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Show THE NAVAJO AS A NATION 161 As grass for Navajo flocks became scarcer and scarcer, the sheep got thinner and thinner. Each year the wool clip was less than the year before. The land had scars from overrun livestock trails. Weeds began to replace the better grasses that had fed the herds for so long. A few years later, a commissioner of Indian affairs wrote about the conditions, saying: "The soil, trampled and eaten out to the roots of its vegetation, fought a rapidly losing battle. The wind blew it in dust clouds, flash floods swept it in rusty torrents into the Colorado River, sheep erosion pilfered the top-soil." While the Navajos increased four hundred percent, the land was able to produce only one-half as much as it had. Charles H. Burke began to look at the matter when he was commissioner of Indian affairs in the 1920s. Burke felt that some rules were needed to protect the "rights" of the poorer Navajos who did not own much livestock. While a few ricos ran very large herds, more than half of the tribal members owned only a hundred head or fewer. Without more range, there was little a Navajo could do to start a herd of his own. The Navajo economy could not grow. As a result, most Navajos stayed poor, while a few did well. But Burke did not seem to see the differences between the Navajo and the white economy. Though a Navajo leader may have owned "more than his share" of goods, he used his wealth to help a wide circle of kin, friends, and neighbors. Some large herds made work and income for several related families. Burke's efforts thus worked against the structure of Navajo society. At times his policies brought an end to the work that had helped the poorer members of the tribe. As a result, the stock reduction programs are still a bitter memory for the Navajos who lived through them. Agents tried to talk Navajos into selling horses that were not used for work. They also tried to improve the quality of Navajo sheep. But these efforts did little to change the size of the herds. Officials then tried taxes. If large stock owners were taxed to pay for the extra burden their herds put on the land, officials thought, then ranchers would not increase the size of their herds. The Tribal Council was not convinced by the official who was sent to explain the government's program in 1928. Still, the council did set a tax of eleven cents per head on all family herds larger than one thousand head. In spite of these efforts, the problem was still serious. Studies made in the early 1930s showed that the Navajo range was used by twice as many animals as it could support. Even with the large |