Navajo Administrative History

The exact moment of the arrival of the Navajo people in the Southwest remains the subject of dispute. The standard view of archeologists and anthropologists suggests that when the Spanish arrived from the south in the 1540s, the Navajo were in the process of migrating into the region from the north. An Athapascan people, they had come from the area around what is now the Canadian border, gradually moving south over a period of hundreds of years. Estimates from this school of thought for the beginning of Navajo influx into the Southwest suggest a time between 1400 and 1525 A.D. Clearly the process was ongoing when the Spanish arrived. [11] In this sense, the point of contact between the two cultures was the meeting point between two different migrant groups, each with different cosmologies, values, and technologies, one slightly ahead of the other in chronological appearance. Both strangers to the region, they arrived nearly simultaneously. The subsequent three hundred years involved working out the nature and extent of the relationship between the two groups.

Navajo oral tradition and tree-ring dating suggest an earlier arrival than does much of modern archeology and anthropology. According to this view, at least some Navajo people or their forerunners were in the region at the same time as the Pueblos. Tree-ring dates from western Colorado show the construction of hogan-type dwellings in the 1100s A.D. that show Navajo-like characteristics and a Navajo homestead south of Gallup, New Mexico, has been dated to approximately 1380 A.D. In addition, a Navajo legend places the arrival of the Dinè, as the Navajo refer to themselves, in the vicinity of Chaco Canyon between roughly 900 and 1130 A.D. Nevertheless when the Spanish arrived, the Navajo were already well ensconced on the Colorado Plateau and their numbers were growing. [12]

The arrival of the Spanish produced a classic confrontation between denizens of the new and old worlds. The Spaniards possessed technology, biological characteristics, and domesticated animals with which the Navajo had no previous experience. The Navajo were better adapted to life in the harsh environment that was and is the Southwest. They knew its edible plants and hidden water sources and had adjusted to life in an unforgiving environment. Until the coming of the Americans, the collision was a stalemate. [13]

The first Spaniards to record contact with the Navajo were not typical explorers in search of gold. Antonio de Espejo, a fugitive fleeing a murder charge who financed an expedition to find two missing priests and thereby redeem his name, led a small group of men that traveled widely across the Southwest. Early in the spring of 1583, the party set off from Zia Pueblo towards Zuñi Pueblo. As they circumvented Mount Taylor, one of the sacred mountains of the Navajo, they met what they called "Indios Serranos," mountain Indians, who were most likely Navajos. These people were peaceful and later engaged in trade with the Spaniards. [14]

But any positive feelings engendered by the initial meeting did not last. Subsequent events set a far less optimistic tone for Navajo-Spanish relations. In 1598, don Juan de Oñate set out from New Spain to colonize New Mexico. Persuading Indians to accept Christian missionaries was an important component of his plan of colonization. While some of the Pueblos reconciled themselves at least temporarily to new forms of worship, others were not so accepting. On December 4, 1598, Acoma Pueblo, the Sky City, revolted against the Spanish.

Acoma was no stranger to warfare with the Spanish. The pueblo had previously fought a pitched battle with Espejo's men, winning decisively. After an incident caused by a lack of cross-cultural communication, the Acomas seized eighteen Spaniards including one of Oñate's nephews, who were in the Sky City to requisition supplies. The nephew and ten other Spaniards were killed, along with a number of Indian servants. Four other Spaniards jumped off the 375-foot mesa into sand dunes below and escaped to carry the news to Oñate. [15]

Retribution was swift and furious, establishing the tone of relations for the next 250 years. Oñate sent a force of seventy men, headed by the slain nephew's brother, to exact revenge and show the strength of the Spanish. In a two-day battle, the Spanish scaled the mesa and burned the Pueblo. Indian casualties in battle were estimated at 800. Another 500 women and children and seventy or eighty warriors were captured. Many of the captives were cut to pieces and thrown from the mesa. The rest were tried and sentenced to punishments of servitude of various lengths. Adult males also had one foot chopped off. Two Hopi Indians involved in the revolt had their right hands chopped off and were sent back to their people as an example. The word spread quickly through the region. In one intense moment, the Navajo and the Spaniards had learned to intensely dislike each other. [16]

From then on, Spanish-Navajo relations were strained. Unlike the smaller, less mobile Pueblos, the Navajo were not easily subdued. Regarding themselves as bearers of civilization, the Spanish found their desire to hegemonize thwarted. They could not bring these independent Indians under their control, but could capture a sufficient number of Navajo to compel a similar response. Despite a seemingly endless series of treaties and arrangements, the Spanish and the Navajos regarded each other as enemies. Initially conflict was military; later it became economic. But one feature of the conflict was consistent: Europeans and their descendants sought to regulate the Navajo way of life, the lands available to the Navajo, and to a lesser degree, their trade with the outside world. They also sought to convert any and all captive Navajos to Christianity and the Spanish way of life.

