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August 2020 THE INDIAN TRADER
Navajo Basket.
The Navajo and Their Basketry The first Spaniards who encountered the growing band of Indians concentrated near Tewa presumed they were Apache because of their nomadic characteristics. But because they restricted their operations to a much smaller area and their activities were less dynamic, the Spanish qualified their name with the Tewa word Navajo… And they became known as the Apache de Navajo. The Indians found the Spanish name unacceptable for several reasons, the most basic being the lack of a sound in their native tongue for “J” and “V” and thus followed the old age custom of calling themselves “the people,” or Dine. The word “people” in its various forms is used as a tribal name for nearly every Indian group of Athapascan stock. During their early Association, the Spanish and the Navajo made strange bedfellows. The Spanish introduced the Navajos to sheep and goats. But they also gave them horses that the Indians used to good advantage in raiding the Spanish settlements to obtain more goats and sheep. The Spanish took Navajo women as slaves and put them to work weaving baskets and blankets; thus, the Navajos had no shame in making Spanish women as their slaves. Each faction had something the other needed and wanted and, even though bloody raiding parties were accepted as essential in getting it, this unusual relationship endured for years. Things changed after the United States assumed control of New Mexico
in 1846. The new government and the American settlers were not willing to accept the Navajo forays as were the Spanish predecessors. When the raidng was directed at a newly built military outpost, the United States decided the time had come to put a stop to them. Two peace treaties with the Navajo failed to last long enough to be ratified by Washington, and thus Kit Carson, in 1863, was ordered to subdue the Indians by force. But to subdue hundreds of small clusters of Indians spread over a vast expanse of territory presented an almost unsurmountable military undertaking for Carson and his handful of Calvary men. Instead, he set forth on a program of destroying their food supply... killing their sheep and livestock and burning their crops. Within a year, the Indians were forced to capitulate or cease to exist. So the following year, 1864, found a significant part of the Navajo tribe relocated at Bosque Redondo on the Pecos River in New Mexico. Within three years, most had been returned to their original homes. In 1869, the government called all the Navajo together to participate in the distribution of some 30,000 sheep and 2,000 goats that would serve as the beginning of the rebuilding of the Navajo Nation. As Indians arrived for their gift, they were herded into large corrals, and their numbers were calculated as they entered. Nine thousand people came.
