Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 71, No. 438, April 1852

"The council breaking up, Sandoval harangued some two or three hundred Navajos, ranged before him on horseback; the object, as it occurred to me, being to explain to them the views and purposes of the government of the United States. Sandoval himself, habited in his gorgeous dress, [we could give no idea of its richness and brilliant colouring without here presenting Mr Simpson's 52d plate, a coloured print of a Navajo in full costume,] and all the Navajos as gorgeously decked in red, blue, and white, with rifle erect in hand; the spectacle was very imposing. But soon I perceived there was likely to be some more serious work than mere talking. It appears that it was ascertained very satisfactorily that there was then amongst the horses, in the possession of the Navajos present, one which belonged to a Mexican, a member of Colonel Washington's command. The colonel, particularly as the possessor of it acknowledged it to be stolen, demanded its immediate restoration. The Navajos demurred. He then told them that, unless they restored it immediately, they would be fired into. They replied that the man in whose possession the horse was had fled. Colonel Washington then directed Lieutenant Tores to seize one in reprisal. The Navajos scampered off at the top of their speed. The guard present was then ordered to fire upon them – the result of which was that their head chief, Narbona, was shot dead on the spot; and six others, as the Navajos subsequently told us, were mortally wounded. Major Peck also threw amongst them, very handsomely, much to their terror, when they were afar off and thought they could with safety relax their flight, a couple of round shot. These people evidently gave signs of being tricky and unreliable, and probably never will be chastened into perfect subjection until troops are stationed immediately amongst them."

This wholesale shooting, for so trifling a thing as a stolen horse, seems rather sharp practice; but perhaps it was judicious to intimidate the Navajos at first starting. They certainly showed no such formidable resistance as had been anticipated, three years previously, by Lieutenant Emory. The expedition continued its march, preceded by forty Pueblo Indians as an advanced guard, through a most formidable defile, which received the name of Washington Pass. The Pueblos were commanded by a chief of their own election, Owtewa by name, whose portrait, given by Mr Simpson, is more like that of some old weather-beaten Spanish guerilla-leader than of an Indian. Indeed, most of the portraits contained in these two volumes have much of the Spanish character of physiognomy, easily explicable by three centuries of license and oppression. Mariano Martinez, another Navajo chief, has the very features and expression of a Castilian or Biscayan peasant. He came into camp a few days after Narbona's death, embraced Colonel Washington, and declared his wish for peace, and his willingness to comply with the conditions of the treaty. Then, again embracing the American officers, "very impressively and with much endearment," he departed to seek and restore the captives and plunder claimed from his tribe. Fear had probably something to do with his humility and submission, for by this time the expedition was in the very heart of the Navajo country, close to the renowned cañon of Chelly. The word cañon, sometimes applied to a shallow valley, more commonly means a very deep and narrow one, or rather a ravine, enclosed between lofty escarpments. The cañon of Chelly is of the latter description, and of most remarkable configuration. It has long been celebrated in Mexico for its great depth and for the impregnable positions it affords, as well as for a strong fort it was said to contain, and which, according to Caravajal, Mr Simpson's Mexican guide, was so high as to require fifteen ladders to scale it, seven of which the said Caravajal affirmed that he, on one occasion, ascended, but was not permitted to go higher. From their camp, within five miles of Chelly, a large party of the American officers visited the cañon, which more than fulfilled their anticipations – so great was its depth, so precipitous its rocks, so beautiful and regular its stratification. Plate 48, "View of the cañon of Chelly near its head," although only a rough lithograph on a minute scale, gives an imposing idea of the gloomy depths of this natural wonder. At that spot Mr Simpson estimated it to be about eight hundred feet deep.

"At its bottom," he says, "a stream of water could be seen winding its way along it, the great depth causing it to appear like a mere riband. As far as time would permit an examination, for a depth of about three hundred feet – I could descend no further, on account of the wall becoming vertical – the formation appeared to be sandstone, horizontally stratified with drift conglomerate. At this depth I found, protruding horizontally from the wall, its end only sticking out, a petrified tree of about a foot in diameter, a fragment of which I broke off as a specimen. How did this tree get there? I also picked up at this point, upon the shelf on which I was standing, a species of iron ore, probably red hematite. The colonel commanding returning to camp, after a cursory look at the cañon, in order to put the troops in motion for the day's march, I had not the time necessary to make the full examination which I would have liked. I saw, however, enough to assure me that this cañon is not more worthy the attention of the lover of nature than it is of the mineralogist and geologist."

