Navajo Wars
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Navajo Wars were a series of battles, often separated with treaties that involved raids by different Navajo bands on the rancheras along the Rio Grande and the counter campaigns by the Spanish, Mexican, United States of American governments, and sometimes their civilian elements. This serious raiding and counter-raids began in the early 1600's and continued through 1865.
[edit] American period
The U.S. military engaged the Navajos to punish the tribe bands for raiding nearby non-Navajos and to secure safe passage for US citizens headed west. Early in the Civil War, troops were taken from the Southwest and sent East. By 1862 the U.S. Military had few resources to deal with the bands of Navajo who continued to engage in traditional raiding. General James H. Carleton, put in charge of the New Mexico District, told 18 Navajo chiefs that they must surrender by July 20, 1863, and move to Ft. Sumner, at the Bosque Redondo in Eastern New Mexico. Carson tried to resign from the army, but Gen. Carleton ordered Col. Kit Carson to mount a campaign against the Navajo, to force all bands to surrender. NAVAJO ROUNDUP,L. Kelly, Pruett Pub., 1970
Between Sept. 1863 and Jan. 1864, Carson and his men chased the elusive Navajo, killing and capturing a few. Crops were burned, stock was confiscated, hogans were burned. Some of Carson's men marched through Canyon de Chelly. Without food or shelter to sustain them through the winters, and continuously chased by the U. S. Army, different groups of Navajo began to surrender. By January, 1864, many bands and their leaders;Barboncito, Armijo, and finally Manuelito— surrendered or were captured and made "the long walk of the Navajos" to the Bosque Redondo reservation at Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Although a bitter memory for many Navajo, there is this first hand account: “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 solders 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.
[edit] See also
People and culture
Navajo people · Navajo language · Navajo music · Navajo mythology · Diné College · Supreme Court of the Navajo Nation
History
Navajo Wars · Long Walk of the Navajo · Navajo Scouts · Code talker · Dinetah
[edit] References
- Kelly, Lawrence. Navajo Roundup, Pruett Pub. Co., Colorado, 1970
- Lavender, David. The Rockies. Revised Edition. N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1975.
- Limerick, Patricia Nelson. The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West. N.Y.: W.W. Norton, 1987.
- McNitt, Frank. Navajo Wars, Univ. New Mexico, 1972.
- Smith, Duane A. Rocky Mountain West: Colorado, Wyoming, & Montana, 1859-1915. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992.
- Williams, Albert N. Rocky Mountain Country. N.Y.: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1950.
- Yenne, Bill Indian Wars: The Campaign for the American West. Yardley: Westholme, 2005
- Thompson, Gerald (1976). The Army and the Navajo: The Bosque Redondo Reservation Experiment 1863-1868. Tucson, Arizona: The University of Arizona Press. ISBN 08163-0495-4.
- Forbes, Jack D. (1960). Apache, Navaho and Spaniard. Norman, OK: The University of Oklahoma Press. LCCCN 60-13480.
