Navajo A Place and Its People An Administrative History

The road to Navajo National Monument winds its way up from Highway 160, the artery connecting Tuba City and Kayenta, Arizona. Up and up the car seems to travel, slowly gaining altitude. Often in the winter, the turnoff in the valley will be free of snow. Up the nine miles to the monument, the snow becomes thicker and thicker, testimony to the dependence on the natural environment and the difficulty that characterizes life in this region. These relationships epitomize the modern and prehistoric story of Navajo National Monument.

Located in the heart of the western section of the Navajo reservation, Navajo National Monument comprises three sections, none of which are contiguous. The main section, referred to by the name of the cliff dwelling it was established to protect, Betatakin, includes 160 acres of government land and a 244.59-acre section of land used under the terms of an agreement with the Navajo Nation. The Keet Seel section, about eight miles cross-country from Betatakin, contains one of the most important large Pueblo ruins in the Southwest within its 160-acre boundary. Inscription House, the third section and also named for its primary ruin, is forty miles away in Nitsin Canyon. [1]

The Colorado Plateau, the setting for the monument, has an unusual impact on people. It is haunting, for the region contains some of the most threatening and striking landscape in the U.S. Rugged and beautiful, its stark outlines and muted colors reflect the difficulty of human endeavor in this unforgiving region. Encompassing part of each of the four corners states, the plateau contains a number of smaller physiographic provinces. One of these, the Navajo section, contains the Shonto Plateau, which surrounds the canyon systems that make up Navajo National Monument. [2]

The Colorado Plateau has a unique geologic history that defines the character of the land and consequently the nature of human life upon it. To the modern human eye, the land appears barren, without promise. It offers few of the features that people of the modern world covet. Its rugged nature required the application of massive modern technologies to even partially subdue, and that endeavor remains far from complete. To the untrained, the plateau and its components are a mystery. Yet in its landscape is a record of the natural environments that preceded the present.

During the lower to middle Triassic period about 225 million years ago, the portion of the Colorado Plateau that contains Navajo National Monument was a vast basin into which the drainage from surrounding highlands flowed. Within the next twenty million years, the plateau was transformed from a shallow sea into a great inland desert not unlike the modern Sahara Desert. Deposits of wind-blown sand piled into enormous dunes that covered the region, forming a massive sandstone layer more than 300 feet in depth.

At the beginning of the subsequent Jurassic period, a brief wetter era was supplanted by the sudden reappearance of arid, desert-like conditions. Navajo Sandstone, as much as 1,000 feet deep in fossilized cross-bedded sand dunes, was the primary feature of this time. Apparently supporting little biotic life, this 25-million-year era ended with the emergence of a new regime, characterized by extensive tidal flats that periodically covered the landscape.

During that new era, the 125 million years that composed the remainder of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, large faunal life and a complex animal community appeared. Attracted by the abundance of small animals and plants, dinosaurs and other large creatures began to inhabit the swampy fringes of the region. As the end of the Jurassic Period neared, a more temperate climate appeared.

A marine environment followed the temperate one, inundating tidal flats with advancing beaches and shallow seas. The late Mesozoic environments, characterized by Dakota sandstone and Mancos Shale, played a significant role in shaping modern landscapes throughout the region. This era created layers of deposits, one atop the other, many of which are in evidence across the Colorado Plateau.

The geologic structure of the region changed dramatically after the series of deposits. In a geologic instant, region-wide orogenic uplift caused the creation of plateaus and monoclinal folds, which in turn changed as a result of volcanism and erosion. The existing river drainages, home to most prehistoric habitation, were the result, and the general outline of the modern plateau was formed.

The area that became Navajo National Monument represents many of these moments in the geologic past. Its lowest elevations show the Wingate Formation, the 300-foot-deep sandstone formed during the time nearly 200 million years when the region was a great inland desert. The red and purple sandstones of the Moenave and Kayenta formations are also present in the monument, as is the Navajo Sandstone of the beginning of the Jurassic period, more than 190 million years ago. These are the rocks so exquisitely shaped by wind, rain, snow, and sun. [3]

