Within the probable borders of the Chicano Nation there are an estimated 75,053 Indians. In addition, some 100,000 more Navajos are located outside these probable borders but must nevertheless be considered as part of the Indian question within the Nation because of their economic and cultural gravitation toward urban centers within it (e.g., Gallup New Mexico). It is easy to see that the Indian question today is of primary importance within the Chicano Nation. Hence we shall discuss it within the general framework of the Chicano national-colonial question.
The first inhabitants of what is now the Chicano Nation appeared in the area about 25,000 years ago. They were big game hunters who probably wandered into North America from Asia following the herds of mammoths and other suitable game. As the big game gradually became extinct, these people were forced to turn increasingly to the gathering of wild foods supplemented by small game hunting as a means of existence.
One of the single most important events in the prehistory of the Americas was the development of maize, domesticated in Mexico about 7000 years ago. Its cultivation spread slowly throughout the Americas and was introduced into the Southwest between 3000 and 1500 years ago, thus making possible the development of societies based on agriculture.
About 200 AD an important culture began to develop in the Southwest and is called the Anasazi culture. It was centered in the San Juan River valley and extended South to Belen, East to the Rio Grande Valley and West to Nevada. The Anasazi culture reached its highest stage of development between 1000 AD and 1300 AD, It was a patriarchal society based on agriculture. Beans, squash and maize were cultivated. The diet was supplemented by small game. Various archaeological findings indicate that this culture, like many of the North American Indians, was heavily influenced by the economic and cultural developments of Mexico. In addition, evidence indicates that there was substantial intercourse among the various tribes of North America.
In the Thirteenth Century, the Anasazi began the large-scale abandonment of their large urban centers such as Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon, and moved to the Rio Grande valley. The cause of this migration is unknown but one can safely assume that a combination of the large drought in the Southwest between 1276-1299, the arrival of the Apaches, disease and arroyo cutting were contributing factors. Their membership depleted, the Anasazi established villages in the Rio Grande basin, which became known as Puebloland. It stretched from the Pueblo of Taos in the North to that of Senecul in the South; from those of Acoma and Laguna in the West to those of Pecos and Tabria (Gran Quiviva) in the East. The Pueblo Indians of New Mexico are the present-day descendents of the Anasazi.
At one time there were about 75»000 people living in Puebloland. They belonged to two linguistic groups, the Keres and the Tanoan (Tano, Tewa, Tiwa and Towa). Today the Tiwa people are located in the pueblos of Sandia, Isleta, Picuries and Taos. Before the arrival of the Spanish, the Tiwas occupied twelve additional pueblos stretching from Isleta to Bernalillo. The Towa are represented by the Jemez pueblo; however, at one time they were located in 21 other villages. The Tewa lived in the Espanola Basin and occupied nine pueblos, but this number today has been reduced to five, San Juan, Santa Clara, San Ildefonsa, Nambe and Tesuque. The Tano people occupied the Galisteo basin with four settlements, of which none remains. The Keres were located in eight settlements at the time of the arrival of the Spanish and today are found in the pueblos of Cochiti, Santo Domingo, San Felipe, Santa Ana, Sia, Acoma and Laguna. The pueblo of Zuni is only remotely related to the Tanoan groups.
Agriculture was the basis of the Puebloland economy. The dog and turkey had been domesticated. Agriculture was made possible through irrigation systems. Trade was carried on with nomadic tribes for skins and meat. The Pueblo people lived in fortified adobe structures.
A common ancestry and origin plus a common economic basis allowed the development of a marked cultural unity. However, the stage of economic development allowed for no political unity. In general, villages were governed by a cacique and a war priest of equal importance. The responsibilities of the cacique were largely social and he was charged with insuring fertility and the general well-being of the people through religious ceremonies. The war priest managed internal affairs and led in the safeguarding of the people against natural calamities.
The Pueblo Indians were scattered throughout the Rio Grande Valley in seventy to eighty villages and generally occupied the best land. However, Spanish exploration and colonialization cut short the independent development of all Indian tribes in the area.
