The present Indian occupants of Canyon de Chelly are Navajos. They are
not related to the Anasazi who built the masonry villages now in ruins.
No one is certain just when the Navajos came to this region nor do we
know exactly where they came from. The best available evidence now
suggests that these people and their close relatives, the Apaches, both
of whom speak an Athapascan language, came south along the eastern edge
of the Rocky Mountains as a single group. They may have reached the
Southwest between the 13th and the 16th centuries. The earliest mention
of people who were probably Navajos is in the Oñate documents of 1598.
This account places them in north-central New Mexico, an area they still
call their homeland but no longer occupy.
The name “Navajo” has never been adequately translated. The first
interpretation of the word came from Father Alonso de Benavides, a
Spanish priest who started missionary work among the Navajos. In his
“Memorial of New Mexico,” which was presented to the court of Spain in
1630, he stated:
_But these Apache de Nabahu [Navajo] are very great farmers for this is
what Navajo signifies ... great planted fields...._
[Illustration: The pastoral scene shows two contemporary Navajo
structures. To the left is a modern hogan, and to the right, a
ramada.]
By 1750, the Navajos had abandoned their homes west of the Chama River
Valley because of pressure from the Utes to the north. Generally they
moved westward, but a few split off to the south. We do not know when
they first entered Canyon de Chelly, but there is evidence at the site
of Tse-ta’a to suggest that it was after 1700.
Hunters, gatherers, and farmers, the Navajos changed their way of life
sharply when they acquired horses and sheep from the Spanish after the
Pueblo Rebellion of 1680. Horses made the Navajos highly mobile and
increased their ability to raid the alluring towns along the Rio Grande
and then vanish into mountain and canyon hideouts. Sheep gradually
changed the basis of their economy, converting them from hunters and
raiders to the pastoral herders they are today.
After the Spanish reconquered New Mexico in 1692, many Pueblo families
from the Rio Grande sought sanctuary with the Navajos. Some of these
refugees were absorbed into the tribe, and they brought with them not
only weaving, but sheep raising, pottery and basketry techniques,
architectural and agricultural ideas, the clan system, and much
religious lore.
Navajo-Spanish relations were generally quiet after the Spanish returned
because the tribe was preoccupied with fighting the Utes to the north
and was interested in enlisting Spanish support or, at least,
forbearance. This comparatively peaceful interlude came to an end in the
1770’s because of land disputes, and friction continued from that time
until the 1860’s.
In 1805, during this period of strife, a Spanish punitive expedition
entered Canyon de Chelly, bent on taking slaves, or servants as the
whites called them.
According to the Navajo account of the episode, all the Navajo men had
gone out on an expedition, leaving the old men, and women, and children
hidden in a deep ledge high up the canyon wall. Their position was
strengthened by a wall of loose stones placed along the rim of the
ledge. As the Spanish troops, commanded by Lt. Antonio Narbona, passed
below, an old woman who had been a Spanish slave could not resist
scoffing at them and thus exposed the hiding place.
In a letter on January 25, 1805, to the Governor of New Mexico, Narbona
described the action which followed:
_On the 17th of the current month I managed to attack in Cañon de Chelli
a great number of enemy Indians and though they entrenched themselves in
an almost inaccessible spot, and fortified beforehand, we succeeded
after having battled all day long with the greatest ardor and effort, in
taking [it] the morning after and that our arms had the result of ninety
dead warriors, twenty-five women and children, and as prisoners three
warriors, eight women and twenty-two boys and girls...._
Narbona reported his losses as 1 dead and 64 wounded. Massacre Cave in
Canyon del Muerto was named for this event.
[Illustration: Massacre Cave sits high up on the west wall of Canyon
del Muerto, a short way upstream from Mummy Cave.]
The Navajos had been held in partial check by Spanish bribes and
punitive expeditions, but after Mexico won its independence from Spain
in 1821, the Navajos returned to raiding in behalf of all those enslaved
by the Spanish. In 1823, 1833, 1836, and 1838 the Mexicans mounted large
expeditions against the Navajos, sometimes sending as many as 1,500 men
after them. It was during this period that Canyon de Chelly was most
often referred to as the stronghold of the Navajos. Although Mexican
reprisals often forced the Indians to take temporary refuge north of the
San Juan River, they were too sporadic to effectively quell the raiders,
who always came back with new attacks. Conditions were so bad that the
Navajos boasted they let the Mexicans live on only because they made
good shepherds for the tribe. The taunt hardly exaggerated their power
at the time.