Three days later, Lieutenant Simpson, attended by his assistant engineers and draughtsmen, and escorted by sixty men and several officers, went to reconnoitre the cañon. The account he gives of it is most curious and interesting. At its mouth the walls were low; but as he proceeded, their altitude increased, until, at about three miles from the entrance, they assumed a stupendous appearance. The floor of the ravine, which in some places was no more than one hundred and fifty feet wide – although generally more than double that width – is a heavy sand. "The escarpment walls, which are a red amorphous sandstone, are rather friable, and show imperfect seams of stratification – the dip being slight, and towards the west. Almost perfectly vertical, they look as if they had been chiselled by the hand of art; and occasionally cizous marks, apparently the effect of the rotary attrition of contiguous masses, could be seen on their faces." Having proceeded about three miles, the party turned into a left-hand branch of the cañon. This branch was one hundred and fifty to two hundred yards wide, and its walls of the same towering height as those of the main line of ravine. Two or three patches of corn, with melons and pumpkins growing amongst it, were met with on the way; and then, after following this left-hand branch for half a mile, Mr Simpson turned to his right up a narrow secondary branch, enclosed between vertical walls three hundred feet high, which in some places are without a seam in their surface from top to bottom.

"About half a mile up this branch," continues Mr Simpson, "in the right-hand escarpment wall, is a hemispherical cave, canopied by some stupendous rocks, a small, cool, acceptable spring being sheltered by it. A few yards further, this branch terminates in an almost vertical wall, affording no pathway for the ascent or descent of troops. At the head of this branch I noticed two or three hackberry trees, and also the stramonium, the first plant of the kind we have seen. Retracing our steps to the primary branch we had left, we followed it up to its head, which we found but two or three hundred yards above the fork – the side walls still continuing stupendous, and some fine caves being visible here and there within them. I also noticed here some small habitations, made up of natural overhanging rock, and artificial walls, laid in stone and mortar – the latter forming the front portion of the dwelling."

It would be necessary to transcribe the whole of Mr Simpson's minute account of his visit to the cañon and its branches, in order to convey to the reader a just idea of that most extraordinary and gigantic fissure. Even then the idea obtained might be incommensurate with the grandeur of the subject, if the description were unaided by the three plates, dashed off with a bold, rough pencil, in which Simpson's draughtsman has given us a better notion of the grim aspect and huge proportions of the ravine than words could well supply. Having explored the lateral branches, without seeing any sign of the celebrated fort, the party then continued their progress up the main channel, passing some ruined villages, perched on shelves of the rock wall. Near one of these, about five miles from the entrance, they observed, in the bed of the cañon, the ordinary Navajo hut, (a common Indian lodge of conical form, constructed of poles united at the apex, and covered with bark, bushes, and mud,) and, hard by it, a peach orchard.

"A mile further, observing several Navajos, high above us, on the verge of the north wall, shouting and gesticulating as if they were very glad to see us, what was our astonishment when they commenced tripping down the almost vertical wall before them as nimbly and dexterously as minuet-dancers! Indeed, the force of gravity, and their descent upon a steep inclined plane, made such a kind of performance absolutely necessary to insure their equilibrium. All seemed to allow that this was one of the most wonderful feats they had ever witnessed."

After this meeting, the party passed more ruins of considerable villages, mostly built on shelves, and accessible only by ladders. Fragments of curiously-marked pottery were picked up, of which drawings are given. The walls, still of red sandstone, increased in the magnificence of their proportions, at intervals presenting façades hundreds of feet in length, and three or four hundred in height, beautifully smooth and vertical. About eight miles up the cañon, a small rill, previously lost in the deep sand, reappeared above ground. At last, at nine and a half miles from the entrance, the horses of the Pueblo Indians who accompanied him not being strong enough to go farther, and the much talked-of presidio or fort not appearing, Mr Simpson resolved to return to camp. The height of the walls, at the point where he turned back, he ascertained to be five hundred and two feet, and still increasing. The length of the cañon he conjectures – he does not mention on what grounds – to be about twenty-five miles. Its average width, as far as he ascended it, was two hundred yards.

