50 THE GREAT DENE RACE.

information from their Agent now raises this figure to 795. The 37th degree
of latitude forms the northern boundary of their land, while 107° long. passes
through the middle of the same. This reservation comprises 447',, square miles.

5th. Then far into the east, just north of Texas, within Oklahoma,
two more bands of Apaches are to be found under the control of the
representatives of the United States. These are the Chiricahua Apaches at
Fort Sill, who number 298, and the Kiowa Apaches, in the Kiowa Agency,
who muster only 156.

Lastly, the latest Report of the Commissioner for Indian Affairs mentions
the Havasupai, “a part of the Bluewater band of Apaches’”’, who are officially
estimated at 207 souls; but the Déné nationality of that band is not fully

established.

Without taking into account this small aggregate of doubtiul Denes, or
even a few independent bands of genuine Apaches, this division of our
aborigines gives us a total of 6068 souls. The group should be more populous;
yet, after the bitter wars and bloody massacres which have decimated their
ranks, it is a wonder that there are so many left.

Distribution of the Navahoes.

We now come to what is probably the most interesting, and certainly
one of the most important, of all the aboriginal tribes north of Mexico. |
mean the Navahoes (Diné), who, in point of numbers, are surpassed by only
one Indian nation, the Cherokee, within the same territory. In fact, they
constitute about one-tenth of the entire native population of the United States,
and their present reservation exceeds in extent that of any other tribe without
exception. It contains fully 18.616 square miles, being, therefore, considerably
more than one-third larger than the whole area of Belgium®. The tribe is
homogeneous, but, for purposes of administration, its territory is divided into
five notable portions as follows:

6th. The Fort Defiance Agency, which comprises the southeastern part
of the whole reservation, as it stands to-day. On this more or less barren
land some 12.000 Navaho Dénés are reported to live.

7th. Immediately north of this is the San Juan Agency with about
7000 Indians. It comprises an area of 5000 square miles or thereabouts,
2000 of which lie in northwestern New Mexico, 2250 in northeastern Arizona,
and 750 in the southeastern portion of Utah.

' Ibid., p. 154. In 1858 the Apaches were supposed to be divided into eight bands, viz.
“the Mescaleros, the Mimbres, the Mogolones, the Chincahui, the Coyoteros, the Pinals, the
Cero-Colorados, and the Tontos” (“The Marvellous Country”, p. 83, Boston, 1878).

® These figures include the land within the Navaho Reservation which, though specially
devoted to the Hopis, is half peopled by Navahoes.