Navajos killed him for the horses. Nobody has Southwest tried to explain why a lone Mexican blacksmith was By Ernie Bulow sent to recover the stolen animals by himself in the first place. Author photo by Erin Bulow Chee’s mother was recorded as Bisnayanchi, a Navajo/Jemez woman living at the fort in the 1850s. Again the records fail us. Bisnayanchi and her sister were said to be Navajos of the Jemez clan – unless they were ladies of mixed blood. Joe Tanner of the famous trading family takes it a step further. He believes that they were Jemez women, captured by Navajos and kept as slaves. This would not be an uncommon practice at the time. Joe’s great-grandfather Seth Tanner (the original Bear Man) had located in northern Arizona but he was a restless man and explored far and wide, leaving his name on springs and trails. Joe believes that the young Seth, who would later pioneer the Mormon colony at Tuba City in Hopi country, encountered the two Jemez ladies who were running from their Navajo captors. Chee could be the child of that union. Tanner was aware as a youngster of a serious connection between Seth’s son Joseph Baldwin (his grandfather) and Chee Dodge, which lasted all through their lives. Seth had homesteaded north of Joseph City, Arizona, at a place called Tanner Springs. Chee later bought that property, though now it is surrounded by reservation lands. Chee Dodge said he was the son of Henry Dodge at one time. David Brugge wrote an excellent piece on Chee Dodge wherein he quoted a letter from Augustus Dodge saying he had a teenaged half-Navajo nephew. That seemed to close the issue. Regardless of Chee Dodge’s paternity, Bisnayanchi also remains a mysterious figure. A few years after Henry Lafayette Dodge’s mysterious death south of Zuni at the hands of raiding Apaches, the U. S. government was forced by American citizens in the
West by
Territories to curb Navajo raiding. This culminated in the Kit Carson campaign and the removal of a good part of the Navajo tribe to Ft. Sumner in eastern New Mexico. During the Kit Carson crackdown life was very difficult for the Navajos as their herds were confiscated and their crops destroyed. The story is that Chee’s mother went out foraging for food one day and simply disappeared. He was taken in by other family members but was separated from them at the beginning of the trek to Ft. Sumner. Many years ago I was told a story about her taking baby Chee and joining “relatives” out at Hopi. Or family members at one of the other Pueblos. Obviously that was not correct. Fifty years later Chee and J. B. Tanner were traveling up the Chuska mountain range to settle the fight between Navajos and the very unpopular Navajo Agent at Shiprock, William Shelton. They stopped in at the trading post run by Charles Newcomb who was a neighbor of Dodge’s when he ran the Crystal store. Chee Dodge stayed friends with Newcomb for life, visiting him even after the Newcombs moved to Coolidge, New Mexico. Shirley Newcomb recalls that Dodge would slip her a five dollar bill whenever he visited. That was a huge amount of money in the early forties. Newcomb later recounted that Chee told him the man involved in the fracas at Beautiful Mountain was the kind stranger who had saved his life on the Long Walk. It might have been that man’s descendent. Dodge and his friend Tanner defused the situation a couple of days before Father Anselm Weber and General Scott showed up with a flourish of government soldiers. The “war” had been averted. The question remains of the relationship of Bizhoshi’s family to Chee Dodge. (And Dodge’s relationship with the Tanners.)
How could a real individual . . . have little provable presence?
Back to the new website I stumbled across. Brenda Dodge has assembled a great deal of fascinating information at Hispanic Dodge Ancestry. She documents the family of Juana de la Trinidad Sandoval of Cebolleta, New Mexico, who apparently had two or possibly three children by Dodge. Henry did not marry Juana but his children took the Dodge name. Brenda says that historians over the years have “written about his exploits as
a hero, a soldier, a lead miner, a businessman, an Indian agent, a gambler, a cheat, and even an adulterer.” She goes on to say that when he left Dodgeville, Wisconsin, “he abandoned his wife and four children, left unpaid bills, and left a mistress to muddle through the birth of an illegitimate child. “It seems when he left in the spring of 1846 that he was embroiled in scandal and controversy. Many questions go unanswered as to the truth behind his leaving his home and family, but this just adds to the mystique and charisma of Henry L. Dodge.” This isn’t the only bombshell. The Hispanic Dodge family has organized and done some DNA work that is only now becoming possible. They approached Chee’s grandson, Benjamin Dodge, in Window Rock and he graciously consented to a DNA test. The result is, Chee Dodge cannot possibly be related to Henry Lafayette. On the other hand, there is no concrete proof that Henry fathered the children of Juana other than family tradition. Joe Tanner has been
wanting to do a similar DNA test and now the way is cleared for that. Another website belonging to a Henry Dodge from the Puerto de Luna Dodges (same family), adds some information about Dodge ancestry and he says in passing “great grandmother, Cayetana Silva, was a friend of Billy the Kid and that her father was involved in burying him.” That can’t be true because I have it on good authority that the old man was still alive and well in Cubero, New Mexico, in the 1960s.
UNPUBLISHED AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPH IN POSTCARD FORMAT
RARE POSTCARD IMAGE OF CHEE DODGE CHIEF NAVAJO
believe • gallup
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