Navajo Indian Refuses to Serve in the U.S. Army (1966)

Letter From a Navajo Indian to the U.S. Army
By Raymond Beletso

Dear Mr. D. D. Spahr:
This letter is in answer to the two notices or Questionnaires you have sent to me in the last 6 weeks, this last one, day before yesterday. I am filling out this last one and returning it to you today. I have read it over and am filling it out as honestly as I can. The reason, that I have hesitated to return it: I am not interested in your war in Vietnam and I am interested in the problems of our Navajo people here on the Reservation and especially in the welfare of my immediate family and my father’s family.

When I first came home when you released me, I found my family very much in need of help, as I had been gone for a long time, both domestically and in the fight we are all having with the State of Utah over a $10,000,000.00 oil Fund, that the State of Utah is trying to beat my people out of, and I just stayed here and soon found myself so involved, that it was just out of the question for me to return to the N.G. I just felt like, what I was doing over there with you fellows in the Army, was just nothing, that my life was here and no other place in the world. I was going to school, as you know, when you people took me into the Army and I only got to finish the eleventh grade in my school work. If you hadn’t taken me then, I would have finished High-school at least.

Anyway, my family has been talking all this over this morning and we have discussed my situation from many ways. My father has been talking: He told us that the white man has been too rough on our Indian people for a long time. 100 years ago, the soldiers told us we were bad people and rounded us up with cow-whips and drive us to Ft. Sumner and held us there in Concentration Camps for 4 years and starved and froze to death, 4000 of our people there and while we were there, the United States had other soldiers all up here over our country, hunting for the few Navajos the first soldiers missed and shooting them down like coyotes and burning the people’s blankets and saddles and stealing their horses, laying waste to everything they could find, that was usable for people.

The record shows, the soldiers treated us worst than animals at Ft. Sumner and when they were about to let us come home, they told us a hundred times, not to kill any more white men. They told us not to have anything to do with a gun, to get away from it if we saw one, to come back and live at peace with every body and would we have a good life.

That we have done and have done for all this 100 years since we sign the Treaty, tho’ we had to sign it with a gun in our backs, we have kept that pledge we made at the Treaty. Now, in this Treaty we signed with the United States Government, we and you have a Clause there, that at no time will our Indian people be called up on to go across the Ocean and fight, to engage in Military Service. But that if the United States is threatened with an Invasion by a Foreign Power, we are obligated to help defend this Nation as much as any other element of our population. Will you look up the Records. Everywhere we go, we hear a distaste for this present war you fellows are fighting in Vietnam. These people you are fighting are not white people. On T.V. we have seen American white soldiers setting matches to these poor people’s homes, murdering their children in cold blood, spreading more destitution and Poverty over that land, in one day, than the President’s War on Poverty can heal in six months. It just don’t make sense to us Indians. From what I have seen in pictures of these Vietnamese people, they look like Indians to me and I just don’t want to kill, especially, my own brothers.

Did you know, that just before the Civil War, the South had a blue print to completely destroy the North American Indian and put Negro slaves in his place and at that time the white man had nearly all other tribes of Indians in concentration camps the same as us, preparatory to mass extermination, had the South won the war. Now, here comes the Bipartisan Rightists of both political parties of 1966 of these United States of America, taking a war of like extermination to these poor Vietnamese people to take their land and country away from them, just like you took it away from us, leaving these poor Vietnamese people homeless, with their loved ones killed, all of them left in such sorrow, that cannot be measured, with a hatred in their hearts for the United States that will never heal. Lately, we hear that your white soldiers have been turning loose poison gas on these people, even killing some of your own men with it by mistake. This is your war, not ours. You are the ones, who conceived it, our people would not do a thing like this. Our history shows, together with our present peaceful status, that we are a peaceful people and our constant daily efforts to create something beautiful and beneficial to our people is everywhere before the white people of this country and before the people from across the ocean, who have come here to visit us.

Here we are, the North American Indians: For 300 years, you white people tried to utterly destroy us. The methods and extremes you went to to do this is appalling and revolting to the civilized half of the human race. You tried to make slaves out of us, but we proved to you, that we would die, before we would be slaves to any white man.

My father said further: Is the white man over there across the sea now, trying to take that land away from these people. If they do this, are they going to give us back some of our land, they took away from us the same way. I don’t want my land back at the cost of killing some one else. I think these poor people in Vietnam are people as we are. I would like to visit them some time and have some of them come to see us. I do not want to hurt them in any way.

We don’t believe in hurting any body and even hesitate to fight when we are justifiable. Our fathers lived here in as much peace with everybody as we could for many years. I try hard to live that way myself and teach my children to do like our fathers did. We are a people, who work for what we need and work more to beautify the things we hold dear to us.

Never, have we found pleasure in destruction or using more of our natural resources, than we find necessary to supply our necessities. When we had this country, we never had it cut up with ditches, carrying away our soils and the most of our waters, that used to soak into the ground, providing abundant grass for our sheep and horses and the wild animals, that belonged to us. All I have here, I have cared for and created for the benefit of my family, which is my life, for their welfare after I am gone and for their children after them and I don’t want to see the white man take my boys away and get them killed somewhere and be denied their part here, for nothing.

I need my boy here to help our family in our daily life and his wife and baby is a responsibility, that no body else can take care of. I have spent a lot of money to help my boy get a little education and all along, I have been expecting him to come back home, when he got this knowledge and help his own family first and then our neighbors around us.

I, Myself, didn’t get any education and I have come to think somehow, that I ought to have better knowledge of the records of the past, that it would make everything more clear of how to deal with the white man and help me to better care for my family and be able to advise my people on the things that are good for them. Now, that my boy has achieved some thing of what I ought to have had, I don’t want his knowledge destroyed, before he has a chance to help raise our people up, and his blood poured out across the sea, fighting there poor Vietnamese people. We have our own civilization and you white people have yours.

We have the record of all the crimes, that your fathers have tried to destroy us, and from the beginning of your occupation of our country, to the present day, our fathers hand this story down to the children and will never forget the deceptive nature of the white man.

I do not have much education yet and there are many things that I do not understand, but with what I have, I understand some things very well. I do know what is right and wrong, tho’ I have made some mistakes. I realize, that I have just begun to really learn. Today, many of our Navajo people are very much uninformed and many of us have been misinformed.

Many of our Navajo drafted young men do not know, what is in the Treaty about fighting these foreign wars. None of our people are cowards, but we have to have a real reason, before we would take part in any conflict, that is a life and death struggle.

We are not the only people in the United States, who believe this war is a crime. We are learning that there are millions of white people and nearly all the black people are against it too. We can’t find that these Vietnamese people have ever harmed anybody and you white people ought not to be over there, destroying their living and their lives. That country is theirs, the same as this country is ours and they have every sacred right to keep it dear to themselves. If we had to, we would live on a very little food, before we would kill somebody and take their living.

The Navajo Times 3/24/66

Posted by: skip
Views: 12990
Topic:9