USA > New Mexico > History of New Mexico : its resources and people, Volume I > Part 56
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a reservation was selected for them at Tularosa, on which less than a third of the number were confined. A reservation was set off at Ojo Caliente in 1874, and the Indians lived in comparative quiet until the reservation was abolished, in 1877, in order to concentrate the different bands, most of those on the reservation being transferred forcibly to San Carlos, Arizona. This was the cause of the most serious Indian hostili- ties of modern times, and southern New Mexico was an Indian battle ground until 1882. Victorio, Nane, Loco, Chato and Geronimo were the chiefs whose names became synonymous with ruthless warfare and savage cruelty.
The report of John A. Carroll, superintendent of the Mescalero In- dian agency, for 1903, showed the population of that tribe to be 439. The Indians were shown to cultivate a large acreage to the general agricultural crops, to raise considerable numbers of live stock, and to be in an economic condition of greater stability than seems possible to a tribe removed only a few years from roaming and hostile savagery. Yet it was also stated that much destitution was found among these Indians, and that the school attendance of the entire scholastic population was explained by the provi- sion made for food and care afforded by the schools. One paragraph may be quoted entire: "The report that a number of Mescalero Apache-a remnant of Victorio's band-were living in the Republic of Mexico, allusion to which was made in the annual report for 1902, was investigated and verified, although the actual number was found to be 37 instead of 107. Three members of the tribe were permitted to visit the Republic last year with a view to obtaining information as to the location, general condition, and pursuits of their relatives. They found them occupying a narrow canyon in the Guadalupe Mountains, about 20 miles east of Zaragoza, a station on the Mexican Central Railroad. They were in wretched circum- stances, having to depend almost entirely on game and herbs and the sale of curios. They were anxious to remove to this reservation, and requested their friends to convey such a message to this office. Accordingly the facts were presented in letter of May 25 last, with the recommendation that measures be instituted to effect the return of the wanderers. This recommendation failed to meet with approval of the office and the status of the unfortunate must remain unchanged. Although the incident is consid- ered closed, it must be refreshing to the office to know that, while members of other tribes in the United States are seeking to dispose of their lands and personal property and to remove to Mexico, others who have lived in that Republic for years are ready to emigrate and swear allegiance to the United States."
There were many casualties during the Indian outbreaks from 1878 on, and the southern portion of the Territory was a battlefield on which many a brave fellow lost his life and others had their courage and fighting ability tested to the full extent. When Victorio first left the reservation, in 1878, after killing six of Captain Hooker's men at the Hot Springs, in Sierra county, Joe Yankie and Nicholas Galles gathered a company and fought the renegades at McEwers' ranch (now Lake Valley). The whites, whose number at first was 34, lost fourteen men killed, the loss being much greater for the Indians. The latter were armed with government carbines, while the whites had mostly light Winchesters.
In December, 1879, J. B. McPhearson and a party of five others who
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made their homes in Sierra county, learning that Victorio had gone on the warpath, started out to meet a small detachment of the Apaches who were headed toward the white settlements in that locality. They suc- ceeded in killing one Indian, wounding another and capturing all the horses of the marauding party without loss to themselves. On August 21, 1881, a troop of forty soldiers, accompanied by an equal number of citizens under the leadership of Mr. McPhearson, met a body of about 90 Apaches in Gavalon canyon, where a desperate fight occurred. Lieutenant Smith, George W. Daly, manager of the Lake Valley Mining Company, and five of the soldiers, were killed, and four others died later of their wounds. The battle continued all day. The Indians captured all the horses and equipment of the attacking party and probably would have exterminated the whites had not a fresh body of troops come to their relief about nightfall.
An incident which created intense excitment throughout the western part of the Territory in the spring of 1880 was the murder of James C. Cooney and a number of other miners by a band of Apache Indians under Chief Victorio. Mr. Cooney had been quartermaster sergeant in the Eighth United States Cavalry, and while performing scouting duty in the Mogol- lon mountains in western New Mexico discovered silver. After his dis- charge from the army he organized the Cooney mining district and began the development of extensive properties in Socorro county. His brother, Captain Michael Cooney, hewed from the solid rock, near the scene of the murder, a sepulcher for the body .. The door is sealed with cement and ores from the mines, and in these ores has been wrought the design of a cross. His friends among the miners also hewed a cross of porphyry which was placed upon the summit of the rock tomb.
