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Show NAVAJ0E INDIANS NEAR STARVATION Utah Sheriff Reports That 30,000 Are in Desperate Plight. Deseret News: in depicting me extremity ex-tremity to which the Navajoe Indians have been driven in their effort to obtain ob-tain food, Sheriff Christensen said: "A few years ago they had great bands of horses ponies, of course, but many of them were good ponies. But gradually they became less. Then as the ranges got dryer and dryer and the raising of corn became well-night impossible and game scarcer and scarcer yuntil there was practically none at all, they started start-ed in killing their horses very fast. They wer obliged to do it. Now they are nearly all gone. In fact, many of them have killed their last pony to feed their squaws and papooses." "Thirty thousand Navajo Indians are at the point of starvation down where I live," said Sheriff Christensen of San Juan county to the Deseret News on Wednesday afternoon. -"Six thousand of them are in Utah, and the rest in New Mexico and Arizona, and the situation situ-ation is desperate. Unless something is done to mitigate their condition pretty pret-ty soon there will be an uprising that will not augur well for the whites. There is no enmity between them now particularly. But the truth is, the Indians In-dians are in the worse possible plight. They are practically without food and winter is coming on. I don't know how they are going to do unless the government gov-ernment comes to their aid. If it does not, they will help themselves to what we have got and then we will have to clear out." Continuing, Sheriff Christensen said: "The deplorable state of affairs has been caused by nine years of drouth. For that period there has been little or no rain. A few years ago the Indians had plenty 4n fact, they were rich. Many, very many of them owned flocks of sheep, numbering 6,000 to 7,00.0 head. inai was preny guua mr uiie iiiuiau. Not many had as few as 400 or 500. Now the wealthiest of them have not got that number while the most have none at all. Year by year their herds have been thinned out until the present pres-ent condition has come about. The past summer has been dreadfully dry and they are getting restless and are likely to break forth at any time. But that is something Uncle Sam must not permit. These Navajoes all live close together where Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona join cornersThose in Colorado the Utes get assistance. Those' in the other sections named do not. They have been on their own resources re-sources and fighting their own battles for life since 18S0, when they got their last aid. The effort has been to make them a. self-supporting and pastoral people. The effort has failed, and I am here to plead for their betterment and for our own welfare and safety as well. I know whereof I speak. I have lived among them for the past twenty-seven years and talk all four of their principal princi-pal languages." . Sheriff Christensen was about to appeal ap-peal to the Indian Rights' association but laid the matter before Senator Rawlins. Wednesday afternoon instead. The latter immediately telegraphed the situation to the Indian commissioner as they had been reported to him by Sheriff Christensen. The expectation is that the government will investigate the matter officially without delay. |