Relations between the Spanish and the Pueblos were marked by vicious and brutal exploitation of the latter, on whom the Spanish depended entirely for their existence. In New Mexico between 1540 and 1680 the Indians were forced to swear allegiance to the King of Spain and to adopt the Catholic faith. A feudal economic system was established which was based on Pueblo labor in the fields of the missionaries and encomenderos. A sharp conflict developed between secular and religious authorities over the exploitation of Indian labor. The result was that the missionaries instituted the Inquisition in New Mexico as a weapon directed against the secular authorities. However, the Inquisition soon became a tool for securing adequate Indian labor, the Indians being forced to adopt and adhere to the Catholic faith and their leaders being eliminated. The persecution of these leaders for heresy reached frenzied proportions between 1675 and 1677. But some leaders escaped the noose. One of these was Popé, who went on to organize the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.
The Revolt was the only time in history that the Pueblos achieved unity of action. The rebellion was completely successful and the Spanish were driven out of New Mexico. A few hundred Christianized Indians left with them and settled around El Paso.
Between 1692 and 1696, the Spanish reconquered New Mexico in a number of bloody battles. A century and a half of Spanish exploitation and brutality had almost eliminated the Pueblo Indians. In 1692 only some 8,000 remained in 18 villages.
From that year to 1820 the Indians were again exploited by the Spanish feudal system; this time, however, they did not constitute the base of it. They suffered alongside the Chicano peasants to whom they were related by intermarriage. The Pueblo Indians became Spanish subjects and were legally “given” grants of land around their pueblos. In addition, they were subject to military service and were extensively used as cannon fodder against the nomadic tribes.
Mexican independence meant only a change of citizenship for the Pueblos. The rise of capitalism after 1820 meant only increased exploitation. In 1837 the Taos Indians alongside Chicano peasants revolted against Mexican rule. The immediate cause of the revolt was taxes. The Indians and peasants elected a Taos Indian as governor and filled many of the government posts with Indians. However, the Chicano bourgeoisie who had agitated for the revolt and spurred it on seized the occasion in order to install itself in power, raise an army and crush the revolt.
In 1847, Taos Indians again united with Chicanos in a revolt against the Anglo-American invaders. The ensuing repression took its toll in Indian lives.
Pueblo Indians were formally freed from feudal exploitation when peonage was officially abolished in New Mexico in 1866. But the New Mexico Territorial Supreme Court did not rule on the question until 1885 and peonage persisted in some areas into the Twentieth Century.
Although the Pueblos were declared citizens of the United States in 1867 and their landgrants were recognized in 1868, they were forced to struggle desperately for their land throughout the territorial period and after. The United States Government sought to destroy the communal land holdings of the Pueblos through a series of measures (the Dawes Act of 1887) whereby all Native Americans throughout the US were granted citizenship and the right to own private property. Thus it was made possible for individuals to sell tribal communal land. The Pueblos successfully resisted these measures and maintained their traditional land areas.
The formation of the National Forests saw the seizure of thousands of acres of traditional Pueblo land (e.g., Blue Lake). One of the major effects of American occupation was the cultural deterioration which accompanied the economic isolation of the Pueblos. In fact during the early years of the 1900s, the art of pottery-making disappeared at the Santa Ana Pueblo.
Statehood had little meaning for Pueblo Indians. In 1921 landowners holding Pueblo land sought to introduce a bill in the US Senate giving the Government jurisdiction over internal Pueblo affairs and confirming the ownership of their land by non-Indians. The Indians successfully resisted this move. In 1924, the Pueblo Lands Act recognized them as wards of the government living on communal land. It declared that such land could not be alienated without the consent of the US Government. To this day there is sharp conflict around the question of Pueblo land. The mobilization of the Taos Indians to win the return of Blue Lake and the resistance to the Colonias de Santa Fe land development project, which is taking place on Indian land, are examples.
