HERE COME NEW NEIGHBORS; SO GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD
In American political terms, the Greater Grand Canyon started in the early 1880’s, in 1881/3, when the Hualapai Reservation was created. Simultaneously, the strange creation known as the Havasupai Reservation was declared, beginning a 90-some-year drama of broken promises, inflicted difficulties, Havasupai perseverance, and political conflict.
Almost immediately, this birthing time also produced the 1884 introduction in the U. S. Senate of John Wesley Powell’s idea for a Grand Canyon National Park, which though large in excess plateau acreage actually encompassed but a fraction of the Canyon’s 277-mile length, ignoring the wonders of its beginning and central and western regions. The Powell version of the Park settled into another 90-year mis-recognition — facetiously put, he and most visitors epitomized the Grand Canyon, the one they saw, as The Big Gully. This is was to be a site of much future conflict.
The failure of that Park concept to move forward did not discourage Powell and his Senate ally, Benjamin Harrison, and their initiative blossomed into another oddity in 1893 when, now elevated to the Presidency, Harrison gave Powell’s concept governmental recognition as Grand Can(with a ~)on Forest Reserve, of all things. Whatever the soon-created Forest Service thought of their new responsibility (they did not like it), they added officialdom’s difficulties to the Havasupai’s trying to continue their traditional life on plateau lands — not included in their Reservation — already heavily impacted by the livestock brought in by newly arrived ranchers.
Meanwhile, much publicity and promotion, much tourism and facilities for it, were stimulated by the coming of the Santa Fe railroad, across the region, then with a spur to the Canyon edge. The railroad was symbolic, and a champion, of the Idea of development for touring at the Canyon, and for a National Park itself. This was doubly useful for the railroad since to figure out suitable boundaries would require that the checkerboard land sections granted the railroad and impacting the Canyon could be traded out— advantageously. The Hualapai benefitted, too, if less advantageously, from wage work along the railroad line, the first of many uses from which they have sought to make their Reservation an economic base.
T.R. AND HIS GREAT BIG STICK
This first decade of the 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt’s Presidency, was a vigorous time for the new Conservation view of public lands. T.R. visited the south rim viewpoint, using the Santa Fe, and gave that endlessly quotable speech. However, for the next several years he only recommended a Park and took no action.
Another shift in the public land law gave T. R. a new chance. A conservationist congressional stalwart authored a bill that gave the President power to set aside, as protected Monuments, “objects of historic or scientific interest”. Conceptually, these were first thought of as little sites; ruins, a handsome butte, a forest grove. This Antiquities Act spoke of setting aside the “smallest area compatible with proper care and management” of the object. But oh!, said T.R., that describes the Grand Canyon, and he withdrew for protection and "public interest" much of the Great Gully he had seen a view of. His grand new tool enshrined the Powell conception of the Grand Canyon, while enhancing land protection in general. (My take is, that given the real dimensions of the Canyon, T.R.’s “smallest” area should have been two or three times larger for “proper care and management”. But that was to take an entire century.) Congress and Roosevelt also declared a big game preserve for the Kaibab Plateau, north of the Great Gully. Pretty toothless as far as big cats, etc. went; cows and bison have benefitted.
And although it was blind to the Canyon’s peoples, a proposal that came close to matching the Canyon’s topography was floated—and drowned—in 1910: The American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society and Canyoneer F. Dellenbaugh laid a 4.5-million-acre plan before President Taft. He had visited the Canyon, ridden a mule down, and admired the Gully, but bowed to his bureacrats’ horror at something so outlandish.
Was it? Here is an 1873 map Powell worked on, made by G. Wheeler from the Ives Survey:
Only 11 years later, Powell’s conception of the Grand Canyon had narrowed and he limited his Park idea to that central Great Gully. Was he overawed? If so, it was infectious. For 80 years, most other proposals stuck to the Gully, including T.R.’s audacious creation of the 1908 National Monument, outlined by the blue line. (The 1910 ASHPS proposal was the only exception, taking in most of this map.)
That Monument, however, was a fact on the ground, and along with the entry of Arizona into statehood 1914) and the entry of Carl Hayden (long-time — 58 years!— protector of the interests of a certain segment of Arizona’s populace) into Congress, concentrated the mind of those interested in exploiting the Canyon. The Monument supposedly froze up and locked out any development. The solution, in Hayden’s view, was a Grand Canyon National Park Act that would keep it open to tourist developments, railroads, reclamation projects, mining, et al. — though maybe no overt logging or grazing. The negotiations (always centered on the Gully) over boundaries and provisions took a few years, but in 1919, President Wilson signed the Grand Canyon National Park into existence, still the same concept as Powell’s 35 years before.
WHOSE PARK?