In geologic time in the American Southwest, Navajo National Monument represents a middle period between the much older Grand Canyon environment and the younger Mesa Verde Group. Tsegi Canyon itself has eroded into a series of Triassic-Jurassic rock layers, making it look more open and less vertical than nearby places such as Canyon de Chelly. The principal formations within the monument all have differing degrees of resistance to erosion, which helped create the relatively open look of Tsegi Canyon as well as the rock shelters in which Keet Seel and Betatakin ruins stand. Most of the rock shelters in the monument are at the base of the Navajo sandstone layer, the opposite of such places as Mesa Verde, where alcoves form on the upper reaches of Cliff House Sandstone. [4]

Tsegi Canyon is the primary drainage of the eastern part of the Shonto Plateau. The canyon contains three major branches and countless side branches, all cut deeply into the Navajo sandstone characteristic of the area. Betatakin and Keet Seel are located in two of the arteries of the canyon, while the side canyons contain numerous other prehistoric ruins.

The history of human habitation in the Colorado Plateau and Navajo National Monument area dates back as much as 10,000 years. At that time, nomadic hunters stalked game in the region. Little solid evidence for extensive habitation before 8,000 B.C. exists, but in the following 500 years, proto-Anasazi groups began to spread from their core areas to the region. From the evidence offered by a site near Navajo Mountain called Dust Devil Cave dated roughly 6,000 B.C., archeologists believe that the people of the region lived in small bands, practiced a hunting and gathering regimen, and had only rudimentary technologies. They moved about seasonally, following game and the maturation of edible plants and harvesting them as they became ripe. These people lived in temporary brush shelters or lean-tos, moving frequently and leaving their abodes behind. [5]

This expansion put people in the vicinity of Navajo National Monument. Evidence from Dust Devil Cave suggests that proto-Anasazi Archaic people lived near the monument in this period, but as yet there are no discoveries of this vintage within the boundaries of Navajo National Monument. Yet that proximity suggests a central position for the region in the life of prehistoric peoples.

This transient nomadic lifestyle persisted for more than 5,000 years, until the domestication of maize. By 500 B.C., the cultivated grain played an important role in the life of prehistoric people. Over the subsequent 1,000 years, the product increased in its significance to the people of the area, becoming a staple of regional diet. As a result, the way people there lived was gradually transformed.

During this extended period, the people of the region--labeled Basketmaker II by archeologists--remained a small, highly mobile population that used a diverse resource base to survive. Wild and early domesticated plants such as flint corn and squash were staples. Their structures were slab-lined and subterranean, located in caves or shelters. These Basketmaker II groups had material goods such as baskets, weapons, clothing, textiles, and other similar items. To make such goods, they used a wide range of materials.

Mobility was a critical feature of life for Basketmaker II groups. Movement sustained them both by providing a variety of food sources and by allowing interaction with other groups. They moved in small groups that occasionally met with larger ones for trade, social interaction, and marriage as dictated by the rules of their culture. The widespread distribution of their sites reveals that Basketmaker II people were not yet completely sedentary, but were moving in that direction. [6]

At this stage, archeological evidence suggests that the beginning of a religious and decision-making structure had already developed. Shamanistic cults existed within these societies, and artistic figures seem to indicate a ceremonial structure as well. The various groups were increasingly linked into larger-scale decision-making entities, adding cohesiveness to the structure of their society.

By 500 C. E., most of the people in northeastern Arizona lived much of the year in one or two places. The nomadic hunting and gathering life was becoming a memory as people began to live in semi-permanent villages. The growing importance of cultivation played a major role in this transformation. As they became agricultural people, this culture group no longer needed to move from place to place in search of food. The moves they made were seasonal rather than cyclic, from a summer homestead to a winter one and back again. These Basketmaker III people were far more rooted to place than their predecessors. Movement became directed at systematic resource use rather than for reasons of exchange and kinship.

A larger population, changes in climatic regimes, and more sophisticated organizational strategies all supported the changes. Architecture became more sophisticated, enabling the establishment of villages. Pithouse structures, roofed with a four-post support system, became common. These structures included ventilation shafts, hearths, living areas, and room for food storage. Surrounding pithouses were work and activity areas, storage facilities, and other features.

Systematic agriculture also made a wider range of foods, including more domesticated plants, available. Beans, varieties of squash, corn, and cotton were typical. Amaranth and piñon, both wild resources, were also staples. Basketmaker III people may have kept domesticated turkeys and they hunted rabbits, some small rodents, deer, and antelope. Sedentary living offered a more broad and certain supply of food than did nomadic life. [7]

During this era, Basketmaker III people began to inhabit the area that would become Navajo National Monument. Subsurface dwellings at Turkey Cave date from this era, and Inscription House may contain similar sites. Yet occupation of the monument area was not yet systematic or widespread.