Navajo depredations had very nearly decimated the frontier settlements
in the central Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico when the United States
went to war with Mexico in 1846. Col. Stephen Watts Kearny had the task
of seizing the northern Mexican provinces, an area that is now part of
the American Southwest. In late June 1846 he left Fort Leavenworth,
Kansas. Marching over the Santa Fe Trail without opposition, Kearny and
his American Dragoons arrived in Santa Fe on August 18, 1846, and
proclaimed New Mexico a part of the United States.
When Kearny and the Army of the West marched off to Mexico, Col.
Alexander W. Doniphan was left behind with orders to invade the Navajo
country, release captives, reclaim stolen property, and either to awe or
beat the Indians into submission. In August 1846 he led the first United
States expedition against the Navajos. Maj. William Gilpin, with 200
men, entered the Navajo country on the north and swung south to meet
Doniphan and several Navajo chiefs at Bear Springs near the town of
Grants, New Mexico, later the site of Fort Wingate. The treaty signed
there turned out to be little more than a scrap of paper. Five more
unsuccessful military expeditions were sent against the Navajos between
1846 and 1849 in vain attempts to end the Indian raids.
In trying to contain the Navajos, the U.S. Government made the same
mistake that the Mexican and Spanish Governments did before them. They
all assumed that a single chief led the several Navajo bands. Actually,
each local Navajo group had its own leader, and time and again treaties
of “lasting peace with the Navajos” were signed by these local chiefs,
who spoke only for their own small bands and had no influence with
others.
The U.S. Army expedition of 1849 clearly illustrated this problem. Lt.
Col. John W. Washington, military commander of New Mexico, led an
expedition to Canyon de Chelly, then considered to be the Navajo
heartland. Washington met local Navajo chiefs on the crest of a small
hill between the present Thunderbird Guest Ranch and the mouth of the
canyon. Here on Treaty Hill a treaty of “lasting peace” was signed with
the Indians. Washington had no sooner returned to Albuquerque, however,
than he learned that another Navajo band had raided a small village near
Santa Fe.
[Illustration: Col. E. R. S. Canby led the last campaign against the
Navajos before the Civil War.]
Regardless of treaties and punitive expeditions, Navajo depredations
continued. Late in 1851, Col. E. V. Sumner marched into the Navajo
country in still another effort to settle the problem. After a single
encounter with the Navajo in Canyon de Chelly, Sumner returned to a spot
southwest of the Chuska Mountains where he established Fort Defiance in
the autumn of 1851. Fighting broke out again in 1858, when a Negro slave
of the post commander at Fort Defiance was killed by a Navajo arrow. The
Army retaliated with an attack on a party of peaceful Navajos, and the
Indians retreated northward.
Up to this time, U.S. Army commanders had controlled Indian policies;
the authority of the civil agents appointed by the Indian Department was
negligible. But now the civilian agents brought political pressure to
bear upon the unsuccessful Army. To soothe the politicians, the Army
drew up still another treaty with the Navajos on December 25, 1858. This
treaty was the second attempt to outline the boundaries of a proposed
Navajo reservation. Like an earlier proposal, the Meriweather Treaty of
1855, it was never ratified.
The year 1859 was relatively peaceful, with few raids on either side.
But the next year opened with a series of Navajo raids that culminated
in a concentrated attack on Fort Defiance. Some of the old Navajos who
participated later recalled that it was a carefully planned assault at
dawn, with as many as 2,000 warriors taking part. After attacking for
two hours, the Indians were forced to withdraw.
In the winter of 1860-61, Col. E. R. S. Canby led the last military
expedition against the Navajos before the Civil War, but his efforts
failed to bring peace. Zarcillos Largos, a great Navajo leader who had
worked for more peaceful relations with whites, was killed in an ambush
during the campaign. The Indians soon resorted to their old tactic of
dispersing, and the campaign ended with another treaty. When troops were
withdrawn from Fort Defiance in March 1861 for Civil War duty, the last
restraint was removed from both sides, and raiding began once more. For
the Spanish-Americans, it was the high point of their warfare against
the Navajos.
The job of subjugating the recalcitrant Navajos now fell to Brig. Gen.
James H. Carleton, commander of the Department of New Mexico and a
seasoned Indian fighter with 25 years of active service. His earlier
experience in Indian affairs had convinced Carleton that establishing
reservations where the Indians could be educated would be the only way
to get them to settle down. Carleton said:
_Soon they will acquire new habits, new ideas, new modes of life; the
old Indians will die off, and carry with them the latent longings for
murdering and robbing; the young ones will take their place without
these longings; and thus, little by little, they will become a contented
people...._
[Illustration: Brig. Gen. James H. Carleton defeated the Navajos and
built Fort Sumner at Bosque Redondo, the Navajo’s place of exile.]
