Code Talker

by Chester Nez

  I lay in the dark, tears sliding down my cheeks. Many of the animals had been pets, greeting their humans with bleats and head butts. I missed them. And Dora missed them. Those animals deserved respect, not such a terrible death at the hands of cruel men. Finally, exhausted from the terrible day, I fell into a deep sleep.

  I woke up feeling groggy, but knowing that something was wrong. Then the stench of burned livestock filled my nostrils. I dressed and went outside. Auntie was already up, working. Together my family performed the tasks necessary to care for our remaining animals. We moved like machines, unable to process what had happened.

  Late that night, I again heard Grandmother’s and Grandfather’s stifled sobs. I overheard their whispered words to each other. They could not imagine how they would make up for their loss.

  Father, working at the trading post, learned that families all over the reservation and the Checkerboard were devastated by the massacre of their livestock. Any family with more than a hundred head of sheep and goats was subject to the “reduction.” The number of animals killed varied on a sliding scale, depending on how big each herd was. Horses and cattle were also killed, but their deaths were more humane. They were shot rather than burned.

  The shocked families warned one another not to protest. There were rumors of arrests.

  A historical perspective on the politics of this disaster doesn’t soften the blow still felt by the families who were deprived of their livelihood. The program may have been well intentioned, but like many other political decisions, the results proved disastrous.

  It was during the Great Depression, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, elected in 1932, was president. His legislative agenda, the “New Deal,” initiated many programs and public-works projects designed to help employ the needy. The disastrous livestock reduction might never have occurred if four things had not come together.

  First, reservation and Checkerboard land, aggressively grazed by livestock, was less productive than it had been. Sheep were the primary animals raised, and they graze close to the ground, often killing the roots of plants. The dust bowl in the southwestern Great Plains had created a more serious problem than the problems on Navajo land, but still, overgrazing was then under the microscope of public awareness. As John Collier wrote: “The Navajo reservation is being washed into the Boulder Dam reservoir.”19 This government project, begun in 1931, is now known as the famous Hoover Dam.

  Second, the overgrazing coincided with a federal New Deal push for a huge park to be created on Navajo land. The proposal, first made in 1931 by Roger Toll, died, but was renewed when Roosevelt was elected. People argued that the park would create jobs, but it would also absorb land needed for grazing Navajo livestock. The National Park Service decided that the Navajos could continue to live on the parkland, but they would have to retain their “quaint” ways of life, continuing to raise sheep and implementing no improvements. This would do nothing to relieve the already overgrazed conditions. It was driven home to officials that fewer animals would mean fewer demands for grass.20

  Third, John Collier, the new Commissioner of Indian Affairs, felt pressured to do something to rehabilitate Navajo grazing lands. He opposed the Navajo National Park, but proposed a stock reduction program as the solution to the overgrazing problem.

  And fourth, Collier also promised to expand the land area of the reservation in return for the reduction in livestock. He wanted to incorporate lands already used by the Navajo for grazing, making their stewardship official. This would include at least some of the Checkerboard Area. The idea seems somewhat contradictory, since with more land, more animals could be supported, but the land was, by then, so poor that Collier felt a livestock reduction would still be in order.

  As planned, Collier’s recommendation for reservation expansion lessened the vehemence of Navajo objections to his proposed stock reduction. The stock reduction proposal passed.

  The Bureau of Indian Affairs jumped in, employing Navajos to execute the reduction mandate. In an attempt to make up for the diminished income from their liquidated livestock, the government also promised the Navajos an education that would lead to jobs with various New Deal public-works programs.

  But then John Collier proposed the “Indian Reorganization Act,” a proclamation of “cultural freedom” for Indians which basically proposed to make the various tribes into corporations administered by the United States government21. The act was passed by the Pueblos but rejected by the Navajos. Still, Congress passed the act in 1934, leaving the future of the Navajos poorly defined in the eyes of the government.

  Once the livestock massacre was completed, with the Navajo sheep population having been reduced from a high of 1.6 million in 1932 to only 400,000 in 1944,22 the promised geographical expansion failed to take place, although, to his credit, John Collier did fight to obtain more land for the reservation.23 The proposed national park was also defeated, a small blessing for those who kept sheep and other livestock. Only a few Navajos were given public-works employment. And the education program that was promised—preparing more Native Americans to work on the numerous public-works projects—did not materialize for the members of the Navajo tribe, the tribe that had rejected John Collier’s Indian Reorganization Act.

  It was odd that in Depression times, the mutton of the slaughtered animals was not preserved as food. Nor were the wool and leather utilized. A small portion of the meat was canned for later use, although the meat from Grandma’s herd and neighboring herds was simply destroyed. Three or four years later, some canned mutton was distributed to chapter houses on the Checkerboard and the reservation.

  Some Navajo families were paid a pittance for their destroyed livestock, less than three dollars per head of sheep, when the market value vacillated between eight dollars and fourteen dollars per head. Other families were never paid. I am not sure whether my family received any money for their dead animals.

