Utah

Previously:

The traveler has Visited the Hopi Indians and heard the stories of Straw Man.

Chapter 16 

I rode through Utah next. Utah was as close to heaven as you could find on earth. A man could fall in love with Utah. I guess that's why so many settlers stopped there.

I had never seen such colors in my life. The reds, blues, yellows, even the black and browns stood out in Utah. The rock formations were awe inspiring.

I've heard stories about how centuries of wind and erosion had carved the rocks, and worn holes right through them. I prefer to think God had a hand in it. He didn't need hundreds of years to put a hole in a rock. He could just touch it and it was there.

If ever a person doubted that God existed, all he had to do was ride through Utah. Someday, I might go back and settle down there. Maybe send for a mail-order wife and raise a family. That would be nice. A man could do a lot worse than raise a family in Utah.

The Navahos lived in Utah. Some said there were more Navaho Indians than all other tribes combined. They didn't live in tepees. They stacked cedar logs upright against each other with a smoke hole in the top. They believed that the physical and spiritual worlds blend together, and everything on earth is alive and their relative. They worshiped the winds, sun, and waterways. The Navaho were superstitious about death and rarely talked about it.

The Navaho Indians had two big kinds of ceremonies: One was the Blessing Way which kept them on the path of wisdom and happiness. The second kind of ceremony was the Enemy Way. The Enemy Way was to discourage evil spirits and eliminate ghosts. It must have worked for them. In the middle of the desert, they managed to forage out a food supply of rabbits, prairie dogs, and antelope. They grew corn and beans and seemed to have plenty. If supplies got low, they would butcher a horse.

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The Navaho had their own personal Devil, in the form of Kit Carson. When the government decided it wanted to really punish the Indians, it sent them Kit Carson. He was put in charge of rounding up the Indians and moving them to a reservation. When the Indians refused to go, General Carson instituted a scorched earth policy. His orders were to shoot all males on sight and take the women and children captives. No peace treaties were to be made until all the Navajo were on the reservation.

Carson was only five and a half feet tall and as skinny as a fence post, but what he lacked in size he made up for in meanness. He hated Indians. Often after routing a band of Indians, he would stay behind to hunt down and kill the survivors. He called it cleaning up.

He enlisted the neighboring tribes in aiding his campaign to capture as many Navahos as he could. One tribe that proved to be most useful were the Utes. The Utes were very knowledgeable of the lands of the Navahos and were very familiar with Navaho strongholds as well.

Carson launched a full-scale assault on the Navaho population. He destroyed everything in his path, eradicating the way of life of the Navaho people. Hogans were burned to the ground, livestock was killed off, and irrigated fields were destroyed. Navahos who surrendered were taken to Fort Canby, and those who resisted were killed. Some Indians were able to escape Carson's campaign but were soon forced to surrender due to starvation and the freezing temperature of the winter months.

Someone said of Kit Carson, “If anything like pity filled Carson's breast, he did not bother to remember it." Carson wrote in his Memoirs that a particular battle was the prettiest fight I ever saw.

To be continued . . .