed to the settlement of the region. Organized and unorganized groups physically removed Indigenous people to reservations and/or dispossessed them of their resources through a variety of tactics ranging from violence to manipulation. All were supported by different forms of social infrastructure—religion, science, engineering, politics, or the law—that they established in the region. State governments along with federally sponsored scientists, scholars, and engineers worked to claim, survey, rename, study, and exploit Indigenous land for their purposes. This is a regional history about how the dominant culture’s ideas about religion, environment, and race came together in the creation of policies and practices as they played out on the ground. For instance, racist ideas and practices within the LDS version of US settler colonialism occurred alongside those of scientists who explored the region in order to “discover” how its resources could be used to shore up specific social and political agendas. While not all members of the LDS Church or various other white actors harbored such views, their actions were couched within the larger push for regional development, which occurred by removing Indigenous people from their lands and appropriating their resources. Together, the actions of settlers, scientists, engineers, and politicians helped create the specific conditions for dispossession under which Glen Canyon Dam would be built with relatively little regard for Indigenous concerns. As a result, the history of the Colorado Plateau, as seen through the lens of Glen Canyon Dam, speaks to the question of erasure. How is it that so many books, articles, and documentaries have been produced on the dam and yet so few have focused on how Indigenous people were and are linked to both the immediate and long-term history of the structure itself? By reorienting the story of the dam to acknowledge Indigenous erasure from larger regional histories that tell the story of the dam, I hope to begin to normalize the idea that we cannot recount histories of religious colonization, scientific exploration, or engineering as disconnected from Indigenous histories. This book explains how such erasures occurred. It focuses on how various actors came to ignore the history of Indigenous people and their contributions to the region. One aim of the book is to demonstrate that erasure is crucial to the story of Glen Canyon Dam and is an integral part of ongoing acts of dispossession. It asserts that neither erasure or dispossession should be ignored. I very much hope that subsequent studies will expand on this work to focus more attention on Native American perspectives in order to support intellectual sovereignty alongside land and water claims.²⁸ Located on the Utah-Arizona border, Glen Canyon Dam looms large 12

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both in the historical imagination and on the landscape. The monumental dam, formally proposed in 1950s legislation and constructed in the 1960s, irrevocably altered the flow of the powerful Colorado River. Glen Canyon itself is often cast as an environmental sacrifice zone. In 1966, the Sierra Club memorialized it in an award-winning book titled The Place No One Knew. Yet people did know Glen Canyon. Local Indigenous populations, especially the Ute, Southern Paiute, Navajo, Puebloan, and Hopi peoples, had known it for generations and had used it in different capacities. Some of their key sacred sites are in and around the canyon, located in close proximity to the dam. LDS settlers had also come to know Glen Canyon during the late nineteenth century. By the 1950s, their descendants took river trips down the Colorado River to celebrate their faith and the ability of their ancestors to overcome great hardship in settling the region. The histories in this book lead up to, and then follow, the construction of Glen Canyon Dam. Yet I do not rehash the dominant narratives surrounding the dam. For instance, I do not write about the Echo Park/Dinosaur National Monument controversy, nor do I focus in great detail on wellknown figures such as David Brower, Edward Abbey, and Floyd Dominy, whose stories have cast a wide shadow across the histories of the arch-gravity dam. Neither is this a story of the technological innovation that was needed to build the mega-dam. Those narratives are important and compelling but have been told in great detail elsewhere.²⁹ In this book, I analyze the various layers of social and physical infrastructures constructed upon the landscape of the Colorado Plateau from the 1840s through the present. This book has benefitted tremendously from the scholars who have worked on the topics listed above as well as those already mentioned and those who have written histories of places adjacent to the one chronicled here. The historian Andrew Needham, for instance, shows that Glen Canyon Dam, the Navajo Reservation, and the City of Phoenix were interconnected through the creation of a complex political and economic regional network. His work has expanded our understanding of “the spaces and peoples included in chronicles of postwar growth.”³⁰ The research that follows demonstrates that other networks of power also spanned the region. For instance, whereas Needham’s work looks from Glen Canyon Dam to Phoenix, my work reorients our gaze northward and charts how the growing LDS population became an emerging social and political power. Jared Farmer’s work has shown that Utah’s history is both “typical and exceptional at the same time.”³¹ The way in which LDS settlers treated Native Americans was, for instance, very much in keeping with broader patterns of colonialism and settlement that produced dispossession, resource ap13

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propriation, and violence in other parts of the United States. Farmer also notes that within mainstream published histories of Utah, Indigenous stories have often been filtered out. What follows supports the first idea, that LDS settlers behaved in very “American ways,” and contributes to recent scholarship that seeks to correct the second.³² As a result, I strive to remap our sense of the region by connecting the twinned impulses of growth and development to the work of some of the key architects of the region’s dominant social and physical infrastructural development. I argue that dispossession was etched into the larger design of the Colorado Plateau in keeping with larger American trends by local or regional planners. The book also builds on the work of scholars who have taken up the themes of environmental racism and social (in)justice throughout the region and beyond. The history of colonialism and energy production loom large in such scholarship. Oil drilling and uranium and coal mining have devasted the health of many of the region’s residents and destroyed wide tracts of land. Many of the region’s Indigenous residents did not view such destruction as neutral processes, even as extractive industries influenced politics across the Navajo Reservation. The anthropologist Dana Powell sees the story of regional energy infrastructure as part of the story of the creation (or reformulation) of political alliances and activism on—and beyond—the Navajo Reservation. Importantly, she asserts that politics across the reservation cannot be separated from larger regional trends. In Wastelanding, the historian Traci Voyles focuses on how natural resource development came to reflect larger relationships between the settler colonial state and Native Americans, especially when it came to the production of social injustice.³³ The scholar Dina Gilio-Whitaker, in As Long as the Grass Grows, charts the long history of Indigenous peoples’ fight to preserve food and water security and the protection of sacred sites through the lens of environmental activism. Other scholars of science, technology, and infrastructure have also explored how racism and differential power relationships occur when colonial societies not only want to restructure society but transform the environment for the benefit of “civilized society.” For instance, the historian Megan Black has charted the role the Department of the Interior (DOI) played in resource extraction at home and abroad. Such activities served to bolster both private industry and an infrastructure that shored up capitalist expansion.³⁴ The Foundations of Glen Canyon Dam builds on these works to sketch out the ways that the structural racism and environmental injustice we now see in the American West were, and remain, infrastructural in their many different manifestations. The history that follows weaves together various threads both in the literature and in the experiences of differ14

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ent groups who have, by and large, been dealt with separately in the literature: religious settlers and biologists, engineers and Indigenous peoples, and politicians and spiritual leaders.

episodes in the multil ay er ed foundations of dispossession The displacement of Indigenous people across the Colorado Plateau through colonization, which was never total, was violent and incredibly disruptive, and it occurred in stages. This book does not cover all of those stages. I do not focus on the Spanish colonization of the greater Southwest, the era of fur trapping and trading, or the internment of the Diné. Nor do I discuss the subsequent arrival of coercive trading practices or provide a detailed account of the trauma associated with the federal policy of stock reduction. I do not give an account of how reservations were formed or how the last violent encounters between Navajos, Utes, and the federal government unfolded. Nor do I deal extensively with intertribal conflicts or try to tell the story from an Indigenous perspective. Rather, I take an episodic approach to the colonization of the region and subsequent dispossession that constituted the social infrastructure on which Glen Canyon Dam was built. By weaving the various threads together, I show that the history of technological development on the Colorado Plateau is also the history of Indigenous dispossession. Put simply, a broader, multilayered process of dispossession had to occur before the dam at Glen Canyon could be considered, envisioned, and then built. Many of the processes can be traced back to LDS colonization of the region as LDS settlers came to the Great Basin and then fanned out across the Colorado Plateau. Along the way, their encounters with Utes, Paiutes, and Navajos ranged from peaceful to violent. Religion, as defined by the LDS settlers, became the dominant social system in Utah and was very influential across the region, even as LDS settlers clashed with the federal government and were persecuted by others. Religion was the foundational structure that brought a community of predominantly white settlers to the region, justified their appropriation of Indigenous resources and labor, and laid the groundwork for the imposition of social and racial hierarchies. The social infrastructure that religion established would come to dominate community and political life along the Utah-Arizona border and northward for generations. The growth of the LDS faith in the region was followed by expansion of scientific exploration in the region. As that occurred, science and schol15

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arship became instruments of dispossession and erasure. Four episodes in the history of exploration in the region illustrate how different “explorers” created data sets and studies that helped the government and/or regional planners dispossess Indigenous people of their lands and natural resources. In each case, the explorer-scholars worked with Indigenous people and often drew heavily upon Indigenous knowledge. Information from each expedition was a key touchstone for the larger development of the region, and information from each expedition was used by the government and sometimes the Bureau of Reclamation as it planned large dams between the 1860s and the 1940s. My discussion of these scientific ventures begins with John Wesley Powell’s 1869 expedition to map the Colorado River and moves on to profile William Douglass and Bryon Cummings’s 1909 expedition and their “race” to “discover” a site that had been well known and sacred to Indigenous peoples for generations: they came to call it Rainbow Bridge. Navajos, on the other hand, called (and call) it Tsé Naní’ áhígíí. The stone arch was removed from Indigenous control when the government created Rainbow Bridge National Monument. This section of the book concludes with a close reading of the work of the geologist Herbert E. Gregory and his wife, Edna, whose trips across the plateau during the 1910s through 1940s resulted in the production of key geological and hydrological data used to plot, name, and organize the resources of the region for future generations of engineers, politicians, and industry professionals. Each expedition relied on Indigenous labor and knowledge, and information from each expedition contributed, directly or indirectly, to the removal of lands from the control of Indigenous peoples. Thus, scientific production constituted a social infrastructure of dispossession that laid the groundwork for the construction of Glen Canyon Dam. The book then proceeds with three other case studies involving engineering and educational programs. Each case study shows how engineers and educators also contributed to the erasure of Indigenous peoples and how their knowledge informed explanations of the region’s growth and development. Here, I examine the actions of a key engineer who surveyed the Colorado River for a dam site, the work of students and professors in the 1930s for the Rainbow Bridge–Monument Valley Expedition (RBMVE), and the work of the biologist Angus Woodbury, one of the most notable alumni of the RBMVE and the son of a prominent LDS family who settled in southern Utah. The scientific and technological studies these individuals produced created narratives that corresponded with the reconfigured landscape upon which white Americans could thrive. For this to happen, Indigenous people had to be continually marginalized. The chapter detailing the 16

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works of these individuals also charts the rise of technical and scientific expertise that would influence how politicians approached regional disputes over land and water in the region for the next sixty years. The legislative debates surrounding Glen Canyon and other Colorado River water storage projects is a crucial part of the story that unfolds in the text that follows. In chapter 4, for instance, I focus on the roles that Utah’s politicians, many of whom were LDS, played in regional development and water policy creation, and I explore the ways both were tied to US Indian policy. By the 1950s, the LDS politicians pushed an agenda that tied the reclamation of regional water supplies to an effort to terminate the federal government’s trust responsibilities to Native Americans, a policy that came to be called “termination” by the government. Development entities who wanted control over specific resources were connected to various policies through the efforts of those who wished to proselytize among, educate, and adopt Native Americans in the Southwest. As a result, the social and cultural infrastructure of Mormonism informed the region’s social and economic development. Thus, political debates about the environment and how it would be used, by whom, and for what purpose formed a key part of the infrastructure of dispossession. The events that unfold in this chapter link back to the importance of Latter-day Saint missionary efforts among the region’s Paiutes, Navajos, Hopis, and Utes that are covered earlier in the book and demonstrate that, by the late 1940s and early 1950s, Mormons helped write and pass federal policies regarding the “reclamation” of the region’s water (i.e., irrigation) and the “termination” of the federal government’s trust responsibilities toward American Indians. These policies sought to undermine tribal sovereignty and push Indigenous peoples toward “self-sufficiency,” and they left an indelible imprint on the region and on how different groups there thought (and think) about each other. The fifth chapter focuses on law as an infrastructure of dispossession. In order to explain how the legal paradigm of the infrastructures of dispossession played out on the ground and in court, I examine the legal case Badoni v. Higginson. Badoni was adjudicated in state and federal courts and effectively created a legal umbrella sheltering and legitimating the infrastructures of dispossession discussed earlier in the book. Badoni was initiated by a group of Diné residents around RBNM who sought to control the water level at the dam in order to keep the waters of Lake Powell from flooding the area under Tsé Naní’ áhígíí, which would safeguard their ability to perform sacred ceremonies there. The final decision in the case rested upon the court’s understanding of land ownership, the legal definition of religion, and the needs of non-Indigenous residents of the region. I focus on the Na17

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vajo litigants’ claims and place them, and their testimony, within the larger context of the development of the region and the Indigenous dispossession on which it rested. The case harkened back to key phases in regional development, including the religious, scientific, technical, and political colonization that occurred over time. Collectively, these episodes illustrate that Glen Canyon Dam did not just appear when engineers designed and then workers built the mega-structure. It sits on a larger and multilayered foundation of unequal regional power relations. Uncovering how the specific layers came to influence the law demonstrates just how sturdy the larger infrastructure of dispossession had become, and how challenging it would be to rebuild a society in which equal weight was given to groups with divergent cultural and social needs. Finally, in the epilogue I point out that even though rebuilding a new, fairer society will be difficult, it is not impossible. I take as an important case study the creation of Bears Ears National Monument (BENM) (see gallery figure 1). After years during which Indigenous activists worked with the National Park Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Department of the Interior, and the Bureau of Land Management, President Barack Obama in late 2016 designated 1.35 million acres in southern Utah as the newest national monument. Rather than the federal government carving the monument out of Indigenous lands without the input of Indigenous people, as had happened with Rainbow Bridge National Monument, this time five tribes—the Zuni Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Hopi Tribe, and Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah Ouray—formed a coalition in support of the monument. They actively lobbied state, regional, and national politicians and organizations for support. They faced strident opposition from local white (primarily LDS) residents of San Juan County, Utah, who opposed the creation of the monument and the management of it by the Bears Ears Commission, a primarily Indigenous organization. However, some members of the LDS Church, some of whom are Indigenous, also supported the creation of BENM. The persistence of UDB and the coalition represent a promising moment in the region’s history—one of cooperation between the federal government and tribes that begins to deconstruct dispossession in important ways. But, as the conclusion also makes clear, dismantling infrastructures of dispossession will be a heavy lift. The Foundations of Glen Canyon Dam is about how the events that led up to the construction of Glen Canyon Dam influenced the lives of people across the Colorado Plateau and beyond it. It is about the experiences and actions of people like Raymond Nakai along with those of settlers, scien18

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tists, engineers, lawyers, and other ordinary men and women, Native American and white. It is primarily about the role that social and physical infrastructures played in the dual processes of the dispossession of Indigenous resources and the erasure of Indigenous contributions and culture as regional development projects grew in size and scope. As recent scholarship by Ashley Carse has noted, “infrastructures are woven into the fabric of society.”³⁵ But more than that, I assert that they help define the warp and weft of society. The patterns of social relations—such as inequality based on racial hierarchies—that emerged alongside infrastructure projects, and proceeded from their creation were not accidental. As a result, both dispossession and erasure are central themes in the book. White settlers built up a number of social substructures through the establishment of religion, science, and political regimes, which they then used to reinforce their goals by building the region’s physical infrastructure. Since the late 1800s, Glen Canyon and, later, Glen Canyon Dam have been the subject of intense study, scrutiny, and debate. Similarly, the dam’s reservoir, Lake Powell, has been at the center of regional water policy debates since before it even started to fill in the 1960s. Today, both the dam and the reservoir have been cemented into the American imagination and landscape as symbols of hope and environmental transformation and/or ecological despair and climate change. Yet even today, few commentators give consideration to the region’s Indigenous people when discussing the past, present, or future of the dam.³⁶ Despite the lack of publications that reference their participation, Indigenous people were involved in a number of different ways with the creation of Glen Canyon Dam. The monumental infrastructure of the dam sits on land once controlled, claimed, and used by Indigenous people such as the Ute, Paiute, Diné, and Hopi. It was built with support and aid from the leaders of the Navajo Nation, like Nakai, and by approximately one thousand Indigenous construction workers. But members of the NN, like members of other communities who lived in the region and relied on the waters of the Colorado River, both then and now, do not speak with one voice about the dam. As the reservoir filled, Nakai and other leaders who had generally supported the dam started to ask just when Navajos would reap the larger social and political benefits they had been led to believe were coming their way. Residents from the Navajo Mountain chapter of Navajo Nation had more specific concerns related to their religion and objected to reservoir waters flooding the sacred site of Rainbow Bridge—and the behavior of the white tourists the water brought to the area. Now, in an era of 19

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climate change, the fate of the dam has become somewhat uncertain. What will happen to the dam, and who will make those decisions? Whatever happens, one thing is clear: Native Americans should have a say in how the river and region are developed. Their voices should lead upcoming conversations (see gallery figure 2).

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r e l igious e x pa nsion Latter-day Settlers, Dispossession, and Indentured Servitude, 1840–1880

I

n July 1911, Sharlot Hall embarked on a seventy-five-day journey through the remote and arid region along the Arizona Territory’s northern border. A few weeks into the trip, Hall, a seasoned traveler, accomplished writer, and the first Territorial Historian of Arizona, was overjoyed to enter the town of Fredonia, just north of the Grand Canyon. Covered in the region’s red sand and suffering from an uncomfortable sunburn, Hall and her guide took refuge among the town’s many leafy poplar trees. She described the community as the “greenest, cleanest, quaintest, little village of about thirty families,” and she was especially delighted to find a well-furnished room where she could store her saddle and camp roll and, at long last, sleep in a bed.¹ The settlement’s wood-frame houses, well-tended gardens, fruit trees, and blooming flowers led her to declare that the “whole place ha[d] a picturesque charm that is not often found” in northern Arizona. The carefully tended alfalfa and wheat fields surrounding the town further enhanced her impression of the “thrifty” LDS settlers who founded the settlement in the 1880s. Since then, they had grown crops as “fine as the best in California or the Salt River Valley” in the extreme climate of the area she, along with others, described as the “Arizona Strip.”² Hall’s respect for the Latter-day Saints derived not just from the fact that they had overcome the aridity, heat, and other environmental challenges to achieve agricultural success but also from their ability to settle in a place where “Pah-utes and Navajos were ready to make short shrift of any white man.”³ While Paiutes and Navajos could have said the same of the Latterday Saint (LDS) settlers, Hall clearly approved of the Mormon colonists and how they had transformed the landscape. Hall’s admiration of Mormon pioneers was pronounced, but she also recognized that the unpredictability of water was a continual problem in the high desert. There was either not enough or, occasionally and dramat21

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figu r e 1.1 Sharlot Hall exploring Arizona.

ically, far too much of it. Hall noted that the Mormon settlers in Fredonia “had the usual trouble getting their irrigating canals built.” Once constructed, some residents watched as their irrigation systems were “washed away repeatedly by the heavy floods down Kanab Creek.” Yet ever a territorial booster, Hall felt the region held untapped potential and wanted her readers to invest in LDS irrigation projects. “[W]ith sufficient capital enough water could be developed to water all the best land of the valley.” Given what the Mormons had already accomplished, Hall thought that “these first settlers deserve[d] a special place in history for the way in which they ha[d] turned the wilderness into good farms and homes.”⁴ The Latter-day Saints of the Arizona Strip, however, were far from the first to explore, live, irrigate, and farm in that part of the Colorado Plateau. With a surface area of 7,878 miles, the area is larger than the state of Massachusetts and with its high desert climate of juniper forests, pinyon pine, spruce, and fir trees, the region is home to Kaibab Paiutes and others. Encompassing parts of the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River, part of the 22

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strip “lay within the sacred land of Puxant Tuvip, where the Southern Paiute people believe they were created.”⁵ Needless to say, LDS settlers were not the first to engineer solutions to the region’s dearth of water. Instead, LDS settlers entered a region that had been inhabited for centuries by a variety of Indigenous groups, including the Nuche (Ute), Paiute (Nuwuvi), Diné (Navajo), Ndee (Apache), and Hopi peoples.⁶ The missionaries who colonized the region in the 1850s and 1860s arrived not just to convert the people who already lived there but primarily to extend the reach of the LDS Church, and, importantly, to build permanent settlements in Indigenous territory by utilizing the water controlled by Indigenous peoples. They built their houses, churches, and ranches on or near sacred sites and on land that the region’s Indigenous peoples had long used to support their own communities, dispossessing those people in the process.⁷ Despite clear indications of opposition, LDS settlers set about appropriating timber resources, hunting area wildlife, and diverting water sources into their own irrigation ditches upon their arrival. Such actions transformed a fragile ecosystem, destabilized an equally delicate set of sociopolitical relationships, pushed Nuwuvi and Nuche into starvation, and destabilized Diné communities. Religious settlement and colonization of the region became a key pillar in the larger infrastructure of dispossession that would have a long-lasting effect on the people and development of the region. Driven out of the eastern part of the United States, Latter-day Saints arrived in the West intent on building a unique religious kingdom. By hunting, farming, and building on Indigenous lands, and by diverting streams and rivers to their fields, settlers commandeered Indigenous resources and subverted Native land use customs. Their aggressive use of the land rendered it, in their view, insufficient to sustain both Indigenous peoples and the newly arrived LDS settlers. Mormon settlers also appropriated the physical infrastructure built by Indigenous groups, such as local earthen barrier dams and irrigation ditches. Their faith-based use and appropriation of Indigenous land made possible the settler communities that soon dominated the region and informed the racial and social hierarchies that would govern them. LDS theologians often emphasize the faith’s biological kinship with nature and commitment to environmental stewardship, but when religious persecution drove early LDS settlers into the western desert, notions of sustainability did not always gain traction.⁸ Mormon pioneers, according to Bill McKibben, “made a great project of subduing nature, erecting some towns in places so barren and dry and steep that only missionary zeal to conquer the wild could be the motivation.”⁹ The church’s position on land use and LDS-Indigenous relations was perfected in the Salt Lake 23

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Valley, but the philosophy took its form from the values and visions of the faith’s founder, Joseph Smith, and his successor, Brigham Young.

joseph smith’s legacy: lds migr ation, br igh a m young, a nd the pr actice of prosely tizing a mong l a m a nites Like many other Americans during the era of the early republic, Joseph Smith’s life was marked by intense personal mobility and ideological ferment. Born in Vermont and raised near the Erie Canal in western New York, Smith experienced the intensity of the Second Great Awakening firsthand. Living in a region of passionate revivalism known as the “burnedover district,” Smith often came into contact with traveling preachers and their unique blend of folk tradition, spiritualism, magic, and religious devotion. Similar to other seekers of the era, Smith was swept up in the evangelical spirit and reported multiple encounters with Jesus Christ and other angelic beings. These visitations continued throughout his life, and in his detailed accounts of his visions, he revealed that he felt chosen to build “the original one true church of Christ.” Smith’s writings formed the foundation of a new American religion, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He sought out followers and began to search for an ideal home for his religion.¹⁰ Smith made converts and convinced them to follow him out of New York. After a brief stay in Kirtland, Ohio, some of his followers moved to Jackson County, Missouri, which Smith designated as Zion. Other Missouri settlers not only rejected Smith’s divine claim to the land but violently expelled members of the faith from the territory during the Mormon-Missouri War of 1838. Cast out, LDS settlers moved to Nauvoo, Illinois. After a series of internal fights over Smith’s theocratic rule and the controversial practice of polygamy, state officials charged Smith with inciting a riot and treason. In 1844, while Smith awaited trial in a Carthage, Illinois, jail cell, a group of local vigilantes attacked and killed him. His death did not end the Mormon quest for their promised land, however. While a small group of Mormons opted to stay in Missouri, most decided to follow their new leader, Brigham Young, the second president of the LDS Church, farther west. In 1847, Young led a group of religious pioneers to a new home in what is today the state of Utah. Far from the conflicts that had plagued the young church in the Midwest, Young and his followers welcomed the relative iso24

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lation of the Salt Lake Valley. But, of course, the region was not uninhabited. Utes, Paiutes, and, in the southeastern part of the state, Navajos had long occupied the land. Young embraced the chance to live beside “Indians” in large part because they held a unique place within LDS cosmology. Followers of Joseph Smith believed that the Book of Mormon offered a true “history of the origins of the Indians.”¹¹ According to that history, in 600 BCE an Israelite family departed from Jerusalem. With assistance from God, they found refuge in North America, but once they arrived they split into two factions: the Nephites, who built great cities, and the Lamanites, who lived a nomadic lifestyle. Smith believed that after his ascension, Christ visited the two groups to redeliver the Sermon on the Mount, provide the sacrament, and appoint twelve disciples. Despite Christ’s intervention, the Lamanites slipped into “wickedness and idolatry” and eventually killed the Nephites, destroying the final vestiges of Christianity in what Smith called “the New World.” All was not lost, however, for the last of the Nephite scholars, Moroni, wrote and buried an account of their history. Moroni later appeared to Smith in New York and led him to buried plates that contained that history. Smith then unearthed, translated, and eventually published the text of those plates as the Book of Mormon.¹² Smith believed North American Indigenous people were the direct descendants of the Lamanites. As a result of this prophetic history, Smith considered “Indians as spiritual kin with whom LDS settlers would build a new Zion.” The Book of Mormon spurred the belief that, in the words of the historian Jared Farmer, American Indians were “destined to save the world, though they couldn’t save themselves.”¹³ As so-called Lamanites, American Indians remained part of the covenant, fated to be “redeemed” by the Latter-day Saints. Smith’s initial quest to travel west in search of a temple site was linked to his beliefs about Indigenous people. By living in close proximity to the Indigenous people, not only could Mormons bring them back into the fold and help them build up Zion, but American Indian communities would also help create a protective barrier between LDS settlers and their non-Indigenous persecutors.¹⁴ Smith’s view, one shared by Young, was that “Indians” were destined to both save and be saved by Latter-day Saints. Young’s cojoined belief that title to “Indian land” claims would need to be extinguished and Indigenous people would need to be converted led to tensions between the LDS pioneers and Indigenous residents of the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau.¹⁵ Upon the Mormon arrival in Utah, relationships between LDS settlers and Indigenous peoples vacillated wildly. Like Massachusetts Pilgrims 25

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nearly 250 years earlier, Mormons needed Indigenous peoples to share their resources but also wanted help hindering the 2,500 armed men whom President James Buchanan had ordered to Utah to install a non-Mormon territorial governor in 1857. Brigham Young worked to protect his people, and his own position as both territorial governor and Indian Agent, by negotiating with surrounding American Indian communities for land use rights. The LDS laity, however, expressed confusion over their mission to American Indians. Their uncertainty was exacerbated by the fact that LDS settlers, like other white pioneers in the nineteenth century West, harbored a host of racist views toward American Indians. Levi Jackman, for one, described the “Indians” that Young had instructed him to bring into the community as the “most filthy, degrade[d] and miserable beings probabl[y] that ever assumid [sic] the shape of human beings.”¹⁶ Church leadership did not always offer clear instruction on how to reconcile settler attitudes with Smith’s teachings. While Brigham Young negotiated for food and land with local Indigenous people and instructed male members of his flock to marry Indigenous women as part of a conversion project, he also despaired that it would take years, if not decades, for the “Ewets” (as he phonetically called the Utes) to be redeemed, concluding that “ ‘it mattereth not’ ” if they were killed.¹⁷ Other LDS settlers felt the same way. In 1849, a group of Mormon militiamen traveled south from Salt Lake City into Utah Valley, to the village where “Little Chief” lived to settle a dispute over livestock. Little Chief, although upset that the settlers had overfished the valley’s lakes, denied that his band had stolen the livestock and helped the Mormons locate the true culprits. Instead of turning to civil law, LDS colonists attacked and killed the four individuals that Little Chief had implicated in the theft.¹⁸ The Little Chief episode was not an isolated event but one of many instances of LDS–American Indian violence during what predominantly white historians have called Utah’s Indian wars. In some ways, Young’s project was doomed to failure because he was engaged in two contradictory efforts: the incorporation of Native Americans into LDS communities and the establishment of settlements on Indigenous land.¹⁹ The violence between LDS settlers and Utes, Paiutes, and Navajos continued throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Mormons continued to move onto American Indian lands and to proselytize among the various Indigenous populations as part of a larger struggle to establish a territory, and then later a state, and to maintain key tenets of their religion. Tensions with Native Americans also highlighted the triangulation of spe26

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cific pressures and contradictions surrounding LDS settlements. LDS settlers needed Indigenous land to expand the boundaries of their Zion, which meant they needed to control the local water supply to meet the needs of their growing agricultural settlements. Settlers also wanted Utes, Paiutes, and Navajos to be on their side in potential conflicts with the US government, but, conversely, LDS settlers wanted the US government to protect them should conflicts with Native Americans spiral out of control.²⁰ On top of all this, they sought autonomy from federal interference. These tensions played out on the land itself—between LDS settlers, the US government, and different Indigenous populations—and would influence how the land was used and who had access to it.

br igh a m young’s v ision for souther n utah a nd norther n a r izona If the first stage of LDS migration was the search for a Latter-day Saint homeland, the second stage focused on peopling the surrounding areas to ensure the continuation of the faith. Occupation of the territories around the Salt Lake Valley would facilitate safe passage of settlers to other areas of the West and create a defensible position in the region through the establishment of a “Mormon corridor” that stretched to California and the Pacific Ocean.²¹ Once ensconced in the Salt Lake Valley, then, Brigham Young sent groups of settlers throughout the Great Basin, across the Colorado Plateau, and to lands beyond the continental United States. Select missionaries settled in Hawaii to grow sugar and convert the Indigenous islanders, others traveled to Mexico, and still others went to Europe. But Young directed the largest group of Mormons to move to the neighboring territories and states of Wyoming, Nevada, Idaho, California, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.²² The followers called to settle this expansive region quickly realized the difficulty of their task and the precarious nature of their hold on the region. Morgan Amasa Barton, the son of an early settler to present-day Bluff, Utah, put it bluntly when he described his father and the other original colonists as “shock absorbers of premeditated plots of Caucasian outlaws and Indian renegades.” Barton and his companions were committed to their leader’s vision of an expanded LDS territory, but he understood that the purpose of expansion was not only to “[make] friends with the Indians” but also to produce “an accumulation of stock and property and means for establishing of schools and churches which, as 27

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a natural consequence, would be fundamental for the greater development” of Zion.²³ The LDS colonists who spread throughout the Southwest saw the extensive Native American presence in the region as proof that their mission into the desert would be successful. If the region could support Indigenous people, they reasoned, it could support LDS settlers. In 1854, for example, Brigham Young directed William D. Huntington to lead a trek into northern Arizona to establish trading relations with the Navajos.²⁴ Huntington was not able to establish an economic relationship with local tribes, but the journey, what he described as a “trip of discovery,” confirmed LDS interest in the region. Huntington was impressed by the numerous “Indian ruins” he encountered during his expedition, and the many pre-Puebloan structures he found solidified his belief that LDS colonizers could build their communities on lands that had been populated by Native peoples for generations. A second voice, the missionary Jessie Smith, held a similar view, remarking, “To our settling this new land, we had evidence that this land has been densly [sic] populated.” As the geographers Barbara Morehouse and Thomas Finger note, “The settlers viewed the many Indian ruins in the area not as a warning about the dangers of overtaxing the environment with excessive human occupation, but as a sign that through their religious work the land could be resettled.”²⁵ The “remains” of former homes, communities, and irrigation ditches convinced the missionaries that the entire area was capable of supporting white settlement. At least some of the ditches and dwellings they saw were used seasonally by Indigenous people. LDS leaders were already aware of the extent of Navajo sheep and cattle herds, and now the additional evidence drawn from these early expeditions to the region convinced church officials that they might be rewarded by their settlement efforts.²⁶ Mormons justified their expansion with a belief in spiritual and environmental stewardship—fertile lands and Native American souls were in need of their management, direction, and care. In order to fully build the kinds of infrastructure that would support a robust LDS community, however, Indigenous people would need to be removed—by force or through conversion to the new faith—from their original homelands. In their effort to expand the bounds of their kingdom on the Colorado Plateau, a desert basin that includes parts of southeastern Utah, northern Arizona, western Colorado, and northwestern New Mexico, many Mormon settlers not only noted the remnants of previous Native civilizations but also came into contact with contemporary Indigenous peoples on a regular basis. Kumen Jones, a missionary to the Navajos, Utes, and Paiutes, 28

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saw his work as a glorious assignment. For his efforts among the region’s Indigenous peoples, Jones believed that the “All Wise Father” would reward him “in the afterlife.” He explained, In His wisdom and justice, he will say to the faithful Indian missionary, “Come, inasmuch as you were willing to give up wealth, comfort, worldly pleasures, you[r] social standing, and all that man naturally seeks after, to become peace-makers, in its broadest and truest sense; come, I have real honor and joy for you, that shall never end, but shall grow sweeter and brighter as time goes on, and your families who have shared the sacrifice with you shall also participate in the honors and blessings that shall never end.”²⁷

Jones had sacrificed to move to the far edges of the Latter-day community in the center of Ute, Paiute, and Navajo territory, but even this committed settler recognized that converting the Native Americans required a much more intensive effort than transforming the landscape from “uncultivated” to “productive.”²⁸ Barton, Jones, and the many other settlers who spread outward from the Salt Lake Valley approached their task with an understanding of their prophet’s position on Native Americans. Brigham Young’s 1864 account of Mormon-Indigenous relations made it clear that he believed that Mormons should act with the “Indians’ best interests” in mind. He acknowledged that Mormons had the capacity to kill “every [Indian] man, woman and child” they encountered, yet, mercifully, he found this option unacceptable. As he thought through his options, he stated, “If we were to do it, what better are we than the wicked and the ungodly. It is our duty to do better than they in our administration of justice and our general conduct toward the Lamanites. It is not our duty to kill them, but it is our duty to save them and the lives of their children.” Young made this claim even while recognizing that it was the Mormon colonization of the region that had thrown Indigenous peoples into turmoil: This is the land they and their fathers have walked over and called their own, and they have just as good right to call it theirs today as any people have to call any land their own. They have buried their fathers and their mothers and children here; this is their home and we have taken possession of it and occupy the land where they used to hunt. But now their game is gone and they are left to starve. It is our duty to feed them. The 29

t h e f ou n dat ions of g l e n c a n yon da m Lord has given us ability to cultivate the ground and reap bountiful harvests; we have an abundance of food for ourselves and for the stranger. It is our duty to feed these poor ignorant Indians. We are living on their possessions and at their homes.²⁹

Young and his fellow LDS pioneers understood exactly how their settlement practices intensified the vulnerability and fragmentation of the Indigenous communities of the region. At the same time, they also recognized how the transformation of the environment fit into the market-driven desire to expand the Mormon empire. Just as missionaries sent to Hawaii carried out plans to expand sugar production, setters to southern Utah and northern Arizona were to invest in cotton production. Such efforts would link the region—and the church—to new global markets. In this region of the southwest, in an area many LDS settlers called Dixie, Young intended his followers to use the Colorado River in much the same way that southern planters used the Mississippi. He planned to build a large warehouse at Call’s Landing, near present-day Hoover Dam, and from there “immigrants and freight would be landed by ships steaming up the Colorado” and sent northward on the Muddy River through St. George, Utah. At this point, goods and people would travel overland to Salt Lake City. In the reverse journey, cotton grown in southern Utah would be loaded onto steam ships and sent back down the Colorado River, on to the Pacific, then out to global markets.³⁰ The development plans the LDS Church devised for the region were bold, but they were also incredibly labor intensive. Everything from the construction of new settlements, including grand structures like the St. George Temple, to large agricultural holdings required more workers than were available.³¹ Determining how to meet these labor needs would necessitate a radical transformation of the region. These changes were as political as they were environmental. The Mormons’ incursion into the area was also a colonization of the region’s natural resources, which were used primarily by Navajos, Utes, Hopis, and Paiutes. Brigham Young may have considered the Indigenous groups he called Lamanites people in need of redemption, but he also considered their land and resources necessary to establish a Mormon Zion. Young, believing that “expansion would be the key to holding territory for the Mormons,” initially deployed scores of men on missions to a variety of locations within the first few years of settling in Salt Lake City.³² This mission was not just spiritually inspired; it was also environmentally driven and economically and politically strategic, and it helped embed an important social infrastructure onto the landscape. 30

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the expa nsion of the mor mon cor r idor a nd the dispossession of indigenous people By the 1890s, Mormons had established permanent colonies in areas formerly controlled by Utes, Paiutes, Navajos, and other Indigenous peoples. Mormon expansion made the period between 1850 and 1890 “one of the most turbulent in the tribes’ history.”³³ Less than a systematic expansion, Mormon settlement of the region occurred in fits and starts, with the first exploratory excursions occurring in the 1850s. By 1855, those who heeded Young’s initial call to service had established twenty villages along the main passage linking Salt Lake City to Cedar City, a small colony located approximately 265 miles to the southwest of the Mormon stronghold. These hamlets were meant to provide an “outer shell of defense” against hostile “Gentiles,” or non-Mormons. The Mormons were also willing to go on the offensive when necessary. To the north of Salt Lake City, in Wyoming, Young purchased Fort Bridger from the mountain man Jim Bridger. To the east, Young sent a group of settlers to the Elk Mountains, now called the La Sal Mountains, near present-day Moab, Utah.³⁴ These LDS, along with other non-LDS, settlers further displaced the area’s Indigenous peoples, who were already facing the pressures of US expansion. By the early 1860s, white settlers chasing mining strikes in Colorado had pushed eastern Utes to the southwestern part of Colorado, increasing their interaction with the Indigenous peoples living in southeastern Utah. The Paiutes, meanwhile, living across a wide swath of south, central, and western Utah, eastern Nevada, and northern Arizona, now had to compete with additional groups, both Native and white, who sought their territory. Almost all were better armed than the Paiutes were. In this competitive environment, LDS settlers wasted little time in claiming the best lands and most valuable resources. They also tried to relocate the recently dispossessed Paiutes to lands just beyond their settlements so that the tribe might create a kind of “early warning system to aid the Mormons against Navajo and Ute depredations.”³⁵ These forced and voluntary resettlements caused shifts in the larger political economy, sparking an inevitable increase in tension and violence between settlers and Indigenous people that were often policed by the federal government. The Navajos’ participation in the larger regional “raiding and trading” economy ended when the federal government forced approximately ten thousand Navajos to march to Fort Sumner/Hwéeldi in eastern New Mexico, where they were interned, between 1864 and 1868. Neither the initial imprisonment nor the creation of a Navajo Reservation quelled tensions be31

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tween the Diné and white settlers in New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. As the historian Jennifer Denetdale notes, Navajos were forced on the Long Walk and imprisoned for fighting against the larger “invasion of Navajo land.” Upon the signing of the treaty that allowed them to return to their homelands, they lost millions of acres of traditional homeland.³⁶ Some LDS settlers claimed not to understand why the federal government had imprisoned the Navajos to begin with, while others worked with the wealthiest groups of Navajos who had escaped the horrors of the Long Walk before, during, and after their imprisonment. Even many years after Navajo internment, the colonist Kumen Jones remained uncertain why the federal government had taken such an action to begin with: I have not found, in a more or less extensive research just what the reason or excuse was for the government to round up the Navajos, hold them for two or three years, and then turn them loose in a condition of extreme poverty, stripped of the little property or means of living they had. I have a wholehearted belief and faith in the US Government and in most of the good strong men who have stood at the head of it from the beginning until the present time, but I am sure that some of them have been unfortunate in their choice of advisors and counselors who have led them into making a few serious errors. Some situations of this kind must have been responsible for the Navajo War of 1868.³⁷

Jones went on to suggest the internment had actually led to violence between Navajos and whites in the late 1860s and into the 1870s. With the Navajos reduced to poverty and sent back to lands in a “destitute condition” where “water for irrigation was scarce,” he found it unsurprising that they robbed others in the region. He tried to put himself in the place of Navajos, noting, “From their point of view they had been in this robbed condition, and if robbing was the white man’s game, why shouldn’t the Navajoes [sic] try their hand at it?”³⁸ Other LDS colonists traded with Navajo headmen and their supporters, such as Haskeneinii, Daghaa Sik’, and K’aayilii, who sought refuge on Navajo Mountain in southeastern Utah and around Rainbow Bridge in order to avoid internment.³⁹ Other Navajos who had escaped Kit Carson and General James Henry Carleton’s removal campaign, as the two oversaw the internment of Navajos, continued to live on the Colorado Plateau—in proximity to colonizing Mormons who had moved onto their lands. Prior to the conflicts between the US government and Navajos in the 1860s, the majority of LDS missionaries at least claimed to seek peaceful 32

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relations through trade with the Ute, Navajo, Hopi, and Paiute peoples. As these white religious settlers colonized the region, actual encounters between LDS settlers and Native Americans represented more diverse experiences. The historian Howard Lamar asserts that “Young’s Indian policy was much more than a policy of buying peace. In fact, the variety and scope of the Indian missions in Utah has never really been appreciated.”⁴⁰ Given that missionaries wanted to do more than trade with Indigenous people, and sought both their lands and their souls—and sometimes their children—Mormon encounters with American Indians provide a wealth of information about the ways Mormons and Indigenous peoples thought about the landscape and each other.

specific mor mon expeditions a nd ute r esponses In the spring of 1855, Young stepped up efforts to build new outposts in the region by sponsoring an expedition to the Elk Mountains. The range offered “water from melting snow, lumber for construction and heating homes, and game to hunt”—all necessary ingredients, the Mormon leader believed, for a thriving agricultural settlement.⁴¹ He tapped the Ohio-born Alfred Billings to lead a small party to establish a southern outpost amid local Indigenous peoples. In the opening weeks of the mission, Billings and his fellow settlers made considerable progress toward their goal by obtaining land and converting local Ute Indians. Throughout the summer of 1855, they selected a fort site and started its construction, began work on a dam, plowed land surrounding the fort, and planted their first corn and wheat crops. During this early work, they relied on a Timpanogos Ute leader named Arapien to facilitate communication with other local Indigenous people and distant Mormon settlements. Members of Arapien’s band delivered mail to and from northern settlements and helped forge connections between what felt to the Mormons like an isolated outpost and other Ute bands (probably the Weeminuche and Sheberetch) as well as Paiutes and the nearby Navajos. A confident Billings reported that local peoples, especially the Utes, could be readily converted, and as his men continued to expand their footprint in the region, he devoted considerable energy to preaching in English among the Native Americans. His diary is peppered with what he saw as positive reactions to his outreach efforts, noting that “the Natives . . . seemed to be well pleased” by his sermons.⁴² At the same time, he also chronicled growing tensions between the area’s Utes, Navajos, and Mormons. Cross-cultural pressures emerged amid, and 33

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because of, LDS efforts to dramatically modify the landscape and insert themselves into local trade networks and political alliances. In late June, as the settlers put the finishing touches on a corral, Billings reported that a Ute leader named Quilsoscket had entered their camp to inform the settlers that they were building on “his [land] that he liked it [as it was].” Billings defused the potential confrontation by engaging the Ute leader in trade. Quilsoscket, Billings noted, stated that he “had but Little” and “wanted something for it.” In turn, Billings and his fellow missionaries provided the Utes with “a blanket and 2 shirts,” noting that Quilsoscket “seemed to be well satisfied” with the exchange. Billings was not troubled that such “landexchanges” violated the federal Trade and Intercourse Acts’ stipulation that only the federal government could purchase land from Indian tribes. Nor is it clear that Quilsoscket was selling his land to the settlers in the exchange. Still, Quilsoscket’s positive reception bolstered the Mormons’ sense that their efforts in the area were proving successful. Indeed, the day after the trade, Quilsoscket returned with four of his men to listen to Billings’s Sunday sermon. In the following weeks, the Ute leader and the male members of his band became regular visitors to the nascent outpost. As the summer of 1855 progressed, Billings and his party continued work on their settlement, increasing their interactions with local Indigenous peoples. They relocated their main camp closer to a spring, finished construction of a dam, completed additional work on their fort, expanded their planted fields, hunted local animals, surveyed the area, cut hay and timber, and hauled stone. By nearly every measure, the settlers had created a solid foundation for their growing community. Exchanges with local Indigenous leaders appeared to confirm this assessment. For example, during these heady days of transforming the land, Quilsoscket returned to the LDS camp to confirm his support for the group’s settlement efforts. To an LDS interpreter, he recounted a recent dream. “I had a dream the other night,” he opened, “and saw the Mormons coming here to live on my land. I went and got my men to drive them off, but the Great Spirit told me to let the Mormons alone, that we must be good friends and not fight anymore.”⁴³ We may question the interpretation of this exchange, but to Billings it was evidence that Quilsoscket wanted his party to teach the Indigenous men “how to work.” Billings also read into the exchange confirmation that his men did not need to feed the Utes whenever “they came amongst us.” But Quilsoscket also included a warning as he cautioned Billings to limit the number of Mormons who would live on his land. “He did not want us to bring any more men out here,” Billings recorded in his diary; “we had plenty to live amongst them.”⁴⁴ 34

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What the Quilsoscket meeting and dream suggested, and what Billings may have completely missed, is that even as the LDS settlers continued to construct their settlement, Utes continued to inhabit, farm, hunt, raid, and trade throughout the region. Aware or not, the settlers were being drawn into volatile regional politics. In mid-July, Arapien, the Timpanogas Ute leader, and his men traveled south to trade “Piede,” or Paiute children, for horses to Navajos.⁴⁵ While Arapien was away, Billings baptized fourteen members of Quilsoscket’s band, including Quilsoscket himself as well as eleven men, two boys, and one woman. Quilsoscket was christened Saint John in this process.⁴⁶ Having converted the local “chief,” Billings felt emboldened to continue his exploration of the region, including expanding the young settlement, a move that required an increased use of water for LDS crops. Such activities would not have gone unnoticed, especially given that by the end of July 1855, the number of Utes (and perhaps Paiutes) coming to the settlement continued to grow. Billings might have taken the accounts of expanding raids and social turmoil as a source of concern, but he was undeterred. Yet Billings’s diary reveals he knew that the LDS presence in the region had consequences for local tribes. One unnamed Indigenous local, probably a Paiute, told Billings they feared that Brigham Young, the Mormons’ “Big Chief,” would recall the missionaries back to Salt Lake, leaving his band “to starve to death.” Another visitor, a man whom Billings called “Chief Almes,” told him that the Mormons “were the only friends they had” and that “all the [othe]r nations around [them] were at war,” but “they did not want to fight.” Other Utes confirmed the increase in regional hostility, informing Billings that the Navajos were especially hostile and the settlers should fear them.⁴⁷ Billings, perhaps naively, recorded such statements as proof that they were welcome in the area. But such declarations, along with Quilsoscket’s request that the settlement remain small, also point to an unstable social climate brought on by uneven power relations and resource competition. As skilled horsemen, many Navajos and Utes had the upper hand against the Paiutes, most of whom did not have horses, and the unmounted Utes, such as Quilsoscket’s band. Without horses, such groups remained especially vulnerable.⁴⁸ Ironically, the LDS settlers had long thought they would use “the Indians” as a potential barrier. The reality was the reverse, at least regarding the unmounted Utes. In a perfect example of the complicated nature of Indigenous-white relations on the Colorado Plateau, Mormon colonizers provided an important buffer against violence even as their presence threatened the band’s subsistence.⁴⁹ By early August 1855, Arapien emerged as an important regional negoti35

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ator and keen observer of cross-cultural power struggles between the Mormons, Navajos, Utes, Paiutes, and federal government. While Billings and his associates continued to cut local timber and tend to their crops, the Timpanogos Ute leader reported to Billings that he had made contact with area Navajos and that, rather than being hostile, they were eager to trade. Arapien told the Mormons that the Navajos “were coming to make peace” with them. He then brought four unnamed Navajo “chiefs,” who declared their desire to “be at peace with all men,” to meet with the men of the settlement. The Navajos, however, made it clear that they would be friendly only on their terms and bluntly stated that “if [the Mormons] would not make peace, they would come uppon [sic] them and kill them all off.” As an expression of goodwill, Billings responded by giving the visiting Navajos a butchered ox.⁵⁰ After helping to ease tensions between Mormons and Navajos through the distribution of food, Arapien then broached the subject of land value and meaning by relating a recent interaction with a representative of the federal government. Lieutenant Colonel Edward Steptoe, a veteran of the Mexican-American War and experienced “Indian fighter,” had been recently posted to Utah and offered to purchase the land on which the Mormons were now living from the Timpanogos Utes.⁵¹ Arapien, in recounting the Steptoe offer to Billings, stressed his allegiance to the Mormons but then declared that such an exchange was impossible anyway, as the “great Spirit did not give . . . [land] to sell or give away.” The leader expressed his band’s cultural attachment to their sacred ancestral lands while also demonstrating his keen awareness that the “sale” of his land would result in his people’s displacement.⁵² Billings, familiar with Brigham Young’s views on environmental stewardship, would have had at least partially understood Arapien’s logic. Young repeatedly stressed that “the earth belonged to the Lord and that humans could hold no title to the land and resources.” According to historian Thomas Alexander, Young informed his followers that “landholders might manage God’s estates only as stewards.” Yet Young’s philosophy also included an important caveat: if these same stewards “did not oversee the land as good managers, the Lord required them to relinquish it to someone who would.”⁵³ While Arapien called into question his ability to sell land, Mormon environmental philosophy challenged the quality and nature of Ute stewardship of the land. In this fragile environment, the political gymnastics required to keep all competing interests in balance could not hold as religious imperatives, environmental pressures, and cultural misunderstandings continued to escalate. 36

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Throughout the late summer of 1855, and contrary to Quilsoscket’s (now Saint John’s) wishes, the Mormon settlement at Elk Mountain continued to expand. Members of the Green River Ute band, led by White Eyes, came to see “for themselves” the much-discussed Mormon settlement. The Mormons, unfazed by the increase in Ute observation, continued to build, farm, and irrigate, sometimes employing Indigenous people as laborers. By early September, Billings had largely completed the stone fort anchoring the settlement and, from his now more secure base, expanded his inventory of local resources. Using existing Indigenous trails, Billings surveyed the regional stocks of cottonwood and white pine trees while also chronicling the sources of much-needed water in the surrounding region. The availability of trees captured much of Billings’s attention, as he was keenly aware of the timber needs of an expanding LDS presence in the area as well as the economic potential of exported lumber. The settlement at Elk Mountain was becoming less informed by Young’s notion of environmental stewardship as economic imperatives were becoming more fully developed.⁵⁴ As the tension in and around the LDS community became more pronounced, Billings reported that “Natives” were “going and coming all the time” and that he was becoming increasingly nervous about plans to travel farther south for another meeting with the Navajos they had met earlier. The journey would take Billings and his party through lands not only where Navajos would far outnumber Mormons, but also where the communities contained, according to Billings, “soome thretining [sic] Amongst them.” Despite his concerns, this week-long September conference between Navajos, Utes, and LDS settlers appeared to proceed smoothly. As he had done in previous explorations, during this trip Billings frequently made note of water sources and grasses, as well as the ideal locations for new farms and cattle operations. He also recorded the extent of Navajo crops and the availability of cottonwood trees, engaging in a survey of natural resources the settlers could potentially use for their own purposes.⁵⁵ For their part, Navajos kept a close eye on the settlers and were ready to protect their lands from them. On September 4, the LDS explorers were intercepted by a group of about twenty Navajos, including an unnamed Navajo leader and two women, who invited the survey team to a trade fair. Two days later, with their transactions complete, the settlers departed; Billings once again emphasized the impressive “riches of the Navajos,” consisting of numerous “horses, sheep, and goats.”⁵⁶ If previous groups of settlers had taken the ruins of former Indigenous settlements as evidence that the environment could sustain settlement, we can only imagine how excited Billings and his party were to 37

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see the more tangible resources of Navajos. They watched how the Navajos managed their herds. The fact that Navajos of southern Utah and northern Arizona were such adept sheepherders and livestock managers made Mormons feel they could emulate that activity. Despite the belief that their most recent excursion into Native land had gone well, upon their return to the fort, the settlers’ first order of business was to harvest their corn crops “to keep the Indians from stealing it.”⁵⁷ This is a telling admission: despite evidence suggesting the Elk Mountain settlement had healthy relations with Indigenous groups, the settlers were cognizant of how their presence was contributing to growing tensions in the region. The Utes’ interest in their crops prompted the settlers to take additional action to protect what they considered to be their settlement, not a shared settlement. The group then made plans to move their cattle and a select number of colonists back to Cedar City and Provo for the coming winter. During a survey of their fields and livestock, they noticed that some Utes had harvested beets, turnips, melons and squash, and had dug up many of their potatoes. To Billings, this constituted theft. His condemnation of the Utes’ appropriation of crops grown on Ute land, often produced with Ute labor, reveals much about the LDS view of the land and its inhabitants.⁵⁸ On September 23, things took a violent turn as the Billings party set about moving their cattle from one grazing area to another. Early in the morning, “quite a Number” of Indigenous people crossed the river and approached the fort. To Billings’s surprise, the once friendly Utes now seemed “saucy and impiudent [sic]” after a settler refused to trade a horse to them. The fearful settlers armed themselves for a conflict. As tempers cooled temporarily, three Utes headed toward a nearby herd of Mormon cattle and a few horses. A settler named Jas Hunt, fearing for his horse that was grazing among the cattle, set out to retrieve it. Quilsoscket’s son, who had been baptized and renamed “Charles” by the Mormons only a few months earlier, followed and attempted to make conversation with Hunt. At some point, Charles told Hunt to look at the stock and, as Hunt rose up on “tiptoe” to do so, Charles “instantly shot him,” then shouted to another man to take the horses. Billings immediately went to render aid, while another settler went after the livestock.⁵⁹ The Utes’ desire for horses indicates that the men in Quilsoscket’s group were adept at reading the political environment. They no longer wished to be unmounted, akin to the unmounted Paiutes. The acquisition of horses would help put them on equal footing with Mormons, other mounted Ute groups, and Navajos, making them less vulnerable to the ravages of colonization and the destabilization it wrought. A violent melee between the Mormons and Utes ensued. According to 38

