MOQUIS TO FORT DEFIANCE.—NAVAJO TERRITORY. 129 
Hundreds have come into camp, and, considering their natural impudence 
of our party, have astonished me by the correctness of their behavior. 
One old fellow was pointed out by a companion who spoke pretty good Spanish as the chief. 
They were curious and a little concerned to know why we had come from the west. No party 
of whites had ever entered their country from that direction. The chief said that we must 
have just left the country of the Apaches, who had lately stolen the Moquis horses, of which 
act the Navajoes had been wrongfully accused ; that the Apaches had plundered them also, and 
that, as our animals were safe, we must be friends to the Apaches, which proved that the 
Apaches, the Moquis, and the Americans were all leagued against ‘‘the poor little Navajoes,’’ 
to use his own expression. The reasoning was logical, but the throng of saucy vagabonds that 
and the weakness 
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Fig. 40.--Navajo valley. 
were listening to the speech with grins that they took no pains to conceal were not calculated to 
enlist much sympathy, and we concluded that the pitiful harangue was intended for the benefit 
of the Moquis, to disarm them of their suspicions in regard to the perpetrators of the late 
theft. 
g- We asked how far we had still to travel before reaching Fort Defiance, and they 
said that a single day’s march would take us there. We supposed that it must therefore be 
about thirty miles distant. They had not heard of the arrival of any party of Americans from 
the direction of Zuiii. 
The Navajoes displayed one trait of character which I had never seen exhibited by Indians. 
A crowd of women surrounded the place where the doctor and myself were sitting, and were 
amusing themselves by inspecting the remnant of the Indian goods and trinkets that had been 
brought along. Having no further occasion for the articles, as the expedition was now so 
nearly ended, and pleased with the unexpected civility we had experienced, I distributed 
17 I 
