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Show 142 X. DINE BIKEYAH to become self-sufficient, they must be given room to grow. By about 1900, Mormons, Utes, and Paiutes pressed the Navajos on the north. The railroad, Apaches, and American ranchers closed in on the south border. Anglo-and Mexican-Americans moved in on the east. Tension rose in these borderlands. More Land for the People One answer to the land problem lay in homesteading the federal land held for public use. Most good agents insisted that the Navajos had a right to use this public land. At the same time, the agents advised the Navajos living in the border areas to stay within the borders. Another solution was enlarging the reserve. Through the late 1800s, the reservation gained a great deal of land indeed. In 1878 President Ulysses S. Grant signed an executive order adding almost 1,000,000 acres on the west. Two years later, President Rutherford B. Hayes gave the Navajos title to more than 1,000,000 acres on the south and east. Two grants of almost 2,500,000 acres each were made in 1882 and 1884, pushing the Navajo boundaries west and south around the Hopis and north to the San Juan River. Much of the Utah Navajo land was restored to public domain in 1892 but given back to the tribe in 1933. In January 1900, the reservation gained a section west of the Hopis. By 1900, then, the tribe had most of its present-day lands north of Window Rock. At first, the land grants sounded generous. Almost seven million acres had been added to the treaty lands. In almost every case, though, Navajos had lived on the land long before it became part of the reserve. They gained little more than safety when it was made an official part of the reservation. What is more, the changes often led to bad feelings between the Navajos and their neighbors. Angry because this land was lost to public use, white ranchers fought all the harder when Indians tried to acquire homesteads. The agents' programs to encourage Navajo homesteading met with very little success. The rules for claiming a homestead confused the People. Most Navajos did not see why they should apply for land that had belonged to the tribe for ages. And a hogan and brush corral were not legal improvements on the land, as the whiteman's buildings were. Navajos sometimes came home from a summer camp to find their lands claimed by whites. In |