RELATIVE PAST AND PRESENT CONDITION.

Transported as these Indians are from their native land a distance of over 400 miles, they will necessarily cherish old recollections for a few years; but under a firm and just government they will soon become reconciled, and even attached, to their present location. Their true interests will naturally bind them to the soil, and as their crops flourish and their flocks and herds increase they will be a self-sustaining colony. It is presumed that over 6,000 acres of land will be planted this present year with wheat, corn, beans, pumpkins, melons, &c., and this, if successful, will afford a large surplus beyond the immediate wants of the tribe. No country in the world is better fitted by nature for the residence of a nation of savage marauders than the region inhabited by the Navajoes previous to their removal to this reservation. Separated from the settled portions of New Mexico by lofty mountains or sterile plains, they planned and executed their forays upon the unprotected inhabitants with a degree of skill, caution, and cunning rarely exampled even among savage tribes, often murdering whole families and sweeping off flocks and herds, and generally succeeding in reaching their fastnesses in the canons and mountains, where they could defy their pursuers.

In Canon de Chelle and its vicinity, and in the valleys of Tunicha and Chusca, and on the Pueblo Colorado, and Navajoes have formerly cultivated fields of grain, insufficient, however, for their pressing wants, as their repeated forays have demonstrated; but from Moqui, Oraibi, and the adjacent Pueblo villages to the Little Colorado, and even on its banks, no cultivation can be attempted with the least prospect of success. The region is bleak and dismal, full of deep and yawning canons, and utterly impassable in the rainy season, at which period the banks of the Little Colorado below the falls are subject to inundation. Were these Indians permitted to settle at any of these places they would be a continual burden to the Government, and would doubtless embrace the first opportunity to return to the protection of their mountain strongholds, again to commence a series of murderous and destructive forays on the Territory. One of the principal chiefs, Delgadito, has assured me that such would be the certain result of their removal to the region above named. This man is reliable, intelligent, and can write his signature legibly.

On the present reservation (Bosque Redondo) they have an unlimited supply of arable land to cultivate, plenty of water at all times for irrigation, and a prospect of being successful cultivators. The open country, extending for hundreds of miles to the south and east and for a long distance to the north and west, affords them excellent pasture for their flocks and herds, and isolates them completely from the settled portion of the Territory, while in the event of an attempt on the part of any to escape or to return tot heir native country, the open country would effectually enable the troops at Fort Sumner to frustrate their object. Should the improvements indicated by the department commander on the reservation keep pace with the expectations of many, the condition of the tribe will be shortly superior to that of the old of Pueblo Indians of New Mexico. The willingness displayed by these people to carry out all the improvements set on foot for their welfare, their aptitude for the performance of manual labor, and the great advantages as to soil and climate they possess in their present location, encourages the hope that their condition will rapidly improve, and that they will at no distant day take rank among the civilized portion of the Indian race upon this continent.