Captured by the Navajos

It was late in the fall of the second year of the civil war that I rejoined my company at Santa Fé, New Mexico, from detached service in the Army of the Potomac. The boom of the sunrise gun awoke me on the morning after my arrival, and I hastened to attend reveille roll-call. As I descended the steps of the officers' quarters the men of the four companies composing the garrison were forming into line before their barracks. Details from the guard, which had just fired the gun and hoisted the national colors, were returning to the guard-house, and the officers were hastening to their places.

At the conclusion of the ceremony I turned again towards my quarters, and noticed two handsome boys, evidently aged about fifteen and thirteen, dressed in a modification of the infantry uniform of the army, and wearing corporals' chevrons. They stood near the regimental adjutant, and seemed to be reporting their presence to him.

At breakfast, the adjutant chancing to sit near me, I asked him who the youthful soldiers were.

"They are the sons of Lieutenant-Colonel Burton, Corporals Frank and Henry," he replied. "They hold honorary rank, and are attached to head-quarters, acting as messengers and performing some light clerical work."

"How do they happen to be in Santa Fé?"

"Mother recently died in the East, and the colonel had them sent here in charge of a tutor who is to fit them for college, I believe."

Later, on the same day, being desirous of looking over this ancient Indian and Mexican town, I was making a pedestrian tour of its streets, and chanced to be opposite San Miguel School in the eastern section during the pupils' recess. Half a dozen boys were engaged in throwing the lasso over the posts of the enclosing fence, when suddenly from a side street appeared the young corporals whom I had seen at reveille.

The Mexican boys instantly greeted them with derisive shouts and jeers. They called them little Gringos and other opprobrious names, and one young Mexican threw the loop of his lasso over the smaller corporal's head and jerked him off his feet. His companions laughed loudly. The older corporal instantly pulled out his knife and cut the rope. Then the two brothers stood shoulder to shoulder, facing the crowd, quite ready to defend themselves. The young Mexicans, gesticulating and shouting, crowded round the two brothers, and blows appeared imminent.

"Muchachos," suddenly cried a ringing voice from the rear, in Spanish, "are you not ashamed? A hundred against two!"

A handsome lad forced his way through the crowd, placed himself beside the two corporals, and faced his young countrymen. Before the Mexicans recovered from their surprise the bell of San Miguel summoned them to school. They hurried away, leaving the two corporals with the young Mexican who had come to their assistance.

"My name is Frank Burton," said the older corporal, extending his hand to the Mexican, "and this is my brother, Henry."

The Mexican boy grasped the proffered hand, and said, "My name is Manuel Perea, of Algodones."

"We are the sons of the commanding officer at the fort. Can't you come and see us next holiday?"

"I should much like to; I will ask the fathers if I may."

"Come over, and we will try to make your visit pleasant."

"How well you speak Spanish! It will be a great pleasure to visit American boys who can speak my language, for I know but few English words."

"Next Saturday, then?"

"At ten o'clock, if the padres consent. Good-bye," and Manuel disappeared into the school-room.

The following Saturday I saw the two corporals and their newly acquired companion at the post and at dinner in the mess-room, and a friendship was then formed which was to continue for many years.

One evening, nearly a month afterwards, I received an order to march my company into the Jemez Mountains to co-operate with other detached commands in a war being carried on against the Navajo Indians. Just as I had laid aside the order after reading it, Colonel Burton entered, and, taking a seat by my fireside, announced that he had been ordered on detached service to northern Colorado, on a tour of inspection, which would require him to be absent for a considerable period, and that he had been thinking of allowing his sons to accompany me to my camp at Los Valles Grandes.

"The hunting and fishing are fine in those valleys, and Frank and Henry would enjoy life there very much," he said. "They have done so well in their studies that they deserve a well-earned recreation."

"I should much like to have their company, sir," I replied, "but would it not be exposing them to great danger from the Indians?"

"The officer whom you are to relieve has been in the valleys nearly a year, and he reports that he has not seen a Navajo in all that time. Of course, it may be your fortune to meet them, but I do not think so. If you do, then the boys must give a good account of themselves. In any engagement that involves the whole command they must not forget they are the sons of a soldier. Still, I do not want them needlessly exposed. You are quite sure it will give you no trouble to take them?"

"Few things could afford me greater pleasure on such isolated duty, sir. They will be good company for me."