Not so happy a moment for the Havasupai, who went from being surrounded by Forest to being surrounded by Park. The change turned out to be bitter rather than better. Hayden actually inquired about their situation, but not from the Havasupai, and even the accurate advice he got, he ignored. Indeed, for most of the rest of his time in Congress, Hayden showed interest, made promises, and stiffed the Havasupai almost (one small exception) every time. Fortunately for his reputation, the Park Service in the Canyon had such bad relations with the Havasupai that nobody noticed how the quiet power from Phoenix squelched any attempt to “steal land and give it to the Indian”. Not until 1972, with Hayden all gone, could the Havasupai story change—no thanks to the Park Service, the Forest Service, and yours truly and his Park-defending allies.
But back to the 1910’s. That most afflicted of all Indian peoples of the Grand Canyon, the bands of the Southern Paiute, -- reduced in numbers by disease, crowding out and loss of water sources, slavery, and general indifference by the new owners, Saints, and masters of their lands north of the Grand Canyon -- were recognized by the federal government as worthy of a reservation. Located in on their territory's edge, the Kaibab band settled there in 1913 and 1917. A quiet presence, though spread across far more territory than just northern Arizona, some of their language survives as names in the area. Their knowledge and memories can only benefit the 21st century's new conceptual expression of the Greater Grand Canyon. Not only does their Reservation, like the Navajo and Havasupai, abut a Monument unit, but the Kaibab are partnered with the National Park Service in the presentation and running of Pipe Spring National Monument, appropriately. More widely now, their footsteps can be recalled by a much greater naming and plaque-ing effort in the Park and the Arizona Strip, the backcountry hinterland of and approaches to the Canyon itself.
The Grand Canyon National Park: 1919. Followed by Park Service (NPS) discontent and perhaps, land greed by its managers. Even the Park Service’s first director, Steven Mather, was afflicted. The anomaly of the Park being created as, and out of, a National Forest resulted in the Kaibab Plateau being set up as its own Forest. Mather wanted it, and its huge deer herd, for their tourism values. He proposed a President’s Forest for the Kaibab. Dead at birth, the idea mixed in with other Park “needs”: adjust the boundary in the southwest, add more to the west, get some of that Forest into the Park, get rid of the remote and Navajo sheep-ridden piece north of the Little Colorado and east of the main river. The result was a fix-it Act in 1927, over which Hayden presided, moderating any Forest-Park dispute. No change in vision; the Big Gully was good enough for Powell, the world could also be satisfied (and would be for 40+ years).
Meanwhile, on the main Canyon’s eastern side and rim, there was significant activity. Navajo expansion west, livestock and all, was recognized by executive orders going over to the Colorado River; quite a change from Bosque Redondo. Then, when the NPS Superintendent declared he did not want the Park's northeast corner bounded by the two rivers, new law gave to the Navajo; they became the recognized land-owners of the eastern Grand Canyon down to the Little Colorado, as well as of much of the latter’s canyon. by 1930.
NAVAJO AND HUALAPAI: MORE SECURITY
The Navajo Reservation was still felt by Hayden to need a firmer legislative hand; there were land claims and counterclaims on it, and lots of the dominant society’s meddling. So he set to work to normalize the Reservation in 1934 by engineering a boundary Act that on the west side performed the neat trick of making a clean, clear, western boundary for the Navajo along the shore of the Colorado and Little Colorado...
And then taking it away so only Arizona could benefit should a dam be built in that stretch. (He looked ahead, did Hayden.)...
And then giving it back to the Navajo...
And then allowing it to be taken again.
So confused is the Act's word-play that even today, the lawyers of the Interior Department think the east side of the Grand Canyon is in the Park above the River shore up to an extinguished, irrelevant, indeterminate line. Others, like the Park Service Cartographer, erroneously think the Park goes up to the rim! Maps over the years still reflect these confusions. In the real world, what they are is a white-man land grab using bureaucratic lawyerly tools.
One can hope that the Greater Grand Canyon spirit of the new 2023 Monument will lead Interior, even blushing, to fix this nasty piece of business and get the Navajo Reservation boundary put formally and without confusion on the eastern shore of the Colorado River where the law says it belongs.
This pre-World War II period did bring an uncontested victory for the Hualapai. In an effort founded and run by themselves (with white lawyers necessary counsel), they confronted, not just Hayden but the whole Indian-affairs bureaucracy, and refused to let their million-acre reservation be split in half, with the Santa Fe walking off with a totally unnecessary bonus for their behavior over the previous century. Carried to the Supreme Court, the Santa Fe claimed it had ownership of half the land from its 1840’s land grant. The Hualapai said it was their land and never surrendered or forfeit. The Supreme Court endorsed the Hualapai position in 1941, assuring them of the complete Reservation. another significant victory in Canyon history.
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