My first recollection of a serious problem was that of water rights on the Rio Grande River between Taos and a little south of Albuquerque. The whites and the Mexicans had all the water, and the Indians were left high and dry. For a beginning for our father, this could not have been more fortuitous. He and his partner had been engaged in law work with a man who grew rice on a large scale in the San Joaquin-Sacramento River delta, and riparian rights were a big part of his problems. So Pop was familiar with this kind of situation.
With this beginning, Pop and Mom were really started on their journey through the "Indian Problem". In 1922 they went to the Rio Grande Pueblos with John Collier, devoting their time to the land problems -- then of extreme importance both with relation to the land itself and to the water rights emanating from the ownership of the land. Some of the Pueblos were literally starving at that time, because the whites and Mexicans had illegally taken their land.
Pop described the manner of conducting a meeting in those days. A meeting between a white man, a Navajo and a Hopi was conducted in Spanish and English. The common language of the Indians was Spanish, except for some who did not know Spanish. Sometimes, therefore, everything had to be translated from English to Spanish to Hopi, from English to Spanish to Navajo and then back again. When the speeches were long, the meetings were longer.
Pop listened to all sides of all the questions and problems the
Indians gave him, but he was never vacillating or indecisive. No matter whether
the people agreed with him, they respected him. No matter whether he was obviously
a friend of one man's enemy, the man still liked and respected Pop. This was
a remarkable quality and enabled him to do things no one else could.
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