The Long Walk of the Navajo, also called the Long Walk to Bosque Redondo (), was the deportation and ethnic cleansingAnderson, Gary C. Ethnic Cleansing and the Indian: The Crime that Should Haunt America. The University of Oklahoma Press. Oklahoma City, 2014.Lee, Lloyd ed. Navajo Sovereignty. Understandings and visions of the Diné People. University of Arizona Press: Tucson, 2017. of the Navajo people by the United States federal government and the United States army. Navajos were forced to walk from their land in western New Mexico Territory (modern-day Arizona and New Mexico) to Bosque Redondo in eastern New Mexico. Some 53 different forced marches occurred between August 1864 and the end of 1866. In total, 10,000 Navajos and 500 Mescalero Apache were forced to the internment camp in Bosque Redondo. During the forced march and internment, up to 3,500 people died from starvation, disease and executions over a four-year period. In 1868, the Navajo were allowed to return to their ancestral homeland following the Treaty of Bosque Redondo.M. Annette Jaimes (1992). The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance. p. 34. South End Press Some anthropologists state that the "collective trauma of the Long Walk ... is critical to contemporary Navajos' sense of identity as a people".
Background
The traditional Navajo homeland spans from Arizona through New Mexico. Navajo built houses, planted crops, and raised livestock there. Groups or bands raided and traded with each other, making and breaking treaties. This included interactions between the Navajo, Spanish, Mexican, Pueblos, Apache, Comanche, Ute, and later American settlers. Any of them could be victims of these conflicts and also instigate conflicts to pursue their interests.
Hostilities escalated between American settlers and Navajos following the scalping of respected Navajo leader Narbona in 1849.Calhoon to Medill, October 1, 1849, from National Archives for Navajo Land Claims Case, at Navajo Tribal Museum, Window Rock AZ In August 1851, Colonel Edwin Vose Sumner established Fort Defiance for the U.S. government (near present-day Window Rock, Arizona) and Fort Wingate (originally Fort Fauntleroy near Gallup, New Mexico). Prior to the Long Walk, treaties were signed in 1849, 1858, and 1861.Often truces, ceasefires and armistices are mistakenly called treaties. Treaties in the United States have been ratified by the US Senate. A truce or armistice are an agreement between combatants but not ratified by the US Congress. For example, The Bonneville Treaty of 1858 was agreed to by the Navajo and the US Military but it was never ratified by the US Senate.
Navajo–Army conflicts
Friction between invading American settlers and Navajo groups was widespread between 1846 and 1863. Manuelito and Barboncito reminded the Navajo that the US Army was sending troops to wage war, that it had flogged a Navajo messenger, and that it opened fire on tribal headsman “Agua Chiquito”, during talks for peace. They argued that the army had refused to bring in feed for their animals at Ft. Defiance, took over the prime grazing land, and killed Manuelito's livestock there. On April 30, 1860, Manuelito and Barboncito with 1,000 Navajo warriors attacked the fort and almost took control.
Truces and treaties committed the Army to protect the Navajo. However, the Army allowed other Native American tribes and Mexicans to steal livestock and enslave Navajos. A truce was signed on February 15, 1861. They were again promised protection, but as part of the truce, two of the Navajo's four sacred mountains were taken from them, as well as about one-third of their traditional land. In March, a company of 52 citizens led by Jose Manuel Sanchez drove off a bunch of Navajo horses, but Captain Wingate followed the trail and recovered them for the Navajo, who had killed Sanchez. Another group of settlers ravaged Navajo rancherias in the vicinity of Beautiful Mountain. Also, during this time, a party of Mexicans and Pueblo Indians captured 12 Navajo in a raid, and three were brought in.
On August 9, 1861, Lt. Col. Manuel Antonio Chaves of the New Mexico Volunteer Militia took command of a garrison of three companies numbering 8 officers and 206 men at Fort Fauntleroy. Chaves was later accused of holding back supplies intended for the 1,000 or more Navajos who had remained close to the fort and was maintaining only lax discipline. Horse races began on September 10 and continued into the late afternoon of September 13. Col. Chaves permitted Post Sutler A. W. Kavanaugh to supply liquor to the Navajos. In September 22, a horse race took place between Manuelito and a Lieutenant Ortiz, which ended with Ortiz's victory, with the Navajo leader having difficulties controlling his horse. Afterwards, it was revealed that Manuelito's bridle reins were cut, likely slashed with a knife. When the Navajos demanded a rematch, the soldiers refused, claimed the blankets and jewels of great value the Navajos put up as bet and closed the fort's gates. When a Navajo tried to get inside, he was shot by a sentinel. Following escalating skirmish, the garrison unleashed a massacre, leaving 15 Navajos, mostly women and children, dead, and many more wounded or captured. On hearing this, General Canby demanded a report from Chaves, who did not comply. Canby sent Captain Andrew W. Evans to the fort, named Fort Lyon on September 25, who took command. Manuel Chaves, suspended from command, was confined to Albuquerque pending court-martial (the charges were dismissed after two months.) In February 1861, Chaves took the field with 400 militia and ransacked Navajo land, without federal authority.
