Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 71, No. 438, April 1852Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 71, No. 438, April 1852
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
mountains, about sixty miles south. There, it is said, to this day
they keep up their fire, which has never yet been extinguished. The
labour, watchfulness, and exposure to heat, consequent on this
practice of their faith, is fast reducing this remnant of the
Montezuma race; and a few years will, in all probability, see the
last of this interesting people."
The Indians in general, Mr Emory states, were delighted to exchange
Mexican for American masters. The day after his arrival at Santa Fé, the
chiefs of the large and formidable tribe of the Pueblo Indians came to
give in their joyful adhesion to the invaders. These Indians are some of
the best and most peaceable inhabitants of New Mexico. Very soon after
the Spanish conquest they embraced the religion, manners, and customs of
their masters. A tradition was long current amongst them, they told the
American officers, that the white man would come from the far east and
release them from Spanish bondage. From Taos and other places
deputations arrived to give in their allegiance, and to ask protection
from hostile Indians; and a band of Navajos, naked savage-looking
fellows, also dropped in and took up their quarters with the interpreter
to the expedition, just opposite Mr Emory's lodging. "They ate, drank,
and slept all the time, noticing nothing but a little cinnamon-coloured
naked brat that was playing in the court, which they gazed at with the
eyes of gastronomes." The Navajos are a robber tribe, dwelling in holes
and caverns in lofty mountains, difficult of access, westward from Santa
Fé and the Rio del Norte, and descending at night into the valleys to
carry off the fruit, cattle, women, and children of the Mexicans. To
assail and subdue them in their strongholds is an enterprise which the
Mexicans never dreamed of attempting, and which Mr Emory believed would
be no easy task even for his own countrymen. Armijo, during his
government of New Mexico, would not allow the inhabitants to make war on
these banditti, whom he took advantage of as a means of intimidation and
extortion, as a thief might avail of a savage dog. Any who offended him
were pretty sure to have a visit from the Navajos. Three years after Mr
Emory's expedition, a military reconnoissance was made from Santa Fé to
the Navajo country, under command of Colonel Washington, governor of New
Mexico. Lieutenant Simpson, of the Topographical Engineers, accompanied
it, and we turn to his report (included in the second volume under
notice) for some particulars of this predatory tribe and its district.
The object of the expedition was to enforce compliance with a treaty
made with the Navajos by a United States officer, by which they had
pledged themselves to give up all Mexican captives, all murderers of
Mexicans, who might be secreted amongst them, and all the Mexican stock
they had driven off since the establishment of the government of the
United States in that province. Several head-men of the Navajos came
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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