The Navajo (Diné) Long Walk

Join Kelli as she finally starts tackling the impact of westward expansion on indigenous populations in the United States. In this episode, we focus on the Navajo, or Diné, who were forcibly removed from their homeland starting in the winter of 1863.

Get ready for a nice, long historical context! :) 

Sources:

Books

• Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West by Hampton Sides
• Diné: A History of the Navajos by Peter Iverson feat. photographs by Monty Roessel
• Navajo Stories of the Long Walk Period, publ. By Navajo Community College Press

Articles

• Hwéeldi - The Long Walk - https://Dinélanduse.org/hweeldi/

Documentaries/Videos

• The Long Walk: Tears of the Navajo (2009) on PBS
• Sisnaajini: A Navajo Story - Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve on YouTube

Transcript

The Navajo Long Walk
Intro
Welcome to A Popular History of Unpopular Things, a podcast that covers the… unpopular stories from history - tales about disease, death, and destruction. I like learning about all things bloody, gross, mysterious, and weird.

In my last episode, I talked about the Benders, a family of killers who murdered travelers on the Osage Trail in Kansas and stole their stuff. And in that episode, I gave a generalized history of westward expansion, referencing the fact that I hadn’t yet done an episode on the impact of all of that westward expansion on the indigenous populations who had lived there for centuries.

So today, we’re going to start covering it.

Now in my experience growing up and later working in New Jersey public schools, coverage of this general topic started and ended with a quick slide on the Trail of Tears, the forced relocation of Cherokee and other indigenous groups from the southern US towards the Midwest. When I became a teacher in 2012, I taught predominately world history, so I had even less time to spend on this topic than the US history teachers. And while the Trail of Tears is undoubtedly an important story and an important part of American history, today I want to broach this topic by talking about a similar event, but one that doesn’t come up as frequently, at least here on the East Coast – the Navajo Long Walk.

No, no, not the Stephen King novel, or recent film adaptation with Mark Hamill as the main antagonist. Nothing to do with that. Although I did really enjoy that story. Super interesting premise, really gross set pieces, and a relatively faithful adaptation. I’ll not say any more in case you still want to read the book and/or watch the film. 

I know I’ve been mentioning Stephen King a lot lately. I’m currently on a mission to read all of his books in the written order, so I imagine he’ll come up again in future episodes. But I digress.

In the 1860s, the people we call the Navajo, but who call themselves the Diné, were removed from their ancestral homelands. I’m going to try to use Diné for the rest of the episode, as that’s the proper term, though I’ll leave the original texts that use “Navajo” or “Indian” to be more authentic to the source material.

So let’s get started! 
Historical Context
I’d like to begin, as usual for an APHOUT episode, with the history surrounding the subject matter. It’s important for us to place the Long Walk in historical context – what was happening in the US that led to the government forcibly relocating thousands of Diné south, out of their ancestral home? Why did they do it? 

We could start really far back, like the arrival of the first pilgrims and their interactions with the various indigenous groups in New England and on the Atlantic Coast, but I’ll spare you a five hour long episode. Instead, I’m going to start with everyone’s, uh, favorite… warmongering… president? Let’s go back to the era of 7th President, Andrew Jackson.

On May 28, 1830, Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law. Here’s a lightly edited selection from that act. I removed any subclauses that made it hard to follow along, but left the original language. Quote! 

it shall and may be lawful for the President of the United States to cause so much of any territory belonging to the United States, west of the river Mississippi, not included in any state or organized territory… to be divided into a suitable number of districts, for the reception of… tribes or nations of Indians as may choose to exchange the lands where they now reside, and re-move there…

And be it further enacted, That it shall and may be lawful for the President to exchange any or all of such districts… with any tribe or nation of Indians now residing within the limits of any of the [United] states or [its] territories… 

And be it further enacted, That in the making of any such exchange or exchanges, it shall and may be lawful for the President… to assure the tribe or nation with which the exchange is made, that the United States will forever secure and guaranty to them, and their heirs or successors, the country so exchanged with them… Provided always, That such lands shall revert to the United States, if the Indians become extinct, or abandon the same [land].

APPROVED, May 28, 1830.