Civil War and Kit Carson
With Confederate troops moving into southern New Mexico, Canby sent Agent John Ward into Navajo lands to persuade any who might be friendly to move to a central encampment near the village of Cubero. In return they would be offered government protection. Ward was instructed to warn all Navajos who refused to come that they would be treated as enemies; many came. Evans was overseeing the abandonment of Fort Lyon and had been told that the new policy was that the Navajo had to be removed to settlements or pueblos, mentioning the region of the Little Colorado west of Zuni as possibly an ideal place. In November, some Navajo started raiding again. On December 1, Canby wrote to his superior in St. Louis that "recent occurrences in the Navajo country have so demoralized and broken up [the Navajo] nation that there is now no choice between their absolute extermination or their removal and colonization at points so remote...as to isolate them entirely from the inhabitants of the Territory. Aside from all considerations of humanity, the extermination of such a people will be the work of the greatest difficulty."
By 1862, the Union Army had pushed the Confederates down the Rio Grande. The United States government again determined to eliminate Navajo raiding and raids on the Navajo. James H. Carleton was ordered to relieve Canby as Commander for the New Mexico Military Department in September 1862. Carleton ordered Colonel Christopher "Kit" Carson to proceed to Navajo territory and to receive the Navajo surrender on July 20, 1863. When no Navajos showed up, Carson and another officer entered Navajo territory in an attempt to persuade Navajos to surrender and used a scorched earth policy to starve the Navajo out of their traditional homeland and force them to surrender. By early 1864 thousands of Navajo began surrendering. Some Navajos refused and scattered to Navajo Mountain, the Grand Canyon, the territory of the Chiricahua Apache, and to parts of modern-day Utah.
The Long Walk
Major General James H. Carleton was assigned to the New Mexico Territory in the fall of 1862. It is then that he would subdue the Navajos of the region and force them on the long walk to Bosque Redondo. Upon being assigned the territory, Carleton set boundaries in which the Navajos would not engage in any sort of conflict. They were prohibited from trespassing onto lands, raiding neighboring tribes, and engaging in warfare with both the Spaniards and European Americans. A majority of the Navajos were abiding by these requirements, but a band of Navajo freelancing raiding parties broke these rules, for which the entire tribe was penalized. In the eyes of Carleton, he was unsuccessful and enlisted outside resources for aid including famous mountain man Kit Carson.
Carson also enlisted neighboring tribes in aiding his campaign to capture as many Navajos as he could. One tribe that proved to be especially useful was the Utes. The Utes were very knowledgeable of the lands of the Navajos and were very familiar with Navajo strongholds as well. Carson launched his full-scale assault on the Navajo population in January 1864. He destroyed everything in his path, eradicating the way of life of the Navajo people. Hogans were burned to the ground, livestock was killed off, and irrigated fields were destroyed. Navajos who surrendered were taken to Fort Canby and those who resisted were murdered. Some Navajos were able to escape Carson's campaign but were soon forced to surrender due to starvation and the freezing temperature of the winter months.
The "Long Walk" started at the beginning of spring 1864. Bands of Navajo led by the Army were relocated from their traditional lands in eastern Arizona Territory and western New Mexico Territory to Fort Sumner (in an area called the Bosque Redondo or by the Navajo) in the Pecos River valley (Bosque Redondo is Spanish for "round forest"—in New Mexican Spanish a bosque means a river-bottom forest usually containing cottonwood trees). The march was very difficult and pushed many Navajos to their breaking point. Many began the walk exhausted and malnourished, while others were not properly clothed and were not in the least prepared for such a long journey. They were also treated cruelly by the soldiers leading the march. They were never informed as to where they were going, why they were being relocated, or how long it would take to get there. One account passed through generations within the Navajos shows the attitude of the U.S. Army:
It was said that those ancestors were on the Long Walk with their daughter, who was pregnant and about to give birth [...] the daughter got tired and weak and couldn't keep up with the others or go further because of her condition. So my ancestors asked the Army to hold up for a while and to let the woman give birth, but the soldiers wouldn't do it. They forced my people to move on, saying that they were getting behind the others. The soldier told the parents that they had to leave their daughters behind. "Your daughter is not going to survive, anyway; sooner or later she is going to die," they said in their own language. "Go ahead," the daughter said to her parents, "things might come out all right with me," But the poor thing was mistaken, my grandparents used to say. Not long after they had moved on, they heard a gunshot from where they had been a short time ago.
At least 200 died during the 18-day, 300-mile (500-km) trek. Between 8,000 and 9,000 people were settled on an area of , with a peak population of 9,022 by the spring of 1865.