By 700 A.D., major changes in the way the people of northeastern Arizona lived were again underway. These mirrored a similar evolution elsewhere in the Southwest. Increasing populations, growing village size, social integration, and more complicated and complex agricultural systems typified this era. Populations spread geographically south of the San Juan River into the Tsegi drainage and on Black Mesa west to Red Lake. Called Pueblo I by archeologists, this phase had levels of technology and the kinds of structures that were common throughout the Southwest. Much above-ground building of masonry storerooms, generally attached to existing pithouses, was typical of the era. [8]

Within the boundaries of the monument, there is significant evidence of habitation during the Pueblo I phase. Turkey Cave shows remains of this vintage, while Inscription House and Keet Seel may also contain similar evidence. The people of the monument area were clearly Anasazi, but the localized subcultures that characterized later periods had not yet developed.

After 900 A.D., the uniform population typical of the previous 200 years became more diverse. Smaller, regionally distinct communities began to appear, characterized by three- to five-room Pueblos. The cultural subgroup that came to live in vicinity of the monument had been labeled the Kayenta Anasazi. Village sizes differed as they spread over a larger area. Experiments in the utilization of new environments and resources were common. Extensive agricultural systems and complex trade networks also typified the time period. Trade goods and ceramic technologies proliferated as the forms, size, and variety of pottery and the range of domestic household goods greatly expanded. Surprisingly, the monument area has less evidence of this phase than the times before or after.

During the 1100s A. D., populations again began to grow after a decline at the end of the Pueblo II phase. As a result, greater experimentation characterized this era. In agriculture and storage, new techniques were introduced as a way to offset the impact of a declining physical environment, increasing population, and loss of some trade partners. A large area northwest of Navajo National Monument was abandoned, as its people retreated toward what is now the monument. This increase in population density spurred technological advance, but placed great strain on the natural resource base of the Pueblo III communities. [9]

The Tsegi Phase in the 13th century was the pinnacle of Pueblo III civilization. Tsegi phase occupation centered in the area surrounding the monument, with settlements ranging in size from small villages to large communities containing more than one hundred rooms. Even more intense agriculture characterized this phase, with terracing and irrigation common. Yet the level of technology could do little to offset growing population and an increasingly used-up environment. The subsequent decline was swift. The combination of growing population, declining environment, and organizational crisis was too much for the communities, and gradually they pulled back to the south and east, founding new communities in the drainages of major rivers.

The major ruins in the monument date from the Tsegi Phase, and as such present in detail one moment in the prehistoric past. They show a moment of consolidation between 1250 and 1300 A.D., sustained by the level of technological sophistication previously reached and the ability to work the land to provide subsistence and surplus. Most of the construction within the monument and in the surrounding area occurred in this brief period. Where there were suitable rock shelters, scores of dwellings were constructed. But the last tree-rings in cut timbers date to 1286 A.D., strongly suggesting that both Keet Seel and Betatakin were abandoned soon after.

The departure of the Kayenta Anasazi most likely had many interrelated causes. A combination of a less bountiful environment and changes in the social structure of the communities played major roles. Geologic and dendrochronological evidence indicates the beginning of an episode of arroyo cutting, which would have destroyed much of the limited agricultural land in the region. An extended drought may have been a causative factor as well. To the people of Tsegi Canyon area, life there seemed tenuous. The agriculture that sustained them ceased to be dependable, and the Kayenta Anasazi appear to have chosen to relocate to places with more stable sources of water. After 1,300 A.D., the Tsegi Canyon area was abandoned until a new group of people settled in the region. [10]

The exact moment of the arrival of the Navajo people in the Southwest remains the subject of dispute. The standard view of archeologists and anthropologists suggests that when the Spanish arrived from the south in the 1540s, the Navajo were in the process of migrating into the region from the north. An Athapascan people, they had come from the area around what is now the Canadian border, gradually moving south over a period of hundreds of years. Estimates from this school of thought for the beginning of Navajo influx into the Southwest suggest a time between 1400 and 1525 A.D. Clearly the process was ongoing when the Spanish arrived. [11] In this sense, the point of contact between the two cultures was the meeting point between two different migrant groups, each with different cosmologies, values, and technologies, one slightly ahead of the other in chronological appearance. Both strangers to the region, they arrived nearly simultaneously. The subsequent three hundred years involved working out the nature and extent of the relationship between the two groups.