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Billings’s account, the Utes fired first and, for a short time, “balls whistled very briskly all around” until the settlers retreated to their fort. The Utes, acting to send a clear message, set fire to the surrounding haystacks. While the settlers busied themselves trying to put it out, their stock ran off, which may have been the Utes’ intent all along. At that point, Billings and the leader of the hostile Utes, “Capsuim a Gampi,” parleyed. Capsuim informed Billings that prior to the attack, an LDS hunting party had killed two or three Utes and that he “would not be satisfied till they had killed 2 more Mormons” in return. Their expressed motivation for violence against the Mormons was retribution, yet the Utes also had previously noted the Mormons’ use of the surrounding territory among their list of grievances. Billings was especially perplexed by the fact that “the Indians engaged in this sad affair were all baptized,” but Capsuim expressed little regret for their actions. When Billings relayed news of Hunt’s death, Capsuim replied that the settlers should “leave right away or . . . all die.” Billings, who had received a bullet wound in the hand, decided that his party should retreat.⁶⁰ On September 24, just one day after the conflict began, the settlers packed up what they could and departed. They left their cattle, horses, and crops behind. As they were leaving, they ran into an elderly Indigenous man whom they considered friendly and informed him of what had transpired. He promised he would try to gather their cattle and return them to the settlers, but he “was only one against many.” A report in Billings’s diary suggests that the man accomplished this task, though it required killing one of the “baptized Indians.” When he eventually caught up with Billings, he returned eight cows. He kept seven “wounded cows” for himself, claiming that they would do the settlers little good but would feed Indigenous locals who had had little success in that year’s hunt given the intense competition for game.⁶¹ The location and timing of this altercation are crucial to understanding the environmental underpinnings of the violence between Mormons and Indigenous people.⁶² Until the Utes attacked, Billings thought the LDS settlers were redeeming the Lamanites and extending the boundaries of Zion. In his opinion, they had exchanged goods for land, taught the region’s Utes how to farm, provided them with food, and successfully traded with rival groups. But Billings had done a better job of assessing environmental resources than surveying the overlaying political landscape. Billings would not have had to look far to see real fissures in the Indigenous community caused by LDS presence in the region. Quilsoscket’s son, Charles, for example, resented the LDS settlers for hunting Ute game, using Ute land and water to grow their crops, and disrupting Native subsistence patterns 39

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such as berry picking, piñon nut collecting, hunting, and growing and harvesting crops. His father had granted the settlers the right to stay in the area provided that no additional Mormons arrived, a stipulation Billings ignored. Arapien’s warning should have alerted Billings to the idea that no Native person could actually sell the land, or at least that Native peoples maintained a different understanding of land ownership, but Billings recorded these discussions without grasping Indigenous settlement norms. What the settlers thought acceptable and what Quilsoscket would accept never became congruent. Mormons surveyed the outlying area, met with the Navajos whom Quilsoscket believed hostile, hunted beyond the settlement, and scouted resources for future LDS use. They grazed their cattle throughout the region. They also built structures and irrigation canals. Such actions threatened the ability of Quilsoscket’s family to control their lands and maintain their livelihood. After the violence occurred, the LDS scribe John McEwen added the following notation in Billings’s diary: “The Indians engaged in this sad affair were all baptized on September 7, 1855 except Charles he was on the 22ⁿd July—they do not belong to our particular band, nor chief.” He thus distanced the violence from Quilsoscket himself. Instead, McEwen pegged the attackers as “some Green River Utes. Some of White Eyes’s band. And band of thieves and murderers.”⁶³ Such identification raises the questions of what, exactly, baptism meant and for whom. Utes had likely accepted baptism as a form of cultural exchange and good will, indicating that the LDS settlers were potential allies in an increasingly crowded and hostile area. But it did not mean that Utes gave up their sense of the land as their homeland. Mormons, on the other hand, thought of baptism in terms of the doctrine of “Indian redemption” and assimilation into the church. They assumed that conversion was transformative for Lamanites, as converted Utes might become “white and delightsome” members of the faith.⁶⁴ Billings may have had a difficult time reading the political landscape because of the fluid political organization of the Indigenous groups involved. While LDS culture was deeply hierarchical, Paiute, Ute, and Navajo culture consisted of dispersed bands linked by language and culture but with a decentralized leadership network. The southern mounted Utes had a history of practicing a kind of expansion through trade, including slave raiding. Their economy and political power hinged on their success trading hides, furs, meat, baskets, slaves, textiles, turquoise, pottery, and horses and working with army scouts. It was primarily when trade failed to provide the necessary resources, such as food, animals, or labor, that Utes turned to violence.⁶⁵ In many ways, this is what happened at the Elk Mountain Mission 40

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when LDS settlers disrupted Ute land use patterns. Moreover, Billings may not have fully absorbed or understood how deeply tied Utes were to hunting as part of their culture—and intercultural exchange. The historian David Rich Lewis reveals that “Ute hunting and gathering territories were never formal or exclusive but were the familiar subsistence range of extended families, mutually recognized between groups and theirs by right of habitual use and seasonal occupancy.” According to Lewis, this kind of use pattern operated on two levels: the emotional and the practical.⁶⁶ Emotionally, Utes valued the land that housed and fed them on a fundamental and spiritual level. Though perhaps not exactly what Lewis had in mind, we can see evidence of how Utes used the landscape to record their history and culture on the area’s sandstone walls. The archaeologist Polly Schaafsma asserts, “Rock art is the product of shared concepts and modes of picturing the world held by members of any given culture at any particular time and in a particular place. With or without intent, a corpus of mutually understandable iconography distributed throughout a given landscape is a mechanism for asserting identity in space.” The scholar Brandi Denison additionally notes that Ute rock art reveals the significance of specific events, game, and animal management.⁶⁷ While Utes may have had an emotional attachment to the land, they were also practical and strategic about the management of local wildlife. Gallery figure 3 shows, for instance, a group of mounted Utes, perhaps even Arapien’s ancestors, culling the smallest of a group of bighorn sheep while leaving enough alive to sustain a healthy herd. Such images illustrate that Utes chronicled their kills, kept an eye on animal populations, used horses and dogs in their hunts, and made their mark on the landscape as they etched their activities onto the canyon walls in their homeland. Beyond that, they rotated use of lands and “spread family groups out in familiar areas to maximize subsistence within the numerous biotic communities of the region.”⁶⁸ They recorded these events to convey such actions to the rest of the community and to others. The arrival of the LDS settlers changed such patterns, especially when the Mormons tried to push the Utes to accept a new way of life. The settlers overhunted from northern Utah into northern Arizona, and game disappeared or was greatly diminished. Utes lost the ability to feed their horses as Mormons plowed and farmed Ute lands. Ute diets changed. As Sara Dant notes, “Within a decade of their arrival, Salt Lake settlers had also ravaged local timber stands and their livestock had overgrazed the grasslands.” In the northern part of the Utah territory, where LDS settlers also altered the environment, “Utes found themselves forced to beg or raid for 41

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the transformed floral and faunal resources.”⁶⁹ Of the Northern Utes, the Indian Agent Garland Hunt wrote, “The fertile valleys along the base of the mountains, from which they derive their subsistence are now usurped by the whites and they are left to starve or steal, or to infringe upon the Territories of other bands.”⁷⁰ By the mid-1850s, the Southern Utes—both those groups with many horses and those with few—faced the same struggles. They worked to avoid losing control of their land, water, and wildlife in the face of colonization and some traded (and later fought) Navajos.⁷¹ As competition for land increased, LDS settlers pushed their vision of stewardship through farming on the Utes to varying degrees of success.⁷² As Quilsoscket’s initial acceptance of the Billings’s party suggests, Elk Mountain Utes did not necessarily object to farming. Utes, like others, understood agricultural labor through the lens of culture. The mounted Utes especially looked down on agricultural labor and were not eager to make the transition to farming that LDS settlers wanted them to make. Records indicate that Arapien, for instance, “preferred to have local whites farm for him.” This represented Arapien’s conception of local power dynamics at work. Some Utes even relegated settlers to the position of subservient farmers, whereas others, especially the more vulnerable bands, farmed as a matter of survival.⁷³ Walkara (Arapien’s brother), for instance, flatly refused to learn how to farm, preferring to get food from the LDS settlers who did so. In 1867, one Ute explained Arapien’s belief system: The Great Spirit created the first man an Indian. . . . When the Indian tribes increased, they made a ladder to get to the place where the great Spirit was, and the Great Spirit scattered them, and made them speak several different languages; and some of them became white from fear, and the Great Spirit then said that it was now the wish of the Great Spirit to have the white man work and plant for the Indian.⁷⁴

When Utes such as those at the Elk Mountain Mission, regardless of their general security level, took the food from LDS fields, they likely saw it not as “theft” but as payment for sharing the local landscape.

dispossessing indigenous people of l a nd a nd childr en Billings and his followers’ hasty retreat to the Utah Valley (present-day Provo, Utah) did not signal the end of Mormon colonization in the south42

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ern reaches of the Utah territory. Indeed, the Mormons would soon return to settle Indigenous lands around the current Utah-Arizona border. Between 1857 and 1890, LDS settlers continued to expand their settlements and to disrupt Indigenous lifeways as they set up the colonies of Kanab, Fredonia, Lee’s Ferry, Navajo Springs, Tuba City, St. Joseph, Bluff, Blanding, Monticello, and others.⁷⁵ The Mormons built these settlements on land seized from Native Americans on the pretext that they would be better stewards of the environment and would make the land more productive. They came west with the deep-rooted knowledge of chattel slavery common to all Americans at the time and arrived to find a long-standing network of Indigenous bound labor—which took different forms that mapped imperfectly onto nineteenth-century notions of plantation slavery—and they sought to adapt these practices to their needs and integrate them into territorial law in keeping with the early Church’s teachings regarding racial hierarchy.⁷⁶ The incorporation of Indigenous slavery into LDS society was neither seamless nor unanimously supported. Many LDS leaders found it unsavory, especially as practiced by Spanish or New Mexican slave traders transporting Indigenous captives along the Old Spanish Trail. Nonetheless, Mormons in the region came to accept what they saw as preexisting practices of Indigenous servitude, in part because doing so served both their environmental goals and their religious mission to the so-called Lamanites.⁷⁷ This became most evident in their participation in the local trade of Indigenous children—something seen by many LDS settlers as a continuation of regional practices but experienced quite differently by the Indigenous people driven by economic dislocation to indenture their children to those who they rightly believed had expropriated their land. LDS settlers were right that the trade in Indigenous children had a long history in the region and that various Native American groups and New Mexicans had engaged in the practice for centuries. LDS settlers found the existing trade troubling and initially sought to limit it through opposition. After some heartbreaking episodes involving traders killing or threatening to kill children who were not purchased, settlers began to buy captive children, inserting themselves into this exchange in unexpected ways. Hannah Leavitt Terry of the Santa Clara Mission (in present-day St. George, Utah) was troubled by her father’s purchase of a Native girl, whom her family would come to call Susie, and shifted responsibility for the transaction onto Susie’s birth family: “When the Indians were hungry,” she noted dryly, “they sold Susie to father.”⁷⁸ As Juanita Brooks explains, the early LDS settlers who bought Indigenous children believed that these young souls “would be redeemed, that they would become a white and delight43

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some people.” Purchase of Native American children, she concludes, “was one way in which the Mormons could also help the process of civilizing the natives.”⁷⁹ This rationale was hardly unique to LDS settlers: it echoed centuries of European justifications of the Atlantic slave trade. And just as European explanations that they were simply buying people previously enslaved by Indigenous Africans effectively concealed the ways the Atlantic slave trade disrupted African life, so too did the LDS rationale for acquiring Indigenous children deflect attention from the ways it fit with the broader American program to “civilize” Indigenous “savages.” When Mormons settled on the most productive land in the region, it inevitably intensified the subsistence pressure on the region’s Native populations, and it was that subsistence pressure that fueled the commodification of children along the Utah-Arizona border. LDS settlers further encroached on Ute, Paiute, and Navajo lands in the 1850s and 1860s, denying Indigenous people access to natural resources and leaving many with little choice but to sell their children in order to secure the larger family’s survival.⁸⁰ Not surprisingly, Latter-day Saints who purchased bound Native children did not make the connection between their settlements, the rise of Indigenous poverty, and the sale of children, believing instead that Natives’ willingness to part with their children reflected their “savagery” and thus offered further evidence that buying and redeeming those children was benevolent. According to the anthropologist Martha Knack, “Mormons rationalized that poverty drove Paiute parents to sacrifice their children for their own shortterm economic benefit, without observing that Mormon seizure of the best watered areas for farms and the best grass seed lands for pastures had escalated those needs.”⁸¹ But the Church leadership was aware that a complicated dynamic was at play. Brigham Young asserted that it was Mormons’ “duty to feed these poor ignorant Indians,” precisely because Mormon settlers were “living on their possessions and at their homes.” Integrating “Lamanite children” into LDS households—“educat[ing] them and teach[ing] them the gospel”—would, he thought, repay the debt settlers owed to the region’s original inhabitants, a belief that only makes sense if he understood the underlying debt.⁸² Mormons followed Young’s directive and extracted labor from the Paiute, Ute, and Navajo children they sought to “civilize.” They did all of this on lands formerly controlled by those children’s families as part of the extension of LDS society and culture into the region.⁸³ This process echoed the dispossession of eastern Native peoples by other American settlers. In 1852, LDS leaders formalized their indenture and slavery policy in the Act for the Further Relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners. In it, Mor44

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mons accepted the trade in Indigenous children as it was tied both to their sense of racial superiority and desire to save “savage” children and to their need for laborers. It may also have accelerated the trade, though that was not the intent of the legislation. Instead, the act tried to stem the unsavory trade in Indigenous slaves by so-called Mexican traders, such as Don Pedro León Luján, who participated in and perpetuated the violent and inhumane trade. According to the act, It is a common practice among these Indians to gamble away their own children and women; and it is a well-established fact, that women and children thus obtained, or obtained by war, or theft, or in any other manner, are by them frequently carried from place to place; packed upon horses and mules; larietted out to subsist on grass, roots, or starve; and are frequently bound with thongs made of raw hide, until their hands and feet become swollen, mutilated, inflamed with pain, and wounded, and when with suffering cold, hunger and abuse, they fall sick, as to become troublesome, are frequently slain by their masters to get rid of them.⁸⁴

Efforts to outlaw this trade had failed, so the Mormons legalized it in order to “meet [their] duty towards them, upon the common principles of humanity . . . and redeem them from a worse than African bondage.” The act stipulated that only those “suitable . . . and properly qualified to raise or retain and educate said Indian prisoner, child, or woman” could indenture, and they could only do so “for a term of not exceeding twenty years at the discretion of the jury or select men.”⁸⁵ Children between the ages of seven and sixteen should be sent to school if there was one in the district. Young saw this course of action as unique, and in some ways it may have been distinctive among US bound labor regimes, though Natives in the region would not have agreed with the LDS explanation. Young said, “This may be said to present a new feature in the traffic in human beings; it is essentially purchasing them into freedom instead of slavery . . . where they could find that consideration pertaining not only to civilized, but humane and benevolent society.”⁸⁶ Once LDS settlers purchased Native children, they often recast the entry of the children into their family as “adoption.” As has often been true in many societies, these “adoptions” of powerless children look much more like indentured servitude than like incorporation into a nuclear family. One agreement filed in Sanpete County, in central Utah, by John Beal, illustrates the process of how children came to be “apprenticed” and lays out the terms and conditions of apprentice and master. On February 1, 1859, John Beal appeared before a panel of Sanpete County 45

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selectmen and a county judge, Gardner Snow, to bind out “a ten-year-old boy name Samuel, an Indian boy of nine or ten years . . . son of [not known] of the Piede [sic] Tribe of Indians.” Beal had purchased Samuel from Arapien and filed a ten-year indenture contract. The selectmen and judge bestowed upon Beal the rights of a “Master,” including “all authority, power and right to and over” Samuel and “his service” according to the laws of the Utah Territory. In return, Beal should “teach and instruct” Samuel in the trade of farming and send him to school for three months per year until he was sixteen. He also agreed to provide the boy with food, two suits of clothing “suitable to his condition,” and a Bible and a copy of the Book of Mormon to help “train him in the habits of obedience, industry, and morality.”⁸⁷ Men like Beal sought to do more than settle on Indigenous land. They used the Church’s definition of the proper relationship between masters and the children they purchased from Ute slave traders to assimilate the children into their own belief system and to benefit from the labor of children like Samuel in the process. Stories like Samuel Beal’s rarely appear in the historical record, yet the 1860 census gives us a snapshot of his place in the community. A boy of ten named “Saml” is listed as part of John Beal’s family. Three girls, ranging in age from three to fifteen, also lived with John and Elizabeth Beal, both age fifty-five. There is no indication that Samuel or the other girls were Native American because Jesse Bishop, the census taker, did not fill in the “Color or Race” box for any members of the Manti community, instead tallying all members of the community at the end as “White.”⁸⁸ We could read this as an indication that Beal had come to accept Samuel as his own son, but the formal contract filed the year before suggests he, in part at least, saw the relationship through the lens of servitude or apprenticeship. Either way, John and Elizabeth needed help on the farm and got it from young Samuel. By 1880, census takers listed a Sam Beal, now a twenty-seven-year-old laborer, as an “adopted” member of William Beal’s family in Sanpete, County. His race was listed as “white.”⁸⁹ Other Mormons living along the colonization corridor acquired, indentured, and adopted Indigenous children. Just a few years earlier, in 1857, Jacob Hamblin, nicknamed the “Buckskin Apostle” for his dealings with American Indians in the southern part of the territory, had been appointed the leader of a mission to the southwestern part of the Utah Territory, along the Utah-Arizona border, to construct the Santa Clara Mission near present-day St. George, Utah. His charge from Brigham Young was to “continue the conciliatory policy toward the Indians . . . for they have got to learn that they must help us, or the United States will kill us both.”⁹⁰ 46

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Young especially approved of Hamblin’s use of Native Americans as laborers on LDS farms, as it taught them “to obtain a subsistence by their own industry” while leaving the missionary free to “visit others and extend [his] missionary labors among them.”⁹¹ Hamblin was an interesting choice to lead this mission. He has generally been cast as both an early social worker and a slave trader. In one well-known example of his generosity, Hamblin encountered a six-year-old boy in the care of a starving elderly Indigenous woman, and he took the boy in and cared for him until the boy turned twenty-five. However, additional evidence suggests that he was also a willing participant in what was called the “Indian slave trade,” purchasing a young Paiute boy from a Ute Indian for “a gun, a blanket, and some ammunition.”⁹² In total, Hamblin purchased and raised four Native children. He also purchased and found homes for other children.⁹³ In that sense, he embodies the porous line between behaviors we are likely to see as “humane,” or at least rooted in humane impulses, and those that we are more inclined to see as exploitative. Like the children in Hamblin’s household, some Native children became fully recognized members of LDS households, but most occupied a more liminal position. They were both part of the family and distinctly not. Evidence suggests that children in LDS families were expected to work, and Native children were no exception. Mary Minerva Dart Judd moved to the Santa Clara Mission in 1857. In early summer, she “acquired” a young “Indian” boy just before she had her first daughter. By January her infant daughter had died, and, perhaps to assuage her grief, on March 19, 1858, she purchased an Indigenous girl named Matilda of unspecified age. The following year, Judd gave birth to another girl, Lois Sabina, in July, and “baught [sic] a lamanite girl” the following spring. Sometime between 1859 and 1861, Matilda died. Judd also reported that her baby Ezra and their “Indian boy” died from the measles.⁹⁴ The historian Juanita Brooks found that “a surprising number of children in white homes died in childhood or early adolescence,” mostly from diseases like measles.⁹⁵ In Judd’s case, she watched her biological and Lamanite children, nine children in all, perish from illness. The high mortality rate on the Utah frontier meant the labor of Indigenous children was highly valued by the Mormons. Judd knew that the work of her purchased children was an essential part of the family’s settlement patterns. She recorded that her “husband and our oldest Indian boy” did most of the work in the winter of 1864–1865 clearing the family’s new home site near a place she called Eagle Valley.⁹⁶ Judd was just one of many LDS settlers who acquired captive Native children as a part of the church’s larger colonial and expansionist project. 47

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By 1853, one hundred LDS households in the community of Parowan, just north of the Santa Clara mission, “possessed one or more Paiute children,” a high number for a supposedly “passive” trade in children. As Martha Knack notes, the purchase of such children “hampered the native community’s ability to recover demographically from the violence that accompanied Mormon settlement.”⁹⁷ Yet the larger process of LDS settlement, not the acquisition of Indigenous children, was the real threat to demographic recovery. Their rationale that conversion would make Native children “white and delightsome” envisioned Native disappearance. Indigenous children became a commodity that eased the demands of their mission. By purchasing children, they could endeavor to redeem them and thus meet Joseph Smith’s call to service among the Lamanites, just as by taking, irrigating, and farming Native land, they could enact Young’s call to stewardship, settlement, and productive land use. The life history of a former Native American captive, Rose Daniels, encapsulates how dispossession and struggles over land, water, and indentured labor were woven together on the Mormon frontier. In the early 1960s, Rose’s son, a Navajo-Ute man named Walter Daniels, recounted his family’s role in the settlement of the region to an interviewer working on the Doris Duke Oral History Project.⁹⁸ The history he relayed about his mother maps onto the standard narrative of early LDS settlement of the Colorado Plateau. Rose Daniels was born to Navajo parents sometime around 1850 in the vicinity of Marble Canyon, Arizona, approximately 65 miles southeast of Fredonia, Arizona, and 140 miles northwest of Santa Clara, Utah.⁹⁹ Walter noted that when his mother was around seven or eight years old, she was kidnapped by Utes and eventually “sold to the Daniels’ family in Provo, Utah.”¹⁰⁰ Rose then served the family for nearly a decade until the father and head of the household, Aaron Daniels, took her as his third wife when he was sixty-three years old and she was approximately eighteen. After the Church declared Aaron an apostate for his failure to tithe and Aaron’s previous two wives severed ties with him, Aaron and Rose left Utah for the gold mines of the Black Hills. Following a few hard years, they returned to Utah and resettled in the small town of Vernal. Because of her connection to the Utes, Rose was eventually awarded a 160-acre allotment on the nearby Whiterocks (Uintah-Ute) Reservation.¹⁰¹ As a white man and the son of some of the earliest converts to Mormonism, Aaron Daniels’s life spans the arc of settlement and cross-cultural encounters associated with the LDS colonization of the region. He worked as a farmer, miner, and trapper. He was an early convert, a polygamist, and, later, an apostate. His relationship with Rose illustrates how dramatically 48

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colonization changed the lives of Navajos and other Indigenous peoples: Rose became a commodity to be traded between rival Indigenous people, then a servant and laborer for an LDS family, and finally a wife and matriarch in an LDS family. Her ties to her Diné family were severed when she was kidnapped, and Rose was never able to recover them. The rise of LDS colonists set off, or at the very least contributed to, a chain of events that radically altered the lives of the original inhabitants of the region and that deserve a more expansive retelling here. In 1934, Rose Daniels recounted the details of her early family life and the violent circumstances surrounding her capture. Almost seventy years after her kidnapping, she still vividly remembered that she was herding sheep one morning when she and another Navajo girl called Red Jacket Jane got to the bend of the canyon where we were out of sight of my mother’s camp and not quite in sight of gran’ mother’s when we heard a funny noise. It was a lot of yipping, just like a flock of wild geese. We should have run and hid but we just stood there. . . . In a minute, we saw twelve Indians coming with their horses on a big run. The Indians didn’t have no clothes, just moccasins and britch-clout [sic]. Their bodies were painted black and yellow. There were swinging war clubs. . . . They stopped to circle around us, tied us up, and rode away yipping. . . . They put me and the other little girl on a horse, but kept us tied. We went down past my gran’mother’s farm and saw her and gran’father laying there with arrows sticking out of them.¹⁰²

After killing her parents and grandparents, as well as some of the family’s sheep to eat, her captors took the rest of the flock and embarked on an arduous journey through some very rough country, crossing two rivers in the process. For the next few years, Rose and her captors were constantly on the move. According to Rose, her kidnappers were White River Utes, and she never warmed to them. They were also clearly impoverished. She told her interviewer that she “never liked these Indians. They were always moving. . . . They didn’t have nothing to eat but meat. . . . They did not have no pots, or kettles, or anything.”¹⁰³ Because she was unhappy and “made trouble,” her captors sold her and Red Jacket Jane to a man named Tabby, the “Chief of the Uinta(h)s.”¹⁰⁴ To her relief, life was better with Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah, a Ute, whose people inhabited the region along the Provo River. Yet even after the trade, Rose and Red Jacket Jane still tried to escape. Both were traded or sold multiple times before Rose ended up with the Daniels family. 49

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Rose and Red Jacket Jane became commodities in a larger regional social and economic cycle that had been transformed by LDS in-migration and agricultural and extractive enterprises—trends in which Aaron Daniels took part. As settlements along the Provo River expanded, Red Jacket Jane and Rose’s captors, for instance, were forced to move farther and farther from their homes to trade. The girls were eventually sold to soldiers at Fort Bridger, Wyoming. While there, Rose noted that Red Jacket Jane repeatedly ran away “from the whites at Fort Bridger” but added that her friend would be quickly recaptured by unnamed “Indians”—who may have been part of Chief Tabby’s band, the same group who sold her originally— who then received a sack of flour for retrieving her. The LDS soldiers at Fort Bridger grew tired of this process and eventually told her captors that “they could keep her.” Red Jacket Jane was viewed by both the soldiers and the Indigenous people as a commodity to be traded for different benefits. We know little of what Red Jacket Jane experienced during this time, but her repeated attempts at escape indicate that she was, most likely, treated badly by both groups.¹⁰⁵ Although accounts differ regarding how Rose eventually ended up with Aaron Daniels, one thing is known: she was sold at Fort Bridger. In the story relayed by Walter Daniels, his mother recalled that a troubled soldier named A. Bynum Lane, a son-in-law of Aaron Daniels, bought her in 1860, five years prior to the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment and eight years after Brigham Young legalized the sale of Native American servants in 1852. Eventually, tensions over Lane’s heavy alcohol consumption led his wife, Aaron’s daughter, to leave him. She took her Diné servant, by then named Rose, and her own biological children to live with her mother— Aaron Daniels’s first wife. From there, Rose was sent to help Daniels’s second wife, Harriet, raise her children.¹⁰⁶ In an alternate version of her life story published in an LDS Church publication, Rose was sold directly to Aaron and Harriet Daniels at Fort Bridger, where Aaron was employed as a scout for the LDS pioneer and frontiersman Captain Lot Smith. In this version, Aaron acted out of mercy in accordance with Brigham Young’s belief that Indigenous people would be “purchased into freedom”; Aaron felt compelled to purchase the girl because he “knew that if he did not buy Rose she might be killed by the Indians, as many slaves had been murdered.”¹⁰⁷ In 1880, Rose Daniels was the only other member of Aaron Daniels’s household in the census of that year. By 1900, Rose had three children and had moved to the Uintah Valley Indian Reservation.¹⁰⁸ Aaron Daniels had died a few years earlier, leaving Rose to raise the children on farmland allotted to her by the government. By all accounts, Rose was a successful farmer 50

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figu r e 1.2 Portrait of Rose Daniels wearing beaded gloves.

who invented a unique method of irrigation, mostly liked based on Diné irrigation practices she learned as a child, that she then shared with others the reserve.¹⁰⁹ Within the various threads of Rose Daniels’s story, and how it is remembered and relayed by her, her descendants, and local historians over the course of a century, we get a clearer picture of the mobility associated with the region’s occupants and the complicated cross-cultural history such movements reveal. LDS settlers journeyed to the region and settled among Indigenous peoples who lived, hunted, farmed, traded, and raided around them. Utes, Navajos, and Paiutes inhabited the region, interacting with each other in sometimes friendly and other times violent ways. Mormons entered what historians have called a “raiding and trading” economy that had been in operation for centuries, and they became part of it. They also competed for resources with Indigenous peoples, enacting changes on the land and further destabilizing the fragile local, regional, ecological, and cultural systems of land use.¹¹⁰ When LDS settlers expanded the ditch system that diverted water to ir51

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rigate their crops in settlements like Fredonia, they took it from other regional populations, like the Navajos, Utes, or Paiutes, who needed it to survive. When they hunted to ensure their survival, they made it more difficult for Indigenous people to find game for their own families. As other historians have shown, competition for resources spurred cycles of inter- and intra-ethnic conflict and alliance.¹¹¹ The toll on some Indigenous families was steep. Rose lost not only her grandparents and mother in the attack but also her freedom. The complex nature of cross-cultural relationships represented by actual people—like Navajo Rose Daniels, her Ute captors, the trappers and soldiers she saw at Fort Bridger, and the LDS settlers who eventually bought her—all of whom were trying to make their way on the land as new forms of physical and social infrastructures were being imposed on the landscape, are key to understanding the evolution of the region’s natural and human-made histories.

setting the foundation in pl ace In 1921, Sharlot Hall’s successor as Territorial Historian, James McClintock, wrote of the LDS settlers and their southern settlements, “It must be acknowledged that the Mormons were wilderness breakers of high quality. They not only broke it, but they kept it broken.”¹¹² LDS settlers saw themselves as stewards of the land as well as stewards of Lamanite souls like Rose’s. Their appropriation of Indigenous-controlled lands and their purchase of children fit wholly within their religious worldview. McClintock, like Hall, celebrated the Mormons’ success in community building through the destruction of older land use patterns. But while LDS settlers may have “broken” or tamed the landscape and destabilized the culture of the area’s Indigenous peoples, they did not destroy those cultures. Indigenous people would be forced onto reservations by the federal government, yet they did not wholly yield their lands to outsiders. Nor did Utes, Paiutes, or Navajos necessarily reject Mormonism. Rose Daniels’s life and death provide some evidence of this process. It is unknown whether Rose Daniels was ever baptized into the Church, but she did request, and receive, an LDS burial.¹¹³ In future generations, American Indians across the region would turn to, or fight against, Mormonism, LDS politicians, and LDS congregants in their quest to survive, irrigate, and even thrive in the region. Before that happened, however, it should be noted that when settlers “broke” the environment on which previous generations of Indigenous cultures were built, their behavior envisaged a number of problems that future generations of 52

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scientists, anthropologists, state and government officials, and Native leaders would attempt to rectify by crafting land use practices and new US Indian policies. The resulting turn to scientific frameworks would influence who would have the most pull in regional debates and whose economic and religious interests would be served.

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i ns t ru m e n ts of disp osse ssion The Influence of Science and Scholarship, 1869–1920

I

n 1909, a Yale professor of geology, Herbert E. Gregory, and four Navajo guides—Grover Cleveland, Eugene Sosi, Denet Bahe, and John Sheen—explored the Colorado Plateau. The forty-year-old Gregory, then working for both the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), was a rising star in American natural science. The Michigan-born scientist was educated at Yale and, after college, gained valuable field experience with the USGS, where he developed a lifelong interest in both geology and human geography. He returned to New Haven in 1898 to take a position as an instructor of physical geography and, with the prominent sociologist William Graham Sumner, Gregory offered courses on the influence of the natural environment on society.¹ Gregory had long been interested in the geography of the canyonlands of the Southwest, and this 1909 expedition gave the world one of its first views of this remote landscape. Over the next four decades, he would author a number of now classic examinations of southwestern geology and culture, including his reconnaissance of the noted Kaiparowits Plateau, the heart of what would become the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. On this 1909 trip, however, the young scientist was, like the other white knowledge-seekers who came before him, following the US government’s simple directive: find water. In a region defined by its aridity, the key to development, Gregory noted succinctly, was compiling “information concerning the water supply.” Locating water served a larger goal, as the study of the region’s geology also determined the site of future development projects. Gregory, who surveyed, named, and studied the rock formations of the region he dubbed “Navajo Country,” wrote, “The primary object of my investigations . . . was to ‘spy out the land,’ with a view of suggesting ways in which the country might be more fully utilized.”² 54

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figu r e 2.1 Herbert Gregory playfully named the “needle” in honor of his wife.

As Gregory conducted his studies, he moved between documenting water sources, recording existing Indigenous place names, and (re)naming the region’s striking geological formations. Tellingly, his focus on naming practices reveals both personal and professional motivations. The names also provide hints about his intimate relationships, inform us about regional colonization efforts more broadly, and illustrate how science became an important tool of Indigenous dispossession. In 1911, Gregory playfully wrote to his wife, Edna Hope Gregory, that while traveling just outside of Chinle, Arizona, his group “struck a wonderfully beautiful park in the red La Plata Sandstone.” He named “the dominating centerpiece” of the area “Edna Needle” and told his new bride that the giant stone pillar was “a graceful, delicately carved shaft of which [she would] be sure to like.”³ Gregory thereby transformed the pillar into a physical incarnation of his monumental affection for his new bride. That it was located on a tract of land Gregory labeled “Carson Mesa”—after Christopher (Kit) Carson, who oversaw 55

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the Navajo Long Walk to Bosque Redondo (Hwéeldi) in 1864—reveals how both intimate desires and imperial memory were encoded through place names. Gregory’s romantic gesture to his wife may seem harmless, or even endearing. When read closely, Gregory’s official reports also reveal how contact between the region’s Indigenous populations and different groups of settlers, explorers, and travelers influenced the scientific literature. Chinle, Carson Mesa, Edna Needle: these three names represent specific narratives that embody different historical moments on the Colorado Plateau. They represent the Indigenous celebration of the natural resources found in a specific place; they memorialize the violent dispossession of Indigenous people from that place; and they map the repossession of those lands by white newcomers. Navajos had lived in these areas for generations before they were imprisoned. Navajo place names, for instance, remain “remarkably stable over time” and use sonic evocations or ideophones to express the beauty of the places they describe. Navajos, too, had named regional landmarks, coding their beliefs and culture into the landscape. Chinle, or Ch’ínílí˛, is a Navajo name that translates to “the place where the water flows out” of the Navajo heartland of Canyon de Chelly. Gregory renamed the land surrounding Edna Needle, which lies about eight miles west of Chinle, Carson Mesa for the man who forcibly removed Navajos from that sacred homeland.⁴ Edna Needle stood as a phallic monument to the geologist’s wife or an ode to Edna Gregory’s domestic sewing labor—or possibly both.⁵ Water, warfare, and personal desire became features of the colonized landscape, and the names attached to each place serve as inscriptions that represent different stages—past, present, and imagined white future—of regional development. At the same time government surveyors and scientists like Herbert Gregory inscribed their personal aspirations, they also recorded their preferred dominant racial hierarchies onto the landscape. They, not Native peoples, created a set of geographic typologies that became widely used by the dominant society. In Gregory’s case, he did more than impose a naming structure that reflected the affection he felt for his wife on the history of colonization, conquest, and Navajo internment. He also infused stadial evolutionary theory—the belief that there existed a natural racial hierarchy with whites at the top—into his government reports and publications. Gregory drew upon the work of other explorer-scientists, such as John Wesley Powell, who had also sought out local Indigenous knowledge and then encoded their own cultural ideas about the course of civilization and racial hierarchies 56

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into official reports. Just as the LDS settlers before them had used religious beliefs, for these explorers the production of scientific studies became the scaffolding that supported the ongoing construction of an infrastructure of dispossession. As Navajos, Utes, and Southern Paiutes sought to retain control of their ancestral lands in the face of Mormon colonization, they also had to contend with the arrival of a wave of government scientists who mapped, surveyed, and inventoried Indigenous lands for state-supported development projects. Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, dozens of federally supported surveying parties crisscrossed the Colorado Plateau, employing Indigenous guides, collecting information, and generating official reports that revealed not only how the government crafted its long-term vision for the land but also the underlying racial structure within those visions. The scientists who wrote official reports and produced statesanctioned studies (re)named towns, topographical features, and plants with terms that are in continued use today. Even when these explorer-scientists were sympathetic to the needs and circumstances of Indigenous peoples, their work contributed to the actual and symbolic dispossession of those peoples and bolstered white claims to the natural resources of the Colorado Plateau. They shared the early LDS settlers’ belief that both the arid climate and the presence of Native Americans were “problems” in need of a solution before productive enterprises such as large-scale agriculture or livestock operations could thrive. Yet, perhaps ironically, the natural scientists—like Gregory—who arrived in the Southwest were dependent on Indigenous knowledge and labor for their “discoveries.” The body of knowledge they assembled—the surveys, photos, maps, and reports—would eventually reinforce the idea that scientists were the ultimate knowledge source, and it would eventually replace the need to consult with Indigenous people and, in turn, be used to construct additional systems of dispossession. There is a deep history of using Native American knowledge to explore Indigenous lands, but during this period natural science became an official tool of Indigenous dispossession on the Colorado Plateau.⁶ Scientists worked at the behest of the federal government to survey lands for the expansion of white settlements. Once the railroads were in place, the government supported surveying and scientific studies as key engines of regional economic expansion well into the twentieth century. With an ever-increasing urgency, government scientists spread across the region, often with Indigenous guides leading the way, as they searched for solutions to both the man57

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ufactured “Indian problem” and ways to live in the region’s arid climate.⁷ White surveyors and their Ute, Paiute, and Navajo guides together explored Indigenous lands. The scientists then produced resource catalogs, surveys, and scientific studies that both businesses and the government needed to support a robust infrastructure of extractive development in the region. Of the dozens of survey teams that explored the American Southwest in the second half of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century, this chapter spotlights four scientists who each represent a key moment in the longer process of Indigenous dispossession and who each produced a unique set of regional development studies. When taken together, they reflect the role scientists and scientific studies played in generating the knowledge that would be used to build large infrastructure projects and also to justify and rationalize the seizing of land, water, and minerals from Indigenous people. The best known is John Wesley Powell and his expeditions on the Colorado River in the late 1860s and early 1870s. His narrative and exploits are well documented, but a closer examination of his views on LDS irrigation practices and assessment of Native American culture illuminates how he used surveying science to influence future Indian policy in the region. Less prominent than Powell but just as important to our understanding of the connection between natural science and federal actions is the work of surveyor William Douglass and one of his rivals, the archaeologist Byron Cummings. Although the site had been revered by Indigenous people for centuries, in 1910, the two raced to be the first to “discover” a monumental stone arch now called Rainbow Bridge, one of the world’s largest natural sandstone bridges. Eventually, the natural bridge and 160 acres surrounding it would be carved out of reservation land to create the Rainbow Bridge National Monument. This was done in the name of science, discovery, and preservation, and Indigenous people were not given a voice in the decision-making process. The final scientist profiled in this chapter is Gregory. His early twentieth-century hydrology reports were instrumental in mapping the region’s water supply. Many explorers focused on water resources, but Gregory’s use of science in the service of social order makes his work significant to the exploration of Native American land use. This focus on the future of the white race in the region, the preservation of Rainbow Bridge as a national monument, and the encoding of social evolutionary ideologies onto the landscape illustrates how the actions of scientific practitioners actively influenced and codified a racial narrative. Their reports and efforts rationalized, expedited, and justified the social and physical projects that framed an emerging infrastructure of Indigenous dispossession in the region. 58

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tak ing a n inter est in the r egion: john w esley pow ell’s surv eys a nd indigenous k now ledge In late May 1869, a thirty-five-year-old veteran of the Civil War, John Wesley Powell, climbed into a long, shallow-bottomed wooden freight boat at Green River Station, Wyoming, and pushed off into the river. He was the head of an expedition that included four boats, nine men, and enough food for ten months. The ensuing three-month journey, which was marked by a series of mishaps, hardships, accidents, and near-drownings, took the men downstream nearly one thousand miles through present-day Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and Nevada. The expedition would produce detailed descriptions of the canyons of the Colorado Plateau and become the first recorded passage of white travelers navigating the entirety of the Grand Canyon. Powell would return to the Colorado River two years later and retrace much of his original journey, producing additional maps of both the river and the canyon. He would later publish his results in a “sober and authoritative” survey that was widely read.⁸ After his expeditions, Powell became a national hero, not just because of the success of his daring adventures but also because of the strength of his science, even though most of what he reported would not be very popular. His journeys coincided with a period of frenzied land development in the American West, and most of his contemporaries were buzzing about the commercial promise of the region. After his exploration of the Colorado Plateau, however, Powell tried to convince those same excitable Americans that the Southwest could not support a freewheeling system of land distribution. The arid region, he argued, “ought to be organized not by the logic of the grid or existing state boundaries, but by the far more important and influential fact of watersheds.”⁹ Decisions about politics, economic development, and settlement patterns should account first for water. Instead of the traditional 160-acre homestead plan that checkerboarded much of the Great Plains, Powell argued for the formation of small irrigation districts and pasturage farms. To support this controversial position, Powell studied the region’s rainfall patterns and immersed himself in the growing standards and seasons for agricultural production. Even more bold, he suggested that the residents of the region form a large cooperative body and be given collective control of water resources. His plan was never implemented in large part because, as historian Donald Worster notes, he was proposing an entirely new national political system based on water availability.¹⁰ While Powell’s proposal for “hydrographic basins” was never adopted, it il59

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lustrates how white government surveyors, geologists, archaeologists, and engineers who worked in the region looked first to the river’s potential to support populations across the arid West.¹¹ As a man on a mission to chart the waters of the Colorado River and better understand how the region might be developed, Powell was especially drawn to how and why the ancestors of contemporary Indigenous peoples had chosen to settle in seemingly remote areas. Powell faced two challenges upon his arrival in the region. The first was practical: Powell needed to figure out how to explore the region, including how to portage boats and move supplies while on the tumultuous Colorado River. The second, and much more important, imperative was to understand the drainage and geography of the river and surrounding canyons. Regarding the first, Powell learned hard lessons from his mistakes. Dangerous rapids claimed boats, food, and equipment, often putting the success of his now-famous expeditions at risk. He also sought the help of local LDS settlers to be part of his party, including the scout and “buckskin apostle” to the region’s Indigenous population, Jacob Hamblin.¹² Regarding the second challenge, Powell learned not from experience but from local Native Americans. Powell took particular care to study how contemporary Indigenous people used the land and water, and he collected as much information as possible from local populations about the region’s terrain, flora, and fauna. During his explorations, Indigenous guides, like the favored Kaibab Paiute Chuarumpeak (whom Powell called Chuar) offered invaluable assistance, showing expedition members where to find food and water as they explored unfamiliar, and very often inhospitable, terrain.¹³ But as important as this daily reconnaissance was for Powell and his team, Indigenous knowledge of the landscape proved a more important contribution. He was repeatedly impressed “by the intimate knowledge of the landscape possessed by his Indian companions,” and he concluded that Native Americans “were a vital natural resource to be mined and transformed into knowledge.”¹⁴ To complete his studies and craft a plan for the development of the region, Powell sought to learn about the region’s past and present inhabitants as he navigated the Colorado River. He made note of the cultivation of Paiute maize crops and searched for clues about the history of the contemporary Paiutes he encountered. On August 16, 1869, for instance, as Powell and his men descended the Colorado River, they stopped to make a set of new oars on a tributary that Powell dubbed Bright Angel stream. While his men set about fashioning the wooden blades, Powell walked the area and came upon the remnants of a few old stone houses. Upon finding a well60

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worn “mealing stone” left in one of the structures, he remarked, “It is ever a source of wonder to us why these ancient people sought such inaccessible places for their homes.”¹⁵ Of course, terms like “remote” and “inaccessible” depended wholly on Powell’s own geographical and cultural biases. Throughout his journey, he also looked to the surrounding landscape for clues to help him understand how people had once lived in the area and what had happened to them. From his discovery of scattered artifacts, he decided that Native homes had been intentionally hidden away for defensive purposes. “Those old Spanish conquerors had a monstrous greed for gold and a wonderful lust for saving souls,” he explained. “Treasures they must have, if not on earth, why, then, in heaven; and when they failed to find heathen temples bedecked with silver, they propitiated Heaven by seizing the heathen themselves.” Powell used evidence from the environment, including area rock art, to support this assertion. In a panel etched onto a nearby rock wall, an Indigenous artist had set the scene. As Powell described it, There is yet extant a copy of a record made by a heathen artist to express his conception of the demands of the conquerors. In one part of the picture, we have a lake, and nearby stands a priest pouring water on the head of a native. On the other side, a poor Indian has a cord about his throat. Lines run from these two groups to a central figure, a man with beard and full Spanish panoply.

On other parts of his Colorado River journey, Powell found additional proof of the defensive nature of dwellings built into what he had called “inaccessible cliffs.”¹⁶ Powell surveyed the location and drew his conclusions from the built and natural environment. The scattered artifacts, pictograph, and cliff-dwellings were evidence that Indigenous peoples had utilized the environment as a protective shield in the face of colonization. But what especially intrigued him was evidence of “ancient” Indigenous irrigation practices: “We can see where the ancient people who lived here—a race more highly civilized than the present—had made a garden and used a great spring that comes out of the rocks for irrigation.”¹⁷ Even when facing the threat of Spanish invaders, the Native peoples of the region had made the harsh environment productive.¹⁸ While Powell admired the strategic choices that “ancient” Southwestern Native Americans had made in the face of Spanish colonization, his writings indicate that he considered the Indigenous peoples he encountered in the 1860s significantly less “civilized” than their ancestors. Powell’s condescending views on contemporary Paiutes did not, how61

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ever, mean he dismissed their knowledge of the environment. In fact, he knew that Southern Paiutes had much to teach him about the landscape, and he sought out their practical knowledge. Near Pipe Springs, Arizona, the explorer compared Indigenous expertise in reading the landscape to his own, stating, “It is curious now to observe the knowledge of our Indians. There is not a trail but what they know; every gulch and every rock seem familiar. I have prided myself on being able to grasp and retain in my mind the topography of the country, but these Indians put me to shame.”¹⁹ Powell felt free to admire and use the expertise of Paiute guides he claimed as “our Indians.” Nor did Powell’s paternalism blind him to the fact that Indigenous peoples’ attachment to the land they inhabited was deep and profound. “The Indian religion is localized. Every spring, creek and river, every valley, hill and mountain as well as trees that grow upon the soil are made sacred by the inherited traditions of their religion. These are the homes of their gods.”²⁰ His personal interactions with Paiutes made him both curious about Native American cultures and sympathetic to their immediate concerns regarding displacement, land loss, food shortages, and settler encroachment. Yet Powell did not believe the government should intervene to help them keep their land free from white settlers—or work to protect their sacred traditions.²¹ Instead of proposing that the government force LDS settlers and other white newcomers to leave Native American lands, Powell advocated patience on the part of the white settlers and proposed the eventual division of Indigenous lands through severalty, a policy that would become known as allotment and be written into law in 1887 with the passage of the General Allotment Act, or Dawes Act. Such beliefs were consistent with those of reformers of the 1870s and 1880s who argued “that the Indians needed to acquire and cherish private property as a first step toward civilization.” Powell did not propose abandoning the reservation system right away. Instead, he wanted Indigenous people to embrace “more productive” land use practices and absorb the dominant culture’s values.²² Solutions to the so-called Indian problem proposed by American reformers who focused on federal Indigenous policy, like Powell, included the creation of reservations and forced assimilation, conversion, and partitioning of lands; all were aggressive forms of cultural erasure. In a sense, Powell, like others, believed that Native Americans could facilitate their own dispossession and that it would constitute progress, stating, “The Indians were a vital natural resource to be mined and transformed into knowledge.”²³ As one of the first men of science to map the Colorado River and also one of the first ethnographers to hire and interview the Indigenous people of the Colorado Plateau, Powell 62

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figu r e 2.2 John Wesley Powell hired Kaibab Paiute guides to help him explore the Colorado River and surrounding areas. Here he is asking a Paiute, possibly Chaur, about water.

held a unique position as one of the foundational members of the USGS and the first director of the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE). Other explorers would follow his path, traveling down the Colorado River, across the plateau, and into the lives of Native Americans. That only happened, however, because Paiutes taught Powell how to navigate the region, the Colorado River, and the surrounding cultural terrain. Powell had learned that in order to do his job, he needed to work with local residents, be they Ute, Paiute, Navajo, or Mormon. As Powell gained the local knowledge needed to successfully explore the region, he looked to the Latter-day Saints as ideal land use practitioners. While he disagreed with LDS theology, he generally supported their attempt to bring “advanced society” to the region. He also approved of the ways that they utilized sites previously inhabited by the region’s Indigenous peoples. While in Pipe Springs, Arizona, for instance, Powell noted that as the Mormons encroached on Indigenous lands, they made a quick study of 63

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the “ancient peoples” who had once lived there. They then reused the materials from area “ruins” to build their contemporary homes. Upon learning this, Powell did not express dismay that the LDS settlers had eliminated the remnants of would-be archaeological sites in the process. Instead, to Powell, LDS homes had more value because they were permanent dwellings, unlike those that belonged to the people he called the “Post-Columbian” people.²⁴ Powell looked at the natural and built environment and concluded that both past and present Native Americans were largely transient populations who moved according to changing environmental conditions. “It would seem,” he argued, “that for various reasons tribes abandoned old pueblos and built new, thus changing their permanent residence from time to time; but more frequent changes were made in their rancherias.” He deduced that “these were but ephemeral, being moved from place to place by the varying conditions of water supply.”²⁵ Powell observed that those older patterns had changed only to a small degree, even after the arrival of the Spanish. While Powell commented that the Native Americans he encountered had recently started to farm “like white men,” they had not yet adopted permanent housing. He lamented, “They are still occupying lodges, and refuse to build houses.” He attributed such decisions to the superstitious nature of unnamed Native Americans, stating, “When any one dies in a lodge it is always abandoned, and very often burned with all the effects of the deceased.” Powell claimed that the unnamed people he described, most likely Navajos, also treated government housing the same way they would any other housing and abandoned it upon a family member’s death. Navajos did abandon or burn possessions of loved ones after death in order to avoid contact with a chindi, the spirit of a deceased person, or any lingering illness.²⁶ Like other white Americans, Powell fi xated on the idea that so-called civilized Americans had permanent homes. A late nineteenth-century concept of home dominated much American thinking in the era. White “civilized” Americans—at least those Powell conceived of as true Americans—had homes; Native Americans not only did not live in permanent “homes,” as the explorer defined them, but also threatened those who wanted to build them in the area.²⁷ In Powell’s mind, the failure to make the transition to permanent housing illustrated the uncivilized ways of contemporary Indigenous people. He reasoned, “With their unclean habits, a fi xed residence would doubtless be no pleasant place.”²⁸ Despite this, Powell interviewed different local Indigenous peoples to learn about their cultures. He used the trails they traveled and sought out their communities’ best guides. He studied their farming and irrigation techniques and listened, sympathetically, to them as they 64

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figu r e 2.3 Brigham Young and an exploring party camped at the Colorado River in 1870. Young is wearing a tall beaver hat.

expressed a need for access to more food, land, and water. He then compared the practices of Indigenous peoples to those of the local LDS settlers, who to him personified “civilized” settlers. Powell even traveled and spent time with Brigham Young, whom he encountered as the Church patriarch was on his way to visit the LDS settlement of Kanab in September 1870. A photograph from the trip shows Brigham Young with a group of settlers, including their “adopted” Indigenous children, and a support team at the junction of the Colorado and Virgin Rivers.²⁹ Like Powell, Young took great interest in the region and the Indigenous people who lived there. The fact that the Indigenous children are not wearing shoes might shed light on Powell’s more material observations. Powell found almost all the “Indians” he encountered throughout the region wanting—both literally and figuratively. Powell’s journals spurred subsequent interest in the region, and the explorers and scientists who followed Powell routinely sought out Paiutes, Navajos, Utes, and early LDS settlers to gain practical information about the 65

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area’s past as well as the names of specific landscape features. They used what they learned from both Native Americans and white settlers to compile information about the land and reproduced their findings through the production of a nomenclature of Native/LDS place names in their reports and maps. They inscribed settler and Native American narratives onto the landscape with one hand while simultaneously marginalizing Indigenous people and downplaying Indigenous contributions to scientific exploration with the other. Because LDS residents had settled nearby or in close proximity to Indigenous “ruins” and contemporary Native American villages, Mormons made Indigenous landscapes legible for the colonizing state. They provided a vision of how those landscapes could be transformed into something more familiar and “civilized”—even as the Latter-day Saints were still considered outsiders.³⁰ As efforts to explore the Colorado Plateau increased, so did scientists’ efforts to understand the history of the region, especially how Indigenous people had used and developed the surrounding landscape. As other historians have demonstrated, settler societies attempted to control representations of the Native Americans’ past even as they laid claim to Indigenous lands, resources, and cultural identity.³¹ As scientists explored, mapped, named, and claimed the landscape on behalf of policy-making entities such as the USGS, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of American Ethnology, and, later, Bureau of Reclamation, the region’s Indigenous inhabitants and white settlers also vied for who would lay claim to the meaning of the history embedded within, and then mapped onto, the land. From the mid-1800s forward, it became standard practice for researchers arriving in the region to hire local Indigenous people to help them locate natural resources.³² Many surveyors and scientists asked their guides to take them through both thriving and abandoned Indigenous villages in order to determine the region’s potential for future settlement. By the 1860s, the nonNative Americans, like Powell and those who followed him, sought to understand the contemporary landscape and present-day inhabitants through the excavation of “pre-historic” sites and the measurement, analysis, and assessment of the land, minerals, and water resources surrounding the “ancient ruins” they located. To determine the region’s future, white scientists determined they needed to gain a fuller understanding of previous generations’ relationships with the canyons, sandstone arches, flora, fauna, waterways, and desert landscapes of southern Utah and the Arizona Strip. The landscape around the Navajo Reservation and the areas of what would come to be known as Zion 66

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figu r e 2.4 The William B. Douglass party, including Navajo and Paiute participants, celebrate their discovery of Rainbow Bridge, Utah, in 1909. Jim Mike is on the far left of the image.

