More News from Indian Country
Pgge 11 Spilydy Tymoo
june 15, 2011
Scientist fights for research at Idaho caves ±1UJJ grant
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (AP)
— A few miles west of Idaho
Falls lie three caves and an ar
chaeological legacy that Suzann
Henrikson can’t let go.
The U.S. Bureau of Land
Management archaeologist has
dedicated years of her life to
convincing others that digging
in the caves for clues o f the
Snake River Plain’s earliest in
habitants is worth the money.
“It’s too important to ignore,”
she said. “We need to investi
gate human history because we
keep making the same mistakes
over and over again.”
Henrikson and her peers say
the Wasden caves, named for
the first white owner of the land,
make up the oldest archaeologi
cal site in Idaho. Excavators have
found bones from all types of
animals in the caves, as small as
mice and large as a mammoth,
as well as prehistoric spear and
arrow points and fragments of
pottery.
Henrikson suspects Native
American tribes - the ances
tors o f to d a y ’s S h o sh o n e-
Bannock Tribes - sometimes
used the caves to trap and kill
large game such as bison and
mammoths as many as 11,000
years ago. As the theory goes,
hunters would drive herds of
bison from the area north of
the caves up a slope and into
the gaping holes formed in col
lapsed lava tubes.
The holes w eren ’t deep
enough to kill many of the ani
mals, so they didn't qualify as
the kind of buffalo jumps other
plains tribes used to harvest
game.
But they did trap large num
bers of the bison in a confined
area where the hunters - could
easily dispatch them.
Henrikson said bison kills at
the Wasden site could date back
as far as 9,000 years. If those
kills were the result of inten
tional drives by hunters, they'd
mark the oldest such site in
North America, she said.
Of course, that’s just theory
at this point. No serious exca
vation has taken place at the
Wasden site since the 1970s, and
archaeologists need to examine
the caves more thoroughly to
confirm - or debunk - their
theories. To dig, they need
money — about $10,000 per cu
bic yard, Henrikson said.
She said excavators will need
about $100,000 just to stabi
lize the W asden site against
erosion.
Henrikson would love noth
ing more than to develop the dig,
to finally unlock its mysteries.
But she knows that’s an uphill
battle in a time when federal,
state and local governments are
slashing every budget item they
can find.
“Money is, basically, almost
nonexistent in universities nowa
days,” she said.
Henrikson said she’s trying to
rebuild momentum for develop
ing the Wasden dig, which was
listed on the National Register
of Historic Places in 1976. She
said her most recent push is to
encourage the site’s listing as a
national landmark, a designation
that would free up some money
to restart excavation.
She knows it won’t be easy
to attract enough money for a
full excavation of the site, but
she doesn’t plan on giving up.
“W hat’s amazing about out
here is I could work until I’m
90 and I would never run out
of stuff to research,” she said
o f the Snake R iver P lain.
“T h ere’s just too much out
here.”
Archives show birth of Code Talkers
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) -
You can tell a lot about a per
son by the papers they leave
behind.
Case in point: The papers in
the Philip Johnston Collection in
the Special Collections & Ar
chives at NAU's Cline Library.
Johnston is best known as the
man who pushed successfully
for the adoption of the Navajo
language for secure m ilitary
communications in the hands
o f the Navajo Code Talkers
during World War II.
The three acid-free, card
board boxes in the library hold
a variety of paper materials, in
cluding tissue-thin, hand-typed
letters from the 1920s, '30s and
'40s, yellowing copies of maga
zine articles, colorful maps, tick
ets and brochures from Mexico,
transcripts o f oral histories,
Code Talker reunion programs
and thick m an u scrip ts o f
Johnston's writings, including
various articles on the South
west.
A gap in correspondence
from 1942 through '45 may
reflect the top-secret nature of
the Navajo Code Talkers and
their work.
However, some of the more
yellowing letters, sent from Los
Angeles, are from just after the
war and deal with Johnston's
efforts to help the N avajo
people.
“If you have been on the
Navajo reservation you will re
alize how terribly unprovided for
the area is in terms of roads and
p u b lic services g en erally,”
Johnston w rote in a Nov. 4,
1946, letter to William Brophy,
the com m issioner o f Indian
Affairs, Department of the In
terior.
The Johnston Collection pro-
Delay on NY
cigarette tax
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) - New
York state is under another
court order preventing it from
taxing cigarettes sold by Seneca
Indian Nation retailers to the
general public at reservation
stores.
