Adams] SHONTO : ROLE OF NAVAHO TRADER 39 



are still in tlie procees of moving southward from Oljeto and Navajo 

 Mountain. As a group, they can be traced back to the celebrated 

 Hoskinini band which, under the leadership of Hoskinini, fled into 

 the mesa country west of Oljeto in 1863, incidentally overrunning 

 the straggling Paiute farming population along the San Juan Kiver. 

 Beginning on Hoskinini Mesa near Oljeto, this group has expanded 

 to occupy most of the Oljeto area, Paiute Mesa, Navajo Mountain, 

 and, latterly, the northern half of the Shonto area. On the upper 

 Shonto Plateau only Skeleton Mesa now remains unoccupied, and, 

 under the constant pressure of expanding population, it may well 

 be the next area of colonization. 



Wliereas the various population elements at Shonto have close ties 

 in other trading communities to the north, west, and south, there 

 appears to be a sharp population division to the east, at the line 

 of Tsegi Canyon. No families at Shonto are said to have originated 

 in the Kayenta area, and few have relatives there. It is further 

 notable that not a single Shonto resident claims an ancestor who under- 

 went the "long walk" to Fort Sumner, while stories of the "long 

 walk" are common around Kayenta. This circumstance strongly 

 suggests that the entire isolated highland area west of Marsh Pass 

 was an effective refuge zone whose inhabitants largely escaped the 

 Carson campaign, but that the refuge area did not extend east of 

 Marsh Pass. The broad expanses of the Tyende and Chinle Valleys 

 offer few opportunities for effective concealment, and it seems highly 

 probable that their present populations represent a reoccupation sub- 

 sequent to the Navaho return from Fort Sumner in 1868. 



EXJEOPEAN PENETRATION 



The first European penetration of the northwestern Navaho area 

 is as obscure as the earliest Navaho penetration. An unknown 

 Spaniard has left an inscription — ^now illegible — and the date "1661 

 A. Dn." (cf. Van Valkenburgh, 1941, p. 78) upon the wall of In- 

 scription House ruin in Navajo Canyon, one of the most remote 

 corners of the entire region. Four decades of search have failed 

 to uncover the circumstances of this early exploration. Subsequent 

 to it there is no indication of Spanish entry in the region for 115 

 years. The date of the inscription coincides with a time when a 

 Franciscan mission was maintained among the Hopi at Awatovi, 

 and it can only be conjectured that some adventurous member of its 

 staff went wandering northward, perhaps guided by Hopi. Inscrip- 

 tion House is about three days' hard ride from Awatovi. 



The visit of Escalante and Dominguez in 1776 has already been 

 mentioned. Crossing the Colorado just below Navajo Mountain, they 

 turned southward across the Kaibito Plateau and thence eastward, 

 skirting the base of Black Mesa, to Oraibi. Sporadic Spanish ex- 



