Henry Chee Dodge, Chief of the Navajo Nation

Henry Chee Dodge, chairman of the Navajo Tribal Council, is chief of the Navajo Nation. A great American and a great patriot, he has, through the years, used wise council and cool judgment in the best interests of his people. One of the wealthiest of Arizona Indians, Chee Dodge has invested heavily in war bonds, has urged his people to extend themselves in the war effort.

Recently the national press wires flashed: "NAVAJO INDIAN BUYS $20,000 WAR BONDS"

Gallup, N. M., Chee Dodge, Navajo leader bought $20,000 worth of War Bonds in Gallup today.

That is a lot of bonds even for a White man. But this Navajo who laid down the cash to help "Washington" is a lot of man.

It was in 1934 when I first met Henry Chee Dodge at his stone ranchhouse under Sonsola Buttes, Arizona. The Stars-Lying-Down, as the Navajo interpret the name, is some 25 miles north of Fort Defiance, and is one of the most beautiful mountain regions of the Navajo country.

At the time of our first meeting, Chee was generally believed to have reached the ripe age when participation in the involved tribal affairs should be too strenuous for an elderly man. But not with Chee-instead of my being the questioner he quizzed, "What's the news?" "What's John Collier up to now?"

It would be untrue to say that Chee is be-loved by all Navajos and Whites. He is too respected a friend to deck with blatherskate or sentimentality. The old and reliable Navajos honor him for what he is by his own righta sagacious and potent leader. But the Bilakana whom he has consistently outmaneuvered in business may not feel the same. Nor the synthetic leaders whom he calls "scrubs." But they respect him!

The story of Chee Dodge's life did not come all in one session while we sat in the soft leather chairs before the crackling juniper logs of the fire in his ranchhouse living room. Anyone who has tried to force words out of Chee soon discovers that he runs into a kindly but complete blackout. The "old man" talks when he feels like it.

Chee Dodge was born at Old Fort Defiance, Arizona, in the spring of 1860. His mother was of the lineage of Naabahe, the supreme War Chief of the tribe. From her came his blood affiliation with the important Ma'iidesgizhni, or Coyote Pass Clan.

Eighteen-sixty was the year in which the black clouds of war settled over the Navajo country. With the dawn of April 1860, some 2,000 warriors attacked the stone and adobe quadrangle of Old Fort Defiance. After a stiff four hour's fight they were driven off by the heavy fire of Captain O. S. Shepherd's mountain howitzers.

In the summer of 1863 Colonel Christopher Carson with his New Mexicans guided by the Ute and Zuni scouts struck the Navajo country. Like a scourge they swept over the deserts and mesa lands. All Navajos who resisted were killed. The women and children were thrown into concentration camps at Fort Defiance and Old Fort Wingate.

The smoky pall rising from burning hogans and cornfields darkened the autumn sky as Chee's family fled into the west. When they reached the land of the Moqui they stopped to rest. Nearby the town of Walpi, the Place-of-the-Gap, was perched on the tip of her spindle-shaped mesa.

For years the Navajos had raided and harassed the Walpi people. Danger hovered in the gray house-cluster. But hunger overrode caution. In Chee's words, "My mother left our camp to trade for corn. She climbed the mesa to Walpi. She never came back. We heard that the Ad'yakini had killed her."

Fleeing westward in the swelling torrent of the Navajo hegira the aunts carried the orphan deeper into the west-beyond Gray Mountain.

They came to the south rim of the Grand Canyon near Lipan Point. Down the dangerous Tanner Trail they descended into the forbidding haze of the chasm “into the very bowels of the World!” To add to the terrors of the endless canyons a band of renegade Navajos started to plunder and kill their own people. After considerable fighting they were trapped and killed. Wandering through the canyon bottom the hungerstricken fugitives herded their few sheep and existed on edible roots and plants.

In the meantime Carson had started to move some 8,000 Navajos on their “Long Walk” to Fort Sumner in New Mexico. Knowing that many of the band still were out he sent a “promise of protection against the Ute and Mexicans.” There would be food and clothing for those who surrendered.

Finally a Navajo leader, called Round Moccasin, came to those in the canyon bottom. The starving people had reached the point where they were ready to surrender. They came out of the canyon near the head of the present Bright Angel Trail. Chee tells, “They hauled the sheep up over the cliffs with ropes made of yucca fiber.” At this time Chee was four years old. No one knows the secret war name given him by his maternal relatives. I have never asked him, Red Woman of Chinle told me in 1935 that she knew him as Chee in 1864. She remembered seeing him as his family traveled through Ganado, Arizona. The name Chee is the Anglicized spelling of the Navajo word “chii,” reddish, for that was the color of his skin.