"Thank you for your kindness. The lads will report to you to-morrow morning. I will see that they are properly fitted out, and will write you now and then during my absence, and as soon as I return to Santa Fé they can be sent back."

Colonel Burton then took his departure, and I turned to a local history to learn from its pages something of the tribe with which I might be brought in contact.

The home of the Navajos lay between the Rio Grande del Norte on the east, the Rio Colorado on the west, the Rio San Juan on the north, and the Rio Colorado Chiquito on the south, but from time immemorial they had roamed a considerable distance beyond these borders.

They had always been known as a pastoral race, raising flocks and herds, and tilling the soil. They owned, at the time we began war upon them, sheep and ponies by the thousand, and raised large quantities of corn, wheat, beans, and other products.

They numbered between twelve and fifteen thousand, and could put three thousand mounted warriors in the field. They were industrious, the men doing all the hard work instead of putting it upon the women, as do the Indians of the plains and all of the marauding tribes. They manufactured their wearing apparel, and made their own weapons, such as bows, arrows, and lances. They wove beautiful blankets, often very costly, and knit woollen stockings, and dressed in greater comfort than did most other tribes. In addition to a somewhat brilliant costume, they wore numerous strings of fine coral, shells, and many ornaments of silver, and usually appeared in cool weather with a handsome blanket thrown over the shoulders.

The Navajos and the New Mexicans were almost continually at war. Expeditions were frequently fitted out in the border towns by the class of New Mexicans who possessed no land or stock, for the sole purpose of capturing the flocks and herds of the Navajos. The Indians retaliated in kind, making raids upon the settlements and pasture lands, and driving off sheep, horses, and cattle to the mountains. Complaints were made by the property-holders, and war was declared against the Indians.

The military department of New Mexico was in fine condition to carry on a successful war. Besides our regiment of regular infantry, it had two regiments of California volunteer infantry and one regiment each of California and New Mexican cavalry.

The Navajo upon the war-path was terribly in earnest, and his methods of waging war were like those of the redman everywhere. With the knowledge that the American soldier was an ally of his old-time enemy, and that the Mexican was wearing the uniform of the "Great Father," he no longer hesitated to look upon us as his enemies also, and resolved to combat us up to the very walls of our posts.

No road in the Territory was safe to the traveller; no train dared move without an escort. Towns were raided, and women and children carried into captivity. Frightful cases of mutilation and torture were constantly occurring in the mountain fastnesses. Troops took the field, and prosecuted with vigilance a war in which there was little glory and plenty of suffering and hard service.

Every band of Indians captured was taken to the Bosque Rodondo, on the Rio Pecos, where a large fort had been established. It was occupied by a strong garrison of infantry and cavalry.

I had found social life in Santa Fé very pleasant during my brief stay there, so I was not overjoyed when I received the order to march my company to Los Valles Grandes, there to relieve the California company already referred to. But the order being peremptory, we packed our baggage during the first hours of the night, and were on the road soon after daybreak.

It was the 3d of October when the boy corporals and myself, mounted on sturdy Mexican ponies, rode out of Fort Marcy for our new station, one hundred miles due west. The regimental band escorted the company through the plaza and for a mile on our way, playing, after immemorial custom, "The Girl I Left Behind Me," and adding, I thought with a vein of irony, "Ain't Ye Glad You've Got Out th' Wilderness?"

On the morning of the 8th, after four days of gradual and constant ascent from the valley of the Rio Grande, which we had forded at San Ildefonso, we began the slower ascent of the most difficult portion of our march.

The woods were full of wild turkeys and mountain grouse, made fat on the pine-nuts, and Frank and Henry and the soldier huntsmen secured a generous supply for our first meal in our new military home.

It took us from early morning until noon of the last day's march to reach the highest point of the road. What with the frequent halts for the men to fasten a rope to the wagon-poles and aid the severely taxed mules up the steepest places, to fill gullies and sloughs with stones and brush, to pry mired wheels up to firm ground, and repair broken harnesses and wagons, we were over half a day in going a distance which could have been accomplished in two hours by soldiers unencumbered with a baggage and supply train.

