Johnston] NAVAHO POPULATION 133 



The question of the number of Navahos who were never brought 

 mto captivity at Fort Sumner remains controversiah Two groups of 

 Navahos must be considered in this connection: those who escaped 

 captivity by moving into the farther reaches of the Navaho hinter- 

 land, and those who had previously been taken captive by Mexican 

 and other settlers in the region. Chief Justice Kirby Benedict, testi- 

 fying in 1866, estimated the number of the latter group as "consider- 

 ably exceeding 2,000," of whom a large proportion were Navahos. 

 The size of the former group was a matter of disagreement between 

 General Carleton and Colonel Carson. General Carleton, who hoped 

 to create at Fort Sumner a kind of model community for the trans- 

 formation of hostile Indians into peaceful agriculturalists, arrived at 

 the understandably optimistic conclusion that fewer than 500 Navahos 

 escaped captivity. On the other hand, Carson, whose familiarity with 

 Navaho country was probably unequaled, asserted that the Navaho 

 numbered at least 12,000, implying that only about half of them had 

 surrendered to his troops.^* 



The first report on the population of the Navaho following their 

 return to their former homeland in 1868 estimates their number at 

 about 8,000. Included in this figure were "several hundred that were 

 never captured and brought to Fort Sumner" (Davis, 1869). About 

 a year later, on October 2, 1869, the first distribution of sheep and 

 goats at Fort Defiance was made the occasion for a general enumera- 

 tion. In total, 8,181 Navahos were counted as they passed through 

 the gates of the stockade to receive their allotment of animals 

 (Bennett, 1870 ).«5 



From that time until the present, information on the total popula- 

 tion of the Navahos has been provided by two major sources: the 

 Annual Reports of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs and the de- 

 cennial censuses of the Bureau of the Census. The former source 

 contains the annual reports of the several agents assigned to the 

 various Indian agencies. In these reports, the Indian populations 

 in their respective jurisdictions are estimated. The latter source 

 provided important supplementary data on Indian population when 

 special enumerations of Indians were undertaken in 1890, 1910, and 

 1930. In its other decennial enumerations, the Bureau of the Census 



*^ Carleton's estimate was evidently based upon his interview with Herrera, one of the 

 Navaho chiefs at Fort Sumner. The pertinent figures are reported in a letter from Carleton 

 to Capt. Erasius W. Wood, dated Mar. 21, 1865 (U.S. Congress, 1867, appendix pp. 221 f.). 

 Carson's estimate is reported in Dunn, 1958, p. 397. Mooney, 1928, p. 21, seems to have 

 accepted Carson's estimate. 



85 The annual report of the following year (Bureau of Indian Affairs, 1871, Doc. 124) 

 mentions some 2,000 Navahos "roaming with other tribes," in addition to those enumerated 

 at Fort Defiance. Even allowing for some duplication, this would imply a total population 

 of close to 10,000 Navahos at this time. Other authorities regard even this figure as too 

 low. For example, Laura Thompson, 1951, p. 30, footnote 6, argues that the present 

 population of the Navaho implies that there must have been about 12,000 Navahos in all 

 in 1868. 