National Park, Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Rainbow Bridge National Monument, and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area were especially intriguing to these men. Like Powell, who hired Navajos, Paiutes, and Utes to help him locate streams, land forms, and archaeological sites, scientists hired Indigenous guides to cook food, carry equipment, care for horses, excavate archaeological sites, and survey the land. They also asked their guides to share the names of the region’s birds, plants, and animals, and locations of key landmarks. Just as had LDS settlers, enterprising researchers relied on Indigenous knowledge even as they pursued a variety of different strategies that they knew would increasingly alienate Native Americans—both physically and metaphorically—from the very landscape that held their history, housed their ancestors, explained their worldview, and shaped their identity.³³ Despite their reliance on Indigenous guides to understand the land they explored, white interlopers, be they LDS settlers or government-sponsored researchers, believed that Indigenous cultures belonged to the past, not the present. Men like John Wesley Powell believed Native Americans’ future lay in their ability to assimilate. After his expeditions, for instance, Powell supported and led the effort to move Southern Paiutes, Utes, and Shoshones to reservations.³⁴ 67

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w illi a m dougl ass a nd by ron cummings: indigenous k now ledge, discov ery, a nd tsé na ní’ á hígíí (r a inbow br idge) Deep within “Glen Canyon Country” sits a rock span the Navajo call Tsé Naní’ áhígíí, or Rock Reaching Across.³⁵ The massive sandstone arch is the world’s largest natural bridge; it stretches nearly three hundred feet high and spans a near equal distance in length. The size of the bridge is impressive, but Navajos did not revere the bridge simply for its stature alone. Rather, testimony, oral histories, and archaeological studies demonstrate that the Puebloan, Navajo, Ute, and Paiute peoples used, visited, and practiced religious ceremonies at the site for centuries. Archaeological evidence dates early Puebloan activity in and around the rock span to as early as AD 1270. Many Navajos consider specific rock formations, including Tsé Naní’ áhígíí, “actual incarnate forms of Navajo gods.”³⁶ Native peoples from the Navajo Mountain area, in present-day Utah, claim that the “geological formations in the Rainbow Bridge area . . . held positions of central importance in the religion of Navajo peoples,” and various tribal groups had constructed shrines in the vicinity of the bridge for centuries.³⁷ The historical importance of the arch to Navajos is multifaceted. Ceremonially, Tsé Naní’ áhígíí is linked to Navajo origin stories and plays a central role in the story of the Hero Twins, the sons of White Shell Woman and the Sun. According to these creation stories, the Hero Twins are said to have traveled great distances across the western ocean on a magic rainbow to visit their mother. Later, Navajo Holy Beings placed the magic rainbow in the safest place they could imagine, Bridge Canyon, below Navajo Mountain. Once in place, the rainbow turned to stone, creating the rock span that continues to stand today.³⁸ The bridge figures into more recent Navajo history as well. It was a place of refuge, where many Navajos fleeing Kit Carson’s violent campaign to destroy their homelands between 1863 and 1864 hid.³⁹ Later, the Navajo guides who often accompanied exploration parties refused to ride under the arch, believing the bridge “was a sacred place and, as such, to be respected by all humans.”⁴⁰ In the decades after Powell’s explorations, places like Rainbow Bridge took on a new importance to the scores of explorer-scientists who came to the Southwest to make discoveries and study the region. Powell considered his expeditions to the Colorado Plateau to be comprehensive examinations, although they represented only the beginning of regional exploration. In the decades following his early explorations of the Southwest, a near endless series of specialists—archeologists, hydrologists, 68

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surveyors, petroleum engineers, and geographers—would descend on the Southwest to map, chronicle, and quantify the people, culture, and environmental resources of the region. These scientists, too, would rely on local Indigenous people as guides, and they continued the tradition of blending local knowledge with contemporary empirical investigation to help them achieve their goals. This new wave of explorer scientists often had competing agendas that set them at cross-purposes. Yet even when that occurred, their work still aligned more broadly with the colonial agenda of dispossession. In the opening decades of the twentieth century, two such scholars, Byron Cummings, an archaeologist and professor of Greek and Latin at the University of Utah, and William Douglass, the general land surveyor for the USGS, would also explore the Colorado Plateau. The two compiled information about the region and its “ancient past” as well as claiming new discoveries that would influence the future direction of federal research initiatives in the region. While their goals and personal ambitions put the two men in competition with each other, their combined actions illustrate how scientists used Indigenous knowledge to advance the aims of a colonial state looking to develop the region. In this case, the state sought to protect some parts of the region from rampant development, setting aside key features as monuments for the American people. The personal competition, and eventually animosity, between the two men would also transform the recorded history of the stone arch into a race to determine who would get the credit and fame for its “discovery.”⁴¹ Ultimately, through the authority of science, their “discoveries” would be combined with another formal structure implicated in the dispossession of Native people—the National Park and National Monument system. Within a year, for instance, their “discovery” removed the arch and 160 acres around it from Navajo and Paiute Reservation lands and placed additional limits on how Indigenous peoples could use the space. Both Cummings and Douglass had heard about the massive stone bridge more than a year before setting out to find it in 1909. In 1907, Cummings was developing a new course in archaeology and took his students to southern Utah for field research. While the group was near the Mormon settlement of Blanding, they “discovered a series of beautiful natural bridges” and wrote a report that “set the stage for the federal government to create Natural Bridges National Monument.”⁴² Knowing of Cummings’s keen interest in natural bridges, a husband and wife team of traders who worked with area Navajos, John and Louisa Wetherill, told the archaeologist that a Navajo elder they called “Sharkie” (a.k.a. One-Eyed Salt Clansman or 69

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Blind Salt, a.k.a. Ashiihi bin aa adini) and a Paiute man, Noscha/Nasja Begay, had told them numerous stories about a stunningly large natural bridge near Navajo Mountain. Carter Smallcanyon (Navajo), one of Blind Salt’s great-great-great-nephews, reported that Blind Salt had learned to locate the bridge “while looking for his horses.”⁴³ It was, the Wetherills claimed, a natural bridge larger and more impressive than those Cummings and his students had already measured. During his time as a General Land Office (GLO) surveyor, William Douglass had also heard stories about the massive bridge from a Paiute man named Jim Mike (also called “Mike’s Boy”). In 1909, with Jim Mike and John Wetherill as their guides, Cummings and Douglass reluctantly teamed up to locate the bridge. After an arduous journey, which included a last-minute dash to see the bridge, each man declared himself to be the first white man working in an official capacity to see it. Each also claimed the title of the “discoverer” of both a sacred site and an environmental wonder.⁴⁴ Aldean Ketchum (Ute/Paiute), Jim Mike’s greatgrandson, noted in a conversation in 2019 that it was not a fluke that his relative knew how to get to the bridge.⁴⁵ The Indigenous people of the region valued that land, used it, and took pride in it. They were willing to take men, albeit men who paid them, to see the arch. Yet, despite their involvement in such “discoveries,” neither local communities nor larger tribal governing bodies were consulted when the national monument was formally established. Although the discovery of Rainbow Bridge seemed to contribute little to the kinds of scientific investigations organized by Powell, it became a significant episode in the use of science in the name of preservation as a form of regional development. For both men, to “discover” meant to see and then to “document” the bridge’s existence for professional reasons. Cummings, for instance, was primarily concerned with “the knowledge and the preservation of scientific data.”⁴⁶ As other historians have noted, the discourse of discovery was often a precursor to the invention of a place in the historical imagination. In this case, however, the larger region had already been “imagined” and “invented” as primitive, ancient, and wild by vivid tourist campaigns created by the railroad and by Navajo traders wishing to profit from sales of “Indian-made” goods.⁴⁷ Cummings and Douglass cast their discovery of Rainbow Bridge in similar language, but they did so for different reasons. Douglass wanted the region to remain “wild” and “undeveloped,” and he pushed his superiors to “secure a place for the bridge within the federal estate where it could be managed from all parties that could do it harm.” As a Progressive, Douglass was especially concerned that since the bridge was near the “oil region,” it should be protected from the extrac70

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tive development that would ruin the area.⁴⁸ Cummings’s desire to claim the bridge was fueled by his academic ambition, and he rushed to have his discovery noted in scientific journals and in the popular press to quickly get something into print for credit.⁴⁹ The meaning of the arch’s “discovery” was formed within an imaginative framework of the region’s future political, economic, and cultural value to non-Indigenous people. Each man fought for the region’s resources to be protected. Douglass wanted to protect it from extractive industries, while Cummings sought to protect the larger region, and its archaeological sites, from looting while chronicling his finds in archaeology. Still, whatever their individual motivation, their goal to preserve the rock span meant extinguishing Native claims to those lands. The narrative of the so-called discovery of Rainbow Natural Bridge pitted Douglass and Cummings against each other, but more importantly it obscured the fact that not only had Indigenous people long known about the arch and considered it sacred, but they were the ones who guided the two men there. Cummings clearly recognized the Indigenous presence at the arch when he documented the “remains of fine pot and a small building or altar near the bridge.”⁵⁰ Even so, subsequent publications about the “discovery” masked or erased the role Indigenous guides had played. In later years, as their careers wore on, both Cummings and Douglass would credit Jim Mike and a father and son both named Noscha Begay for helping them find the arch in August 1909. However, in 1952, Cummings’s book Indians I Have Known minimized the role that Jim Mike played in the expedition, stating, “Mr. Douglas [sic] was sure . . . we would get lost in that terrible canyon where there were no trails” and that the guide Douglass hired, Jim Mike, “plainly did not know the country and was frightened.” In Cummings’s account, it was his own “Pahute” guides, the Noscha Begays, who led the party to the arch. Cummings wrote, “I was the first white man to see the Rainbow Bridge and John Wetherill was the first white man to pass under this great arch.” It took him until 1952 to declare that the “real discoverers were two Pahute Indians, Noscha and Noscha Begay.”⁵¹ In 1910, when the government used surveys from their trip to carve a national monument out of a section of the Paiute Reservation, neither man fully acknowledged the roles that Sharkie, the Begays, or Jim Mike played in the expedition. Nor did they—or the other scientists or officials involved in the federal designation—acknowledge that, at best, they were probably only a few of the first white men to “discover” the bridge. From oral testimony and rock inscriptions, we know that there were other non-Native Americans who had seen the bridge as well. Trappers and miners made their mark on rocks within a few miles of Rainbow Bridge. Yet, other than 71

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etching their name on stones or leaving some tools in the area, these individuals did not publicize their findings or claim the natural bridge as their own discovery.⁵² On May 10, 1910, President William Howard Taft signed a proclamation designating the 160 acres surrounding the bridge as Rainbow Bridge National Monument (RBNM). Cummings and Douglass’s discovery had resulted in an almost immediate kind of dispossession—the removal of lands designated as part of a Paiute Reservation in the name of science. The official proclamation stated, “[The] extraordinary natural bridge, having an arch which is in form and appearance much like a rainbow . . . [is] of great scientific interest as an example of eccentric stream erosion. . . . [It] appears that the public interest would be promoted by reserving this bridge as National Monument, together with as much land as may be needed for its protection.”⁵³ From the outset, Douglass especially wished for the discovery of the bridge to be widely known in hopes it would lead to this special designation.⁵⁴ Further, making Rainbow Bridge into a national monument restricted Native peoples’ access to a sacred site they had visited for centuries. Navajos, Utes, and Paiutes experienced the consequences of this action almost immediately. As historians Mark David Spence and Karl Jacoby have noted, the creation of national parks and monuments often accompanied the removal of Indigenous people and their claims to the place. In this case, after Douglass and Cummings “discovered” the bridge, the Indigenous people who not only revered the site but had cared for it for centuries were almost immediately deemed improper stewards of the space. Douglass, for instance, believed Native people incapable of protecting the bridge from oil companies and, even more distressing, irrelevant to its significance. John Wetherill, the white trader who lived in the region, was made the custodian, giving him increased control, influence, and importance in the area. In 1916, when Congress authorized the creation of the National Park Service (NPS), control of RBNM was moved to it, and John Wetherill, the man who had first heard about the arch from local Indigenous people, was named the first official park custodian.⁵⁵ Cummings and Douglass were not the only men of science whose interests in the region were piqued by Wetherill. In 1907, Wetherill told a geologist, Dr. Herbert E. Gregory, about the existence of the bridge an entire year before he had let either Cummings or Douglass know about the formation. Gregory apparently regretted his decision not to go looking for the “rainbow” in 1908 or 1909, and, in some ways, it was his disappointment at missing out that spurred him to return to the Colorado Plateau on numerous expeditions between 1910 and the 1950s. So well known and revered was 72

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Gregory by other scientists, geologists, surveyors, and recreationists that in 1940, when a river runner named Norman Nevills “discovered” another large Navajo sandstone bridge, this one measuring 175 feet wide and 75 feet high and located on a tributary of the Escalante River, he named it after Gregory. He reasoned that it only made sense to do so because he used Gregory’s surveys as guides into the region.⁵⁶ Gregory Arch now rests under the waters of Lake Powell, though as the water level drops, it may reappear.

discov ery, str ategic na ming pr actices, a nd sta di a l evolutiona ry theory Almost forty years after Powell’s first expeditions, and about the same time as Cummings and Douglass, Gregory arrived to study the region. Like Powell before him, Gregory explored the Colorado River region as a representative of the USGS and on behalf of the BIA. While Powell was, and still is, much better known to the general public, Gregory’s contributions to science and to the exploration of the region continue to garner respect among scholars.⁵⁷ It was Gregory who named many of the region’s dominant features, including the most common kind of rock found throughout the Colorado Plateau, Navajo Sandstone. Over the course of his long career, Gregory produced dozens of geological studies of the Colorado Plateau and the varied population that called the region home. He mapped, named, and narrated the evolution of geological and human activities in his best-known publication, Navajo Country: A Geographic and Hydrographic Reconnaissance of Parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.⁵⁸ Sent to survey the area for the BIA and USGS, Gregory believed himself a sort of missionary, though, unlike the Latter-day Saints, not a religious one. A man of science, he wanted to collect and produce information that could be useful to other scholars and advance his career, but he also expressed a desire to help Navajos and other Native Americans: “I believe also that the sanest missionary effort includes an endeavor to assist the uncivilized man in his adjustment to natural laws.”⁵⁹ He thought Navajos uncivilized and that he had a personal responsibility to help such people stuck in “an early stage of evolution.”⁶⁰ Gregory professed, “The future of the Navajo country depends fundamentally on the solution of [the] problem [of] the water supply and therefore both reconnaissance and detailed work were designed to procure data bearing on this problem.”⁶¹ In his writings it is unclear whether Gregory meant he believed the future of Navajos—and other Indigenous people—depended on the development of water or the fu73

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figu r e 2.5 Herbert Gregory regularly chronicled Indigenous irrigation practices, including this “ancient” irrigation ditch, as part of his exploration of the Colorado Plateau.

ture of white habitation in Navajo country would be contingent on it; either way, he looked to Navajos and other Native Americans to assist him as he crafted a survey of the region for the BIA.⁶² It was in his 1916 publication that Gregory labeled the Colorado Plateau “Navajo Country” and gave this name to his manuscript, revealing much about how he thought about the region, the people who lived there, and perhaps even his profession. In all of this, his thinking illustrates the ongoing legacy of colonialism. But Gregory was also drawing upon naming conventions established by other entities. While Navajos called the area Diné Bikéyah, the region had been colloquially called “Navajo Country” by colonial enterprises, explorers, government agents, tourists, and business interests for over fifty years. By codifying the term in his scholarly work and in documents he produced for the government, Gregory made it the official name for those within his profession.⁶³ Precedent may have been the most important factor in his decision to apply the Navajo moniker to the lands that made up a wide swath of the Colorado Plateau, but the creation of such a map had consequences. On the surface, it was a straightforward 74

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geographical decision for him to include what he called the “land strips,” or parcels that sat outside the official Navajo Reservation, in his definition of Navajo Country. After all, these non-reservation lands, he argued, were “still (in) larger part utilized by [Navajos].” Gregory’s Navajo Country also included the Hopi reservation as well as land eastward toward New Mexico “from the [Navajo] reservation line to the 108th meridian” and additional area “bordering the Santa Fe Railway” and the “lower part of San Juan River.” A final section, a “small area near the mouth of the Little Colorado,” was also included in his survey, even though these areas sat outside the reservation and were populated by other Indigenous people, namely the Paiute. Notably, those lands included the Paiute Strip, a parcel of land set aside for Paiutes, and Rainbow Bridge National Monument.⁶⁴ In his work, Gregory not only focused on chronicling minerals and geological formations; he also devoted considerable attention to how Indigenous people had used the land and scarce water resources. He also focused on the changing population of the area and the ability of Indigenous people to make the land productive. He assumed that at least part of the Colorado Plateau would remain home to Paiutes, Utes, Navajos, and Hopis, whose ancestors had lived there well before the first European or American explorers arrived. The parts of the landscape that were to remain “Indian land” would, he thought, have different resource needs than the nearby areas that whites would eventually use. He based this assertion on his understanding of a Navajo economy centered on sheep, goats, and horses. Gregory concluded, “If the region is to remain as Indian land, the problem is to procure water for stock and, in a minor degree only, for agriculture.” Even as he recognized the importance of sheep to Navajo culture, Gregory, like Powell and many other politicians who would follow their lead in subsequent generations, advocated to change Navajo settlement patterns. He advanced the idea that “the Navajo” would benefit from “irrigated land in places where he may live the year round, not in mountain districts where corn will not mature and where sheep are driven only when forage is scarce in the lowlands.”⁶⁵ He also recognized, however, that Navajos had a long history of irrigating their land and stated, “Navajos, Hopis, and other Indians used and continue to use a variety of water control methods” such as flood irrigation and irrigation by stream and river diversion. As evidence, Gregory highlighted the construction of what he called “temporary Indian dams” and permanent ditches.⁶⁶ He judged these practices as unsustainable in the long run. In Gregory’s estimation, there were practical and ecological challenges to the continuation of Indigenous irrigation practices. Navajo Country was 75

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bordered by three major rivers—the Colorado, the San Juan, and the Little Colorado Rivers—along with the Little Colorado’s tributary, the Puerco. The Colorado River stood as “the master stream of the plateau province” since it received the majority of the “surface water from the entire region,” but even with the availability of these rivers, Gregory thought developing these lands would not be easy for Indigenous peoples.⁶⁷ “The problem confronting the Indian in reclaiming land by diversion of streams is twofold,” Gregory explained. The first issue was practical, as Indigenous people faced “the difficulty of securing a permanent intake and the necessity of building sluiceways across innumerable arroyos.”⁶⁸ The second, and perhaps more significant, concern was that, based on his calculations, he considered only a small area of the reservation appropriate for farming: “About 40,000 acres of a total of over 16,000,000 acres, i.e., less than .0025 of the area, are suitable for agriculture. One-half of the farm land is already occupied, although not utilized to full capacity.” Though Gregory actively sought knowledge from Navajos and studied their land use and irrigation practices, he did not judge their history of adapting their land for farming or sheepherding a success despite the fact that Navajos had a proven track record of growing their livestock herds and living off of them.⁶⁹ Moreover, he thought it generally beyond their capabilities to be successful as he defined it. For Gregory, development meant agricultural pursuits as practiced by white settler societies such as the LDS communities. Although he saw and sought to understand how Navajos used land and water, he could not see past the cultural and racial hierarchies with which he framed his research. So he concluded, “Where the Indian has failed the white man has been able to succeed in maintaining irrigation works based on stream diversion.”⁷⁰ Whether a sign of ambition or evidence of the degree to which his expedition was implicated in the processes of colonialism (or both), Gregory routinely celebrated the ability of white settlers to alter the landscape in ways that would support agricultural development while also simultaneously diminishing the importance of Indigenous people’s accomplishments. In his reports, he erased Navajos from the area he named after them by focusing his attention on the triumphs of white settlers. Because his racial ideology trumped his empiricism, Gregory did not have to look far to find ample evidence of white success in making the arid landscape bloom, as LDS settlers in the region had already transformed “underutilized” Native lands into productive capital. Like Powell, Gregory looked upon the LDS settlements on the Colorado Plateau with great admiration. He followed the pattern of earlier ethnographers and acknowledged the role that the Span76

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ish had played in traversing the area, but, he concluded, their failure to build permanent settlements in the region reinforced the idea that “Southern Utah was practically unknown until systematic scouting by the Church of Latter Day Saints introduced the epoch of colonization.”⁷¹ This conclusion is especially revealing given that Gregory had studied the history of regional settlement and had noted, as early as 1915, “[The] geographic conditions which controlled the location of settlements of the ancient Kisani race exert the same influence on modern Indians both Hopi and Navajo, and also guide the white man in his efforts to make the Navajo country more habitable.”⁷² As Gregory continued, he made his primary point more explicit: “The thickly populated areas during the days of the cliff dweller are the center of population of the Navajo and are also the areas which are best adapted for settlement by whites.”⁷³ Embedded within this interpretation was the idea that Indigenous peoples had contributed little to contemporary regional development and that the land was “unknown” while it was known to only Indigenous people. Mormons, on the other hand, had proven themselves especially adept at locating suitable settlement sites, finding adequate water supplies, and cultivating healthy farmlands. The fact that they chose to build their own communities in places inhabited by Indigenous peoples (of the past and of the present) seemed to be of little consequence as Gregory assigned positive qualifiers such as success to their actions. In keeping with a central aspect of America’s mythic sense of nation building, Gregory expressed a Turnerian view of success: he credited white settlers as the ones who had succeeded in settlement because they had supposedly done the hard work of making the land “productive” through their labor. An astute observer, Gregory knew that existing place names reflected the specific local histories of both the Native Americans who inhabited the region and the whites who colonized it. He learned, for instance, that the LDS community of Kanab, Utah, derived its name from the Paiute word for “willows,” a naming practice that reflected the area’s sparse environmental resources. Willows, Salix lasiolepis, are native to the West and grow best in riparian soils. Paiutes taught early Latter-day Saint arrivals to the region that they could locate water by finding willow trees away from riverbeds. In retelling the story of how the settlement of Kanab came by its name, Gregory quoted an 1870 newspaper editorial from the LDS bishop A. Milton Musser. Musser apparently informed readers that the Mormon leader “Arza E. Hinkley located several points on the new sites where water [could] be found by digging wells” in order to plot out an LDS town simply by following the Paiute practice of locating willows.⁷⁴ In such in77

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stances, Gregory credited the settlers with learning how to read the landscape—rather than the Paiutes who taught them—in order to achieve their long-term goals. Both the name of the place, Kanab, and the wells the Mormons built to support their colonization efforts serve as important indicators of the prospective growth of one community and the decline of another. In the same year Hinkley looked to locate water for wells, the census reported that the population of Kanab consisted of approximately one hundred Paiutes and sixty Mormons. Those numbers changed as Mormons dug more wells, constructed irrigation canals, and began to use the sparse local water supply to irrigate their farms to grow food and cotton for their own consumption. By 1898, the local Paiute population had not grown beyond the 1870 numbers, yet now they lived with more than 1,400 white residents of Kanab.⁷⁵ As in other areas that the Church colonized, such as the Snake River Valley in Idaho, the white population expanded and adjusted to the environment. In this case, they sought to conquer the arid and drought-prone climate by building more and more small dams, which became increasingly abundant and important to their agricultural efforts.⁷⁶ As Gregory reflected on the growth of LDS communities and established his own naming practices, he worried more about Native American threats to white settlers than white threats to Indigenous communities. According to Gregory, Southern Utah in the decade 1860–1870 has been described as a “string of stockades and forts”; however, such protective enclosures were little used. The Piutes [sic] were generally friendly; the Utes restricted their warlike activities to northern Utah; and the Navajos proved to be thieves rather than murderers. However, at times fear of the Indians made life in the frontier villages and outlying farms precarious. For a few years beginning in 1866 the people lived close to the forts; the occupants of small villages moved to larger ones and some settlements in Kane and Garfield Counties were abandoned.⁷⁷

Gregory does not go into detail about the fate of the Indigenous people who supposedly made life difficult for early Mormon settlers other than to state, at the very end of his report on the population of southern Utah, that by 1936 some unnamed “Indians” living near the LDS town of Moccasin, Arizona, “were encouraged to establish homes nearby and to learn the care of crops and livestock—an experiment that led to the establishment of the Kaibab Reservation.”⁷⁸ He did, however, inadvertently record that as the LDS population grew, the Paiutes who had named the area for its sur78

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rounding willow trees lost access to the local water supplies that had sustained their communities. Gregory’s research and interest in naming, and his accounts about Native American and LDS irrigation efforts, expose some of the less violent but equally destructive effects of colonization. Mormon colonization meant dire consequences for Paiutes, Navajos, and Utes. As Donald Worster has noted, “Mormon expansion meant Indian starvation. Seeds of grass could feed the white man’s cattle or they could feed the native people’s children; they could not do both.”⁷⁹ This was certainly the case in Kanab. In 1910, a census taker who shared the name Brigham Young with the LDS leader recorded that there were thirty-three Paiutes living in the Kanab Precinct, most with no access to a water source.⁸⁰ In 1913, when Gregory was conducting a different survey, the once vibrant Paiute population who had lived and irrigated along Kanab Creek had seemingly all but disappeared from the township as Paiutes from around the region were “removed” to the Kaibab Paiute Indian Reservation beginning in the late 1890s.⁸¹ In addition to connecting Indigenous place names to Mormon communities, Gregory also developed a deep interest in how specific place names that reflected LDS experiences became wedded to the landscape. While discussing Fredonia, Arizona, for instance, Gregory related how the small Mormon settlement that Arizona’s territorial historian, Sharlot Hall, was so taken with upon her arrival in northern Arizona in 1911 had come into being. He explained that Mormons had strategically located Fredonia approximately twenty miles south of Kanab “in response to religious convictions and with little regard to geographic features.”⁸² Gregory relayed that the Mormons had deliberately sought a location with a harsh physical environment to discourage outside interference and protect them from religious persecution. According to Gregory’s account, The village is said to owe its founding to the attempts by Federal authorities to enforce laws against polygamy in Utah. To escape prosecution polygamous men of Kanab and neighboring settlements retained one wife at home and provided establishments just south of the Stateline where they were legally beyond the reach of Utah officials and separated from the Arizona officials by the canyons of the Colorado.

Fredonia allowed these men to maintain plural families in the face of increasing efforts by non-Mormons, especially the federal government, to prohibit the practice. Gregory explained why Mormons chose to settle in the area but also how Kanab’s polygamist history was reflected in the new 79

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town’s name. It was the apostle Erastus Snow whom Gregory credited with creating the name by combining the English word “free” with the Spanish name for women, “doña.” Thus, the town’s name translated to “free women.” The name was designed to refute the robust claims that the practice of polygamous marriage enslaved women.⁸³ While the Mormon women may not have been considered chattel or even indentured, the town’s remote location did reinforce its dependency on the Mormon households of Kanab. Since the site actually had few “natural advantages,” Fredonia’s residents initially relied on their neighbors to the north in Kanab for food, water, and, eventually, the labor needed to irrigate the farms that Hall described as “thrifty.”⁸⁴ There is little indication that by 1915 LDS settlers in Fredonia had much to do with their Paiute neighbors directly to the south. Mormons could escape persecution by taking over more Indigenous territory and renaming it both to celebrate their triumph and to claim it, a fact that illustrates how colonization is reflected in naming and how naming illustrates the emergence of a social order that became embedded into a landscape as Indigenous people were dispossessed from it. Though Gregory spent a good deal of time learning about place names and what they revealed about the surrounding people and landscapes, the real objective of his work was grounded in more practical concerns. Gregory wanted to locate water, but he also worked to impose a standardized set of names that chronicled history and could be employed by fellow geologists in the future. In the same way Gregory thoughtfully recounted the origins of existing place names and mapped the movement of people by doing so, he also consulted area residents in order to create a standardized regional taxonomy of the area’s varied geological formations. Before he donned his sturdy shoes and hiked into Navajo Country, Gregory sought the support of locals and used their knowledge. He called upon Navajo traders like Richard Wetherill, John’s brother, to help him supply his team; he consulted with Franciscan missionaries of the Southwest to help translate Navajo and Hopi words; and he tracked down historical texts about the area, consulting everything from the records of early Spanish explorers and colonizers to the scientific reports produced by the government surveyors, like Powell, who preceded him. Yet his greatest debt was to the people most familiar with the region. In his acknowledgments he specifically mentioned the “devotion of [their] Navajo assistants, Grover Cleveland, Eugene Sosi, Denet Bahe, and John Sheen,” men who, according to Gregory, “added much to [their] comfort and at times saved [them] from disagreeable experiences if not from disaster.”⁸⁵ Gregory made it clear that the involvement of Navajos—as guides to 80

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figu r e 2.6 What Herbert Gregory sometimes failed to mention was the fact that Navajos, like LDS settlers, had a history of drilling wells and irrigating their lands.

specific places and as resources themselves—was an essential component of his overall “reconnaissance” mission, but in discussing the characteristics of the people on whom he came to depend, Gregory could also be dismissive. At one point he noted that the Navajos’ “knowledge of distances and of directions is of such nature as to be of little use to a white man.” At other moments he spoke of the need to establish a hierarchy with the Indigenous people in his employment. “It is essential to success that the Navajo should understand and approve of you and of your mission, and therefore frankness should characterize all dealings with him,” he wrote. Yet Gregory also recognized that Navajo guides and go-betweens were essential to the success of any endeavor, and he advised subsequent researchers that a “Navajo . . . should be a member of each party, not only to serve as guide and interpreter but to obtain advance information regarding water and forage and to establish friendly relations with those Indians who have slight acquaintance with the whites.”⁸⁶ Gregory, like Powell before him, needed Navajos to provide the practical knowledge that would enable an outsider to make the region “known” to whites. The Indigenous knowledge his guides provided was an essential part of Gregory’s expeditions. Besides helping him find water and forage for his 81

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horses, cut trails, and establish base camps, his guides helped him learn and assemble the place names he used in his reports. Gregory inscribed these Navajo names for springs, streams, natural bridges, and other land and water formations into USGS and BIA reports. Of the 204 geographic terms in Gregory’s 1917 publication “The Geology of Navajo Country,” 89 were Navajo in origin. While Gregory used many of the Navajo names he collected, he translated others into English. For instance, Gregory explained that the name Boiling Stream came from the Navajo word “Tohalushi,” meaning, simply, boiling water.⁸⁷ He described it later in the text, with more scientific precision, as an artesian spring that reaches “the surface only after finding an opening in impervious beds through which the water is forced upward by pressure exerted at some distant locality,” but the Navajo influence remains clear.⁸⁸ Like Boiling Stream, the majority of the terms Gregory adopted from Navajos described natural features or natural processes, including specific types of trees (Chaol = piñon pine), animals (Nasja = owl), and plants (Selukai = reeds among the rocks).⁸⁹ Many of these names identified an attribute of the place being described, such as the place where water boils up out of the rock bed, but Navajo naming practices also reveal much about how Native Americans thought about the environment, its utility, its characteristics, and its spiritual value in addition to how the physical world could support Indigenous communities. Understanding how and why scientists like Gregory decided to use Navajo names adds a layer of culture to our understanding of the landscape of the Colorado Plateau. In his classic Navajo Country, Gregory explained how he determined the names of formations and places in his work. First, he chose to “use all names found on older maps and in the writings of earlier explorers, so far as such names have been applied to features whose position has been determined.” He then used Navajo and Hopi “terms so far as they have definite application” and were terms commonly used “by Mexicans and white men.” He also deferred to “terms that ha[d] been applied by archeologists who ha[d] written of the Navajo country.” If he did use Indigenous names, he explained that “care ha[d] been taken to approach as nearly as possible the native pronunciation.” He did this to avoid “introducing needless complications,” whereas the use of Spanish names followed “the ordinary rules of that language.” Despite seeking linguistic help from the Franciscan missionaries who helped translate the Navajo names into an appendix of geological terms, Gregory relied upon Anglicized or Spanish versions of the terms he used.⁹⁰ In so doing, he followed the standard geological practice of the day.⁹¹ He may have used straightforward naming procedures and the standard 82

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conventions of natural science at the time, yet both the names Gregory used and the practices he employed reveal how settler colonialism became embedded in the landscape and legitimized in government documents and surveys. Naming is a powerful political act, and using Indigenous names in an official report on the area gave additional power to those labels. They became “official” names. They also illustrate that dispossession was an ongoing process in the region in which Gregory participated. When Gregory used Spanish names, he was commemorating the legacy of Spanish explorers and conquistadors. He did the same thing with his commemoration of white terms. Other names he picked to use—like Edna Needle or Carson Mesa—represented his own sense of feelings of longing or belonging, or his understanding of regional history. Together these newer names reflected, and reinforced, the uneven power relationships that were coming to dominate the area, and they revealed that scientists, outsiders to the area, claimed the cultural and political authority to determine and encode names. Yet, as numerous scholars and activists remind us, “dispossession was never undifferentiated, nor was it total.”⁹² The employment of Indigenous names and terms that reflected the environment did not simply begin with Indigenous communities and end with the scientific surveys. Rather, names were, and are, dynamic and represent a variety of competing interests. Moreover, specific Indigenous terms continue to be used by Diné residents today, illustrating a form of continued resistance to dispossession. As the Navajo/Diné scholar Karlotta Chief writes, for instance, the names and labels people use to describe themselves and their lands reflect complex ongoing relationships between people, the environment, and Indigenous knowledge systems. Using water (“Tó”) as an example, she notes that water is “part of indigenous identities and origin stories; for a Diné-specific example, Diné deities include ‘Born-for-water’ and Diné clans include ‘Big-water’, ‘Near-the-water’ (and many other water-based clans).”⁹³ The names and labels that Gregory’s guides used for the land and the geological features they explored reflected the relationships Navajo people had with specific places, landscapes, and resources, and their relationships with their culture and each other. Gregory’s appropriation of such terms did not alter the intimate relationship that the people who inhabited the space he was writing about had with that space. Yet he did represent the government and its colonializing ethos, which sought to lay claim to specific cultural and physical resources for the purposes of development, expansion, and dispossession. As an official representative of the federal government, Gregory used the authority of his position to select specific terms because he believed they had a valuable heritage as well as a contemporary power. Native peoples, 83

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LDS settlers, and other non-Native explorers had given names to different places long before Gregory entered the region, but his translation of Navajo names into English, his Anglicization of their spellings, and his use of Navajo terms without understanding their cultural significance reveal that Gregory’s methodical and self-conscious work was grounded in his authority as a government representative and man of science working for the settler state, which was intent upon possessing the land and the knowledge embedded within it. He reordered that knowledge according to the interests of science in service to the state for use in future development of the region. Gregory treated Indigenous knowledge as a resource to be mined. When scientists collected and named plants, places, and geologic formations, they did more than identify specific places or things. Naming was a key part of the colonial project that almost all contemporary scientists and explorers participated in. It was a key component in the precise ordering of the natural world. Don D. Fowler explains that between 1873 and 1876, Powell, for instance, “defined three stratigraphic geologic ‘groups’ prominent in the Canyon Country: the Shinarump Group, the Vermilion Cliff Group, and the White Cliff Group.” The identification of these geologic formations was a central part of uncovering the deep history of the Colorado Plateau. Gregory followed Powell’s lead in the early 1910s, naming and grouping “the Wingate, Kayenta, and Navajo strata into the Glen Canyon Group.” In naming those rock formations, Gregory employed the established geologic naming practice that stipulates “that a particular stratum or formation should be named for a specific place where it can be clearly seen.”⁹⁴ For instance, Wingate and Kayenta sandstone layers represent specific places—Fort Wingate, New Mexico, and Kayenta, Arizona, from which the individual strata being named can be easily observed. But Gregory did not stop there. Indeed, one of Gregory’s most lasting contributions to the naming of the southwestern landscape was his use of the term “Navajo Sandstone” for “the most conspicuous assemblage of strata in northeastern Arizona and southeastern Utah.”⁹⁵ Since Navajo does not refer to a specific place but rather to a population, Gregory might be seen as breaking with established practice when he proposed this label to refer to a place, but by applying the name Navajo to both a layer of rock formation and a land base, Gregory acknowledged the Indigenous roots of the place. Yet at the same time he also helped to erase the land claims of the people who lived there. Both the names Gregory used and the practices he employed reveal the ways in which colonialism became embedded in the landscape and legitimized through the academy and the state, in effect translating the knowledge he appropriated 84

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into scientific discourse that would be used alongside efforts to dispossess Navajos of their land.⁹⁶ What happens if we think more specifically about the stratification and placement of the name Navajo in terms of how Gregory thought about the stages of social and geological evolution at a place like Black Mesa on the Navajo Reservation? If we look at the geological cross section of rock type, it reads, with a few exceptions, like a chronology of regional settlement patterns. Moenkopi (the original name whites used for a specific Hopi village) make up the oldest layer and the foundational layer of the stratigraphy. It is important to remember that Hopis were not removed from their homeland, nor were they interned by the federal government. So, their place on the landscape remained relatively fi xed, even in the face of colonization. It was Powell who named that layer of the sandstone after them. Gregory continued Powell’s practice of naming stone after people and helped the name Navajo Sandstone assume a central position on the stratigraphic charts and across the landscape. The history of Navajo-white interaction is relevant in this case too. As Navajos resisted the encroachment of white settlers onto their lands, the federal government launched a violent and deadly Navajo removal campaign, called the Long Walk, in the mid-1860s. By the late 1860s, the nine thousand Navajos who had been imprisoned at Fort Sumner, New Mexico, were allowed to return to a greatly reduced section of their homeland. Navajos held a central place on the Colorado Plateau before, during, and after the Long Walk. After the Long Walk, which Navajos call Hwéeldi, however, Navajos had worked to rebuild their stock herds, fields, and communities and saw an impressive degree of success. For instance, their population rebounded to thirty thousand by the 1880s.⁹⁷ The fact that Navajo Sandstone was named after Navajos indicates that Gregory recognized the importance of Navajos and their history as he conducted his geologic studies. Subsequent layers of the Black Mesa Navajo Reservation stratigraphy illustrate these and other histories of colonization in dramatic fashion. The Entrada layer is a clear reference to the era of Spanish colonization on the plateau, while the Bluff and Cow Springs layers bear the name of Mormon settlements in the region. Like Navajo Sandstone, the top layer, Yale Point Sandstone, was named by Gregory after his alma mater.⁹⁸ While this is not a perfect reading of the layers across the plateau, we do know that Gregory espoused a form of stadial evolutionary theory whereby “primitive” societies progressed toward civilization. He viewed Navajos as uncivilized and held that it was the responsibility of whites like himself to help them by “assisting uncivilized man in his adjustment to natural laws.” In naming the layers of Navajo Sandstone and Yale Point Sandstone, 85

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among others, as he did, Gregory, like Powell, affi xed his interpretation of the stages of civilization onto the landscape, effectively placing Navajos beneath European and white civilization. Navajos, on the other hand, had different names for rock layers at Black Mesa. Navajos call what Gregory dubbed the Yale Point layer on Black Mesa Bitsí˛˛íh Hwiits’os, which translates to “the hill that tapers at its base.” Black Mesa does indeed taper near its base, so this is an accurate description that reflects Indigenous knowledge and naming practices of the area (see gallery figure 4).⁹⁹ Gregory’s exploration and naming practices indicate his fascination with both the physical and the social landscapes across the plateau. The topics of the many studies he produced ranged from those that contributed to an understanding of geologic processes to an assessment of how those processes were identified by different groups. His focus on naming provides a window into the social organization of those landscapes—an organization in which he was an active and influential participant. His studies also reveal that he contributed to an epistemology that generally venerated the land use practices of white settlers and scholars over Indigenous peoples. These interpretations encapsulated and anticipated the much more complicated interactions that would characterize relationships among Native Americans, scientific and social scientific researchers, and federal and state bureaucracies in the years that followed. The names he bestowed on places and things were important. They reflected a whole slew of relationships that can be read like layers of interaction.

a dding a nother l ay er to the foundation of glen ca n yon da m By the mid-nineteenth century, surveyors, engineers, geologists, and other “knowledge seekers” had swept across the Colorado Plateau. Like the LDS settlers, who wished to expand the borders of their own spiritual homeland, or Zion, such researchers were also motivated by their mission to fully understand the landscape and claim it for future generations of white Americans through their research efforts. They were driven by a desire to “discover” heretofore “unknown” places, such as Rainbow Bridge, to advance American progress and to establish contributions to their disciplines and build their careers.¹⁰⁰ Like Latter-day Saints, they, too, sought to uncover and interpret the region and its prehistoric and geologic past. Yet their primary objective was to better understand how the region might be incorpo86

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rated into a more cohesive plan for the nation’s economic expansion, which would come at the expense of Indigenous people. White members of the expeditions commonly expressed that the production of knowledge would help demonstrate the importance of the region’s natural and cultural resources for the nation’s economic growth. The whites who took part in these surveys made claims of discovery and named the features of the land according to a social and stratigraphical order that they themselves helped create. The emerging names of landforms and rock layers represented a narrative of racial hierarchies and stadial evolutionary theory consistent with late nineteenth-century colonization efforts and early to mid-twentieth-century nationalistic epistemology of white racial superiority. In this sense, knowledge production and shifting power relations were interconnected processes. As whites came to dominate in the region, a narrative retelling of the imposition of racial hierarchies and colonization efforts was literally mapped onto the landscape itself. With an eye toward future development, such expeditions mined the region’s rich deposits of Indigenous knowledge as they worked to restrict Indigenous access to sacred landforms and other natural resources. Indigenous guides shared their knowledge of the land with white scientists and traders, but these same “discoverers” concealed or were slow to credit Native contributions to their successful expeditions. Nor did they always fully acknowledge their dependence on Indigenous knowledge as they used that knowledge to further their own, or the state’s, interests. Both settlers and representatives of the settler state repackaged the information they extracted in the form of narratives that celebrated the success of colonizers as seemingly preordained and part of the “natural order” of things. Such narratives made their way into the popular press but also became embedded in scientific publications that would influence subsequent generations of archaeologists, surveyors, engineers, politicians, and contractors, as well as the Native American communities who would have to continually produce counternarratives in order to fight them. In these narratives, Powell, Douglass, Cummings, and Gregory also reflected on what the LDS settlers had accomplished and what still needed to be done to make the region habitable for others from the dominant society. Powell and Gregory both discussed how impressed they were with what Mormon settlers had built in the region and reflected on what they saw in LDS communities, though they were not always laudatory in their descriptions of the Saints. Gregory, in particular, contended that LDS settlers had only started the process of civilizing the area by constructing a 87

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figu r e 2.7 LDS settlers drilling an artesian well at the Hero Twins rock formaton, near present-day Bluff, Utah.

robust but small-scale network of water and transportation infrastructure. The more important technical work, the work that would enable such projects to grow in magnitude, would be done by men like Gregory and those who followed his lead. The production of official maps and surveys fell to academics and natural scientists, like Gregory, who possessed formal training and the official position to create a robust channel for the distribution of that knowledge.¹⁰¹ In his publications, Gregory inserted himself at the end of a long chain of explorers—John Fremont (1843), George Wheeler (1872), and Powell (1869)—who used knowledge and expertise to produce the first readable maps of the region for government use.¹⁰² Gregory’s admiration for this earlier generation of explorers was considerable, but he also noted 88

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that their reports, while pioneering, were largely incomplete. It was up to him—and those who followed him—to finish the job. He traveled the region, visited LDS towns and Indigenous villages; worked with Diné guides, regional traders, and LDS settlers; conducted his water and geologic studies; and officially named the region’s varied landscape features along the way. He aimed to solve the “problem of the water supply” and assist with the development of other natural resources in “Navajo Country.” Yet Gregory also overlooked—or perhaps did not fully grasp—that much of the region was not really as arable as he envisioned.¹⁰³ To argue, as he did, that major irrigation works were beyond Indigenous capabilities may have been accurate given that they lacked the kind of broad financial support needed to do so because of colonialism, but, more important, his statement also assumed that Navajos wanted the same kind of development as white settlers, the USGS, or even the National Park Service. Despite the positive lens through which he viewed LDS settlers and all they had done, irrigation on the level he proposed was also beyond the capabilities of a few LDS communities. Major irrigation and water development projects have since necessitated huge federal investment in the region. Powell’s and Gregory’s reports laid the groundwork for such projects. And as the nonIndigenous population in the region grew, white residents of the region and their political representatives would come to demand more of them. Water projects would, in turn, facilitate the growth of non-Indigenous populations in the region. Whatever Gregory’s intentions, infrastructure would be built for whites in Navajo Country, not necessarily Navajo people.

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s t ruc t u r e s of e r a su r e Engineering, Education, and Ecology, 1910–1960

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n 1955, a professor emeritus of zoology and ecology at the University of Utah, Dr. Angus Woodbury, asked the readers of Science magazine a question: “Shall the arid lands of the interior [of the United States] be made habitable and provide better distribution of dense populations, or shall they be doomed to remain arid with sparse populations?”¹ As his word choice suggests, Woodbury’s query was born out of his support for the continued efforts to develop and apportion the Upper Colorado River for the dominant culture through the construction of large irrigation projects and dams. Frustrated by resistance from environmental organizations that questioned both the need for new dams on the Colorado River and its tributaries and who sought to curtail the development of proposed regional infrastructure projects in national monuments, Woodbury used his article to weigh in on the emerging controversies over whether a large dam should be located at Echo Park in Dinosaur National Monument. “Whether this or that dam site should be used, whether it will improve or ruin recreation, whether we are setting a precedent of invading a national monument,” Woodbury noted dismissively, were relatively minor concerns outweighed by the larger issue of water storage for regional development.² As a pro-development ecologist and conservationist, Woodbury’s views on the construction of water storage facilities were as clear as they were concise: “All conservation [of water] is ultimately directed toward supplying human wants to good advantage and in balanced proportions.” He wanted politicians to table any environmental debates and for Congress to immediately authorize the Colorado River Storage Project (CRSP). After funds had been appropriated for the project, natural scientists could, in Woodbury’s calculation, step in to resolve any lingering environmental concerns. Before that happened, his baseline position remained unchanged: “Would it not be better for the Congress to authorize the development of the river basin, de90

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termine the policy of water use, provide funds for operation and refer minor items of dispute to some fact-finding scientific body for final judication?”³ In taking such a position, Woodbury positioned himself against environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club and Izaak Walton League on the issues of not only whether dams should be built on the Upper Colorado River but also where dams should be located. Men of science would, in his view, be the best neutral arbiters of such conflicts. Although he addressed the general congressional procedure, Woodbury’s article was directed at a specific regional controversy. In the mid-1950s, when the CRSP was proposed, it included a large dam in Echo Park, a particularly scenic river valley in northwestern Colorado near Dinosaur National Monument. Almost immediately after the dam was proposed, environmentalists mobilized to fight against the Echo Park dam because it would flood much of the Yampa and Green River valleys within the national monument. In response to these heated protests and the resulting political debates, the Bureau of Reclamation agreed to remove Echo Park as a dam site. In return, environmental groups agreed to not object to the construction of a dam in Glen Canyon. The year after Woodbury published his article, Congress authorized the CRSP, which included the dam at Glen Canyon. To build that dam, the government would engage in a land swap with the Navajo Nation. Despite their initial agreement to support Glen Canyon Dam, environmentalists regretted their choice and rallied against the dam. By the early 1960s, as construction of the massive water storage facility proceeded, scientists raced to collect natural specimens and archaeological artifacts from the area that would be flooded in a wide-ranging “salvage” operation. Woodbury led this salvage operation, a job that reflected his knowledge of the area, his professional expertise, and his deep family history in the region.⁴ Born in 1886 to Mormon settlers who heeded the call to build a colony in southern Utah, near St. George, Woodbury, like his friend Herbert Gregory, believed that “much of the land will be doomed perpetually to nonuse or only partial use unless additional water supplies can be provided.” This meshed perfectly with the views of the predominantly white politicians and LDS religious leaders from the region, who saw dam building as crucial to the economic and social development of Utah, Arizona, and Colorado.⁵ Until his tenure as director of ecological research on the Colorado River Project ended with his death in an automobile accident in 1964, Woodbury was an important part of a larger cohort of men who valued the region for its beauty and ecological diversity but wanted to increase its non-Indigenous population.⁶ Woodbury saw water infrastructure as essential to regional growth. That the state’s possession of Indigenous lands was 91

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also a necessary precursor to that growth was a condition Woodbury accepted without question. Woodbury embraced the idea that colonization had transformed the region, and the lives of its Indigenous people, for the better and that water storage and infrastructure projects would speed the “civilization” of the region. Examining events in the period between the 1910s and the 1950s can provide us with a better understanding of how the engineers and scientists who sited and studied the region to determine where to site Glen Canyon Dam thought about the water, regional expansion, and the Indigenous peoples who lived in the Colorado River basin. The instruments of dispossession that preceded Woodbury—US expansion, LDS settlement of the area, and scientific exploration—would be followed by a push for large-scale water reclamation projects. Woodbury’s early exposure to Mormonism and his own family’s history stand as reminders of the personal influences that affected regional water policy. His influential publications, public pronouncements, and political lobbying in the 1950s bolstered the general perception that Indigenous peoples, seen only as bit players in regional politics, did not have a stake in water resources. By the 1960s, they only rarely figured into Woodbury’s assessments of the region—a striking omission given that he spent a good part of his career in the 1930s and 1940s researching Indigenous agricultural history.⁷ A fuller assessment of Indigenous water use, of course, reveals that Diné, Paiute, Ute, and Hopi residents of the region had long engaged in widespread irrigation efforts just as they attempted to participate in modern policy-making initiatives, but Woodbury promoted a different narrative. By the end of his career, his scientific pronouncements openly supported the construction of Glen Canyon Dam and tacitly buttressed an infrastructure of dispossession by facilitating the process of Indigenous disavowal and erasure—key components of both settler colonialism and structural erasure, even if they were not defined by either violent removal or elimination.⁸ Woodbury was hardly alone in his support of the construction of a large water storage dam on the Colorado River. Eugene Clyde LaRue (1879– 1947), a USGS engineer, was one of the first to propose that large dams be built on the Colorado, including a dam at Glen Canyon. Here, I examine some of the professional connections a new generation of scientists made in the 1930s, during the large, multiyear educational Rainbow Bridge– Monument Valley Expedition (RBMVE) as many of those involved surveyed the area. Both Herbert Gregory and Woodbury took part in the expedition, which marked an influential moment in their careers and in the 92

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exploration of the region as a whole. Detailing such actions can help us better understand Woodbury’s career and the evolution of his ideas regarding history, science, religion, and family in regional development. An examination of the work of these men reveals how LaRue, Woodbury, and others continued to downplay the importance of Native American contributions to the settlement, scientific exploration, and creation of regional knowledge networks across the Colorado Plateau. The actions of men like Woodbury and LaRue corresponded with, and were part of, a larger, state-sanctioned disturbance of Indigenous land claims and water use patterns that occurred on a national level for decades.⁹ Investigation of their professional networks illuminates how the environment of southern Utah and northern Arizona was remade by the combined force of settlement by Mormons and the implementation of state and federal Indian policy that occurred alongside the technical and scientific work that increasingly made massive infrastructure projects feasible. Engineers, educators, and ecologists during this phase of regional development all used their professional standing to facilitate Indigenous erasure. Not only were Indigenous claims to land and water subsumed by infrastructure projects and the government policies that made these projects possible, but the importance of Indigenous people to regional development barely registered to men like LaRue, participants of the RBMVE, and Woodbury. Nor did it seem to occur to them that the lives of Indigenous people would be affected by such projects.

eugene c. l a rue: engineer ing indigenous er asur e In the fall of 1921, the then forty-three-year-old Eugene LaRue, a hydraulic engineer from Los Angeles, explored the Colorado River at the behest of the USGS and the Southern California Edison power company. It was not LaRue’s first trip down the river, nor would it be his last; the aim of this journey was to survey, map, and explore sections of the Green and Colorado Rivers from a jumping-off point in eastern Utah. From there, he traveled to Lee’s Ferry in Arizona. Along the way, he identified sites for hydroelectric dams and storage reservoirs. It was LaRue who measured the flow of the Colorado River and explored the dam site in Glen Canyon. He favored the construction of a dam at Glen Canyon over one at Boulder Canyon (now called Hoover Dam) until his death in 1947. Like Powell and Gregory before him, LaRue thought of the region in terms of how it could be developed and how water should be allocated. He believed that a “series 93