End quote

So essentially, if there are indigenous groups living in the United States or any of its claimed territories, the president can “exchange” the land they live on now for other territories out beyond the Mississippi. Most of which, when you look at maps from 1830, is just labelled “unorganized territory.” There were some settlements west of the Mississippi, like in Missouri or the Arkansas Territory, some small parts of Louisiana, but that’s about it. We’re not out gold mining in California yet. So basically, get out of the US and your ancestral lands and just go live over there where we haven’t settled yet.

Ok, but why though? Let’s do a little bit of context within our context – why did Jackson want to kick indigenous groups out of the established US and across the Mississippi River into uncharted territory? I mean, this act didn’t come out of nowhere, right?

So in the beginning of the 19th century, that’s the 1800s, Americans were starting to migrate further inland from the coastal settlements that characterized earlier settlement patterns. And when they moved into modern-day Alabama and Mississippi, Americans found themselves at odds with the indigenous groups who lived there.

Now it’s important to note that this is not the first time white Americans are encountering indigenous groups. That goes all the way back to the first settlers; go listen to my episodes on the Salem Witch Trials, Jamestown, or Roanoke for more information there.

But these 19th century settlers wanted these lands in Alabama and Mississippi, so they started petitioning the government to remove the offending human beings off of land that, they believed, should be theirs. A concept not unique to the American experience, but one that pops up quite a lot in history and modern times. Who cares if the land is yours – I just showed up and now I want it!

Now at the time, Presidents Jefferson and then Monroe agreed that Indians in the southeast and in the ever-expanding American territory should relocate to the West. But they didn’t use their power or that of the government to make it happen. That only began with war.

In 1814, then-Major General Andrew Jackson went to war against the Creek Indians in modern-day Alabama. This early period of American history is fraught with conflict between white settlers and indigenous groups, as you could probably expect – there was a lot of tension between those who had lived on land for generations, and those who wanted to live there now. Violence escalated back and forth, culminating in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. Jackson and his troops won, and as part of the victory, he forced the Creek leaders to hand over 23 million acres of land to white settlers. That land is about half of today’s Alabama and parts of Georgia.

But Jackson didn’t stop there – between that victory and becoming president, elected in 1828, he continued to negotiate with various tribes for their lands – sometimes peacefully, sometimes with force.

But all of this helped define his prevailing attitude towards the indigenous – that they should be removed from American lands and sent into the unclaimed Western territories. So when he became president, he made that happen.

And that’s what brings us to the Trail of Tears. Beginning in 1831, various indigenous groups – mainly the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, and Seminole – were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands in today’s Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama. Over the span of 20 years, they were marched over land or by rivers out to what was called “Indian Territory,” a large chunk of which is in modern-day Oklahoma.

And it was… bad. I mean, we’re not talking a brisk, happy hike out west. They were forcibly removed from the only place they had ever known and lived, land that belonged to their ancestors, and were subjected to very harsh conditions along the way. Let’s let those who were there do the talking. First, a letter from John G. Burnett, who was a soldier that was part of the forced relocation effort. Quote:

The removal of Cherokee Indians from their life long homes in the year of 1838 found me a young man in the prime of life and a Private soldier in the American Army. Being acquainted with many of the Indians and able to fluently speak their language, I was sent as interpreter into the Smoky Mountain Country in May, 1838, and witnessed the execution of the most brutal order in the History of American Warfare. I saw the helpless Cherokees arrested and dragged from their homes, and driven at the bayonet point into the stockades. And in the chill of a drizzling rain on an October morning I saw them loaded like cattle or sheep into six hundred and forty-five wagons and started toward the west.

One can never forget the sadness and solemnity of that morning. Chief John Ross led in prayer and when the bugle sounded and the wagons started rolling many of the children rose to their feet and waved their little hands good-by to their mountain homes, knowing they were leaving them forever. Many of these helpless people did not have blankets and many of them had been driven from home barefooted.

On the morning of November the 17th we encountered a terrific sleet and snow storm with freezing temperatures and from that day until we reached the end of the fateful journey on March the 26th, 1839, the sufferings of the Cherokees were awful. The trail of the exiles was a trail of death. They had to sleep in the wagons and on the ground without fire. And I have known as many as twenty-two of them to die in one night of pneumonia due to ill treatment, cold, and exposure…

The long painful journey to the west ended March 26th, 1839, with four-thousand silent graves reaching from the foothills of the Smoky Mountains to what is known as Indian territory in the West. And covetousness on the part of the white race was the cause of all that the Cherokees had to suffer… At this time, 1890, we are too near the removal of the Cherokees for our young people to fully understand the enormity of the crime that was committed against a helpless race. Truth is, the facts are being concealed from the young people of today. School children of today do not know that we are living on lands that were taken from a helpless race at the bayonet point to satisfy the white man's greed. Future generations will read and condemn the act… Let the historian of a future day tell the sad story with its sighs, its tears and dying groans.

