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Despite attempts to avoid further difficulties, Washington eventually had enough, and in 1863, in the midst of the Struggle for Existence in the Civil War, Congress decided that they had to fund an expedition in New Mexico and Arizona, and Kit Carson, already famous as a "Mountain Man," scout, Indian agent, and explorer, was sent to bring resolution to the Navajo and allied problems. The mission was to also deal with Confederate sympathies in the Southwest, and to control the Mescalero Apache and Jicarilla Apache, in New Mexico. Unfortunately, Carson did not have full authority for the expedition, and the mission became quite violent.Kit Carson, known as "Red Shirt" to the Navajo, had gained a reputation as a friend of the Indians, by living with a number of tribes, learning their ways, and the history and "why's" that had led to their traditions. He understood that the Navajo decision process was decentralized, and that, if left on their traditional lands, some bands would continue to raid, no matter what pieces of paper might be signed, no matter how prominent the signers on the Navajo side.
The 1863 expedition included a predominance of volunteers, many of whom were Hispanic, the offspring of settlers that had been the victims of two-hundred or more years of raids by the Navajo, and who bore little love for those people. As the party was assembled, a number of other native Americans, rivals of the Navajo, also volunteered to help. Ute, Hopi, and Zuni joined the troop, in force. General James Carleton, the military man responsible for New Mexico was also in charge of the party.
Carleton had no sympathy for the Navajo. The expedition moved out in mid-1963. The Navajo intelligence worked as it usually did, and few Navajo were seen, but almost every Navajo male that the group caught, they executed. This was to be a harsh mission.
The primary tactic taken by the party was a scorched earth policy. As the Navajo bands fled before the military party, as Carson expected, the American force moved in and leveled the hogans of the Navajo, destroyed their crops, orchards, and fields, and confiscated or killed any Navajo livestock that they found. The expedition also turned a blind eye toward slaving, and the trade of captured Navajo women and children to slavers in Mexico, although this was officially against US policy at a time when the government was fighting to free slaves in the southern states.
Kit Carson was very adept at locating the "hidden" homes of the Navajo. In the desert hideouts of the Navajo, there was little leeway for this type of destruction. Life in a desert environment was always a balance on the edge of a knife blade. In a matter of months, many of the Navajo bands were struggling, and were forced to turn themselves in to US military auspices at Fort Defiance. The Navajo had been offered refuge at the fort, if they would submit, voluntarily. At the fort, these refugees were fed, leading other hungry bands to surrender.
By January, 1864, the party had reached the mouth of Canyon de Chelly. This was sacred territory, the Heart of the Navajo. Kit Carson appealed to General Carleton, saying that he saw no point to invading the last refuge, with the few residents who remained in the area. Carleton not only wanted the action to be completed, he sent reinforcements from Fort Defiance to insure success. Carson, under orders, proceeded. The Navajo, in a desperate state, offered no resistance. A few women and children came out and surrendered. Kit Carson fed them and treated them with dignity. When the watching Navajo saw this, the remainder of the holdouts gave themselves up.
The last of the Navajo resisters were taken by Carson to Fort Defiance. A number of Navajo had, as expected, escaped into even more-remote areas of Utah, around Navajo Mountain or into the Canyonlands area, but these individuals were far too weak and too far away to present any real threat anymore. They were subsisting totally on what they could gather in a barren land.
Meanwhile, the Navajo who had been rounded up at Fort Defiance were about to undergo a traumatic event, the worst thing that the American Government would do to the Navajo nation. It must be remembered that the government had just finished a campaign of starvation. Most of the Navajo who had given up had done so due to malnutrition, with no hope of additional food sources, other than the good offices of their primary enemy, the US government.
As the army collected the refugees, it made plans to move them out of the Four Corners region. 6,000 Navajo were told that they would have to walk to a new home, Fort Sumner, far away, in southeastern New Mexico. Only the elderly, the children, and those truly infirm were provided with transport in wagons. All others had to proceed on foot. This trek would come to be known as "The Long Walk." For many Navajo, the Long Walk would become Year One of a new era. For many purposes, Navajo time is now counted from the time of the great relocation.
Unknown numbers of the already weakened adults died on the way. This march was through more, harsh, desert country. Most significant to the Navajo, the destination was far away from Dine bi Keyah, their sacred homeland. They were being forced to march past the corner mountains, that delimited "their" world. Outside of their sacred lands, they believed, their religious traditions would not work. Again, the Anglo was to disrupt and disrespect native religious practices.
The march took many weeks. The original 6,000 Navajo were not moved all at once, but in groups, disrupting bands and families, and creating further chaos in Navajo life. The new home was known as Bosque Redondo, meaning "Round Forest" or "Circular Grove" in Spanish. The location was named for a small group of cottonwood trees. There was little else in the area. Bosque Redondo turned out to be a prison camp. Eventually, more Navajo, for a total of 8,500 individuals, plus 400 Mescalero Apache, would join the first arrivals and be held at Bosque Redondo. Their imprisonment would last for four, long, sorrowful years.
The Navajo were told by the United States to use their survival abilities, and support themselves. This was next to impossible for them in the strange, flat land, with different soils and weather patterns than those to which the Navajo were accustomed. Few seeds were available, and the traditional Navajo crops failed in the new environment. As Winter arrived, the exposed families found that there was little wood for fuel and no local Coal Valley to provide a source for heat. The local water supply was unreliable, for this many people, and was of questionable quality. With the Navajo men under guard and without their ponies, the usual supplementary supplies from raiding were also gone.
Meanwhile, the encampment was exposed and vulnerable, not just to the weather, but also to raids by surrounding bands of still-untamed Apache and Commanche. The army guards were effective at keeping the Navajo in, but not at keeping marauders out. Supplies from the army were grossly inadequate, and much of the food supplied by the government was strange and unpalatable to Navajo tastes.
With so many people in such a concentrated area, and limited supplies of water, sanitation was difficult at Bosque Redondo. The Navajo, who had had little previous extended contact with Whites, were now continuously surrounded by Anglo soldiers, and had to meet and deal with government representatives on an almost daily basis. This exposed the tribe to a number of new diseases. Several epidemics swept through the camp. Many internees died from European illnesses to which they still had little immunity. Starvation and exposure would kill hundreds of others of the captives during this imprisonment.
The episode did not end until 1868. Finally, with the war over, Washington took another look at the Southwest. They no longer had to worry about Confederate sympathies in the region, or of Native American nations taking the opposite side in the War Between the States. The majority of the Navajo were now concentrated in a single site, where a few leaders could finally make decisions and speak authoritatively for the nation, as a whole. This was quite different from the earlier years when a "leader" spoke only for a few families.
Barboncito, chief spokesperson for the Navajo, negotiated a treaty with Washington that would finally allow the Navajo to return to the Four Corners and Canyon de Chelly. This pact stated that the Navajo would never fight again. A reservation was to be provided for them on the mountains and canyonlands around the Defiance Uplift.
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Contents, including illustrations, copyright T. K. Reeves, 1997.
on 5 April, 1997.