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of coordinated dams . . . would maximize the water available for consumptive use and power generation” and would be essential to regional growth. A large dam at Glen Canyon was part of LaRue’s master plan.¹⁰ As with prior efforts to explore the Colorado River, LaRue worked as part of a larger team, and he kept both technical records and a diary of personal reflections that illuminate his goals for the expeditions. His team consisted of a boatman, a cook, a recorder, two “rod” men, a geologist, and a well-known photographer named Emery Kolb, who had a studio along the Bright Angel Trail into Grand Canyon. LaRue was also a skilled photographer himself who took over one thousand photographs of the river.¹¹ Less well known is that LaRue recorded this trip in a diary, writing in a pragmatic yet revealing style. These reports contain the expected scientific data gathered during their expedition but also include a series of LaRue’s observations. Remembering how he initially felt upon seeing a particularly roiling part of the river, LaRue, who was a weak swimmer, noted, “It did not seem possible that a boat could go through without upsetting.” So, LaRue watched how Kolb “duck[ed] low to avoid being knocked out of the boat by the waves.” Then, he copied the photographer. But the group encountered more than dangerous waters, and LaRue also recorded these daily events: “Two rattle snakes killed in canyon to date.” Beyond that, he described the weather as “fine” and the moon as “beautiful.” Such entries actually tell us quite a bit about the man and the enterprise.¹² After each day in the canyon, LaRue recorded what had happened in his diary. Boats capsized or catapulted their passengers into the churning rapids. Venomous snakes threatened the group when they pulled ashore. He did not linger over the details. Each morning, the group got back in their wooden boats to begin the day and face new risks. Those boats were especially important to the crew, a lifeline to their work and their survival, and each one received a special name, including LaRue’s own boat. Unlike his predecessors, LaRue and the group did not hire or consult with local Indigenous people on the trip, but this did not mean he was oblivious to the Indigenous people who lived in the region. LaRue named his own boat “The Navajo,” but despite the name he made no mention of Navajos or Diné people in his diary, and it is unclear if Navajos joined the group on any part of the trip. Still, LaRue, like Powell before him, made suppositions about the region’s Native Americans based on the material culture he located along the riverbanks. LaRue, for instance, found evidence that unnamed Native Americans had hunted along the banks of the Colorado River in Cataract Canyon (above current-day Lake Powell) and surmised that the region’s Native peoples must have been using boats for a long 94

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figu r e 3.1 Eugene Clyde LaRue did not seek out Navajos on his expeditions, but he did name his boat The Navajo. Boatman Frank Dodge posing on board.

time, because the location where LaRue found some arrowheads “could not be reached without boats.”¹³ LaRue also collected scientific information, such as erosion rates, about rock formations that were important to the Diné and their cosmology. But even here, LaRue did not consult Navajo oral histories about the topography of the region. He either chose to distance himself from the people who claimed such sites as essential to their religion and well-being or, more likely, it did not even occur to LaRue to consult them. Instead, he sought out “local” knowledge from more recent arrivals to the region, especially the Latter-day Saints and other white settlers who lived in close proximity to Navajos and their sacred sites. Like Powell and Gregory, 95

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LaRue’s goal was to acquire knowledge of the area while exploring, surveying, and mapping it. However, he never claimed that his work would help the region’s Indigenous peoples. Native American concerns did not seem to register with LaRue, and, unlike Gregory, he never claimed to work for their benefit. He was paid by the USGS and Southern California Edison, and his primary goal was to demonstrate the suitability of Glen Canyon as a dam site to politicians and regional planning experts.¹⁴ LaRue chose not to consult with Navajos when he was studying landforms that represent critical figures in Diné cosmology: the Navajo Twins or Hero Twins, Monster Slayer (na’ye’ ne’ayani), and Born-for-Water (toba’djictcini).¹⁵ In 1925, LaRue sought out the Hero Twins, two towering sandstone columns named for sacred figures who, in Navajo cosmology, helped fight the monsters who were causing problems to bring balance to the world the Diné inhabited. LaRue studied the rocks in order to better understand erosion rates. To conduct this work, he used photographs taken on earlier USGS expeditions of the rock formations. LaRue and his coauthor, Kirk Bryan, published their findings in “Persistence of Features in an Arid Landscape: The Navajo Twins, Utah.” The two scientists made it clear by the title of their article that they saw the rock formations as mere tools with which to conduct their study and not as significant Navajo landmarks. To conduct their research, they used a simple method of gauging erosion rates. They traveled just north of the LDS settlement of Bluff, Utah, to where a “crenulated sandstone cliff ” formed the “northern boundary of the open valley” of the San Juan River. They then made a quick visual examination of the “conspicuous” twin rock pillars. Upon first impression, they noted how the towers appeared “fragile” and their fall “imminent.” Armed with photographs taken in 1875 by William Henry Jackson, the photographer for the Hayden survey team, and another taken in 1910 by geologist E. B. Woodruff, who had worked with Gregory on an exploration of the San Juan oil fields, the two men restaged the older photographs and made a series of observational conclusions. Despite outward appearances, LaRue and Bryan noted that the pillars were not in fact fragile; indeed, they had hardly moved or changed in fifty years. The only observable differences to the rock formation were the result of direct human action taken by LDS settlers.¹⁶ After seeking out “local testimony” from whites living in the region, they learned that people had moved stone blocks from near the base of the rock formation for use as building materials.¹⁷ LaRue did not consult Navajos, either when traveling down the Colorado or San Juan Rivers or when studying sites named after the Hero Twins of Diné Bikéyah. He glossed over Indigenous use of, and connection to, the culturally significant landforms, reducing the value (in his mind) of the twin 96

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figu r e 3.2 Photograph of the Hero Twins from Bryan and LaRue’s scientific study on erosion rates.

rocks to scientific data about sandstone erosion rates—an issue that would become increasingly important as engineers contemplated building a dam along the Navajo sandstone walls at Glen Canyon. That LaRue was more interested in prior scientific studies than he was in Navajo culture or firsthand Indigenous knowledge suggests that he felt entitled to make claims on, and about, the places he explored. Such claims constitute a key moment when those interested in regional infrastructure turned away from the practice of consulting contemporary Indigenous people about their environment. But even as he ignored contemporary Indigenous knowledge, he used it: in his scientific studies he cited the work of earlier scholars who had extracted both Indigenous knowledge and labor from local populations. In essence, LaRue no longer needed Native American 97

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guides to help him in the region. Other expeditions, like Powell’s, Gregory’s, and Hayden’s, had provided him with the relevant information. This kind of erasure tacitly reinforced the belief that the region’s Native Americans were part of the region’s past, not its present or future. Such actions constitute a key form of Indigenous erasure that was part and parcel of dispossession. Indigenous knowledge (and labor) had been vital to the work of the scientific explorers who came before LaRue—Powell, Gregory, Cummings, Douglass, Hayden, and others. But by the 1920s, LaRue could rely on the USGS maps and official scientific surveys those explorers had created. What LaRue saw as objective scientific analysis replaced the local understanding of the physical world in professional publications. Additionally, the physical presence of the region’s Indigenous populations had also been diminished as they were forced onto reservations, and their intellectual presence shrank in each successive generation of scientific scholarship. LaRue took this scientific erasure even further by using his work to advance his state-sanctioned understanding of what he considered to be the larger social good of economic growth: water and energy would be made to serve the needs of the white populations on the Colorado Plateau. LaRue’s engineering work, along with his investment in a southern Utah homestead in Monticello, Utah, reflected both his individual and larger professional ambitions as well as the goal of the governments of the western states and the United States. The needs of Indigenous peoples of the region were an afterthought—if he thought about them at all. Unlike Gregory, who was nominally tasked with helping Navajos find water, LaRue, at least in his public or private documents, expressed little interest in the plight of Indigenous people. Nor did he query Native Americans about their thoughts on proposed or impending water storage projects. Instead, his line of vision extended well beyond both the Navajo Reservation and the boundaries of what Gregory called Navajo Country. LaRue saw how the waters of the Colorado River might be harnessed to meet the needs of primarily white settlers in California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Utah. Importantly, LaRue’s purview may have been influenced by his personal investment in the local non-Indigenous communities of southern Utah, Southern California, Colorado, and northern Arizona. Hence, LaRue’s obsession with a dam in Glen Canyon was fueled by personal economic incentives as well as professional judgment and pride. As a fastidious and hardworking hydraulic engineer, LaRue conducted a detailed study of the region and came to the opinion that a northern dam site was the superior location for the first large dam on the Colorado River. He then tried to convince others that this was the exceptional plan. Build98

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ing a dam at Glen Canyon became a source of professional pride, if not a downright obsession, for LaRue.¹⁸ In reports and in meetings, LaRue fervently expressed his opinion that residents from “seven states” would benefit in terms of flood control and water storage on the Colorado River from a dam at Glen Canyon or very near it, at Lee’s Ferry.¹⁹ LaRue expressed frustration with an alternative plan to build the first big dam at Black or Boulder Canyon, near where Hoover Dam now sits. His obstinate personality comes through in a letter he wrote to one of his colleagues. Rather than proceed with the Black Canyon proposal, LaRue wanted the planning commission to defer to him, writing, “It would help clear the atmosphere if the politicians as well as the engineers would postpone discussion of the Colorado River project until the engineering facts are made available.”²⁰ The facts in question would be produced by LaRue in his forthcoming report. LaRue’s obsession with the location of the first mega-dam on the Colorado intensified as the date for the conference to decide the Colorado River’s water allocation neared.²¹ Just prior to the multistate meetings of the group set to negotiate the Colorado River Storage Compact in Santa Fe, LaRue helped coordinate a large river expedition down the Colorado in the fall of 1922. He sought to make his case for his favored dam site, in person, to a number of prominent LDS politicians from Utah and other regional policy makers. He desperately worked to get Governor Charles Mabey of Utah to join the group. He also anticipated that geologist Herbert E. Gregory would be part of this trip. In the end, neither Gregory nor Governor Mabey actually joined the expedition, although Mabey did send the “Mormon apostle and irrigation expert” John A. Widtsoe, PhD, in his place. Widtsoe worked as director of the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station at the time, so it made sense for Mabey to send him in his place. But he was not the kind of prominent decision maker LaRue had hoped to reach.²² Despite his best efforts, LaRue failed to persuade policy makers that a dam at Glen Canyon should be the first big dam on the Colorado. Even so, LaRue’s actions and potential motivations around the issue of dam siting deserve attention. LaRue had reasons beyond professional pride for favoring the construction of a dam closer to Utah’s border with Arizona than to California. LaRue had invested in a plot of land in Monticello, Utah, in San Juan County, as a homesteader. A dam in or near Glen Canyon would bring both water and transportation infrastructure to southern Utah. He thought both would benefit the residents of the region’s smaller towns more than a dam downriver would. While this was not LaRue’s sole motivation for picking Glen Canyon, his personal investment in southern Utah in part explains why he fought so hard for the Glen Canyon plan. Even as LaRue was guiding politi99

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cians and water planners down the Colorado River to make his case, he was paying his brother Scott LaRue, an impoverished forty-five-year-old, to dry farm 160 acres of arid and unforgiving land. Ever attentive to details, LaRue sent his younger brother instructions on how to improve the land from the late 1910s through the early 1920s. LaRue saw homesteading as a business venture, one that was increasingly dependent on the arrival of more infrastructure to the region, especially roads, railroads, and, of course, dams. The younger LaRue lived a lonely existence in Monticello, struggling due to a series of accidents, inclement weather, and personal issues to get the ground seeded with wheat before the elder LaRue filed the final homestead claim, which the engineer eventually did from his home in Pasadena by drawing on his personal connections and bypassing the normal route by which claims were granted in the state where they were located.²³ While LaRue knew a dam at Glen Canyon would not immediately help residents of Monticello irrigate their crops, store water, or control regional floods, he believed that a dam in southern Utah or northern Arizona would dramatically transform the area he viewed as the region’s “farming belt.”²⁴ He also noted, despairingly, that the proposed dam location at Black or Boulder Canyon would “preclude the development” of a dam at Lee’s Ferry or in Glen Canyon for “30 to 50 years.” LaRue knew the construction of a dam in Black or Boulder Canyon in Nevada meant the residents of southern Utah would have to wait longer for much-desired infrastructure, thus slowing the growth of the regional economy.²⁵ LaRue invested significant funds in his Monticello farm because he was hoping that he and his brother might be able to grow food, meet market demands, and make a healthy profit. He clearly thought the land was a good investment and spent thousands of dollars in supplies over the years while his brother homesteaded the land.²⁶ His work with the USGS and Southern California Edison had provided him with ample opportunity to travel and study the region; it also put him in a position to potentially plan and profit—if even modestly—from the region’s development. LaRue also hoped such development might be untethered from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. LaRue frequently advised others who sought his opinion as a hydraulic engineer when laying out townsites. In 1920, Mr. R. D. Rasmussen of Monticello, Utah, reached out the engineer. He wanted LaRue to help him find additional investors to fund a new townsite company in San Juan County, Utah. LaRue responded enthusiastically that he had faith that more acres in the region would be irrigated with regional water supplies, and he gave the aspiring businessman free advice on how the town should develop as more “American” than a 100

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town dominated by LDS leaders. First, LaRue, who had spent the earliest days of his career in Salt Lake City, stressed that the local bank should be a “national bank,” not a local LDS-run financial institution. Next, he opined that the town should not be dominated by LDS interests in order to diversify the religious makeup of the county to draw outside investors. LaRue wrote, I will state that this proposition will fare better if the town site company is not dominated, in any way, by the Mormon Church. I would therefore suggest that in the selection of officers, the places should be equally divided between Mormons and Gentiles. If the community is to thrive, it is absolutely necessary for the Mormons and Gentiles to work in harmony.

LaRue was clearly hopeful that the region would be developed with input from non-LDS members of the community. As the younger LaRue brother worked the nearby Monticello homestead claim, LaRue’s professional agenda brought him closer to his brother’s farm. However, he was unable to visit due to time constraints, professional responsibilities, and the difficulties presented by the region’s rough terrain.²⁷ Still, LaRue believed what he told Rasmussen, and he and his brother thought that a railroad, a major road, or a larger irrigation project—perhaps even one LaRue himself might help plan—might soon be built in the region.²⁸ Notably, neither his brother nor LaRue himself, nor even Mr. Rasmussen, made mention of any Native American presence on the landscape, even though San Juan County—which was founded in 1880 and is home to Bluff, Blanding, Monticello, and other communities—borders the Navajo Reservation and is firmly ensconced in Navajo Country. Glen Canyon Dam is also currently located in the county. This non-acknowledgment of an Indigenous presence on the land in the historic record they left also constitutes a form of Indigenous erasure. LaRue could, in part, ignore Indigenous people because he and other scientists were no longer dependent upon them for information about the landscape. Nor did white farmers like his brother seemingly encounter them on a daily basis. If the younger LaRue did, he failed to mention it. The LaRue brothers felt entitled to claim and farm the land made available to them by the removal of Indigenous people from the area by earlier generations of settlers, the state of Utah, and the federal government. Men like the younger LaRue farmed lands formerly occupied by Indigenous people, lands where there is ample evidence that Navajos, Paiutes, and Utes had hunted, farmed, and collected plants and herbs 101

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for ceremonies.²⁹ These Indigenous peoples, meanwhile, were restricted to live on regional reservations, such as the one where Rose Daniels ended up. The region’s Native Americans also had less control than men like LaRue over decisions regarding how local resources would be used, in part because they had been intentionally alienated from the region’s white settlers through erasure. This was part of a larger national process of settler colonialism. The scholar Kyle Whyte has illustrated that white communities erased “Indigenous economies, cultures, and political organizations for the sake of establishing their own,” meaning white communities would replace Indigenous ones.³⁰ Men like LaRue, his brother, the federal government, and the state agencies for whom LaRue worked all helped draft a plan for the future of formerly Indigenous-occupied lands. LaRue used the Homestead Act to stake a claim to land. He traveled throughout the region. He conducted studies to determine the best way to measure the water supply and support regional growth.³¹ Though politicians did not fully make use of his water supply data and overallocated the waters of the river in 1922, his work as an engineer helped usher in the dispossession of local Indigenous people through their erasure. Though LaRue was oblivious to the presence or concerns of Indigenous people, he did not ignore early environmental activists and their concerns. On the 1921 river trip, like Douglass and Cummings had before him, LaRue visited Rainbow Bridge; but whereas local Paiute and Navajo guides had helped the earlier explorers’ “race” to discover the expansive rock arch a decade earlier, LaRue was now able to follow a now well-known path from the river to the arch. LaRue’s goal was to investigate whether a nearby dam would flood the monument’s lands. During his visit, LaRue realized that a dam at Lee’s Ferry or Glen Canyon would, in fact, flood RBNM. He told his supervisor, N. C. Grover, that a dam in either location meant “that Rainbow Bridge was likely to be flooded.”³² LaRue claimed that he “realized at once the seriousness of this situation” and in a separate letter written to the chief hydraulic engineer of USGS, he noted with certainty “that the [Rainbow] bridge will be effected [sic] by back water if a dam . . . is constructed to a height greater than 500 feet [at Glen Canyon].” If water were to flood the area, both the USGS and the BOR would need “permission from Congress to back water into the Rainbow Bridge National Monument.”³³ LaRue, wary of a possible public outcry after the Hetch Hetchy controversy—wherein the Hetch Hetchy valley, located within Yosemite National Park, was flooded by the construction of the O’Shaughnessy Dam—went as far as to caution the men on the 1921 trip “about giving out this information in such a way that it might be published in the newspapers or maga102

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zines throughout the country.”³⁴ He wished to avoid opposition to the dam sites he was proposing. Always the engineer, however, LaRue had a solution to flooding at RBNM. He “suggested that a dam could be built at Bridge Canyon at a very low cost in order to prevent the back water from reaching the bridge.” Any technical issues, such as the need “to pump the natural flow at Bridge Canyon over such a dam into the reservoir,” could be overcome by the sound application of wise technology.³⁵ It was in trying to rally support for this position that LaRue would, in just over a year’s time, try to convince the governor of Utah to join his river trip, where he could make his case, telling him, “This trip would give you firsthand knowledge of the character of the country which would be affected by the development of the Lee Ferry project. You would then be in a better position to judge as to what extent the development of this project would benefit the state of Utah.” He also wanted to assure Governor Mabey that there was nothing arduous about a side trip to Rainbow Bridge, stating, “A four-year-old child could walk from the Colorado River though this beautiful side canyon to the Rainbow Bridge natural bridge in two hours.”³⁶ Some of his contemporaries disagreed with LaRue’s assessment of the difficulty of hiking through canyon country, just as they objected to his suggested placement of dams on the Colorado River, but throughout this debate, LaRue learned that the physical challenges of exploration often paled before the political obstacles that surrounded water issues in the West. Over the course of his long career in the Southwest, LaRue experienced the full variety of risks faced by engineers. Whether climbing high peaks with scientific equipment, measuring the depths of canyons, determining the flow strength of rivers, or even killing rattlesnakes, LaRue understood all of this work as contributing to a larger goal—the damming of the Colorado River. Control of the major artery of the West would expand access to its waters and assist in the economic development of the region. LaRue never wavered in his opposition to construction of a dam at either Black or Boulder Canyon, and as the 1920s progressed, he, as he had feared, found less support for his plan for a dam at Glen Canyon or nearby Lee’s Ferry. But LaRue also recognized that not everyone shared in that vision. He hit a political low point when William Mulholland, the chief engineer of the Los Angeles Water Department, publicly ridiculed LaRue’s water policy positions during a special session of the US Senate Committee on Irrigation and Reclamation in Los Angeles.³⁷ The bruises from this political fight were not quick to fade. Even so, LaRue’s views on water development, especially around Glen 103

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Canyon and Rainbow Bridge, proved wholly predictive. When it came to the flooding of Rainbow Bridge, LaRue’s primary concern was that damage to a national monument would spark protests from different public factions, including, of course, preservationists. Given the furious reaction to the proposed flooding of Hetch Hetchy Valley in 1918 by preservationists, he was correct to anticipate a fight. Although in the case of flooding caused by Glen Canyon Dam, that fight would not come until the 1960s and would continue until 1980. At the time, he tried to keep his plan for a diversion dam under wraps, stressing, “I would suggest that this matter be considered extremely confidential and that no information be given out until the result of the detailed survey became available.”³⁸ His concern for secrecy was significant—the success of government efforts to build a hydraulic system in the West depended on political unity—but what LaRue did not foresee, or perhaps what he did not consider, was how Indigenous peoples would react to the project and how they, too, would be drawn into the political battles surrounding Rainbow Bridge. LaRue’s studies, which were funded by USGS and Southern California Edison, can be viewed as supporting what Patrick Wolfe describes as a kind of territorial imperative, the relentless expansion of settler society that worked toward the erasure and replacement of Indigenous peoples. LaRue gave no thought to the future of Navajos, Paiutes, or Utes in the region. This kind of multifaceted erasure was part and parcel of the settler colonial toolkit, especially what scholars Manu Vimalassery, Juliana Pegues, and Alyosha Goldstein call the practice of “colonial unknowing.”³⁹ LaRue became a controversial figure in the region’s history beyond his work on Glen Canyon Dam. He sited, mapped, and proposed twenty-one different dam sites in Grand Canyon alone while maintaining his opposition to a dam in Boulder Canyon. The historian Robert H. Webb describes the hydraulic engineer’s plan like this: “If LaRue’s plan for water development of the Colorado River had prevailed, the entire length of the Colorado River in Grand Canyon would have become a lake.”⁴⁰ But, for his part, LaRue saw things differently. He didn’t envision a lake as much as he saw a plan for social progress. He believed he had developed a “comprehensive plan for development for the Colorado River below the mouth of the Green River . . . to provide for the maximum practicable utilization of the potential power, maximum preservation of water for irrigation, effective elimination of the flood menace, and adequate solution of the silt problem.”⁴¹ He saw the river as an “organic machine” in the making. The centerpiece of that comprehensive plan was a dam at Glen Canyon, which became, according to some of his friends, the engineer’s obsession.⁴² When 104

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he lost the battle over where the first big dam would go, the blow was total: he quit the USGS. He died in 1947, a decade before work on Glen Canyon Dam began. His legacy remains significant because he represents both the key moment when plans for Glen Canyon were hatched and a transition in regional planning endeavors when Indigenous people and their knowledge were viewed as no longer essential to development efforts. That does not mean, however, that Indigenous people “disappeared,” or that they were ambivalent about development projects or no longer valued the landscape. Indigenous matriarchs, spiritual leaders, and politicians continued to care for the landscape across the plateau, especially around Monticello and Bluff and near the area called Bears Ears. As Jonah Yellowman explains, they viewed, and continue to view, such lands as their “mother who provides for [them] and the plants and animals to which [they] are related.”⁴³ By and large, however, the deep relationships such individuals had with the land would be ignored by subsequent waves of development professionals, scientists, and scholars.

r a inbow br idge monument va lley expedition: educationa l ende avors a nd the continuation of er asur e Eugene Clyde LaRue and the generations of scientists and technical bureaucrats who preceded him were not the only ones interested in seeing and exploring southern Utah, northern Arizona, Rainbow Bridge, and the surrounding Navajo Country. During the 1930s, as Navajos across the reservation experienced drought, poverty, environmental crisis, and the catastrophic reduction of their livestock, other scientific expeditions also spread out across the Colorado Plateau. The economic woes of the Great Depression did not dampen the exploratory drive of scientists even in a time of reduced institutional and agency budgets. In fact, scholars and scientists found creative ways to sustain their work in the region throughout the decade. Beginning in 1933, for example, scholars from the University of California, Berkeley, the Museum of Northern Arizona, and Clark University worked in conjunction with administrators from the National Park Service, the American Museum of Natural History, and the US Department of Agriculture to launch a multiyear, interdisciplinary scholarly expedition into the American Southwest christened the Rainbow Bridge–Monument Valley Expedition. The organizer, Ansel Franklin Hall, a professor at UC Berkeley and one-time chief naturalist for the US Forest Service, wanted to 105

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attract a group that represented a variety of disciplines and included outstanding scholars and scientists to advise and oversee a field staff consisting primarily of college students.⁴⁴ This impressive collection of scientists would roam across a massive section of reservation and non-reservation land. Like LaRue, many of those involved would also overlook the knowledge, culture, and claims of Indigenous people even as they sought out the labor of Native Americans to support their expeditions. Many of those who participated in the RBMVE had little contact with Native Americans prior to the expedition, and few had any interest in contemporary Native American issues, nor would the student cohort engage in any consistent scholarly way with Indigenous people. The RBMVE was, in many ways, an incredible undertaking, massive in scope and ambition. The cast of scientists included the giants of the era as well as individuals who would go on to become important members of their profession. The RBMVE would end up bolstering the infrastructure of dispossession in the region. Once the staff and advisory board of the RBMVE were in place, Hall looked for smart, young, and energetic students to complete the corps. Potential expedition participants had to be capable, hardworking, able to pay their own way, and accepting of the terms and conditions of expedition. Appealing to the extended university community in the University of California alumni bulletin, Hall outlined his plans “for Scientific Exploration During the Field Season of 1934.”⁴⁵ He initially hoped to find men between the ages of sixteen and forty-five who were “available from June 3 to August 15” to develop their skills in “exploration, mapping, geology, archeology, botany, and zoology.” Hall and his team sought college students who wanted to work as paleontologists, biologists, engineers, ethnologists, artists, surveyors, or even river raft captains. Although no professional training was necessary, Hall stipulated that those answering the call had to be physically fit and intellectually disposed to engage in the process of “scientific discovery” as well as vigorous “camp routine.” He stressed that this would not be a “deluxe expedition”; rather potential participants should expect to round up their own pack animals, gather their own firewood, help with cooking, and scout work site locations, as well as be able to withstand everything from sandstorms to torrential cloud bursts.⁴⁶ Expedition members were also expected to be financially secure, as those who wished to participate had to pay their own expenses. The trip would cost each man $4.30 per day, or nearly $400 for the entire summer, a substantial amount during the middle of the Great Depression, which tells us something about the class status of most of the participants.⁴⁷ For those selected, the 1934 field expedition was to be the ultimate working vacation for 106

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budding renaissance men—one that promised adventure, education, and the opportunity for “real scientific pioneering.”⁴⁸ The expedition was designed to get young people into the field and train them while also funding the scientific and scholarly work of advisory board members. Over the course of its tenure, from 1933 to 1944, more than 350 men and three women participated in the expedition. The group included, among others, sixtyone archeologists, thirty-nine biologists, thirty-eight geologists and paleontologists, sixty-eight engineers, one dendrochronologist, twenty-one photographers and filmmakers, at least one pilot, and sixty-two Navajos, who worked in the role of support staff.⁴⁹ Not surprisingly, the majority of the paying participants were young, white, and well off. In support of this extended team, numerous Indigenous camp crew and “packers,” including the sixty-two individuals described above, were also hired. The list of faculty, staff, and students who were part of the RBMVE reads like a who’s who of American science, archaeology, and history. The historian Herbert E. Bolton, ethnobiologist Lyndon L. Hargrave, geologist Herbert Gregory, and zoologist and ecologist Angus Woodbury were among the many scholars affiliated with the expedition. Gregory served in an advisory capacity, while Woodbury served as an instructor on the 1937 and 1938 expeditions.⁵⁰ Many of the men recruited for the endeavor had successful careers after the expedition, especially the anthropologists Omer C. Stewart, Edward T. Hall, Ralph Beals, George Brainerd, Richard MacNiesh, and John W. Bennett.⁵¹ As a whole, the participants from the multiyear expedition produced numerous studies and scholarly reports. The anthropologist Don Fowler noted that the RBMVE produced the “largest systematic archaeological survey in Glen Canyon Country prior to Woodbury taking on the Glen Canyon Salvage Project in the 1960s.” While the production of knowledge was one goal of the project, Hall’s larger goal was to convince “Congress to create a national park that would encompass various parts of the Glen Canyon Country and Monument Valley.”⁵² While a national park was not immediately created, Hall did reach out to a network of white locals to support the endeavor. Overall, the RBMVE was a laborious undertaking. Team leaders needed to formulate studies and assign work; its participants trekked, charted, dug, surveyed, collected, and noted specific details; and local Navajos hauled materials and delivered food and mail to expedition members. In 1987, John W. Bennett (1915–2005), a professor of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, recalled his experience as a young man on the 1937 expedition. He described the work he and his fellow participants did. He remembered digging vehicles out of washes, hiking to Rainbow Bridge, and doing 107

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the more precise work of excavating archaeological sites. Such activities provided the young people who paid to go on the RBMVE with a kind of adventurous on-the-job training. But Bennett also described the work that local Navajos did to make the trip feasible. While the students carried their backpacks and set up individual camps, Bennett recalled that the “heavy stuff, the bed rolls and the big duffle bags and so on were taken to the sites by mule pack and donkey pack. The expedition used the services of several Navajo families that lived in the Marsh Pass and the Tsegi Canyon area as pack people.” Not only did Navajo families haul camping equipment to different field sites, they also “brought food into us once a week, and mail, and when necessary, would take our luggage back and forth.”⁵³ For basic camp services as well as a lifeline to the outside world, the expedition relied heavily on local Navajo residents. Just as Cummings and Douglass first turned to the white residents of the Colorado Plateau for help in planning their quest to discover to Rainbow Bridge, Hall also sought the assistance of residents of the region to help with the expedition. Hall, for instance, sought out the Navajo trader John Wetherill and his wife, Louisa, for both topographical information and help hiring local Navajos. Whereas Gregory and Powell sought Indigenous knowledge, recorded their findings, and generally, if only partially, credited their Indigenous sources by including names of Navajo residents like Grover Cleveland, there is little to indicate that the scientists of the RBMVE acknowledged Navajo contributions even when they sought out local knowledge.⁵⁴ For instance, Bennett recalled that the site where he worked, which was located in Tsegi Canyon, in Canyon de Chelly—the sacred heartland of Diné Bikéyah—in scientific publications was dubbed the Cobra Head Canyon Camp, the only working camp with a non-Navajo name. As he explained, his group’s name was changed because the “Navajo name for what came to be known as Cobra Head Canyon was Squaw’s Tit Canyon.” Bennett described the land surrounding the camp as “a rounded dome-like sandstone elevation.” Near the middle of the dome was a “spiral which ha[d] the appearance of a female breast.” Bennett and the men who led his group, the anthropologists Ralph Beals and George Brainerd, decided to change the name of the group in all published material from the 1937 field camps.⁵⁵ Because they were professional anthropologists and archaeologists, we can understand why they decided not to use the translated slang name for the region, even though they believed that Navajos commonly used it, because of the coarse nature of the term tit. Still, the dismissal of Native terminology, even if considered inappropriate by contemporary cultural standards, demands a more focused examination. There is 108

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no evidence that the scientists sought to learn the specific Diné name of the landform. Nor is there evidence that the group even discussed consulting local Diné residents for any alternative names. This lack of inquiry suggests the group had little interest in collecting what Bennett called “ethnological” information. Instead, their goal was to acquire “hard” archaeological data, which they did by excavating two small pit houses in the canyon. Bennett later attributed the lack of interest in the local population to the slow development of the field of ethnology in the 1930s, which other scholars have also noted.⁵⁶ “Work on American Indians,” he stated, “was a matter of just one or two individuals up until about the forties or fifties.” He believed that the “notion of an ambitious team kind of study, concentrated study, of the particular tribal group” was not considered a valuable or fundable endeavor. By the late 1980s, however, Bennett looked back on the RBMVE and considered it a missed opportunity. “I still feel that it’s a matter of regret that more ethnological work was not done by some of us interested in ethnology.”⁵⁷ Sometimes the young men of the expedition did more than fail to consult Navajos about specific place names or conduct formal ethnographies with them. Occasionally, they “teased” their Navajo “packers” in ways that were culturally inappropriate and deeply offensive. For instance, after carefully excavating a human skeleton from one of two burial pits in Tsegi Canyon, part of the ancestral homeland of the Navajo, Pueblo, and other Indigenous peoples of the region, Bennett guided a “Navajo packer” to the excavation site. “I showed him that skeleton, and we explained in pidgin English . . . this was a skeleton of an old prehistorical inhabitant of Tsegi Canyon.” He tried to convey to the Navajo man that “this was no relative of his, no relation to the Navajo.” But the unnamed man objected, stood with his hands on his hips, and uttered something very loudly that Bennett took to mean “Maybe.” Bennett believed that the man was “expressing complete skepticism about these crazy young Americans . . . digging out all this stuff from the sand.”⁵⁸ Because many of the participants were new to the professions of archaeology and anthropology, and did not fully understand Navajo spirituality and views on death and dying, they missed important cultural cues. Bennett clearly acted with extreme insensitivity by violating the dead and digging up ancestors as part his own “professional development.”⁵⁹ This occurred in a place that was sacred to Navajos and on lands many generations of their ancestors inhabited. For his part, Bennett claimed that he meant no harm by his actions. Even looking back decades later, he saw the episode as a cheerful prank. The unnamed Navajo laborer, in Bennett’s eyes, did not understand what he and his peers were up to. In 109

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Bennett’s retelling of the event and the expedition, he did not think that Navajos were capable of understanding the value of the expedition. Yet the Navajo packer’s silence speaks volumes: he did not volunteer information or correct the anthropology student, finding it either useless or too difficult to fully explain to Bennett the source of his dismay. Bennett’s disregard for Indigenous intellect as well as their values and beliefs about the dead and how they should be treated constituted a common form of erasure and disrespect, though one that Bennett at least partially recognized in retrospect. As Hall and Bennett noted, the RBMVE was formulated to provide primarily young white middle- to upper-class men with adventure as well as professional training. In the mid-1930s, as the RBMVE continued its educational project, many of its young participants, like Bennett, were newcomers to the region and acted more like naive tourists than students of science; they had a difficult time communicating with area Navajos. Frederick Coe from New York was an expedition member during the summer of 1936. He marveled that the Navajos he encountered engaged with the same kinds of popular culture as did other Americans, remarking that Navajos from Kayenta traveled to the hospital to watch the popular Our Gang comedic films. He also noted that many of his peers bought pottery and rugs from the trading post at the Hopi village of Orabi, a popular tourist activity at the time. But Coe also had other telling interactions with Navajos and Hopis. The leader of his group purchased a cow from a local Orabi resident. After a struggle to capture the animal, Milt Wetherill, a cousin of John Wetherill who worked with the expedition, stepped in to rope the cow. He then hit the cow “over the head with an ax,” cut its throat, hung it up by its back legs on a tree to drain the blood, and then butchered the cow for the students. After the cow was skinned, Coe watched as some “Indian women took the guts and squeezed the crap out of it.” He watched with curiosity as the women then “ate some of the guts raw and carried the rest away.” Driving away at dusk to find a place to camp, the group watched the “Indian fires” burning in the distance as their radio played. A few days later, as the group tried to locate a local water supply, Coe asked a local Native woman he encountered for directions to a stream, but “she wouldn’t talk.” Eventually, a member of the family relented and showed him where to look for water.⁶⁰ Learning about the region meant watching and observing the Indigenous residents of the area; sometimes that meant that members of the expedition behaved like the tourists they were, and other times it meant they acquired more practical information about the water needed to sustain the group through the summer. Both behaviors differ from the sustained consultation conducted by Powell and Gregory, but like Powell and 110

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Gregory they, too, viewed Indigenous people as a racially inferior group. Not surprisingly, some of the Indigenous people with whom members of the RBMVE interacted were hesitant to give them information. Even though the men of the RMBVE learned much about the region from their interactions with Navajo laborers, there is little mention in their diaries, publications, and notes about the specific individual Indigenous people who made that work possible. Even when the contribution of Indigenous people extended beyond physical labor, their various roles in the survey were often obscured. Max Littlesalt, a Navajo, made what some scholars believe to be one of the most notable discoveries of the entire expedition: a small fossilized dinosaur embedded in the Navajo Sandstone in Keet Seel Canyon. Still, the paleontologist Charles Camp gave the paleontological find the official name Segisaurus halli, “in honor of the Tsegi and Ansel Hall”; it was not named either by or after Max Littlesalt.⁶¹ Some Navajos, like Littlesalt, willingly worked for the expedition, and some found ways beyond a paycheck to benefit from the work. While we know they were paid, exactly how much they made remains unclear. Still, there is evidence that local Navajos saw expedition members as a source of desired items or supplies. The Indigenous women mentioned above saw the cow stomach as a delicacy and took their share of it, and other Indigenous people bartered with young men like Coe as a form of exchange. In such cases, Navajos often used white norms and customs to their own advantage. On July 17, 1936, as Coe worked his way to “Tsegi City” for surveying, he traveled with a new packer. The man helpfully offered Coe a whip to keep the mule he was riding, Chipmunk, moving forward. In return, Coe offered the anonymous packer a cigarette. “I made the mistake,” said Coe, “of giving him the package to take one out, and he kept the whole package.”⁶² It is noteworthy that Coe recorded the name of his mule but neglected to note the name of the men and women who assisted him on the expedition itself. Such practices were not unique at the time, and individual Navajos were rarely identified in the official records or photographs from the expedition. Today, there is a large ongoing effort to correct this original act of erasure and return photographs from the expedition to Navajos in the region for their own community’s use, following proper protocols and preferences.⁶³ While the failure of expedition members to name the Indigenous women and men who assisted them with the production of knowledge represents a specific kind of exclusion from the dominant society’s historical record, the RBMVE staff and students committed other more overt acts of dispossession. The potsherds, human remains, artifacts, beams from dwellings, 111

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figu r e 3.3 Unnamed Navajo and white RBMVE expedition members enjoy a break.

plants, and rock specimens that members of the expedition acquired became part of collections at UCLA and other institutions.⁶⁴ The expedition’s photographers took thousands of photographs that would be used by scholars and others in the future. The practice of collecting items to conduct “reconnaissance” in the region was not new. Powell, Gregory, and other statesponsored scientists had engaged in similar activities. But it is important to recognize that the production of scientific and scholarly work for those working at colleges and universities also hinged on the labor of Indigenous people. It also depended on the inability of Indigenous people to control how their lands, burial sites, and historic artifacts would be studied and used by outsiders. The RBMVE remains noteworthy for the production of a new generation of scholars interested in the Colorado Plateau. It bolstered the careers of more established scholars. But according to Bennett, the real value of his summer expedition was not the training (which inspired him to pursue a doctorate in anthropology) but rather the exposure to the “incredible beauty, the remoteness of the Rainbow Bridge in Monument Valley.” In the 112

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end, however, as he looked back on his career, Bennett did not believe that the RBMVE produced “scientific work in proportion to its magnitude.”⁶⁵ That the expedition did not live up to its promise is perhaps debatable, but what is clearer is that the RBMVE brought a wave of natural scientists to the region who would go on to not only influence the fields of American anthropology and archaeology but also participate in regional land and water use policy formation that regional politicians would come to see as key to their political platforms. Angus Woodbury, for instance, used the expedition’s vast collection of aerial photographs to produce ecological studies into the 1950s and advised regional politicians during Glen Canyon debates, illustrating how the legacy of the expedition lived on in future studies.⁶⁶

a ngus woodbury: science a nd the politica l ecology of er asur e In 1954, Woodbury published a general textbook, Principles of General Ecology, that defined ecology as “a science which investigates organisms in relation to their environment; a philosophy in which the world of life is interpreted in terms of natural processes; [and] an art requiring skill and having a plan and a pattern within which many activities can be centered.”⁶⁷ The same three impulses, of science, philosophy, and art of planning, could also sum up the driving factors in Woodbury’s approach to the political ecology of the region. By the 1950s, Woodbury’s views on ecology as science were manifest through his stance as a conservationist. He supported, for instance, the “efficient development and use of material resources such as water, forests, and soils,” a position that defined the early twentieth-century conservation movement.⁶⁸ He was also philosophically inclined to believe that scientific inquiry bolstered technical innovation, and he artfully navigated the governmental bureaucracies of state and federal agencies to obtain funding for scientific studies related to, and often in support of, regional development projects. Woodbury viewed land use through the lens of its “use value” to members of the dominant society, and those working in a variety of professions praised his efforts. In the Journal of Range Management, H. G. Reynolds, from the Rocky Mountain Range and Experiment Station, noted that Woodbury’s book was “the finest book on general ecology” and would provide the “foundation material for specialists in applied fields such as forestry, range management, wildlife management, and others.”⁶⁹ Woodbury did more than focus on how science could help foster an understanding of ecosystems and environmental productivity. As a scien113

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tist, Woodbury had faith that scientific research could also make society more profitable and productive for planned communities. He also believed that religion played a central role in that social development and organization. While Woodbury questioned some of the teachings of the church he grew up in, he valued the LDS Church as a “social organization” and saw the vast networks of Mormonism as contributing to the “enrichment of life.” Woodbury remarked, “The Church has a remarkable social organization that yields opportunities for many of its members to participate in social services and they get practice working together. . . . The Church has always encouraged cooperation. Irrigation systems were developed and many of them still operate cooperatively.” Regarding his own relationship to the Church, he noted, “A scientist mingling with members of his religious group can thus partake of the friendly companionship that belongs there even though he does not accept the supernatural point-of-view.”⁷⁰ Beginning in the 1930s, Woodbury established himself as a scientific expert in the culture and society of the Colorado Plateau and basin, and his career benefitted greatly from an extended support network of friends and family but also the political and professional contacts only made possible through his faith community. Woodbury’s views on both Native Americans and natural resource use grew out of his LDS background and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the context of the Cold War. His religion helped him normalize and explain the displacement of Native Americans. Evoking Christian and LDS doctrine that detailed the evolution of civilization, he argued, “The development of our civilization coincided in time with an expanding population of European peoples who wrested control from the American Indians and who found untold natural resources that the Indians had failed to utilize.” Yet, just as he broadcast the popular opinion that Indigenous peoples did not adequately develop the “New World” garden, he also warned that if modern society did not better conserve existing resources, “natural resources may be depleted” and “our shared standard of living is bound to decline.” His solution was to leverage the combined forces of science and religion to make the members of human society “more socially cooperative.”⁷¹ LDS “social cooperation,” evidenced in such endeavors as large-scale irrigation efforts, laid the groundwork for the Church’s colonization of southern Utah and northern Arizona. Irrigation, he argued, led to a greater standard of living for white settlers and spurred the growth of a “civilized society” for the white residents who had “good cultural training” and “good morals.” In Woodbury’s calculation, natural science and environmental stewardship contributed to social uplift. He credited the expansion of civilization in the West to 114

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“a foundation philosophy of freedom and democracy.” Fearing the negative impact of the Soviet Union on American democracy, Woodbury saw the development of the Southwest through a contemporary political lens. He would, at times, struggle to bridge the worlds of science and religion, but he remained an influential voice on conservation issues. And yet in this discussion of local environmental science and international geopolitics that would eventually include Utah’s political leaders, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the Department of the Interior, Woodbury paid only minimal attention to Indigenous peoples or their concerns. Woodbury’s background influenced his approach to the region’s deeply religious-political landscape. In the 1950s, when Woodbury asked the questions that opened this chapter, he had already spent considerable time thinking about water scarcity. Born in 1886 to “early [LDS] settlers” in St. George, Utah, he saw firsthand how a lack of water could make or break a family’s fortunes.⁷² Woodbury recalled, “[As] a boy of ten I accompanied my father from our home at Saint George, Utah, in the Virgin River Valley, into the wilds of the ‘Arizona Strip’ at ‘Parashont,’ near Mount Dellenbaugh” for “huge” cattle roundups. That summer, 1896, “a severe drought hit the region and the usual water sources ran dry”; once-lush grasslands turned into “dust beds.” Woodbury watched as the “[o]wners of the water . . . guarded their supplies and gave preference to their own cattle” while other ranchers, without access to water, saw their animals die of thirst. “No wonder my father went out of the cattle business,” Woodbury concluded sadly, as after this summer of drought he had “only two of his herd left.”⁷³ After failing in the cattle business, Woodbury’s father moved the family to Salt Lake City, where he worked as an instructor at a Latter-day Saint college and the younger Woodbury attended school.⁷⁴ While his father’s fortunes cycled up and down, Woodbury used his time in Salt Lake City to prepare for what would become a successful career in science. In 1908, he enrolled at Brigham Young University (BYU), took classes for a year, and then left to become an assistant forest ranger for the Forest Service. That year, 1909, he married Grace Atkin, a former student of his father. Atkin, who worked as a schoolteacher in Grafton, Utah, was, like Woodbury, the descendant of LDS settlers “called” to southern Utah by Church authorities. She, too, knew that her parents and grandparents routinely dealt with the vagaries of water in the region. Her family history bore out the adage about either feast (floods) or famine (drought). Her childhood experiences taught her to become a student of water, animals, insects, and human nature.⁷⁵ Shortly after their marriage, the couple honeymooned on Mokiac Spring and then traveled on to visit the Arizona Strip. From there, 115

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they made their way to the “Parashaunt Wash” and eventually to the Wild Cat Ranger Station, where Woodbury began work as a ranger.⁷⁶ In their new home, Grace enabled Angus’s work as a naturalist and ranger. After their first son was born, the couple continued to explore the Arizona Strip. As a young mother, Grace explored the region and taught her children to engage with nature. While Woodbury worked, she took their children to explore “wherever a team of horses and a buck board could go, over the desert, around mountain dugways, down deep canyons,” traveling into what she called the region’s “Virgin forests.” She noted, tongue in cheek, that these were places “where the hand of man has never set foot.”⁷⁷ But like many of the others who had explored the region, Grace also ignored, or at least discounted, the fact that the region was home to Native Americans. The only indications that she recognized Native American claims to the land came in the opening pages of the family settlement history that she and her husband wrote in 1957. There, the couple noted that when Grace’s grandparents moved from St. George to establish the village of Atkinville, “this little village demonstrated the adaptability of an English immigrant not only to survive in the desert land but also to wring from it prosperity for himself and family in a land that had previously sustained only a scanty Indian population.” She also noted that her ancestral home was built along the Mokiac Wash, parenthetically noting it as “Indian Moqueac,” directly to the south of St. George on the Utah-Arizona state line. This was the same place the couple had spent the first night of their honeymoon in 1909.⁷⁸ There is little question that science was a Woodbury family value. While Grace adhered to traditional LDS values and gender roles, she maintained her own interest in science and found ways to make it compatible with raising a large family in southern Utah. As a young girl, she realized social proscriptions would likely prevent her from becoming a scientist, so she decided her best option would be to marry a scientist. Her former science teacher helped her achieve that goal by introducing her to his son, Angus. During World War I, when the couple moved back to St. George to help the elder Woodbury run his dairy farm, the transition was anything but smooth. The work was mundane and opportunities for intellectual engagement few. In a humorous speech she gave in 1957, she described the tedium of one of her jobs: keeping the cows’ tails from swatting her husband while he milked the cows. She lamented, “How can anyone’s ambitions thrive in such an environment—holding a cow’s tail—the lowest form of employment on this mosquito-infested, cow-featured farm.” In response to her desperation, she came up with a new way to sustain her interest in science: “As 116

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I walked back to the house on the verge of feeling sorry for myself, I had an idea. . . . If I couldn’t become a scientist, I would raise our children to be scientists.” She noted, humorously, that her husband supported her in this quest: “Angus, after due reflection, thought it had possibilities—he even offered to help me with it when he had time.” Eventually, the family traveled to California and back to Utah, leading a rich life infused by scientific exploration and structured by family values.⁷⁹ Grace Atkin Woodbury’s labor, support, and interest in science, as well as her participation in the LDS Church, all became essential parts of Angus Woodbury’s success. In the mid-1920s, the family moved to Provo so that Angus could finish school at BYU, and he graduated with a bachelor of science degree in 1927. While he studied, Grace took care of the home and children and was active in the Relief Society—the LDS women’s organization.⁸⁰ Later that same year Angus started in the graduate program in zoology at the University of Utah, then earned a master’s degree in 1929. From there, the family moved to Northern California so he could attend the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a PhD in zoology in 1931. While working toward his degrees, Woodbury participated in the RBMVE and worked as the park naturalist at Zion National Park during the summers, taking his family to Zion in tow. It was at Zion that the Woodburys met Edna and Herbert Gregory. The two men consulted on scientific matters as the couples traveled throughout the region together.⁸¹ While Gregory and Woodbury engaged in scientific study, their spouses, Edna and Grace, did the practical work of supporting these expeditions: obtaining food, running errands, typing manuscripts, doing laundry, or otherwise helping as the men collected specimens and “geologized,” or discussed, their findings.⁸² Angus Woodbury eventually spent the bulk of his career at the University of Utah, where he headed up the Department of Zoology until his retirement in the early 1950s. In 1961, Angus acknowledged the significance of his wife’s contributions when he was given the Academy of Distinguished Service Award. As he stood to accept the award, he told the audience, “I want to share this honor with this lady [Grace] who earned the PHT by helping to push 7 men through their PhD programs.” Not only did she earn her “Putting Hubby Through [PHT]” degree while he earned his PhD, Angus credited Grace with doing same thing six more times, once for each of her four sons and again for her two sons-in-law.⁸³ Each of her two daughters also earned science degrees. The actions of Grace Atkin Woodbury illustrate that both settlement and science often hinged on the labor of individuals who were not academ117

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ically recognized as scientists or even professionals themselves. Sometimes these hidden contributors were the Indigenous laborers hired by expeditions for wages. The larger market conditions meant these laborers sometimes worked for expeditions that threatened to undermine their cultural values. Others, like Grace Woodbury and Edna Gregory, were affected by the dictates of gender roles. In their case, the infrastructure of gender norms limited their occupational choices even as they worked to support the goals of the dominant culture. For Grace, science and settlement were worthy goals necessary to further the growth of “American civilization.” Grace and Angus worked to build a cohesive “social family unit” that valued conservation and was part of a larger, growing community.⁸⁴ When Angus asked, “Shall the arid lands of the interior [of the United States] be made habitable and provide better distribution of dense populations, or shall they be doomed to remain arid with sparse populations?” he was doing more than engaging in a contemporary debate. He believed the region had to be transformed to accommodate larger populations, or it would remain a drag on national development and the nation’s security. Grace, in facilitating her husband’s scientific work, implicitly endorsed this larger vision.⁸⁵ In this case, the larger aims of the state played out at the level of an immediate family. It was while the Woodburys were at Zion (1925–1933) that Angus deepened his interest beyond reptile, bird, and animal studies and focused on the region’s social and cultural landscape—a focus that would morph and change later in important ways. In his “A History of Southern Utah and Its National Parks,” which has been in print since its first publication in 1944, Woodbury did extensive research on the region’s human inhabitants, extracting knowledge from Tony Tillohash, “an educated Shivwits [Paiute] Indian”; John Wesley Powell’s journals; and interviews with LDS “pioneers” and other settlers, and by consulting government records and documents.⁸⁶ In this volume, Woodbury discussed the importance of the land and how Native Americans used it. It is likely that he also consulted with Gregory for a section on how regional place names connected to Indigenous peoples, since the two men were close friends and explored the park and surrounding areas together. As a historical narrative, “A History of Southern Utah” is decidedly declensionist in its message and reflects the dominant understanding about the rise of Western civilization. In Woodbury’s telling, “The Mormon pioneers gradually upset the Paiute government” when whites “settled on Indian camp sites and occupied Indian farming lands.” Mormon cattle ate plants and seeds that Paiutes needed to survive, and they “crowded out deer” and other animals upon which Indigenous people “sub118

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figu r e 3.4 Angus Woodbury examining Native American rock art in Glen Canyon.

sisted.”⁸⁷ Such patterns forced Paiutes into a dependent relationship with whites. Angus Woodbury’s interpretation was strikingly similar to the narrative that Brigham Young had put forth in 1864. For Woodbury, the decline of “Indian” populations corresponded with the ascension of the LDS settlers who introduced an “improved” standard of living into the region. As he told it, “Within a few years, farm crops and livestock brought to the whites more food and clothing than the Indians had ever dreamed of.” Instead of moving away from the area, Paiutes, Navajos, and Utes turned into “beggars.” And this system continued: “As long as the whites were in the minority, they used to feed the Indians.” The unequal relationship, however, supposedly taught Indigenous people about the benefits of a civilized society—namely, that there was more to eat than “grass seed and wild game.” He also noted that diseases like measles ravaged local Indigenous populations and shifted the demographics of the area without noting that settlers brought such diseases to Indigenous populations. Quoting an “Indian” man named George, who sounds more like a stereotyped character from a 1940s Hollywood movie, Angus Woodbury wrote 119

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that this “old Kaibabits [Paiute Indian]” described the period of Mormon settlement and how Native Americans succumbed to starvation and disease succinctly: “When white man come, lotsa Injuns here. Injuns heap yaiquay [meaning lots of them die]. . . . Purty soon all gone. . . . Purty soon lotsa white man.” Woodbury cast this as the logical sequence of colonization.⁸⁸ What followed, naturally, were the introduction of “Indian reservations”; LDS missionary efforts to convert Indigenous residents and settle more lands; the exploration of lands by scientists like Powell, Cummings, and Gregory; and the creation of national monuments and parks, such as Rainbow Bridge National Monument, Navajo National Monument, and Zion National Park, on lands formerly held, revered, controlled, and used by Indigenous peoples. As civilization expanded, Native Americans “disappeared” from the area around Zion. Like Gregory, Woodbury’s was a stadial interpretation of the region’s history. White society would thrive and Indigenous people would dissipate, though the land would continue to bear witness to that history through names, artifacts, and pictographs. During the 1950s and early 1960s, neither Woodbury nor his wife seemed to give much thought to the importance of contemporary Native Americans in the region. Both viewed the Native American ties to the land as part of the region’s distant past, not its present or future. The elimination of the Native American presence on the landscape is especially notable in Woodbury’s 1957 report “Glen Canyon Reservoir Upper Colorado River Basin Working Plan for Ecological Studies,” which he submitted to the National Park Service and the University of Utah. The absence of mention of Native Americans is all the more remarkable given Woodbury’s earlier work. In the report, Woodbury proposed a detailed study of the “plants and animals to be affected by the future reservoir.” The only mention of Indigenous peoples in the document cast them as part of the region’s distant history, not as contemporary residents of the region. Woodbury proposed to study the “crops of plants and animals that could have been used by the primitive people who inhabited the area and are being studied by the anthropologists.”⁸⁹ As he drafted the successful proposal, Woodbury drew on his RBMVE research and photographs; his knowledge of southern Utah; his contacts at the NPS, Reclamation Office, Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest and Range Office, and Bureau of Land Management; the work of his colleagues in anthropology; and prominent political contacts he knew as a result of his family’s—especially Grace’s—role in the larger LDS community. Woodbury’s early regional studies informed his opinion about later projects. In the 1930s, Woodbury’s research with the RBMVE both advanced his 120

