The Other Slavery (44 page)

Encouraged by the example of the frontier towns, other New Mexicans clamored for stern retribution. In August a crowd gathered in Santa Fe and issued an immediate call for one thousand volunteers. Men began signing up in Santa Fe, Bernalillo, Rio Arriba, San Miguel, and Valencia Counties. Together these companies formed a citizen battalion of nearly five hundred men under the command of Manuel A. Chaves and took to the field against the Navajos in September.
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The Navajos had to worry not only about these New Mexican volunteer forces but also about other Indians. The Pueblo Indians dispatched their own warriors. Forty Indians from the pueblo of Jemez, led by the pueblo’s governor, Francisco Hosta, heeded the call. Pueblos and Apaches also acted as scouts and auxiliaries for both the militias and the U.S. military. These Natives were glad to make common cause with
Euro-Americans against their mutual enemy and regarded this service as a way to secure horses, sheep, and captives. Even more dangerous than the Pueblos and Apaches were the Utes. The rivalry between the Navajos and Utes stretched back for centuries, but their different historical trajectories had given the Utes some advantages. Over the years, the Navajos had settled down in a multiplicity of clans in northwestern New Mexico, eastern Arizona, and parts of Colorado and Utah, accumulating large herds of sheep and developing fruit orchards and other crops that tied them to the land. Some twelve thousand Navajos lived in this homeland they called Dinétah. Their pastoral and fragmented existence made them vulnerable to attack, however, especially from the Utes, who lived just to the north and had adopted an equestrian and mobile existence.

Up to 1856, the Utes and Navajos had raided each other from time to time, but that year the U.S. military began receiving news of a state of generalized warfare between the two nations. Although it was hard to determine the true extent of this conflict at any given time, there were obvious flashpoints. In September 1860, the Utes assembled a war party of five to six hundred individuals—larger than New Mexico’s entire volunteer force. Two colorful figures led this party: Chief Kaniache of the Muache Utes and a German-born Indian subagent for the Capote Utes named Albert H. Pfeiffer. (Both would go on to play crucial roles in the ultimate removal of the Navajo nation to the Bosque Redondo reservation.) Little is known about the daily operations of this extraordinary war party, but one thing is clear: it became the most successful military unit operating against the Navajos. In short order, the Utes killed six Navajos and took nineteen captives, five hundred horses, and no less than five thousand sheep.
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Albert H. Pfeiffer grew up in Germany but immigrated to the United States when he was a young man. In 1858 he was appointed the Indian subagent operating out of Abiquiu. The cape he is wearing here, made of buckskin and red flannel, was presented to him by the Ute Indians. He wore it in public with marked dignity. According to the 1860 census, Pfeiffer and his wife kept at least eight Indian servants.

Last to enter the fray against the Navajos was the U.S. military. Regular soldiers gathered at Fort Defiance in September and October 1860 and mounted a three-pronged advance into Navajo country. The army’s participation was brief but significant. Together with New Mexican militias and Indian war parties, the three American columns pursued the Navajos through the winter. In February 1861, thirty-two Navajo headmen, their resistance broken, sued for peace and signed a treaty. This state of affairs would not last for long. The Navajo nation was divided between wealthy families owning orchards, herds, and captives and other families with few possessions. Rich Navajos favored peace to preserve their wealth, but poorer Navajos, who had suffered disproportionately, had strong incentives to continue fighting. Hispanic New Mexicans distinguished between these two groups, unabashedly classifying them as either
ricos
(rich) or
ladrones
(thieves). The military campaigns of 1860–1861 had only exacerbated the plight of the poor Navajos, who
saw their children and women taken away and their few animals stolen. Seeking to recover what they had lost, they launched another cycle of raids. By the end of 1861, the U.S. officer who had been in charge of the army’s earlier campaign, Colonel Edward Canby, recognized that at least some of the Navajos had resumed their attacks.
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This was the situation when General James Carleton arrived from California, oversaw the final withdrawal of Confederates from New Mexico, and considered ways to put his military might to good use. He made preparations for an all-out offensive, with the intention of removing the entire Navajo nation four hundred miles away to a reservation on the windswept plains of eastern New Mexico called Bosque Redondo. This time there would be no compromises or temporary arrangements, only a scorched-earth campaign designed to bring about the Diné’s unconditional surrender. The choice would be simple: total extermination or wholesale removal.

