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Updated: June 28, 2025
For tracking jail-breakers Indians, Navajoes or Apaches were sometimes employed, and the marvellous skill they showed was simply astonishing and inexplicable; all done by reading the "sign" left by the escaping party, but "sign" often quite unnoticeable to the white man. Indeed, an Indian would follow a trail by sign much as a hound will do by scent.
On one side were the Navajoes, with consternation in their looks, for the warriors had recognised their children. On the other stood the scalp-hunters, not a few of whom, in the captive train of their enemies, could distinguish the features of a wife, a sister, or a daughter. Each gazed upon the other with hostile hearts and glances of revenge.
They were at once recognised! A cry of singular import burst from the Navajoes as they beheld these new proofs of their discomfiture. The warriors unslung their lances, and thrust them into the earth with impotent indignation. Some of them drew scalps from their belts, stuck them on the points of their spears, and shook them at us over the brow of the abyss.
We told him we might be gone one moon, perhaps not so long. He wanted to know what Indian country we would pass through. I told him none but the Comanches, for they were terribly afraid of Navajoes. We assured him that we would not pass through their country. On the day appointed for the sale of our goods, the robes came in by the hundreds. I never saw anything equal it.
The Apaches, a very numerous race, and the Navajoes, are the chief occupants, but there are many minor bands, who, unlike the Apaches and Navajoes, are not nomadic, but have fixed habitations. Amongst the most remarkable of these are the Soones, most of whom are said to be Albinoes. The latter cultivate the soil, and live in peace with their more numerous and savage neighbours.
In 1864 the Navajoes were made captives by the military, and taken to the Bosque Redondo reservation, which had been set apart for the Mescalero Apaches, where they were for a time held as prisoners of war, and then turned over to this department.
Both tribes have combined in this movement; and it is believed that all the warriors will proceed southward, leaving their country unprotected behind them. "It is my intention then, as soon as I can ascertain that they have gone out, to enter their territory, and pierce to the main town of the Navajoes." "Bravo!" "Hooray!" "Bueno!" "Tres bien!"
After journeying fifty miles in this direction, and feeling themselves free from the scrutiny of the Mexican authorities, they changed their course to the southwest, and travelled through the country occupied by the Navajoes, who are an interesting and dangerous race of Indians, even to the trader of this day.
"Let it bleed," said he, "till I have examined the point. It does not look like a war-shaft; but the Navajoes use a very subtle poison. Fortunately I possess the means of detecting it, as well as its antidote." As he said this, he took from his pouch a tuft of raw cotton. With this he rubbed the blood lightly from the blade.
They add to the expression of many a beautiful landscape that opens before us as we move onward. We see picturesque costumes in the villages and along the highways: men dressed in the chequered serape or the striped blankets of the Navajoes; conical sombreros with broad brims; calzoneros of velveteen, with their rows of shining "castletops" and fastened at the waist by the jaunty sash.
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