End quote.

And I suppose I’m doing just that – passing on our past so that we do not continue to make the same mistakes. I don’t think we as human beings have done a good job of that, but it doesn’t mean I’ll stop trying.

Now consider the source – that was a young man who was sent there to take part in this. And years later, he writes of his regret, hoping it will make a difference. That’s bad enough, but we also have indigenous sources. One source I read mentioned how, since this particular group had to march over the winter, the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers were frozen solid, so the only water available was stagnant. Within one family, the father, mother, and five siblings died from water-borne disease, leaving only one survivor. 

Another survivor wrote, quote, 

“Long time we travel on way to new land. People feel bad when they leave Old Nation. Womens cry and make sad wails. Children cry and many men cry...but they say nothing and just put heads down and keep on go towards West. Many days pass and people die very much.”

End quote.

It was a horrendous event in US history. But despite this, it wasn’t the only forcible relocation, as we’ll soon get to the Navajo Long Walk.

Now once the indigenous were removed from Southeastern American lands, the appetite of white Americans only grew – there was more land out West, ripe for the taking. And we typically encapsulate this feeling into the concept of “manifest destiny” – that the United States was divinely ordained by God to continue expanding further and further West, to the other side of the continent, and bring what they perceived to be the superior systems of democracy, capitalism, and the American way of life from one coast to the other. It’s what led, in part, to the Mexican American War, fought between 1846-1848. The US went to war in Mexican lands to annex Texas, which had won independence from Mexico in 1836, though Mexico wouldn’t recognize it. That was the Alamo, by the way. If you’ve ever heard “Remember the Alamo,” and all of that… that was all part of Texas fighting for their independence from Mexico. Almost all the Texans died at the Alamo, but it became a rallying cry that helped other Texans win independence a few weeks later.

But anyway. 

The US inserted itself into the situation to annex Texas. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed in 1848 to end the war, forced Mexico to give the US a whole boatload of land that stretched from New Mexico to California and the Pacific Coast. And with that acquisition of land, the US felt emboldened in their manifest destiny quest to expand American values across the continent. 

At the same time the US was fighting Mexico, and in fact a bit before that, there was also the California Gold Rush, which helped encourage some Americans to head out West to try their luck panning for gold. Forcing Mexico to hand over Californian lands further justified settlement in lands that were not their own.

And then, as I mentioned in my previous episode on the Bloody Bender family in Kansas, you’ve got the transcontinental railroad, which helped transport people out West even faster. The railroad began construction in 1863, but by this point, westward expansion was in full force. My favorite story from this era, of course, is the infamous Donner Party incident, which was in 1846-1847.

But my broader point, I suppose, to help paint the picture that is today’s episode, is that white settlers and Americans were rapidly moving out West. It didn’t matter whose land it was, who was already living there, or even if it belonged to another country – the US felt that the land should be theirs, and so they would take it. Cherokee in the way? March them to Oklahoma. Mexicans claiming land that should be ours? War. And now that we’ve got tons of land, let’s just encourage settlers to go out West and claim plots of land – that was the Homestead Act of 1862 – to help with western migration and American cultural expansion.

And in the mid 1860s, the next casualty on the manifest destiny-westward expansion list was the Navajo – the Diné – who were forced off their land in 1863 and imprisoned until 1868.

So first, let’s learn a little more about the Diné, their land, and what it meant to them. Only then can we truly understand what they lost with their forcible relocation.
The Four Mountains
The Diné originally came from northwestern Canada and Alaska, but settled into what became their homeland in the 1400s - parts of today’s Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado. Essentially the “four corners.”

And if you don’t know what the four corners are, it’s the only point in the US where four states meet at a single point, so you could technically be standing in all four states at once. Check out a map, it’s pretty neat. There’s a monument there and everything. I remember going there as a very small, and very weird child.