January 18, 1881, a body of Apaches under Chief Nana suddenly descended upon the little town of Chloride, killed two men named Mc- Daniels and Overton, seriously wounded another named Patrick, stole many horses and cattle and fled before a show of defense could be made.
It was in the latter part of March (March 26th), 1883, while the Apaches were on the warpath in Grant county, that Judge H. C. McComas and wife and child were killed near Thompson's canyon on the stage road to Lordsburg. The Judge, who was a leading lawyer of Silver City, had left home to drive across the country on a visit to his son at Pyramid City. Overtaken by Indians, he made a running fight, but was slain be- fore he could escape, and his wife and five-year-old child met the same fate. The bodies were found a short time afterward by John A. Moore, deputy county assessor. Judge McComas was a native of Virginia, and came to Silver City in 1880. His wife was a sister of Eugene Ware, ex- pension commissioner.
A party of Indians under Geronimo, numbering 134, according to military authorities, left the San Carlos reservation May 18, 1885, and came within three miles of Silver City, killing 26 persons on the raid and wounding others. Those known to have heen killed were: James Mont- gomery, on the Little Blue: Robert Benton, on the Big Blue; Nat Luse, Peter Anderson, and Robert Smith, at Alma ; Smith, on the Little Blue; two brothers Lutton, on Middle Blue; Calvin Orwig, E. W. Lyons, at Alma: John Madden, Bunting, Green, and a young fellow named Prather. Soldiers and citizens took up the pursuit, and a
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few days later Captain (afterward General) Lawton and his command engaged in a fight in Guadalupe canyon, in which several soldiers were killed. In September following Brady Pollick, cattleman, was killed by Apaches seven miles from Lake Valley. About the same time George Horn and a son of John McKim were added to the victims. Other victims were: September 29, A. L. Sabourne, merchant of Cooney City ; Novem- ber, Charles Moore and William McKay, near Lake Valley; November, John T. Shy, cattleman, and family, and Andrew J. Yeater and wife, near Cold Springs : George C. Hay and Jacob Halling, at Lake Valley ; Decem- ber, George Kinney, a freighter, at Cactus Flat, on the Mogollon road, also Charles Clark ; Lilly, Prior and Ethel Harris, near Alma ; in the same vicinity, Surgeon T. D. Maddox, U. S. A., and four privates killed. Names of others slain were Waldo, Williams, May, Wright, Papi- naw, Grudgings. Polland. On December 23d a telegram went to Presi- dent Cleveland from citizens of Socorro asking for efficient protection, and on January 6, 1886, the stockmen and other citizens met at Socorro and offered a reward of $250 for each Indian scalp. On the following March 25th Geronimo's band was captured in the state of Sonora, Mexico, and two days later was surrendered to General Crook. On March 29th he escaped with 25 of his bucks and sought refuge in old Mexico.
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THE NAVAJOS AND THEIR BLANKETS.
New Mexico is famous as the home of the Navajo Indian and his blanket. As the native emerges from the condition which characterized his ancestors to that more nearly approaching modern civilization, interest in all that relates to him naturally increases. The greatest popular interest centers about the blanket produced by the Navajos, the basketry of the Apaches, Navajos and other tribes, and the pottery made by nearly all the tribes and families of the originally nomadic Indians and those designated as pueblos. Basketry covers a wide range of territory, the various tribes manufacturing an almost endless variety of forms and patterns. But the blankets made by the Navajos have a peculiar interest and attraction to those who become familiar with their remarkable qualities and most in- teresting history. These blankets are, in fact, unique among the handiwork of the red men. For as they are made by the one tribe only and possess characteristics that no others attempt to imitate, they doubtless attract more widespread interest than any other article of Indian craft.
