Long Walk of The Navajo - Background

Background

The traditional Navajo homeland is called, in the, from northeastern Arizona through western New Mexico, including Canyon de Chelly, where a kid had houses and raised livestock. There was a long historical pattern in the Southwest of groups or bands raiding and trading with each other. This included Navajo, Spanish, Mexican, Apache, Comanche, Ute, and after1846 the new settlers (Americans). Events in the period between 1846 and 1863 included a cycle of treaties, raids and counter-raids by the Army, the Navajo and a civilian militia, with civilian speculators often on the fringe. Most of the militia involved were longtime enemies of the Navajo, Spanish descendants from northern New Mexico where Spain had established several settlements beginning in the late 16th century.

Hostilities between the Navajo, Hopi and Spanish colonists began at that time. They escalated between the Americans and Navajos following the scalping of the respected Navajo leader Narbona in 1849. 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). The Bonneville Treaty of 1858 reduced the extent of Navajo land. There were also treaties negotiated and signed in 1849, 1858 and 1861, but they all failed.

There are many examples of friction between these groups between 1846 and 1863. They include the murder of a personal servant of Major Brooks, commander of Fort Defiance, by an arrow in the back on July 12, 1858 for the slaughter of the Navajo livestock on the grazing grounds. There was an attack on Fort Defiance by about 1,000 Navajo warriors under the leadership of Manuelito and Barboncito on April 30, 1860. Navajos were angry that the Army was bringing in troops to wage war, flogged a Navajo messenger, had opened fire on tribal headsman, Agua Chiquito, during talks for peace on January 21. The army had refused to bring in feed for their many animals and took over the grazing land after killing Manuelito's livestock, which was not covered by their treaty. The army was allowing raiding and stealing of livestock and capture of Navajo tribal members by other tribes and New Mexicans resulting in the enslavement of captives. A new treaty was signed about February 15, 1861, to pacify the Navajo, but two of their four sacred mountains were lost to them, as well as about one third of their traditionally held 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 the horses for the Navajo, who had killed Sanchez. Another group of citizens 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, Lt. Col. Manuel Antonio Chaves of the New Mexico Volunteer Militia took command of a garrison of three companies numbering 7 officers and 203 men at Fort Fauntleroy. Chaves was later accused of being prodigal in dispensing his post's supplies to the 1,000 or more Navajos that had remained close to the fort, and was maintaining remarkably 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 freely to the Navajos. There was a dispute about which horse won a race. A shot rang out, followed by a fusillade. Almost immediately 200 Navajo, well-armed and mounted, advanced towards the Guard, shooting at the men. They were fired upon by the soldiers, and scattered leaving 12 dead bodies and forty prisoners. On hearing this, Gen. Canby demanded a full report from Chaves, who did not comply. Col. Canby sent Captain Andrew W. Evans to the fort, named Fort Lyon since September 25, and he took command. Manuel Chaves, suspended from command, was confined to the limits of Albuquerque pending court martial. (The charges were dismissed after two months.) Four years later, a congressional committee investigating the conditions at Fort Sumner, heard testimony that the Fort Fauntleroy episode of the horse race resulted in mountain howitzers being fired at the Indians, resulting in 20 or 30 being killed. A few days later another soldier testified that on the day of the horse race, he saw a soldier murdering two little children and a woman and tried to stop him, but was prevented by a Lt. Ortiz. He also said 12 or 15 Navajos were killed. The rest scattered and the peace that had been hoped for was impossible. In February 1861, Manuel Chaves took the field with 400 men and ransacked Navajo land, basically without federal authority.

With Confederate troops moving into southern New Mexico, Col. 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 where they would be offered the protection of the government. Ward was also instructed to warn all Navajos who refused to come in that they would be treated as enemies; he was partly successful. Captain Evans was overseeing the abandonment of Fort Lyon and had been told that the new policy would be that the Navajo had to colonize in settlements or pueblos, mentioning the region of the Little Colorado west of Zuni as possibly an ideal place. In November, some Navajo were raiding again. On December 1, Col. Canby wrote to his superior in St. Louis that "recent occurrences in the Navajo country have so demoralized and broken up 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 turned its attention to the Navajos, determined to eliminate Navajo raiding and raids on the Navajo.

Col. Jackson was ordered to relieve Canby as the Commander for the New Mexico Military Department in September 1862. Carleton gave the orders to 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 campaign to starve the Navajo out of their traditional homeland and force them to surrender. He was partly successful by early 1863, when thousands of Navajo began surrendering to the Army.

Some Navajos evaded and refused to surrender to the U.S. Army. These groups scattered to Navajo Mountain, the Grand Canyon, the territory of the Chiricahua Apache, and to parts of Utah.