The downward march on the western slope of the mountain-range was rapidly made over a smooth road through a continuous avenue of overarching forest trees, and without a halt. From the lower limit of the forest we caught the first glimpse of the Great Valleys. The valley before us was fourteen miles long, and of a nearly uniform width of eight miles. It was almost surrounded by mountains; in fact, while there were many trails leading out of it, there was but one practicable wagon-road-that by which we had entered. But at the southern extremity there was a precipitous ca?on, through which flowed a considerable stream. To the west was another ca?on, a dry one, called La Puerta-the doorway-which led into the second valley, called the Valley of San Antonio.

The Great Valley, on the eastern edge of which I had halted the company for a few moments' rest and observation, was lower through the centre than at the sides. It was not unlike an oblong platter, and was absolutely treeless, except that opposite us a bold, pine-clad point jutted out from the western mountain-range about three miles, like a headland into the sea.

The whole valley was verdant with thick grass. The two boys, sitting on their ponies a few yards in advance of the company line, were in raptures over the prospect.

"This is the first bit of country I've seen in New Mexico that looks like Vermont," said Frank.

"Yes, and what a change in the space of a few miles!" observed Henry. "On the opposite side of this range were only bunch-grass, cactus, and sand, and here we have fine turf and waving grass. What are those objects in that farther corner, sir?" he continued, turning to me and pointing to the southwest. "Look like deer or grazing cattle."

"There is a small herd of deer there, sure enough," I replied, after making out the objects through my glass. "We shall not want for venison if we have good luck with our rifles."

"Deer, antelope, turkeys, ducks, geese, sand-hill crane, and trout!" exclaimed Frank. "We've hit a hunter's paradise."

"And bears and catamounts, too, I suspect," said Henry, looking a little lugubrious.

"My, but wouldn't I like to kill a bear!" said Frank.

"Well, I don't believe I shall hunt for one, and I hope a bear won't hunt for me," said the younger lad. "I'll be satisfied with turkeys, grouse, ducks, and trout."

Six miles due west, a little south of the wooded point, detached from it about half a mile, we perceived a line of small cabins, which we inferred was the volunteer encampment. They stretched across a little level space, enclosed by a gently sloping ridge of horseshoe shape. The ridge, in fact, proved to be of that shape when we examined it later. The row of sixteen cabins stretched across the curve, and looked out of the opening towards the eastern side of the valley. Fifty yards in front of the cabins, running across the horseshoe from heel to heel, flowed a crystal stream of water twenty feet wide and two feet deep, which rose from forty-two springs near the northern end of the valley. The ridge enclosing the encampment was nowhere more than twenty-five feet above the level parade.

The cabins were built of pine logs laid up horizontally, flanked on the north by the kitchen and stable, and on the south by a storehouse. Behind the cabins, at the centre of the horseshoe curve, two-thirds the way up the slope of the ridge, and overlooking the encampment from its rear, stood the guard-house, in front of which paced a sentinel.

Resuming our march, a brisk step soon brought us to the encampment. At the brook before the parade I was met by the volunteer officers, who did not disguise their joy at the prospect of leaving what they considered a life of unbearable exile. Even before the customary civilities were passed, the captain asked me if my animals were in a condition to warrant his loading the wagons with his company property as soon as I unloaded mine, as he wished to make an evening's march towards Santa Fé.

I told him I thought they were, provided he took the two wagons belonging to the camp in addition, so that the loads would be light. He approved of my suggestion, and promised to send back the wagons as soon as he reached Fort Marcy.

The wood-yard being well supplied with fuel, I saw no reason why the wagons and mules could not be spared the ten days necessary to make the round trip.

One reason for doing all I could to facilitate the immediate departure of the Californians was that my men were anxious to move into the cabins at once.

With my first glance at the encampment, it had seemed to me too open to surprise. The adjacent forest-clad point crept up near the left flank, offering an effectual screen to an attacking party, and the overlooking sentinel at the guard-house did not have a range of vision to the rear of more than fifty yards. He was not on the summit of the ridge by at least half that distance, and walked along the side of the guard-house next the cabins. He could see nothing of the surface of the valley to the west of the ridge, and when passing along the front of the building, as he paced backward and forward, he saw nothing to the rear of his beat.

I expressed my opinion of the situation to the volunteer captain, but he replied, "Pshaw! you might as well take the sentinel off, for all the good he does as a lookout for Indians."

"Have you seen none?"

"Not a solitary moccasin, except an occasional Pueblo, since I've been here-eleven months."

"I suppose you have scouted the country thoroughly?"

"There isn't a trail within thirty miles that I do not know. These bundles of wolf-skins and other pelts you see going into the wagons are pretty good evidence that my men know the country."