"Both in going up and returning through the cañon, groups of Navajos and single persons were seen by us, high above our heads, gazing upon us from its walls. A fellow upon horseback, relieved as he was sharply against the sky, and scanning us from his elevation, appeared particularly picturesque. Whenever we met them in the cañon, they were very friendly – the principal chief, Martinez, joining and accompanying us in our exploration, and the proprietors of the peach orchards bringing out blanket-loads of the fruit (at best but of ordinary quality) for distribution among the troops. I noticed the cross, the usual emblem of the Roman Catholic faith, stuck up but in one instance in the cañon, and this is the only one I have seen in the Navajo country."

Mr Simpson was assured by Martinez that he and his companions were the first American troops that had visited Chelly. His visit, he considers, has solved the mystery of the wonderful cañon, and dissipated the notion previously entertained that upon a plateau, near its mouth, stood a high insulated fort, to which the Navajos repaired when danger approached. The report was very likely to be originated by the elevated position of some of the old Mexican villages, and also, perhaps, by the lofty shelves of the rock walls, to which the sure-footed Navajos may have fled when enemies were at hand, and to scale some of which would have taken more than the "fifteen ladders" spoken of by Caravajal. We cannot but regret that Mr Simpson did not prosecute his researches till he reached the extremity of the main cañon. However unnecessary in a military point of view, the results of such an expedition could not have been otherwise than highly interesting to science, and especially to the geologist. We can hardly doubt that the perusal of his report will stimulate adventurous travellers to an early exploration of the wonderful cañon. It offers, indeed, a wide field for speculation, and abounds in points of the strongest interest. Its origin – whether a natural fissure or from aqueous agents (Mr Simpson seems to incline to the former hypothesis) – its ruins, broken pottery, and other antiquities – its minerals and plants, are all fresh and fascinating subjects for investigation. The Navajos, too, are a people well worth making acquaintance with; presenting, as they do, a singular mixture of barbarism with ingenuity and civilisation. From what Mr Simpson had seen of them, he fully expected, on ascending the cañon, to find they had better habitations than the wretched wigwams we have already described. But no others did he discover, save ruined houses and villages, of whose origin the Navajos could give no account; and he was struck by the anomaly, that dwellers in miserable mud lodges should be the best blanket manufacturers in the world. "The sarape Navajo," says Gregg, in his Commerce of the Prairies, "is of so close and dense a texture, that it will frequently hold water almost as well as gum-elastic cloth. It is, therefore, highly prized for protection against the rains. Some of the finer qualities are often sold among the Mexicans as high as fifty or sixty dollars each." Gregg also speaks of the Navajos producing "some exquisite styles of cotton textures," and of their ingenuity in feather embroidery; but Mr Simpson could discover amongst them no traces of either of these two arts, although they are fond of decorating their persons with plumage of birds, and display much taste in its selection and arrangement. Mr Simpson particularly noticed their wickerwork bowls and vases, which, like the blankets, held water, and were superior to anything of the kind he had seen in the States. The credit of making these was attributed, not to the Navajos, but to the Coystero Indians.

After quitting the neighbourhood of the Navajos, Lieutenant Emory and "The Army of the West" marched due south, following the course of the Del Norte for a distance of more than two hundred miles from Santa Fé. Turning off from the river, after parting with their waggons by reason of the badness of the road, their progress continued, without anything of particular interest occurring, until they reached the neighbourhood of the river Gila, when a number of Apache Indians, a tribe celebrated for their thievish propensities, came into camp, headed by their chief, Red Sleeve, swore eternal friendship to the Americans, and everlasting hatred to the Mexicans. Henceforward, they protested, the white man might pass alone and unharmed through their country: if on foot, he should be mounted – if hungry, they would give him food. Carson, the guide, only twinkled his keen eye, and declared he would not trust one of them. They were eager to trade.

"They had seen some trumpery about my camp which pleased them, and many of them collected there. My packs were made. One of my gentlest mules at that moment took fright, and went off like a rocket on the back trail, scattering to the right and left all who opposed him. A large, elegant-looking woman, mounted a straddle, more valiant than the rest, faced the brute, and charged upon him at full speed. This turned his course back to the camp; and I rewarded her by half-a-dozen biscuits, and through her intervention, succeeded in trading two broken-down mules for two good ones, giving two yards of scarlet cloth in the bargain. By this time, a great number of Indians had collected about us, all differently dressed, and some in the most fantastical style. The Mexican dress and saddles predominated, showing where they had chiefly made up their wardrobe. One had a jacket made of a Henry Clay flag, which aroused unpleasant sensations; for the acquisition, no doubt, cost one of my countrymen his life. Several wore beautiful helmets, decked with black feathers, which, with the short shirt, waist-belt, bare legs, and buskins, gave them the look of antique Grecian warriors. Most were furnished with the Mexican cartridge-box, which consists of a strap round the waist, with cylinders inserted for the cartridges."