The Navajo was among the last of the Indian tribes to abandon the warpath ; but when once conquered he was the first to become self-sup- porting. The Navajos are descended from an Athabascan family, which formerly occupied a large portion of British America. The name was de- rived from the Spanish "Navajoa," applied to a section of country in the valleys of the San Juan and Little Colorado rivers; and the Spaniards originally called the Indians occupying that region "Apaches de Navajoa." But the Navajos call themselves Tinnai or Tinneh, which, translated, means "the people." When they first occupied their present domain is not known. They have many legends as to their origin. One is that they crossed a narrow sea beyond the setting sun and landed in the Puget Sound country. There they fared so wretchedly among unfriendly tribes that the Great Spirit, after repeated invocations, sent them a great stone ship, upon which they were carried through the air to their present habitation. They point to the sacred "ship rock" about 30 miles west from Farmington as proof of this story. Another legend is that the progenitors of the present tribe were brought from the far north on the back of a great bird. Another is that they were cast up from the bowels of the earth. Regardless of the means employed for their emigration, all tradition points to the far north as the original home of the tribe.
The Navajos say that the Apaches were once of the same tribe, but that generations ago some became renegades and outlaws and finally founded a new nation.
The attempts on the part of the Spanish authorities in the eighteenth century to collect the Navajos about a mission and place them on the same basis as the pueblo Indians have been narrated in other pages. Such un- dertakings were unsuccessful. and under the three successive regimes of
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Spanish, Mexican and American governments the Navajos were known as hostile Indians, from whom depredations might be expected on slight provocations.
In 1862 the United States government established an agency and military post in the Navajo country, locating it just west of the boundary line between New Mexico and Arizona and naming it Fort Defiance. For years the marauding expeditions of these savages had terrorized the coun- try. The chief cause which sent the Indians on the warpath is said to have lain in the following incident: Early one morning a Navajo came to the door of a kitchen at Fort Defiance and asked for a drink of water. The cook, whether by accident or design, threw a pan of dirty water in the Indian's face, whereupon the latter drew an arrow and killed the cook. A guard near by, witnessing the incident, and believing it to have been an unprovoked murder, killed the Indian. Instantly the Indians in the vicinity of the fort rushed to arms, and within a very brief time the entire tribe were on the warpath. General Canby, assisted by such well-known Indian fighters as General Carleton and Kit Carson, took the field and waged a vigorous and relentless campaign against the Navajos. Wher- ever the sheep and horses of the Indians could be found they were either confiscated for the use of the government or killed. Their peach orchards were cut down, their growing crops devastated, and the cavalry horses turn- ed loose in their fields of grain.
So successfully was the campaign conducted that upon the expiration of two years the Navajos were prepared to lay down their arms and sue for peace. Singly and in small bands these warriors, many of whom were sadly emaciated as the result of starvation, came to the fort to accept the terms of peace or punishment that their conquerors might offer. For the first time in history they were willing to admit complete defeat. As soon as the entire tribe, with the possible exception of a few individual warriors, had surrendered, all were taken to the Bosque Redondo, in the Pecos valley near the present site of Fort Sumner, where a reservation had been set aside for them and a military post established. But on account of the radi- cal difference in the climate the death rate among these people soon be- came alarming. During a visit of General William T. Sherman, who was on a tour of inspection, the Indians petitioned him that they might be re- turned to their former reservation. But Sherman refused to accede to their demands, probably upon the advice of well-known Indian fighters at the post. Then the young women of the tribe, attiring themselves in festi- val fashion, besieged the commander, promising that if the prayer of the tribe was granted they would so train their children that never again would the Navajos engage in warfare against the United States govern- ment. Their humiliation was complete. So deeply was Sherman impressed with the manner of the petition and the promises of reform and future good behavior. that he finally consented to recommend the return of the Indians to their old country, a recommendation that was promptly acted upon by the government.
