Petition for the Rights of Hopi Women

Between 1842 and 1912, the United States acquired half a continent and absorbed it into the body politic. Trans-Mississippi lands differed, for the most part, from lands settled earlier: They were more mountainous, more arid, and subject to greater extremes of nature.

Government land policy was solidly based on the Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which had provided formulae for partitioning the well-watered woodlands of the East into viable lots for farming. In 1878 John Wesley Powell, a leading Government explorer, geologist, and ethnographer of the Southwest, published his Report on the Lands of the Arid Regions of the United States. He criticized the disposal of Western lands along Eastern patterns and suggested remedies. Powell urged the Government to map and classify lands according to their resources: minerals, coal, pasturage, timber, and arable soil. He proposed settlement by irrigation districts composed of individual farms of 80 acres, followed by local establishment of irrigation cooperatives to develop the water supply. Pasture lands were to be allocated in 2,500-acre units. All water rights would inhere in the land to prevent private monopoly of water rights.

The report was not well received by special interest groups, nor did it sound like an equal distribution to the average citizen. Perhaps the people to whom it would have made the most sense were Native Americans of the Southwest. Powell was a student of the region, and he noted how the Indians adapted to the environment. Cooperative management of water and arable soil was one of the adaptations of the Hopi of Arizona.

As Hopi lands were lost and the Moqui tribe was confined to the reservation, it struggled to maintain the system it had evolved over centuries to survive on arid land. The economic viability as well as the social and spiritual organization of the Moqui were at stake. The tribe was concerned about the division of lands belonging to extended families into privately owned parcels, and it was also worried about the transfer of the means of production from females to males under the legal and economic system of the United States, which treated men preferentially. A matrilineal society would become patriarchal, property rights would be thrown into dispute, and women would be reduced to the kind of second-class status held by contemporary white women.

A petition written to the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1894 and signed by representative men of the tribe articulates these concerns. The petition, dated March 27 and 28, 1894, can be found in the Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Record Group 75. There is no record of a direct response to this petition, but the Hopi lands were not divided by the Federal Government.

John Wesley Powell’s recommendations were finally adopted by the Reclamation Service, New Deal agencies combating the Dust Bowl, and the Bureau of Land Management. Powell’s studies and the adaptation of Native Americans to arid regions are attracting attention today. The Southwest has been developed and populated to its environmental limit. Shrinkage of aquifers and recurring drought require new-or perhaps very old-solutions if the area is to avoid stagnation.

TEACHING ACTIVITIES

1. Ask students to review their textbook’s explanation of the Land Ordinance of 1875, the Northwest Ordinance, and laws pertaining to buying or homesteading public lands. Ask the class to decide:

a. How did the Federal Government acquire ownership of Western lands?

b. Why did the Federal Government survey and divide public lands?

c. What reasons did the Government have for selling land? What motivations were behind the changes in price and credit over time?

d. Why might the model of 160-acre farms developed for the lands of the Old Northwest be inappropriate for Western lands? (Students may need to refer to a U.S. map that shows geographical features.)

2. Distribute copies of the document and a worksheet for each student. Direct students to read the document and to complete the worksheet as homework.

3. When students have completed the worksheet, discuss questions they may have. Ask the class to consider the document and to discuss the following questions:

a. What Moqui ideas would have been most reasonable for the Government to incorporate in its own land policy?

b. What Moqui ideas do you think were so alien to the European tradition that they were never even considered? Explain.

c. Offer reasons why you think the Moqui requests were granted or not granted. (After the discussion, advise students of the historical outcome.)

4. Ask students to read copies of Chief Seattle’s speech to Isaac Stevens in 1854, the interview of Chief Joseph of the Nez Percé in 1879 in the North American Review, Geronimo’s surrender parley with General Crook in 1886, or other examples of Native American commentary on land ownership. Indian Oratory: Famous Speeches by Noted Indian Chieftains by WC. Vanderwerth contains selections from Native American leaders all across the country. Ask them to summarize the attitudes of Native Americans toward land, ownership, and the spiritual.

5. Direct a group of students to learn what the property rights of white women were in their state or territory in 1894 and to compare and contrast them with the rights of Moqui women.

6. Select a volunteer to research the life and writings of John Wesley Powell and present the findings to the class in an oral report.

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