The Navajo campaign of 1863–1864 would not involve large armies clashing in epic battles like those elsewhere during the Civil War. Instead, General Carleton likened the Navajo campaign to a chase for wild game. As he put it, “An Indian is a more watchful and a more wary animal than a deer.” He therefore encouraged his soldiers to follow the enemy’s tracks “day after day with a fixedness of purpose that never gives up,” using “all sorts of wiles to get within gunshot of it.” Carleton’s basic strategy consisted of fielding small units working in different areas of Dinétah to keep the Navajos continually on the run. His forces would ravage the land—burning crops, orchards, and food stores; setting fire to hogans and tepees; and tracking Navajos over long distances—all the while denying them food and shelter until they became utterly exhausted. It would be a relentless chase through Navajo country.
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General Carleton chose the legendary scout Christopher “Kit” Carson to lead the offensive. It was an inspired choice, first because the two men knew each other well and shared the same ideas concerning the importance of stealth, mobility, and endurance in the campaign. In 1854 a group of Indian scouts under Carson had guided Carleton and his
soldiers as they followed a group of Apaches. The chase lasted “more than a fortnight” but was successful in the end, thus demonstrating how a few resolute men with a little bacon, flour, and coffee could effectively track down an elusive enemy. Apart from shared experience and ideas, Carson was an excellent choice because he had access to the best possible scouts to fight the Navajos. From 1854 to 1861, he had worked as an Indian agent, representing the U.S. government to the Indian nations of northern New Mexico. At his home in Taos, he had given out presents and received Indian visitors almost daily. Over the years, he had become especially close to the head chief of the Muache Utes, a remarkable leader named Kaniache, who had saved Carson’s life on one occasion. When Carson took charge of the campaign against the Navajos, he knew exactly where to get his scouts.
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In the summer of 1863, General Carleton dispatched eleven hundred American soldiers to Dinétah. Divided into seven companies, they fanned out to give chase. Even though Carson was in the field and nominally in charge, General Carleton remained a hands-on commander. From his perch in Santa Fe, he insisted on being informed of every company’s moves and in return constantly wrote letters containing instructions. Like a stern father, Carleton directed, praised, and scolded. When he had gone too long without news from Carson, he would fire off a short missive: “Make a note of this: You will send me a weekly report,
in detail,
of the operations of your command, a certified copy of which I desire to send to Washington.” When a company stayed too long in one place or spent weeks without encountering any Indians, Carleton ordered the men to move and get into the action. When Carson expressed some misgivings about entering the Canyon de Chelly, the Navajos’ stronghold, and requested permission to return home for the winter, Carleton tersely replied, “It is desirable that you go through the Cañon de Chelly before you come.” In all cases, the commanding general gave clear orders about how to dispose of the Navajos: “You will promptly attack and destroy any and all grown male Indians whom you may meet. Women and children will not be harmed, but will be taken prisoners and will be securely guarded until further orders.”
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In theory Carleton’s soldiers were supported by Indian scouts. But the reality could be quite different, as the day-to-day workings of Carson’s command readily attest. Routinely, Carson and his Ute scouts would leave camp early in the morning, riding ahead and moving quickly while the rest of the regiment made preparations to start the march. This advance party was the first to make contact with enemy Indians and frequently did much of the fighting. By the time the rest of the troops arrived, it was usually all over. The American soldiers spent much of their time burning crops and hogans. Ironically, the Ute scouts were often referred to as “auxiliaries,” but in truth they did all the tracking and much of the fighting, while the U.S. troops were the ones performing auxiliary functions.
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Carson naturally relied on Kaniache for this campaign, and because the Ute head chief and his men anticipated doing much of the hard work, they also assumed they would keep the spoils of war. Accordingly, Carson forwarded an extraordinary request to Carleton:

It is expected by the Utes, and has, I believe, been customary to allow them to keep the women and children and the property captured by them for their own use and benefit, and as there is no way to sufficiently recompense these Indians for their invaluable services, and as a means of insuring their continued zeal and activity; I ask it as a favor that they be permitted to retain all that they may capture.

Carson made this request as a concerned commander who wished to retain his Indian scouts. But his letter went further, expressing an opinion that must have been shared quite widely throughout New Mexico’s frontier society:

I am satisfied that the future of the captives disposed of in this manner would be much better than if sent even to the Bosque Redondo. As a general thing the Utes dispose of their captives to Mexican families, where they are fed and taken care of and thus cease to require any further attention on the part of the government. Besides this, their being distributed as Servants thro’ the territory cause[s] them to loosen that collectiveness of interest as a tribe, which they will retain if kept together at any one place.

Carson, who was married to a Hispanic woman from Taos, knew these things from personal experience. He had Navajo captives in his household, as did Subagent Pfeiffer and other soldiers, officers, and civilians all the way up to Governor Henry Connelly.
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Even so, General Carleton refused to grant Carson’s request. “All prisoners which are captured by the troops or employees of your command will be sent to Santa Fe by the first practicable opportunity,” Carleton replied in his characteristically brash style.
“There must be no exception to this rule.”
In the heat of the battle, however, Carson overlooked this pointed order. Kaniache continued to complain about doing all the hard work but not receiving sufficient compensation until he and his Utes finally left Carson’s service. Revealingly, Carson noted that the real reason for the Utes’ departure was that they had already gathered sufficient stock and captives. As for Kaniache and his men, they continued to operate against the Navajos, but “on their own account” and free from the strictures of the U.S. military.
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The fight against the Navajos continued unabated through the fall. But even with more than a thousand U.S. soldiers and an undetermined number of Indian scouts on the prowl, New Mexico remained unsafe. “There are parties of fives and tens and twenties of Navajoes and Apaches, most always well mounted, stealing throughout the country and committing depredations,” Carleton reported in August to his superiors in Washington. To assist the troops, Carleton proposed a plan to raise volunteer forces in each county. As was the case two years earlier, frontier towns such as Cubero, Cebolleta, and Abiquiu were the first to respond. And also as before, they immediately launched what amounted to full-scale slaving raids into Dinétah.
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None of these raids was more successful than Ramón Baca’s in November 1863. Baca led a group of 116 Hispanic volunteers on a six-day foray in a northwesterly direction from Cebolleta: “We encountered about 200 Indians, very poor, without stock of any consequence,” Baca reported. “The Indians ran at once. We killed five men and one woman and took three children prisoners.” Since its founding in the early nineteenth century in western New Mexico, Cebolleta had developed as a rough frontier outpost and a buffer community consisting of convicts,
soldiers, and their families. An Indian subagent named Nathan Bibo lived in Cebolleta and years later wrote about the Indian fighters, with their “shirt and trousers made of unbleached cotton (manta), the very large brim Old Mexico straw hat (poblano), sandals of home-made fabric, leather belt . . . and their long hair braid hanging way down the back of the body.” These men, by means of their superior knowledge of Indian hiding places, took “hundreds of prisoners who, as was the custom of those early days, were sold as domestics all over the territory, sometimes at very high prices,” according to Bibo. If the number is accurate, Baca and his men were by far the most successful slavers of the Navajo campaign.
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