  There are historians who suggest that the government’s stock reduction program was aimed at making the Navajos less independent and more dependent upon the “generosity” of the government in Washington, D.C. I don’t know about that, but I do know that for us Navajos, the government’s “livestock reduction” program ended in failure.

  Historians name John Collier, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs from 1933 to 1945, as the instigator of the massacre. But I remember another man, E. Reeseman Fryer, who, during the New Deal, worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs as the superintendant of the Navajo Reservation under John Collier. He served from 1936 until 1942, and was personally responsible for implementing much of the livestock reduction program. This man was especially resented. He was a white man, enjoying a position of power over the Navajo tribe.

  The popular belief was that what Fryer fried was the Navajos.

  The extermination went on for some six years, with different sections of Navajo land targeted at different intervals. By the time it stopped, the rain had stopped as well, and the grass continued to dry up.

  The effect on the Navajo sense of community was devastating. In the time before the massacre, friends and neighbors helped one another. When someone fell sick, neighbors pitched in to care for their animals. Medicine men and women were summoned to cure both people and animals. Neighbors and family assisted by gathering together at night and praying for the sick to recover.

  The livestock reduction challenged this sense of community by pitting Navajo against Navajo. Those who kept livestock resented the Navajo exterminators who worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Neighbors put up fences to enclose their pastures, saving them for the sheep that they had left. The year-round migration from one community grazing area to another that had always been the norm as I grew up became impossible. As a result, ties between neighbors weakened.

  The toll in self-respect was also huge. Families, unable to protect their own livestock, felt powerless. And nothing could have done more to erode the local work ethic. What was the point of working hard to build up wealth, a sizable her
d, when the government just stepped in and destroyed it?

  The massacre killed more than livestock. It changed the dynamic between neighbors; it changed the meaning of hard work; it changed everything.

  After the Long Walk, the livestock massacre is considered the second great tragedy in Navajo history. A story now woven into oral tradition, the extermination is discussed wherever Navajos meet, so that like the Long Walk, it will never fade from memory.

  Hot, dry summer days passed while I herded the remaining sheep, helped with repairs, chopped wood, and generally made myself useful at home. Occasionally adult relatives asked me to translate Navajo to English for them at the trading post. I always liked to help. Translating was interesting, and they paid me with a stick of licorice or peppermint candy. But just as good as the candy was the respect I got for my knowledge. School was paying off.

  I hadn’t talked during my summer days at home about the fighting at school or about how mean the matrons and teachers could be. I just wanted to enjoy being back in Chichiltah with my family. They looked at me with pride and treated me like someone special.

  Even so, at the end of each summer I lay awake considering whether I should go back to Fort Defiance. It was so much nicer at home, despite the lack of amenities like hot running water and electricity. Those comforts were nothing compared to being treated well. And at home, I knew exactly what was expected of me, so life, though physically challenging, was stress-free. At school, it was difficult to know what the teachers and matrons wanted.

  Still, in the end, I always returned. Even after some years, when Dora fell ill with tuberculosis and spent most of her time in the Fort Defiance sanitarium, I went to class. A couple of years after Dora got sick, my brother Coolidge finished school. Dora, though she recovered from the tuberculosis, was kept at home. So I returned to Fort Defiance alone. I forced myself to go, pushing the dread I felt to the back of my mind.

  I wanted to make my family proud.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Marine Recruit

  Late 1930s, Early 1940s

  As the truck navigated rutted paths, heading home toward Chichiltah, a tremendous weight lifted from my shoulders. No more matrons. I was the last of the Nez children to graduate from Fort Defiance. While I was a student there, the school had expanded its program to include seventh and eighth grades. But I’d finally completed the two additional years.

  Four years of school still loomed ahead. On my first day at public junior high school, in Gallup, New Mexico, I could hardly believe my ears. Navajo. Spoken in the hallways. Navajo!

  The classes were conducted in English. But there were lots of fellow Navajos, and when I stepped from the classroom to the hall, I spoke to a few, sometimes in English, sometimes in Navajo. No one hit me across the shoulders with a ruler. I felt liberated!

  From the first day, I noticed that the structure of this school differed drastically from Fort Defiance. At Fort Defiance there had been no letter grades. And English dominated the curriculum there, with the intent—I was now aware—of weakening our ties to Navajo culture, binding us to the white culture instead.

  Here, at Gallup, there were many subjects. I had to study hard to catch up, but I liked the Gallup school. No matrons watched my every move. No tiny children cried in their beds at night, terrorized by the administration and the older students.

  Chichiltah, although much closer to Gallup than to Fort Defiance, was still too far for a daily commute. So, while attending school in Gallup, I lived nearby at Fort Wingate. The fort boasted a football field and a complex of dormitories. The land, a soft blend of reds, tans, browns, and purples, felt like home. I shared an early-morning bus trip into Gallup each day with other Navajo students.

  I finished ninth grade and was partway through tenth when the government again intervened. A Navajo boarding school in Tuba City, Arizona, was my next home. The school, founded by the Hopi Indians, was in desperate need of repair. The Hopis gave the deteriorating building to the Navajos.

