Navajo Nation - History

History

For the history prior to 1868, see Navajo people.

After the Long Walk and the Navajos' return from their imprisonment in Bosque Redondo, the "Navajo Indian Reservation" was established according to the Treaty of 1868. The borders were defined as the 37th parallel in the North; the southern border as a line running through Fort Defiance; the eastern border as a line running through Fort Lyon; and in the West as longitude 109°30′. Though the treaty had provided for one hundred miles square in the New Mexico Territory, the actual size of the territory was only 3,328,302 acres (5,200.472 sq mi; 1,346,916 ha) — slightly more than half. This initial piece of land is represented in the design of the Navajo Nation's flag by a dark-brown rectangle.

However, due to the fact that no physical boundaries or signposts were set in place, many Navajos ignored these formal boundaries and returned to where they had been prior to captivity. A significant population of Navajo still resided along the Little Colorado and Colorado Rivers as well as on Naatsisʼáán (Navajo Mountain), never suffering in the concentration camps at Hwéeldi (Ft. Sumner).

The first expansion of the territory occurred on October 28, 1878, when President Rutherford Hayes signed an executive order pushing the boundary 20 miles to the West. Further additions followed throughout the late 19th and early 20th century (see map). Most of these additions originated in executive orders, some of which were confirmed by acts of Congress; for example, the executive order which added the region around Aneth in 1905 was later confirmed by Congress in 1933.

The Eastern border was shaped primarily as a result of the Dawes Act of 1887. In an attempt to "civilize" Native Americans, the federal government divided selected tribal lands into small parcels known as allotments and promised U.S. citizenship to those deemed successful at farming the land according to the agricultural standards of the time. Unfarmed or "unsuccessfully" farmed parcels were subsequently declared "unclaimed" and auctioned off to Anglo-American settlers. The program continued until 1934. While the Navajo reservation proper was excluded from the act's provisions, the Eastern border became a patchwork of reservation and non-reservation land, known as a "checkerboard" area.