The Diné chose this region over others because of their creation myth. I’m not going to go over all of it, because this isn’t a mythology podcast, but a crucial element is the four sacred mountains. As described by Ravis [ray-vis] Henry, a Diné park ranger at the Canyon de Chelly [shay], which is on Navajo lands, the Diné migrated through four different worlds before arriving on this one. Their deities, their gods, told them that they created four sacred mountains for the Diné people made out of four different stones or shells. The white mountain, the turquoise mountain, the yellow mountain, and the black mountain. Once made, the mountains began to breathe and speak, and gave their names – and it is the space within these four mountains that was to be the Diné home.

The first mountain, the white mountain, is the eastern boundary of the Diné homeland. It called itself Sisnaajini [sis -naw- djinn- eh], but we know it as Blanca Peak in Colorado, the fourth highest summit of the Rocky Mountains.

The second mountain, the turquoise mountain, is the southern boundary and rests in New Mexico. It took the name Tsoodził [t-sow dzeh]. We know it as Mount Taylor, named for President Taylor in 1849.

The third mountain, the yellow mountain, is the western boundary and is located in Arizona north of Flagstaff. It’s name is Dok’o’oosłííd [doke -*click* oh- o - slee], but we know it as the San Francisco Peaks.

And finally, the black mountain in Colorado is the northern boundary, which the Diné call Dibe Nitsaa [dee-ben-t-za]. We call that one Mount Hesperus, and it’s near the southern edge of the San Juan mountains, which is the traditional homeland of the Ute peoples. It’s also the same mountain range that Alfred Packer operated in, the San Juans. He was the Colorado Cannibal, if you didn’t listen to that episode. That one was good, I liked telling that story. Go check that one out if you’re interested in this era of frontiersmen co-existing with settlers and the indigenous.

Now within these four mountains, the Diné had everything they needed to survive. 

Or, as Diné leader and chief Barboncito later said, quote,
Our grandfathers had no idea of living in any country except our own… When the Navajos were first created, four mountains and four rivers were pointed out to us, inside of which we should live, that was to be our country.

There was food, water, and shelter within the Navajo lands. In the Canyon de Chelly, a beautiful, winding stronghold of red rocks and peaks, with beautiful verdant greenery in the valleys, there were also plentiful orchards of peach trees.

But the Diné were unique amongst other indigenous groups in the area because they were semi-nomadic pastoralists – they relied heavily on sheep, goats, and horses for their survival. Anthropologists call it transhumance herding – the idea of migrating seasonally based on where the flocks could eat and survive. In the winter, they’d live in the lowland valleys to avoid the harsh snows and cold winds. In the summer, they’d migrate to the cooler mountains to escape the bowl of heat. The sheep, especially, provided meat but also wool, and the Diné were excellent crafters and weavers. I read in Hampton Sides’ book Blood and Thunder that Navajo loomed blankets were prized and highly valued; he notes that one Navajo blanket, with bold, crisp geometric designs in red and black, that was so tightly woven it could hold water, was worth ten buffalo robes. Even though they weren’t actually buffalo, they were bison. We just call them buffalo for… reasons. But there is a distinct difference!!

Sheep were so integral to their existence that the Diné were known for raiding local settlements and other indigenous groups for their livestock – acts that made them a lot of enemies, amongst other indigenous, like their historic enemies the Utes, as well as local settlers and the Mexicans to the south. And to the fast-arriving Americans, there was a growing sense of unease and confusion about the Diné. Many feared Navajo raids. And so, there was a growing clamor to do something about them. 

Let’s start covering the history that leads up to the Long Walk.
American Arrival
So when we try to answer the question of “why the Diné” and “why that moment in history,” the simplest answer is this: the Diné lived in land that the US now claimed as part of their westward expansion. And their constant sheep- and horse-raiding made them a thorn in the side of everyone else living there, which made them a target.

Peter Iverson says it well in his book, Diné: A History of the Navajos. Quote:

A clear pattern had emerged in regard to those peoples and those lands. The westward movement of the Americans sooner or later engulfed Indian communities. Americans justified the process of dispossession by declaring that Indians weren’t using their lands to full advantage… Indians represented an obstacle to “progress,” a deferral of dreams.

End quote.

