Dobyns and Euler, archeologists and Hualapai advocates --they deserve a discussion all their own-- open their 1975 book on the Hualapai (Walapai)* by marking and lamenting the centenary of the Hualapai's forced entry into the U. S. economy as laborers. This fits my own impression gathered from archives, that the Hualapai see their reservation, only a piece of their original territory, as a place on which to base a viable economy. If the story of the Havasupai asks, in part, what would their lives and society have been like had the government established an appropriate reservation in 1882, the Hualapai story asks, in part, what happens to a people when they try to use a reservation as an enabler for them to abide in their ancestral lands.
A major part of that story, told in detail and with passion by C. W. McMillen in Making Indian Law, concerns the Hualapai fight to get full ownership and control over the land itself. The rest, of how the they worked to establish a supportive economy, has several sub-parts --including the national struggle over authorizing dams in the Grand Canyon. Here, I want to present a remarkable little jewel I came across in the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) files at Truxton Canyon. It concerns Fred Mahone, the hero of McMillen's history, and has a tiny coda.