We walked to the kitchen, and found, hanging on the walls of the store-room, a dozen quarters of venison, the fat carcass of a bear, and several bunches of fowl.

"We are not obliged to kill our cattle to supply the men with meat," added the captain. "We butcher only when we need a change from wild meat."

"I saw from the edge of the valley where I entered it that you have deer."

"Pretty much everything but buffalo is here."

"I hear your brook is full of fish."

"There's where you make a mistake," he replied. "There is not a fish in this valley. The water is spring water, and must possess some mineral property distasteful to trout, for they never run up here. In San Antonio Valley, six miles to the west, in a brook less clear than this, you can catch them by the cart-load."

"I suppose you intend to take this venison with you?"

"Not if you will accept the gift of all but a few quarters, which we will take for friends in the city."

"Thank you and your men. It will be a treat to us, and keep us going until we can put in a hunt on our own account."

We went back to the parade, and stood looking at the surrounding mountains in the deepening twilight.

"What other ways are there in and out of the valley, besides the one which we entered?" I asked.

"Well, on the east and south sides there is a trail between the peaks, four in all, and one good bridle-path to the Pueblo of Jemez. That descends from the valley level to the Jemez River bottom, a drop of nearly three thousand feet, in a distance of three miles, zigzagging twice that distance."

"And to the west and north?"

"To the north there is a trail to Abiquiu, rarely used, and to the west there is only La Puerta, into which all the other trails from the east and south concentrate. It is to watch La Puerta that this camp was established."

"And you say you have seen no Navajos or signs of them since you came?"

"Yes, plenty of signs, but no Indians. Parties have passed here in the night, but none were driving stock."

I learned all I could of the captain while his men hurried their baggage into the wagons, but he was too much excited over the prospect of leaving the Great Valleys, as well as curious to know of events in Santa Fé, to give me much information. When the guard of regulars relieved the volunteer guard, I placed my sentinel on a beat a dozen yards in rear of the guard-house, which enabled him to see several hundred yards back of the ridge, and yet not show himself prominently to an approaching foe.

The volunteers at last marched away, and I made a casual examination of the cabins. I noticed that the inner surface of the log walls had been hewn smooth, and the names, company, and regiment of the former occupants had been carved with knives or burned in with hot pokers along the upper courses. Each had a wide, open, stone fireplace and chimney set in one corner, after the Mexican fashion.

No uniform design had been observed in the construction of the cabins, the occupants having followed their own ideas of what would prove comfortable. Height, width, and depth were variable, but their fronts were in perfect alignment.

The hut which had been occupied by the officers and which fell to the boys and myself was at the right of the line, next the storehouse, a little removed from the others. It was twenty by twenty feet, partitioned on one side into two alcoves in which were rude bedsteads, one of which was assigned to the boys and one to myself. A door opened on the south side, and a window, the only glass one in camp, looked out upon the parade. Floors in all the cabins were of earth, raised a foot higher than the outside surface of the ground, smoothed with a trowel and carpeted with blankets, until later, when skins of wild animals took their place. Doors were made of puncheons, swung on wooden hinges and fastened with wooden latches operated by latch-strings.

Our first day in camp was principally spent in making ourselves comfortable. The men were busy in filling bed-sacks from the hay-stacks, and in repairing the cabins and articles of furniture. Ten head of beef cattle had been turned over to me with the other property of the camp. I had placed them in charge of a soldier, with orders to herd them in the valley immediately in front of the opening, where they could be plainly seen from the parade as well as the guard-house.

At noon two Mexican hunters, father and son, rode up to my door, the former mounted on a mule and the latter on a burro, or donkey. The elder said their names were José and Manuel Cordova, of Ca?oncito, that they were looking for deer, and would like permission to make the camp their place of rendezvous. I gave them permission to do so, and their animals were turned loose with our stock.

About four o'clock in the afternoon the boy corporals and myself, tired with our work of repairing and arranging quarters, sat down to a lunch of broiled grouse.

We were busily picking the last bones when we were startled by loud shouts. Quickly running to the centre of the parade, where the men were rapidly assembling with their arms, I saw the soldier-herdsman coming towards camp as fast as he could run, waving his hat and shouting. Behind him the steers were running in the opposite direction, driven by six Indians on foot. They were waking the echoes with their war-whoops.

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