There are 20 pueblos in the Chicano Nation. The populations, landholdings and income vary widely. The Zuni Pueblo controls 407,247 acres while the Tinguas in Ysleta del Sur have only 73 which are only a state trust. The Zuni Pueblo has a population of 5,128 and a tribal enrollment of 55,352 while the Pojoaque Pueblo has a population of 60. The Ysleta del Sur has an unemployment rate of 50% and an underemployment rate of 50%, according to Federal figures, while the Isleta Pueblo has an unemployment rate of 26% and an underemployment rate of 19%. The Nambe Pueblo has a median family income of $3,200 per year while the Sia Pueblo has an average family income of $1,400.
Despite certain variations it is crystal clear that the Pueblo Indians are the most oppressed of the peoples within the Chicano Nation. The cause of their oppression is US imperialism. The poverty of the Pueblos is due to the lack of land; this has forced them to be dependent on subsistence agriculture, seasonal jobs and handicraft work for mere existence. US imperialism has deprived them of adequate land for two reasons: l) the imperialists’ need of land and water rights for purposes of economic exploitation of the Nation; and 2) their need to increase the size of the proletariat for the same purposes.
Historically it has been seen bow the Indians and the US imperialists have clashed over the control of land. What remains is to show the increasing proletarianization of the Indians. This can be illustrated by our noting that of the 72,788 Indians in New Mexico, only 32,722 are living on a reservation or enrolled in a tribe. Of that remaining 40,066 the overwhelming majority have been driven into the proletariat, living and working in Albuquerque or other cities of New Mexico. However, US imperialism, in its ruthless oppression of the Pueblos, in its driving them into the proletariat, creates the objective conditions for its own overthrow and the solution of their problems.
The Apache tribes first appeared in the Southwest in the early Fourteenth Century. They had a matriarchal society which depended upon the gathering of wild food and small game-hunting. It is sometimes thought that the arrival of the Apaches hastened the decline of the Anasazi culture. Relations between the two societies were transitory and alternated between peaceful trade and attacks by the former on the latter for the purpose of obtaining food and horses.
The arrival of the Spanish found the Apaches to be the most numerous of the Indian tribes and they were quick to name all of them. The Mescalero were so named because of their use of the mescal plant as food. The Jicarilla gained their name because of their use of baskets. The Navajo were referred to as either Navajo or Apache in Spanish writings, which makes it difficult to know whom exactly they were referring to.
The Navajo developed distinctly from the Apache tribes. They were the first American Indians to utilize the horse. This important development took place between 1650 and 1680. The Spanish sought to exploit the labor of the nomadic Indians and recognized that they would first have to force them to develop a way of life based on agriculture. They tried to achieve this through warfare and more than met their match. The Apaches and Navajos raided Spanish settlements and Pueblos almost at will. In the Sixteenth Century they brought about the closing of more than half of the Spanish missions in New Mexico. The Spanish retaliated by seizing Apache children and selling them as slaves.
The Navajos offered protection to those Pueblo Indians who fled from the Spanish yoke, and encouraged them to launch the Revolt of 1680.
The Navajos adopted many things from the Pueblos. They began raising sheep and cultivating the land. They learned the art of weaving from them and picked up the art of working silver from the Spanish. Their religious beliefs were and are those of the Pueblos superimposed on the Athapascan beliefs.
The Spanish were unable to control the Apaches at any time. When the rule of New Mexico passed to Mexico, the Mexicans did no better and the Apaches severely limited the growth of the Chicano Nation. Thus in 1848 the Mexicans insisted that the Americans assume responsibility for controlling the nomadic Indians and this agreement was written into the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
The colonialist war of 1846 and the subsequent Chicano rebellion caused the Anglo-Americans to station more soldiers in the Chicano Nation than had either Spain or Mexico. Further, the Anglo-American imperialists realized full well that exploitation of the Nation could not be achieved without the annihilation or neutralization of the nomadic Indians.