  Tuba City was a land of sandstone and wind. I spent a couple of years there, and I never grew to like it. In addition to the school building being in bad repair, the food was awful. And there wasn’t much to do. We used to steal watermelons and peaches from local Hopi farmers.

  I made many friends. But even with friends I found myself bored. News broadcasts told of fighting in Europe, but the United States had not yet joined in the conflict that would eventually be known as World War II.

  In Window Rock, Arizona, however, the Navajo Tribal Council foresaw our country’s involvement. Rather than waiting for the American government to jump into the fray, in late spring of 1940 they passed a unanimous resolution:

  Whereas, the Navajo Tribal Council and the 50,000 people we represent, cannot fail to recognize the crisis now facing the world in the threat of foreign invasion and the destruction of the great liberties and benefits which we enjoy on the reservation, and

  Whereas, there exists no purer concentration of Americanism than among the First Americans, and

  Whereas, it has become common practice to attempt national destruction through the sowing of seeds of treachery among minority groups such as ours, and

  Whereas, we hereby serve notice that any un-American movement among our people will be resented and dealt with severely, and

  Now, Therefore, we resolve that the Navajo Indians stand ready as they did in 1918, to aid and defend our Government and its institutions against all subversive and armed conflict and pledge our loyalty to the system which recognizes minority rights and a way of life that has placed us among the great people of our race.

  It might surprise non-Navajos to read this declaration of allegiance. No Navajo, however, would be surprised. We have always felt a deep allegiance to our motherland, our Navajo Nation, and our families. To this allegiance is linked a sincere desire to protect all three.

  Even though I didn’t like Tuba City, if I hadn’t gone there, my whole life would have followed a different path. Something happened, something that would impact all of us, all across the country. Pearl Harbor transformed our boredom.

  “The Japs bombed Pearl Harbor!” Word spread through the Tuba City dormitory like wildfire that Sunday morning, December 7, 1941. Soon, we all knew that Pearl Harbor was in Hawaii. Hawaii was thousands of miles away, and not yet a state, but it was also the home of a United States Naval base.

  The Japanese had been allies of the United States and Britain in World War I. They had captured a German base in Tsingtao, China, and after the war, they had prospered through expanding trade, becoming a recognized political and economic force in eastern Asia. But their triumph had been followed by the great earthquake of 1923, which destroyed half of Tokyo. Economic disasters followed, in the form of an overabundance of rice, which drove prices down, and tariffs imposed on Japanese manufactured exports by Western nations. Exacerbating this was the burgeoning population. By 1937, the island nation of Japan held, in its limited space, more than eighty million people. Japan’s resources were being depleted. The country needed to expand.

  Planning to gain natural resources, a market for their manufactured goods, and cheap labor, Japan invaded China near Beijing. After a three-month battle, the Japanese won Shanghai in November 1937. With the capital, Nanking, then threatened, Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Republic of China, relocated to Wuhan. Japan captured the demoralized city of Nanking in December. Japanese-led massacres in the aftermath of the Nanking defeat killed as many as two to three hundred thousand Chinese people.

  America, shocked by the violence of the Japanese attack, refused to sell Japan items like scrap metal that could be used in waging war. In the summer of 1941, we nationalized all Japanese assets in the United States. Enraged, Japan signed a pact with Germany and Italy in September. The island nation, now aligned with the Axis powers against the United States, planned attacks on Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, Midway, and the Philippines.

  After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States c
ould not ignore their enemy’s intent to take over the Pacific. We declared war against Japan the next day, December 8, 1941.

  Our school principal called us all together. He wanted to be sure that we all understood what was going on. He had researched Pearl Harbor, and he shared what he had learned with us students, telling us about the Japanese, their aspirations to control an empire, and the damage they’d done to the United States Navy.

  My roommate, Roy Begay, and I discussed the momentous events.

  “What do you think this means?” asked Roy.

  “Our country has joined the war. I think the military will want us,” I told him. “We are warriors.”

  We, like other Native Americans, had been born to the warrior tradition. Like other Navajos, we saw ourselves as inseparable from the earth we lived upon. And as protectors of what is sacred, we were both eager to defend our land.

  April to June 1942

  After gaining permission from the Navajo Tribal Council, Marine recruiters arrived in Tuba City only months after the Pearl Harbor attack, in April 1942. Full of curiosity and excitement, Roy and I listened to their presentation. The Marines showed enthusiasm and pride. They looked strong and capable in their dress-blue Marine uniforms.

  The recruiters announced that they wanted young Navajo men who spoke fluent English and fluent Navajo. The men were needed for a special project that would benefit their country. I glanced at Roy. He seemed riveted by the Marines’ words. I, too, was intrigued. Joining the Marines would mean leaving school, leaving the reservation and the lives we had always known, and entering foreign territory—the home of the white man. That was scary . . . and intriguing. Joining the Marines would affect the path we traveled for the rest of our lives. It might end our lives, if we were sent into battle.