Navajo prisoners of Kit Carson on the Navajo Long Walk to the Bosque Redondo.
The story of the Long Walks of the Navajo is a story
of great drama, pain, and sadness. It is the terrifying and traumatic story of
53 forced marches that occurred from 1864 to 1866, the tragic deaths of over
2000 Navajo that occurred during these marches, and their eventual
incarceration at the Bosque Redondo near Fort Sumner, New Mexico. It is a story
that defined the future of the Navajo people and will always remain an
important part of their collective history, a complicated story with a
beginning that is difficult to trace as it involves a complex style of
communication and continuous breakdowns in communication, a cycle of
retaliatory raids, treaties, broken treaties, and more raids.
The story begins with the people themselves. The
Navajo, or Dine, lived in a pastoral society. They were sheepherders, raised
livestock, and lived in large family groups. They had great respect for their
elders, the leaders of their family groups.
According to the Bosque Redondo Memorial, they lived
in large homes, called hogans. Their grazing land was lush, rich, and
surrounded by mountains and canyons, with wide, flowing rivers. Their land was
in what is now Arizona and western New Mexico, including the mineral-rich
Canyon de Chelly, which will become more important later in this story. It was
bordered by four mountains that the Navajo considered sacred. It was not always
a peaceful environment. They lived through droughts, floods, wildfires, and
other natural disasters and learned to survive. They survived so well that
eventually they needed to expand to more areas to accommodate their growing
sheep herds.
Canyon de Chelly circa 1873.
Unfortunately, their search for land for expansion
created ongoing conflicts with the Apache, Comanche, and Ute tribes; it
coincided with the arrival of the Spanish in the 1600s; and in the 1800s,
clashed with the Anglo-European settlers and their beliefs in Manifest Destiny,
the belief that a "dominant culture had the God-given right to spread across
a continent, regardless of any preceding culture."
It was an interesting, though violent way of life
for the Navajo, Comanche, Apache and Ute who lived in this area. They often
made treaties, traded goods including their intricate weaving, lived in peace, then
raided, retaliated, and lived in times of war. When the Spanish arrived, this
way of life continued. The Spanish naturally wanted the best land for their own
crops and livestock. They established numerous settlements in northern New
Mexico in the 1600s, with remnants that exist to this day. Santa Fe, New Mexico
is the oldest capital city in the United States! The Spanish also participated
in the same established cycle of raids, treaties, trades, then more raids.
In the mid-1800s, life for the Navajo went rapidly
downhill. Tension between the Navajo, the Spanish, the Americans, and
particularly the American military reached an all-time high when their leader,
Narbona, was scalped on August 30, 1849, during a clash with the American
military. As you'll recall, the Navajo lived in family groups, not communally,
but Narbona came from a well-respected and wealthy family and he was viewed as
a leader of his people and their negotiator. He was also a highly-respected
military leader, particularly in his younger years. In 1822, 24 Navajo heads of
family were massacred at Jemez Pueblo while traveling to a peace conference to
the newly formed Mexican government. In 1835, Narbona led a successful ambush
of the Mexican enemies at a pass, now known as Narbona Pass, in retaliation.
This, of course, led the American military to view him as a rebellious fighter,
while the Navajo considered him a respected leader.
The clash in views could only lead to more conflict,
though there were also treaties. Remember, there was a pattern in place of
raids, treaties, trades, broken treaties, raids. After the establishment of
Fort Defiance in Arizona and Fort Wingate in New Mexico, the Navajo and the
United States signed treaties in 1849 reducing the amount of Navajo land, then
the Bonneville Treaty of 1858, reducing the land even further, and another in
1861. Each of these treaties was eventually broken with constant clashes
between the two parties.
To make matters worse, in 1854, the Santa Fe
District Court ruled that there was no such thing as Indian land in New Mexico,
which allowed anyone who wanted to move onto Indian land and declare it their
own, an act that seemed to beg for total chaos.
It is at this point that the story becomes one as
old as history itself, a story of attempted genocide.
To say that there was extreme prejudice against the
Navajo and other Indian tribes is an understatement. This prejudice made them
particularly vulnerable to raids and attacks from the Spanish, Americans, and
U.S. military. The soon-to-be General James H. Carleton arrived in New Mexico
shortly after the Confederate Army was chased from the land. Carleton was eager
for a fight, eager to prove himself and found an easy mark with the Navajo. He
used his political connections wisely and was appointed Commander of the
Military in New Mexico. President Lincoln approved the establishment of a new
fort near the eastern border of New Mexico and Texas and Carleton named it Fort
Sumner after his mentor. Carleton sold Lincoln on the idea by claiming the fort
would offer additional protection to settlers in the Pecos River Valley, but
his intention was to use the land as a reservation, which was essentially a
prison for Indians.