Genocidal campaigns against them were methodically carried out. It was no accident that the Anglo-Americans directed their first sustained blows against the Navajos, the largest and most influential of the Indian tribes and one which concentrated on stealing livestock.
New Mexico was organized into the Ninth military department in 1851 and in 1863, after the defeat of Confederate forces, the first expedition of the campaign against the Navajos was launched under the leadership of Colonel Kit Carson.
Orders were given that no male Indian was to be taken prisoner. All women and children were to be. All cultivated land was to be burned and the livestock seized or destroyed. By the fall of 1864 the Navajos, two thousand of their men dead, had surrendered. They were then forced to march to Fort Sumner during the winter, and were interned there along with the Mescaleros until 1865. Thousands died of starvation, smallpox, chickenpox, whooping cough and pneumonia. In 1868 General Sherman negotiated a treaty which allowed them to return to their native lands which make up the present-day Navajo reservation.
The Mescalero were the first Indians to suffer the attacks of the Anglo-Americans. In August, 1862, Kit Carson headed an expedition to destroy them. All the men were killed, all the women and children taken prisoner, and all food destroyed. Their resistance broken after a winter-long series of attacks; they were forced to move to a temporary reservation at Bosque Redondo near Fort Sumner. After intense suffering they simply walked off this reservation, and finally, in 1873, they were given their own real Mescalero Reservation.
The Jicarilla Apaches had close relationships with the Utes and traded frequently with the Chicanos and Pueblos. Immediately after the Anglo-American invasion they professed a desire for peace. Although often carrying on small raids against livestock ranches, they never suffered the large military campaigns such as were directed against the other Apaches. Instead, they suffered more from federal bureaucracy. They Government continually sought to move them to the southern part of the state, but they successfully resisted, insisting that they would consider a reservation only in Cimarron County. In 1887 the Jicarilla Reservation was finally established.
The western Apaches (the Mimbrenos, Mogollones and Chiricahuas) came under attack when the Anglo-Americans sought to explore the area for gold and build a railroad through their lands. Specifically, an Anglo-American general tricked the Apache leader Cochise into surrendering. He escaped but the Anglo-Americans murdered his family. The Apaches under Cochise and Mancos Colorados retaliated by destroying all mines, small settlements and ranches in the area. During the Civil War they attacked both the Union and Confederate forces. Afterwards, the Anglo-Americans murdered more than one hundred peaceful Apaches, mostly women and children, in the Camp Grant Massacre. In 1872 Cochise finally surrendered and most Apaches went to Canada Alamosa to live. Many times after that Apaches left the reservations to fight the invaders, the last time being in 1885 when Geronimo led a group of Chiricahua Apaches off the reservation and fought the American and Mexican forces for a whole year before surrendering. They were forced to go to Florida until 1910, when 187 were allowed to go to the Mescalero Reservation and the rest were sent to Oklahoma.
They are the most recent of the Indian peoples to come to the Chicano Nation.
Their arrival is contemporaneous with that of the Spanish. No one knows why they left their lands in Wyoming to move into the Southwest.
They arrived late in the Seventeenth Century and quickly mastered horse-back riding; so well, in fact, that they were named the “Huns of the Plains” by the Spanish. They established themselves in the eastern plains of New Mexico and hunted Buffalo. They traded with the Chicanos and Pueblos at the town of Taos and the Pueblo of Pecos, and blocked any attempt of these peoples to settle east of the Rio Grande, boasting that “the only reason they allowed the Spanish and Mexicans to remain in New Mexico, Texas and Northern Mexico was to raise horses for them.” (Warren A Beck, New Mexico: A History of Four Centuries, pp 37-8)
The Comanches frequently raided the Santa Fe trail. After the Anglo-American invasion they continued to do so. Close relations existed between them and the Chicanos. In fact, those Chicanos who had made their way out from Las Vegas and other towns in order to trade with the Comanches were known as Comancheros, and traded guns for cattle and whiskey for Texan scalps. They often incited the Comanches to attack Anglo-Americans and warned them of the latter’s military plans.
