_From Copyright Photograph 1904 by E.S. Curtis_
For a long period prior to the acquisition from Mexico of the territory
now forming the northern portion of Arizona and New Mexico, which, since
first known, has been occupied in part by the Navaho, the tribe had been
in the habit of making raids on the New Mexican Indian pueblos and the
white settlements along the Rio Grande, chiefly for the capture of
livestock, although both Indians and Mexicans also were taken and
enslaved. The Mexicans lost no opportunity to retaliate, with the result
that scattered throughout their villages in the valley of the Rio Grande
there were more captives of Navaho blood than there were Mexican prisoners
among the Navaho tribe; but in the matter of sheep, cattle, and horses,
the Navaho were far ahead in the game of thievery, and even boasted that
they could easily have exterminated the Mexicans had they not needed them
as herders of their stolen flocks. In consequence, bitter enmity early
arose between the Mexicans and the Navaho, which reached its height about
the time Col. Stephen W. Kearny took possession of the territory in behalf
of the United States in 1846.
In the year named a military expedition was sent into the Navaho country
for the purpose of making a treaty of peace and friendship with this
marauding tribe; but this treaty, like several others that followed, was
soon broken, and the raids continued as before. In 1858 the troubles
arising from the plunderings became especially severe and led to several
other expeditions, but with little result. The problem became a serious
one in 1861, when the Civil War necessitated the withdrawal of troops from
the frontier, leaving the way open to the devastation of the country by
the Navaho and Mescaleros, until General Carleton, who assumed command of
the military forces in New Mexico in 1862, formulated a policy to
thoroughly subdue the Navaho and to transfer them to the Bosque Redondo,
on the Rio Pecos in New Mexico, where Fort Sumner had been established,
and there hold them as prisoners of war until some other plan could be
devised. His plan was successfully carried out. By the spring of 1863 four
hundred Mescaleros were under guard on the new reservation, and by the
close of that year about two hundred Navaho prisoners had either been
transferred thither or were on the way. Early in 1864 Col. Kit Carson led
his volunteers to the Canon de Chelly, the Navaho stronghold, where in a
fight he succeeded in killing twenty-three, capturing thirty-four, and
compelling two hundred to surrender. The backbone of the hostility was now
broken, and before the beginning of 1865 about seven thousand, later
increased to 8491, were under military control within the new reservation.
But the Bosque Redondo proved unhealthful and disappointing as a
reservation, while its maintenance was costly to the Government. A treaty
was therefore made with the Navaho in 1868, one of the provisions of which
was the purchase of fifteen thousand sheep to replenish their exterminated
flocks. In July 7304 Navaho, the remainder having died or escaped, arrived
at Fort Wingate on the way to their old home, where they have since lived
in peace and prosperity.