INDIANS OF THE ENCHANGED DESERT: An account of the Navajo and Hopi Indians and the Keams Cañon Agency [SOLD]

INDIANS OF THE ENCHANGED DESERT: An account of the Navajo and Hopi Indians and the Keams Cañon Agency

by Leo Crane

The First edition published by Little, Brown, and Company, Boston 1925

This Rio Grande Press First edition published in 1972

Hardback, 385 pages.  Beautifully illustrated with over 30 early photographs.  Excellent condition.

Leo Crane’s life reads like a novel of the period. He spent several years in the Washington offices of the Indian Service in the early part of the 20^th century.  He came to the Southwest for health reasons and stayed to become agent at Keams Cañon and later held the same position at the New Mexico Pueblos and the Sioux Agency.  He weighed, by his own account 118 pounds.  He ruled, by General Scott’s account, an empire comprising several thousand square miles and several thousand ‘ignorant savages.’

Crane was not enamored with his Indian subjects and yet no man ever fought the BIA with such fervor.  He hated the bureaucrats in Washington.  He hated the politics, the bungling, the inefficiency, the utter stupidity of federal Indian policy.  He blamed most of the ‘Indian problems’ on that policy and very little on the Indians.

Crane knew the Indians had a history of broken treaties, a paternalistic government that was one hell of a parent and a few agents who tried to apply Washington-made rules that were a nuisance at best, a disaster at worst.  This was a time when Indian money was held by the agency: when children were taken from their homes by force and sent to ‘Indian’ schools, which were really ‘white’ schools for Indians.  Crane protested against the removal of (his) children.

This book will be an eye-opener to most readers.  It does not always present the Indian in the best light nor does the government in the best light, however, Crane tells it like it was.  It is a fascinating book and an enlightening book of Indian policy in the early 20^th century.

Table of Contents

I Nolens Volens

II Across the Plains

III Into “Indian Country”

IV Old Trails and Desert Fare

V Desert Life and Literature

VI A Northern Wonderland

VII The first Ball of the Season

VIII Old Oraibi

IX The Making and Breaking of Chiefs

X The Provinces of the “Mohoce or Mohoqui”

XI The Law of the Realm

XII Comments and Complaints

XIII A Desert Vendée

XIV Soldiers, Indians, and Schools

XV An Echo of the Dawn-Men

XVI Fiddles and Drums

XVII Service Tradition

XVIII Buttons and Bonds

XIX Our Friends, the Tourists

XX The Great Snake-Ceremony

XXI Desert Belascos

XXII On the Heels of Adventure

XXIII The Red Bootleggers

XXIV Held for Ransom

XXV Wanted at Court

XXVI Hopi Annals

XXVII L’Envoi