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Show THE FEARING 99 During the same campaign, Francisco Salazar led a second group of Mexican soldiers over much the same ground. Salazar went as far as the junction of the San Juan and Colorado rivers. A short distance from the junction, he too attacked a Paiute camp. About one hundred Navajos were seen escaping from the camp. A few days later, Salazar saw the tracks of Navajo livestock headed north toward Bear's Ears. He reported that the Navajos stayed north of the San Juan River. They already knew the value of the northern country as a refuge. Twelve years later, in 1835, the New Mexicans learned more about the northern Navajos. That year the Utes reported that the Navajos were living in the La Plata and Sleeping Ute mountains next to the Utes. The Utes told the New Mexicans that the Navajos planned to plant crops there in the spring. Anglo-Americans were also learning that the People were widely scattered. As American trappers pushed into Utah in the 1820s, they met Navajos. In 1826, for instance, James Ohio Pattie reported meeting the People on the San Juan River near its junction with the Colorado. In 1839 another western traveler, T. J. Farnham, drew a map that showed Navajos north of the San Juan, reaching almost to present-day Monticello. The names of some of the Navajos who lived in this region have come down through history, preserved by Navajo tradition. Foremost among these people was K'aa'yelii, a leader of the northerners. He was born about 1801 just north of Bear's Ears, near Kigalia Spring, a place later named for him. Another headman, Kee Diniihj, was born in White Canyon about 1821. Two of White Sheep's grandparents were born in the 1820s, one at the lower crossing of the San Juan River and another near Bear's Ears. Hastin Beyal remembered that he had been born about 1832 in Grand Gulch, southwest of Bear's Ears. Paul Goodman's great-grandmother was born near Bear's Ears early enough to have a twenty-year-old daughter at the time of the Long Walk. The number of Navajos north of the San Juan was growing when the United States conquered the Southwest. At first the northerners would have as little to do with the newcomers as they had with the Spaniards and Mexicans. Soon, though, the war raging to the south would reach these remote Navajos. |