The country of the Navajos is not adapted to agriculture; and as the climate demanded clothing in excess of the supply of skins of wild animals, which never have been very abundant, and some industry suited to their environment was necessary, the raising of sheep and the making of blank- ets proved a most welcome departure and saved them from the necessity
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of migration to another country. Fortunately their land was adapted to grazing, and as their flocks increased they became better versed in the- ways of the shepherd. Year by year their flocks grew in size until now the number on the Navajo reservation aggregates half a million. The gradual growth of this industry has greatly influenced their destiny, and they are now a peaceful pastoral people, nearly every family owning sheep and goats, the flesh of the latter being more generally used for food than the former. Not only are these people beyond want, but many of them are wealthy as the result of their operations in sheep.
The Navajos have a communal form of government. Their head chief is chosen by a popular election. With one exception none of these chiefs has become a historic figure in peace or war. The exception is Chief Manuelito, a shrewd, crafty and warlike Indian, who served as. chief from 1850 to his death in 1894, at the age of seventy-three years.
The early Spanish invaders found very skillful metal workers among the Pueblo Indians, from whom the Navajos probably learned the art. But in spite of his better and permanent abode, the Pueblo is not so expert a silversmith as the Navajo, who is compelled to lead a more or less nomadic life by reason of the necessity for constant change of pasturage for his flocks. His equipment consists of a rude, temporary forge, charcoal, clay crucibles, clay or stone moulds, a blow pipe, tongs, files, emery paper, etc .. For an anvil he uses the first piece of iron of sufficient size he can find. Their chief pride seems to be necklaces and belts of silver, which they make of Mexican dollars or bar silver procured from the nearest trader. So patient and adept are they that they frequently make a teaspoon from a silver dollar without melting or casting.
But blanket-weaving, chiefly by the women, is the principal industry of the tribe. As a barbaric art it has become a feature of great commercial importance. In spite of the fact that they are coming in close contact with the mercenary whites, the native characteristics of these people, aside from their earlier warlike traits, have suffered less by reason of this con- tact than most American Indians; and this accounts for the barbaric beauty of their blanket patterns and the harmony of brilliant colors they present.
Dr. Washington Matthews, for many years assistant surgeon in the United States army, located at Fort Wingate in the seventies and eighties, became recognized as one of the most eminent authorities on the traditions, manners and customs of the Navajo Indians, and especially on the Navajo blanket, his article on that subject forming a portion of the third annual report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. (Report of 1881-2.) According to Dr. Matthews the art of weaving among the Navajos is of aboriginal origin, and while European art has undoubtedly modified it, the extent and nature of the foreign in- fluence is easily traced. It is by no means certain, but there are many rea- sons for supposing that the Navajos learned their craft from the pueblo Indians after the advent of the Spaniards. But if that be the case, the pupils far excel their masters today in the beauty and quality of their work. It may safely be stated that with no native American tribe north of Mexico has the art of weaving been carried to greater perfection than among the Navajos.
The superiority of the Navajo to the pueblo work results not only from a constant advance of the weaver's art among the former, but from
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a constant deterioration of it among the latter. The chief cause of this deterioration is that the pueblos find it more remunerative to buy, at least the finer serapes, from the Navajos, and give their time to other pursuits, than to manufacture for themselves; for they give more attention to agri- culture and mining. In some pueblos the skill of the loom has been almost forgotten.
In prehistoric days the materials of textile fabrics made by the Nava- jos consisted of cotton, which grows well in New Mexico and Arizona, the fibers of yucca and other leaves, the hair of different quadrupeds and the down of birds. While some of the pueblos still weave cotton to a slight extent, the Navajos spin nothing but the wool of the domestic sheep, which animal is of Spanish introduction. In recent years they have introduced, at the behest of civilization, the weaving of blankets of Germantown yarn; but the latter product, it will instantly be seen, is not typical of the Indian. The wool is not washed until it is sheared. When the process was first studied by whites it was combed with hand cards purchased of American traders. In spinning, the simplest form of the spindle-a slender stick thrust through the centre of a round wooden disk-is employed. The Mexicans on the Rio Grande have used spinning wheels for generations ; and although the Navajos have often seen these wheels, have had abund- ant opportunities for buying and stealing them, and undoubtedly possess sufficient ingenuity to make them, for some reason they seem still to prefer the rude implement of their ancestors. To a great extent they still employ their native dyes of yellow, black and a reddish brown. They probably at one time also had a native blue dye, but the introduction of indigo by the Spaniards or Mexicans superseded this. They now produce green by combining their native yellow and indigo. Ever since the introduction of sheep they have also had three different natural colors-white, gray, and a rusty black. The brilliant red figures in their finer blankets were formerly made entirely of bayeta-a bright scarlet cloth having a long nap, orig- inally brought from Mexico, but now supplied to the Indians by traders. They ravel this and use the welt. In the history and description of bas- ketry, found on other pages in this work, will be found a somewhat de- tailed outline of the manner in which the dyes used in the decoration of baskets were made; as the same dyes are used largely in blanket-making it will not be necessary to cover the ground here.
