Just as the early Spanish found it necessary to dominate and rule this kingdom of the Desert clans, so do the Indian Agents who govern it to-day. A Government post here, another one hundred miles away, mark all of civilization that one can find, held against the obliterating fingers of the hungry, unchanging Desert. Here is the last frontier, an area of fifty thousand square miles, having fifty thousand Indian inhabitants and few indeed of other men.
For the most part the native people are pagan barbarians, having savage customs, jealously guarding their secret mysteries, slow to obey, but quick to resent interference, feeling all the power of their isolation.
A NAVAJO FLOCK AND ITS SHEPHERDS
CAÑON DE CHELLY, SEEN FROM THE RIM
Where the Navajo retreated before Kit Carson in 1863. The earliest records mention it as a Navajo stronghold. The cliff-dwellers held it before them. There are places where its rock walls tower 1000 feet.
As late as 1911 a troop of United States cavalry was breaking camp at a point in Keams Cañon, of the Moqui Reservation, not a mile from where Kit Carson, with his New Mexican volunteers, made his camp in August 1863, during that famous march to Cañon de Chelly. Ostensibly this modern troop had acted as an escort to another famous Colonel of the older frontier Army—that gentleman who has out-talked so many Indian tribes, with his sign-weaving fingers if his words sound strange to them, with men of the plainest diction when all else fails. Actually it had served as a show of force, trooping in frontier fashion against a band of unreconstructed rebels of the hills. A bloodless campaign of thirty days was ending. Washington orders, irrevocable, called to other troubles on the [[17]]Border. The support lent to the Indian Agent, still a pallid tenderfoot, was about to be withdrawn. He ventured to remark that the serenity of the moment might be followed by untoward proceedings, once the uncombed native learned that the soldiers had departed. He asked for military advice, knowing full well that he would get no civil consolation.
Until then there had been a great show of tactful diplomacy between the two Governmental representatives; the one of war counseling peace, and the supposed civilian who had ventured close to war. The Colonel spoke, for the first time without regard to the gentle traditions of the Interior Department:—
“Young man! you have an empire to control. Either rule it, or pack your trunk!”