Voices from the Field

PIONEERS

             My father was one 
of the original pioneers that came
and settled Blanding in 1880, called

by the President of the Church to establish 
friendly relations with the Utes 
and Navajos.
There had been considerable
 
hostility on the part of the Navajos 
because three 
of their young men were killed 

on the west side of the Colorado River. 
But it was the women of the community 
who fixed up

a banquet and they had a big 
dinner out under the cottonwoods. 
And the Navajo left with a very 

friendly feeling toward us: the settlers 
never had trouble like that again. 

We overcame them
with friendliness. 

The trouble came after

                         because the Navajo children 
weren't going to school.  My dad,
I heard him say 

quite a few times, they'd never be able 
to take care of themselves
 
if they hadn’t learned the gospel. 
He wanted Bluff turned 

into a Navajo school where white men
would teach. When he died, 

he pleaded with me to do 
all I could to see such a school 
put up. But, of course, 
the BIAs didn't seem interested. Not 

until the mines, and suddenly
they held a meeting up at Shiprock, and I brought
that question of a Navajo school
back up--I wanted to know,

like my dad did, why the Navajo people 
had been so discriminated against. 

And there wasn't anybody that could answer.

We had a problem child 
at the time, a Navajo

girl who’d been living with white people and become 
quite incorrigible: she was twelve
years old and in first grade. 
All the school principals refused 

to accept her, tried to pass her
between Blanding
and Shiprock. Of course,

I brought her up 
at that meeting to ask
what could be done for girls
like her.  I think 

what I said prompted them 
to set up that school 

near Aneth mines. And ever since
they’ve been putting forth

real effort to get the Navajo children
here in school.

Where did that girl go
after the meeting? 

I don’t know: she disappeared.
 

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