For the ordinary blanket loom two posts are set firmly in the ground. To these are lashed two cross-pieces or braces, completing the frame. A horizontal pole is attached to the upper brace by means of a rope, spirally applied. The upper beam, parallel with the latter, is analagous to the yarn beam of the looms used in the eastern and New England states by our own ancestors, and hangs about three inches below it, being attached thereto by a number of loops. A spiral cord wound around the yarn beam holds the upper border cord, which in turn secures the upper end of the warp. The lower beam is the equivalent of the cloth beam in the looms of civilization, although the finished web is never wound around it. The original dis- tance between the two beams is the length of the blanket. A thin oaken stick is used as a batten. There is also a set of what civilized citizens would call healds, attached to a heald rod, which are made of yarn or cotton cord -alternate threads of the warp. The loom is a rough replica of that used by the thrifty housewife of the east in the manufacture of rag carpets, ex-
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cepting the shifting attachment. There is no shuttle, strictly speaking. If the figure to be woven is a long stripe, the yarn is wound on a slender twig or splinter, or shoved through on the end of such a piece of wood. Where the pattern is intricate, the yarn is wound into small skeins or balls, or broken into short pieces, and shoved through with the finger.
In making a blanket the operator sits on the ground with her legs folded underneath her. The warp hangs vertically before her, and as a rule she weaves from below upward. As she never rises from this squatting posture when at work, when the finished web rises to an inconvenient height she simply loosens the spiral rope at the top of her loom and folds the loosened web, sewing the upper edge of the fold down tightly to the cloth beam.
As it is desirable, especially in handsome blankets of intricate pattern, to have both ends uniform, even if the figure be somewhat faulty in the centre, the majority of women weave a small portion of the upper end before they finish the middle. Some of the most expert depend upon a careful estimate of the length of each figure before they begin and weave continuously in one direction. Sometimes the loom is turned upside down and the work carried on from below upwards. The ends of the blankets are bordered with a stout three-ply string applied to the folds of the warp, and the lateral edges are similarly protected by stout cords applied to the weft.
Navajo blankets are single ply, with designs the same on both sides, no matter how elaborate those designs may be. To produce their variegated patterns they have a separate skein, shuttle or thread for each component of the pattern. The mechanism described is the simplest in use. In manu- facturing diagonals, sashes, garters and hair-bands the mechanism is much more cimplicated. In making diagonals the warp is divided into four "sheds."
Navajo blankets represent a wide range in quality and finish and an endless variety in design, notwithstanding that all of their figures consist of straight lines and angles, no curves being used. "As illustrating the great fertility of this people in design," wrote Dr. Matthews, "I have to relate that in the finer blankets of intricate patterns out of thousands which I have examined, I do not remember to have ever seen two exactly alike. Among the coarse striped blankets there is great uniformity."
Dr. Matthews states that "the only marked difference that he ever observed between the mechanical appliances of the Navajo weaver and those of her pueblo neighbor was in the belt loom. The Zuñi woman lays out her warp, not as a continuous thread around two beams, but as several disunited threads. She attaches one end of these to a fixed object, usually a rafter in her dwelling, and the other to the belt she wears around her body. The Zuñi women weave all their long, narrow webs according to the same system; but Mr. Bandelier has informed me that the Indians of the pueblo of Cochiti make the narrow garters and hair-bands after the manner of the Zuñis, and the broad belts after the manner of the Navajos."
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