Navajo oral tradition and tree-ring dating suggest an earlier arrival than does much of modern archeology and anthropology. According to this view, at least some Navajo people or their forerunners were in the region at the same time as the Pueblos. Tree-ring dates from western Colorado show the construction of hogan-type dwellings in the 1100s A.D. that show Navajo-like characteristics and a Navajo homestead south of Gallup, New Mexico, has been dated to approximately 1380 A.D. In addition, a Navajo legend places the arrival of the Dinè, as the Navajo refer to themselves, in the vicinity of Chaco Canyon between roughly 900 and 1130 A.D. Nevertheless when the Spanish arrived, the Navajo were already well ensconced on the Colorado Plateau and their numbers were growing. [12]

The arrival of the Spanish produced a classic confrontation between denizens of the new and old worlds. The Spaniards possessed technology, biological characteristics, and domesticated animals with which the Navajo had no previous experience. The Navajo were better adapted to life in the harsh environment that was and is the Southwest. They knew its edible plants and hidden water sources and had adjusted to life in an unforgiving environment. Until the coming of the Americans, the collision was a stalemate. [13]

The first Spaniards to record contact with the Navajo were not typical explorers in search of gold. Antonio de Espejo, a fugitive fleeing a murder charge who financed an expedition to find two missing priests and thereby redeem his name, led a small group of men that traveled widely across the Southwest. Early in the spring of 1583, the party set off from Zia Pueblo towards Zuñi Pueblo. As they circumvented Mount Taylor, one of the sacred mountains of the Navajo, they met what they called "Indios Serranos," mountain Indians, who were most likely Navajos. These people were peaceful and later engaged in trade with the Spaniards. [14]

But any positive feelings engendered by the initial meeting did not last. Subsequent events set a far less optimistic tone for Navajo-Spanish relations. In 1598, don Juan de Oñate set out from New Spain to colonize New Mexico. Persuading Indians to accept Christian missionaries was an important component of his plan of colonization. While some of the Pueblos reconciled themselves at least temporarily to new forms of worship, others were not so accepting. On December 4, 1598, Acoma Pueblo, the Sky City, revolted against the Spanish.

Acoma was no stranger to warfare with the Spanish. The pueblo had previously fought a pitched battle with Espejo's men, winning decisively. After an incident caused by a lack of cross-cultural communication, the Acomas seized eighteen Spaniards including one of Oñate's nephews, who were in the Sky City to requisition supplies. The nephew and ten other Spaniards were killed, along with a number of Indian servants. Four other Spaniards jumped off the 375-foot mesa into sand dunes below and escaped to carry the news to Oñate. [15]

Retribution was swift and furious, establishing the tone of relations for the next 250 years. Oñate sent a force of seventy men, headed by the slain nephew's brother, to exact revenge and show the strength of the Spanish. In a two-day battle, the Spanish scaled the mesa and burned the Pueblo. Indian casualties in battle were estimated at 800. Another 500 women and children and seventy or eighty warriors were captured. Many of the captives were cut to pieces and thrown from the mesa. The rest were tried and sentenced to punishments of servitude of various lengths. Adult males also had one foot chopped off. Two Hopi Indians involved in the revolt had their right hands chopped off and were sent back to their people as an example. The word spread quickly through the region. In one intense moment, the Navajo and the Spaniards had learned to intensely dislike each other. [16]

From then on, Spanish-Navajo relations were strained. Unlike the smaller, less mobile Pueblos, the Navajo were not easily subdued. Regarding themselves as bearers of civilization, the Spanish found their desire to hegemonize thwarted. They could not bring these independent Indians under their control, but could capture a sufficient number of Navajo to compel a similar response. Despite a seemingly endless series of treaties and arrangements, the Spanish and the Navajos regarded each other as enemies. Initially conflict was military; later it became economic. But one feature of the conflict was consistent: Europeans and their descendants sought to regulate the Navajo way of life, the lands available to the Navajo, and to a lesser degree, their trade with the outside world. They also sought to convert any and all captive Navajos to Christianity and the Spanish way of life.