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career and gave him the opportunity to make extra income during the summers. But most important, it also shaped his vision for the long-term plan for the region. In his primary publication that resulted from the RBMVE, he noted that the overall goal of the expedition was to conduct research that would help “set aside much of the spectacular northern part of the Navajo Country as a national park.”⁹⁰ Twenty years later, as the NPS planned to administer the 186-mile-long Glen Canyon Reservoir, Woodbury put the data and photographs he collected from the expedition to good use. His working plan was to conduct additional studies to better understand the long-range biological implications of recreation on the Glen Canyon Reservoir.⁹¹ His mission was to make a “thorough analysis,” as none existed, of Glen Canyon’s biota. Science and water conservation went hand in hand for Woodbury. His work would enable the NPS to be better stewards of the reservoir, meaning it would help government administrators manage the wildlife “likely to attract or interest visitors” and control any pests and diseases that these animals might carry to protect tourists.⁹² Just a few years earlier, Woodbury had penned the Science article that opened this chapter. It would not be the last article he wrote for the prestigious journal, nor would it be the last controversy he would address within its pages. He spent his life thinking about how humans could best use the natural world. He was a conservationist who believed that civilized humans needed to use nature to support social needs, but that they must do so with care. As a result of his science, his faith, and his personal experience, Woodbury would become embroiled in political debates about Glen Canyon Dam and Rainbow Bridge National Monument that would continue after his death.

scientific na r r ati v es a nd er asur e Over the course of their studies on the Colorado Plateau, LaRue, the participants of the RBMVE, and Angus Woodbury both unconsciously and knowingly erased Indigenous contributions to regional development. Moreover, once scientific narratives about the region were published, they came to define the region for subsequent generations of researchers and proved difficult to revise. The cohort of scientists and engineers who researched the region between 1910 and 1960 were instrumental in shaping regional land and water use policies. Importantly, these scientists also guided public discussions about how water should be used and who would have access to it, and they were responsible for instructing generations of students on the im121

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portance of federal infrastructure in ecological management. As part of this cadre, Woodbury contributed to the scientific understanding and social infrastructure that provided the scaffolding for regional construction projects like Glen Canyon Dam. As a Utahn, regional son, and a member of the LDS community, Woodbury conducted ecological and zoological studies that were influenced by his family history and personal knowledge of the region. As a descendant of the earliest white settlers to the region, Woodbury was acculturated to the idea that technology should be used to control the flow of water to the region. His faith in the “reclamation” of water to relieve the problems of aridity was coupled with his devotion to the academic study of the area’s plants and animals. Because Woodbury’s connection to southern Utah and northern Arizona was more personal than that of either Gregory or Powell, his status as a “native son” gave him the cultural authority that many others lacked. This deeper familiarity with the region, however, did not prevent him from casting Indigenous peoples as passive agents in their own colonization. While never explicitly “anti-Indian” in their writings or research, both LaRue and Woodbury, like other Americans, gave relatively little thought to how the infrastructure and development they proposed and supported affected the lives and livelihoods of the Indigenous peoples of the region, even as these scientists and professional men discussed the history of Native Americans of the region. As in Gregory’s case, the studies they conducted, the knowledge they amassed, and the work they produced was informed by Indigenous peoples and their own ethnocentrism. Whereas Gregory acknowledged the Indigenous peoples with whom he traveled and worked, LaRue, the men of the RBMVE, and Woodbury rarely made mention of specific Indigenous people when they wrote or thought about the region’s past for the scientific community. When they did discuss Indigenous peoples, they usually relegated them to an idealized past as “uncivilized” and “primitive” people, as Woodbury did in his “History of Southern Utah and Its National Parks.” The narratives that Woodbury and LaRue created corresponded with the dramatically reconfigured landscape they were working to create; it was a landscape on which “American” society would thrive and on which contemporary Indigenous peoples had a clearly defined place only on its margins.⁹³ It also signaled an emerging professional landscape in the region. Publishing the results of one’s work signaled one’s authority as an expert.⁹⁴ Woodbury spent most of his career as a biologist and ecologist, but he was also consulted as an expert on the Colorado Plateau and chimed in on political debates. Woodbury’s expressed desire to put “minor items of dispute,” 122

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such as where a specific dam should be built, aside in favor of the big issue of supporting water conservation meant that he favored the agricultural water use patterns established by his white and primarily LDS forebears. The infrastructure that LaRue and Woodbury supported was not an infrastructure for all the people of region, but rather one designed primarily for current and future white residents of the Colorado Plateau. Yet the region’s Indigenous peoples had always had a major stake in the region’s future, and they attempted to help mold decisions about the infrastructure that would shape its future, even if the engineers and scientists who studied the region rarely recognized them. Local politicians, on the other hand, were a bit savvier and more opportunistic in their formal recognition of local Native Americans and their concerns. They realized that they could not completely erase the Indigenous presence in the region as men of science and engineering had done so often in their publications. Politicians realized that they especially needed to court local Navajo leaders in order to accomplish a series of lofty goals that involved Indigenous land and water rights. Regional politicians grasped that Navajos were essential to the success of any large infrastructure project in the region, but especially a dam at Glen Canyon. In addition to needing Navajo land to get the dam built, which the BOR and the government had obtained by the mid-1950s, local politicians brazenly sought to integrate tribal leadership into a new economic and social era over which Navajos themselves had little control. In many ways, events of the 1930s and 1940s set the stage for this. Navajos experienced rapid and transformative changes during these decades through “vastly increased exposure to Anglo-American society” that occurred as a result of stock reduction, the growth of the modern market economy, World War II, and the tribe’s central importance to an increasingly expanding regional extractive and energy industry.⁹⁵ In short, the importance of Navajo resources to regional development made it more and more difficult for local politicians to disregard tribal leaders even if those, such as LaRue, who planned for such expansions no longer actively sought to work with individual tribal representatives on the ground—or even acknowledge their previous importance to such projects. The importance of tribal land and support were key reasons why Paul Jones, the chairman of the Navajo Tribal Council from 1955 to 1963, was invited to participate in the celebrations that marked important milestones in Glen Canyon Dam’s construction. In 1958–1959, for instance, when representatives of the Glen Canyon Bridge Dedication Committee crafted a plan to mark completion of the bridge, they asked Paul Jones to be a distin123

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guished guest speaker sandwiched in between governors Fannin of Arizona and George Dewey Clyde of Utah. According to the committee, including Jones was “appropriate as the Navajo people have a great deal of interest in the project.” Despite the tribe’s importance, and as far as the records indicate, Jones appears to have been the only representative of the Navajo Nation to be formally invited to attend the expansive ceremony, which drew between 1,000 and 1,500 guests.⁹⁶ When Jones spoke at the dedication of the Glen Canyon Bridge in Page, Arizona, he emphasized how meaningful the construction of Glen Canyon Bridge was—and Glen Canyon Dam would be—for Navajos. More important, he also reminded those in attendance of how important Navajo land was for the dam. He stated that when it came to damming the Colorado River at Glen Canyon, perhaps referring to earlier generations of Navajos who helped surveyors, geologists, and scientists explore the region, the “Navajo Tribe ha[d] been deeply involved in this project from its inception.” Pointedly, however, he also drew the crowd’s attention to the fact that “the bridge site and the Dam site and the south shoreline of the lake to be created by the Dam live on the Navajo Reservation.” Jones, and the Tribal Council, supported the dam because they anticipated that the bridge would “bring thousands of visitors to enjoy recreation facilities to be offered by the great man-made lake.” After experiencing a brutal period when Navajos saw their sheep herds killed during an era of “stock reduction” and had withstood a severe drought and the poverty of the Great Depression, Jones envisioned that the dam would invigorate the local Navajo economy. He predicted that the tribe would develop the shoreline with hotels, boat docks, and “other recreation facilities” that would provide much-needed employment for cash-strapped Navajos. It would also assist with “the recreation for all America.” He hoped the potential income from these projects would be a boon to Diné residents. By the early 1950s, the average Navajo family earned only $400 per year yet needed approximately $1,200 per year to support “a minimal subsistence level.”⁹⁷ Jones, like other regional boosters, saw economic hope in the form of a dam and reservoir. He believed the dam would bring a secure supply of tourists as well as water, power, and jobs to the Navajo Reservation. While holding out hope that the dam would invigorate the Navajo economy, Jones and other Navajos worked to fight to change the narrative that circulated in the dominant culture, which cast Navajos as a “primitive or disappearing” people who lived in the past, a people who were separate from a bright American future full of technological promise. Getting decision makers to address the full panoply of Navajo concerns as they related 124

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to the development of Glen Canyon, the infrastructure that was being built on Navajo land, became even more of a struggle when the concerns of ordinary Navajos diverged from those of their leaders or from white politicians, scientists, or environmentalists—especially, as we shall see, when it came to Tsé Naní’ áhígíí, or Rainbow Bridge.

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n September 22, 1966, Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, First Lady Lady Bird Johnson, and Navajo Nation Tribal Chairman Raymond Nakai, along with a host of other national and local politicians, attended the dedication of Glen Canyon Dam. Although some speakers at the dedication of the dam paid tribute to nature, God, and the feats of engineering that made the structure possible, at least one honored guest was thinking more about the region’s Indigenous inhabitants than the vast concrete walls that had begun to regulate the flow of the Colorado River by 1966. As Navajo Tribal Council Chairman, Nakai sat up on the podium listening to the others, he was no doubt thinking of the talk he had written to mark the occasion but would be unable to give. As other speakers exceeded their allotted time, the program organizers cut his remarks from the day’s agenda. Nakai had something to say even if he was not allowed to say it. In preparing his remarks, for instance, Nakai focused his attention on a question often posed to him by his Navajo constituents. When asked, “What has made our country great?” Nakai found himself inclined to answer, “Hard work.” Upon reflection, however, he noted that the “Incan and Phoenician slaves” had surely worked as hard as did any contemporary member of the Navajo Nation or other American citizen. The difference—and the thing that made America great—the Navajo leader surmised, was the promise of “personal and individual opportunity.” Yet Nakai knew that such a promise remained unrealized for many Navajos. As an advocate of selfdetermination, Nakai’s goal was to remind those present of resources more elusive to Navajos than water, coal, or oil: financial independence and economic opportunity.¹ Nakai often evoked commonplace American tropes of hard work and individual opportunity when speaking to predominately white audiences to make the point that Navajos wanted, needed, and deserved resources. In many ways, however, the organizers’ simple act of si126

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lencing Nakai foreshadowed how Navajo concerns would be treated by the US government. The government had needed a key piece of Navajo land on which to build Glen Canyon Dam, and it had worked with Navajo leaders to get it. Once the land swap had been completed, however, national, regional, and local politicians seemed to have little time for Navajo leaders and citizens. We can see how the predominantly white crowd thought and felt about the dam, the region, and Navajos as events unfolded on the day of the dedication ceremony. At the beginning of the day’s events, Stewart Udall, a devout member of the Latter-day Saint community and grandson of LDS settlers in northern Arizona, spoke and proclaimed that the local surroundings featured “the most dramatic and spectacular part of Arizona.” As the ceremony wore on, it rivaled the dramatic scenery in terms of rhetoric and spectacle. Udall himself raised the stakes when he commented on the superlative aspects of the region’s human-made and natural wonders: “We have right in our view the highest steel arch bridge in the world. We’re standing on one of the highest dams of the world. And not to be satisfied with only a manmade arch, there is upstream about 50 miles from here the largest stone arch in the world, Rainbow Bridge.”² Lady Bird Johnson, taking the podium to dedicate the dam, was a bit more poetic but no less eff usive. She claimed that the geographic area surrounding the dam was more than visually stunning; it also chronicled “eons of time laid bare” inscribed “on stone pages and in the treasure troves of Indian myths and artifacts.” Shifting her gaze from the past to the present, she noted that the newly built Glen Canyon Dam brought to light the important relationship between technology, conservation, spirituality, and recreation. “To me, the appealing genius of conservation is that it combines the energetic feats of technology—like this dam—with the gentle humility that leaves some corners of the earth untouched—alone—free of technology—to be a spiritual touchstone and a recreation asset.” Johnson thought the combination of natural and human-made wonders would inevitably make the rapidly filling reservoir “a magnet for tourists” and thus economically beneficial to all the region’s inhabitants (see gallery figure 5).³ One of the less well-known figures at the ceremony who was allowed to speak was Elder Theodore Burton. Burton was there to represent the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and he also remarked upon the ties between technology, commerce, and spirituality in his dedicatory prayer: Oh God, the Eternal Father, . . . we thank Thee for this work which has been created. . . . May the power that comes from the generators turn the 127

t h e f ou n dat ions of g l e n c a n yon da m wheels of industry to create new products . . . and may the light which goes on in the homes . . . of men be reflected in the light which comes into their eyes.⁴

Burton’s comments reflected more than his own faith; they mirrored an entire set of local and national aspirations. The dam and its water storage capacity—symbolizing the conquest of nature by engineering—justified and reinforced the faith that Americans placed in technology. Thus, the ceremony celebrated more than the hope that certain segments of society placed in the awe-inspiring 710-foot-high dam, the more than 2,000 miles of shoreline the reservoir would create, or even the dam’s capacity to generate 1.35 million kilowatts of electricity; it also signified society’s dedication to the ideal of progress and its faith in engineering to solve a wide-ranging set of problems. Burton’s presence at the dam dedication, while seated alongside a delegation of Navajos who did not speak, underscores connections between federal American Indian policy, reclamation, and religion. Despite the fact that the reclamation of water and the termination of the federal government’s trust responsibilities toward Native Americans, which became an official policy in 1953, appear to be separate policy initiatives, they were linked by a deeply ingrained belief system held by the key legislators and politicians who advocated for both policies as a way to spur regional growth, “uplift” Navajos from poverty through a new phase of a larger “civilization agenda,” and solve what they referred to as “the Indian problem.” Although both reclamation and termination policies can be seen as part of longer historical trends associated with a plan to assimilate Native Americans and control nature for the benefit of the dominant society, they were also connected through, and supported by, a specific group of politicians who saw the plans as complementary and essential to further build up a larger regional infrastructure of dispossession. Drawing the connection between the two policies shows how and why Navajo Nation leaders were drawn into—and willingly engaged with— the era’s political contests as they sought to establish their political influence in the region and foster economic opportunity for their constituencies. Attempts to bring economic development to the region led Navajo leaders such as Sam Ahkeah (1946–1955), Paul Jones (1955–1963), and Raymond Nakai (1963–1971) to support the Bureau of Reclamation’s proposed Colorado River Storage Project (CRSP) and the construction of Glen Canyon Dam. The Tribal Council’s decision to back the dam’s construction in the early 1950s reveals how and why some politically powerful Navajos found themselves awkwardly aligned with supporters of the federal policy 128

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of termination at a key moment when other Native American leaders and the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) were actively fighting the policy and the white politicians who proposed it. As the issues of reclamation and termination became increasingly intertwined, Navajo Nation (NN) leaders sought to position themselves to get the best deal possible from government officials to obtain the infrastructure and jobs that residents of their reservation sorely needed. They also, however, worked to stall their own “termination” without really ever overtly opposing the policy of termination itself.⁵ Navajo politicians were skilled at tactical maneuvering when it came to the issue of termination. The development of water, energy, and transportation infrastructures became intertwined facets of the notion of progress as defined by the federal government. Yet the term progress meant something very different to Navajo leaders than to the region’s white politicians who employed the term in support of dams, roads, and electrification.⁶ The federal government’s attempt to terminate its trust responsibilities toward Native Americans in the 1950s was directly linked to water reclamation. While reclamation’s links to the evolution of American technical innovation or the rise of modern environmentalism are well known, almost no attention has been paid to how the US policy of termination and the western water policy of reclamation were connected by a host of factors, including western politics and the religious philosophy of Mormonism.⁷ Indeed, some of the key backers of termination were LDS politicians who were also some of the most vocal supporters of the CRSP. A deeper look into the story of Navajos and Glen Canyon Dam demonstrates that religious ideology influenced regional economic development, governed ideas regarding natural resource use, and shaped federal policy toward Indigenous people in unexpected and sometimes dramatic ways. A century after they used the term redemption to justify their settlement in the West, LDS ideas of “redeeming the Lamanites” and “redeeming the desert” remained connected, not coincidental propositions.

navajos, the a mer ica n dr e a m, a nd the da m at glen ca n yon A former radio host at KCLS in Flagstaff, Raymond Nakai, who served two terms as Navajo Tribal Council Chairman, is often hailed as the Navajo Nation’s “first modern political leader.” As Chairman, Nakai made economic development, religious freedom, and civil rights core issues of his ad129

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ministration. Nakai’s views were influenced by his own background. He was born in 1918 in Lukachukai, Arizona, and, like other Navajos, he grew up herding sheep. He was educated at Fort Wingate and at Shiprock, and he converted to Catholicism as a young man. An avid reader, he came to value education. After graduating from high school and from Shiprock in 1942, he joined the navy and fought at Guadalcanal during World War II. After the war, he returned home to work on the reservation and became a radio announcer at KCLS, which made him a prominent figure in Diné Bikéyah. The fact that he was a well-known figure on the reservation helped him win his bid for Tribal Chairman in 1962. He was inaugurated in 1963.⁸ As a firm believer in the “American dream,” Nakai thought that increased access to education and economic opportunities would eventually lead Navajos, like other Americans, to produce and consume more goods. More production and consumption would ultimately improve the quality of life for everyone, thereby strengthening the nation as a whole. The text of his undelivered dedication speech reflected these sentiments. “We are in this country . . . untapping one of the greatest resources this continent possesses and that is the opportunity for all segments of our population to become ever more productive and in this way, provide ever more of the necessities and comforts of life for the greatest number of people.”⁹ Nakai’s intention had been to remind those who put their faith in technological progress to also be mindful of the ever-present need for equal opportunity. Although Nakai thought that technology could spark consumerism—and that consumerism had the power to transform society—he knew that such changes could easily be rendered meaningless without genuine social reform. While his remarks did not represent the feelings of everyone across the Navajo Nation, he did represent a specific faction of the Tribal Council who wished to foster economic development and progress on the reservation while preserving Indigenous ways of life and self-determination. If by 1966, when Nakai prepared his Glen Canyon remarks, he was not wholly convinced that the dam would bring a flood of opportunity to the reservation, he had become more hopeful about the tribe’s overall economic prospects by the time the reservoir filled up. In 1969, while speaking at the Lake Powell reservoir dedication, which now encompassed lands formerly used and controlled by Navajos, Nakai reflected on the ties between water, nature, and jobs. Nakai noted that as an amateur photographer, he had spent many a weekend capturing images of “some of the beauties of the remote areas of the reservation.” As a result of these excursions, he was convinced that Lake Powell would enhance the grandeur of the region more than detract from it. “No one deliberately took it upon himself to destroy 130

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the beauty of this area thoughtlessly, and no one can say that this ‘Jewel of the Colorado,’ is not equally as beautiful as the area now under water.” The clear blue lake that sparkled before him was “a prize worth having,” for he believed it would ultimately enhance more than the scenery. “We are excited with the prospect of building up our tourist trade through these prospective recreational areas. This too will bring employment for the Navajo people.”¹⁰ Such a statement brought Nakai into alignment with the powerful regional politicians who advocated for continued development. In his 1969 remarks, Nakai also referenced the environmental controversy that surrounded the construction of Glen Canyon Dam by citing Lake Powell: The Jewel of the Colorado, which the Department of the Interior had published in direct response to the Sierra Club’s efforts to stop additional largescale reclamation efforts. Nakai made it clear he was generally buoyed by the economic optimism associated with the development surrounding Lake Powell and recreation concessions.¹¹ Nakai was not alone in envisioning the potential economic prosperity that the environmental transformation of the plateau would bring to the region. Much of the enthusiasm for that transformation came from the white, Latter-day Saint residents of Utah and Arizona who had cultivated a deeply cultural and spiritual connection to the land. Celebrating that land and developing it for the expansion of their own communities, however, meant they continued to support the removal of Indigenous people from the land through conversion and assimilation as well as the anti-Indigenous policy of termination. Sometimes they did this through direct political campaigns tied to development of infrastructure in the region, and sometimes they did it in less overt and seemingly apolitical ways.

mor mons, diné, l a nd, a nd water As one can tell from the names culled from the Book of Mormon and given to towns and parks throughout Utah, Latter-day Saints consider the region their Zion, the geographic home of the spiritually like-minded and those who share the status of “pure in heart.”¹² As a result, the names of the places they settled mirrored their devotion to their faith. LDS settlers also, however, maintained that they had a special relationship to the Indigenous people of the Americas, and they considered the Indigenous peoples throughout the region, such as Navajos, to be Lamanites. Understanding how LDS ideas about the original inhabitants of the region influenced policies surrounding the reclamation of water and the termination of the fed131

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eral government’s trust responsibilities toward Native Americans necessitates a closer examination of the actions of Mormon settlers on or near the Navajo Reservation as well as those of the politicians and church leaders who helped guide official church actions and political policies. It took almost a century for the conversion of the Diné to become a priority for LDS leadership. For the most part, LDS settlers to Navajo Country focused on irrigation and productive land use rather than “Indian redemption” during the early years of settlement. But even during the early phase of colonization, the two could not be easily separated. By 1877 the Church had established over three hundred settlements throughout North America, mostly in the Intermountain West. Those sent to establish such communities were expressly told to settle in close proximity to Native Americans.¹³ Making the land productive became a key imperative. By the 1880s, LDS settlers had established a host of small communities in what is now called the Four Corners region, where the states of Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico meet. Because annual precipitation for the region was less than four hundred millimeters per year, which made farming almost impossible without irrigation, the LDS settlers quickly established a pattern of dam construction to create a watering system for their crops. In St. Joseph, Arizona, for example, Mormon emigrants built five dams between 1876 and 1884. Such dams tended to be relatively small and were destroyed when the Little Colorado River surged. It was not until 1924 that the community constructed its first permanent dam.¹⁴ Subsequent dam building made the settlement of the towns of St. Joseph, Sunset, and Brigham City, Arizona, possible. Mormon dam builders also saw themselves as “agents of God’s great plan for the earth,” and they wove together the ideas of “redeeming the remnant” and “reclaiming the desert” so it could “blossom as a rose” in scripture and through settlement practices.¹⁵ As modern as the settlers’ irrigation systems might have been, their close proximity to the Navajo Reservation meant that while many LDS settlers were able to farm, others needed to establish stable trade relationships with Navajos in order to forge ties with local Indigenous residents. Trade relationships between LDS settlers and Navajos were fraught with tension and ripe for cultural misunderstanding. While members of the first Mormon expedition to Navajo Country in 1854 reported that raiding Navajos were “cannibals,” they sought to trade with them nonetheless. The historian William Lyon reports that Mormon hostility toward the Navajo continued until 1870. Certainly, Erastus Snow anticipated that Mormon settlers might need to use violence to keep the peace even after Navajos 132

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were released from Fort Sumner or Bosque Redondo in 1868.¹⁶ By 1871, conflict between LDS setters and Navajos had eased somewhat when an LDS trader and federal Indian Agent named Jacob Hamblin helped negotiate an end to periodic skirmishes. Hamblin’s agreement, however, was short lived. As Mormon settlements in the region expanded, so, too, did tension. Even so, trade with Indigenous people and invasion onto Indigenous lands structured interactions.¹⁷ Water was often at the heart of disputes between Navajos and white settlers, LDS or not. Between 1878 and the early 1900s, for instance, both Mormon and non-Mormon settlers competed with each other as well as with Utes, Paiutes, and Diné residents for water from the San Juan River in southeastern Utah. Tensions between non-Mormon settlers and the LDS faithful reached a boiling point when Mormons realized the region’s rivers could be used for transporting goods as well as irrigating crops.¹⁸ The nearby San Juan River thus became central to both growing crops and shipping goods for LDS settlers. Meanwhile, both Mormon and non-Mormon settlers tried to befriend the region’s Indigenous people to have as allies against each other. This put Indigenous people in a bind: whom should they befriend when both groups were out to dispossess them of their land and water? Not surprisingly, “Indian depredations” continued throughout the 1880s, with Indigenous people trying to maintain access to important water ways and grazing land for their stock and whites claiming those same resources as their own. By the early 1900s, LDS settlers had firmly established settlements in the region, and they continued to displace Indigenous people. The LDS settlers also used water not only to dispossess Indigenous people but also to ease tensions with their “gentile” neighbors. According to Robert McPherson, they “shovelled their way into acceptance by the gentiles, by digging ditches, working on the riprap dam, and planting crops.”¹⁹ Throughout the era of settlement, LDS settlers and traders sought contact with Navajos while keeping in mind the idea that Navajos were Lamanites who might eventually be made “white and delightsome.” As McPherson has noted, “These men . . . shared . . . a belief about these Indians’ origins and their destiny.”²⁰ And yet, despite continual contact with Navajos and the LDS belief that Indigenous peoples were “redeemable,” widespread efforts to convert Navajos did not actually begin in earnest until 1942, when George Albert Smith, designated by LDS leadership as an “apostle and special friend to Native Americans,” organized the first LDS mission to Navajos in Gallup, New Mexico.²¹ Such efforts corresponded with US and Navajo involvement in World War II and both the BOR’s and the LDS Church’s efforts to educate and convert Navajos from the 1940s to the 133

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1960s. Missionary efforts expanded in 1947, when the LDS Church initiated what would formally become known as the Indian Student Placement Program (ISPP) in 1954. For their part, some Navajos participated in the LDS ISPP “as an avenue for their own advancement.”²² In that program, more than twenty thousand young Navajos would be sent to live with Mormon families during the school year to be educated alongside Mormon children, converted to the faith, and assimilated into white culture. Navajo parents thought they might spare their children from the harsh conditions of boarding schools while their children received a quality education by sending them to live with LDS families, in a kind of foster care, via the ISPP.²³ Sadly, as with boarding schools, some Navajo children suffered during their time away from their families. Lawsuits recently filed on behalf of some Navajo participants claim they were sexually abused while in the ISPP and also “assert that the culture of the Navajo Nation was ‘irreparably harmed’ by the LDS Church’s ‘continuous and systematic assimilation efforts.’²⁴ By the 1950s, Latter-day Saints had also become an important force in regional politics. Supporting agriculture and population growth through irrigation and dam construction and the assimilation of Lamanites emerged as core parts of their political agenda. Regional politicians, at least those in Utah, came to position such goals as complementary legislative objectives. As Church leadership supported the ISPP, George Dewey Clyde, a devout Mormon and governor of the state of Utah from 1957 to 1965, viewed the construction of water infrastructure as a key objective, one that would build on LDS settlers’ own history of irrigation projects. In 1959, Clyde even issued a bold claim that ignored the fact that Indigenous people had long sustained themselves through sophisticated irrigation works, noting that it was Mormons who invented “modern irrigation.”²⁵

nationa l politics a nd r egiona l dev elopment: r ecl a m ation a nd ter mination For Utah Senator Arthur V. Watkins, reclaiming water from the region’s rivers for agricultural use and Mormonism went hand in hand. By the 1950s, reclamation would become part of a larger regional political drive, led in part by Watkins and other Utah politicians who felt not only that it would help their state’s economic growth, but also that it was part of their larger religious mission.²⁶ Similarly, as the so-called Indian problem moved to the foreground in Cold War political debates when politicians compared reservations to communist communities, LDS politicians like Watkins en134

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tered the fray and offered a solution. Drawing on their background and belief system, they, along with many LDS residents of cities and small towns throughout the West, worked to pass two key pieces of legislation. One promised the construction of dams along the Colorado River and its tributaries, while the other sought to reconfigure the government’s relationship with American Indian nations.²⁷ Both programs, in Watkins’s eyes, were designed to help the region become more prosperous. In 1950, in order to guarantee that the states of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Arizona would have access to their share of the Colorado River, the Bureau of Reclamation devised the Colorado River Storage Project Act. The original plan called for the construction of nine dams—including one called Echo Park Dam within Dinosaur National Monument, just outside of Watkins’s former home in Vernal, Utah—as well as a host of other proposed reclamation projects throughout the arid West. Given the LDS communities’ proclivity for dam building, LDS residents and government officials, including Senator William A. Dawson (R-UT) and Senator Arthur Vivian Watkins (R-UT), strongly supported and helped to craft the plan. Debates about the size and scope of the project raged in the early 1950s and culminated in 1956 with the passage of the CRSP. The same politicians, however, were also involved in other legislation of significance to Native Americans during the 1950s. In 1953, the year just prior to the formal inception of the ISPP, Watkins introduced legislation to terminate the government’s trust responsibilities to American Indians; this meant that the government would end Indigenous peoples’ “status as wards of the federal government” and its special relationship with tribes while simultaneously reducing its role in Indian affairs via Public Law 280.²⁸ By the 1950s, the government’s “Indian agenda” reflected Watkins’s own religious views and ideas of Native American “uplift.”²⁹ Watkins worked to simultaneously engineer the passage of federal Indian policy, water policy, and land use policy that reflected his religious faith and economic philosophy. Watkins was not alone. Some of the most influential engineers working on western water issues were Latter-day Saints, including Ellis L. Armstrong, who served as commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation from 1969 to 1973.³⁰ As a devout Latter-day Saint, Watkins cared deeply about local issues, especially those related to irrigation and Indigenous peoples. Though born in Midway, Utah, Watkins returned to Vernal, Utah, and became involved in church and city affairs shortly after graduating from Columbia Law School in 1912. He also wrote editorials for the local paper, ran a farm, and became a community leader. He moved to Orem, Utah, in 1929 and continually 135

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worked to strengthen his influence in Utah politics and his position within the Church by studying Mormon theology. In 1946, Watkins ran a successful campaign for the United States Senate by avoiding “political debate and stressing religious themes.”³¹ Leadership in the predominantly LDS state was often built upon leadership in the LDS Church. Watkins was not unique in his religious and political beliefs. However, his ability to bring his beliefs to bear on US Indian policy was formalized in 1947, less than a month after Watkins entered the Senate, when he was appointed to chair the Senate Subcommittee on Indian Affairs. For Watkins, the diversity of what he called “Indian communities” was, according to historian Warren Metcalf, “a problem to be solved through the process of conversion.”³² This view fit neatly with the senator’s understanding of Lamanites, their role in LDS doctrine, and the larger effort to convert Navajos and other Indigenous peoples. It also meshed, more broadly, with the longer history of Christianization efforts linked to US Indian policy. As a senator, Watkins had an impulse to reshape Indian policy that was tied to his faith and the efforts of the LDS Church and the ISPP. In 1954, Watkins wrote to LDS leadership that the more he learned about US Indian policy, the more he was convinced that the US government had “made some terrible mistakes in the past.” But Watkins had a solution: “It seems to me that the time has come for us to correct some of these mistakes and help American Indians stand on their own feet and become a white and delightsome people as the Book of Mormon prophecied [sic] they would become.” To build a strong community of Lamanite converts, Watkins wanted to start at a more basic level. He sought to educate Navajos and then help them achieve economic independence. Watkins put it bluntly, “I realize that the Gospel of Jesus Christ will be the motivating factor, but it is difficult to teach the Gospel when they don’t understand the English language and have no training in caring for themselves.” It was only when Navajos could read the gospel in English that they could come to accept it. “The Gospel should be a great stimulus and I am longing and praying for this time when Indians will accept it in overwhelming numbers.” Such beliefs led Watkins to support the ISPP and other educational efforts he believed would facilitate conversion of Native Americans to the LDS faith.³³ Watkins also identified the fact that the US government had allowed “Indians” to stay on reservations as something that had retarded their “progress” in assimilating into the dominant culture. This posed a unique threat to American unity as a whole. Reservations, Watkins believed, had helped Indigenous people preserve their cultures. Watkins likened this to the government treating Native Americans like “museum pieces.” But while 136

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that may have stalled their assimilation, their real threat, according to the senator, was that reservation life kept Native Americans living akin to people in communist Russia. According to Watkins, John Collier’s administration of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (1933–1945) had enabled Indigenous people to live in “communal communities somewhat on the Russian pattern.” Watkins then asserted that the policy of termination provided the solution to both problems since “large numbers of Indians strongly object to [Collier’s] approach.” After the Navajos’ experience fighting during World War II, Watkins asserted that they, in particular, were ready to move away from reservations and had “recently shown signs of a desire to make progress along with white people.”³⁴ This proposal completely overlooked the actions of men like Nakai and others who, after fighting at Guadalcanal, returned to work on behalf of all Navajos for self-determination, voting rights, the expansion of higher education opportunities on the Navajo Reservation, and tribal sovereignty. Watkins, however, was ready with a multipronged plan that served his vision, not Nakai’s. Navajos would be educated and trained to be farmers. If they resisted such attempts, they would be relocated from their reservations. In either case, he hoped they would be converted to Mormonism. At the same time Watkins worked to facilitate conversion and sought to push through his policy of termination, he also worked as a key advocate of the CRSP. According to Watkins, the reclamation of the mighty Colorado’s waters was a divinely inspired policy, one that would drive more Navajos to become farmers while simultaneously bringing white residents of the larger region the water and electricity they needed to expand the region’s cities and towns. The senator made this clear to David Brower in 1954 when the outspoken anti-dam activist from the Sierra Club testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Reclamation and Irrigation. Watkins took the chance to lecture Brower on how even God supported the CRSP: In the first chapter of Genesis, it’s written—the first commandment given is, ‘multiply and replenish the earth, and subdue it.’ And we believe that God intended us to subdue it. So, we’ve heard from Him and we know what He wants us to do, and that’s what we’re out there to do, and that’s what this project is all about. . . . We’re following the commandments’ [sic] of God.³⁵

In Watkins’s view, the Lamanites were not the only ones who had a key role to play in the region by becoming “white and delightsome.” According to his reading of both the Bible and the Book of Mormon, federal and state 137

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governments should also work to make the region’s arid land submit to efforts to irrigate it. Efforts to convert Native Americans to Mormonism, develop the region’s lands and waters, and terminate the federal government’s trust responsibilities toward Native American people were concurrent and connected proposals for Watkins; all would formalize and expand infrastructures that dispossessed Indigenous populations in the region. Such efforts also occurred on a larger cultural landscape where ordinary LDS men and women continued to celebrate, claim, and possess lands formerly used, controlled, and viewed as sacred by Indigenous peoples as part of their own religious history. Not all of them shared Watkins’s political views, and some—such as Ernest Wilkinson, the president of BYU at the time—disagreed with his approach to termination. It is, however, important to realize that a good proportion of LDS settlers did want to convert Indigenous people. In this way, Watkins’s political efforts surrounding both termination and reclamation occurred alongside the seemingly apolitical or innocuous actions of many ordinary Mormons in ways that demonstrated their tacit acceptance of dispossession.

seemingly a politica l lds cl a ims on glen ca n yon a nd a bout nati v e a mer ica ns One way in which the dispossession of Indigenous lands occurred was through the efforts of politicians and policy makers like Watkins. Another was through the cultural repossession of Indigenous lands by members of the LDS Church, who laid claim to the region by thinking of the land as part of their own religious history and thus as culturally sacred to all Latterday Saints. The areas of southern Utah and northern Arizona that the CRSP targeted was, thus, sacred for both Navajos and Latter-day Saints, albeit in different ways. The Diné consider the waters, lands, mountains, canyons, plants, and sky as living parts of their spiritual and physical homeland. Mormons, too, felt, and feel, a spiritual historical connection to the lands of southern Utah and northern Arizona based on the history of the LDS settlers who had moved to the area. This can be seen not just in Watkins’s actions but in the behavior of a select group of LDS laypeople and recreationists who revered places like Hole-in-the-Rock, a site near Rainbow Bridge and Glen Canyon that played an important role in LDS history. Throughout the 1950s, and continuing to today, Mormons traveled to the site to pay tribute to the extraordinary efforts of their LDS foremothers and fathers to 138

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settle the region, while at the same time dismissing sacred Indigenous sites as mere tourist attractions. The story of Hole-in-the-Rock’s creation is the story of the 1879 San Juan Mission expedition, whose members were sent to settle among and befriend the Utes, Navajos, and Paiutes near present-day Bluff, Utah. After assessing the landscape, these settlers chose to travel directly through the rock walls on the western rim of Glen Canyon instead of going around the canyons. Once they made that decision, they stuck to it, even as they were stymied by daunting canyons and harsh environmental conditions. Faced with no discernible route to easily travel to the bottom of the canyon, the 230 expedition members decided to carve and blast a trail through the sandstone walls in order to reach the Colorado River, which lay more than a thousand feet below them. Little acknowledged is the fact that these settlers used an existing Native American trail and decided to widen it to suit their purpose. The arduous endeavor included pickaxing, chiseling, and then blasting a “hole in the rock” wall at a point where a large crack already existed. This seemed a better plan than traveling an additional five hundred miles to get around the canyon walls. Thus, the settlers decided to widen the crack so that it would be large enough for a wagon to fit through. They then built a wooden track for the wagons. Yet these were only the first few steps in the engineering process. Just beyond the original crack was a fortyfive-foot drop. After that there “was a second drop-off, and finally a gully that dropped about a thousand feet in three-quarters of a mile.” As Jared Farmer notes, members of the San Juan expedition sensed they were making history and “doing the Lord’s work” as they carved and blasted their way through the rock wall. In the end, the difficulties they faced getting their wagons, and more than one thousand head of cattle, down to the river bed both delayed them and caused them to change their original destination. While the original journey was slated to take six weeks, it took the settlers six months to carve a passageway through the canyon. After bringing twenty-eight wagons down through the hole they created and then lowering them the rest of the way, the exhausted expedition members stopped eighteen miles short of their original destination. There, the exhausted settlers founded the town of Bluff, Utah.³⁶ Decades later, Mormons from Utah and beyond would continue to celebrate the strenuous efforts of the San Juan expedition by re-creating their journey as an expression of faith and as a community-building exercise. Members of the South Cottonwood Ward Association of Salt Lake City, Utah (SOCOTWA), for instance, were self-proclaimed “river rats” who retraced 139

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the routes of the early Later-day Saint missionaries who had settled areas surrounding the San Juan, Colorado, and Escalante Rivers. They, however, approached important LDS landmarks from the rivers below them, rather than from the rocks above.³⁷ For instance, during a 1958 trip, SOCOTWA rafters stopped at Hole-in-the-Rock. After they set up their campsite, the evening culminated with a retelling of how members of the San Juan Mission reckoned with the region’s harsh terrain in order to settle it. This SOCOTWA tour group, and others before and after it, learned that it was at Hole-in-theRock that early Mormon missionaries had lowered their “twenty-six wagons . . . over the cliff on the first day” and that it took “two hundred and fifty” Mormon pioneers “to build a road down a steep canyon, face to the edge of the river,” in order to travel down to the Escalante River and cross to the opposite riverbank. Members reported being awed by the history and gazing up at the cliffs to imagine what a harrowing ordeal it must have been for their theological ancestors to get down to the river.³⁸ The following year, in 1959, another SOCOTWA group stopped on the river below Hole-in-the-Rock and “retraced the trail” of the pioneers by making the steep climb up to the opening in the canyon wall. In doing so, they “marveled at how [their LDS ancestors] had blasted out the crevice . . . down which to lower with ropes their wagons and animals.” The route, which had taken expedition members six months to carve out of the sandstone, could now be traversed by SOCOTWA members in an hour. Mormon tourists noted that their “respect for the courage and faith of those Mormon pioneers” only increased with each step.³⁹ Such trips enhanced for newer generations the sense that the land in question was part of LDS regional and religious history, and members viewed their participation in them as a way to grow closer to their faith. Guided SOCOTWA river trips tended to be well organized, devoted to worshipping God, and full of exploration of the region’s rock country. The June 1959 Glen Canyon–Colorado River expedition included thirty-four people. Mornings and evenings on the river started with a prayer of thanks, a blessing of the food, and a prayer for each traveler’s safety on the river. As the group made its way down the river, members periodically stopped in order to marvel at the “towering heights of the beautiful tapestry” of the sandstone walls. At key moments, they would pull the boats to shore in order to hike to natural pools to swim and “be refreshed” or photograph “Indian hieroglyphics at the bottom of a smooth vertical canyon walls.”⁴⁰ Sometimes the group did more than leave footprints and take photos. As almost all SOCOTWA members noted, next to the trip to Hole-inthe-Rock, the “highlight of the trip . . . was the hike to Rainbow Bridge,” 140

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where, year after year, they laid claim to the Indigenous landmark.⁴¹ In the middle of their weeklong journey down the Colorado River, members of the June 1950 group prepared to make the fourteen-mile trek to Rainbow Bridge through the “spectacular Aztec Canyon,” which the group also colloquially called the Canyon of the Gods. Such terminology indicates that SOCOTWA members may have had some knowledge that Native Americans considered the bridge a sacred site and imbued it with religious significance. The group’s official diarist reported that the trekkers were awed by the canyon’s “sheer walls, fantastic formations, bathtubs, tributary canyons and fun spots” as well as a feature that the group dubbed Dairy Queen Rock about halfway up the canyon. Heartier members of the group used fi xed ropes “to climb a buttress on one side of the bridge.”⁴² In order to help them make it to the top of the bridge itself, while he positioned himself thirty feet above the group, the group’s leader directed his followers through a series of foot and finger holds that had been chiseled by a previous expedition. Using steel rings that previous guides had set in the sandstone, “those who wished” could then lower “themselves to one end of the top of the bridge and then hike to the top of its great arch.” Once at the top, they carved their names in the soft stone and then returned to the group below.⁴³ When they inscribed their names into the landscape, they did so to memorialize their trip and validate their people’s claim to the canyon and to Rainbow Bridge. They had not only seen it but climbed it and bonded with other members of their faith in the process. Besides swimming and hiking, worship was a regular feature of SOCOTWA expeditions. On a Sunday night in 1959, a member of the tour group named Oman “conducted a sacrament meeting in a grotto a few steps from camp.” Making do with what they had, the group improvised and turned a canteen into the sacred vessel from which they drank the water taken as part of their sacrament. As per Mormon religious practice, the devoted boaters then bore their own testimony, relating their conversion stories and missionary experiences to the wider group. Recording such events, the official diarist noted, “under the stars in this narrow canyon and with perfect attending and order, the meeting was very impressive and inspirational.”⁴⁴ When the group experienced the misfortune of losing a few of their boats that were towing the food and other supplies the group needed, they turned to prayer, realizing that “without those three boats [they] had problems.”⁴⁵ Although prayer marked unfortunate occurrences during the middle of the trip, it was followed by playful ceremonialism as the end of the their time on the river grew closer. By melding religious practice with recreation, the Mormons who went on these trips sought to reaffirm their 141

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faith communally, even as the dam Watkins fought to get built would make similar trips difficult, if not impossible. While most of the prayers SOCOTWA “rats” offered were sincere, the group was not above engaging in rituals of a less-than-serious nature and doing a little more sightseeing before they returned home. As the end of the 1959 trip neared, one of the group’s leaders “conducted the final river ceremony,” which consisted of “offering to the river god Yogi an article of clothing.” When finished with this “appeasement ritual” to their imagined river deity, the group packed up their rafts, loaded their trucks, and proceeded to the Glen Canyon Dam site, where they met their bus and spent a little bit of time observing the construction of the structure before continuing onto Page, Arizona. There, they not only saw the new dam being constructed but also purchased “ice cold soda pop and ice cream.” The unnamed diarist who recounted the group’s activities concluded that their “expedition was a marvelous experience” and subsequently complimented the leadership, food, and congeniality of the group while noting that the “river was fascinating; the side trips were varied, amazing, and beautiful.”⁴⁶ Other SOCOTWA groups reported holding Sunday school in a beautiful rock grotto they called the Tabernacle, noting that a “sincere spiritual service was enjoyed by all.”⁴⁷ While SOCOTWA members valued their own cultural ties to the region, their understanding of the region’s pre-LDS past tended to be shallow at best. “River rats” frequently, for instance, ruminated on Native American “superstitions,” evoked their own mythologized river spirits, and freely hypothesized about the region’s Indigenous populations. During a 1958 trip, one SOCOTWA rafter demonstrated a tacit if simplistic understanding of Navajo cosmology by noting that “the Indians worshipped [Rainbow Bridge] as a God and refused to go under” it.⁴⁸ Meanwhile, SOCOTWA guides fabricated Yogi, the “mock” river wind god who seemingly required material sacrifices. Deween Canning and Barbara Cook, the “official historians” of the May 30–June 6, 1959, trip, declared that “Yogi had another victim” when the group’s official flag “flew the coop.” Flags were not the only thing that faced risk on the river. John C. Josephson, from Salt Lake City, learned that lighthearted play could easily turn dangerous. After he broke his leg in an attempt to test a river swing, he suffered for four days until the trip came to an end. While complaining of his physical pain, he lamented that he “couldn’t carry out his idle threats of throwing the girls over the cliff as a Moqui [Hopi] sacrifice.” Once the group reached Lake Canyon, those who were able-bodied hiked up to an “old out-moded dwelling that existed hundreds of years before.” The hikers speculated about who may have 142

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built it, investigated the structure itself, and then collected nearby pottery shards and flint pieces as souvenirs. A few of the more curious “rats” crawled through a small opening to explore the interior of the “Moqui dwelling.” The trip’s official historians concluded, “Not much history is known of this strange Indian tribe. Some say they were of a giant stature; others believe they must have been midgets.”⁴⁹ Clearly, the fact that the Hopi were still very much alive and living in the vicinity did not seem to register with the boaters. Nor did the fact that Hopi history existed in a number of different accessible forms, including among LDS ancestors, who had formerly called Hopi the Moki or Moqui. Ultimately, asides about the original inhabitants of the region were meant to demonstrate humor. But they also reveal the less-than-serious nature with which participants viewed Indigenous peoples and their religious beliefs. This devaluing of Indigenous peoples’ spiritual traditions also underlay Watkins’s views. For many, but not all, Mormons, from the time of settlement onward, Indigenous peoples and their concerns were afterthoughts. Most were more concerned with how LDS settlers came to settle the region, the importance of their own faith, and how so-called Lamanites fit into Mormon cosmology as well as, perhaps more important, how the resources Indigenous people utilized might be leveraged for further LDS expansion in the region. While seemingly apolitical, such trips and sentiments reveal how deeply entrenched white beliefs about Native Americans were. Ordinary Mormons, along with LDS politicians and leaders, understood the religion through their own cultural lens. They de-sacralized Rainbow Bridge and the canyon country of Indigenous religion and inscribed meaning onto the landscape that fit their own preconceived notions of Lamanites, LDS settlers, and nature. This truncated perspective made it easy for tourists and politicians alike to erase Navajo, Ute, Paiute, and Hopi religious beliefs from the land. SOCOTWA tours’ reenactment of LDS history largely ignored or belittled Indigenous cultures, ceremonies, and reverence of Rainbow Bridge. Although SOCOTWA represents a small subgroup, they were some of the first non-Indigenous visitors to use the river as a destination. However, the dismissive way in which they contemplated and treated Indigenous sacred spaces would become all too common among the rising number of white recreationists who followed them to Rainbow Bridge via Lake Powell after the dam was built. SOCOTWA trips, like the expeditions of John Wesley Powell, Herbert Gregory, E. C. LaRue, and Angus Woodbury before them, demonstrate that as non-Indigenous visitors interacted with the environment surrounding the Colorado River, they, like others, layered their own meaning onto the river and canyons. Their be143

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havior also exposes them as members of a dominant society that ignored or erased the layers of meaning Indigenous peoples had attached to the land, canyons, and waterways prior to their arrival and even long after their settlement. This kind of engagement with place and disengagement with Indigenous people—and their beliefs—reflected the imposition of an infrastructure of dispossession and the ways spaces, landmarks, and landscapes were racialized through a celebration, and continuation of, settler colonialism. Such seemingly apolitical claims to the region fed into a larger narrative that the Colorado Plateau, and its features, belonged to whites and not to others. Mormons had cultivated the idea that the land was historically important and sacred as their own Zion, albeit a Zion in need of continual improvement, whether through the carving of trails, building of dams, formation of government, imposition of religiously grounded educational initiatives for Indigenous peoples, or termination of the federal government’s trust responsibilities toward Indigenous peoples. Such ideas meshed well within the dominant white culture’s thirst for water, quest for energy, and attempts to claim dominion over nature and the Indigenous people of the region. That the Diné controlled the land the BOR needed to construct the dam and considered Rainbow Bridge a sacred site were issues that would be dealt with through legislation and political negotiation. Watkins, for instance, supported a land deal between the federal government and Navajo Nation leadership that enabled the government to obtain the land around what would become Page, Arizona, for construction of Glen Canyon Dam. Simultaneously, he pushed his church’s agenda to convert Navajos while also supporting the larger policy of termination, which mirrored LDS views of Native Americans and the role they could play in American society. Navajo leaders, for their part, worked with Watkins, the BOR, and other politicians to try to ensure that their lands, water, and culture would be protected and their communities would benefit if they supported the dam.

r egiona l support for r ecl a m ation a nd the assimil ation of nati v e a mer ica ns Watkins and the other regional politicians who supported the CRSP also worked to fight environmental organizations like the Sierra Club and Izaak Walton League, which actively opposed the CRSP because, in its original version, it included a dam at Echo Park in Dinosaur National Monument 144

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(DNM). While much has been written about opposition to the Echo Park Dam and the history of American environmentalism, the basic outlines of the debate are worth revisiting, especially because the debate involved residents of Navajo Nation and the region in important ways. When the CRSP was first proposed, most conservationists supported the basic premise of the plan: the West needed water. The Izaak Walton League, an environmental group founded in 1922, even noted that development of the Colorado River was “essential and inevitable.”⁵⁰ But environmental groups also wanted to be sure that “wildlands” and recreation spaces such as national parks and monuments remained free from development. The BOR engineer E. C. LaRue had predicted back in the 1920s that dams within the boundaries of, or that threatened to flood, national monuments would spark vocal opposition from preservationists. In this case, LaRue proved correct. When organizations such as the Sierra Club and the Walton League saw that the CRSP included a dam at Echo Park in DNM, they rallied their members to fight the legislation. BOR leadership, for their part, did not initially think anyone would object to a dam in DNM because so few people visited the monument. They even reasoned that a reservoir would enable more people to enjoy the underfunded and underutilized monument.⁵¹ BOR leaders would discover, however, that they were wrong: environmental organizations, with Sierra Club’s Dave Brower leading the way, organized a successful campaign against the Echo Park Dam. The Echo Park Dam would have been located near Watkins’s hometown of Vernal, Utah, and the senator launched a vigorous pro-dam defense. He also pulled Navajos into the center of the debate over the dams of the CRSP. With a dam near Vernal removed from the CRSP, Watkins and his supporters doubled down on the idea of a dam at Glen Canyon. One strategy Watkins and other Utah politicians used to win over public support of the CRSP was to link the policies of termination and reclamation in the public’s mind. Advocates argued that the CRSP would yield water for westerners and stimulate “progress” for Navajos in the form of greater self-sufficiency. Watkins counted on his LDS and Republican constituencies to support both his “Indian policy” of termination alongside his reclamation strategy. Advocates for both policies abounded, but those who supported the CRSP were especially well organized, well funded, and enthusiastic. In the early 1950s, an organization called Upper Colorado River Grass Roots, Inc., adopted the nickname of “Aqualante.” The new name was shorter and catchier than the group’s official title, and it played on the idea that the organization’s members were “water vigilantes.” Their stated mission was to take matters into their own hands and fight for the CRSP. 145

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The one hundred thousand members of the organization saw the CRSP as a plan that guaranteed an energy-rich and agricultural future in the region. In short, they believed that building dams would “put the waters of the Colorado River in four states—Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming—to use.”⁵² Putting the waters of the Colorado River to use had long been the desire of LDS leaders, settlers, ranchers, politicians, businessmen, and farmers. Who better to lead the fight than LDS politicians from Utah? To rally the public around the construction of the dams, the organization, which was led by the water engineer and future governor of Utah George Dewey Clyde, hired the Dave Evans Public Relations firm to launch a pro-dam campaign. As lobbyists, the Evans firm took in the single largest payment in congressional history.⁵³ The firm earned their money when they mailed out tens of thousands of pages of promotional materials to citizens and organizations across the Four Corners region, especially to interest groups in the Upper Basin states. They also reached out to garden clubs and other civic organizations across the United States, wrote articles for Parade magazine and other publications, and lobbied politicians in Washington, DC, to plead their case that the CRSP was needed and wanted, and would bring progress to the region.⁵⁴ Aqualante sent “speakers kits” across the Four Corners region while the Evans firm also issued press releases, letter templates, and advertisements. Children could become honorary vigilantes by purchasing an Aqualante enforcers badge. Information packets were distributed primarily to the region’s LDS membership through ward meeting-houses. Believing broad support essential, the Evans firm also sent the public relations kits to national politicians, local and state officials, and other smaller community organizations such as Boy Scouts troops throughout Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado. Citizens responded to the rallying cry by joining the organization, picking up their pens, and conducting a letterwriting campaign to spread word of their cause to newspapers. The Evans firm even assisted would-be authors in such endeavors by providing them with prewritten “suggested Editorial” texts that could be copied and mailed to local news outlets. Aqualante explicitly aimed to counter the Sierra Club’s opposition to CRSP and its many dams.⁵⁵ Aqualante worked especially hard to inspire its membership in 1954–1955 to fight for Glen Canyon Dam after the Sierra Club’s efforts to save Dinosaur National Monument from the Echo Park Dam succeeded. In a postEcho Park climate, Aqualante members strove to combat the “false information (put out by organizations like the Sierra Club and all of its east coast 146