Where the name of Dodge originated is speclative. Some say that it came from Major Theodore Dodd, an early agent at Fort Defiance. The more reasonable version is that it came from Captain Henry Lafayette Dodge. Captain Dodge, whom the Navajos called “Red Shirt” was greatly beloved by the Navajos; and the whole nation grieved when he was killed by the Chiricahua Apaches near Springerville, Arizona, in 1856. It may be that the army officers at Fort Defiance named him Chee Dodge after this renowned frontiersman.

The four year exile at Fort Sumner on the Pecos River is very hazy to Chee. He wasgrowing from four to eight years of age. Old Navajos told me that he carried water and ran errands for the officers stationed there and was a great favorite among them. Even then the orphan boy was outstanding among the hundreds of Navajo children held on the reserve.

growing from four to eight years of age. Old Navajos told me that he carried water and ran errands for the officers stationed there and was a great favorite among them. Even then the orphan boy was outstanding among the hundreds of Navajo children held on the reserve.

During the Fort Sumner period Chee's elder maternal aunt married Perry H. Williams, a goverment farmer. When the Navajos were allowed to return to their homeland in 1868, Williams who had a liking for the boy adopted him. He augmented the lad's small fund of English and gave him preliminary schooling.

When they finally arrived at Fort Defiance, Williams settled Chee and his aunt in a stone house by the clear stream that flows out of Natural Bridge Canyon. A few months later news came that Washington was issuing sheep and goats to the Navajos.

When the issue day came Captain Frank T. Bennett and Major Theodore Dodd stood on the old corral walls and started dividing the sheep and goats. Each Navajo large and small was given two sheep and one goat. The halfgrown boy was there to get his share. No one could know at that time that from these two scrawny ewes would spring the thousands that in later years would carry the Dodge “earmark.” Through trials and vicissitudes for the Navajos. White adventurers and scamps settled on and around the reservation. Like buzzards they preyed upon the Indians. From bases in the north the fierce Ute raided as far south as the Moqui towns. Even among the Navajos their own renegades brought trouble. In these times of trial the Navajos as well as the White man learned to rely upon Chee.

In 1881 Chee had become of such importance in Navajo affairs that the agent Galen Eastman requested his permanent appointment as interpreter. This was approved by Washington. As Chief Herder he received $720 a year and $3.00 a day traveling expenses. Only two other Navajos, John Navajo, and Brudo, spoke English. The three formed the bottleneck through which Navajo-Government affairs passed.

With the coming of the Atlantic and Pacific R. R. (the present Santa Fe System) Navajo blankets and silver started to develop into a new income source. Recognizing the possibilities for his tribesmen, Chee took great interest. Sponsoring the greatest of all Navajo silversmiths, Atsidih Sanih, Chee had the old silversmith make him the first turquoise set Navajo ring ever wrought from silver.

In 1882 Federal funds became so low that Chee's salary had dwindled to $300 a year. To Interpretation of Navajo into English or vice versa was extremely difficult at this time and pregnant with the possibility of serious misunderstandings. Most of it was done by Jesus Arviso, a Sonoran. He had to go through Navajo-Spanish to a Spanish-English speaking official. As early as 1870 Chee had mastered English. At that time he became known as Ashkihih Diitsi, the “Boy Interpreter.” When Perry Williams died in 1872 Chee was on his own. Adolescence was manhood. But he was well able to take care of himself and his affairs. During the seventies he worked as a government interpreter at Fort Defiance. He wasn't working for “Washington” alone he was saving money from his meager wages. Even then he had vision of a kingdom of his own.

The seventies and eighties were fraught with to keep his hand in things he agreed to interpret part time at councils. His headquarters were at Natural Bridge Canyon where his own interests, horses, sheep, and cattle began to claim most of his time.

With Manuelito, the nominal chief of the Navajo, Chee was one of the first Navajos to be issued a wagon. But not following the prodigality of the old chief, the young leader used his wagon to good advantage in teaming and other gainful uses.

In 1882 Denis Rirodan, the elder brother of Mr. Timothy Rirodan of Flagstaff, was appointed Navajo agent. A man of no mean stature himself, he saw the possibilities in the twenty-two year old interpreter. Chee says of Denis Rirodan, “He was the man who gave me my start. He gave me every chance. With-

out doubt he was the best agent the Navajo ever had!"