In 1874 an extensive military campaign crushed the Comanches and the remnants of the tribe were moved to Oklahoma.
They arrived in New Mexico at about the same time as the Comanches and established themselves in the Espanola Valley, blocking Chicano expansion to the North. They traded extensively with the Chicanos and Pueblos.
After the Anglo-American invasion they continued much as before, and even fought alongside Anglo-American soldiers against the Navajos and Comanches. They alternately attacked and traded with Chicano settlements. In 1849 Congress appropriated $18,000 to finance a treaty with them, and in 1850 they agreed to settle on a reservation.
However, it was not until 1853 that a site was chosen. The southern Utes settled down but the northern Utes banded together with the Jicarilla Apaches to continue raiding and fighting. In 1855 they again agreed to settle down. A number of treaties were signed and petty fighting continued until 1873 when the present Ute reservation was established. Soon afterwards a part of the Ute tribe moved to the northeast part of the reservation, which was subsequently divided into two parts, one belonging to the Southern and the other to the Mountain Utes.
Within the Chicano Nation they are located on seven reservations. The huge Navajo tribe lives on three, totaling 1,950,000 acres, 146,996 acres and 76,813 acres. There are an estimated l40,000 Navajos enrolled in the tribe with 119,546 living on the main reservation and 1800 on the other two. (Figures come from a 1969 Federal census of Indian Reservations). The tribe has an income of $16 million a year: 69% from oil, gas and minerals, 16% from businesses, 3% from forestry and 22% from investments. (The tribe has more than $10 million invested in securities.) It is governed by a tribal council of 74 members representing 96 chapters of the reservation. It employs 1000 full-time and another 400 part-time workers. The tribal council owns a number of businesses including two motels, agricultural cooperatives, a Crafts Guild, the Navajo Forests Products Industry and the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority. Seven large private businesses operate on Navajo land, including Fairchild Semiconductor and General Dynamics. It is obvious that the exploitation of the resources of the Navajo people by the US imperialists would bring into existence a stratum of Navajos whose purpose is to facilitate this exploitation. This stratum is represented by the Tribal Council in general and is personified by Peter McDonald, the Navajo Tribal Chief.
Despite the wealth of Navajoland, the Navajos have an unemployment rate of 51% and an underemployment rate of 23%. The life expectancy of males is 44 years. Tribal law prohibits the unionization of Indians on the reservation. Clearly, only a handful of the Navajos profit by the US imperialist exploitation of their land and labor power, while the vast majority suffer unbearably. Slowly poverty and unemployment are forcing more and more of the people into the proletariat of the cities.
The situation of the Mescaleros, Utes and Jicarillas is similar but on a smaller scale. There are 1676 Mescaleros on 460,384 acres of land; they have an annual income of $570,000 coming mainly from production of forest products. They have an unemployment rate of 69% and an underemployment rate of 11%. The Jicarillas hold 742,315 acres. Of the 1491 on the reservation the median yearly family income is $4,500; the unemployment rate is 42% and the underemployment rate is l4%. As far as the Utes are concerned, there are 596 on the Southern Ute reservation and 11.47 on the Mountain. The former hold 307,100 acres, and have an annual total income of $448,800 and an annual median family income of $4,500. The rate of unemployment is 52% and that of underemployment is 35%. The latter hold 567,377 acres and have a total annual income of $1 million and an annual median family income of $4,500. The unemployment rate is 84%.
In each of these tribes a stratum has arisen which fronts for US imperialism. The miserable lives of the masses stand in complete contradiction to the imperialists’ lies about the prosperity of the New Mexico Indians, more and more of whom, in reality, are forced into the proletariat. It is the duty of communists to fight for the unity of the working class. In the Chicano Nation it is the duty of communists to unite the nation under the leadership of the working class to defeat US imperialism and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the coming battles the oppressed Indian peoples constitute a reserve of the working class and will certainly be a valiant and staunch ally in the struggle.