The Navajos
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Wash.6 Both Mexican military officers described seeing traces of Navajos fleeing north across the San Juan River into what is now Utah. Many accounts written during the following forty years mention Navajos, Paiutes, and Utes traveling through and living in the area of southern Utah. In 1832, for example, Navajos were reported living north of the San Juan River. It is recorded that Hastiin Beyal was born at the head of Grand Gulch during this time.7 The grandparents of a Navajo man called White Sheep were born in the 1820s, one near Bear's Ears and the other near the San Juan River. The Navajo headman K'aayelli was born around 1801 near Bear's Ears. Kigalia Spring, north of Bear's Ears, was later named after him. Another Navajo headman called Kee Diniihi was born in White Canyon in 1821. Navajos were reported living as far north as Monticello, Utah, in 1839, on a map drawn by a traveler, T.J. Farnam, and other trappers and travelers also mentioned Navajos in the area.8 United States Military Conquest: The Long Walk and Fort Sumner Incarceration Although some of the following history does not directly pertain to Utah and Utah Navajos, the events are seminal in Navajo history, impacting profundly all Navajos from the time of the Long Walk to the present. In 1846 the United States declared war on the Republic of Mexico. Colonel Stephen W. Kearny entered New Mexico in August and took over the province with no resistance from the Mexican troops there. The Navajos first thought that the Americans would be allies with them against their common enemy, the Mexicans. To their surprise, however, the Americans sided immediately with the Mexicans, declaring that they would protect Mexican colonists against all hostile Indians, including Apaches and Navajos. Kearny dispatched Colonel Alexander Doniphan to lead an armed expedition into Navajo country. This was the first U.S. military expedition into the heart of Dine Bikeyah, Navajo land. Part of the expedition followed the San Juan River southwest towards Chinle Wash. Utah Navajos may have seen American soldiers for the first time during this period. By the time of the arrival of the American soldiers, hostilities were so rampant on all sides that attempts by the Americans to enter into meaningful peace treaties with the Navajo people were not worth the paper on which they were written. As was the case during the Spanish and Mexican occupation of the territory, treaties were written and broken almost immediately by one side or the other. A close reading of Spanish, Mexi-