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supporters) by writing letters to friends and associates in other states, giving them the facts and urging them to write their Congressmen.”⁵⁶ Importantly, it was because of the Echo Park debate that Congress had been forced by the Sierra Club to agree to a provision that protected Rainbow Bridge National Monument from Glen Canyon Dam’s waters when it approved the CRSP legislation in 1956.⁵⁷ Although much has been written about the Echo Park debate and the birth of modern environmentalism, Aqualante also warrants attention for the way it pulled Native Americans into this national—but intensely regional—debate. Aqualante members based their support of the CRSP primarily on national defense, industrial development, the need for water to irrigate crops, and what they described as a plan to “uplift” Navajos. As stressed in their promotional literature, the area’s natural resources (i.e., oil, natural gas, and the uranium that had recently been discovered) could not enhance the nation’s defense without sufficient water and power. Evans and his group even made a thirteen-minute documentary that they showed to members of Congress when lobbying for the CRSP. Called Birth of a Basin, a clear reference to The Birth of a Nation, the film focused on how agricultural industries, including the growing cotton industry in the region, would benefit from the dam.⁵⁸ Beyond that, the organization argued that the project would aid not just the larger national economy but especially residents of the Navajo reservation in particular. Aqualante literature also claimed that the CRSP would enable the “people of the Navajo Indian Tribe—the largest tribe in existence” to “help themselves.” “This,” the group noted, “will reduce the need for federal aid,” a claim that made a hash of budgetary reality but meshed perfectly with the prevailing political sentiment that it was time to terminate the government’s trust responsibilities toward Native Americans.⁵⁹ It should be noted that not all LDS residents of the region agreed with this plan. But by addressing both Native American and government concerns, Aqualante sought to assume a moral high ground. They advocated to build dams so that water, power, and new policies could propel Navajos into the “modern” world. This line of argumentation seemingly convinced those who lived closest to Indigenous people and expected them to yield their lands. It appears that the majority of Aqualante members were LDS residents of the plateau, as the membership was organized through local LDS ward houses (see gallery figure 6). In its propaganda literature, Aqualante profiled a Navajo farmer named Mr. Yellowman and evoked the failure of another government-run “conservation” program, Navajo stock reduction. In a prewritten speech, Aqua147

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lante claimed, “One of the most envied men on the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico is one Mr. Yellowman. Why? Well, Mr. Yellowman has about a 20 acre-farm with water to irrigate it. He is able to rotate his crops. . . . He is able to provide a good living for his family.” Unfortunately, Aqua lante noted, Mr. Yellowman was exceptional. Echoing rhetoric from the Bureau of Reclamation, the Soil Conservation Corp, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs from almost twenty years earlier, during the era of stock reduction, Aqualante claimed, “Most of the Navajos have only over-grazed and eroded wasteland . . . land that is almost barren of vegetation . . . land that takes as much as 18 acres to support even one sheep.”⁶⁰ When Aqua lante cited the government program, they neglected to mention that it had resulted in an increase of reservation-wide poverty. The plan, in operation from 1932 to 1945, was an effort to drastically reduce the number of livestock on the Navajo Reservation. It had the net effect of drastically undermining Navajo economic selfsufficiency under the guise of attempting to stop erosion and protect reservoirs.⁶¹ The outward rationale for stock reduction was that Navajo land was overgrazed. Federal officials rationalized that a reduction in sheep would help safeguard the future of the Navajo livestock economy and help preserve the Navajo’s land base. Government ecologists and engineers had bigger worries that stemmed from a massive reclamation project. Namely, they feared that soil erosion on the reservation might lead to a silt-filled Lake Mead, which both would dramatically change the ecosystem of the river below the dam and could potentially undermine the production of hydropower. As the Bureau of Indian Affairs saw it, Navajo sheep herds would have to be “reduced” (i.e., killed) for the sake of the operation of Hoover Dam. Among Navajos, stock reduction was a wholesale disaster. Despite the objections of Navajos, the policy was implemented and caused starvation, further eroded the land, and destroyed Navajos’ trust of BIA officials.⁶² Given that it was such a dismal failure, why would anyone—let alone a Navajo—believe a new government conservation program would be any different? Aqualante provided the answer to such a question. “What the Navajos want,” continued the same brochure that highlighted Mr. Yellowman’s story, “is the same chance that Mr. Yellowman has. . . . Water will give them a chance to help themselves.”⁶³ Not content to end their case with one man’s story, Aqualante argued that water and power would help the tribe educate their children, and better-educated Navajos would make better Americans. It was not so much that they envisioned that all Navajos would have increased access to water, however, as it was that more Navajos would move to the “better-irrigated” areas. Once Navajos relocated, Aqua148

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lante members claimed that it would be easier for Navajos to send their children to schools.⁶⁴ This plan proposed by Aqualante mirrors one put forth by Watkins in a joint subcommittee meeting on the “Termination of Federal Supervision over Certain Indian Tribes” in February 1954. Chairing the hearing, Watkins pressed the Bureau of Indian Affairs commissioner, Glenn L. Emmons—a former banker from Gallup, New Mexico, and a supporter of the ISPP—on the issue of Navajo education as an avenue for “self-help” and assimilation. Emmons stated, “We know that we have not only to educate the Navahos, but integrate them as quickly as we can with the American school system.” Watkins replied to Emmons by introducing the topic of water scarcity into the discussion: “I think that would be a very desirable objective for the simple reason that in the area of the Navaho Reservation there are very few places where you can build schools because of lack of water.” Watkins and Emmons agreed the Navajo education “problem” was the biggest challenge the bureau faced. Both men believed that relocating Navajo children in particular to non-Native homes off-reservation offered one solution.⁶⁵ Not coincidentally, the LDS Church had already started the ISPP for a similar purpose in addition to their larger mission to Navajos. Both men viewed getting water to the reservation, and controlling how such waters were used, as strategies that would facilitate assimilation and provide a solution to the larger Navajo “problem” of governmental reliance. Aqualante press releases claimed that Navajos supported CRSP. They noted that Glen Canyon Dam had the support of an unnamed chairman of the Navajo Tribal Council and quoted him as saying, “[The CRSP] will enable us to help support ourselves with the dignity and human satisfaction to which every citizen is entitled.” The quoted anonymous Navajo spokesperson asserted that more than fifteen thousand Navajo would benefit directly from the project, saying, “This will be a wonderful thing for us; it will enable us to take our rightful place in society. But it will also be wonderful for the United States. It will mean, 15,600 more really useful citizens living as well as we all want US citizens to live.”⁶⁶ The model editorial they provided for their members even claimed that Navajos were more progressive in some ways than those who questioned the project. Navajo leaders had donated $10,000 to Aqualante in support of the project. This single largest donation to the project “was noteworthy” because “the Indians not only gave a tremendous push to a worthy project, but they also showed the way for the rest of the citizens” of the area. The editorial ended with a plea to white readers to donate to Aqualante and work to support the CRSP, 149

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claiming, “The Navajos have done their part. Now it’s up to us.”⁶⁷ As dams were being designed, Aqualante advanced a complementary program of Navajo education and uplift that mirrored the goals of termination. That both water conservation and “Indian assimilation” shared the same constituency of motivated LDS politicians and local residents has been overlooked in the historical record. Aqualante’s promotional campaign assumed the role of speaking for Navajos. They created a group of anonymous and “evolved” Navajos whose goals aligned with those of Watkins and the BIA. That “Indian assimilation” became part of a promotional campaign to get the dams built reflects the imposition of an infrastructure of dispossession through another iteration of the government’s “civilization” agenda and begs for an assessment of how leaders of the Navajo Nation responded to the CRSP project.

navajo le a ders: a n a dditiona l perspecti v e The unnamed tribal chairman whom Aqualante quoted in its promotional literature was, in all likelihood, Sam Ahkeah, who served first as vice chairman and then tribal chairman from 1946 to 1955.⁶⁸ Born in 1896, Ahkeah spent his early childhood near Rock Point, New Mexico. When he was eight years old, he traveled to Fort Lewis, Colorado, to attend school. In the years that followed, he worked on ranches and mines in Colorado. After a mining accident, he returned to New Mexico and started a small ranching operation, which grew to support a herd of 550 sheep under his sister’s care, near Shiprock. The livestock reduction program decimated the family’s holdings, leaving them with only thirty-nine sheep. This spurred Ahkeah to go into politics. He was elected as vice chairman of the Tribal Council in 1942. In 1947, he became chairman.⁶⁹ This meant that his own political career corresponded with the rise of the CRSP. In his testimony before the Eighty-Third Congress in 1954, approximately two years after the Aqualante kits were mailed out to speakers, Ahkeah voiced his support for the CRSP. With Utah’s own Senator Watkins chairing the hearings, Ahkeah made his position crystal clear. “For about 100 years we have waited for such a project which could irrigate a very large area of the reservation. . . . When the land is irrigated, it will make about 1,500 farms of a size sufficient to support a Navajo family. This means 1,500 families supporting themselves directly from the project.”⁷⁰ Ahkeah and his lawyer estimated that about 7,800 people would directly benefit from the CRSP and that an additional 7,800 would indirectly be helped.⁷¹ 150

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Ahkeah’s testimony before Congress was almost an exact transcript of the anonymous quote in the Aqualante press release. Yet Aqualante and Ahkeah were not in complete agreement. In particular, they held divergent definitions of farming. For Ahkeah, a farm was an area primarily planted with “pasture grasses and forage for raising livestock and a small area used to grow garden produce and row crops.” “Navajos,” he stated, “are successful in the livestock industry,” and he saw the dam primarily as a way to renew stock herds, not just help Navajos grow crops.⁷² A surge in stock raising would foster financial independence. It would mean Navajos would open “stores, filling stations, and all kinds of service businesses” to meet the demands of livestock industry personnel as well as an influx of tourists from Glen Canyon’s reservoir, Lake Powell. In his view, the larger Navajo community would support the CRSP because it would enable them to “become self-sufficient,” “live with dignity,” and “become taxpayers.”⁷³ Importantly, the Navajo chairman then made a very strong case for the reinsertion of the building of infrastructure projects he strongly supported, including the recently removed Navajo Dam and the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project (NIIP) into the CRSP bill. Indeed, under Senator Watkins’s watchful eye, Navajo Dam did again become part of the project after Watkins was certain he had Ahkeah’s support for the CRSP and Glen Canyon Dam. Congress delayed approval of the NIIP, which was designated primarily for Navajos, until 1962. It, unlike other regional projects, remains unfinished.⁷⁴ Ahkeah’s statements show that some Navajos clearly supported development efforts but wanted them on their own terms, for their own benefit. We cannot overlook, however, that when Ahkeah testified in front of Watkins, the senator was pursuing his plan to terminate the federal government’s trust responsibilities to Native Americans. Nor can we ignore the fact that Watkins was soliciting testimony regarding both education plans that would remove Navajo children from their homes and send them to Intermountain Indian School in Brigham City, Utah (which Watkins helped found) and termination hearings held that very year.⁷⁵ Ahkeah’s successor, Paul Jones, who served as tribal chairman from 1955 to 1963, also spoke out in favor of the CRSP, but he was a bit more circumspect in his assertions. In an article titled “Reclamation and the Indian” for publication in the Utah Historical Quarterly in 1959, Jones, like those before him, invoked the story of Mr. Yellowman. This time, however, he used the farmer’s story as a cautionary tale. Although Mr. Yellowman had been chosen as “the best farmer in San Juan County,” Jones noted that Mr. Yellowman “frankly admits he cannot make a living from his farm.” Launching a critique of the government’s—and the Aqualante-supported—plan to 151

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cluster Navajos into irrigation districts, he opined that crowding the “maximum number of Indians on each Indian irrigation project,” would surely meet “with uniformly unsuccessful results.” Thus, he used the state’s own history journal to appeal for changes to the pending NIIP in New Mexico. He clearly had a specific audience of educated, policy-oriented leaders, who valued Utah’s history, in mind when he asked for an increase in the size of the basic “farm” from 90 to 120 acres. Jones noted that the tribe did want to be financially independent and had already taken matters into their own hands by starting an unnamed “farm” school and hiring a farm manager named Clifford Hansen to lead it. But, like Ahkeah, Jones envisioned that “farms” would primarily support sheep, hence the need for increased acreage. Jones backed the NIIP because it had the ability to transform land that had only supported 5,116 sheep into land that could support 436,000 sheep. In a place where a common refrain was “sheep equal life,” irrigation was, in the chairman’s words, “a life-or-death matter.”⁷⁶

aqua l a nte, navajos, a nd a politics of progr ess If Sam Ahkeah suspected his appeal to Watkins and other politicians would receive a warm reception, he was right. It was an appeal that, after all, hewed closely to the one used by Aqualante in its literature. Although it appears that Aqualante was a simple grassroots organization that developed to champion the needs of small-town farmers and Navajo Indians, it was, as indicated earlier, actually the brainchild of two prominent Utahans: George Dewey Clyde and David W. Evans. Utah politicians had been involved with Aqualante and its promotional campaign from the organization’s inception. George D. Clyde had made a political career out of water issues, starting in 1934 when he was appointed as the State of Utah’s water conservator. By the 1940s, he had been elected director of the Utah Water Users Association. In 1945, Clyde was serving as chief of the Division of Irrigation Engineering and Water Conservation and Research for the US Soil Conservation Service. He moved on to become the director of the Utah Water and Power Board in 1953. A devout member of the LDS Church, he was elected governor of Utah in 1956. Before that, however, he had earned an master’s degree in engineering from Berkeley and had worked as dean of the Engineering College at Utah State University. While serving as the director of the Utah Water and Power Board, Clyde, along with Watkins, commissioned David W. Evans’s public relations firm to help the water and power industry campaign for the CRSP. Evans created Aqualante and, with the 152

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help of state and church officials, turned it into a high-profile organization. Clyde’s relationship to Aqualante can be seen in a letter he wrote to William A. Dawson. In 1957, when Clyde feared that environmental groups such as the Sierra Club would again mobilize their members to fight Glen Canyon Dam, he informed Dawson that he had already passed along the suggestion to the governors of Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado that “the [Aqualante] Grass Roots organization in each state be activated.”⁷⁷ This may make Aqualante the first “Astroturf,” or faux grassroots, movement in the United States. According to scholars Tamara Mix and Kirsten Waldo, “Astroturf endeavors are clever public relations campaigns supported by large private public relations budgets. Also referred to as false grassroots, faux grassroots, and synthetic grassroots, these public relations campaigns are designed to suggest to their audience that a grassroots coalition is involved,” when in fact a public relations firm creates the movement.⁷⁸ Given that Senator Watkins was a close political ally of Aqualante’s cofounder, George Clyde; a key supporter of Aqualante; and the chair of the Senate Interior Committee Subcommittee on Indian Affairs, it is apparent that Utah politicians were involved in entangling federal Indian policy and water policy. That prominent Utah politicians assumed important roles in both Indian affairs and water conservation make it possible to interpret their maneuvering within a framework put forth by historians such as Donald Worster. Worster argued that the very nature of consolidating water into dams put vast amounts of water in the hands of a few businesses whose interests aligned with powerful politicians.⁷⁹ It is not surprising that Clyde was closely tied to the water and power industry and that in 1959 he had become a prominent partner in the construction company that received the government contract to build Page, Arizona—the town directly next to Glen Canyon Dam—on land that was once part of the reservation and belonged to the Navajo tribe. If one examines the actions of politicians like Watkins and Clyde, one must look at Ahkeah’s and Jones’s roles as well. Were they also fulfilling the role Worster assigns to politicians? If not, what does one make of Ahkeah’s involvement with Aqualante and the CRSP, especially in light of termination? Ahkeah clearly knew that his support of the CRSP would please Watkins. Watkins, in turn, reinserted the smaller Navajo Dam back into the bill. In light of stock reduction, could Ahkeah’s testimony in support of the dam represent one strategy to get the water the government had promised in earlier treaties—water that could revive decimated herds? Ahkeah was willing to embrace development if it would provide his constituents with 153

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the water they needed to rebuild their sheep flocks, which were an essential part of the Navajo economy, Navajo culture, and Navajo cosmology, not the LDS vision of ideal “farming” communities. Paul Jones also used his position as tribal chairman to advocate for the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project. He made his case at the moment the NIIP was being debated before congress and before an audience of Utah politicians that included Clyde. Like Ahkeah, Jones was familiar with the organizations and politicians who had influence over reclamation projects. Not only did Jones use the example of Mr. Yellowman in his Utah Historical Quarterly article, but either he or the editors also used a photograph of a Navajo Tribal Council meeting, provided by David W. Evans, to illustrate the publication. While we cannot be certain that Jones selected this photograph, the fact that Aqualante’s key propaganda engineer provided the illustration the Quarterly used to illustrate the tribal chairman’s appeal seems more than coincidental. As a politician who had his own constituency to consider, Jones had met with Clyde and Evans at the American Association of State and Local History (AASLH) conference earlier that year.⁸⁰ Jones and Clyde had even appeared on a panel at the AASLH together, and their remarks provided the foundation for their articles that appeared in the Quarterly. In his article, Jones took the opportunity to correct George Dewey Clyde’s assertion that Mormons invented irrigation as well as to advocate for his tribe. After reminding his audience that Indigenous people had been engaged in irrigation since “before there was reclamation law and even many years before the Mormon settlers at Salt Lake City or the Spanish settlers in New Mexico started to build irrigation works,” he went on to request a revision of the current NIIP bill that was before Congress, noting that whereas the bill called “for farm units of ninety acres,” the advisory committee of the Navajo Tribal Council “has requested a figure be revised to 120 acres.”⁸¹ In all likelihood, Jones hoped that Clyde and Evans, along with their influential political network, could help him in this endeavor. Navajo leaders sought irrigation projects, and they worked with Utah’s LDS politicians in order to serve what they perceived to be the needs of their people. They financially supported Aqualante and borrowed heavily from the group’s literature when addressing the public and other politicians. They took advice from Watkins, Clyde, and Evans when it was strategic to do so or when their interests aligned with those of powerful politicians. Sometimes it paid off, but not always or to the degree Navajo leaders hoped. By the time the Glen Canyon Dam was completed, approximately one thousand Navajos had been employed by firms building it, but five 154

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thousand jobs went to non-Indigenous workers. While Navajo leaders had hoped more Navajos would be employed, their maneuvering clearly did some good in bringing jobs to their constituents. Yet completion of the dam brought more acute disappointments as well.⁸² In 1974, to the dismay of ordinary Navajo and religious leaders from the Navajo Mountain community, Lake Powell’s reservoir waters reached Rainbow Bridge. Despite their promises, the Bureau of Reclamation, LDS politicians, and the National Park Service did little, if anything, to protect this Navajo sacred site. For Navajo leaders like Sam Ahkeah, Paul Jones, and Raymond Nakai, embracing progress meant being open to economic development plans that would help them strengthen their ability to preserve Navajo cultural and religious traditions as well as help their Navajo constituents feed their families. Among other things, these leaders wanted people to be able to worship as they wished, have enough water to raise stock, find well-paying jobs, and earn enough money to be able to feed their families while also maintaining a lifestyle of their choosing. Progress for white politicians like Watkins meant disseminating his faith; building up the physical, political, and religious infrastructure in the region in ways that reflected the goals of white society; and using his role as a senator to help with such projects. There were key moments when such notions of “progress” aligned, as when Navajo leaders donated money to Aqualante to support to the CRSP. There would be other times when the concerns of Navajos in the region around Glen Canyon diverged from those of white politicians like Watkins, sometimes in dramatic fashion.

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hroughout the early 1960s, Navajo Tribal Chairman Raymond Nakai had generally celebrated Glen Canyon Dam and other construction projects. Yet by August 1, 1969, when Nakai took the podium at yet another Glen Canyon–related event in the newly built city of Page, Arizona, he was no longer in a triumphant mood. The occasion this time was the commemoration of the life of John Wesley Powell, Lake Powell’s namesake. Nakai described Powell as “an individualist” who “pitted his strength against the grim fastness of these giant chasms.” But since he was speaking before members of the local chamber of commerce, Nakai spent the majority of his time criticizing the government’s treatment of Navajos. He reminded his audience that the land that now housed “the beautiful progressive town” of Page had, until very recently, been part of the Navajo Reservation. He lamented, “Many areas on our own reservation could be just as beautiful” as Page if the federal government would do more than dole out “mere pittances” to Navajos. Nakai’s main charge was that the government “studiously disregards [Navajo] needs.” He then described a politically fractured landscape made worse by newly proposed legislation that sought to cordon off Page from the Navajo Reservation with a three-thousand-acre “buffer” zone. Nakai told his audience, “We have not yet determined whether Washington does not wish Page to contaminate us, or the Navajo Tribe to contaminate Page.” Either way, the promised jobs, economic opportunities, and improved regional relations that the Bureau of Reclamation had promised Navajos had not materialized to the extent Nakai and his predecessors had anticipated.¹ Moreover, now that construction on the dam was complete and the reservoir was filling up, Nakai was coming to the realization that state and federal agencies were consciously ignoring the concerns of Navajo leaders and laypeople alike. Those concerns would be amplified across the reservation, in different ways, throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. 156

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The late 1960s through the 1970s marked a change in how Navajo leaders and some of their constituents understood Glen Canyon Dam and the Lake Powell area. Waves of colonialization had dramatically altered life for the Diné in different episodes throughout the nineteenth century. After the Diné were imprisoned and forced to move to a reservation in the late 1860s, white settlers and the US government colonized much of the land they held dear. Explorers and scientists erased many of their contributions to the region’s mapping and exploration during the 1910s and 1930s. During the 1930s and 1940s, the government again damaged Navajos’ livelihood and well-being during the era of stock reduction. By the 1950s, as Navajos returned home from World War II, tribal leaders began working with the government and experienced a brief and hopeful period when politicians like Watkins and organizations like the Aqualante promised that infrastructure projects would transform their reservation. Federal administrators at the BOR and beyond had actively sought their assistance in passing the Colorado River Storage Project in the 1950s. Navajo leaders anticipated that the CRSP would help residents of Navajo Nation. By the 1970s and 1980s, however, the hopefulness of Nakai and other Diné leaders was giving way to frustration. Around the same time, ordinary Navajo citizens took action when the government’s promises to protect Tsé Naní’ áhígíí (Rainbow Bridge) from Lake Powell’s rising waters failed to materialize. By the 1970s, Nakai was not alone in expressing his dissatisfaction with how state and federal governments treated Navajos and their concerns. Some Navajos living closest to the dam, especially those who lived nearest to Rainbow Bridge National Monument, began to voice their dismay regarding how both Navajos and their sacred sites were being treated. They became increasingly concerned by the flood of tourists who used Lake Powell to travel to Rainbow Bridge by water instead of by foot. Water recreationists drove their powerboats under, partied at, and discarded waste at Tsé Naní’ áhígíí. In so doing, they disrupted Navajo ceremonies, or precluded them altogether. As a result, a group of elders from the Navajo Mountain, Shonto, Oljato, and Inscription House chapters of the Navajo Nation forged a loose alliance with different environmental activists and groups, including David Brower, the Sierra Club, and Friends of the Earth (FOE), who were also unhappy with the administration of the Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell. The coalition sought to protect Rainbow Bridge from increased degradation. While members of this coalition had divergent goals, ranging from the celebration of pristine nature to protecting national monuments from development to the safeguarding of Indigenous land claims and religious practices, Navajo residents and environmental activists found common ground and turned to the 157

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courts to adjudicate the protection of Tsé Naní’ áhígíí. The complex issue of how to balance individual Navajos’ active relationship with Tsé Naní’ áhígíí with the state’s and federal government’s economic interests in Lake Powell was a core issue in the court case that became known as Badoni v. Higginson. The case was brought by Navajos who sought to “enjoin the operation of Glen Canyon Dam” because the impoundment water under the bridge had “drowned some of [their] gods and denied [their] access to a prayer spot sacred to them”—specifically, Tsé Naní’ áhígíí.² The final decision in the case rested upon the courts’ understanding of three things: land ownership, religious practices, and the needs of non-Indigenous residents on the Colorado Plateau. For the Navajo litigants, protecting the bridge was a matter of cultural and religious significance. For the white politicians and consultants involved, not building diversion dams to protect the bridge from water from Lake Powell became a matter of both fiscal and ecological responsibility. The various threads of the case show how different values clashed through land use practices and legal policies. The Badoni case had legal implications in terms of the precedent it set or failed to set. The claims the Navajo litigants made and how the court and defendants responded to them can also be understood within the longer history of dispossession. Thus, the Badoni case reveals that what preceded it—the land use patterns of Indigenous people prior to colonization, the era of settler colonialization, the production of scientific knowledge to facilitate regional development for the dominant society, and political dealings surrounding Glen Canyon Dam—greatly influenced the outcome of the case. The court’s final decision was not inevitable, but given all that occurred before, it was certainly predictable. From the 1850s onward, the dominant society had erected social, political, and cultural scaffolding that was designed to support settler society’s paradigms and to dismantle Indigenous ones. The way the judges interpreted the law in each part of the Badoni decision harkened back to key phases of the religious, scientific, technical, and political colonization of the region. Together, these phases created an infrastructure of dispossession that culminated in the construction of Glen Canyon Dam and influenced how the dam, the lake, and the surrounding lands would be viewed, used, and managed after its construction.

navajo nation support for glen ca n yon da m During the contentious battle to get the dams of the CRSP built in the 1950s and 1960s, Nakai’s predecessors—Sam Ahkeah and Paul Jones— 158

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had provided the US government, especially the Department of the Interior and senators from Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado, with the political and financial support they needed to pass the CRSP legislation. Navajo leadership had willingly backed reclamation projects and donated $10,000—the same amount that all the Upper Basin states combined contributed—to support the lobbying group, Aqualante.³ Even more significant than their financial contributions, however, was the fact that in 1957 the Navajo Nation also provided the government with fifty-three thousand acres to use as a “staging” area to build the dam. This parcel of land was located on the south bank of the Colorado River and was used to house the town of Page, Arizona, where workers lived and supplies could be easily transported to the dam site.⁴ In exchange for the Navajo Nation reservation lands the government needed to build the modern city of Page, Arizona, the NN Tribal Council negotiated for the return of a similarly sized, and long contested, parcel of land in Southeastern Utah called McCracken Mesa. Since the arrival at Hole-in-the-Rock of settlers in 1879–1880, Mormons in San Juan County had contested the Diné claim to land that LDS ranchers wanted to use to graze their own livestock in southeastern Utah. Eighty years of tension between Navajo herders and LDS ranchers culminated in violence in the 1950s, when white residents stole and killed Navajos’ horses and harassed local Navajos in a series of attacks. Not surprisingly, lawsuits followed.⁵ As the historian Sonia Dickey has noted, the “violent acts on McCracken Mesa . . . formally ended . . . just a few years before the construction of Glen Canyon Dam,” when Navajos sued local white ranchers. This was not a coincidence. However, neither the final settlement in that lawsuit, Hatahley v. United States (1956), nor the land swap that formally returned the contested land to the Navajo Nation in exchange for the parcel that led to the creation of Page, nor the Badoni decision brought an end to the tension between the descendants of LDS settlers and Navajos in the region.⁶ Nakai’s expression that the NN’s relationship with the State of Utah had improved probably reflected how Navajo Nation leaders and state government officials worked together more than it mirrored how the Navajo and white residents of San Juan County interacted on a day-to-day basis on the ground. The McCracken Mesa/Page land swap made it possible for the federal government to build Glen Canyon Dam, and it also convinced Nakai and the Tribal Council that they would eventually receive the modern amenities they saw in the newly constructed city of Page. They also thought they might get additional support from the surrounding state governments of Arizona and Colorado for their willingness to help the government. In 159

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short, Navajo leaders hoped that the deal might lead the white residents across the Colorado Plateau to treat Diné residents with increased respect. The tensions that preceded the land swap demonstrated that many of the LDS residents of southeastern Utah had a tendency to dismiss Navajo claims to the land prior to the construction of Glen Canyon Dam. As one white local resident of Monticello put it during the Hatahley case, LDS settlers were the only true “native” residents of the region: “If you got here any other ways [besides the Hole-in-the-Rock expedition] . . . it just don’t count.”⁷ This belief was not uncommon. It also helps explain why so many ignored the claims of Indigenous people who had lived in “Utah” before the LDS settlers arrived, such as the Montezuma Creek and Aneth Navajos. In response, Navajos in southeastern Utah pressed to make sure the government understood that they had an ancestral claim to the land on and near McCracken Mesa as well as to the region’s other resources, even in the face of violent opposition from local whites.⁸ Ninety-one-year-old Caroline Naughty-Girl conveyed this sentiment when she testified, “This is our range area from Mancos, Col., on the east, to the Bears Ears Pass in Utah on the West, north to where the whites settled the town of Monticello, Utah, and south to the Colorado River Country.”⁹ When Navajo Nation and Tribal Council leaders agreed to the land swap, their intention was to work with surrounding state governments as well as the federal government in order to help the citizens of Navajo Nation get the resources and recognition they deserved.¹⁰ This idealism echoed that of Sam Ahkeah when he testified before Watkins and expressed his support for irrigation projects that would bring water to Navajo herders. Navajo leaders also, however, sought to help their own communities by bringing more jobs and resources to the reservation. In part, they were successful. About one thousand Navajo men eventually worked on the dam, which helped ease tensions between the Utah state government and Navajos. Yet, Navajo claims to their ancestral lands were still dismissed by the Second District (Utah) and Tenth Circuit courts when it came to the water the dam held back, Tsé Naní’ áhígíí, and RBNM. By the late 1960s, Nakai believed that the Navajo Nation’s strategy of supporting the dam had been only partially successful. Between the late 1940s and the early 1970s, Diné leaders had attempted to use negotiations over water and regional infrastructure to improve their economy as well as their relationships with the state governments of Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico and had attempted to leverage such projects to fortify the Navajo economy in the process. In 1968, only two years after completion of the dam, for instance, when Lake Powell attracted four hundred thousand vis160

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figu r e 5.1 Leaders from the Navajo Nation working with key government officials and agencies. This photo was taken on the same date that Nakai spoke at the Lake Powell dedication ceremony. Note that the group is standing near but not under Rainbow Bridge. Nakai is wearing his cowboy hat.

itors annually, Nakai spoke in support of a proposal to establish the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. The Tribal Council was especially “excited with the prospect of building up [their] tourist trade through these prospective recreational areas . . . [which would] bring employment to Navajo people.” Speaking of the time since the opening of the dam, he noted, “Our roads are becoming choked with campers and trailers seeking a hideout far from the noise and small[ness] of our crowded cities.”¹¹ The plan never came to pass, and in 1969 Nakai told white business owners at the Kiwanis Club event in Phoenix that while more tourists were traveling through the reservation than ever before, and while the tribe’s relationship with Utah had improved over the years, tensions between the Navajo Nation Council and Arizona’s state legislature only seemed to fester.¹² A clearly frustrated Nakai felt compelled to tell Arizona businessmen that Navajos were not a “burden” to the state. He reminded members of the civic organization that, instead of being a liability, the NN had done much more to facilitate Arizona’s economic growth than Arizona had done for the NN.¹³ 161

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In contrast to the “excellent” relations the NN had cultivated with the Utah legislature, he said, the tribe’s relationship with Arizona was “strained and getting worse.” It had recently deteriorated, Nakai explained, because Arizona continued to use “persuasion and expressions of good will” to pressure the Tribal Council to surrender an additional thirty-seven thousand acrefeet per year of Colorado River water for use in the Central Arizona Project (CAP). Even after the reluctant Tribal Council had finally relented and accepted such demands, Nakai asserted, Arizona’s leaders had responded not with thanks but with renewed attacks on Navajo sovereignty.¹⁴ While Navajo Nation leaders had worked with federal and state authorities to forge good relations and help their constituents, others were beginning to find the results of those efforts more than simply disappointing—they viewed them as destructive. The Navajos living closest to the dam fought the flooding of their sacred site, Tsé Naní’ áhígíí, when Lake Powell began filling to capacity. When Lake Powell reached an elevation of 3,669 feet and 15 feet of water pooled under Rainbow Bridge, they asserted that it injured or drowned Navajo deities.¹⁵ When their pleas to lower the lake level fell on deaf ears, they opted to use the courts to solve the problem, claiming that Lake Powell’s rising waters violated their understanding of the CRSP Act and were damaging their sacred sites and their culture in the process. The Navajo Nation’s legal arm, DNA People’s Legal Services, filed the case in conjunction with environmental activists.

ba doni v. higginson : the importa nce of tsé na ní’ á hígíí The key charge put forth by local Navajos was that “the flooding of the Rainbow Bridge National Monument has resulted in the destruction and desecration of many Navajo gods and sacred areas in the vicinity” and that tourists impeded their ability to freely practice their religion. The National Park Service, the Department of the Interior, and the non-Native interests they represented—including the white residents of the region—countered that many non-Navajos depended on the lake’s water for energy, irrigation, and recreation.¹⁶ The Badoni v. Higginson case was first heard in the United States District Court in Utah from the mid-1970s to 1977. The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit later affirmed the original decision in 1980. Chief Justice Aldon J. Anderson wrote the decision for the United States District Court, Central Division (i.e., Utah District Court) in 1977. As the judge who heard the case, Anderson was tasked with reviewing the 162

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depositions, evaluating the arguments, and weighing the competing interests raised by the case.¹⁷ Anderson heard testimony from NPS employees, BOR and DOI representatives, and state government officials about the importance of the dam and its reservoir to the nascent tourist and travel industry, but also as a source of irrigation and energy. By the mid-1970s and early 1980s, RBNM had become a popular tourist destination. Navajo spiritual leaders, in turn, testified that they needed to practice site-specific ceremonies near the imposing stone arch in peace and solitude. They charged that the behavior of tourists desecrated their sacred sites. The plaintiffs in the Badoni case hoped the judge would restrict the water level in the reservoir to keep Lake Powell from flooding the area under Tsé Naní’ áhígíí or that the originally promised diversion dam could be built to protect the stone arch. Either solution would have limited boat access to the area, mitigating some of the damage tourists caused. Ultimately, and unsurprisingly, the court viewed the impact of the water of Lake Powell and tourism on the region’s economic development as more important than the violation of Navajo spiritual concerns. As Lake Powell filled, tourism to RBNM spiked. Before the waters of Lake Powell surrounded RBNM, few non-Native visitors made the trip to the bridge. Yet by 1980, when the dam reached full capacity, one hundred thousand people per year were making the trip to Rainbow Bridge.¹⁸ This was a stark contrast to the pre-1909 era, when only Indigenous peoples and a few non-Native visitors made the trip to the bridge. Even after it became a national monument, visitation to the arch by non-Natives was spotty at best. Yet once water flowed under the arch, visitors flocked to RBNM. Once there, boaters played music, consumed alcohol, and swam naked in the waters under the bridge. Even though the NPS did its best to prohibit swimming under the arch and asked tourists to refrain from offending local Navajos who considered the bridge sacred, such activities continued.¹⁹ When the issue of tourist behavior came up in court, Anderson followed the federal government’s argument and affirmed the claims of the State of Utah’s recreational and water interests. Judge Anderson dismissed Navajos’ original claim that their First Amendment right to freely practice their religion at, and around, the stone arch had been violated. The decision in this case is not surprising, given the larger social infrastructure the state and local governments had built expressly to favor their goals. Well before the water filled, regional business leaders fostered recreational interests without concern for the impact they would have on ordinary residents of the Navajo Nation.²⁰ As a result, area Navajos took the chance to have their concerns about 163

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tourism and development heard in court. A group of Navajos from the area, Lamarr Badoni, Nakai Ditl’oi, Teddy Holiday, Betty Holiday, Jimmy Goodman, Joe Manygoats, Jessie Yazzi Black, and Begay Bitsinnie, came together to make specific claims for “relief.” In short, Lamarr Badoni and the other plaintiffs claimed that the bridge connected Navajos to both their spiritual and earthly ancestors, and they wished to protect the place itself, their ways of life that were central to their identity as Diné, and their religion in the process. They, and their attorneys, contended that they had a vested interest in Tsé Naní’ áhígíí as a sacred site and noted that their ultimate goal was to protect it as “a sacred religious shrine of the Navajo people.” Asserting their historic claims to the landscape surrounding Tsé Naní’ áhígíí, the plaintiffs noted that “the Bridge and the monument are located within the boundaries of the Navajo Indian Reservation.”²¹ Next, they charged that the “defendants’ operation of both Glen Canyon Dam and the Reservoir and the Rainbow Bridge National Monument” had “resulted in the destruction and desecration of many holy places of great importance.” Thus, actions taken by the BOR, NPS, and DOI had threatened the “spiritual and cultural well-being of the plaintiffs.”²² Lawyers representing Badoni and his peers asserted that the spectacular rock arch had long been held sacred by Indigenous communities, especially Navajos, and they insisted that the area around Tsé Naní’ áhígíí contained “many sites of great religious significance to the Navajo, including burial grounds, sacred springs, and other locales all of which have been sites . . . [for] traditional religious ceremonies.” Declaring that Lake Powell had already submerged numerous places of historical and religious significance, the lawyers noted that the water level of Lake Powell now made it possible for tens of thousands of non-Indigenous tourists to visit the arch each year by boat. The tourists desecrated the water under the bridge by making “noise and [leaving] litter” in their wake or, more directly, by defacing the arch itself with graffiti on its base.²³ Lawyers for the Navajos made three different claims for relief. First, they asked the US District Court of Utah to protect the plaintiffs’ First Amendment right to practice their religion. Next, they wanted the BOR, NPS, and DOI to adhere to section 1 of the Colorado River Storage Act, which stipulated that the secretary of the interior would “take adequate protective measures to preclude impairment of Rainbow Bridge National Monument,” including the construction of a dam to divert water from entering the national monument. Finally, they pressed the defendants to complete an environmental impact statement (EIS) before Lake Powell could be filled to full capacity.²⁴ Ultimately, the Badoni plaintiffs asked the government to pro164

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tect Tsé Naní’ áhígíí and to rectify the fact that Congress had failed to live up to its promise to appropriate money to build a protective barrier dam. The plaintiffs also asked the court to order the defendants to adhere to the standards of the newly passed Environmental Protection Act.²⁵ For the group of Navajos who took legal action, the protection of the stone arch, the preservation of their religion, and their right to determine what happened within areas of deep cultural significance could not be neatly separated. For instance, the plaintiff Teddy Holiday testified, “The ceremonies at the Bridge are meant to benefit all Navajos, thus I feel I am a participant in all such ceremonies. I feel a direct attack on a person’s religion is never authorized; the flooding is an interference with our religion.”²⁶ The arguments Holiday and his fellow litigants put forward over the use and desecration of Tsé Naní’ áhígíí can be viewed through what the legal scholar Marcia Yablon and others call the “issue of control” that occurs when sacred environments become tourist attractions. According to Yablon, such cases boil down to a fundamental question: “Who has the right to control how these sites are used and who gets to use them?”²⁷ A core demand in the Badoni case, which in some ways encompasses the totality of the plaintiffs’ case, was that the reservoir not be filled to capacity. The plaintiffs sought to assert control over the monument by regulating the level of Lake Powell so that the lake’s water would not flood the area under Tsé Naní’ áhígíí. Limiting the water level would protect the natural wonder as well as its spiritual significance by preserving Navajo rights to determine specific policies related to their sacred sites. This, they asserted, would ensure their ability to practice their ceremonies on the landscape when and as they were needed by the community.²⁸ Ultimately, however, the court ruled against Lamarr Badoni and his fellow plaintiffs. Judge Anderson dismissed the first request for relief in the case by agreeing with DOI lawyers that Navajos had no legal claim to Rainbow Bridge because it had been declared a national monument in 1910 by President Taft during “the assimilation period,”²⁹ which, legal scholar Howard Stambor notes, “was dispositive of the plaintiffs’ claims.”³⁰ Anderson put things more directly: “The court feels that the lack of a property interest is determinative of the First Amendment question and agrees with the defendants that the plaintiffs have no cognizable claim under the circumstances presented.”³¹ While the legal principle may have been clear to Anderson, the arguments heard by the court(s) and the outcome of the case, expressed in two separate rulings (1977, 1980), illustrate how earlier infrastructures of dispossession such as the declaration of national monuments on Indigenous land during the early 1900s, created a foundation that the 165

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federal government used to solidify their claim to formerly recognized Indigenous spaces. By negating Navajos’ religious and cultural practices in favor of non-Native tourism and economic gain, the courts simultaneously undermined and erased Indigenous claims to their ancestral homelands.

l a nd, cogniz a ble cl a ims, a nd the a dministr ati v e history of r a inbow br idge While the BOR, NPS, and DOI expressed frustration that Navajos appeared to suddenly assert an inherent property interest via an expression of their right to practice their religion at Rainbow Bridge, such a claim would not have surprised the first non-Indian visitors to the arch. In his testimony, Robert Tallsalt (Ashiihi Neez) from the Navajo Mountain chapter of the Navajo Nation noted that he and other Navajos and Paiutes attended ceremonies at Rainbow Bridge: “Many people have gone there, among them my uncle (A’shiihi Bináá Adini yaa) and Paiute (Ne’ eshjaa’a yaa biye).”³² When surveyor William Douglass and archeologist Byron Cummings first learned in 1909 of the stone arch, they also learned it was spiritually important to the region’s Native Americans. This was reaffirmed during their initial mission to find the arch, when Cummings documented a “religious” shrine at Rainbow Bridge and said it included the “remains of a fine pot and a small building or altar near the bridge.”³³ Additionally, both Cummings and Douglass noted that their Paiute, Ute, and Navajo guides—“Sharkie” (Navajo), Nasja Begay (Paiute), Billy Mike (Ute), and Jim Mike (a.k.a. Mike’s Boy, Ute)—would not walk or ride under the arch for religious reasons.³⁴ In 2019, Aldean Ketchum (Ute/Paiute), the grandson of Billy Mike and greatgrandson of Jim Mike, noted that it was not a fluke that his grandfather knew how to get to the bridge, nor that he would not walk under it when he arrived. Local Indigenous people had long known about the arch and understood well its spiritual significance.³⁵ Testimony in the Badoni case further illustrates that some locations in and around the arch, located within the national monument, had long been considered sacred to the region’s Indigenous residents. In his 1976 deposition, Robert Tallsalt told the court that he lived only twenty miles southeast of Rainbow Bridge and knew of numerous sacred places near the arch. The eighty-seven-year-old hataałii (Diné healer) had been trained by his father in the Hózhóójí (Blessingway), the Hóch’íjí (Evilway), and other ceremonies, and informed the court that as a “recognized . . . medicine man by the Navajo people” he felt qualified to testify about the sacred areas in 166

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figu r e 5.2 Photograph of Jim Mike taken on a return trip to Rainbow Bridge in 1974. He was finally paid the fifty dollars he was owed from the 1909 expedition.

proximity to the arch. He told the court that “generally, there are four sacred places; the spring north of the Bridge, the Bridge [itself], the place to make offerings by the spring, the cave south of the Bridge.” He concluded by reiterating his main point: “These places are all sacred.”³⁶ Tallsalt’s testimony bolstered the claim that many of the Indigenous peoples living in the region had long worshipped near Tsé Naní’ áhígíí. The fact that this knowledge was not included in Douglass’s original 1909 petition to make the arch and the 160 acres surrounding it into a national monument does not make it any less true, but his failure to include, seek, or acquire this information was an example of erasure. Because the Navajo, Paiute, and Ute men who guided the pair probably did not know of Douglass’s plans for the preservation of the arch—which called for it to be removed from lands previously controlled by, and then set aside for, the Paiutes and the Navajos—we do not know if they would have supported or objected to turning the arch into a national monument. Further, while Douglass and Cummings argued over who had the right to claim “discovery” of the bridge, the government was more than willing to follow Douglass’s advice by setting aside lands in the name of “scientific” 167

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exploration and “public interest” without considering its history before they deemed it significant. Thus, RBNM was created in 1910 without discussing the designation with the Navajos, Utes, Hopis, or Paiutes who inhabited the area around the arch at that time, and who had historically occupied and revered it. Those historical claims were, and remain, culturally significant even if the designation of the arch as a national monument legally voided Indigenous legal claims to the place. Clearly, like the federal government before it, the Utah District and Tenth Circuit Courts were not interested in Indigenous culture. Both courts based their final rulings on the legal fiction that the monument designation negated the historically based assertions the lawyers for the plaintiffs put forth in Badoni. In other words, the legal matter of what constituted a “cognizable claim” may have been a simple one for courts, but the larger cultural context surrounding the matter obscures historical complexity. The government’s own history of indecisiveness about who had a recognizable claim to Rainbow Bridge, which is located on the tract of land called the Paiute Strip and surrounded by the Navajo Reservation, is substantially more involved than the court’s final ruling indicates. The history of federal land designations in the area that encompasses RBNM was a complicated one even before President Taft signed the proclamation that carved the monument out of the land parcel the government had dubbed the Paiute Strip. The name Paiute Strip itself indicates that the government recognized that Indigenous peoples used the land. Between 1884 and 1933, the government acknowledged that both Paiutes and Navajos had claims to the land. As a result, the government had routinely changed the designation of the Paiute Strip, in response to pressures from local interest groups, from Native land to public land to land reserved for use by Native Americans. The Paiute Strip had long been home to Utes, Paiutes, and Navajos, who relied on it for spiritual and physical sustenance. Moreover, there was significant interaction between the Paiutes and Navajos in particular. For instance, while San Juan Paiutes remained a distinctive group, they had coexisted in the region with their Navajo neighbors for at least a quarter of a century. This was especially true after Navajos fleeing Kit Carson and imprisonment took refuge in and around Rainbow Bridge in 1864. As the Navajo population grew and the region’s settler population expanded, government officials had difficulty discerning who should be given control of the land and how best to assist local Paiutes. As a result, in 1884, President Chester A. Arthur issued an executive order adding the area known as the Paiute Strip to the Navajo Reservation. A few years later, how168

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ever, in 1892, due to pressure from LDS settlers, “431,160 acres of land [in the Paiute Strip] was returned to the Public domain” by President Benjamin Harrison.³⁷ In the early 1900s, when an Office of Indian Affairs (OIA) agent named Levi Chubbuck was tasked with establishing a reservation for the Kaibab and San Juan Paiutes, he withdrew a portion of the Paiute Strip from public lands and set it aside for use as a future Paiute reserve.³⁸ As Navajo and white settlements in northern Arizona and southern Utah swelled in the early 1900s, the OIA was worried that the condition of local San Juan Paiutes was becoming increasingly precarious. As a result, the OIA decided to set aside the land around Rainbow Bridge for use by Paiutes. By the early 1900s, for instance, both Chubbuck and Laura Work, the Panguitch school supervisor, became concerned that the San Juan Paiutes faced increasing land use competition from both Navajo herders and LDS cattlemen, who continued to use Paiute lands as if they were their own.³⁹ Chubbuck responded to such fears by designating the San Juan Reservation on the Paiute Strip, in and around the as yet “undiscovered” Rainbow Bridge. He asserted that this tract should be set aside for Paiutes because the San Juan band claimed “the territory in which they live (the lower San Juan River country on both sides of the stream) as theirs and deny somewhat aggressively the right of white or other Indians there.”⁴⁰ However, as the historian Martha Knack notes, Chubbuck’s proposed reservation was withdrawn from “the public domain by a simple administrative request in 1907.”⁴¹ In 1908, Congress instead set aside the area for use “by multiple Native American groups [of Paiutes].” The area was slated to be called the Paiute San Juan Reservation.⁴² As this complicated history of the area they dubbed the Paiute Strip demonstrates, the federal government had long known of Native peoples’ claims to the land. The Paiute San Juan Reservation existed only on paper before it was eliminated altogether just a year after its creation. Local white settlers and mining and oil interests reacted negatively to the creation of the reservation. Lobbyists representing non-Indian groups “achieved some success in June 1909, when Secretary of the Interior Richard A. Ballinger allowed prospectors to enter the strip.” Despite the fact that “Ballinger insisted . . . that mining should not interfere with Indian rights,” such efforts effectively diminished Indigenous claims to the land and bolstered those of self-interested whites.⁴³ The prospectors who were beginning to seek out oil in the region represented the very interests that the USGS representative, and “codiscoverer” of Rainbow Bridge, William Douglass feared. Douglass wanted to protect the area from oil and gas companies, so he pushed for Rainbow 169

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Bridge and the area around it to become a national monument. His fears were not unwarranted; for instance, many of Herbert Gregory’s most important regional studies were funded in part or wholly by oil and gas companies. These very studies encoded a racial hierarchy into the geologic formations of the region that placed whites at the top of layers of the region’s rock strata and lifted many of those formations out of Indigenous control. For example, shortly after President Taft made Rainbow Bridge a national monument, John Wetherill, the white trader who helped organize the 1909 Rainbow Bridge expedition, was given the responsibility of managing the Rainbow Bridge National Monument, formally placing it under government control and white authority—and taking it out of the hands of both Native Americans and oil companies.⁴⁴ As the pre-1910 history of the region illustrates, the government’s determinations about who had the strongest claim to the area, the Navajos or the Paiutes, were contradictory at best. These arguments and determinations about who would control the landscape occurred with little to no consultation with Indigenous peoples. Even when Levi Chubbuck traveled through the area to determine where the San Juan Paiute Reservation should be, he failed to actually visit the land in question. Instead, he consulted with “unnamed” white traders who lived to the north of Flagstaff, Arizona—at least one hundred miles from Rainbow Bridge.⁴⁵ Even after the 1910 national monument declaration carved Rainbow Bridge and 160 acres surrounding it from the larger area known as Paiute Strip, debates about who should get to control the remaining nondesignated lands—Native Americans, the government, the public, ranchers, oil companies, or miners—continued. In 1922, for instance, another Indian Agent was prompted by local white settlers to visit a small section of the larger region in order to determine how best to use the land. When he encountered only a few Paiutes during his trip, he decided to return the remaining lands of the San Juan Paiute Reservation to the public domain. When no minerals were found on that land in subsequent surveys, Congress decided to transfer more of the area to the Navajo Reservation in 1933. As a result of this complicated history, Rainbow Bridge National Monument is surrounded by the Navajo Reservation, just as the plaintiffs in the Badoni case asserted. Meanwhile, the San Juan Paiute and communities of Mesa White Ute still claim this area as their homeland.⁴⁶ In 1974, when the original complaint was filed in the Utah District Court, Badoni and his Navajo peers based their claim to Tsé Naní’ áhígíí on the fact that its significance was rooted not in land transfers or government declarations but in history and culture. In the end, this argument had little sway with the court.⁴⁷ 170

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“r ecognized” r eligion a nd first a mendment cl a ims Because of the longer history of dispossession in the region, it was easy for the court to ignore this larger history of Navajo and, by extension, Ute, Paiute, and other Indigenous claims to the land. Indigenous control of Tsé Naní’ áhígíí and the land around it first had been undermined through colonization and then, in response to the pressures of white settlement and development, formally removed by governmental and legal systems created to support white settlements. An additional complicating factor in the Badoni case was the fact that previous generations of settlers, along with the statesanctioned policies that justified their presence on the landscape, had invalidated and undermined the very notion of Indigenous religion, spiritual practices, and ceremonies as legitimate because they were not Christian in origin nor did they fit white understandings of an “organized religion.” As Tisa Wenger has demonstrated, there is a long history of linking religious freedom to Christianity: “The dominant voices in the culture linked racial whiteness, Protestant Christianity, and American national identity not only to freedom in general but often to this freedom [of religion] in particular.”⁴⁸ Such policies were informed by the long history of formal US initiatives and goals toward Native Americans. In the Badoni case, the Bureau of Reclamation echoed this disconnect when it put forth the argument that Navajo religious practices did not meet the legal standard for an organized religion. Therefore, they argued, the Navajos’ claim that the arch was sacred could be easily dismissed by the court. As a defendant, the BOR conceded that Navajo oral tradition and ceremonialism “may be ‘religious’ in nature.” It continued, “But defendants do contend that plaintiffs cannot demonstrate that these interests constitute ‘deep religious convictions shared by an organized group and intimately related to daily living.’ ”⁴⁹ The bureau’s lawyers claimed that religious leaders like Tallsalt were not “recognized by the Navajo Nation” as a whole, nor were they “formally trained” in a seminary, and that only “three of the eight individually-named plaintiffs had attended only approximately four religious ceremonies within the Boundaries of the Bridge since 1965.” This, they argued, made clear that the “Rainbow Bridge and its environs” did not have “anything approaching a deep, religious significance to any organized group.”⁵⁰ Citing other depositions, the defendants claimed a lack of “consistency” in ceremonial practices among Navajo religious leaders and that there was no proof that a specific established ceremony had been disturbed due to tourist behavior. This showed that there was no “active interest in the 171

