Navajo Indians are in demand as workers in the sugar-beet fields of the West, for, unlike braceros (from Mexico), they are not protected by treaty regulations. Navajos are cheap; they keep their mouths shut and they do as they are told. When the season ended at Burley, Idaho, a Navajo beet picker named Kee Chee dumbly obeyed orders to get his family on a chartered bus for the long ride home to New Mexico—even though it meant taking his sick, seven-month-old daughter out of a hospital at nearby Bear River City, Utah.
The bus was cold. Kee's pretty, 25-year-old wife,...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