The western New York tribe
is the biggest seller of cigarettes
among the state’s Indian Na
tions. The appellate division of
state Supreme Court granted its
request for a temporary restrain
ing order Thursday.
The order bars collection of
the $4.35-per-pack tax on Sen
eca N ation-bound cigarettes
until June 20.
vides a fascinating view into the
mind of a man whose brilliant
code concept undoubtedly aided
the Allied victory in the war.
“Here is someone with obvi
ous regional and local interest,”
commented Sean Evans, an ar
chivist at Cline. “W hen you
think historically about anything,
there is so m uch stu ff that
people just throw away because
they don't think it's important.”
Online through Cline Library,
there are also more than 2,000
black and white photographs
that Johnston took, many of
them with N ative A m erican
themes, including scouting trips
on the reservation.
There is also a 1940 photo
of the old El Pueblo Motor Inn
in Flagstaff, which Johnston built
in 1937, working with contrac
tor R.E. Goble.*
D escrib ed in a 1936
Coconino Sun article as an “auto
court,” the court was described
as h avin g “a five-room
caretaker's hom e and three
double camp cottages. They will
be of Spanish design, stuccoed
outside and plastered inside.”
Johnston had moved back to
northern Arizona with his wife
Bernice, and they had decided
to make this location their per
manent home.
They purchased a site 3 miles
east of downtown Flagstaff for
the motel.
They also built a private resi
dence behind the motel.
Today, the facility, now called
the El Pueblo Motel, still stands
on east Route 66 and is the old
est motel remaining along Route
66 outside of the downtown
area.
It was from the motel that
Johnston engineered the recruit
ment of Navajos to serve in the
Marines as Code Talkers.
The property itself is eligible
for listing on the National Reg
ister of Historic Places as a na
tional landmark because it ex
emplifies the motor court build
ing type and it is associated with
an individual who made signifi
cant contributions to American
and world history.
“The preservation of heri
tage resources is how we con
nect to and learn from the past,
and importantly, it’s how we
implement the Regional Plan
and preserve the character of
our cqm m unity,” said K arl
Eberhard, historic preservation
officer for the city of Flagstaff.
The El Pueblo Motor Inn is
one of 27 remaining motels, out
of 50 in 1960, from Chicago to
Los Angeles that contribute to
the National Historic District of
Route 66.
Johnston was born on Sept.
17, 1892, in Topeka, Kan., and
died on Sept. 11, 1978, in San
Diego, Calif.
His love of things Native
American began in his child
hood.
The son of a m issionary,
Johnston came in 1896 with his
family to Flagstaff, from where
his father, William Johnston, was
to serve Navajos residing on the
western part of the Navajo Res
ervation.
On the reservation, young
Philip learned to speak Navajo
while playing with Navajo chil
dren and was one of perhaps
30 non-natives who understood
the complex and subde Navajo
expressions.
In 1902 he traveled with his
father to Washington, D.C., with
his father and local Navajo lead
ers when they spoke to the Presi
dent Theodore Roosevelt to
persuade him to add more land
to the Navajo Reservation via
an Executive Order.
In fact, the youth was trans
lator between the local Navajo
leaders and the president.
In the early 1900s, Johnston
attended and graduated from
the Northern Arizona Normal
School, which is now NAU.
In March 1918, he enlisted
in the U.S. Army 319th Engi
neers, where he received a re
serve commission, before ship
ping to France to participate in
the Great War.
It was here that he may have
learned about Comanches being
used as code talkers by U.S.
Army units.
As a veteran, Johnston at
tended the University of South
ern California, Los A ngeles,
where he earned his graduate
civil engineering degree in 1925.
Afterward, he took a job with
Grassland office closed temporarily
(AP) - The Crooked River
National Grassland office has
been temporarily closed in Ma
dras until the federal govern
m ent can hire another staff
worker. There were two people
stationed at the district office,
but one of them works after
noons in the field, which would
have left the other employee
alone.
Federal officials say policy is
to have two people at the office
for security reasons.
the city of Los Angeles water
department before returning to
Flagstaff a dozen years later.
Johnston never forgot the
usefulness of Native American
languages for secure communi
cations during World War I.
After Pearl Harbor was at
tacked and America entered the
war, Johnston wrote a “Pro
posed Plan for Recruiting Indian
Signal Corps Personnel,” which
he submitted in February 1942
to M ajpr General Clayton B.
Vogel and his staff to convince
them of the value of the Na
vajo language as code.