The acquisition and mastery of the horse by the Navajo compounded the problems of the Spanish. By 1610, the Navajos could use horses to further their objectives. Horses offered them a mobility that made them more lethal opponents of the Spanish, a range that made no part of New Mexico safe, and a cultural identity that accentuated Navajo autonomy. By the end of the reconquest of New Mexico in the 1690s, the Spanish recognized that the Navajo were and would remain beyond their reach. [17]

By 1820, the Navajos became the most feared enemy of the colony. The horse transformed the Navajos into a powerful adversary almost equal to the Spanish. Along with Utes and Comanches, Navajos incessantly raided the colony in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, forcing the weak, often debilitated, and contentious leadership of Spanish New Mexico to become enmeshed in a cumbersome and poorly followed set of treaty arrangements. The Spanish formed uncomfortable alliances with all the tribes in the region, at various times finding themselves using the Navajo in campaigns against other Indians and conversely fighting alongside other Indians against the Navajo. Animosity between different groups of Indians also contributed to an already complex situation. Spanish slave raids, particularly one that resulted in the massacre of hundreds of Navajo women and children in Canyon del Muerto in 1805, heightened existing tensions, and the Navajos became raiders on a large scale. [18]

Yet the Spanish colony of New Mexico remained weak. The Spaniards lacked the resources and the wherewithal to establish a powerful entity at the northern tip of their empire in the Americas. Their religious, cultural, and economic mission never achieved success with the Navajo. The only effort to establish a mission to Christianize the Navajo lasted merely two years. Nor was New Mexico as economically profitable for the Spanish as were other parts of their empire in the New World. As a result, administration of the colony was half-hearted throughout the eighteenth century, leaving it open to challenges to Spanish authority. By 1800, the Spanish empire had crumbled. Fewer and fewer of its resources were allocated for the New Mexico colony.

The abundance of complex and repeated agreements between the Navajos and the Spanish colony of New Mexico attested to the precariousness of the position of the Spanish. They lacked the numbers and power to enforce their will on the Navajo. Clearly fear was a major element in the Spanish view of Navajos; the establishment of the genizaro--detribalized Indian--community at Abiquiu as a buffer between the "Indios Barbaros" and the colony revealed the vulnerability of Spanish New Mexico.

Despite its limitations, the Spanish empire in northern New Spain persisted into the nineteenth century. Although the periphery was seldom strong, it did hold for an extended period. New Mexico, at least along the Rio Grande, remained a part of the Spanish empire and Spanish culture and religion melded with that of the Pueblos. But extending hegemony beyond the river valley proved too much. The Navajos played an important role in denying further Spanish expansion.

The Spaniards faced many problems in their efforts to deal with the Navajos. Among the most important was identifying individuals who could speak for the Navajo people. In one such effort, a colonial governor offered to provide four silver-tipped canes and medals to Navajos who were willing and able to assume that role. In addition, the Spanish often paid Navajos to fight with them against other Indians, arbitrarily designating the leaders of these accomodationists as the leaders of the Navajo people. [19]

But unlike the effort made with the Pueblos, the Spanish made few attempts to offer the Navajo the "benefits" of their society. When compared to the town-dwelling, agricultural Pueblos, by Spanish standards, the Navajos seemed backward. The Navajos were not subject to comprehensive missionary efforts as were the Pueblos, nor were there efforts to rid the Navajo of their culture and make them Spanish. Only Navajo captives were brought into the realm of Spanish culture and life. The Spanish simply could not subject the Navajo to their cultural will.

As a result, the Navajo retained autonomy and remained largely beyond Spanish control. As the letters of governors of the colony show, the Spaniards spent a lot of time worrying about what the Navajos would do next. The Spanish empire in the New World crumbled in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, and the problems of one of the most remote outposts of New Spain attracted little attention. Spanish authorities had more important problems to address, and without support, officials in New Mexico could do little to change or stop the Navajo. They lacked the resources and the power. An adversarial view became codified in the perspective of the Spanish. Navajos became the feared adversary--the enemy.

