SHINE SMITH, FRIEND OF THE NAVAJO

Story by Gladwell Richardson

"SHINE SMITH"

For more than two days and nights Shine Smith had been without water. He was lost in the hottest and driest part of the Navajo Reservation. After the first 24 hours he wandered in circles, beset with feverish hallucinations. Now in the light of the stars on the third night after what should have been a quick horseback ride from Navajo Mountain on the Utah border to Kayenta, only death remained.

In that wild maze of intermingled canyons and unknown mesas of extreme northern Arizona the end of the trail was at hand. Shine in his condition could not go on.

Suddenly on the trail within a few feet loomed a Navajo horseman.

Amazed, Shine collected what wits he had left and called through broken, swollen lips the Navajo word for water, "Toh! Toh!"

The Navajo, John Chief, moved up beside the white man to stare at him pityingly in the starlight. Chief said leadenly that the nearest water was ten miles away.

"I can never reach it," Shine whispered hopelessly.

"My friend, we can try."

Chief turned about, riding beside Shine. At times he steadied him on that nightmarish ride. Finally he was forced to tie him in the saddle. Shine afterwards could recall little of that impossible ride to cheat death. Chief did get him to a spring. That water saved his life. For five days after reaching the spring Shine hovered between life and death in the hogan of Tom Holliday. It was months before he fully recovered.

It was at this turning point in Shine's career he made the vow to devote the rest of his life to helping the Navajo Indians.

The Navajos have never had a better friend, or a more important one. Shine Smith has become a legend. The saga of Shine Smith, who came to the southwest as a missionary thirty years ago, is also one of romance and adventure, as well as of service to humanity. Running through the bright threads Shine Smith, beloved friend of the Navajo Indians, is one of the best known persons on the reservation. Few white men know the Indians as well as he does, or is more esteemed by them.

is the picture of a man who held steadfast to one single purpose. His pulpit is wherever he happens to be when need arises. His church, nay, his cathedral! is the grandest and most encompassing in all the world. It is 25,000 square miles of northern Arizona. In that vast region every man and woman, and especially the children, know him. Regardless of race, color or creed, Shine Smith is certain to be where storm clouds gather, where there is need of his kindness and his strength in the depths of human misery.

Red man, and white. He has helped bring them into the world, fed and clothed them, and buried them finally in some lonely campo santo on a wind swept mesa. Or beside silent trails where long ago tired feet have gone to rest forever.

Of all the thousands of people who know him, few of them realize that which has made him great. In recent years the host of stories and legends about Shine Smith have grown to such proportions it is extremely difficult to pierce the maze.

Six feet tall, wide shouldered, gray headed, Hugh Dickson Smith was born August 24, 1882, at Rome, Georgia. His father was Edward Reed Smith, an aide to former General Nathan B. Forrest, C. S. A. His mother was Susan Claudia Cothran Smith, the daughter of Wade Cothran, once judge of the supreme court of South Carolina. His uncle, Charles Henry Smith, was the nationally known humorist, "Bill Arp" of the Atlanta Constitution.

From high school, Shine Smith went to the Presbyterian University at Clarksville, Tennessee, and then the Theological Seminary at Austin, Texas. He was ordained a minister in the Presbyterian Church at Coleman, Texas, in 1911. For the next six years he preached to the cowboys of west Texas, receiving early in 1917, a call to proceed to northern Arizona as a missionary to the Navajo Indians.

It was in west Texas he became known as "Cowboy Preacher" Smith. After his arrival in Arizona, Zane Grey started calling

PHOTOGRAPHS BY BOB FRONSKE

him "Parson" Smith. For the first three years in the Navajo country he was known by both these names, but soon he was to acquire still a third.

He was stationed at a mission at Ganado until late in 1920, was then assigned to Chinle, and in 1921 to Kayenta. From Kayenta he was sent to Tuba City where he later separated himself from that station to become a roving missionary; a free lance, the hardest possible road any man could possibly choose for himself.

It was soon after his arrival at Tuba City he became known as "Shine" Smith. This is a contraction of "Sunshine."

How he acquired this nickname is also the subject of many stories, but here is how it came about. During the hard winter of 1921 people on the reservation were dying like flies from the influenza. Shine was in the saddle day and night taking food and medicine to remote areas far from Tuba City. At the same time he was battling to keep the school children there from dying by both influenza and malnutrition. The Navajos began to say of him: "He brings hope and life like the sun shining upon the earth." Within a short time he became "Sun shine" Smith, and finally "Shine" Smith.

Cold, frozen and without any sleep for many long hours at a stretch he would appear at a remote hogan to bring food and med icine. Conditions were so bad that in many cases just the little amount of food he could pack in would do more to save lives than the medicine. Most of the cases were children. Their sit uation caused him untold grief, though he managed somehow to keep a smile and a laugh to encourage the stricken people.

Not always did he manage to force himself through the snow and ice in time to prevent far more grim tragedy than silent death. One terrible afternoon he battled through a snow storm to a hogan where smoke no longer drifted from the top. Inside he found the mother and five children cold in death, victims of the flu. In bitter remorse and helplessness the father had just hanged himself to the roof of the hogan.

Very early in his sojourn with the Navajos he set about bettering the lot of the children. It has been for them he has labored the hardest. Often he has been heard to say, "To see them made well and happy again is my reward."

For every year he has been with the Navajo Shine has consistently fought injustices and violation of the Indians' personal rights. Many small cases are adjudicated on the spot satisfactorily to all concerned. No matter the personal risk and expense, Shine always follows through.

In 1941, a delegation of western Navajos wanted to get to Washington to plead their cause in the matter of enforced stock reduction and to seek money for farms. They asked Shine to accompany them as their spokesman. Since the delegates were "in bad" with the authorities at Window Rock, the Navajo tribal capital, Shine had, literally, to steal them off the reservation.

