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Show WITH SITGREAVES TO THE PACIFIC On August 3 1 they pushed on to the edge of Zuni, then entered the pueblo the next day. Sumner remained at Zuni for only a few hours, long enough to meet with Indian leaders, then headed north "to give the Navajos the devil," as Kern put k. Instead, the Navajos bedeviled Sumner. Although he managed to march into Canyon de Chelly, Sumner failed to "chastise" the Navajos. To his annoyance, the Indians refused to fight directly, but wounded and intimidated his men with guerrilla tactics. Alarmed by the implications of what seemed to be thousands of camp-fires on the rim of Canyon de Chelly, Sumner silently retreated from the canyon in the dead of night. By October 1, the tough-talking colonel was back in Albuquerque, his major accomplishment having been the establishment of a military post, Fort Defiance, isolated in the heart of Navajo country.17 While Sumner pursued the Navajos in vain, a frustrated Sitgreaves lost valuable time and rations waiting at Zuni for a military escort. Sumner had assigned Maj. Henry Lane Kendrick, with thirty artillerymen, to accompany Sitgreaves to the Colorado. Kendrick knew the country as well as any officer, having served in Colonel Washington's 1849 Navajo expedition, where he and Kern apparently had come into frequent contact. The two shared an interest in science. Following his graduation from West Point in 1835, Kendrick had stayed on at the Academy as professor of chemistry, mineralogy, and geology, until he was called into active service by the outbreak of war with Mexico Before the escort could join Sitgreaves. however, Kendrick had orders to heir establish the new post at Fort Defiance Thus, instead of leaving Zuni on September 5, as planned, the explores waited at Zuni for Kendrick's return. * During the delay at Zuni, Kern triec to take care of unfinished business bac-v in Santa Fe. He asked Horace Dick-inson to run some errands that includes delivering a message to his landlady collecting $102 from the territorial treasurer, Charles Blummer, and looking for a misplaced sketchbook. Dickinson searched Kern's usual haunts in Santa Fe, but to no avail. Later that fall the sketchbook turned up in Jacob Spiegelberg's store, where "some of his clerks, thinking it some book of the store, laid it away."19 Joe Ellis found it and sent it on to Philadelphia. Dick also wrote from Zuni to the Indian agent in Santa Fe, John Greiner, asking him to try to locate the bodies of his brother and Old Bill Williams, to give them a decent burial, and to recover the Kerns' missing property. Dick had "got well acquainted" with Greiner in Santa Fe, and thought him "a fine old sensible fellow."20 Notwithstanding Dick's confidence in him, Greiner was unable to go up the Rio Grande that fall, for lack of a military escort. In the winter Greiner became ill and still could not make the trip, but he told Kern that he hoped to go in the spring.21 The delay at Zuni also gave Kern an opportunity to sketch. Several lithographs based on Kern's drawings at Zuni 149 |