And this attitude is evident in what the Americans wanted for the Diné – to relocate, for one, and to settle down into agriculture, what they considered to be the more superior form of eking out a living. Which of course should stop any horse and sheep raiding. Raise a whole new generation of Diné to farm and stay put, and perhaps within a generation, the old ways would be gone.

Most Americans didn’t understand the indigenous way of life, and many saw it as “savage” or “barbaric” – their words from various sources, not mine. Iverson continues with this quick quote: “Indians must be compelled upward out of savagery and barbarism into the higher stage of civilization. If this “improvement” required coercion, then so be it.” End quote.

Boy, where have we heard this before? My mind goes straight to imperialism in Africa. If you learned about this in school, or listened to my episode on the Belgian Congo, then this should be ringing some bells for you, too. It’s the same justification for imperialism that European nations used to take over 90% of African land away from the Africans who had lived there for centuries. Same vibe, different people. “Civilize” those they deemed lesser, right? We did the same thing for our imperial territories, by the way – the poem “White Man’s Burden” by Rudyard Kipling, often cited in conversations about Western imperialism, was about why the US should colonize the Philippines.

But the US did it at home too – they wanted to “civilize” the indigenous. And while they were at it, they wanted to move them off of that productive land they don’t seem to be using. 

And that, my friends, is really what it was about. What do I always say? It’s about land. Everything is about land. The land itself, where the land exists, the resources in and around that land, who is living on the land, and how we can profit from the land. Men have killed and will continue to kill over land.

Now to hasten this process along a bit, the US government needed a reason to get in there and start writing laws to take the land away. So, in August 1849, troops marched into Diné lands and killed a man who had apparently stolen a horse. In the ensuing struggle, seven Diné men died, including a respected Diné leader named Narbona who had previously negotiated with the US government to try and protect his lands.

The result of this was the Treaty of 1850, which boiled down to this quick quoted passage, quote: “the Govt of the US will establish such military posts and agencies, and authorize such trading-houses, at such time and in such places as said Govt may designate.” End quote. Or in more colloquial terms, we’ll put military posts where we want.

Not too much longer afterward, Fort Defiance was constructed in Navajo country, in Arizona. The town has the same name today – Defiance, Arizona. So now, we have a situation where the US government is taking an active interest and stance in Diné lands, and even put a fort within the four mountains. You could imagine the Diné didn’t take it well.

For instance, if the US government was going to be posted up in Diné lands, you might hope that they’d keep the peace, right? But Diné women and children were still being taken and sold into slavery, so the Diné in general weren’t too keen on doing what the US government wanted. And they made that quite clear.

So the following year, 1851, the governor of the New Mexico territory put together volunteer units under his direction that were authorized to, quote, 

…attack any hostile tribe of Indians which may have entered the settlements for the purpose of plunder and depredation.” “[Should they] dare to come to your neighborhood, you are authorized to make war upon them, and to take their animals and such other property as they may have with them.

End quote.

You can clearly see that the relationship between the American settlers and the indigenous Diné was not going well. And conflicts and squabbles kept breaking out at Fort Defiance between the revolving door of commanders and the indigenous men and women they commanded.

But things started to change for the worse in 1862 with the arrival of General James Henry Carleton.

So back in 1840, the idea of reservations was floated around as a potential (heavy air quotes) “solution” to what they considered to be the Indian problem. As Iverson puts it, policymakers hoped that isolating and controlling Indians on reservations would encourage non-Indian “settlement” and development of the interior West. Given the problems of proximity in the past, the government sought to move Indians beyond harm’s way to some of America’s least attractive, most remote terrain. And by doing so, the land would be opened up for what they thought would be more productive development, which in turn, they justified, would be in the best interests of America. How patriotic.

Carleton was very much on board with this idea, and he already had a place in mind that he had seen while out and about - the Bosque Redondo, or Round Forest, in eastern New Mexico.

Carleton envisioned reservations as places where the new generation of children would learn to read and write, taught US culture, values, and Christianity, and hopefully, quoting Carleton here, quote,

…the old Indians will die off and carry with them the latent longings for murder and robbing: the young ones will take their places without these longings: and thus, little by little, they will become a happy and contented people…

Gross.

You know what this is, by the way? Ethnic cleansing. More on that later.

Here’s more of Carleton, quote:

By the subjugation and colonization of the Navajo tribe we gain for civilization their whole country, which is much larger in extent than the state of Ohio, and, besides being the best pastoral region between the two oceans, is said to abound in the precious as well as the useful metals… their destiny [is] to give way to the insatiable progress of our race.

