THE WEST: Hi, the Rich Indian

A few short years ago the docile Navajo Indians grubbed about in their 25,000-sq.-mi. desert reservation at the four corners where Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico meet. Disease-ridden, undernourished, ignorant, they lived in ramshackle hogans and crumbling shacks, contemplating a future as bleak as their past was romantic. Then, in 1956, big-time oil drillers on Navajo land hit the jackpot, and the dollars began gushing in. By last week, their numbers grown to 85,000 (v. 15,000 in 1868), their treasury to $60 million, their ancient weapons supplanted by grosses of ballpoint...

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