Captured by the Navajos Part 1

Captured by the Navajos.

by Charles A. Curtis.

I

INTRODUCES THE BOYS

It was late in the fall of the second year of the civil war that I rejoined my company at Santa Fe, 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 Fe?"

"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 la.s.so 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 la.s.so 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 a.s.sistance.

"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 AlG.o.dones."

"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 Spanis.h.!.+ It will be a great pleasure to visit American boys who can speak my language, for I know but few English words."

"Next Sat.u.r.day, then?"

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

The following Sat.u.r.day I saw the two corporals and their newly acquired companion at the post and at dinner in the mess-room, and a friends.h.i.+p 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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 Fe 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 quant.i.ties 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, sh.e.l.ls, 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 cla.s.s 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 Fe 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 st.u.r.dy 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 unenc.u.mbered 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 canon, through which flowed a considerable stream. To the west was another canon, 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 gra.s.s. 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.