End quote.

Double gross. Their destiny is to help white Americans progress further as a race? Ugh. And that line in there about useful metals – with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, just operating on vibes, Carleton had this hunch that there was gold in them thar hills within the four mountains. And he wanted his own little piece of the gold rush glory. There was gold in California, there was gold in Colorado, why not also in New Mexico? The territory was under his control, after all, and he wanted the glory. His other colleagues were off fighting battles in the Civil War while he’s in charge of New Mexico, and he wanted to make a name for himself.

So to do that, he’d move the Diné out of their sacred Four Mountains to a far away place on the Pecos River, the Bosque Redondo as I mentioned earlier. 

He wanted to bring them, quoting Carleton again,
…away from the hills and hiding places of their country, and there to be kind to them: to teach their children how to read and write: teach them the art of peace: teach them the truths of Christianity. Soon they will acquire new habits, new ideas, new modes of life; the old Indians will die off and carry with them all the latent longings for murdering and robbing: the young ones will take their places; and thus, little by little, they will become a happy and contented people, and the Navajo Wars will be remembered only as something that belongs entirely in the past.

Ughhhhh triple gross. We’ve heard this story before, right? Oh, no, it’s okay because we’re going to civilize them and teach them English and the ways of God and make their lives better because their lives will look more like our lives. 

The 19th century was full of stories of the West doing this to those they perceived as lesser, and it’s a horrible stain on our collective history.

Once Carleton forcibly relocated these people he despised, he’d need a fort there to police them – Fort Sumner, named after a commanding officer. Not to be confused with Fort Sumter in South Carolina, which is where the first and opening shot of the Civil War took place only a few years earlier. He started construction on Fort Sumner almost immediately after taking office in New Mexico.

The site itself… well, it was awful. He thought it was nice enough; it had a beautiful pocket of trees, it was on the river… but when his men went to check it out before the whole process started, they noted it was far away from supplies, building materials would need to be carried over great distances, the water wasn’t clean - it tasted funny and was alkaline - and it was subject to spring floods. Carleton didn’t care, scoffed at their general disapproval, and went ahead with his plans anyway.

So the idea was formed, the site was chosen… and now the hard part. How does one forcibly relocate an entire civilization of people off their ancestral lands, when you know they will fight back?

For this, Carleton turned to his friend – the famous Kit Carson.
Kit Carson
So in preparation for this episode I read a whole bunch of sources on the Diné, Carleton, Kit Carson, and more. And I really like this general description of Kit Carson from Hampton Sides’ book, Blood and Thunder. Quote:

Christopher Carson was a loveable man. Nearly everyone said so. He was loyal, honest and kind. In many pinpointable incidents, he acted bravely and with much physical grace. More than once, he saved people’s lives without seeking recognition or pay. He was a dashing good Samaritan – a hero, even. He was also a natural born killer. It is hard to reconcile the much-described sweetness of his disposition with his frenzies of violence. Carson could be brutal even for the West of his day (a West so wild it lacked outlaws, for no law existed to be outside of). His ferocious temper could be triggered in an instant. If you crossed him, he would find you. After participating in a preemptive attack – others called it a massacre – on an Indian village along California’s Sacramento River, Carson pronounced the action “a perfect butchery.”

End quote.

Kit Carson, like many other young men in the era of westward expansion, yearned for the freedom a life in the mountains could offer, so he went West at a young age and learned from various mentors over the years. I’m not writing an episode on Kit Carson, though, so I’ll skip through most of his biography. Read Hampton Sides’ book for that.

What’s important to know about Kit Carson was that he lived amongst various indigenous groups for much of his adult life, and made a home in Taos, New Mexico. He was friends with the Utes, who you may recall were enemies of the Navajo, so it’s logical to think that Carson carried these biases with him.

His exploits out west in various arenas made him famous; his friend and mentor John C. Fremont was sent out west in the 1830s on a geographical surveying expedition, and in the 1840 report he produced, made Kit Carson an absolute legend. From this, various writers turned Kit Carson into a literary hero, sensationalizing his adventures and making him a household name. So when Carleton needed someone he could trust, who knew the land and the men who lived there, he turned to Kit Carson. The two quickly became friends.

