Long Walk of the Navajo

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This story is about the long walk to Fort Sumner. There are two points of view regarding it - the White man's and the Navajo's.
—Howard W. Gorman, Navajo Stories of the Long Walk Period, page 42.

Image:Langer Marsch.png The Long Walk of the Navajo, also called the Long Walk to Bosque Redondo, was a 20 day or more foot walk many Navajos made in 1864 to a reservation in southwestern New Mexico. Sometimes the "Long Walk" includes all the time the Navajo were away from the land of their ancestors, who had arrived there in the 1500s.

These lands are called, in the Navajo language, Dinetah. (Dinetah included land included in the four sacred mountains, from northeastern Arizona through western New Mexico, and north into Utah and Colorado.) The Navajo cultivated crops on the fertile floors of canyons, including Canyon de Chelly, and raised sheep, traded or stolen from the Spanish and Mexicans There was long historical pattern of the Navajo raiding Spanish, Mexican and Pubelo settlements along the Rio Grande valley, and Spanish and Mexican and U. S. Army punitive raids into Navajoland.

The hostilities following the killing of respected Navajo leader Narbona in 1849 escalated. Treaties negotiated and signed in 1849, 1858 and 1861 were broken. The he U.S. government established in Aug. 1851 Fort Defiance (near present-day Window Rock, Arizona) and Fort Wingate (originally Fort Fauntleroy), and the Bonneville Treaty of 1858 reduced the extent of Navajo land.

Typical events in the period between 1846 and 1863 included a cycle of treaties, raids and counter-raids by the Army and Navajo and a civilian militia, with civilian speculators often on the fringe. Some examples include, the murder of Major Brooks's personal servant in July, 1858 and an alleged raping of a Navajo by a servant of the commander of Fort Defiance, William T. H. Brooks. There was an attack on Fort Defiance by about 1,000 Navajo warriors under the leadership of Manuelito and Barboncito on April 30, 1860 who were angry that the Army did not bring in feed for their animals and often used the best grazing land. A treaty was signed on February 15, 1861 to smooth that over. Then Lt. Col, Manuel Chaves of the New Mexico Volunteer militia took the field with 400 men and randsacked Navajoland. By 1862 the U.S. Army had pushed the confederates down the Rio Grande and again turned its attention to the Navajo.

The plan to relocate the Navajo to a series of reservations was first proposed by General Canby, former commander of the New Mexico Military Dept. Major Gen. James H. Carleton, the U.S. Army was ordered to relieve Canby as the Commander for the New Mexico Military Department in Sept. 1862. Carleton gave the orders to Carson to proceed to Navajo land and on July 20, 1863 receive the Navajo surrender. When no Navajo showed up, he used a scorched earth campaign to starve the Navajo out of their traditional homeland and for them to surrender.

Bands of Navajo led by the United States Army were relocated from their native lands in eastern Arizona Territory and western New Mexico Territory to Fort Sumner, aka the Bosque Redondo on the Pecos River Valley. Bosque Redondo means round grove of trees in Spanish. The Long Walks started in Jan. 1863. At least 200 died along the 300-mile (500 kilometer) trek, that took over 18 days to travel by foot. Between 8,000 and 9,000 people were settled on a 40 square mile (104 km²) area, with the peak population being 9,022 by the spring 1865. An interesting description of the long walk: "By slow stages we traveled eastward by present Gallup and Chusbbito, Bear spring, which is now called Fort Wingate. You ask how they treated us? If there was room the soldiers put the women and children on the wagons. Some even let them ride behind them on their horses. I have never been able to understand a people who killed you one day and on the next played with your children...?" -Very Slim Man, Navajo elder, quoted by Richard Van Valkenburgh, Desert Magaine, April, 1946, p. 23.

Some Navajo managed to escape the U. S. Army, and moved Westward into the territory of the Chiricahua Apache, the Grand Canyon, on Navajo Mountain and in Utah.

The Bosque Redondo was not a good site for so many people because of its poor water and minimal provisions of firewood. By 1868 the experiment—meant to be the first Indian reservation west of Indian Territory—was declared a failure because of poor planning, disease, crop infestation and generally poor conditions for agriculture (harvests failed in each of the successive years of 1864, 1865, 1866 and 1867). Having survived the ordeal, the various peoples (including 400 Mescalero Apaches) interned at the camp were permitted to return from whence they came. The Navajo were granted a 3.5 million acre (14,000 km²) area where they had previously resided.

On June 18, 1868, the once-scattered bands of people who called themselves Diné, now united as one, set off on the return journey, the Long Walk Home. Never again did the Navajo raid their neighbors. After relating 20 pages of material concerning a very different version of the Long Walk, Howard Gorman, age 73 at the time, concluded

"As I have said, our ancestors were taken captive and driven to Hweeldi for no reason at all. They were harmless people, and, event to date, we are the same, holding no harm for anybody...Many Navajos who know our history and the story of Hweeldi say the same." (Stories of the Long Walk)

The Navajo were forced to move to the reservation because they would not live in peace with their neighbors.

[edit] See also

[edit] Sources

Bailey, Lynn R. (1970). Bosque Redondo: An American Concentration Camp. Pasadena, California: Socio-Technical Books. (No ISBN).
Bial, Raymond (2003). Great Journeys: The Long Walk—The Story of Navajo Captivity. New York: Benchmark Books. ISBN 0-7614-1322-7.
Brown, Dee (1970). Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. ISBN 0-330-23219-3.
Kelly, Lawrence (1970). Navajo Roundup. Colorado: Pruett Pub. Co. (No ISBN).
McNitt, Frank (1972). Navajo Wars. Colorado: Univ. New Mexico. (No ISBN).
Thompson, Gerald (1976). The Army and the Navajo: The Bosque Redondo Reservation Experiment 1863-1868. Tucson, Arizona: The University of Arizona Press. ISBN 0-8163-0495-4.
Compiled (1973). Roessel, Ruth: Navajo Stories of the Long Walk Period. Tsaile, Arizona: Navajo Community College Press. ISBN 0-912586-16-8.