Another notable man who played an important part of Chee's life was Dr. Washington Matthews, the post surgeon at Fort Wingate, and later Acting Surgeon General, USA. Dr. Matthews' main claim to fame was his outstanding work on Navajo life and customs. Almost all of 1883 was spent in assisting Dr. Matthews prepare his epic and rare "Navajo Legends" and "Night Chant."

It was Dr. Matthews who made it possible for Chee to make his first trip to Washington in 1884. Acting as guardian for Hathli Nezh and two other medicine men, Chee spent three months in Washington. While there he met President Chester A. Arthur, the first of the three presidents that Chee has known.

After Chee's return it became clear that old Manuelito had fallen out of Rirodan's good graces. According to Chee the matter was personal, but Rirodan in his report laid it to much whiskey, and the ownership of slaves. On April 19, 1884, at the age of twenty-four years Chee received the following appointment: TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: I have this day appointed Henry Dodge (or Chee as he is known amongst his tribe) as head chief of the Navajo tribe. This Cottonwood Creek. At this time he had saved $2,000 of his government wages.

Indian trading was gaining impetus after the coming of the A. & P. In it Chee saw possibilities to further expanding his interests. In 1884 the northernmost trading post on the reservation, which was temporary, was run by Archie Sweetland on Tsalee Creek. North-ward there was a vast trading area. With Stephen E. Aldrich, a trader from Manuelito, New Mexico, Chee opened the Round Rock Trading Post north of Chinlé.

Some have stated that Chee's fortune was founded at Round Rock, but recently he told me that he never made much money as an Indian trader, and that his business association with Aldrich was not friendly. He added, "Sheep, horses, and cattle were the life. In them the Navajo could prosper-for he understood how to care for them. Yes! Livestock is the backbone of Navajo life even today!"

In the good years that followed, Chee's live-stock expanded to great proportions. He knew how to make money out of sheep. Realizing that the long-legged, rangy Navajo ewe would not produce a maximum of wool and mutton, he started introducing improved rams to his flocks. All was not easy sailing the vicissitudes of action is taken with the sanction of the Hon. Secretary of the Interior and Commissioner of Indian affairs. Henry Dodge has always proven himself intelligent and reliable, deeply interested in the welfare and advancement of his tribe and respected by Whites in accordance herewith.

D. M. Rirodan, U. S. Indian Agent.

At this time Chee had a standing offer from the military at Fort Wingate of $900 per annum as interpreter for the Commanding Officer. But owing to his growing livestock interests he refused the offer. The ranges near Natural Bridge became too crowded. So he built a new home under Sonsola Buttes where the grass was "belly deep" and fine fields sloped away to the abundant water of

JUNE, 1943

Sheep-growing are no respecters of persons. In the great snow of 1891 the carcasses of 1500 of his frozen sheep scattered from Klagetoh to Tanner Spring. Later a slick Bilakana financier almost got away with considerable of his capital investment in the stock of a tottering bank.

By 1920 the days of the old Navajo Headman was waning. In 1923 the young bloods of the tribe called for a formal tribal government based on White Man's rules and regulations. In the election that followed, Chee was honored by being elected the first Chairman of the Navajo Tribal Council.

After serving his term he relinquished the nominal leadership of the tribe to a younger man. But not the real power something that had crystalized over fifty years of service to his tribesmen. Time was creeping upon theoldsters, but not Chee. He had been able to adjust himself in this ever-changing and confusing world. In 1936 he took office as Tribal Councilman from Crystal, New Mexico. He was reelected last year and continues to serve his people wisely and well.

Today, at the prime age of 83 summers, Chee retains the full possession of his mental and physical powers. Last fall he personally supervised the branding and shipping of his cattle. A neatly dressed, large and robust man with the shrewd gray eyes, topped with silk white hair, he still keeps the fine appearance the "old timers" tell of, "La! Chee was a great one for fine clothes the best in horses, and everything. You knew he was something when you looked at him!"

Chee is no man's man. Not even to Navajo agents or bankers. Amidst his large family he stands as the dynamic center of all activities. He has been neither a stumbling block or a stooge for the Indian Department. The genuine government of the Navajos has been run for the past ten years from the living room at Sonsola. There, the elders and the "thinking men" of the tribe have come for advice and hope in this changing world.

Recently newspapermen have questioned me in regard to the old master's attitude towards the so-called "New Deal" for the Navajo. I could not take the liberty to answer for Chee further than that Navajo agents have been phantoms who have gone into oblivion or been perpetuated by their deeds. I do know that Chee's loyalty remains ever steadfast to Washington Sita'ih, the Eternal Chief, who sits in a hogan under a white dome that shines like the sacred white shell in the land east of the sunrise.

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