If anything, the Mexican territory of New Mexico was even weaker than the Spanish colony. From its founding in 1821, Mexico lacked the economic resources to sustain its northern frontier. Texas in particular and to a lesser degree New Mexico were invaded by U.S. economic interests almost from the moment of Mexican independence. The Mexican government could do little to stop the Navajos, who preyed on the weakened and nearly defenseless territory. The Navajos relentlessly attacked New Mexico, appropriating crops, stealing livestock, and taking captives. The situation became so dire that in 1845, Governor Manuel Armijo wrote: "the war with the Navajo is slowly consuming us." When Brig. Gen. Stephen Watts Kearny arrived in Santa Fe in 1846 to proclaim the beginning of the American era, the best thing he had to offer the people of New Mexico was protection from Navajo raids. "The Navajos come down from the mountains and carry off your sheep and your women whenever they please," he told Santa Feans on August 22, 1846. "My government will correct all this." [20]

It was a promise the U.S. military intended to keep, particularly after a band of Navajo stole a flock of American army horses. The Navajos had almost free run of New Mexico; the great chief Narbona exercised his curiosity about the Americans by viewing the American troops at Fort Marcy near Santa Fe from a secret vantage point in the nearby mountains. But Kearny made a promise. By treaty or war, the Americans sought to bring a measure of order to New Mexican-Navajo relations that had never before existed.

Although the Navajo and the Americans signed a treaty at the end of 1846, it proved insufficient to maintain peace. The Taos Rebellion of 1847 complicated cross-cultural relations in New Mexico, and by the summer of 1847, the treaty had become a bad memory. The Navajos had lost respect for American soldiers, while Spanish-speaking New Mexicans incessantly reminded the Americans of General Kearny's promise in 1846. The result was more than a decade of war designed to compel Navajo submission. [21]

This effort culminated in the efforts of Brig. Gen. James H. Carleton, who attacked the Navajos in their own land and removed them to a "reservation" in eastern New Mexico. Smitten with gold fever and using the Civil War as an excuse, Carleton proceeded against the Navajo. In the summer of 1863, he railed against the Navajo to his superiors, brought Christopher (Kit) Carson from Taos to lead 1,000 men to the Dinehtah, the Navajo homeland, and gave the Navajo until July 20, 1863, to surrender. A war with no quarter began, in which Carson and his men destroyed Navajo livestock and crops. The scorched earth policy succeeded. By the middle of February of 1864, more then 1,200 Navajo had surrendered. The Americans had kept their promise to the people of New Mexico, albeit at the expense of the Navajo. [22]

Some of the Navajo escaped capture and fled west, to the Navajo Mountain and Shonto Plateau areas. Many settled in the area, forming an independent and uncowed group of Navajo, committed to their pre-reservation style of life. Not exposed to Anglo culture and the degrading removal to the Bosque Redondo near Fort Sumner in the Pecos Valley and subsequent attempts to anglicize the Navajo and make them dependent, these Navajos retained an autonomy that helped sustain traditional culture. After the Navajos returned from the Bosque Redondo in 1868, the people of the western reservation were distinguished by their independence and fidelity to traditional Navajo ways. Settled as an evasive maneuver from a conqueror, the western reservation became a bastion of cultural conservatism, the home of the most traditional Navajos. These "longhairs" had a different set of experiences than those who were sent away, and it shaped their outlook. They survived the conflict with the Americans, suffering only geographic relocation as a price. Their freedom, cultural autonomy, and economy were not taken from them.

Nor did they face much encroachment from Arizona Territory. The little development in the middle and late nineteenth century centered on the south-central part of the territory. The area around Navajo Mountain offered grazing and mining opportunities, but because of the Navajo influx, it had the reputation of being hostile territory. In the late nineteenth century, a number of Anglo-Americans explored the area, but they did so carefully. They recognized that they were in the homeland of people who took a dim view of their presence.

After the "Long Walk" to Fort Sumner and the subsequent four-year stay at the Bosque Redondo, the threat of the Navajo as a physical adversary ended. But the military defeat of the Navajo did not mean that efforts to integrate them into the society of the New Mexico Territory began. The Treaty of Bosque Redondo, which allowed the Navajos to return home, cemented a new order. While the Navajos were compelled to give up raiding and other predatory practices as part of the agreement to return to the Dinehtah, the only concession to their need to develop a self-sufficient economy was the assignment of 160-acre parcels of the newly created reservation to heads of families and 80-acre tracts for single people, as well as $100 worth of seed and implements the first year, $25 the following two years, and $10 per year for the subsequent ten years for Navajos engaged in farming. The Navajo young were required to attend school, and informal provisions for the return of Navajos held by New Mexicans were established. The Navajo were home, but needed to find a viable way to reconstitute their culture and livelihood. [23]

