50 Years Ago: Fight between tribal officials leads to two suspensions

The first week in March 1965 was a good news week for the Navajo Times.

The lawsuit filed by Allen Hill, an assistant public relations director for the Navajo Tribe, against Maurice McCabe, the tribe’s executive director, was still on everyone’s mind.

Nakai used the $70,000 lawsuit against McCabe to put him on suspension – thus getting rid of a political opponent for awhile – and then later suspended Hill as well to show that he was not taking any sides in the dispute.

Hill claimed that McCabe assaulted him at the Window Rock Airport and after he was suspended, he sat down and talked to a reporter for the Navajo Times, explaining why he would file a suit against someone who was technically his boss.

“The main reason I filed this suit is because this is the third time I have been beat up by higher officials – twice by members of the council, which occurred right in the council chambers within the past year,” he said.

As for the fight involving McCabe, he said he was on his way to San Francisco when he met up with McCabe at the Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix.

McCabe, he said, invited him and Ned Hatathli, who was traveling with him, to dinner.

Throughout the dinner, said Hill, McCabe continued to insult him and other members of the council who supported Nakai.

Hill said he and McCabe then had a “little altercation” when they went out to get on the plane and Hill claimed he skinned his hand on McCabe’s sharp belt buckle while trying to defend himself.

When they reached the Window Rock Airport, Hill said, McCabe slugged him just as he stepped down out of the airplane.

“Ned Hathathli tried to pull him away,” Hill said, adding that McCabe hit him several times, knocking off his glasses, pushing him up against the airplane and finally hitting him to the ground.

He said he suffered bumps over all parts of his head, two black eyes, a cut to his nose and damage to his teeth.

McCabe continued to refuse to comment on the incident except to say that he did not assault Hill.

He says he is planning to file a counter suit.

This was the week when the Navajo Tribal Council decided that the San Juan County Commission in New Mexico was not working in the best interests of the Navajo people who lived in their county.

The situation began when the commission approved the transfer of a liquor license belonging to R.G.

Hunt near Aztec to a site a lot closer to the Navajo Reservation between Shiprock and Farmington.

That transfer was proposed in 1964 but was rejected by the state but the commission a year later approved it, saying that it would not conflict with the health and safety of the people in the area.

The council disagreed, passing a resolution objecting to the plans and saying that if it was approved, it would mean a sharp increase in liquor related deaths on the road between Shiprock and Farmington.

Nineteen sixty-five was the year when the BIA basically hired Indian bodyguards for a tree.

The United States government hired two Native Americans, one of them a Navajo, to guard a tree in California.

This is no ordinary tree, named “Old Solo.” The giant Sequoia is one of the oldest and biggest living things on earth.

Its age has been estimated at more than 3,000 years old and is 54 feet in circumference.

It is 202 feet tall.

The Interior Department, with the aid of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, decided to hire two Native Americans who worked with the U.S.

Forest Service – Al Peryon and Sonny James – to watch over the tree after it was hit by lightning.

The lightning caused the tree to catch on fire at the 120-foot level and the fire was still smoldering a week later, despite efforts by firefighters to put it out.

Firefighters have used specially treated water on the fire and bombed it with liquid from helicopters.

Neither have been successful.

The fire is too high up to be doused by ground crews and it’s too low to be affected by the water thrown out of the helicopter.

Forest Service rangers even tried to shoot a line through the branches using a bow and arrow in the hopes of being able to use the line to haul up a hose.

Because of its age and the fact that thousands of people trek to the forest each year to gaze at Old Solo and take pictures, Forest Service officials said they want to try and save the tree if it is at all possible.

So they put out the word for Native Americans who were used to camping out a lot and found Peryon and James who agreed to pitch a tent at the base of the tree and “watch for changes in the fire and take care of any fallen embers.”
They are to work a five-day week, eight hours a day until the fire either goes out by itself or is doused by storms or snow.

They will be paid together $4.98 an hour.

Rangers have been commissioned to drop off supplies using a four-wheeled vehicle to the tree watchers daily.

Normally, Old Solo was accessible only by footpath.

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