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Bridge among Navajos.”⁵¹ The Navajo plaintiffs felt differently and said so in their depositions. But the defendants clearly had Christian religious traditions in mind when they defined religion. Judge Anderson endorsed this line of reasoning and accepted the comparison in the defendants’ hypothetical argument that “involved a plaintiff who petitioned a federal court to restrict public access to the Lincoln Memorial because he had had an intense religious experience there.”⁵² In the same way that LDS colonists had disregarded Indigenous land claims and rejected the legitimacy of Navajo, Paiute, Ute, and Hopi religions, so, too, did the Utah court in the Badoni case. Not coincidentally, Aldon J. Anderson, the judge who wrote the second circuit court decision in 1977, was a devout member of the LDS Church and a direct descendant of the LDS apostle Ezra T. Benson, one of the first settlers in the Salt Lake Valley. Anderson clearly held views that aligned with the dominant society about what constituted religion.⁵³ Given his deep connection to the LDS Church and Christianity, it is reasonable to assume that Anderson’s perception of “organized religion” may have been guided by his own notions of what constituted religious worship and faith. When the Navajo plaintiffs asked the court to stop tourists from “acting in such a manner as to destroy and desecrate the Navajo gods and sacred sites threatened by the rising waters of Lake Powell and by the influx of tourists,” and when they asserted that “if humans alter the earth in the area of the Bridge, plaintiffs’ prayers will not be heard by the god and their ceremonies will be ineffective to prevent disease,” such notions likely did not register with Anderson on a deeper level.⁵⁴ Instead, he was more inclined to accept a hypothetical scenario put forth by the defense that equated a sacred Navajo site to the Lincoln Memorial, and their religious practices to the ecstatic experience of one imagined individual, not generations of shared Navajo belief.⁵⁵ Anderson used this imagined case to chastise Navajos, reminding them that they were allowed to worship at Rainbow Bridge only as a courtesy from the NPS, who managed the monument, because Navajos held no state-sanctioned property interest in the case. This line of reasoning undergirded his dismissal of the plaintiffs’ First Amendment claim, ignored historical land use patterns, and demeaned Indigenous ceremonialism. By drawing on the dominant culture’s conception of religion and upholding the federal government’s seizure of Indigenous land, Anderson rooted his decision in the infrastructure of dispossession that had been erected during the preceding century. Not surprisingly, Badoni and the other plaintiffs appealed Anderson’s ruling. They hoped that the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth 172

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Circuit would reach a different conclusion. Instead, in 1980, the court of appeals upheld the core of Anderson’s decision, offering a telling rationale for rejecting Navajo claims. The court did not so much dismiss the charge that Navajos’ freedom to practice their religion had been violated as much as it ruled that other, more material, issues dwarfed that right. The court simply agreed “with the trial court that the government’s interest in maintaining the capacity for Lake Powell at a level that intrudes into the Monument outweighs the plaintiffs’ religious interest” as the overriding principle in the case.⁵⁶ The court of appeals did substantively engage with the “religious claims” of Native Americans, rather than dismissing them as abstractions, as had Anderson. Still, its decision clearly indicated that Navajos’ desire to protect their sacred sites was less important than the “material good” provided by the dam to the non-Indigenous people of Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico. This pitted the spiritual interests of Navajos against the material and economic interests of the dominant society. As the legal scholar Michael Lawrence notes, the issues in the Badoni case elucidate the principle “that the First Amendment does little to protect Native Americans’ ability to practice religions enshrined on public lands because their interests must compete with the greater public’s need for economic development.”⁵⁷ However, this larger public “need” had never been divorced from religious thinking. In fact, the dam, the water of Lake Powell, and the development of the region had spiritual overtones for non-Indigenous people. The difference was that such spiritual interests encompassed material development and were seen as an outgrowth of, or even the manifestation of, a larger project of civilization and colonization that could reference LDS land use and belief. Recall Theodore Burton’s prayer: “May the power that comes from the generators turn the wheels of industry to create new products . . . and may the light which goes on in the homes . . . of men be reflected in the light which comes into their eyes.” As a man of science and religion, Burton, who held a PhD in chemistry, attributed such enlightenment to God working through men such as the engineers and visionaries who created the dam. In turn, he hoped the electricity the dam generated would spark God’s enlightenment in humans. Such thoughts mirrored those of the BOR, and its commissioner, Floyd Dominy, when he explained the government’s support for Glen Canyon Dam and other BOR resource development projects. According to Dominy, there was an important hierarchy at work in such projects: “There is a natural order in the Universe. God created both man and nature. And man serves God. But nature serves man. To have a deep blue lake where no lake was before seems to bring man closer 173

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to God.”⁵⁸ Thus, while in the view of Mormons like Burton and non-LDS BOR representatives like Dominy, Glen Canyon Dam was a public good, it also illustrated God’s power to inspire engineers to design and build engineering marvels like the dam. Thus, one of the larger disputes to emerge in Badoni v. Higginson was not just a question of whether Navajos had an organized religion, and therefore a right to practice their ceremonies within RBNM, but a question of whose religious ideals would be viewed as legitimate and what kinds of physical infrastructure would support or protect those ideals. The history of the LDS colonization of the Colorado Plateau, the growing influence of the LDS Church, the ideology of officials and lay people alike who associated civilization with Christianity, and the political influence of some of key members of both groups set the stage for the Badoni decision. Interestingly, Navajo Chairman Raymond Nakai had anticipated an upcoming clash between Navajo religious beliefs and Christian beliefs as early as 1964. In a speech titled “An Alien God,” he told his largely Navajo audience that they would continue to face challenges to their religion. Nakai, however, believed they had an avenue of redress if such issues arose: the Declaration of Independence. “It is up to us to tell our brethren whose religious beliefs may center around the [Navajo] ‘changing woman’ that our [American] forefathers had [made] reference to all gods when they set forth in our Declaration of Independence the fact that the most precious right inherent to man is the right to do homage to God in whatever form he chooses.”⁵⁹ In the mid-1960s, a hopeful Nakai envisioned a world where Navajo Gods would get the same respect as would Burton, Dominy, Woodbury, Gregory, or Watkins’s God. Instead, the court eventually offered Nakai, Badoni, Tallsalt, and other Navajos a world in which Navajo ceremonies received far less respect than that accorded to Christianity or the conservation of natural resources for the benefit of non-Indians. Like the surveyors, hydrologists, geologists, scientists, and engineers of the DOI and BOR who studied the region’s water supply and helped to design the dam in the first place, the courts were guided by systems of belief that mirrored their own culture.

pr eserv ing the l a nd or protecting r bnm: the r a inbow br idge di v ersion da ms, a ngus woodbury, a nd stewa rt uda ll Beyond religious arguments, the plaintiffs in Badoni stressed that the Upper Colorado River Storage Act had originally included a provision to protect 174

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RBNM from the incursion of Lake Powell’s water. By 1977, such protection still had not occurred. The provision to protect the national monument was originally forged in consultation with Navajo Tribal Council (renamed the Navajo Nation Council in 1968) leaders and environmentalists like David Brower and Richard C. Bradley of the Sierra Club, who had successfully fought against a dam at Echo Park in Dinosaur National Monument in the 1950s. At least one Navajo Mountain resident, Robert Tallsalt, objected to the dam in public meetings before it was built because it threatened the sacred arch.⁶⁰ The core idea to appease such parties was that Congress would seek to protect RBNM from Lake Powell. Section 1 of the Upper Colorado River Storage Act read, “As part of the construction, operation, and maintenance of the Glen Canyon unit the Secretary of the Interior shall take adequate protective measures to preclude impairment of the Rainbow Bridge National Monument.”⁶¹ The House and Senate agreed to that provision after being informed “that when full, the Glen Canyon Reservoir would reach a surface elevation of 3,700 feet and would, if unrestrained, back water into the Monument.” That meant that, according to the BOR, “the water would be 94 feet deep at the Monument boundary and 46 feet beneath Rainbow Bridge itself.”⁶² During the Badoni case, however, it had become clear that the economic and ecological costs of building the necessary diversion dam (or dams) had been a key issue of contention for over a decade. The BOR, for instance, estimated that “total construction costs for protective works to keep water out [of the monument] were then estimated at between $21 and $35 million.”⁶³ Congress would have needed to appropriate such funds if the diversion dams were to be built. They failed to do so, in part, after Floyd Dominy convinced the incoming secretary of the interior, Stewart Udall, that such a plan would be both too costly and too ecologically destructive to move forward.⁶⁴ As in the case of the plaintiffs’ first two claims, the way the court ruled on this issue emerged from the history of the regional debates surrounding the development of infrastructure, population growth, and how different constituencies thought about nature, beauty, and ecology. As Glen Canyon Dam was being built, a robust debate over the construction of a diversion dam (or some other protective structure) near Tsé Naní’ áhígíí was also taking place in magazines, newspapers, and periodicals. Participants in this debate included regional politicians such as Angus Woodbury, BOR officials such as Floyd Dominy, environmentalists such as David Brower, and Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall. Some were public, face-to-face debates, while others unfolded on the pages of periodicals such as Science. These debates remind us that as early as 1921 E. C. LaRue 175

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figu r e 5.3 Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall on an inspection trip to Rainbow Bridge, Utah, in 1961 to inquire into the protection of Rainbow Bridge. Angus Woodbury, Floyd Dominy, Paul Jones, David Brower, and a number of other key players in the controversy joined Udall on this trip.

knew that the flooding of RBNM would become controversial.⁶⁵ Remember that as the engineer charged with siting a dam at Glen Canyon for the United States Geological Survey (USGS), LaRue claimed he “realized at once the seriousness” of the implications if a tall dam were constructed in Glen Canyon. He was certain “that the [Rainbow] bridge will be effected [sic] by back water if a dam . . . is constructed to a height greater than 500 feet.” LaRue also recognized that if water were to flood the area, both the USGS and the BOR would need “permission from Congress to back water into the Rainbow Bridge National Monument.”⁶⁶ LaRue also foreshadowed section 1 of the CRSP. Thinking through the need to protect the monument, LaRue proposed a potential solution: the construction of a smaller dam in Bridge Canyon could be built to keep water out of the monument. This was essentially the proposal that Congress accepted when it approved the Upper Colorado River Storage Act. Members of the Navajo Tribal Council also agreed to move forward with the act if Tsé Naní’ áhígíí could be protected. In 1958, Navajo Tribal Commissioner Paul Jones sought to make sure that Rainbow Bridge was pro176

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tected.⁶⁷ The Tribal Council “granted Reclamation rights of way and easements for the construction and maintenance of barrier dams and diversion tunnels to protect Rainbow Bridge National Monument from inundation” as an expression of support for the project. At the same time, the Tribal Council refused to expand the monument by one hundred acres, as the NPS had requested, stating that it was “not in the best interests of the tribe” to do so. The council supported the protection of Tsé Naní’ áhígíí but was unwilling to give the federal government more of its reservation lands.⁶⁸ The debate over funding section 1 occurred in the early 1960s, as Glen Canyon Dam was being built and just after Stewart Udall, who had represented Indigenous concerns in the past as a congressman from Arizona, had become secretary of the interior in January 1961. There is little evidence that Navajo leaders or laypeople were key consultants when the decision was made to not build those diversion dams. It was Stewart Udall, Floyd Dominy, Angus Woodbury, and other prominent local politicians who objected to funding this specific part of section 1 of the act on financial, ecological, and aesthetic grounds. According to Brower, the ultimate decision to scrap the diversion dams occurred behind closed doors, “with no opportunity for public participation in the decision.”⁶⁹ Environmentalists, like David Brower, William R. Halliday, and the plaintiffs in the Badoni case, however, wanted RBNM protected and the diversion dams built. By the spring of 1961, the pro-dam biologist, conservationist, and ecologist Woodbury, along with Halliday, who represented the Western Speleological Survey, presented opposing arguments regarding whether any protective measures should be taken to protect RBNM to an audience of experts in the journal Science. Halliday’s piece was a response to an article that had been penned by Woodbury in 1960. Woodbury’s original argument was that the proposed sites for any protective infrastructure would be costly and difficult to construct, and would mar the natural beauty of the area. Such reasoning created a dilemma for the BOR and Congress, he claimed. Woodbury wondered whether section 1 of “the present law” should “be enforced and adjacent scenic features be permanently scarred and injured in order to protect one small but important sector of the over-all scenic features?” He argued that the best course of action was to not to build the diversion dams and let nature provide its own solution to the problem in fifty to one hundred years, when, Woodbury asserted, a natural diversion dam would form, protecting the national monument in the process. Noting that the world was facing a “population bomb,” he made a case for using funds to conserve water along with “developing the byproducts of the lake 177

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as national recreational resources.”⁷⁰ He closed by asking conservationists to “leave the people of the future with a heritage of wisely used resources which will continue to serve mankind.”⁷¹ A year later, in 1961, Halliday responded to Woodbury’s proposal. To Halliday, doing nothing was a “default decision” and one that had implications for all national monuments.⁷² Halliday argued, instead, that a diversion dam should be built at what Woodbury called “site C.” Noting that his proposal had the support of groups such as the Sierra Club, he also admitted that building such a dam would introduce “an unnatural work” into the area, and while that might be generally undesirable, he thought it was warranted in order to protect the monument. Halliday made another proposal for the protection of RBNM as well, one that would be low cost and low impact: lowering the level of water in the reservoir.⁷³ This last proposal was essentially the same request that the Badoni plaintiffs would make sixteen years later. As the debate became more heated, Woodbury drew on his expertise as well as his personal, religious, and professional networks to become a key spokesperson on the issue of the proposed diversion dams. For instance, almost as soon as Woodbury received Halliday’s contribution to the journal on February 20, 1961, he consulted with Senator Frank Moss (D-UT), a noted supporter of Woodbury’s initial plan not to fund the diversion dams.⁷⁴ He also sought out Dr. Armand J. Eardly, the dean of the College of Mines at the University of Utah, and the noted LDS historian Juanita Brooks, both of whom were friends through the LDS Church and part of his scholarly network. They provided advice and helped him rehearse and edit his response to Halliday. He then conferred with Cecil Jacobson of the BOR, another devout member of the Church and one of the key planners of the Upper Colorado River Storage Act, who advised him on how to make the most effective argument against building the diversion dams. Woodbury noted in his diary that Jacobson “went over my article and caught a very important point that I had overlooked that practically clinched my position and gave me still more assurance than ever.”⁷⁵ By April 14, Woodbury had submitted his response to the journal and continued to publicly lobby against the diversion dams. On April 26, Woodbury received word from someone on Senator Moss’s staff that he was “welcome to go” on an upcoming trip to Rainbow Bridge with key decision makers “but could not be [formally] invited.” Woodbury then made his own way to Page, Arizona. Once there he joined Senator Moss, Secretary Udall, Commissioner Dominy, David Brower and Bruce Kilgore of the Sierra Club, and Joe Carithers of the Wilderness Society on a tour of RBMN. Kilgore remarked upon meeting 178

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Woodbury, “Oh, you are the man giving us so much trouble,” to which Woodbury retorted, “Oh, no, you are the one making trouble.” Woodbury viewed the environmentalists as adversaries in this debate. Udall had assembled the group of about forty or fifty men, according to Woodbury’s calculation, to help the secretary make up his mind about the diversion dams, explaining that their objective “was to determine whether to build the protecting dams at Bridge or Aztec Canyon and to consider the problem of enlarging Rainbow Bridge National Monument into a National Park.” Woodbury did not mention any of the Native Americans who were in attendance during this trip—prominent Navajos Paul Jones, Ned Atovle, Maurice McCabe, Ed Plummer, and Sammy Day. Their points of view seemed neither relevant nor noteworthy to Woodbury.⁷⁶ Early on the morning of April 29, Udall and his entourage left Page and took helicopters up to a mesa close to the stunning stone arch to visit the various prospective dam sites. Woodbury and Brower then hiked to the bottom of the arch, goading each other along the way. When they got to the river, Woodbury socialized with Moss. Udall then decided to go to “Site C,” which was located “about 3 miles downstream from the monument” to survey the area to get a better sense of the terrain.⁷⁷ During the trip to site C, Woodbury overheard Dominy tell Udall that “site C was out,” saying there was “no place for a camp and base of operations.”⁷⁸ Woodbury got the impression that the decision had already been made. After a day exploring the area, the entire group returned to Page. Udall then reconvened the group for a longer conversation that evening. Toward the end of a long program featuring films, talks, and discussions, Udall addressed the group, stating there was common agreement that the only question at hand was whether dam site C “could be built without marring the scenery.” After watching a film shown by Frank Masland, an avid boater and conservationist, that showed the exploration of the region north of Navajo Mountain and depicted a flash flood, Udall initiated a conversation. By his own account, Woodbury played a significant role at the meeting, noting that site C “was useless because it could not protect the bridge.” He then referenced the flash flood they had just seen in Masland’s film. He claimed that a dam in the proposed location “would catch flash floods and the sediment would eventually back under the bridge and it would be as bad as no dam.” Thinking he had made a strong case against the construction of barrier dams, Woodbury left to return to Salt Lake City the following morning. On his way out of Page, he stopped by the Glen Canyon Dam site and expressed his amazement at how much had been accomplished since his last trip a year earlier. Upon his arrival in Salt Lake City, 179

figu r e 5.4 Illustration from Angus Woodbury’s 1960 Science article, which lays out the proposed diversion sites.

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Woodbury continued to advocate for his position, describing the trip on a local radio program and meeting with other community groups to make his case to the voting public.⁷⁹ Again, Woodbury did not mention or seemingly even consider that the Navajo residents of Navajo Mountain or others from across the plateau should be consulted. From his notes, speeches, and other public references, one would not even know that Navajos were part of the group that traveled to Rainbow Bridge, but for some vague references to “Indians and newsmen who followed their host . . . toward the towering natural bridge.”⁸⁰ But Tribal Chairman Paul Jones was part of the original group who made the trip to Rainbow Bridge and the potential barrier dam sites. He also listened as Udall proposed expanding the current monument into a national park “from land that was held mostly from Navajos.” It was land that Udall knew Navajos would not give up without getting something significant in return. Udall told the crowd that “the Navajos are going to have a final say” about whether or not RBNM would become Rainbow Bridge National Park.⁸¹ Shortly after this trip, Udall stuck with his original position and opposed the construction of a protective diversion dam to protect RBNM. It was a decision he had made in part on the advice he received from Dominy, Moss, Woodbury, and others.⁸² Udall was not as concerned about the potential expense of building a diversion dam; rather, he made his decision based on the conservationist principle that in “the long run, [Rainbow Bridge] will be ‘conserved’ only if it remains secluded in this fantastic area of canyons and cliffs.” There is also evidence that Udall had made up his mind prior to leading the group’s visit to Rainbow Bridge. In a letter to Representative Wayne Aspinall, the chairman on interior and insular affairs, Udall expressed his preference to “do nothing” and to “suffer the intrusion of the lake of the lesser of the evils” in August 1960.⁸³ One minor historical note: while Udall did not approve the diversion dams for RBNM during this trip, he did decide to work to establish Canyonlands National Park on the plane ride home.⁸⁴ Like Woodbury, Udall thought building diversion dams would ruin the scenery and hurt the larger ecological region.⁸⁵ Ironically, Brower and other environmentalists, who had spent the better part of the previous decade arguing against the construction of dams in or near national monuments, found themselves arguing for the construction of the barrier dams based on the idea that Congress needed to keep its promise “even if it required intrusive measures [we] would normally oppose to fulfil it.”⁸⁶ Dominy had already convinced the House Appropriations Committee 181

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to withhold the money necessary to build such structures. Without the support of the secretary of the interior, the BOR, or regional politicians like Moss, Congress refused to allocate funds to build the diversion dam or dams. They did so even though the House and Senate knew a water level of 3,700 feet would push water into the monument and under the bridge.⁸⁷ So, even while Udall said his decision was not based on cost, the price of the diversion dams was off-putting to many politicians, taxpayers, and regional denizens like Woodbury, who viewed it as wasteful and unnecessary. Without their support, environmental groups and Navajo residents faced a difficult battle to get Congress to uphold the section 1 of the act. As a result, Woodbury’s proposed “default decision” had become Udall’s de facto position, and, along the way, Woodbury became a key spokesperson for it, lending his professional reputation as a professor, conservationist, ecologist, and, like Udall, the son of some of the region’s first LDS settlers to the position. Even though he grappled with his faith during this same time, choosing to embrace scientific reasoning over LDS teachings, he still prioritized the larger LDS community’s efforts of regional growth and reclamation efforts above all else. It was this position—that the diversion dams should be scrapped along with the idea that the water level in the reservoir should be lowered—that Badoni and the other Navajos living closest to the monument sought to get the courts to reconsider in 1977. The fight over the diversion dams illustrates how another pillar of the infrastructure of dispossession was fi xed into place. Decisions directly related to the protection of RBNM played out in scientific journals; between politicians, policy makers, and activists; and in the press. That Woodbury published his position in the nation’s top scientific journal, Science, reveals how such reports could be used as tools of dispossession. By and large, the region’s Native Americans were effectively silenced in public iterations of such debates. Politicians sought out Navajos when they needed their land or approval to get legislation passed. Once the physical infrastructure was in place, men like Woodbury and Dominy then took center stage when considering what was best for the region’s future without consulting Indigenous people. While Udall and Dominy had come to the same conclusion about the diversion dams independently,⁸⁸ Woodbury had the social network and administrative contacts to make sure his voice was heard in these debates. He had the authority to be recognized as an expert, and he was in contact with the politicians who would make the final determinations. More importantly, Woodbury had access to those networks because of his knowledge of the region stemming from his time as part of the RBMVE, his respected publication record, and his authority as a professor 182

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and researcher at the University of Utah, all of which he could, and did, leverage to support his specific positions. While we know that Paul Jones was on the trip, the reporters who covered the event did not interview him or ask his opinion about the diversion dams. Nor is there any evidence that he had the chance to address the group in any formal capacity. We do know, however, that a number of men on the trip had similar upbringings. Udall and Woodbury found common cause in their idea of regional development and shared a love of the landscape and respect for nature, in part because both men had been raised by devout Mormons on the Colorado Plateau—and had worked with their families to be community builders. Jones and Udall also had much in common. Udall had been raised in Arizona in proximity to the Navajo Nation, and Jones had even considered Udall “a champion for the Indian Tribes” in the mid-1950s when Udall served as a democratic congressman representing, in part, the Navajo Nation. Like Udall, Jones had been elected as a leader, serving two four-year terms as Tribal Chairman.⁸⁹ While Udall had come to the conclusion that the diversion dams should not be built, he did so based on the idea that RBNM should be expanded into a larger national “wilderness park” that would be carved out of Navajo lands. Udall proposed a 640-square-mile extension of the existing monument lands, and he was initially confident that the Navajo Tribal Council would agree to his proposal and see the value in it if they were guaranteed control of the park’s concessions.⁹⁰ As the historian Sonia Dickey notes, Udall waxed poetic about his plan but failed to survey Navajos who lived and herded sheep within the boundaries of the proposed park. While Udall reached out to Paul Jones as well as the head of the Navajo Nation’s Park Department, Sam (Sammy) Day III, neither Day nor Jones provided thoughts in public forums, including on the April 29 trip. This and other actions led Dickey to conclude that “Udall’s lip service to Native participation reflected the Interior’s lackluster embrace of Indian self-determination in the early 1960s.”⁹¹ But Udall’s failure to substantially consult with the tribe also illustrated just how effective and robust the region’s infrastructure of dispossession had become. Even when Native American leaders such as Paul Jones or Raymond Nakai had access to key decision makers such as Udall, their concerns were not debated in political or public forums. This lack of representation in public forums, however, does not mean that Navajo Nation leaders did not influence decisions, take control of situations, or try to remake how infrastructures of dispossession worked against them. In fact, it was the council’s response to Udall’s plan for an expanded “primitive” Navajo wilderness park that effectively killed the secretary’s 183

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idea. Navajo leaders simply refused to relinquish the land Udall wanted for the scheme after the secretary rejected a proposal from Jones that would have helped “develop the tribe’s shoreline along Lake Powell between Antelope and Navajo Canyons.”⁹² Jones’s correspondence with Udall and other BOR officials in the aftermath of the first proposal illustrates that the leader pushed back on Udall’s original terms and pressed forward with his own demands for stable water rights, increased access to electricity, and access to more robust economic infrastructure to help his constituents. As Dickey notes, Jones signaled that the tribal leadership had embraced the principle of self-determination.⁹³ But Jones had to do so within the legal and political structures put in place by what Floyd Dominy called “political engineering.”⁹⁴ That political engineering pushed Navajos into a situation where they were forced to be more reactive than proactive, and the laws and policies put in place were designed to protect the interests of the settler communities more than those of the region’s Indigenous people. It left Diné residents of the region without the water and electricity they needed in order to supply Phoenix, Page, and other cities with the resources they needed to grow.⁹⁵ Leaders from the Navajo Nation had favored Glen Canyon Dam in the 1950s. In this case, Navajo leaders were disappointed and dispossessed not because the dam was built but because they did not receive the benefits of the dam they had been promised or the protection of Rainbow Bridge their constituents wanted.

en v ironmenta lists, navajos, a nd the public r el ations ca mpa ign to protect r bnm Woodbury was not the only outspoken non-Indigenous actor who played a significant role in the RBNM debate as it related to the Badoni case. Environmentalists like David Brower and organizations like the Sierra Club also had the ability to influence the lives of, and how the public viewed, ordinary Diné men and women. In part, this was because they made the issue of protecting national parks and monuments a centerpiece of the modern environmental movement. The author Dina Gilio-Whitaker notes that the efforts of contemporary environmentalists hinged (and still often hinge) on a predominantly white environmentalist mindset that “was deeply influenced by a national fi xation on the imagined pre-Columbian pristine American wilderness and the social Darwinist values of white superiority.”⁹⁶ We can see such views on display in the meeting where Udall proposed that RBNM be expanded to become a “primitive” national park that might encompass 184

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Navajo Mountain, one of the four sacred peaks for the Diné. At the time, David Brower chimed in with his opinion that the park be dubbed “Navajo Rainbow National Park” and suggested that “the Navajos who are in that terrain . . . would stay there and not be disturbed.” He then added that it could be “one of the greatest pleasures of a trip to this area” for non-Indians to see Navajos, Navajo homes, and Navajo landscape as part of the scenery.⁹⁷ For many Native Americans, the creation of national parks and monuments had come at the expense of tribes. Lands were removed for use by white tourists at the behest of conservationists and preservationists. This created an ambivalent relationship between Native Americans and environmentalists.⁹⁸ In the years before the Badoni case, the Sierra Club had tried its best to sway public and legal opinion about the protection of RBNM through the construction of diversion dams without involving actual Native Americans. Instead, it referenced idealized versions of them and filed its own failed lawsuit, Friends of the Earth v. Armstrong, to reduce the water level in the reservoir without consulting Navajos.⁹⁹ When Udall’s efforts to create Rainbow Bridge National Park stalled and the secretary refused to support construction of a diversion dam, Brower then reasoned that the court of public opinion or the legal system could be leveraged to help protect RBNM from the inundation of Lake Powell’s water. While Woodbury used his professional networks and relied on his reputation as a scholar to publish his proposals in scientific journals, Brower and the Sierra Club made a more direct public appeal by using art, photography, literature, and poetry to build a visual case that national monuments and parks needed to be protected from the worst effects of infrastructure. The more Brower came to regret the construction of Glen Canyon Dam, the harder he worked to protect RBNM and pushed to keep more dams off of the Colorado River.¹⁰⁰ To help with such efforts, Brower hired photographers such as Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter, and Philip Hyde to create beautifully illustrated coffee table books to draw attention to the organization’s mission—saving rivers from being dammed, trees from being logged, and monuments from being developed—all while building the organization’s coffers to enable activism. They evoked Native American themes in such publications as The Place No One Knew: Glen Canyon on the Colorado.¹⁰¹ While the Sierra Club built its public relations campaign in the 1960s, however, a subset of Navajos who lived in the vicinity of Navajo Mountain and Tsé Naní’ áhígíí came together to directly express their dismay at the jump in regional tourism and the resulting land and water use practices. As the canyon beneath the bridge filled with water, many local residents felt that their sacred sites were being destroyed. Their anxieties were justified 185

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when high water levels brought motorboats filled with tourists to Rainbow Bridge in dramatically increasing numbers. By the early 1970s, hundreds of tourists visited the bridge every day.¹⁰² By 1980, one hundred thousand people per year were making the trip to their sacred arch.¹⁰³ Despite the NPS’s efforts to prohibit swimming under the bridge and to inform tourists that drinking and loud music were especially offensive to local Navajos, unruly tourists continued to come.¹⁰⁴ Such activities increasingly antagonized Diné spiritual leaders—a fact that did not go unnoted by the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth. Both environmental organizations hoped that Navajo concerns could be leveraged to force the BOR to keep the water level of Glen Canyon Dam from filling to capacity and inundating RBNM. After losing their 1973 case, in which they had been unable to demonstrate that any party had been injured, Brower finally admitted that “someone” did “know” Glen Canyon: Native Americans. In 1974, Brower and FOE refiled their case—and worked to coordinate a new case—this time in cooperation with Navajos who wished to limit the water level and thus curtail the actions of boaters at the stone rainbow on religious grounds. In a February 1974 memo sent to David Brower, a legal strategist noted that the FOE et. al. will ask for a petition for Rehearing from the Supreme Court using as “new evidence” the fact that the Indians’ interest(s) have not been properly presented in our previous appeal. One day after our petition is filed the Navajos (a tribe plus seven individual Navajos including a number of medicine men) will file an appeal of their own. They will “scold” us for ignoring them previously but will ask the court for the same ruling we do. (Owen [Olpin, lawyer] thinks this scolding is all to the good and will appeal to some judges who are more sensitive to Indian than environmental problems.)¹⁰⁵

In September of that same year, Badoni and the other litigants, three of whom were recognized hatałii (spiritual leaders), filed the case that became known as Badoni v. Higginson. The fact that Brower and the other environmentalists encouraged the filing of the case does not lessen the importance of the Badoni case or the actions of the litigants in it. The spiritual leaders in the Badoni case sought to protect their cultural heritage, and they used environmentalists to help them do so. As Tallsalt noted, some Navajos had spoken out against Glen Canyon Dam all along. Now they were doing more than speaking out. They were trying to use the courts to protect Tsé Naní’ áhígíí. They believed that 186

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the American legal system, as a social infrastructure, could help them mitigate the cultural harm done by the physical infrastructure of the dam. As such, they needed something from the courts. Though many Navajos, like Nakai, thought that those in the dominant society only listened to Navajos when they wanted something from them, these litigants attempted to exert their right to worship—and control land they had valued for generations in the process. They sought to “possess” the land by making a case for the sacred arch’s protection. If they had environmentalists’ allies helping them, they would take the help. In the end, neither group prevailed.

dispossession by design The story of the Colorado Plateau after colonization can be read as a kind of blueprint that was used to build a larger culture of dispossession that manifested in the physical transformation of the landscape. This is especially true in the history of Rainbow Bridge. Indigenous people have long had a relationship with Tsé Naní’ áhígíí (Rainbow Bridge), and Navajos, Paiutes, Hopis, and Utes all laid claim to the region surrounding it. Those claims were invalidated by the white settlers and their government, which took Indigenous lands. In many ways, Brigham Young and the LDS colonists who settled in southern Utah and northern Arizona created the master plan for the region. Their goal was to irrigate the arid region on an everincreasing scale in order to “make the desert bloom.” Between the 1880s and the 1920s, men like John Wesley Powell, William Douglass, and Herbert Gregory worked as state-supported architects who drafted an additional set of plans to expand regional colonization and distribute the region’s natural resources. A key moment in the history of Indigenous dispossession occurred following the 1909 trip to “discover” the Rainbow arch, when the land was removed from the Navajo Reservation and made a national monument; it also exhibits connections with the Doctrine of Discovery, which had been used since the 1400s to seize lands from Indigenous peoples.¹⁰⁶ Eugene C. LaRue followed, playing the part of the structural engineer who was a key advocate of Glen Canyon Dam. As LaRue considered his plans, he unintentionally gave form to both Young’s vision of expanded irrigation and intentionally helped map out the government’s large reclamation projects. Between the 1910s and 1950s, Herbert Gregory, Angus Woodbury, Arthur V. Watkins, and George Dewey Clyde all represented the different kinds of scholarly and administrative expertise needed to line up legislative approval to bring the dams into existence. 187

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Glen Canyon Dam did not just appear when engineers designed and built it in the 1950s. The dam rests on a larger and multilayered foundation of uneven regional power relations. So, too, does the Navajo effort to protect Rainbow Bridge in court. The core arguments in Badoni v. Higginson harken back to specific historical moments, linking them to the religious, scientific, technological, and ecological exploration of the region as well as the political maneuvering that was involved in building Glen Canyon Dam. Once the permits had been issued and the dam itself had been built, local Indigenous peoples (the former occupants of the land) were left with few avenues for redress when their own needs were not met. They attempted to use those avenues to their benefit, but the courts ruled that Navajos did not have a “cognizable” claim to the arch. However this does not mean that Navajos gave up their quest to protect and worship at the arch. Such efforts continue even today. About a month after the final decision in the Badoni case was issued, the NPS agreed to work with Native Americans to manage the site. It was a small, and not wholly successful, victory, but filing the case was one way Navajos sought to weaken the infrastructure of dispossession that attempted to shape their lives.¹⁰⁷

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disp osse ssion a n d p osse ssion The Continued Fight over Sacred Land and Water on the Colorado Plateau

I

n 1974, 101-year-old Jim Mike (Paiute), one of the original guides of the 1909 Cummings-Douglass party that “discovered” Rainbow Bridge, returned to the stone arch. This was the same year the Badoni case was filed, and the National Park Service worked to assemble a delegation of park officials and representatives from the Associated Press to join Mike and his family on the long trek back to the arch. Once there, the NPS paid Mike the fifty dollars he had been promised for his original scouting services. The AP staged a photo op, in which Mike sat in a lawn chair, holding a crisp fifty-dollar bill, with the famed arch in the background. He was also presented with a robe.¹ Unfortunately, Mike was paid what he would have been paid in 1909 rather than its equivalent in 1974 dollars. As the Badoni case wound its way through the courts, the NPS began to recognize the complexity of the issues surrounding Native American ties to the bridge and the management of an Indigenous sacred site. The NPS thought Mike deserved credit for his role in the expedition and back pay for his services. It also realized that Navajos deserved a measure of control over what happened at Rainbow Bridge. By 1980, the NPS was working with the Navajo Nation to craft a management plan for Rainbow Bridge National Monument. Subsequent policies, such as the creation of a Native American Relationships Policy (NARP), which was triggered by the Native American Freedom Act of 1978, were meant to make the NPS “more sensitive to the cross cultural make-up of the region” around Rainbow Bridge. In 1997, the NPS again celebrated Jim Mike’s role in the 1909 expedition by installing a dedicatory plaque that named him as part of the original expedition team.² Recognizing Jim Mike’s role in the expedition and crafting an RBNM management plan were small steps designed to right historical wrongs. Still, despite the federal government’s belated attempts to recognize the contributions of Indigenous people in the discovery of the arch, and to 189

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work with them in the management of the site, we should not ignore the fact that the creation of the monument originally occurred with no input from Indigenous people. Nor should we forget that that the court’s decision in Badoni privileged the needs of the dominant society at the cost of Indigenous interests. The episodes covered in this book show that dispossession on the Colorado Plateau occurred when settlers and the federal government took Indigenous lands, when scholars used Indigenous knowledge to further state or federal interests, when engineers and scientists appropriated or erased evidence of Indigenous habitation or diminished the cultural significance of their land, when politicians imposed and pushed policies that favored the needs of whites over Indigenous people, and when courts invalidated cultural Indigenous claims in a decision that was based on the combined force of all of these actions that had come before. While not exactly coordinated, the social infrastructures described here had been systemically embedded into the culture of the region through a series of actions that built upon each other. One thing that makes infrastructures of dispossession powerful is that, over time, they become naturalized and hidden from our view. They produce what those commenting on international disputes call “facts of the ground”—a building of a dam or the distribution of resources mandated in a court decision—and their value is reinforced by continual use. They create a status quo. For instance, it is all too easy to articulate a defense of the judge’s decision in the final Badoni case: Rainbow Bridge National Monument was, and is, government land; therefore, Lamarr Badoni and his fellow Navajo litigants had and have no legal claim to Rainbow Bridge. The judge decided the case based on the law as it existed at the time. Yet when we consider the longer, deeper history of how the government got the land, how the monument was carved out of lands designated for Indigenous peoples, and how laws were written to reflect the ideals of the dominant society, the case becomes more complex and the decision more complicated. The judge may have applied the law correctly, which was part of his job. But justice was not served, and surely that must be the larger job of any system of justice. By taking such things into consideration, we see more clearly how settler colonialism and infrastructures of dispossession have worked in tandem. Without seeing that, we are unlikely to keep them from continuing to work in tandem. Ever since Glen Canyon Dam was proposed, it has been controversial. Part of the original controversy stemmed from the fact that the region is arid, water is scarce, and many different entities—states, cities, communi190

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ties, industries—wanted the water the proposed dam would collect. Since 1922, when the Colorado River Compact divided the waters between the Upper and Lower Basin states, the region’s residents and regional planners have discussed, and debated, the river’s utilization. By the 1970s, one of the key conflicts surrounding the dam revolved around the water level of the dam and the flooding of a national monument. Today, controversies continue. The dam’s very existence is in question due to climate change and an ongoing drought. By September 2021 the reservoir was only 31 percent full. By March 2022, the water level could only drop by thirty-four more feet before the production of hydropower would be no longer possible.³ In December 2021, Dan Beard, the former commissioner of the US Bureau of Reclamation, proposed decommissioning the dam. “All damming should be stopped,” Beard said. “There’s just not enough water to keep Lake Powell and Lake Mead operational. You have to have one over the other.”⁴ At least one spokesperson for the Navajo, Mark Maryboy, a former Navajo Nation Council delegate and San Juan County (Utah) commissioner, agrees. Maryboy contends that “draining the lake would begin the healing process for Native Americans. Now is the moment and the longer the delay, the more damage is done.”⁵ Maryboy’s proposal suggests that as more and more conversations occur about the future of the Colorado River, Indigenous people will demand a say in what happens. That such demands be respected is especially important in light of the fact that no Native people were at the table when the compact was signed in 1922.⁶

be a rs e a rs: a n infr astructur e of hope? Given the long history of dispossession, are there ways to think about engineering, infrastructure, or resource management that do not continue to build on and exacerbate dispossession? Once embedded in society and on the landscape, can infrastructures of dispossession be deconstructed in ways that portend a more equitable and just future? A contemporary example that points toward a more inclusive infrastructure has emerged in the case of Bears Ears National Monument. Unlike the case studies covered in earlier chapters, which focus on settler colonialism and loss, the recent creation of Bears Ears National Monument offers us a more hopeful example that contrasts with the long and depressing historical narrative of dispossession (see gallery figure 7). It’s far from perfect, but it’s also far from replicating what has come before. Beginning in 2011 the Indigenous-led organization Utah Diné Bikéyah 191

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(UDB) started to push for the preservation of sacred ancestral lands known as Bears Ears, in San Juan County, Utah. They sought to create a protected area on federal lands north of the Navajo Reservation and west of the White Mesa Reservation of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe.⁷ Early on, one LDS county commissioner, Phil Lyman, told UDB and Navajo Nation representatives that they had no right to influence land policy issues beyond the scope of their reservations. In April 2015, UDB hosted a meeting of representatives from more than nine tribes and pueblos in Bluff, Utah, requesting that they use their sovereign government relationship to realize protections for the shared cultural landscape of Bears Ears. That meeting laid the foundation for the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Council (BEITC), with representatives of five tribes agreeing to work together: the Hopi Nation, Navajo Nation, Pueblo of Zuni, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, and Ute Indian Tribe. The “Coalition Tribes” declared themselves “unified in the effort to protect this landscape we call Hoon’Naqvut, Shash Jáa, Kwiyagatu, Nukavachi, Ansh An Laskokdiwe, in our Native Languages, all of which mean ‘Bears Ears.’ ”⁸ The coalition seeks to protect these ancestral homelands for future generations. Leaders of the group worked with and lobbied the State of Utah, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Department of the Interior, and the Bureau of Land Management to get President Obama to designate 1.35 million acres in southeastern Utah as a national monument. UDB and the Navajo Nation completed the map, boundary, survey, and data collection and proposed the monument in April 2013. BEITC wrote the narrative report in October 2015. BEITC is poised to shape a future management plan as comanagers of the national monument, defining how sacred sites will be used and who can access them. In contrast to the process through which Rainbow Bridge National Monument had been created (see chapter 3), Native people and Native interests were front and center in the establishment of Bears Ears National Monument. Such efforts did not go unopposed, especially in the racially polarized atmosphere of San Juan County, Utah. The coalition and UDB faced strident opposition from many local white, and primarily LDS, residents of San Juan County, who objected to the creation of the monument. In the eyes of men like Phil Lyman, an LDS pioneer descendant whose family settled in Blanding in 1905 and former San Juan County commissioner, the creation of the BENM was a case of “federal overreach” where “elite, faceless bureaucrats thousands of miles away” made “decisions about local lives without local input.”⁹ The irony of this position was not lost on UDB, who had tried to work with white San Juan County representatives on the creation of the monument and other land use propositions, nor was it lost on Indig192

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enous activists and historians who study dispossession in the region. As this book shows, a long history of state and federal overreach in the region had forced Indigenous people off of their homelands, pushing them on to reservations and redistributing their resources to white settlers. This does not diminish the fact that LDS pioneers worked hard to cultivate the landscape or make homes in the area, but critiques like that of Phil Lyman ignore and seek to erase the way federal overreach and the dispossession of Indigenous people enabled LDS pioneering work. To allow such erasure is to continue the practice of dispossession. At the center of the BENM are twin 8,500-foot-high buttes—the “ears” that dominate the landscape and have come to symbolize how difficult it can be to address land use issues in the West. In public forums and debates over the national monument, those buttes have come to represent opposing views about how resources in the West should be managed. As such, they and the creation of the monument bring the core controversies covered in this book into sharp focus: Should the dominant Anglo sense of the land and natural resources of the region be viewed as commodities to be developed by business interests, overriding Native American conceptions of the land and claims to it? President Trump clearly thought so when he sided with the pro-business constituents who opposed the creation of the monument and cut its size by a whopping 85 percent, opening the lands removed from the monument back up to mineral and other development. It was a move widely, but not universally, celebrated by the residents of San Juan County. According to Gavin Noyes of UDB, 85 to 90 percent of whites opposed BENM, while 85 to 90 percent of Navajos supported it. The division seemed to run nearly perfectly down the LDS split in San Juan County. Mormon Natives tended to oppose the monument, and nonMormon whites in Bluff supported it. San Juan County is majority Native American by a small percentage.¹⁰ On October 8, 2021, President Biden basically restored Bears Ears National Monument to its original boundaries. Yet prominent politicians in Utah and beyond continue to object to the monument’s existence.¹¹ The battle over the buttes provides a case study of Indigenous people asserting themselves through the creation of a nonprofit that worked with state, federal, and local whites to craft a national monument that centered an Indigenous worldview alongside those of the dominant culture. Ongoing fights show that they were only partially successful. The legacies of settler colonialism and the infrastructures of dispossession are too deep and too powerful to be easily dismantled.¹² Still, BENM can be seen as representing a new kind of infrastructure 193

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for in the region: one of hope. Not only did the coalition and groups like UDB recently celebrate President Biden’s decree on Bears Ears, but there is another kind of hope inherent in the creation of BENM. It signaled that a new regime of land management can acknowledge the essential role that Indigenous people should, and by right must, play in the governance of their homelands. It also reflects the reverence with which Native Americans hold the place. As the Diné artist Michael Haswood explains, “Bears Ears is sacred. It is one of the last places medicine men [and women] can gather herbs. That’s [one reason] why it’s so important.”¹³ Beata Tsosie of the Santa Clara Pueblo recalled her feelings when she visited Bears Ears, stating that it felt like her “genetic memory had been activated.” Similarly, Malcolm Lehi, a Ute, has described Bears Ears as both an ancestral and a contemporary home.¹⁴ UDB cofounder Gavin Noyes viewed the creation of BENM through the lens of respect. Bears Ears “is a fundamentally human proposal” that can usher in “a new era of recognizing we are all human, we all have values, we are all connected to each other, and we respect each other.”¹⁵ Still, the very notion of a federally controlled space that Indigenous people will help manage illustrates how much work there is to do. Even so, BENM illustrates that an infrastructure of inclusion instead of erasure is possible. Bears Ears seeks to begin to rectify a small part of a massive historical injustice. Native Americans are claiming space, holding events, protecting their culture and sacred lands, and modeling environmental stewardship at a key moment in our global environmental history. In doing so, they are simultaneously doing as they have always done and pointing toward a more hopeful future. That hopeful future is, however, far from assured. At the same time that Native Americans are claiming authority to shape the Bear’s Ears National Monument, a different struggle illustrates the continuing power of infrastructures of dispossession. Despite a historic drought that scientists expect to worsen as a result of climate change, the Utah state legislature passed a law in 2006 funding a pipeline to carry eighty-six thousand acre-feet of water per year from Lake Powell to Kanab and Saint George, Utah. These settlements are roughly 140 miles west of the lake and are, as we saw in chapter 1, iconic places in the pioneering narrative of the LDS Church. Local residents believe that access to this water—access they insist they have by right of the 1922 compact—will allow these two communities to add five hundred thousand people in the next fifty years. They appear unconcerned about projections that the Colorado River’s capacity is expected to decrease between 10 and 30 percent by 2050.¹⁶ Something has to give. Should the pipeline be built, it may increase the 194

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amount of water that will be drawn away from the reservoir created by Navajo Dam, which provides desperately needed water for Navajo Nation.¹⁷ The legal structures governing the Colorado River’s water favor the building of the pipeline. The infrastructures of dispossession that are the subject of this book support a physical infrastructure project that will hurt Native peoples and ignore the environmental realities of the arid West in order to provide water to a small city, St. George, that as of now has twelve golf courses. The juxtaposition of the authorization of this pipeline and the creation of Bear’s Ears National Monument crystallizes a choice that we must face about the future of the West. We can begin to dismantle the infrastructures of dispossession, empower the region’s Native peoples, and seek a more sustainable future. Or we can adhere to the legal structures that have dispossessed Native peoples and fueled development that turns a blind eye to environmental limits and continue to hurtle toward a future in which more and more people fight over less and less water while the land’s original inhabitants continue to be robbed of the resources needed to sustain their communities.

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I have benefited from all the previous work on the dam and from the scholars and journalists who have written about its many different aspects. There are so many people who have contributed to this literature that I cannot include them all in my acknowledgments, but I count myself lucky to have been able to read many of those works. Leading up to the publication of this book, many different people provided me with advice, assistance, and constructive criticism. I especially want to thank Martin Summers, Richard White, James Sidbury, Jennifer Graber, Jane P. Hafen, Julie Hardwick, Angelo Baca, Thomas Alexander, John Herron, and Paul Conrad for all the heavy lifting they did. All of them read a complete draft of the entire manuscript and provided invaluable feedback. Members of the Native American Indigenous Studies Writers Group, including Colleen O’Neill, Tisa Wenger, Coll Thrush, Brian Delay, Andrew Fisher, Farina King, Chantal Norrgard, Cathleen Cahill, Doug Miller, and Boyd Cothran, read drafts of material that appears in the book and helped make it better. I thank them all for their close readings, insightful questions, and generous feedback. Gavin Noyes, Aldeen Ketchum, Malcolm Lehi, Mark Maryboy, Michael Haswood, Cyntia Wilson, Honor Keeler, and Angelo Baca from Utah Diné Bikéyah also provided invaluable assistance by helping me learn more about Bears Ears. Gavin also read parts of the manuscript and provided some key corrections and essential insights. For that, I am exceptionally grateful. Colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin, both in my department and from the College of Liberal Arts, have been very supportive. Chairs Jaqueline Jones and Daina Berry provided encouragement and advice. Randy Lewis, Kelly McDonough, Joan Neuberger, Indrani Chaterjee, Tracie Matysik, Judith Coffin, Megan Raby, Bruce Hunt, Alberto Martinez, Jorge Canizares-Esquerra, Alan Tully, Neil Kamil, C. J. Alvarez, Ben 196

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Brower, Eric Drott, Kirsten Cather, and Anthony Webster read and provided feedback on different sections of the book. My former and current students James Jenkins, Neel Baumgardner, and Lauren Ayers helped with research, while Alina Scott, Jesse Ritner, Adrienne Sockwell, and Gwen Lockman were engaged discussants on topics related to the book. Gwen Lockman provided much-needed help with photo permissions at a key moment. Alex Taft helped with the bibliography. Various threads from discussions with Emily Brownell, Cameron Strang, and Christopher Heaney can also be found in the book. I thank them all. In addition to support from colleagues, I was awarded a Provosts Author’s Fellowship, a Humanities Research Award, and two fellowships from the Institute for Historical Studies in order to help me complete the manuscript. I thank the department, college, and university for providing this support. Beyond my home institution, numerous colleagues and institutions have helped make this book possible as well. Colleagues at Brigham Young University, including Brenden Rensink, Jay Buckley, Thomas Alexander, and Brian Cannon, all provided useful commentary. The Redd Center at BYU also provided research funding. I would also like to thank the Rachel Carson Center at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and its director, Christof Mauch, for a three-month fellowship as well as my fellowship cohort, including Nichole Graham, John Barry, Andrea Gaynor, Victor Seow, Patrick Reed, Daniel Lewis, Hal Crimmel, Ruth Morgan, and Simone Muller, for their incisive and useful input on chapter 1 of the manuscript. I feel lucky to have Mark Fiege, Jay Taylor, Ari Kelman, Mary Mendoza, Andrew Needham, James Brooks, Neil Maher, Anne Martinez, Mark Fiege, Joe Gentin Pilawa, and Jared Famer as colleagues who provided crucial intellectual support during the writing process. I am continually impressed by their commitment to the discipline and their willingness to provide helpful comments and useful advice. Dina Gilio-Whitaker and Jennifer Denetdale helped answer key questions related to the manuscript and my framework at key moments. John L. Brooke and Donald Jackson were gracious enough to discuss and provide advice on parts of early versions of different chapters as well. I was able to preview some of the material that appears in this book in talks I was invited to give at the University of Michigan and at the Huntington Library. I am thankful to Katherine French, Robert C. Ritchie, Peter Blodgett, and Dan Lewis for those opportunities. Finally, a year-long fellowship from the Louisville Institute made it possible for me to complete a large section of this manuscript. Without such support, I’m sure this book would have taken me even longer to complete. Archivists and librarians at various institutions furnished useful leads 197

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and research assistance. I would especially like to thank the librarians and archivists from special collections libraries at the University of Arizona, University of Utah, Brigham Young University, Utah State University, the University of Wyoming, the Denver Public Library, the Lyndon B. Johnson Library, the New York Public Library, the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, the Colorado Historical Society, the Utah Historical Society, the Utah State Archives, the Norman Rockwell Museum, Northern Arizona University’s Cline Library, the Utah Research Center of the Utah State Archives, the Center for Southwest Studies at Fort Lewis College, the Fowler Museum, the Navajo Office of Historic Preservation, the Center for Southwest Research at the University of New Mexico, and the Water Archives at Colorado State University. Dan Webb from the Utah USGS office also helped me locate hard-to-find information. At the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, Peter Blodgett and Dan Lewis provided assistance at critical moments in the development of the book. Greg Thompson at the Marriott Library and Ardis K. Smith at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Church Archive did as well. David Price, the law librarian for the US District Courts Law Libraries was essential in helping me find the Badoni case records and depositions. I was able to correspond with Stephen Jett and meet in person with Richard Bradley, both of whom not only are impressive scholars in their own right but were involved in some of the historical events covered in this manuscript. Their perspective was especially helpful in crafting chapters 4 and 5, and I am grateful they took the time to answer my questions, and in Bradley’s case, meet and share documents from his personal collection with me. At the University of Texas Press, Robert Devens and Dawn Durante have been a pleasure to work with as I navigated the publication process. I cannot thank them enough for their helpful feedback and tolerance as they waited for the manuscript and answered questions. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers who provided insightful comments during the review process. My strongest thanks goes to my family and friends, who have sustained me throughout the writing process. I cannot thank Daniel and Liam Hannon enough for their patience as I spent long hours in archives or tucked away in my office. They shouldered the lion’s share of my stress, and I appreciate their love and kindness. My parents, Peter and Maria Bsumek; my aunt, Vera R. Campbell; and my brother, Peter Bsumek, offered help in a variety of forms when it was much needed. I feel extremely grateful that I have such an amazingly supportive family. Friends including Kirsten Thomson, Joan Neuberger, Judy Coffin, Susie Thomas, Mindy Johnston, Rachel 198

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Borup, Beth Reyburn, Traci Matysik, Andreas Matouschek, Virgina Talley, Janani Mukundan, Julie Hardwick, and Martin Summers helped me stay sane during the writing process. Most important, they provided essential encouragement that helped me keep going. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Jim Sidbury and Amy Lessner—each knows why, and I am grateful. I am also especially thankful to Gero Matouschek, who went out of his way to take one of the photographs that appears in this book. Despite all the help I received, there may be errors in the book, though I hope there are not. If there are, I am responsible for all of them. In addition, I also apologize in advance to anyone who helped me that I might have neglected to mention in the acknowledgments. I dedicate this book to my parents, who taught me the value of learning history, and also to my son, Liam Hannon, and the members of Utah Diné Bikéyah—all of whom make me hopeful for the future.