On their return to their homeland, the Navajo had to adapt to the new order imposed by the Americans. Much of their historic economy and way of living had been eliminated. Raiding the settlements protected by the Americans was out of the question. It was this practice that inspired the wrath of the American military, and the memory of exile in the Bosque Redondo loomed large in Navajo consciousness. Navajos instead built an economy based less on agriculture and much more on livestock and crafts such as jewelry- and rug-making. Even the people of the Shonto Plateau and the Navajo Mountain area experienced these changes, although their distance from Indian agencies and other institutions of American government and society limited the impact. [24]

Always important in the Navajo economy, sheep became the basis of sustenance for many in the post-Bosque Redondo era. Adaptable and innovative, the Navajo responded to their new situation by developing a livestock-based economy. In the 1880s, the livestock economy flourished, making the Navajo prosperous by their own standards. But this attempt at self-sufficiency also put many of the Navajo in conflict with some of the most powerful interests in the New Mexico Territory. [25]

After 1846, the Territory of New Mexico was transformed. A loosely knit cabal often referred to as the "Santa Fe Ring" dominated both the political and economic affairs of the territory. Many of its members, such as Thomas Benton Catron, later U.S. senator from New Mexico and the person for whom Catron County is named, made great fortunes and wielded vast influence. Even those who were sometimes supportive of Hispano and Indian interests, such as territorial governor and judge L. Bradford Prince, were far more sympathetic toward the Pueblos than the Navajo. Almost all of the leaders of the ring were involved in the livestock industry and most had some ties to the various railroads that sought to traverse New Mexico in the 1870s and 1880s. The result was that the most powerful forces in the territory had needs that came in direct conflict with the growing and increasingly prosperous Navajo livestock economy.

In the resolution of the so-called "Checkerboard lands" dispute between 1885 and 1910, powerful territorial interests and the Navajos developed a pattern of economic competition to replace the military adversity of the pre-Bosque Redondo era. The attitude of the Americans toward the Navajo had not changed; despite the fact that Navajos resided in the jurisdiction of the U.S., they were still regarded as opponents. The checkerboard resulted from the overlap of the alternating sections of land given to the railroads with executive order additions to the Navajo reservation and public domain lands. Compounding the problem were historical patterns of use. Navajos settled in the contested areas after their return from the Bosque Redondo and grazed animals in the area. The Indians sought to make the area an executive order addition to the reservation, but the discovery of Artesian water made the status of the lands worth contesting. Efforts by leading members of the territory helped assure delays, and the situation was never clearly adjudicated. [26]

In Arizona, the Navajos faced a similar situation. Encroaching grazing interests pushed farther north in the state, threatening Navajo sheep range along the southern rim of the reservation. Pressure increased as the network of trading posts spread across the reservation, embroiling Navajos in the cash economy and subtly encouraging more emphasis on craft-making. Little of this reached the Navajo Mountain area, located in the heart of the western reservation. No trading posts were located in the area before 1900, and the contested public domain areas that skirted the reservation protected the people of its heartland from outside grazing pressures. In the vicinity of Navajo Mountain, Navajos retained a historic pattern of living. [27]

At the turn of the twentieth century, the Navajos were people in transition, saved by their adaptability. They had survived the Bosque Redondo and developed new strategies to replace what they had lost. The livestock industry initially flourished, but the period of relative prosperity came to a halt in early 1890s as a result of an extended drought. The Navajo population continued to grow. This led to increasing pressure on the resources of the region and economy of the Navajo people.

Yet there were splits within the Navajo community. Those who experienced the Bosque Redondo had a different outlook than those who fled to the area around Navajo Mountain. The people of the area that would become Navajo National Monument remained largely unaffected by the Anglo world. Apart from it geographically, their cultural independence was protected by difficult terrain and the lack of Anglo institutions in northeastern Arizona. This area was one of the last places to be surveyed and mapped, much of which did not occur until after 1910. In the early twentieth century, few Anglos dared traverse the area.

The Navajos were also a culture recently exposed to the curiosity of the American mainstream. Beginning in the 1890s, Americans recognized that their continent had limits, geographic and otherwise. Without a frontier into which to expand, Americans perceived their future as different from their past. An effort to save remnants of the cultural and historical past was closely tied to emergence of the idea of utilitarian conservation, best described as the greatest good for the greatest number of people from each resource. Railroads began to promote the historic and prehistoric Southwest, miners and others began to explore the remote regions of the reservation, and anthropologists and archeologists visited the Southwest. In this milieu, the first explorations of what would become Navajo National Monument took place.