Carleton first had Kit Carson – I’m using his nickname and last name together to help distinguish him from Carleton, which I fear I might slur together into one name otherwise… Carleton, Carson… – he had Kit Carson first do a “trial run” of sorts on another indigenous group, the Mescalero Apaches. Kit Carson would overrun them and force them to the Bosque Redondo. From there, they’d use their successes and any failures to inform the Navajo campaign. 

Interestingly, Carleton originally wanted Kit Carson to kill all Indian men he came across, and just relocate the women and children. Kit Carson refused to do that – after all, he grew up around various indigenous groups and was friendly to many. But his loyalty was first and foremost to the Union and his country, and was very much on board with the idea of relocating the Diné to the south. But he drew the line at indiscriminately murdering all of the indigenous men simply for being indigenous men.

The “trial run” with the Mescalero Apaches was a success, so Carleton wanted Kit Carson to head immediately for the Four Mountains and its roughly 12,000 inhabitants.

He commanded nearly a thousand men – US army officers, New Mexican volunteers, Pueblos, and Utes. 

Now Carleton had given the Diné a chance to surrender before Carson came in and did the job by force. After the Mescalero Apaches were moved, Carleton met with Navajo leaders and told them, essentially, that they had six months to move peacefully. And if by the end of that six months the Diné leaders didn’t come back to him and agree to these terms, he would use violence to get the job done.

Not much of a choice, really. Move peacefully, or we’ll move you forcefully. 

But the Diné didn’t come back, and so Carleton felt he had done his Christian duty and atempted to solve this peacefully. He could sleep at night. He tried. Which is really just nonsense; he just wanted a justification for what he was about to have Kit Carson do.

And so, he drew up General Order No. 15. Quote:

For a long time past, the Navajo Indians have murdered and robbed the people of New Mexico. It is therefore ordered that Colonel Christopher Carson, with a proper military force proceed without delay to Navajo country and there… to prosecute a vigorous war upon the men of this tribe…”

End quote.

So Carson moved in. And as they marched into Navajo territory, they destroyed lands and crops along the way – they went full scorched earth, the policy of destroying everything as you go so that your enemy can’t make use of it. There weren’t spectacular battles or set pieces, really. Or as Sides put it, 

there was nothing glorious about Carson’s campaign: no great engagements, no fields of honor, no decisive victories. With the American invasion, the Navajos did that they had always done – they scattered, vanished, dropped into their thousand pockets and holes and abided by silence. And so, with no one to figt, Carson’s campaign became… a war of grinding attrition.

End quote.

In fact, Kit Carson’s side only had one casualty – a Major Joseph Cummings, who surged ahead of his column alone into a canyon, and was later found miles ahead with a rifle wound in his belly.

Since Kit Carson was fighting ghosts, he spent much of his time destroying the land and their settlements instead. Wheatfields and cornfields were destroyed, pots and baskets broken, livestock eaten or killed, watering holes and salt fields monitored and controlled… the idea was to starve the Diné out of hiding.

And, I suppose, that brutal tactic worked. As Iverson wrote, 

The maelstrom of destruction and death brought by Carson and his men and their Native allies had the desired effect. Thousands of Navajo were starting or freezing to death; countless others had died.

End quote.

Kit Carson estimated that 2 million pounds of food was burned, thousands of acres of ripe, harvestable food. And when the Diné could get out to find supplies, they found that everything was destroyed. Orchards cut down, fields ruined, livestock taken away. As this war of attrition went into the winter, many Diné starved to death, cut off from their food and water sources. 

Some surrendered earlier than others. A group of about 60 refugees hiding out in the Canyon de Chelly came to Kit Carson, telling him, quote, “Because of what your soldiers have done, we are all starving. Many of our women and children have already died from hunger. We would have come in long ago, but we believed this was a war of extermination.” End quote.

When Kit Carson assured them that they would be moved to a new location, they were… happy? I guess? It’s better than the alternative – slowly starving to death. Some of these refugees went back into the Canyon to tell the others that they could give themselves up and live, rather than starve to death in the cold. 

Kit Carson took this as a sign the war against the Diné was going very much in his favor, so he progressed even further into the Canyon itself. He ordered his men to lay waste to it all. Go even more scorched earth on the land, including the prized peach orchards of the Canyon de Chelly.  Anyone who willingly surrendered would be spared, and any resistance would be put down.