In 1863, Carleton drew up plans for a 40-square-mile reservation at Fort
Sumner on the Pecos River in central New Mexico. He called the new
reservation Bosque Redondo, which is Spanish for circular thicket.
[Illustration: The valiant Manuelito fought against the whites, but
without permanent success. In 1863 he was one of a number of
prominent Navajo leaders.]
[Illustration: Capt. Albert Pfeiffer led his men down Canyon del
Muerto between these cliffs, destroying hogans and crops.]
When the reservation was ready, Carleton ordered Col. Christopher (Kit)
Carson to take the field against the Navajos in June 1863. Carson’s
force consisted of four companies of New Mexican Volunteers, two mounted
and two unmounted, and 200 Ute Indians, who were guides and scouts,
altogether a force of about 1,000 men. Their first operation was to
reoccupy and repair the abandoned Fort Defiance, which they renamed Fort
Canby in honor of General Canby.
The Navajos were led by Barboncito of Canyon de Chelly, a spokesman for
the bands living west of the Chuska Mountains, and Manuelito, a leader
of those who dwelt east of the mountains. Many subchiefs, as usual, led
individual bands.
Carson had orders from General Carleton to destroy all cornfields and
livestock. He sent word to the Navajos that they should surrender at
Fort Canby, and then moved into the field to persuade them. The first
skirmish took place in August near the fort. Under constant pressure
from the military through the winter of 1863, their herds being killed
and crops burned, the Navajos were soon destitute and began to surrender
in small numbers.
The crowning blow to Navajo pride, however, was the Army’s ostentatious
penetration of Canyon de Chelly, their most secure refuge. A detachment
of men under Capt. Albert Pfeiffer carried the “Navaho Fortress” in
January 1864. Entering through Canyon del Muerto, Pfeiffer guarded the
junction while Capt. A. B. Carey led a detail through the main gorge of
de Chelly, marching west to east. Captain Pfeiffer described his
progress through del Muerto:
_My travel through the cañon, for the first 12 miles, was accomplished
on the ice of the bed of the stream which courses through it.... Lt. C.
M. Hubbell, who was in charge of the rear, had a great deal of trouble
in proceeding with the pack trains, as the mules frequently broke
through the ice and tumbled down with their loads. All the Indian
prisoners taken thus far were half starved and naked. The cañon has no
road except the bottom of the creek. We traveled mostly on the ice, our
animals breaking through every few minutes, and one mule split
completely open under the exhausting fatigue of the march. On the 12th
instant traveled 8 miles; had several skirmishes with the enemy. Indians
on both sides of the cañon whooping, yelling and cursing, firing shots
and throwing rocks down upon my command. Killed two buck Indians in the
encounter and one squaw, who obstinately persisted in hurling rocks and
pieces of wood at the soldiers. Six prisoners were captured on this
occasion. Lieutenant Hubbell followed up some Indians in a tributary
cañon, but could not overtake them on account of the steepness of the
hillsides, where nothing save an Indian or mountain goat could make
their way...._
This raid, which netted only about 100 prisoners, convinced the Navajos
that even though Carson was not out to destroy them, he would go
anywhere to ferret them out. They had no choice but to surrender at Fort
Canby. Shortly after the Canyon de Chelly raid some 500 Navajos, with
their flocks, straggled into the fort. By February 15, 1864, 1,500
Navajos were being fed and clothed there, and by the first of March
about 2,400.
The much storied “Long Walk” and exile of the Navajos began on March 6,
1864, when these 2,400 people with 30 wagons, 400 horses, and 3,000
sheep and goats left Fort Canby for Bosque Redondo, 300 miles away in
New Mexico Territory. Only the aged, the children, and the crippled rode
in wagons—all others walked the entire distance. One old Navajo recalled
the exodus in later years, saying:
_It was a great sight, we stretched from Fort Defiance to the Window
Rock ‘haystacks’ ... a distance of about 7 miles._
On March 14-15, a second group of about 3,000 Navajos began the foot
journey. The last large escort of Navajos to Fort Sumner was on April
24, when 1,200 persons started their “Long Walk.”
[Illustration: This old army map shows the military posts of the
1860’s. The red line traces the “Long Walk” of the defeated Navajos
to Fort Sumner at Bosque Redondo.