Blood and Thunder

As Colonel Washington’s men pressed further into the desert, they began stealing Navajo corn to feed their horses. Washington reasoned that “the Navajo would eventually have to reimburse the U.S. government for the considerable costs of the expedition now mounted against them, a twist of reasoning that only further infuriated the Navajo” (294-5). Despite the increasingly furious reaction among his fellow Indians, Narbona sent livestock to Washington twice, the second shipment totaling hundreds of his own sheep. He understood that Washington’s mission was meant to recoup losses and was determined to maintain the peace.

As they pressed deeper into Navajo territory, hundreds of warriors swarmed around Washington and his troops. Three chiefs emerged, among them Narbona, who was now quite old. After contentious negotiations, especially from Narbona’s proud son-in-law Manuelito, a treaty was signed. The prognosis for American-Navajo relations looked tentatively good.

Everything fell apart over a single horse. One of Washington’s men recognized a Navajo pony as his stolen property, and Washington immediately took his side. A one-sided conflict followed, in which Washington ordered his men to fire on fleeing Indians. Seven Navajo were killed, among them Narbona.

In a final indignity, a New Mexican souvenir hunter scalped him. Dick Kern wrote, “He was the chief of the Nation, and had been a wise man and great warrior […] I very much regret that I had not procured his Narbona’s cranium, as I think he had the finest head I ever saw on an Indian” (298-9). 

Navajo culture was thanatophobic, or fearful of death. Despite his kindness in life, Narbona’s family feared his potential for becoming a vengeful ghost, as he was murdered rather than dying peacefully in old age. Because of Narbona’s wealth, some Navajo even feared him to be a witch in life. Special precautions needed to be taken (301-2).

Narbona’s body was first washed by his servants and dressed in fine clothes. The corpse was bundled in a horsehair rope, cinched in an intricate pattern known as the “death knot.”

Navajo did not bury their dead or perform sky burials, as did the Plains Indians. Instead, they interred the bodies in the nooks and crannies of red rock. Narbona’s two sons conducted the burial with “zealous and methodical secrecy” (303). They ritualistically slaughtered Narbona’s two favorite horses for him to ride north to the afterlife.

The cardinal direction north was considered supernatural and unlucky by the Navajo; the afterlife, a real physical place, was believed to exist there. Coincidentally, scientific evidence suggests that the Navajo initially emigrated from Canada. The Canadian tribe of the Athapaskans and the Navajo speak a strikingly similar language, as they discovered to mutual dismay at the 1893 World Fair in Chicago (304-5).

Narbona’s sons grieved for four days in silence; “in mortal danger of spiritual infection […] they had to help keep each other strong” (306-7). After a series of purification rituals, including a cleansing steam bath, they looked ahead to vengeance.

The Washington Expedition pushed into the “literal and metaphorical heart of Navajo country: the extraordinary sandstone labyrinth known as Canyon de Chelly” (307-8). It was believed that an impregnable Navajo fortress existed somewhere deep in the canyon, which Washington was eager to siege and subdue. He had no misgivings about the death of Narbona. His troops “blithely” continued to steal crops, even as the power of angry young warriors like Manuelito began to grow. “In their first encounter with the Diné, they had met and then promptly killed (and mutilated!) the most eminent Navajo alive, and quite possibly the one man who could have brought about an accord with the United States” (309-10).

The sparse desert beauty of Canyon de Chelly was unappreciated by the Americans, who were socialized to appreciate romantic greenery. As Washington’s army continued through a foreboding canyon, they realized they were in a strong defensive position and feared a Navajo attack. None came. On his map, Simpson called this place “Pass Washington,” a name which still holds today. The Americans were blithely unaware of the history of the place for the Navajo: they were in Narbona Pass.

Generally, the Navajo avoided the Americans. Like Chaco Canyon, Canyon de Chelly had also once been inhabited by the Chaco Indians; their ruins and pictographs covered the sandstone walls. The Americans didn’t notice an offshoot branch of the canyon, Canyon del Muerto, where pictographs of Spanish cavalrymen commemorated their massacre of Navajo women and children nearby.

Again, the Americans met with Navajo leaders; again a treaty, which cultural differences rendered useless, was signed. The Navajo

had no concept of individual land ownership or constitutions or the rule of law or the delegation of political authority. Their traditions were so radically different that they had no idea what the Americans were really talking about. (320-1)

While the treaty was surprisingly fair, the signing took place under ulterior motives: It gave the Americans ample excuse for military action, should the Navajo break the treaty.

By October 1849, Kit Carson was 39. Tired of running errands for the army and considering himself too old for life on the trail, he had spent a year preparing a homestead in New Mexico for Josefa and their son to join him from Taos. As Carson embraced farming life, his frontier legend grew, and his life story was magnified and distorted in pulpy dime store novels called “blood and thunders.” Even as the West knew slowly faded, Carson himself grew more famous: “It was difficult to exaggerate how hungry the nation had become for a single heroic character who could personify the surge of Manifest Destiny that was so dramatically changing the country” (333-6).

Settlers now regularly passed by on the Santa Fe Trail near Carson’s homestead. One wagon train was led by Francis Aubry, a French Canadian trapper and friend of Carson. A man in the party, James M. White, decided to take his wife Ann and their daughter ahead, with only 150 miles left to Santa Fe. The false sense of security in White’s decision—and Aubry’s lack of concern—reflected a changing vision of the West. The year before, Aubry had ridden from Santa Fe to Independence, Missouri, in only eight days, a record-breaking haul and one that gave the impression of new accessibility from east to west. It “punctur[ed] some of the Trail’s aura and served to inspire more timid souls who had long been nursing vaguely ambitions of traveling west” (324-5).

Indian attack, however, remained a real and constant danger. Western expansion represented a paradigm shift to the Indian way of life: not only did white settlers use up valuable desert resources, their encroachment into Indian territory shifted increasingly desperate communities into violent contact with each other. One such community was the Jicarilla, a tribe of Apache who had seen a particularly rough time. Carson was familiar with them, and it was only Carson’s knowledge of their customs which protected him. Even so, he slept with one eye open.

The White family lacked this critical knowledge and experience. James White handled several interactions with the Jicarilla inappropriately; he and the men in this party were killed, and Ann White, her child, and a black servant were abducted. Carson joined the rescue party, led by Major William Grier. Carson managed to track down the Jicarilla, but Grier refused to follow his advice in staging the rescue. Ann White was killed just before Carson could get to her. She had been tortured and raped for weeks. Carson found in Ann’s belongings a dime store “blood and thunder” starring him. He imagined that Ann had read it in captivity and hoped he might save her; her death haunted him for the rest of his life.