40 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuU. 188 



ploration followed Escalante and Dominguez, but to the end of 

 Spanish and Mexican rule in 1848 the region north of the Hopi re- 

 mained virtual terra incognita. The most enigmatic record of 

 Spanish or Mexican exploration that remams is a reference to a trad- 

 ing expedition which left Abiquiu on March 13, 1813, visited the Salt 

 Lake area, turned southward, and returned via Escalante's crossing 

 on the Colorado to Abiquiu on July 12. At the "Crossing of the 

 Fathers" they found a native trader waiting "as was his custom." 

 (See Corbett, 1952, p. 155.) 



THE AMERICAN PERIOD 



American exploration of the northwestern Navaho country did not 

 get under way until some 10 years after the United States acquired 

 the territory by the Mexican Cession of 1848. In the fall of 1858 the 

 great Mormon pioneer Jacob Hamblin made the first of many cross- 

 ings into the "Indian Country," reaching the Hopi villages via the 

 Crossing of the Fathers and pioneering what was later to become 

 the Mormon Road to the Little Colorado settlements. As of 1858 

 Hamblin and his companions felt that, once across the Colorado River, 

 they were in Navaho country. 



In the following winter, Capt. John G. Walker led a regiment of 

 mounted rifles northwest from Fort Defiance to Canyon de Chelly, 

 and thence along the northeastern scarp of Black Mesa to the present 

 site of Kayenta. The group subsequently traversed Marsh Pass 

 into Long House Valley, on the very borders of the modern Shonto 

 community. Their presence here is authenticated by a series of still 

 legible inscriptions upon the walls of Long House ruin, some 15 

 miles from Shonto. Walker was in all probability the first white 

 man ever to set foot in the Shonto area proper. After leavmg Long 

 House Valley his group ascended to the rim of Black Mesa above, and 

 turned eastward across the mesa to Chinle Valley and so back to Fort 

 Defiance (Van Valkenburgh and McPhee, 1938, p. 16). 



During the campaign of 1863 a group of Navahos who had been 

 captured on Black Mesa by Navaho scouts were driven into Shonto 

 Canyon itself, preparatoiy to their march to Fort Defiance. Some 

 Navahos believe that in the following year Carson's own troops were 

 in the canyon (Van Valkenburgh, 1941; p. 145), but there is ]io au- 

 thentic record of this. In the same year 1864, however, a heliograph 

 station was established on the summit of Navajo Mountain for the 

 transmission of military information, via a series of relay stations, 

 to Fort Defiance. There are no tales of depredations committed by 

 soldiers around Shonto or Navajo Momitain, and it is certain that no 

 extensive campaign was ever undertaken in the area. 



Notwithstanding occasional American military operations during 

 the Civil War era, there is no question that the chief Anglo-American 