The Apaches are a nomadic tribe, living in huts of twigs, easily constructed, and abandoned with indifference. In the saddle from infancy, they are perfect horsemen, and usually well mounted – their horses being kept in excellent condition by the abundant pasture that clothes the pleasant hills between the Del Norte and the Gila. Round the skirts of these they hover, overlooking the plains of Chihuahua and Sonora, and watching for those caravans whose slender escort encourages an attack. They are inveterate thieves, faithless and treacherous; but their treatment by the Mexicans was ill calculated to improve their character, or to turn them from their evil courses. The Mexicans slew them unmercifully whenever they could catch them, and used every species of stratagem to decoy them into their power.

"The former governor of Sonora," Mr Emory informs us, "employed a bold and intrepid Irishman, named Kirker, to hunt the Apaches. He had in his employment whites and Delaware Indians, and was allowed, besides a per diem, 100 dollars per scalp, and 25 dollars for a prisoner. A story is also told of one Johnson, an Englishman, an Apache trader, who, allured by the reward, induced a number of these people to come to his camp, and placed a barrel of flour for them to help themselves. When the crowd of men, women, and children was thickest, he fired a six-pounder amongst them from a concealed place, and killed great numbers."

What wonder if tribes which have met such perfidious and cruel treatment are eminently distrustful of the white men! Two poor wretches, with whom the head of the American column fell in, could not believe their senses when suffered to ride away unmolested. They spoke no Spanish, but a language described by Mr Emory as resembling the bark of a mastiff; and it was thought they belonged to the tribe of Tremblers, so called from the emotion they display at meeting white men. Some distance down the Gila, a second band of Apaches was met. They were anxious to have "a talk," and the Americans wished to trade; but it was difficult to dispel Indian mistrust. Alone and unarmed, Mr Emory went to meet them at the top of a hill, where their chief, although well mounted, and surrounded by six or eight of his armed followers, showed great trepidation on receiving the weaponless white man. Mr Emory remained as a hostage, whilst a young Indian, bolder than his fellows, went into camp. The ice thus broken, intercourse followed. Amongst others, a middle-aged and particularly garrulous Apache lady visited the American bivouac.

"She had on a gauze-like dress, trimmed with the richest and most costly Brussels lace, pillaged, no doubt, from some fandango-going belle of Sonora. She straddled a fine grey horse; and whenever her blanket dropped from her shoulders, her tawny form could be seen through the transparent gauze. After she had sold her mule, she was anxious to sell her horse, and careered about to show his qualities. Charging at full speed up a steep hill, the fastenings of her dress broke, and her bare back was exposed to the crowd, who ungallantly raised a shout of laughter. Nothing daunted, she wheeled short round with surprising dexterity, and seeing the mischief done, coolly slipped the dress from her arms, and tucked it between the seat and the saddle. In this state of nudity she rode through camp, from fire to fire, until, at last, attaining the object of her ambition, a soldier's red flannel shirt, she made her adieu in that new costume."

Scattered through Mr Emory's journal, and especially after passing Santa Fé, and whilst following, with occasional deviations, the course of the Gila, are many notes and observations of much interest to the naturalist. Traversing the plains near the little town of Socoro on the Del Norte, Mr Emory noticed, as the chief growth of the sandy soil, the iodeodonda, or Larrea Mexicana– a new plant, which, when crushed, gives out a most offensive smell of creosote. It grows to about the height of a man on horseback, and is the only bush which mules, even when extremely hungry, refuse to eat. On the 8th October, shortly before attaining one of the southernmost points of his journey, Mr Emory found himself surrounded by a vegetable world totally different from that of the United States. The variety of enormous cacti was so great that it was impossible, with his slender means of transport, to carry away a complete collection of them. Just after turning off from the Del Norte, he passed through a valley where grew a new variety of the evergreen oak, with leaves like the holly, and which was covered with round red balls, the size and colour of apricots, the effects of disease, or of the sting of an insect. Three days later he fell in with the famous mezcal, (an agave,) "about three feet in diameter, having broad leaves, armed with shark-like teeth, and arranged in concentric circles, which terminate in the middle of the plant in a perfect cone. Of this the Apaches make molasses, and cook it with horse meat." In the districts where this plant flourishes, artificial craters are found, into which the Indians throw the fruit, with heated stones, to remove the sharp thorns and reduce it to its saccharine state. In the course of one of his botanical rambles, during a day's halt, rendered necessary by severe marches, Mr Emory came upon a settlement of tarantulas, which, on his approach, rushed fearlessly to the front of their little caves and assumed an attitude of defence. He threw a peeble at them, and it would be hard to imagine, he says, concentrated in so small a space, so much expression of defiance, fury, and ability to do mischief, as the pleasant little colony presented.