Their first major stop was made in Denver, Colorado. Here men and women, important leaders in civic affairs, especially Mr. George Olinger and Mr. Frank Kramer, entertained the delegation. They unleashed the first barrage of publicity that covered the nation.

Wherever he goes Shine Smith's broad shoulders and super personality are instantly recognized. So it was on the train with his colorful Navajos. By the time they arrived in Chicago they were surrounded by reporters and photographers who remained with them so long they hardly had time to eat and catch the next train to Washington.

Despite the cold reception received in the nation's capital from the officials who should have welcomed them, the delegation received so many requests for personal appearances they could not all be filled.

Arizona's Senator McFarland tried to get them an interview with President Roosevelt. He was ill, but Mrs. Roosevelt graciously gave them an interview. Her secretary informed the delegation the First Lady could spare only five minutes as she must be on her way out of Washington.

That five minutes turned into forty as Mrs. Roosevelt was very much impressed by their cause. The second wife of John Chief, who saved Shine's life years before, presented her with a Navajo blanket. The delegation's mission was mentioned three times in Mrs. Roosevelt's syndicated column. She was instrumental in getting the Navajos $200,000 for farms, and she planned to visit the reservation that winter, but the outbreak of war intervened.

When Shine first came to the Navajos he thought a few months' study would equip him with a working vocabulary of their language. He discovered very early that several very noted missionaries in the field, although speaking Navajo after a fashion, were still using interpreters. It came as a distinct shock to him to find the relationship between the missionary and his interpreter was the worst of makeshift arrangements.

Immediately Shine realized what few of them ever did, that unless the missionary could speak Navajo fluently he was handicapped from the start. At this period Don Lorenzo Hubbell and his sons at Ganado and Oraibi became his lifelong friends. He took his problem there and was told that to learn the tribal language he must get out among the Navajos. This Shine did, but his efforts were all very discouraging. Finally he reached the point where he decided he was a failure, and that unless he could learn the language so he could carry on the work nearest his heart, he would withdraw from the Navajo country.

While thus sadly discouraged he sat in a Navajo hogan one morning while breakfast was being cooked. He broke from a deep mood of despondency to notice a singular fact. The small Navajo children enunciated their words clearly and distinctly. It was easier to solve correct pronunciation from them than from older people. From that moment on Shine was to be found everywhere with the children, at school, at home, herding sheep, traveling or just playing with them. With amazing speed he found himself speaking Navajo fluently as well as any Navajo. Not content there, he started learning Hopi. Later at Kayenta he found Paiute Indians among the people he worked with. Sitting in a shelter with a Paiute family one wintry night so cold a fire must be maintained to keep from freezing he paid two small boys 25 cents each to keep it replenished. Then he sat up all night with them exchanging Navajo words for Ute until he could make himself understood by the Paiutes.

An indefatigable worker, Shine roved the far flung spaces both on and off the reservation visiting hogans and the homes of the people living inside his 25,000 square mile stamping ground. He carried medicine to doctor sufferers of trachoma, skin diseases, colds, measles, injuries, and so on. Serious cases of illness he transported himself, or arranged for the patient to be taken to a hospital. Constantly he preached sanitation and child welfare as often as he told them about the Bible and the white man's God. Indeed, many were the times when he even turned obstetrician. Or again perhaps he came in time to administer last rites and then help dig the grave.

On a good many occasions Shine has taken over and operated the trading post while the owner went out with his wife to the hospital to await the birth of a baby. There are practically no trading posts on the reservation he has not operated while the trader had to go away on business, or take an injured or sick member of the family out to the hospital.

Though the Navajos are what Shine calls fondly "his people," all races, colors and creeds have been aided by him. He has been a standby in illness and death, and illness of the spirit. He will travel any distance to aid a friend.

In his territory, which he knows so thoroughly, Shine has been a guide to the great and near great. Artists and writers, scientists, congressmen, governors of states, industrialists, moving picture people, hiking clubs, parties of explorers and dozens of nationally prominent people. One of these recently was Joe Iuhlein, Milwaukee industrialist, former president of Schlitz breweries. Another was Mrs. Will Rogers, Jr., seeking to adopt two Navajo children.

Other peoples' romances have come into his life. Of the thousands of people he has married many of them have been misty eyed couples who say, "Reverend Smith, we met at Chinle last year and we have come back to ask you to marry us on the rim of Canyon de Chelly." Or again it may be at the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, the Painted Desert, on the bridge at Cameron, or on the top of Navajo Mountain where they want to be married. He is always willing to cooperate in any way.

A man of such stature who has done as many things as Shine, who has accomplished so much for his chosen people, could not fail to gain the enmity of some. Even these people are hardly enemies. They have merely resented his influence and integrity which gain him a position of trust and dependability. These few people through jealousy and envy are responsible for a story about Shine Smith which never contained a grain of truth.

At various times since 1921 it has been whispered by the unknown, Shine Smith was unfrocked as a minister. The charge is said to have been one of dancing with the Hopi at Moencopi in a village kiva. And another that he encouraged and assisted at pagan Navajo tribal wedding ceremonies. (Tribal weddings are recognized as valid in law.) The record does show that during the 1920's Shine was accused of misconduct by no less than brothers of the cloth, and one Indian agent. These accusations seem not to have been taken seriously by his church authorities. For the reason they were mostly ludicrous. The best Shine's detractors appear to have been able to produce was this one, actually made, ". . . that he was about to depart from his station for the purpose of making a trip to Navajo Mountain without proper authorization."

Lack of the freedom of movement and action he deemed necessary to effectively carry on his work to benefit the most culmi-