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a rchi v es a nd m a nuscr ipts 1898 Census. US Census Records. National Archives and Records Administration. 1910 Census. US Census Records. National Archives and Records Administration. Arendt, Gertrude. Bsumek-Bierwald Family History. In possession of author. 1999. Billings, Alfred. Diary. Harold B. Lee Library. Brigham Young University. Brooks, Juanita. Collection. Huntington Library. Brower, David. Collection. Bancroft Library. University of California, Berkeley. Colorado Plateau Archives. Special Collections. Cline Library. Northern Arizona University. Cummings, Byron. Collection. Anthropological Special Collections. J. Willard Marriott Library. University of Utah. Cummings, Byron. Collection. Special Collections. J. Willard Marriott Library. University of Utah. Dawson, W. A. Collection. Special Collections. J. Willard Marriott Library. University of Utah. Dominy, Floyd. Collection. Special Collections. University of Wyoming. Duke, Doris. Oral History Collection. Special Collections. J. Willard Marriott Library. University of Utah. Glen Canyon Dam Collection. Special Collections. Cline Library. Northern Arizona University. Gregory, Edna Hope. Papers. Museum of Northern Arizona. Gregory, Herbert E. Papers. Special Collections. J. Willard Marriott Library. University of Utah. Hamblin, Jacob. Letters and Papers. Huntington Library. Inventory of the County Archives of Utah No. 20 Sanpete County (Manti). Utah State Archives. Jones, Kumen. Collection. Huntington Library. Jones, Paul. Papers. Special Collections. Cline Library. Northern Arizona University. Judd, Mary Minerva Dart. Diary. Huntington Library. Judd, Neil. Photo Collection. National Archives and Records Administration.

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bi bl io g r a p h y Nakai, Raymond. Papers. Cline Library. Northern Arizona University. Land Patent Records of the State of Utah. Utah State Archives. LaRue, Eugene C. Collection. Huntington Library. McKay, Koln Gunn. Collection. Utah State University. Marsten, Otis “Doc.” Collection. Huntington Library. Merzel, Stephanie Young. Papers. Special Collections. J. Willard Marriott Library. University of Utah. Monaghan, Jay. Interviews. Colorado Historical Society. Powell, John Wesley. Papers. National Anthropological Archives. Rainbow Bridge Monument Valley Collection. Bancroft Library. University of California, Berkeley. Rainbow Bridge Monument Valley Collection. Fowler Museum. University of California, Los Angeles. Rainbow Bridge Monument Valley Expedition Photograph Collection. Center for Southwest Studies. Fort Lewis College. Rainbow Bridge National Monument Collection. Special Collections. Cline Library. Northern Arizona University. Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Record Group 75. National Archives and Records Administration. Rockwell, Norman. Collection. Norman Rockwell Museum. Rusho, Bud. Oral History. National Archives and Records Administration. Savage, C. R. Photo Collection. Harold B. Lee Library. Brigham Young University. Sprang, Richard (Dick). Collection. Cline Library. Northern Arizona University. South Cottonwood Ward Association Collection. Special Collections. J. Willard Marriott Library. University of Utah. Stringham, Briant H. Papers. Special Collections. Utah State University. Terry, Hanna Leavitt. Journal. University of Illinois Archives. Udall, Stewart L. Papers. Special Collections. University of Arizona. Untermann, Ernest C. Collection. Special Collections. J. Willard Marriott Library. University of Utah. Watkins, Arthur V. Collection. Harold B. Lee Library. Brigham Young University. Woodbury, Angus. Collection. Special Collections. J. Willard Marriott Library. University of Utah. WPA Collection. Utah State Archives.

interv iews a nd author discussions Bradley, Richard C. Interview. August 4, 2018. Colorado Springs, CO. Cuglietta, Vera. Interview, July 31, 1999. Ketchum, Aldeen. Discussion with the author; storytelling evening at Utah Diné Bikéyah event. May 25, 2019. Monument Valley.

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bi bl io g r a p h y Lehi, Malcolm. Discussion with the author. May 25, 2019. Comb Ridge, Bears Ears National Monument.

w ebsites Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition. https://bearsearscoalition.org/about-the-coalition. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona. https://itcaonline.com/member-tribes/san-juan-south ern-paiute. The ONWARD Project. https://www.onwardproject.org/mission. Utah Diné Bikéyah. https://utahdinebikeyah.org/overview.

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i l lus t r at ion cr e di ts

figur es figu r e 1.1. Leroy E. E. Slow, Sharlot M. Hall at the Grand Canyon.

PC-4 7.2. Courtesy of Sharlot Hall Museum Library and Archives. figu r e 1.2. Rose Daniels. Digital reproduction, 2003. Uintah County Library

Regional History Center. © 2003 Uintah County Library. figu r e 2.1. Herbert E. Gregory, Edna’s Needle. Special Collections,

J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah. figu r e 2.2. John K. Hollers, John Wesley Powell and Native American, 1873.

Image no. 2002-10682, Smithsonian Institution Archives. figu r e 2.3. Charles Roscoe Savage, Brigham Young and Party at Colorado River,

1870. Charles R. Savage Photograph Collection, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University. figu r e 2.4. Neil M. Judd. Neil M. Judd Photographic Collection Relating

to the Discovery of Rainbow Bridge, Utah, 1909–1927. Prints and Negatives Relating to the Discovery of Rainbow Bridge, Utah, 1909–1927, National Archives and Records Administration. figu r e 2.5. Herbert E. Gregory, Ancient Irrigation Ditch, 1909. Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah. figu r e 2.6. Herbert E. Gregory and Simeon Schwemberger, Driving Well Point,

Navajo Reservation, Ariz. Schwenberger, 1909. Herbert E. Gregory Photograph Collection, Multimedia Archives, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah. figu r e 2.7. Charles Goodman, Artesian Well (100 Gals. per Min.) at “Twins,” Bluff, Utah, 1909. Herbert E. Gregory Photograph Collection, Multimedia Archives, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah.

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i l l u s t r at ion c r e di t s figu r e 3.1. Eugene Clyde LaRue, Frank Dodge Standing on the Bow of the

“Navajo” at Sentinel Rock Creek, August 10, 1921. 5″ × 4″. V155/0119, vols. 151–170, Persons (alphabetical), Papers of Otis R. Marston, Otis Marston Colorado River Collection, Huntington Library, San Marino, California. figu r e 3.2. Kirk Bryan and E. C. La Rue, “the Navajo Twins as photographed

by E. G. Woodruff in 1909” and “the Navajo Twins as photographed by E. C. La Rue in 1925 from the same point as that used by Woodruff in 1909.” Geographical Review 17, no. 2 (April 1927): 253. figu r e 3.3. Grace Hoover, Navajo Visitor to Camp, 1934. SWP 008, vol. 9, 067,

Ansel Hall Photograph Albums: Rainbow Bridge–Monument Valley Expedition, Center for Southwest Studies, Fort Lewis College. figu r e 3.4. Angus Woodbury at Smith Fork Petroglyphs, September 1957.

P1194, Everett Ruess Family Photograph Collection, Multimedia Archives, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah. figu r e 5.1. V. Jetley, “Under Rainbow Bridge are Harold Mott, Navajo Tribal Attorney: Raymond Nakai, Chairman, Navajo Tribal Council: Graham Holmes, Area Director, BIA: Frank Kowski, Regional Director, NPA; and John Cooke of NPS. Kneeling are Harthon ‘Spud’ Bill, Deputy Director, Bureau of Reclamation. 6/19/69—Bureau of Reclamation photo by V. Jetley,” 1969. US Bureau of Reclamation, Colorado Plateau Digital Collections, Cline Library, Northern Arizona University. figu r e 5.2. Jim Mike, Discoverer of Rainbow Bridge. Used by permission.

© 2009 Utah State Historical Society. figu r e 5.3. Secretary of the Interior Udall Touring Rainbow Bridge, Glen Canyon National Park, Utah, 1961. AZ 372, Stewart Udall Papers. Courtesy of University of Arizona Special Collections. © Arizona Board of Regents for the University of Arizona. figu r e 5.4. Angus M. Woodbury, “Aerial photograph of the region around Rainbow Bridge, looking south up Aztec Creek. The principal features of the plans for protecting the national monument are indicated.” Science 132, no. 3426 (August 26, 1960): 520. Image from the US Bureau of Reclamation.

g a llery figur es g a l l ery figu r e 1. Forest Service, United States Department of Agriculture,

Bears Ears National Monument, December 14, 2016. g a l l ery figu r e 2. Norman Rockwell, Glen Canyon Dam, 1969.

Oil on canvas, 51″ × 77″. Glen Canyon Dam, Colorado River Storage Project, US Bureau of Reclamation.

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i l l u s t r at ion c r e di t s g a l l ery figu r e 3. Marty Tow for the National Parks Service,

Wolfe Ranch Petroglyphs, 2017. g a l l ery figu r e 4. Dick Beasley, Navajo Reservation—Black Mesa. In Geologic Cross Section of the Grand Canyon-San Francisco Peaks-Verde Valley Region; Geologic Cross Section of the Cedar Breaks-ZionGrand Canyon Region (Zion Natural History Association, 1975). g a l l ery figu r e 5. Lady Bird Johnson at the Dedication of Glen Canyon Dam,

September 22, 1966. 28A, photograph contact sheet, 1966-09-22-C3197. White House Photo Office Collection, LBJ Presidential Library. g a l l ery figu r e 6. “The Upper Colorado River Storage Project,” Dial-a-Fact card.

Aqualante Papers, MS 0118, box 11, folder 23, Ernest Untermann Collection, Series VII, Upper Colorado River Basin Papers, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah. g a l l ery figu r e 7. Michael Haswood, Distant Thunder Ancestors, 2021.

Color pencil and acrylic black paint pen. Erika M. Bsumek collection. g a l l ery figu r e 8. Gero Matouschek, Low Water, Glen Canyon Dam,

January 17, 2021.

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i n de x

Note: Page numbers in italics denote images and captions. Abbey, Edward, 13 Act for the Further Relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners, 44 Adams, Ansel, 185 adoption of Indigenous children, 17, 45– 46, 65 aerial photography, 113 Ahkeah, Sam, 128, 150–155, 158–160 Alexander, Thomas, 36 American Association of State and Local History (AASLH), 154 “American dream,” 130 American Museum of Natural History, 105 “An Alien God” (Nakai), 174 Anderson, Aldon J., 162–163, 165, 172, 235n53 Aneth Navajos, 160 Ansh An Laskokdiwe, 192. See also Bears Ears (Bears Ears National Monument) Aqualante. See Upper Colorado River Grass Roots, Inc. Arapien, 33, 35–36, 40, 42, 46 archaeological research: and impact of dam construction, 91; and Mormon expeditions in Ute lands, 41; and Rainbow Bridge-Monument Valley Expedition, 107–109, 113; and scien-

tific expeditions in Southwest, 58, 87; and survey expeditions, 60, 64, 67–71 Arizona, 6, 27–28, 135, 153 Arizona Strip, 21, 116, 203n2 Armstrong, Ellis L., 135 Arthur, Chester A., 168 As Long as the Grass Grows (GilioWhitaker), 14 Aspinall, Wayne, 181 assimilation, 134, 144–150, 165. See also missions and missionaries Associated Press, 189 “AstroTurf ” lobbying groups, 153. See also Upper Colorado River Grass Roots, Inc. Atovle, Ned, 179 Aztec Canyon, 179 Baca, Angelo, 9 Badoni, Lamarr, 164, 190 Badoni v. Higginson, 17, 158–159, 162–166, 168, 170–174, 182, 184–188 Bahe, Denet, 54, 80 Ballinger, Richard A., 169 baptisms, 35, 39–40. See also conversion of Indigenous people Barton, Morgan Amasa, 27, 29 Beal, John, 45–46

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i n de x Beal, William, 46 Beals, Ralph, 107–108 Beard, Dan, 191 Bears Ears (Bears Ears National Monument), 9, 10–11, 18, 105, 191–195, 204n7, 239n12 Bears Ears Commission, 18 Bears Ears Pass, 160 Begay, Noscha/Nasja (father and son), 70–71, 166 Bennett, John W., 107–110, 112–113 Benson, Ezra T., 172 Biden, Joe, 193–194 big horn sheep, 41 Billings, Alfred, 33–42 Birth of a Basin (documentary), 147 Bishop, Jesse, 46 Bits’iis Nineezi. See Colorado River Bitsinnie, Begay, 164 Black, Jessie Yazzi, 164 Black, Megan, 14 Black Canyon, 99–100, 103 Black Mesa region, 85–86 Blind Salt (Ashiihi bin aa adini), 70–71 Bluff, Utah, 105, 139, 193 Boiling Stream, 82 Bolton, Herbert E., 107 Book of Mormon, 25, 136 Born-for-Water (toba’djictcini), 96 Bosque Redondo (Hweeldi), 56 botany research, 8 Boulder Canyon (Hoover Dam), 93, 99– 100, 103 Bower, David, 178 Boy Scouts, 146 Bradley, Richard C., 175 Brainerd, George, 107–108 Bridge Canyon, 103 Bridger, Jim, 31 Brigham City, Arizona, 132 Brigham Young University (BYU), 115 Bright Angel Trail, 94 Brooks, Juanita, 43, 47, 178

Brower, David, 2, 13, 137, 145, 157, 175, 177, 184–186 Bryan, Kirk, 96 Bsumek family history, viii–x Buchanan, James, 26 Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), 18, 54, 73–74, 81, 137, 148–150, 192 Bureau of Land Management (BLM), x, 18, 120, 192 Bureau of Reclamation (BOR): and Badoni v. Higginson case, 164; and changing attitudes on Glen Canyon Dam, 157; and contests for political influence, 128; and continuing fight over sacred lands, 191; and dam dedication ceremony, 1, 2; and Indigenous claims on Rainbow Bridge, 166, 171; and lake intrusion into Rainbow Bridge, 155; and LaRue’s expeditions, 102; and LDS claims on Glen Canyon, 144; and linking of termination and reclamation policies, 148; and political ecology of erasure, 115; and politics of water reclamation policy, 133, 135; and scope and context of study, 16 burial sites, 109, 112, 164, 217n72 Burton, Theodore, 127–128 Byrd, Jodi, 218n106 California, 27 Call’s Landing, 30 Camp, Charles, 111 Canning, Deween, 142 Canyon de Chelly, 56 Canyon of the Gods, 141 Capote Utes, 7 Capsuim a Gampi, 39 Carbon County, Utah, xi Carithers, Joe, 178 Carleton, James Henry, 32 Carse, Ashley, 19 Carson, Christopher (Kit), 32, 55, 68, 168 Carson Mesa, 55–56, 83

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i n de x Cataract Canyon, 94 cattle herding, 28, 38, 40 Cedar City, Utah, 31, 38 Cedar Paiutes, 8 Central Arizona Project (CAP), 162 Charles (son of Quilsoscket), 39–40 Chief, Karlotta, 83 children of Indigenous peoples, 17, 43–51, 65, 210n78 Chinle, Arizona, 55–56 Chubbuck, Levi, 169, 170 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS): and author’s background, vii–xi; claims on Glen Canyon, 138–144; and Clyde’s background, 152; and contests for political influence, 129; and continuing fight over sacred lands, 192–194; and dam dedication ceremony, 1, 127; and dispossession of Indigenous lands and children, 15–18, 31–33, 42–53, 187, 209n77, 210n78; environmental philosophy of, 36; and indentured servitude, 44, 45–46, 48, 209n77; and Indigenous claims on Rainbow Bridge, 169, 172–174; and linking of termination and reclamation policies, 145– 147, 149–150; and Mormon settlement of region, 21–24; and naming conventions of white explorers, 81, 83, 85; and Navajo irrigation projects, 154–155; and Navajo support for dam project, 159–160; overuse of timber resources, 23, 37, 41, 208n54; and political ecology of erasure, 114–120, 122–123; and politics of water reclamation policy, 131–134, 134–138; population growth in Utah territory, 207n32; and previous scholarship, 11–15; and Rainbow Bridge diversion dam proposal, 178, 182–183; and regional colonization, 3–4; relationship with US government, 208n51; and religious obser-

vances at Rainbow Bridge, 141; and settlement of Colorado Plateau, 8–11; settlers’ relations with Indigenous peoples, 24–27, 205n18, 207n49; and surveying/scientific expeditions, 33– 42, 57–58, 60, 62–67, 69, 76–80, 86– 89, 88, 99–101; and Woodbury’s background, 91–93; and Young’s vision for region, 27–30 Clark University, 105 class divisions, 106–107 Cleveland, Grover, 54, 80, 108 cliff dwellers, 77 climate change, 4–5, 19, 191, 194 Clyde, George Dewey, 124, 134, 146, 152– 154, 187 coal resources, 14 Cobra Head Canyon Camp, 108 Coe, Frederick, 110 Cold War, 114, 134 Collier, John, 137 Colobella, Beneditto, ix colonialism/colonization: and changing attitudes on Glen Canyon Dam, 157– 158; and continuing fight over sacred lands, 190, 191, 193, 239n12; and culture of dispossession, 5–7, 187; and “economies of dispossession,” 218n75; and Indigenous claims on Rainbow Bridge, 171–174; and LDS claims on Glen Canyon, 144; and naming conventions of white explorers, 76–78, 80, 82–85; and political ecology of erasure, 114, 120, 122; and politics of water reclamation policy, 132; role of irrigation projects in, 76, 78–80, 89; and scientific expeditions, 69, 87, 102, 104; and scope and context of study, 15, 18; ties to Mormon religion, 3; and Woodbury’s background, 91–92 Colorado, 6, 135, 153 Colorado Plateau: and author’s background, vii–viii; and Badoni v. Hig-

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i n de x ginson decision, 158; and continuing fight over sacred lands, 190; and culture of dispossession, 187; and Cummings and Douglass’s expeditions, 68–69; described, 7; and dispossession of Indigenous children, 48; and dispossession of Indigenous lands, 32; and establishment of “Mormon corridor,” 27; and Indigenous claims on Rainbow Bridge, 174; and Indigenous irrigation practices, 74; labeled “Navajo Country” by Gregory, 74; and LaRue’s expeditions, 98; and LDS claims on Glen Canyon, 144; and Mormon conversion of Indigenous peoples, 25; and Mormon settlement of region, 5–7, 7–11, 22, 35; and naming conventions of white explorers, 72, 73–76, 82, 84, 85; and Navajo support for dam project, 160; and political ecology of erasure, 114, 121, 122– 123; and Rainbow Bridge-Monument Valley Expedition, 105, 108, 112; and regional knowledge networks, 93; and scientific expeditions in Southwest, 54–58, 59–67, 68, 86; and scope and context of study, 4, 12–14, 15, 18; and Young’s vision for region, 27–28 Colorado River: and borders of Navajo Country, 76; and commencement of dam construction, 1; and continuing fight over sacred lands, 194–195; and environmental activism, 145; and LaRue’s expeditions, 98; and LDS claims on Glen Canyon, 139, 140, 143; and Mormon settlement of region, 22–23; and politics of water reclamation policy, 135, 146; and scope and context of study, 16, 17; and white settlement of Colorado Plateau, 9; and Young’s vision for region, 30 Colorado River Compact, 4, 191 Colorado River Project, 91

Colorado River Storage Act, 164, 174–175 Colorado River Storage Project (CRSP): authorization of, 90–91; and changing attitudes on Glen Canyon Dam, 157; and contests for political influence, 128–129; and creation of Aqualante, 152–153, 155; input for Navajo leaders, 150–152; and LaRue’s expeditions, 99; and LDS claims on Glen Canyon, 138; and linking of termination and reclamation policies, 144– 147, 149–150; and Navajo support for dam project, 158–159, 162; and politics of water reclamation policy, 135, 137; and Rainbow Bridge diversion dam proposal, 176 Colorado River Storage Project Act, 135 conquistadors, 83 conservationism, 113. See also environmental protection and activism; stewardship ethic conversion of Indigenous people, 9, 10, 25–26, 29, 35, 137 Cook, Barbara, 142 Cottonwood trees, 37 cross-cultural pressures, 33–34, 52 Cummings, Bryon: and continuing fight over sacred lands, 189; and Indigenous claims on Rainbow Bridge, 166– 167; and LaRue’s expeditions, 102; and naming conventions of white explorers, 73; and political ecology of erasure, 120; and Rainbow BridgeMonument Valley Expedition, 108; and scope and context of study, 16; and success of LDS colonizers, 87; and survey expeditions, 69–72 Curley, Andrew, 6 Daghaa Sik’, 32 Dairy Queen Rock, 141 Daniels, Aaron, 48, 50 Daniels, Harriet, 50

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i n de x Daniels, Rose, 48–52, 51, 102, 211n99, 212n108 Daniels, Walter, 48, 50 Dant, Sara, 41 Dave Evans Public Relations, 146 Dawson, William A., 135, 153 Day, Sammy, 179, 183 dedication ceremony for dam, 1–4, 124, 126, 128–129, 161 Denetdale, Jennifer, 10, 32 Denison, Brandi, 41 Dibe’ Ntsaa (Mount Hesperus), 8 Dickey, Sonia, 159, 183–184 Diné Bikeyah, viii, 74, 96, 108, 130, 191– 192. See also Utah Diné Bikeyah (UDB) Dinosaur National Monument (DNM), 90–91, 135, 144–146, 175 Ditl’oi, Nakai, 164 diversion dam proposals, 175–177, 179– 185, 180 “Dixie” region, 30, 209n76 DNA People’s Legal Services, 162 Doctrine of Discovery, 187 Dodge, Frank, 95 Dominy, Floyd, 13, 175, 177, 181–182, 184, 237n94 Dook’o’oosłiid (San Francisco Peak), 8 Doris Duke Oral History Project, 48 Douglass, William: and continuing fight over sacred lands, 189; and culture of dispossession, 187; and Indigenous claims on Rainbow Bridge, 166–170; and LaRue’s expeditions, 102; and naming conventions of white explorers, 73; and Rainbow Bridge-Monument Valley Expedition, 108; and scope and context of study, 16; and success of LDS colonizers, 87; survey expeditions, 67, 69–72 drought, 78, 105, 115, 124, 191, 194

Eardly, Armand J., 178 Echo Park and Dam, 13, 90–91, 135, 144– 147, 175 ecological despair, 19 economic development, 2, 128, 130, 154, 166 Edna Needle, 55, 56, 83 education, 130 Elk Mountains (La Sal Mountains), 31, 33, 37–38, 40–42 Elk Mountain Utes, 42 Emmons, Glenn L., 149 employment of Indigenous people on dam project, xi, 2, 19, 124, 129, 131, 154–156, 160–161, 232n82 engineers, 6 Entrada layer, 85 environmental impact statement (EIS), 164 Environmental Protection Act, 165 environmental protection and activism, 4–5, 14, 36, 91, 144–145, 157, 184–187. See also stewardship ethic environmental racism, 14 “Equality of Opportunity” ceremony, 1 erosion rates, 96, 97 Escalante River, 73, 140 ethnography, 76, 109 Evans, David W., 152, 154 Fannin, Paul, 124 Farmer, Jared, 13–14, 25, 139 Finger, Thomas, 28 First Amendment, 164–165, 172 Fish and Wildlife Service, 120 Forest and Range Office, 120 Fort Bridger, Wyoming, 31, 50 Fort Sumner (Hweeldi), 9, 31, 85 Four Corners region, 132, 146 Fowler, Don D., 84, 107 Fredonia, Arizona, 21–22, 48, 52, 79–80 Fremont, John, 88 Friends of the Earth (FOE), 157

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i n de x Friends of the Earth v. Armstrong, 185–186, 238n99 gender roles and norms, 4, 116 General Land Office, 70 geological research, 16, 54–56, 60, 72–73, 170, 218n73, 220n95 “The Geology of Navajo Country” (Gregory), 82 Gilio-Whitaker, Dina, 14, 184 Glen Canyon Bridge Dedication Committee, 123–124 Glen Canyon–Colorado River expedition (1959), 140 Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, 161 “Glen Canyon Reservoir Upper Colorado River Basin Working Plan for Ecological Studies” (Woodbury), 120 Glen Canyon Salvage Project, 107 goat herding, 37 Goldstein, Alyosha, 104, 218n106 Goodman, Jimmy, 164 Grand Canyon, 22–23, 94 Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, 54 grazing rights, 159 Great Basin, 15 Great Depression, 105–106, 124 Green River Utes, 37, 40 Gregory, Edna Hope, 16, 55–56, 117–118 Gregory, Herbert E.: and culture of dispossession, 187; and Cummings and Douglass’s expeditions, 72–73; and Indigenous claims on Rainbow Bridge, 170, 174; and Indigenous irrigation practices, 75–76, 79–80, 81; on indigenous ruins, 217n73; and LaRue’s expeditions, 98–99; and LDS claims on Glen Canyon, 143; and naming conventions of white explorers, 73–86, 219n89, 220n95; and political ecology of erasure, 117–118, 120,

122; and Rainbow Bridge-Monument Valley Expedition, 91–92, 107–108, 110–112; and scientific expeditions in Southwest, 54–58; and scope and context of study, 16; and success of LDS colonizers, 87–89 Gregory Arch, 73 Grover, N. C., 102 Hall, Ansel Franklin, 105 Hall, Edward T., 107 Hall, Sharlot, 21–22, 22, 52, 79 Halliday, William R., 177–178 Hamblin, Jacob, 46–47, 133 Hansen, Clifford, 152 Hargrave, Lyndon L., 107, 224n54 Harrison, Benjamin, 169, 219n91 Haskeneinii, 32 Haswood, Michael, 194 Hatahley v. United States, 159–160 hatałii (Navajo singers/healers), 9 Hawaii, 27, 30 Hero Twins, 68, 88, 96, 97 Hetch Hetchy Valley, 102–104 heterogeneous engineering, 201n10 Hinkley, Arza E., 77–78 “A History of Southern Utah and Its National Parks” (Woodbury), 118, 122 Hole-in-the-Rock, 138–140, 159–160 Holiday, Betty, 164 Holiday, Teddy, 164, 165 homesteading, ix–xi, 59, 98–102 Hoon’Naqvut, 192. See also Bears Ears (Bears Ears National Monument) Hoover Dam, 5, 99, 148 Hopi people: and author’s background, viii; and continuing fight over sacred lands, 192; and creation of Bears Ears National Monument, 11; and culture of dispossession, 187; historical significance of Glen Canyon to, 13; and Indigenous claims on Rainbow Bridge, 168, 172, 234n32; irrigation practices,

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i n de x Hopi people: (continued) 92; and LDS claims on Glen Canyon, 142–143; and LDS missions, 228n21; and Mormon dispossession of Indigenous lands, 33; and Mormon settlement of region, 23; and naming conventions of white explorers, 75, 77, 80, 82–83, 85; and Rainbow BridgeMonument Valley Expedition, 110; and scope and context of study, 17–19; and Young’s vision for region, 30 Hopi reservation, 75 horses, 8–9, 35, 37–38, 41 House Appropriations Committee, 181–182 Hunt, Garland, 42 Hunt, Jas, 38–39 hunting resources, 23, 39–41, 51–52 Huntington, William D., 28 Hyde, Philip, 185 hydrological data, 16 hydropower, 5, 148, 191 Idaho, 27 indentured servitude, 44–46, 48, 209n77 Indian Agents, 26 Indian Peaks Paiutes, 8 Indians I Have Known (Cummings), 71 Indian Student Placement Program (ISPP), 134–136, 149 Indian wars, 26 Indigenous guides: and continuing fight over sacred lands, 189; and LaRue’s expeditions, 98, 102; and LDS claims on Glen Canyon, 140–142; and Mormon settlement of region, 21; and naming conventions of white explorers, 73–74, 77, 80–81, 83; and Navajo claims on Rainbow Bridge, 166–167; and Rainbow Bridge-Monument Valley Expedition, 109; and scientific expeditions in Southwest, 54, 57–58,

87–88; and survey expeditions, 60, 62–64, 63, 66–67, 68–71 intercultural exchange, 41 Intermountain Indian School, 151 internment of Indigenous people, 32 irrigation: and Gregory’s expeditions, 74, 75–76, 78–80, 81; and Indigenous support for CRSP, 150–152; and LaRue’s expeditions, 100; and linking of termination and reclamation policies, 148–149; and Mormon dispossession of Indigenous lands, 32, 48, 52; and Mormon settlement of region, 22–23, 88; Navajo Indian Irrigation Project, 154; and political ecology of erasure, 114; and politics of water reclamation policy, 132; role of, in colonial project, 76, 78–80, 89; and Rose Daniels, 51 irrigation ditches, 6 Izaak Walton League, 91, 144–145 Jackman, Levi, 26 Jackson, William Henry, 96 Jackson County, Missouri, 24 Jacobson, Cecil, 178 Jacoby, Karl, 72 Johnson, Lady Bird, 1, 126–127 Jones, Kumen, 28–29, 32 Jones, Paul: and contests for political influence, 128; and dedication of dam, 123–124; and Indigenous support for CRSP, 151–152; and the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project, 154–155; and Navajo support for dam project, 158–159; and Rainbow Bridge diversion dam proposal, 176, 179–180, 183–184 Josephson, John C., 142 Journal of Range Management, 113 Judd, Mary Minerva Dart, 47 K’aayilii, 32 Kaibab Paiutes, 22, 78, 79, 169, 218n106

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i n de x Kaiparowits Plateau, 54 Kanab, Utah, 78–80, 218n106 Kanab Creek, 22, 79 Kanosh Paiutes, 8 Kayenta strata, 84 KCLS radio, 129, 130 Keet Seel Canyon, 111 Ketchum, Aldean, 70, 166 Kilgore, Bruce, 178–179 King, Farina, 10 Kisani people, 77, 217n72 Kiwanis Club, 161 Knack, Martha, 44, 48, 169 Kolb, Emery, 94 Koosharem Paiutes, 8 Lake Canyon, 142 Lake Mead, 148 Lake Powell: and “American Dream” ideology, 130–131; and Badoni v. Higginson case, 163–165; and continuing fight over sacred lands, 191, 194; and dam dedication, 1–2; and economic development among Navajos, 151; and Indigenous claims on Rainbow Bridge, 172–173; and LDS claims on Glen Canyon, 143; and Navajo support for dam project, 160–162; and Rainbow Bridge diversion dam proposal, 174– 184; rising waters at Rainbow Bridge, 155, 157–158; and scope and context of study, 17, 19 Lake Powell: The Jewel of the Colorado (Department of the Interior), 131 Lamanites: and dispossession of Indigenous children, 43–44, 47–48; and dispossession of Indigenous lands, 39– 40; and LDS claims on Glen Canyon, 143; and Mormon redemption ideology, 25, 29–30, 131, 133–134, 136–138 Lamar, Howard, 33 land swaps, viii, 159 Lane, A. Bynum, 50

LaRue, Eugene Clyde: Colorado River expeditions, 93–105, 95; and culture of dispossession, 187; and LDS claims on Glen Canyon, 143; on opposition to dam projects, 145; and political ecology of erasure, 121–123; and Rainbow Bridge diversion dam proposal, 175– 176; and Rainbow Bridge-Monument Valley Expedition, 105–106; support for dam project, 92–93 LaRue, Scott, 100 La Sal Mountains, 7, 31 Law, John, 201n10 Lee, Lloyd, 10 Lee’s Ferry, Arizona, 93, 99–100, 102–103 Lehi, Malcolm, 10, 194 Lewis, Dan, 219n91 Lewis, David Rich, 41 Little Colorado River, 76, 132, 218n73 Littlesalt, Max, 111 livestock reduction programs, 150–151, 157 lobbying, 159. See also Upper Colorado River Grass Roots, Inc. Long Walk, 9, 32, 56, 85 looting of archaeological sites, 71 Los Angeles Water Department, 103 Lower Basin states, 191 Luckert, Karl W., 215n35 Lujan, Pedro Leon, 45 Lyman, Phil, 192–193 Lyon, William, 132 Mabey, Charles, 99, 103 MacNiesh, Richard, 107 Manuelito, Navajo chief, 11, 204n7 Manygoats, Joe, 164 Marble Canyon, Arizona, 48 Marsh Pass, 108 Maryboy, Mark, 191 Masland, Frank, 179 McCabe, Maurice, 179 McClintock, James, 52 McCracken Mesa, 159–160

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i n de x McEwen, John, 40 McKibben, Bill, 23 McPherson, Robert, 133 medicine men, 166, 194 Melamed, Jodi, 218n106 Mesa White Utes, 170 Metcalf, Warren, 136 Mexican-American War, 36 Mexican culture, 9, 45 Mike, Billy, 166 Mike, Jim, 67, 70, 71, 166, 167, 189 mining, 31, 71 missions and missionaries, 17, 23, 27–30, 32, 133–134, 140–141, 228n21 Mix, Tamara, 153 Moab, Utah, 31 Moccasin, Arizona, 78 Moenkopi, 85 Mokiac Wash, 116 Monster Slayer (na’ye’ ne’ayani), 96 Montezuma Creek, 160 Monticello, Utah, 98, 100, 105 Morehouse, Barbara, 28 Mormon corridor, 27, 31–33 Mormonism. See Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) Mormon-Missouri War of 1838, 24 Moroni, 25 Mosquito Springs, 10 Moss, Frank, 178–179, 181 Mount Dellenbaugh, 115 Muache Utes, 7 Muddy River, 30 Mulholland, William, 103 Museum of Northern Arizona, 105 Musser, A. Milton, 77 Nakai, Raymond: and “American Dream” ideology, 129–131; and Badoni v. Higginson case, 164; and contests for political influence, 128; and dam dedication, 1–3, 4, 126; and environmental protection of Rainbow Bridge,

187; on government’s mistreatment of Navajos, 156–157; and Indigenous claims on Rainbow Bridge, 174; and Navajo support for dam project, 158– 162; and politics of water reclamation policy, 137, 155; and Rainbow Bridge diversion dam proposal, 183; and scope and context of study, 18–19 naming conventions of explorers, 73–86 Nash, Gerald, 232n82 Nasja Creek, 219n89 National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), 129 National Park and National Monument system, 69. See also specific place names National Park Service (NPS): and administration of Rainbow Bridge site, 162–164, 166, 186, 188, 189; and continuing fight over sacred lands, 192; creation of, 72; and creation of Bears Ears National Monument, 18; and economic development goals, 89; and political ecology of erasure, 120– 121; and politics of water reclamation policy, 155; and Rainbow BridgeMonument Valley Expedition, 105; recognition of Jim Mike, 189 Native American Freedom Act, 189 Native American Relationships Policy (NARP), 189 Natural Bridges National Monument, 69 Naughty-Girl, Caroline, 160 Nauvoo, Illinois, 24 Navajo cosmology, 68, 142, 154 Navajo Country (Gregory), 73, 75, 82 Navajo Dam, 151, 195 Navajo Holy Beings, 68 Navajo Indian Irrigation Project (NIIP), 151–152, 154 Navajo Indian Reservation, 164 Navajo Mountain, 19, 32, 68, 166, 181, 185, 219n89

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i n de x Navajo Mountain and Rainbow Bridge Religion (Luckert), 215n35 Navajo Nation (NN): and administration of Rainbow Bridge, 166; and “American Dream” ideology, 129– 130; and author’s background, viii; and Badoni v. Higginson case, 163; and Bears Ears National Monument, 192, 195; and changing attitudes on Glen Canyon Dam, 157; and continuing fight over sacred lands, 189, 191; and criticisms of dam project, 2; and dam dedication, 124–129, 161; and foundations of dispossession, 18–19; and key moments in Glen Canyon history, 1–4; and legal framework of dispossession, 157; and linking of termination and reclamation policies, 144– 145, 150; Navajo Nation Council, 175, 191; and Navajo support for dam project, 159–162, 161; and political ecology of erasure, 120; and pro-development interests, 91; and Rainbow Bridge diversion dam proposal, 175, 183– 184; relations with Latter-day Saints, 134; and religious rights to Rainbow Bridge, 171; and white settlement of Colorado Plateau, 9 Navajo (Diné) people: and “American Dream” ideology, 129–131; and Badoni v. Higginson case, 162–166; and Bears Ears National Monument, 191– 195; and changing attitudes on Glen Canyon Dam, 156–158; and continuing fight over sacred lands, 189–191; cosmology, 96; and culture of dispossession, 187–188; and Cummings and Douglass’s expeditions, 68–70, 72– 73; and dam dedication, 126–129; and environmental protection of Rainbow Bridge, 184–187; and expansion of Mormon corridor, 31–33; and Gregory’s expedition, 54, 56–58, 88–

89; and Indigenous claims on Rainbow Bridge, 166–170; initial support for Glen Canyon Dam, 158–162; key leaders, 150–152; and key moments in Glen Canyon history, 1–4; and LaRue’s expeditions, 94–98, 95, 101– 102, 104; and LDS claims on Glen Canyon, 138–139, 141–144; and linking of termination and reclamation policies, 145, 147–150; and Mormon dispossession of Indigenous children, 44, 48–52; and Mormon expeditions, 33–38, 40, 42; and Mormon migration and proselytizing, 25–27; and Mormon settlement of region, 21, 23; and naming conventions of white explorers, 73–78, 80–85, 219n89; and politics of progress, 152–155; previous scholarship on Colorado Plateau, 13–14; and pro-development interests, 91–92; and Rainbow Bridge diversion dam proposal, 175–177, 179–184; and Rainbow Bridge-Monument Valley Expedition, 105, 107–112, 112; and regional development politics, 136–137; relations with Latter-day Saints, 131–134; and religious rights to Rainbow Bridge, 171–174; and religious significance of Rainbow Bridge, 68; and scientific narratives and erasure, 123–125; and scope and context of study, 15–19; and survey expeditions, 63–65, 67; and white settlement of Colorado Plateau, 7–11; and Woodbury’s expedition and research, 119, 121; and Young’s vision for region, 28–30 Navajo Reservation: and ceded for Rainbow Bridge National Monument, 187; and dam dedication, 2; land ceded for Page, 156; and LaRue’s expeditions, 98, 101; and linking of termination and reclamation policies, 148–149; and Mormon dispossession of Indig-

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i n de x Navajo Reservation (continued) enous lands, 31–32; and naming conventions of white explorers, 84; Paiute Strip addition, 75, 168–170; and political ecology of erasure, 124; and politics of water reclamation policy, 132; and scope and context of study, 13– 14; and survey expeditions, 69; and white settlement of Colorado Plateau, 9 Navajo Sandstone, 3, 73, 84–85, 111 Navajo Tribal Council, 123–124, 126, 128–129, 149, 154, 159–162, 175, 176– 177, 183 Ndee (Apache), 23 Needham, Andrew, 13 Nephites, 25 Nevada, 6, 27 Nevills, Norman, 73 New Mexico, 6, 27, 135, 153 Nightway ceremony, 9 Nihi Kéyah (Diné land), 10 Northern Paiutes, 214n22 Northern Utes, xi, 42 Noyes, Gavin, 193, 194 Nuche (Southern Ute), 7, 23 Nukavachi, 192. See also Bears Ears (Bears Ears National Monument) Nuwuvi people, 7, 23. See also Paiute Indian Tribe Obama, Barack, 18 Office of Indian Affairs (OIA), 169 oil resources, 14, 70–71 Old Spanish Trail, 43 Oman, 141 ONWARD Project, 223n49, 224n54 Orabi (Hopi Village), 110 O’Shaughnessy Dam, 102 Ouray Reservation, 8 Page, Arizona, viii, 2, 142, 144, 153, 156, 159, 184

Paiute Indian Tribe: and archaeological studies in Rainbow Bridge area, 68–72; and author’s background, xi; and continuing fight over sacred lands, 189; and conversion of Indigenous peoples, 25–27; and creation of Bears Ears National Monument, 11; and dispossession of Indigenous lands and children, 31, 33, 44, 47– 48, 51–52, 187; and expeditions in Ute lands, 35–36, 38, 40; historical significance of Glen Canyon to, 13; and Indigenous claims on Rainbow Bridge, 166–170, 171–172; irrigation practices, 92; and LaRue’s expeditions, 101–102, 104; and Mormon claims on Glen Canyon, 139, 143; and Mormon settlement of region, 21–23, 207n49; and naming conventions of white explorers, 75, 77–80; and political ecology of erasure, 118–120; and politics of water reclamation policy, 133; and religious significance of Rainbow Bridge, 68; and scientific expeditions in Southwest, 57–58; and scope and context of study, 15, 17, 19; and survey expeditions, 60, 61–63, 65, 67, 67; and white settlement of Colorado Plateau, 7–10; and Young’s vision for region, 28–30 Paiute Reservation, 69, 72, 169 Paiute Strip, 75, 168–170 Paiute Tribe of Utah (PITU), 8. See also Paiute Indian Tribe paleontology, 111 Parade magazine, 146 Parashaunt Wash, 116 Parowan, 48 Pegues, Juliana, 104 “Persistence of Features in an Arid Landscape: The Navajo Twins, Utah” (LaRue and Bryan), 96 Phoenix, Arizona, 13, 184

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i n de x Pierce, Franklin, 208n51 The Place No One Knew: Glen Canyon on the Colorado (Porter), 13, 185 plantation slavery, 43 Plummer, Ed, 179 polygamy, 24, 48, 79 Porter, Eliot, 185 Powell, Dana, 14 Powell, John Wesley: and culture of dispossession, 187; and LDS claims on Glen Canyon, 143; Nakai on, 156; and naming conventions of white explorers, 84; and plan for reservations, 214n22; and political ecology of erasure, 118; and Rainbow BridgeMonument Valley Expedition, 112; and scientific expeditions in Southwest, 56, 58, 59–67, 87–89; and scope and context of study, 16 pre-Puebloan people, 28 Principles of General Ecology (Woodbury), 113 Provo, Utah, 38 Public Law 280, 135 public relations, 184–187 Puebloan people, viii, 13, 68 Puxant Tuvip, 23 Quilsoscket, 34–35, 37–40, 42 racism and racial hierarchy, 14, 26, 43, 45, 87, 184, 192–193 raiding and trading economy, 9, 31, 35, 40–42, 51 Rainbow Bridge: and Badoni v. Higginson case, 163; and dam dedication, 161; “discovery” of, 70–73; Indigenous claims on, 166–170; Indigenous names for, 215n35; intrusion of Lake Powell waters, 155; and LDS claims on Glen Canyon, 138, 140–141, 143–144; and Mormon dispossession of Indigenous lands, 32; and scientific expe-

ditions in Southwest, 68, 86, 102; and scope and context of study, 16, 19 Rainbow Bridge-Monument Valley Expedition (RBMVE), 16, 92–93, 105– 113, 112, 117, 120–122, 170, 182; and ONWARD Project, 223n49, 224n54 Rainbow Bridge National Monument (RBNM): and Badoni v. Higginson case, 17, 158–159, 162–166, 168, 170, 171–174, 182, 184–188; and changing attitudes on Glen Canyon Dam, 157; and continuing fight over sacred lands, 189–190, 192; and culture of dispossession, 187–188; and diversion dam proposal, 174–184; and Gregory’s expeditions, 75; Indigenous claims on, 166–170; and LaRue’s expeditions, 102; and linking of termination and reclamation policies, 147; national park proposal, 179, 181, 184–185; and political ecology of erasure, 121; proclamation establishing, 72; and scope and context of study, 9, 16, 18; wilderness park proposal, 183 Rasmussen, R. D., 100, 101 Reclamation Office, 120 recreation, 2. See also tourism Reddy, Chandan, 218n106 Redemption, 25–26, 30, 39–40, 43–45, 48, 129, 132–133, 208n64 Red Jacket Jane, 49–50 Relief Society, 117 removal campaigns, 32, 101–102 Republican Party, 145 Reynolds, H. G., 113 Rio Puerco, 76 riparian areas, 7 rock art, 41, 119 Rocky Mountain Range and Experiment Station, 113 Sabina, Lois, 47 Salt Lake, 35

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i n de x Salt Lake City, Utah, ix, 30, 31, 101, 115, 139 Salt Lake County, Utah, xi Salt Lake Valley, 23, 25 San Juan County, Utah, 18, 101, 159, 191–193 San Juan Mission, 139 San Juan Paiutes, 168–170 San Juan Reservation, 169 San Juan River, 76, 133, 140, 219n89 Sanpete County, Utah, 45–46 Santa Clara, Utah, 43, 46–48 Santa Clara River, 8 Santa Fe Railway, 75 Schaafsma, Polly, 41 Science, 90, 175, 177, 180, 182 scientific exploration, 15–16, 73–86 Second Great Awakening, 24 Segisaurus halli, 111 Senate Committee on Irrigation and Reclamation, 103 Senate Interior Committee Subcommittee on Indian Affairs, 153 Senate Subcommittee on Indian Affairs, 136 Senate Subcommittee on Reclamation and Irrigation, 137 Sharkie (One-Eyed Salt Clansman), 69– 70, 71, 166 Shash Jaa’ (Bears Ears), 9, 192. See also Bears Ears (Bears Ears National Monument) Sheen, John, 54, 80 sheep, x, 28, 37–38, 130, 150 Shinarump Group, 84 Shivwits Paiutes, 8 Sierra Club: and changing attitudes on Glen Canyon Dam, 157; conflict with pro-development interests, 91; and creation of Aqualante, 153; and criticisms of dam project, 2; and environmental controversy surrounding dam, 131; and linking of termination

and reclamation policies, 144–147; memorialization of Glen Canyon, 13; and politics of water reclamation policy, 137; and public relations campaign for RBNM, 184–186; and Rainbow Bridge diversion dam proposal, 175, 178 Sinaway, 7 Site C, 179, 180 slavery, 43, 44, 46, 47–48 Smallcanyon, Carter, 70 Smith, George Albert, 133, 208n54 Smith, Jessie, 28 Smith, Joseph, 24, 25, 48 Smith, Lot, 50 Snake River Valley, 78 Snow, Erastus, 80, 132 Snow, Gardner, 46 Soil Conservation Corp., 148 Sosi, Eugene, 54, 80 South Cottonwood Ward Association (SOCOTWA), 139–143 Southern California Edison, 93, 96, 100, 104 Southern Paiutes, 13, 23, 214n22 Southern Utes, xi, 42 Spanish explorers, 8–9, 76, 83 Spence, Mark David, 72 stadial evolutionary theory, 56, 85–87, 120 Stambor, Howard, 165 Steptoe, Edward, 36, 208n51 stewardship ethic, 23, 36–37, 41–43, 48, 52. See also environmental protection and activism Stewart, Omer C., 107 St. George, Utah, 30, 46, 91, 115, 195 St. George Temple, 30 St. Joseph, Arizona, 132 subsistence activities, 39–40, 47 sugar production, 30 Sumner, William Graham, 54 Sunnyside, Utah, x Sunset, Arizona, 132

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i n de x Tabby-To-Kwanah, 49–50 Tabernacle rock formation, 142 Tabuts, 8 Taft, William Howard, 72, 165, 168 Tallsalt, Robert, 166–167, 171, 175, 186 Tangaro, Mary, ix–xi Tangaro, Nicola, ix Tanner’s Crossing, 218n73 taxonomy, 80. See also naming conventions of explorers technological innovation, 13, 15, 128 “Termination of Federal Supervision over Certain Indian Tribes,” 149 Terry, Hannah Leavitt, 43 Thirteenth Amendment, 50 Tillohash, Tony, 118 timber resources, 23, 34, 36–37, 41, 208n54 Timpanogos Utes, 33, 35–36 tourism and recreation, 2, 157, 160–161, 163, 166, 186 Trade and Intercourse Acts, 34 trade and traders, 33, 36, 40, 51, 80. See also raiding and trading economy trappers, 71 Treaty of Spanish Fork, 8 Tribal Council, 150, 159 Trump, Donald, 193 Tsegi Canyon, 108–109, 111 Tse Nani’ ahigii (Rainbow Bridge), 9 Tsisnaajinii (Blanca Peak), 8 Tso, Mae, 10 Tsoodził (Mount Taylor), 8 Tsosie, Beata, 194 Udall, Stewart, 1, 126–127, 175–179, 176, 181–185 Uintah Basin, 8 Uintah Ouray, 11, 18, 48 Uintah Reservation, 8, 50 Uncompahgre Utes, 7 United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, 162, 168

United States District Court in Utah, 162, 164, 170 United States Geological Survey (USGS), 73; and economic development goals, 89; and LaRue’s expeditions, 96, 98, 100, 102, 104–105; and naming conventions of white explorers, 81–83; and Rainbow Bridge diversion dam proposal, 176; and scientific expeditions, 54; and survey expeditions, 69 University of California, Berkeley, 105 University of California, Los Angeles, 112 University of Utah, 117, 120, 183 Upper Basin, 4, 159, 191 Upper Colorado River, 90 Upper Colorado River Grass Roots, Inc. (“Aqualante”), 145–152, 157, 159 Upper Colorado River Storage Act, 174–178 uranium, 14 US Bureau of Reclamation, 191 US Congress, 90, 91, 102, 147, 150– 151, 165, 169, 175, 181–182. See also US Senate US Department of Agriculture (USDA), 105 US Department of the Interior (DOI): and Badoni v. Higginson case, 162– 163, 165–166; and continuing fight over sacred lands, 192; and environmental controversy surrounding dam, 131; and Indigenous claims on Rainbow Bridge, 169; and Navajo support for dam project, 159; and political ecology of erasure, 115; and Rainbow Bridge diversion dam proposal, 175, 182–183; and scope and context of study, 14, 18 US Geological Survey (USGS), 169 US Senate, 103, 136–137, 153 US Soil Conservation Service, 152

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i n de x Utah Diné Bikeyah (UDB), 9, 11, 18, 191– 194, 204n7 Utah Historical Quarterly, 151, 154 Utah State University, 152 Utah Valley, 42 Utah Water and Power Board, 152 Utah Water Users Association, 152 Ute Indian Tribe: and archaeological studies in Rainbow Bridge area, 70, 72; and author’s background, vii–viii, xi; and continuing fight over sacred lands, 192, 194; and culture of dispossession, 187; and gender roles, 209n73; historical significance of Glen Canyon to, 13; and Indigenous claims on Rainbow Bridge, 166–168, 170–172; individualism in, 209n66; irrigation practices, 92; and LaRue’s expeditions, 101–102, 104; and LDS claims on Glen Canyon, 139, 143; and LDS missions, 228n21; and Mormon conversion of Indigenous peoples, 25– 27; and Mormon dispossession of Indigenous lands and children, 31, 44, 46–49, 51–52; and Mormon expeditions in Ute lands, 33–42; and Mormon settlement of region, 23, 207n49; and naming conventions of white explorers, 75, 78; and political ecology of erasure, 119; and politics of water reclamation policy, 133; population at time of LDS settlement, 209n72; and religious significance of Rainbow Bridge, 68; and scientific expeditions in Southwest, 57–58; and scope and context of study, 15, 17–19; significance of Bears Ears to, 204n7; and survey expeditions, 63, 65–67; trade with other Indigenous peoples, 208n65; Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, 10– 11, 18, 192; and white settlement of Colorado Plateau, 7–11; and Young’s vision for region, 28–30

Vermilion Cliff Group, 84 Vernal, Utah, 48, 145 Vimalassery, Manu, 104 Virgin River Valley, 115 Voyles, Traci, 14 Waldo, Kirsten, 153 Walkara, 42 Washington University, 107 Wastelanding (Voyles), 14 Watkins, Arthur Vivian: and changing attitudes on Glen Canyon Dam, 157; and creation of Aqualante, 153; and culture of dispossession, 187; and hearings on CRSP, 150; and Indigenous claims on Rainbow Bridge, 174; and LDS claims on Glen Canyon, 141–143; and linking of termination and reclamation policies, 149–155; and Navajo support for dam project, 160; and politics of water reclamation policy, 134–138 Webb, Dan, x Webb, Robert H., 104 Webster, Anthony, 215n35 Weeminuche Utes, 7 wells, 77–78, 81, 88. See also irrigation Wenger, Tisa, 171 Western Shoshone, 214n22 Western Speleological Survey, 177 Western Steel, ix Wetherill, John, 69–72, 108, 110, 170 Wetherill, Louisa, 69–70, 108 Wetherill, Milt, 110 Wetherill, Richard, 80, 224n54 Wheeler, George, 88 White Cliff Group, 84 White Eyes, 37 White Pine trees, 37 White River Utes, 7, 8, 49 Whiterocks (Uintah-Ute) Reservation, 48 Whitmore Canyon, x Whitmore Oxygen Company, x

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i n de x Whyte, Kyle, 102 Widtsoe, John A., 99 Wild Cat Ranger Station, 116 Wilderness Society, 178 Wilkinson, Ernest, 138, 147 willows (Salix lasiolepis), 8, 77–78 Wingate strata, 84 Wolfe, Patrick, vii, 5, 104 Woodbury, Angus: and criticisms of dam project, 2; and culture of dispossession, 187; influence in RBNM debate, 184–185; and LDS claims on Glen Canyon, 143; and political ecology of erasure, 113–121, 121–123; and Rainbow Bridge diversion dam proposal, 175–183; and Rainbow BridgeMonument Valley Expedition, 90– 93, 107; and rock art of Glen Canyon, 119; and scope and context of study, 16 Woodbury, Grace Atkin, 115–118, 120 Woodruff, E. B., 96 Work, Laura B., 169, 218n106 World War I, 116 World War II, 123, 133, 137, 157 Worster, Donald, 79, 153 Wyoming, 6, 27, 31, 135, 153

Yablon, Marcia, 165 Yale Point Sandstone, 85–86 Yazzie, Alfred W., 9 Yellowman, Jake, 147–148, 151, 154, 231n63 Yellowman, Jonah, 105 Yosemite National Park, 102 Young, Brigham, 24: and conversion of Indigenous people, 10; and culture of dispossession, 187; and governorship of Utah, 208n51; and Mormon conversion of Indigenous peoples, 25–26; and Mormon dispossession of Indigenous children, 44–48, 50; and Mormon dispossession of Indigenous lands, 31, 33; and Mormon expeditions in Ute lands, 35–37; and naming conventions of white explorers, 79; and political ecology of erasure, 119; and stewardship ethic, 208n54; and survey expeditions, 65, 65; vision for region, 27–30 Zion, 27, 30, 118, 120, 144 Zion National Park, 117 Zuni people, 11, 18, 192, 228n21

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