Items Left Behind

The last roof beams for the pueblitos and hogans were cut around 1760. Without caretakers to rebuild after the slow melting of winter snows and the driving rains of late summer, the homes of the Gobernador turned into the stories of Dinétah.

Ute raiders crossing the San Juan River convinced some families to seek good farmlands elsewhere. Present north of the Gobernador before the arrival of the Navajo, the Ute and their allies, the Comanche, struck south, out onto the plains, and down the Rio Grande. Better armed and more mobile than the Navajo, they were able to ride for miles, hit at night, and escape with food, livestock, and most frightening of all, the children of the Gobernador farmers.

Droughts in the mid-1700s drove others closer to the Spanish settlements. The 1600s had been a time of relatively good rains in the Gobernador; during the 1700s, bad years came often. The raiders took advantage of the changing climate as well: most attacks came in good years, when storehouses were full.

Many chose to put more distance between themselves and the raiders moving down across the San Juan River. The final push came from the Spanish and their hunger for the fine woolen blankets the Navajos brought in trade. Good grazing for sheep and goat herds drew many south and west, closer to the present boundaries of the Navajo Nation. Pueblito and hogan sites built outside Dinétah from the 1740s through the 1770s mark the shift of the Navajo homeland away from the canyons of the Gobernador.