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Show WALCOTT-MCNALLY INCIDENT already seated at the fire. All three Navajos watched as the Americans ate breakfast, after which McNally left to secure the prospectors’ five horses. The Indians were ready to barter, but Walcott wanted to wait for his companion to return, and so the Navajos bided their time. Slim Man wondered if the white men would accept one of his horses as a trade for the rifle he saw lying on the ground. Hashkéneinii Biye’ proposed the deal; Walcott refused. This angered Hashkéneinii Biye’ and rekindled the resentment that had smoldered in his heart since the killing of his relatives in Utah ten years before. In January 1874, four young Navajos on a trading expedition had stopped in Grass Valley, Utah, during a terrific snowstorm. Seeking shelter, the men came across an empty cabin, took up residence until the storm ended, and killed a calf for food. Angered by the intrusion onto their property, the William McCarty family entered the cabin, killed three of the Navajos, and wounded the fourth, who managed to escape. This severely injured fourth man made his way back to his people, blamed the Mormons since the killings occurred in their country, and encouraged Navajos living on the northern end of the reservation to go to war. Jacob Hamblin, the Mormon apostle to the Indians, held council with the distraught Navajos and eventually averted a possible frontier war, but not before Navajo agent William F. M. Arny became involved in the situation and ratcheted up the rhetoric. Central to Hamblin’s success was his proving that the murderers were not Mormons but only bad men who needed punishment.13 Apparently, as Hashkéneinii Biye’ contemplated these events, he remembered that there had been no satisfaction and no revenge on the perpetrators. He was still angry about it and his wife knew it. Because of this, the night before his encounter with Walcott and McNally, she hid his moccasins so that he could not hurt the two peaceful miners. But now, the time seemed right. Hashkéneinii Biye’ proclaimed, “Let’s kill these Americans. They are always mean and have no accommodation about them.” Man with White Horses’s son readily agreed, but Slim Man cautioned that their relatives would not like them to do it; the other two did not seem to care. Hashkéneinii Biye’ told the boy to pick up the rifle, while he grabbed an ax. Walcott responded to Hashkéneinii Biye’ first, trying to wrest the tool out of his hands until the Indian told Walcott that he was just checking the blade for sharpness. Walcott then went to the boy to get his rifle as the youth began to remove it from its scabbard. As Walcott bent over to secure the rifle, Hashkéneinii Biye’ struck him in the back of the head with the ax, killing him instantly. As two older Navajos joined the group, Slim Man rose from his seat and asked, “What have you boys been doing fighting?” Slim Man explained to the older men what had happened, which raised the question of what course to follow with McNally. One of the old men, 13 Moore, Chiefs, Agents, and Soldiers, 124–36. 255 |
