How the United States Used Polarization Against the Navajo and Hopi

by Winter Rabbit

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(This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2025 Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2025 at 10:42:49am PST

History contains numerous tragic instances of genocide, wherein predators exterminate human beings after dehumanizing them.

(1)Kurt Kaltreider, PH.D. "American Indian Prophecies," p.44:
...It is estimated that 100 million Indians from the Caribbean, Central, South, and North America perished at the hands of the European invaders. Sadly, unbelievably, really, much of that wholesale destruction was sanctioned and carried out by the Roman Catholic Church and various Protestant denominations.(1: p.37)

The predators are extremists —

(Bold mine)

Puritans, Indians, and Manifest Destiny. p. 49.
The fact is that to the Puritan, the Native American was the instrument of Satan.

who use religion as justification for genocide.

"O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!"(Psalm 137:8–9 NRSV)

The extremists want more land and resources, so they act the under the illusion of friendship.

Source

In January 1861, Manuelito, Barboncito, Herrero Grande, Armijo, Delgadito and other rico leaders agreed to meet Colonel Canby at the new Fort being built, Fort Fauntleroy (later changed to Fort Wingate). The leaders promised it was best to live in peace and promised to drive the ladrones from the tribe that were causing the problem.

Peace lasted until September 22, 1861, at which time the Navajos felt they had been cheated during a horse race at the Fort by the soldiers. Navajos, women and children, were shot and bayoneted. After the massacre no Navajos were seen around the Fort.

In the meantime, the Civil War was underway and there were battles near Santa Fe between the Confederacy and the Union Army, with the Union Army defeating the Confederates at Glorieta Pass. That being done, Brigadier General Carleton, Commander of the U.S. Army of New Mexico Territory turned his attention to the Navajos. He called the Navajo land, "a princely realm, a magnificent pastoral and mineral country." "The Navajos were wolves that run through the mountains and must be subdued."

(Bold mine)

Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee pgs. 16 - 20

And this time of friendship, the Navajos went often to Fort Fauntleroy (Wingate) to trade and draw rations from their agent. Most of the soldiers made them welcome, and a custom grew up of having horse races between the Navajos and the soldiers. All the Navajos looked forward to these contests, and on racing days hundreds of men, women, and children would dress in their brightest costumes and ride their finest ponies to Fort Wingate....

The Navajos, squaws, and children ran in all directions and were shot and bayoneted. I succeeded in forming about 20 men.... I then marched out to the east side of the post; there I saw a soldier murdering two little children and a woman. I hallooed immediately to the soldier to stop. He looked up, but did not obey my order. I ran up as quick as I could, but could not get there soon enough to prevent him from killing the two innocent children and wounding severely the squad. I ordered his belt to be taken off and taken prisoner to the Post.... Meanwhile the colonel had given orders to the officer of the day to have the artillery (mountain howitzers) brought out to open upon the Indians.... after the massacre there were no more Indians to be seen about the post with the exception of a few squaws, favorites of the officers.

Enemies, not friends - they wanted them all dead. What did they do, since they couldn't murder all the Navajo and Hopi? They used a softer method, like pitting one tribe against the other. Here's that history.

The US put the Hopi Nation in the middle of the Navajo Nation.

(Bold mine)

The Hopi reservation was originally a rectangle 55 by 70 miles (88.5 by 110 km) in the middle of the Navajo Reservation, with their village lands taking about half of the land.^[19] The reservation prevented encroachment by white settlers, but it did not protect the Hopis against the Navajos.^[7]

The Hopi and the Navajo fought over land, and they had different models of sustainability, as the Navajo were sheepherders. Eventually the Hopi went before the Senate Committee of Interior and Insular Affairs to ask them to help provide a solution to the dispute. The tribes argued over approximately 1,800,000 acres (7,300 km²) of land in northern Arizona.^[20] In 1887 the U.S government passed the Dawes Allotment Act. The purpose was to divide up communal tribal land into individual allotments by household, to encourage a model of European-American style subsistence farming on individually owned family plots of 640 acres (2.6 km²) or less. The Department of Interior would declare remaining land "surplus" to the tribe's needs and make it available for purchase by U.S citizens. For the Hopi, the Act would destroy their ability to farm, their main means of income. The Bureau of Indian Affairs did not set up land allotments in the Southwest.^[21]

The Dawes Act destroyed the Hopi’s ability to feed their families, survive, and thrive. Then, the US government took full advantage of normal conflict between these two tribes, who never fought over religion.