The acquisition and mastery of the horse by the Navajo compounded the problems of the Spanish. By 1610, the Navajos could use horses to further their objectives. Horses offered them a mobility that made them more lethal opponents of the Spanish, a range that made no part of New Mexico safe, and a cultural identity that accentuated Navajo autonomy. By the end of the reconquest of New Mexico in the 1690s, the Spanish recognized that the Navajo were and would remain beyond their reach. [17]

By 1820, the Navajos became the most feared enemy of the colony. The horse transformed the Navajos into a powerful adversary almost equal to the Spanish. Along with Utes and Comanches, Navajos incessantly raided the colony in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, forcing the weak, often debilitated, and contentious leadership of Spanish New Mexico to become enmeshed in a cumbersome and poorly followed set of treaty arrangements. The Spanish formed uncomfortable alliances with all the tribes in the region, at various times finding themselves using the Navajo in campaigns against other Indians and conversely fighting alongside other Indians against the Navajo. Animosity between different groups of Indians also contributed to an already complex situation. Spanish slave raids, particularly one that resulted in the massacre of hundreds of Navajo women and children in Canyon del Muerto in 1805, heightened existing tensions, and the Navajos became raiders on a large scale. [18]

Yet the Spanish colony of New Mexico remained weak. The Spaniards lacked the resources and the wherewithal to establish a powerful entity at the northern tip of their empire in the Americas. Their religious, cultural, and economic mission never achieved success with the Navajo. The only effort to establish a mission to Christianize the Navajo lasted merely two years. Nor was New Mexico as economically profitable for the Spanish as were other parts of their empire in the New World. As a result, administration of the colony was half-hearted throughout the eighteenth century, leaving it open to challenges to Spanish authority. By 1800, the Spanish empire had crumbled. Fewer and fewer of its resources were allocated for the New Mexico colony.

The abundance of complex and repeated agreements between the Navajos and the Spanish colony of New Mexico attested to the precariousness of the position of the Spanish. They lacked the numbers and power to enforce their will on the Navajo. Clearly fear was a major element in the Spanish view of Navajos; the establishment of the genizaro--detribalized Indian--community at Abiquiu as a buffer between the "Indios Barbaros" and the colony revealed the vulnerability of Spanish New Mexico.

Despite its limitations, the Spanish empire in northern New Spain persisted into the nineteenth century. Although the periphery was seldom strong, it did hold for an extended period. New Mexico, at least along the Rio Grande, remained a part of the Spanish empire and Spanish culture and religion melded with that of the Pueblos. But extending hegemony beyond the river valley proved too much. The Navajos played an important role in denying further Spanish expansion.

The Spaniards faced many problems in their efforts to deal with the Navajos. Among the most important was identifying individuals who could speak for the Navajo people. In one such effort, a colonial governor offered to provide four silver-tipped canes and medals to Navajos who were willing and able to assume that role. In addition, the Spanish often paid Navajos to fight with them against other Indians, arbitrarily designating the leaders of these accomodationists as the leaders of the Navajo people. [19]

But unlike the effort made with the Pueblos, the Spanish made few attempts to offer the Navajo the "benefits" of their society. When compared to the town-dwelling, agricultural Pueblos, by Spanish standards, the Navajos seemed backward. The Navajos were not subject to comprehensive missionary efforts as were the Pueblos, nor were there efforts to rid the Navajo of their culture and make them Spanish. Only Navajo captives were brought into the realm of Spanish culture and life. The Spanish simply could not subject the Navajo to their cultural will.

As a result, the Navajo retained autonomy and remained largely beyond Spanish control. As the letters of governors of the colony show, the Spaniards spent a lot of time worrying about what the Navajos would do next. The Spanish empire in the New World crumbled in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, and the problems of one of the most remote outposts of New Spain attracted little attention. Spanish authorities had more important problems to address, and without support, officials in New Mexico could do little to change or stop the Navajo. They lacked the resources and the power. An adversarial view became codified in the perspective of the Spanish. Navajos became the feared adversary--the enemy.