[Illustration: AN AGED NAVAHO, LOOKING OVER THE PAINTED DESERT.]
And here we have, I believe, one of the additional sources of enmity between the Navaho and the Spaniard. As their wards, the Spanish were in duty bound to care for and protect the Pueblos. Thus Navaho and Spaniard were ever at war, and when the Mexican came in the Spaniard's stead the battle still continued on the same lines and with the same ferocity.
It was on the 22d of January in 1849 that Lieut. J. H. Simpson, afterwards General, started on that interesting trip of his through the Navaho country, which has forever connected his name with these nomads. He was not in command of the expedition, its head being Col. John M. Washington, who was military and civil governor of New Mexico at the time. The object of the expedition was to coerce the Navahoes into a compliance with a treaty which they had made with the United States, two years previously, and to extend the provisions of the treaty.
When they reached the Chaco Canyon trouble ripened between the soldiers and the Navahoes, and the latter were fired upon, with the result that seven were killed, including Narbona, their great warrior and chief.
This was but one of many such attacks upon the whites. Then as now, only far more so, the Navahoes resented the intrusion of white people in their territory; and having gained fire-arms, they used them to deadly purpose upon those who slighted their will.
There is no doubt that the Navahoes were a source of great terror to the Mexicans who first settled in and near their territory. Even after the United States became their guardians at the acquisition of New Mexico in 1847, they were very hostile, murders, robberies, and depredations of every kind being quite common. In 1855, Dr. Letherman reported that "the nation, as a nation, is fully imbued with the idea that it is all powerful, which, no doubt, has arisen from the fact of its having been for years a terror and a dread to the inhabitants of New Mexico." But that these depredations were not perpetrated upon the whites alone is evident from the fact that one of the richest men of the Navahoes himself applied to Major Kendrick, then the commanding officer of Fort Defiance, N. Mex., to protect his cattle, as he could not otherwise prevent his own people from stealing them.