"Thank you for your kindness. The lads will report to you to-morrow
morning. I will see that they are properly fitted out, and will write
you now and then during my absence, and as soon as I return to Santa
Fé they can be sent back."

Colonel Burton then took his departure, and I turned to a local
history to learn from its pages something of the tribe with which I
might be brought in contact.

The home of the Navajos lay between the Rio Grande del Norte on the
east, the Rio Colorado on the west, the Rio San Juan on the north, and
the Rio Colorado Chiquito on the south, but from time immemorial they
had roamed a considerable distance beyond these borders.

They had always been known as a pastoral race, raising flocks and
herds, and tilling the soil. They owned, at the time we began war upon
them, sheep and ponies by the thousand, and raised large quantities of
corn, wheat, beans, and other products.

They numbered between twelve and fifteen thousand, and could put three
thousand mounted warriors in the field. They were industrious, the men
doing all the hard work instead of putting it upon the women, as do
the Indians of the plains and all of the marauding tribes. They
manufactured their wearing apparel, and made their own weapons, such
as bows, arrows, and lances. They wove beautiful blankets, often very
costly, and knit woollen stockings, and dressed in greater comfort
than did most other tribes. In addition to a somewhat brilliant
costume, they wore numerous strings of fine coral, shells, and many
ornaments of silver, and usually appeared in cool weather with a
handsome blanket thrown over the shoulders.