Native Sun News Today: Navajo elders continue long fight on disputed land

Located in the Four-Corners plateau of the U.S. Southwest, Big Mountain encompasses most of the northern portion of the so-called “Hopi Partitioned Lands,” an area in which a 1974 Presidential Executive Order called for forced eviction of traditional, non-English-speaking Navajo, or Dineh, under the Navajo-Hopi Relocation Act or Public Law 93-531.

Since that time, nearly 14,000 Dineh and 600 Hopi have been relocated from Big Mountain and other communities like Coal Mine Mesa, Jeddito, Sands Springs, and Star Mountain. Altogether 22,000 Dineh have been displaced or have lost their ancestral range areas, due to federal demarcation of reservation boundaries in territory once shared.

Strict federal policing of the relocation continues into the 21st Century, not without clashes between armed officers and traditional sheepherders. Enforcement includes limitations on water and natural spring management, animal husbandry, firewood gathering, and any type of social or ceremonial activities.

By the way, the US didn't always pit one tribe against the other. It served the US national interest, when during Trails of Tears, the government sought to prevent tribal conflict with Fort Smith.

YouTube Video

Well, the Navajo Nation and the Hopi Nation did not get their “Fort Smith.” After all that divide and conquer, do you think the US government wanted the smaller or larger tribe to win?

“Between 1868 and 1991, the Navajo land base has been extended 15 times, mostly at the cost of what Hopi consider their traditional land base, but also incorporating on the northern and western edges of the reservation land of the Utes and Southern Paiutes. It is in the context of this long historical struggle that the highly publicized cause of the Navajo people living at Black Mountain on Hopi land must be understood.”
www.kstrom.net/...

The May 19, 2019, decision sustained the Hopi Tribe’s efforts to put land into trust over the objection of the Navajo. The objection was ruled “untimely” because the Navajo Nation had not filed them within the 30 days of the notice’s publication in the local newspaper. In fact, the Navajo Nation’s objection was lodged nearly two and a half years late, in August 2016. The land had been placed in trust in December 2013.

On December 16, 2013, the Acting Western Regional Director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs placed 210.85 acres of land into trust at the request of the Hopi Tribe. Three days later, a legal notice was published in the Arizona Daily Sun, a Flagstaff, Arizona newspaper, that provided written notice of this action. The land, known as the Twin Arrows Property, was placed in trust for the Tribe pursuant to Section 5 of the Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute Settlement Act of 1996, P.L. 104-301, 110 Stat. 3649, as amended.

The Navajo Nation unsuccessfully argued that it should have been given written notice since the Nation was listed on a road easement found in the Coconino County records. The Code of Federal Regulations, amended in 2013, actually allows for notice that land is being put into trust by two different means. One way is for an interested party to notify a Bureau of Indian Affair’s official in writing of his or her interest in the land. The official is then obligated to provide the party written notice when the land goes into trust. The second way is for the official to notify the public at-large by publishing the decision in a newspaper.

The US wanted the Hopi, the smaller tribe to win, because that meant less responsibility to less tribal members. For instance, "The second way is for the official to notify the public at-large by publishing the decision in a newspaper."

Source

The use of trust land is governed by tribes and generally not subject to state laws, though certain federal restrictions still apply. Many federal programs and services are also available only on trust lands.

Tribes may benefit from:

New Market Tax Credits

Indian Employment Tax Credits

Tax-Exempt Financing

Discounted Leasing Rates

Federal Contracting Preferences

Foreign Trade Zone Customs Duty Deferral, Elimination or Reduction

State/County Land Use Exemption

Accelerated Depreciation for Business Property on Indian Reservations

These benefits have allowed tribes to enhance housing opportunities for their members, realize the energy development capacity on their lands, negotiate the use and sale of the natural resources, and protect tribal ways of life including subsistence hunting and agriculture.

That is how the US used polarization against the two tribes after exterminating as many as they could: put one in the middle of the other, assimilated as many as possible into Christianity, stole their water, gave Peabody Coal full reign, and forcefully relocated them under the Navajo-Hopi Relocation Act (Public Law 93-531) in 1974, and "notify the public at-large by publishing the decision in a newspaper," instead of direct written notice after nearly 14,000 Dineh and 600 Hopi have been relocated from Big Mountain and other communities like Coal Mine Mesa, Jeddito, Sands Springs, and Star Mountain. Altogether 22,000 Dineh have been displaced or have lost their ancestral range areas, due to federal demarcation of reservation boundaries in territory once shared.

Extremists want more land and resources, so they act under the illusion of friendship or ignorance. Unless, of course, they don't have to. They can kill quickly with a gun, or slowly with a newspaper.

Author is a member of the Metis Nation of the United States

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