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Show 166 XI. DINE DOO WAASHINDOON A crowd gathered to watch this Navajo foot-race in the early twentieth century. A Simeon Schwemberger photograph, courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution National Anthropological Archives. Mining More than tourism, timber, tribal business, or wage work, mining came to support the Navajo Tribe. Miners never did find much gold or silver in Navajoland. The wealth that they found was black â€" coal and oil. In 1907 a well in a remote part of Monument Valley began to pump Navajo oil. Soon it was clear that tribal lands held large pools of oil. The Aneth Extension, fifty thousand acres that Congress had given the tribe in 1933, became the site of the Greater Aneth Oil Field. Natural gas also came out of nearby wells. The mining of uranium added to the tribe's royalty income. Deposits of bentonite, gypsum, lime, alum, and other minerals have been found as well. The mining changed Navajo life in many ways. Mines and drilling rigs have hired a great number of Navajos. Navajo labor built many of the houses and pipelines that support large-scale mining. This income was welcome to many people in the San Juan area. More important than wages, though, were the royalties the tribe earned from the mines. The Tribal Council chose not to divide the wealth among all the People. It would not have helped anyone much if it had been split up that way. Instead the council put the money in banks. There it earned interest and paid for many tribal projects. A scholarship fund was begun and later expanded. Money was set aside for an irrigation project. The |