At precisely the same time in history when the
slaves were set free, the Native American Indians were imprisoned.
There were a few incidents that may have inspired
Lincoln to believe he had no choice but to remove and incarcerate the Indians,
including the Minnesota Massacre, which I will expand on in my next post.
Surprisingly, as much as I have read about Old West history, I knew very little
about this event until I started preparing for this post, and the Minnesota
Massacre was extremely influential to the feelings and fears American Settlers
held toward Native America Indians.
In 1862, when most able-bodied men were fighting in
the Civil War, the Sioux in Minnesota, for reasons historians still to this day
have trouble understanding, decided to rise up against the local settlers. Four
young braves, returning from a hunt, found some hen eggs and one decided to
take them home. Another brave pointed out that the eggs did not belong to him.
The first brave threw the eggs on the ground and stated, "I am not afraid
of the white man," and to prove this, he murdered the owner of the nearby
home, his wife and daughter and two neighbors. When the young men returned to
the reservation and admitted what they had done the tribal council met to
decide a course of action. They decided they had two options, they could turn
the braves over to the military or start a war. They decided to start a war
that lasted for nearly a month.
They massacred many families in cruel and torturous
ways, most of them women and children, teachers and missionaries whose husbands
were fighting the war. One young boy, 11-year-old Merton Eastlick, whose story
is told in The Old West: The Indians by Benjamin Capps, witnessed the brutal
murder of his father and two brothers. His wounded and desperate mother placed
his sister in his arms and the boy walked 50 miles to save the child and find
help. Surprisingly, the mother, son, and baby all survived. Others were not as
lucky. Eventually, 450 settlers were murdered and 2000 Sioux surrendered to the
military. Two Sioux chiefs--Shakopee and Medicine Bottle--escaped to Canada, but
they were soon identified, drugged, and returned to Minnesota strapped to dog
sleds. Of the 392 Sioux accused of murder, 307 were sentenced to death.
Survivors of the Dakota Wars taking refuge in the prairies.
The situation between the Indians and the U.S.
military had reached an impasse and the U.S. government decided the best course
of action was "removal and incarceration." According to The Old West:
The Indians, it was decided that reservations would be the ideal situation,
moving entire tribes to designated areas of land, but not the land with rich
soil and minerals where the Indians once lived. Reservations were not
originally intended to be prisons, though they eventually did resemble such
facilities, in fact, it was expected that Indians would need to leave the
reservations in search of game, but some came to resemble prisons, prisons as
bad as those used during the American Civil War, and Fort Sumner was one of
them. Fort Sumner and the Bosque Redondo Reservation were actually considered
an "experiment" by the government, a particularly cruel experiment that
failed.
Carleton had already moved 400 Mescalero Apache to
the Bosque Redondo, promising them food sources and protection from raids. In
fact, according to the Bosque Redondo Memorial, Carleton's original intention
was to accommodate only the Mescalero Apache. The plan was to teach the
Mescalero Apache to work as farmers, but they were a nomadic tribe, unfamiliar
with living in one place for long periods of time, and their situation, along
with that of the Navajo, their enemies, who would soon join them, gradually went
from bad to worse. The camp and reservation was built to accommodate 5000
people. Eventually, more than 10,000 Apache, Navajo, and American soldiers
would inhabit the reservation and Fort.
This is where Christopher "Kit" Carson
enters the story. Carson was a well-known scout, trapper, guide and soldier
serving under Carleton's command when Carleton made Carson a Colonel. Colonel
Carson was head of the 1st Cavalry of New Mexico Volunteers. In the summer of
1863, Carson, his men, and his Ute spies and scouts marched into the high
plateau country intent on driving the Navajo from the rugged desert east to the
Bosque Redondo. According to Capps' The Old West: The Indians, Carson suggested
to Carleton that the Ute scouts be allowed to keep some of the captured Navajo
for slave labor as payment for their work in tracking the Navajo down, but
Carleton vetoed this idea.
Christopher "Kit" Carson
Carson established a partial camp at Fort Canby on
the border of Arizona and New Mexico and another at Pueblo, Colorado. Then he
began what is now known as the most infamous act of his career, the scorched
earth campaign, burning all food sources. On their first mission, they burned
70 acres of corn, harvested 15 acres of wheat that the fed to the animals,
burned an additional 50 acres of corn, captured several Navajo where they
worked in their fields along with 43 horses and mules and over a thousand sheep
and goats. This was the test run. Within the next month they destroyed every
crop of wheat, beans, pumpkin, "and hundreds of acres of the finest corn
ever seen." The Navajo were completely unprepared, working in their fields
or on their homes, and yet, they were afraid to surrender. They were afraid
that the true intentions of the U.S. government was to completely destroy their
people, and they weren't far off in this guess. Carson and his men continued
his scorched earth campaign far into the fall, destroying everything in their
path, including fruit trees, anything that might provide sustenance to the
people. Eventually, the Navajo were forced to surrender, having lived for
months on pinon nuts and completely unprepared for the winter to come.