“Because of the fact that a
com plete u n d erstan d in g o f
words and terms comprising the
various Indian languages could
be had only by those whose ears
had been highly trained in them,
these dialects would be ideally
suited to communication in vari
ous branches o f our arm ed
forces,” he wrote.
Johnston recommended re
cruitm ent from the N avajo
tribe, because at 49,338 mem
ber, it was the largest tribe in
the U.S., according to his re
search in 1942.
In an article in the Cline Li
b rary archives by A.E.
Mortensen, “A Typical Arizonian
at War,” Johnston is described
as a “human dynamo” and a
true patriot.
“Philip Johnston was flying
the true colors of a real Ameri
can,” M ortensen wrote. “On
O ctober 2nd, 1942, P hilip
Johnston now 50 years of age,
voluntarily gave up all civilian
ties and entered the M arine
Corps with rank of Staff Ser
geant.”
The first assignm en t for
Johnston was a recruiting tour
through A rizona and N ew
Mexico, based out of the mo
tel, and “then back to Camp
Elliott to take over the actual
schoo ling o f the N avajos,”
Mortensen continued.
N ot m uch is know n o f
Johnston after World War II,
although letters in the archives
show that he remained very ac
tive in his work to help Native
Americans, including creating a
nonprofit organization to raise
money to send them to college
during the 1950s.
This year, there were seven
Navajo Code Talkers, each with
a companion, entered in the
Armed Forces Day Parade on
May 21 in Flagstaff:
Sidney B edoni, P eter
M acDonald, A lfred Peaches,
G eorge W illie , D an A kee,
Samuel Sandoval and Samuel
Tsosie.
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tribe targets job skills
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP)
_ A federal grant to a South
Dakota Indian tribe is ear
marked to help residents of
public housing find jobs.
The U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban awarded
$240,000 to O glala Sioux
Tribal Partnership for Hous
ing on the Pine Ridge Indian
Reservation. Officials said
caseworkers will help occu
pants make the most of their
knowledge, skills and abilities
to find work.
HUD said it aw ard ed
$31 m illion nationally for
p ro g ra m s th a t im p ro v e
em ploym ent prospects or
lin k the eld e rly and d is
abled to support services
so they can m aintain in d e
pendent living.
HUD S ecretary Shaun
Donovan said in a statement
that public housing should of
fer services that help resi
dents be self-sufficient.
Group wants American
Indian casino in Lansing
LANSING, Mich. (AP) - A
group is moving ahead with its
effort to bring an American In
dian casino to Lansing.
Ted O 'D ell, chairm an o f
Lansing Jobs Coalition, said that
he’ll ask City Council members
to approve his request before
trying a ballot issue. He wants
to gather enough signatures to
get it on the city’s November bal
lot.
O'Dell’s group did not sub
mit the number of signatures
needed to put the issue on the
August ballot.
In April, a group aiming to
build casinos in Lansing and six
other Michigan cities launched
a process that could put the
measure before state voters this
fall. “Michigan is Yours” needs
more than 300,000 signatures
from registered voters across
the state.
The effort failed to make the
2010 state ballot.
Flooding costs force
Crow tribe to lay off 150
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) -
The costs of dealing with severe
flooding on the Crow Indian
Reservation have forced the
tribe to lay off 150 workers.
Crow p erso n n el d irecto r
Kayle Howe tells the Billings
Gazette that the tribe faced the
unexpected costs o f paying
people to help residents in iso
lated areas and distributing food.
He says those costs came on
top of revenue shortfalls that
had already caused the tribe to
cut full-time employees to 32
hours a week.
Howe says the tribe is trying
to recover the money it paid for
flood-rescue efforts, but it could
take a while.
Before Friday’s layoffs, the
tribe employed approximately
815 people.
Howe says most of those laid
o ff w ere the m ost recen tly
hired, and that at least some
won't be eligible for unemploy
ment payments.
Alcatraz occupation anniversary
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -
Last Saturday marked the 40th
anniversary of the ending of the
occupation of Alcatraz Island
by American Indian activists.
The 19-month occupation
came to an end on June 11,
1971 w hen fed eral officers
evicted the remaining 15 pro
testers.
Activists had seized the island
in San Francisco Bay in Novem-
ber 1969 with the hopes of turn
ing it into an Indian university
or cultural center.
With as many as 800 activ
ists on the island at the height
of the occupation, the protest
received massive attention.
After the occupation ended,
the university or center was
never built, but plans to sell the
island to private developers were
dropped.