From the 1st to the 9th of November, we find frequent mention in the "Notes" of an extraordinary species of cactus, to which Dr Engelmann of St Louis, in an interesting botanical letter appended to Mr Emory's work, proposes to give the name of Cereus Giganteus. Under this name we find it depicted at page 96, in a plate where a mounted Indian, halted at its base, gives, by comparison, an imposing idea of its height. It also forms a most singular and striking feature of several of the landscapes scattered through this volume – of one particularly, on the Gila, where it has the effect of a chain of artificial columns or signal-posts. One of its most curious characteristics appears to be its invariable perpendicularity both of stem and branches; the latter, as soon as they bud out from the main trunk or from each other, hastening to turn their heads heavenwards, and to spring up in an exactly parallel direction to the parent stem. "The stem," says Dr Engelmann, "is tall, 25 to 60 feet high, and 2 to 6 feet in circumference – erect, simple, or with a few erect branches." Mr Emory's first mention of this pillar-like plant is as follows: —

"At the point where we left the Gila, there stands a cereus six feet in circumference, and so high that I could not reach half way to the top of it with the point of my sabre by many feet; and a short distance up the ravine is a grove of these plants, much larger than the one I measured, and with large branches. These plants bear a saccharine fruit much prized by the Indians and Mexicans. They are without leaves, the fruit growing to the boughs. The fruit resembles the burr of a chesnut, and is full of prickles; but the pulp resembles that of the fig, only more soft and luscious. In some it is white, in some red, and in others yellow, but always of exquisite taste."

The name of pitahaya is given to this cactus by the Californians; but that, according to Dr Engelmann, is a general name applied in Mexico and South America to all the large columnar cacti which bear an edible fruit. "We encamped in a grove of cacti of all kinds," writes Mr Emory on the 4th November; "amongst them the huge pitahaya, one of which was fifty feet high." The next day "we followed the Gila for six miles. The pitahaya and every other variety of cactus flourished in great luxuriance. The pitahaya, tall, erect, and columnar in its appearance, grew in every crevice from the base to the tops of the mountains, and in one place I saw it growing nearly to its full dimensions from a crevice not much broader than the back of my sabre. These extraordinary-looking plants seem to seek the wildest and most unfrequented places." Although the course of the Gila is nine degrees to the north of the tropics, the vegetation, as exhibited in a plate at page 112, has something very tropical in its gigantic luxuriance and strange character. The geological features of the country are of corresponding peculiarity. On the 8th November, the course of the expedition was traversed by "a seam of yellowish-coloured igneous rock, shooting up into irregular spires and turrets, one or two thousand feet in height. It ran at right angles to the river, and extended to the north and to the south, in a chain of mountains as far as the eye could reach. One of these towers was capped with a substance many hundred feet thick, disposed in horizontal strata of different colours, from deep red to light yellow." A sketch of this singular chain of natural spires and towers is annexed to Mr Emory's description by one of his companions. At this part of the journey, although beaver "sign" and tracks of game were seen, few animals made their appearance. On the 6th November, the only creatures observed were lizards, scorpions, and tarantulas. Five days after, however, Mr Emory secured a long-sought bird, an inhabitant of the mezquite tree, having indigo-blue plumage, with top knot and a long tail, and whose wings, when spread, exhibit a white ellipse. "Strolling over the hills alone," says Mr Emory, "in pursuit of seeds and geological specimens, my thoughts went back to the States; and when I turned from my momentary aberrations, I was struck most forcibly with the fact that not one object in the whole view, animal, vegetable, or mineral, had anything in common with the products of any State in the Union, with the single exception of the cotton-wood, which is found in the Western States, and seems to grow wherever water flows from the vertebral range of mountains of North America."