It was January, 1864, when Kit Carson and his troops
invaded the last Navajo stronghold, the Canyon de Chelly. With no food or
resources left, both sides were suffering--Carson's men had frozen feet; the
Navajo, frozen corpses. The Navajo had no choices left--they surrendered, and
began what is now known as The Long Walks to the Bosque Redondo. They moved
southeast through the Tunicha and Zuni Mountains with no food, shelter or
clothing for protection then followed the Rio Grande to the City of Santa Fe.
Most of the Navajo traveled by foot, though there were a few wagons for the
elderly. The first group of 2500, 126 died before they even left Fort Canby and
another 197 on the forced march. Through a series of 54 marches, 8000 Navajo
were eventually incarcerated at the Bosque Redondo. Many Navajo simply
"disappeared" along the way, kidnapped by other tribes, Mexicans, and
settlers for use as slaves, or worse.
Map of the primary Long Walk trails.
Once they arrived at the Bosque Redondo, the Navajo
were forced to dig 30 miles of irrigation ditches, plow and plant 2000 acres
with corn, then watch helplessly as cutworms and flooding destroyed their
crops. They walked 12 miles to gather mesquite for firewood and carried it on
their backs. While they were gone, their enemies, the Mescelaro Apache, would
raid their camps and steal the few blankets and clothing they had left.
Meanwhile, the Spanish, Mexicans, and white settlers stole their land back home
with the approving nod of the U.S. Government.
The Mescelaro Apache, realizing the government could
not possibly fulfill their promise of providing food and shelter for their
people, escaped from the Bosque Redondo on November 3, 1865, leaving nine sick
people behind to tend the fires and fool the military into believing they were
preparing for bed. When Carleton's men discovered the Apache had fled the
reservation the soldiers tried to follow, but found the Indians had separated
into small groups, dividing some families forever, a sacrifice they made in
order to ensure that at least some family members would survive. Carleton's men later admitted to capturing
and killing small groups of women and children, but the majority escaped.
The experiment had failed. The original inhabitants
of the reservation fled. There was little food left for the remaining Navajo.
Famed Texas cattle kings Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving delivered cattle
to the Bosque Redondo, but most of this meat went to the soldiers. The
desperate situation of the Navajo people did not go unnoticed. In June of 1865
the Doolittle Committee convened to investigate conditions on the Bosque
Redondo and speak with the Navajo about their plight. They delivered a brutally
honest report to Congress, but no action was taken as there was still
tremendous prejudice against the Navajo, and the Navajo continued to die.
Relief finally came with the removal of General James Carleton from his command
on February 25, 1867. He was replaced by General William T. Sherman and Colonel
Samuel F. Tappan whose assignment was to negotiate a treaty of peace with the
remaining Navajo people. Chief Barboncito, the last Navajo Chief to surrender,
signed the Treaty of 1868, and there is now a memorial in the field where the
treaty was signed. The Treaty of 1868, according to the Bosque Redondo
Memorial, "established, under Federal Law, the sovereignty of the Navajo
Nation." In 1971, the Navajo people once again gathered at the Bosque Redondo Memorial bringing rocks from their homes to commemorate those family
members who had suffered and died at the reservation.
Chief Barboncito
On June 15, 1868, the Navajo began The Long Walks
Home in a ten mile long line, walking 12 miles a day for 25 days. Of the
original 8000 Navajo captured, only 7304 survived to start the journey back to
their homeland. They were given 1500 horses and mules, 2000 sheep, 50 U.S. Army
wagons, a U.S. Calvary escort, and an apology. By July 4, 1868, they were 12
miles east of Albuquerque. At Fort Wingate, near Gallup, New Mexico, the Navajo
established their headquarters. According to the treaty, they were given 15,000
sheep and goats that were delivered to Fort Defiance in November of 1869, and
every surviving Navajo man, woman and child received two animals. It is believed
that the Navajo people became stronger and more resilient in spite of, or
because of, the horrific experiences of the Long Walks. They had survived. In
fact, they prospered, eventually expanding their new reservation to over 17
million acres, eight times larger than Yellowstone National Park.
Bosque Redondo Memorial. Photograph by Darla Sue Dollman.
.jpg)
.PNG)