I like how Hampton Sides puts this next part. Quote: 

It’s hard to fathom how this played on the Navajo psyche. To obliterate the grand old [peach] orchards was a final thumb in the eye, as if to say, “Everything that you are, everything that you have, is forever disgraced.” The Navajos would never forgive him for it.

End quote.

Many surrendered. It was either that, or starvation, really. More and more came as the months went on. And soon enough, it would be time for the Long Walk out of the Four Mountains and into the Bosque Redondo.
The Long Walk
So, again, the Long Walk is a bit of a misnomer. It wasn’t a walk; it was a forced march. Starved, emaciated Diné were forced to head several hundred miles south and east to the new Fort Sumner. They didn’t know where they were going, how long it would take to get there, what they would find when they arrived, or how long they’d be there.

It also wasn’t a single event; there were 53 different episodes of Diné being marched to their new reservation dating from August 1863 to the end of 1866. Sometimes it was just a few dozen, other times hundreds. There also wasn’t one single route. I put a link to a website run by Diné Land Use dot org in the description, showing a map of all the various routes the Diné were marched along – check it out next time you’re able to. 

You could imagine that this journey would be difficult in perfect weather. But for all, it was not only a physically difficult trip, but also a psychologically difficult one. They were being forced from their ancestral home to a new place, and they feared what it would be like. Here are some primary sources about the trip itself, told from Diné who survived the Long Walk.

One man, Curly Tso, said that, quote, “it was horrible the way they treated our people. Some old handicapped people, and children who couldn’t make the journey, were shot on the spot, and their bodies were left behind for crows and coyotes to eat.”

Gus Bighorse noted that, quote, “The trip is on foot. People are shot on the spot if they say they are tired or sick or if they stop to help someone. If a woman is in labor with a baby, she is killed. Many get sick and get diarrhea because of the food. They are heartbroken because their families die on the way.”

Luci Tapahonso reports that, quote, “Two women were near the time of the births of their babies and they had a hard time keeping up with the rest… Some army men pulled them behind a huge rock, and we screamed out loud when we heard the gunshots. The women didn’t make a sound but we cried out loud for them and their babies.”

Their new “home,” if you could even call it that, they called Hwéeldi [h-well day], and it was as awful as they feared. It was flat, barren, treeless. No mountains in view. And they were imprisoned there from the winter of 1863 to June of 1868.
Fort Sumner
Life at Fort Sumner was not what Carleton had promised, but are we really surprised to hear that? When did the colonizers ever make good on the promise that they would make life “better” for those they colonized? That they’d educate them, teach them to read and write, introduce religion, teach them agriculture, etc, etc… That’s not what government-led colonization is about, right? Sure, maybe some individuals want to do some good along the way. But the whole process of colonization is a violent act, and it always ends in violence.

There were some attempts at educating the children in the ways of Western civilizations, but it was so far removed from their way of life that it failed. Really, it wasn’t about empowering the next generation of Diné children. It was about indoctrinating them in Western American values so that they would replace their parents and ancestor’s ways of thinking – Carleton said as much in his letters.

While imprisoned at Fort Sumner, the Diné were hungry all the time. There wasn’t enough food to feed everyone, and the rations weren’t enough to stave off that hunger. The Diné could farm, they weren’t completely nomadic, but the land at the Bosque Redondo was awful. Insects, a harsh climate, and poor soil made agriculture almost impossible. 

Starvation and poor conditions also made disease a problem; many died of dysentery.

Fun side tangent time, because you know I love enthusing about disease ! And if you didn’t know that, welcome to the podcast. I love talking about diseases and how impactful tiny microbes have been on our human history. And to be fair, I don’t think I’ve had many episodes lately where I had the chance to talk about disease. But I do today! 

Dysentery is an intestinal infection, usually transmitted by bacteria such as shigella, salmonella, E. coli, or campylobacter. It’s worth noting that a parasite named Entamoeba histolytica [his-tuh-LIT-ih-kuh] can also cause dysentery, though this is usually in tropical regions where the amoeba exists.

Since it’s an intestinal bacterial infection, expect intestinal symptoms: severe bloody or mucus-y diarrhea, abdominal cramps, fever, nausea. You can get it through contaminated food or water, or from poor hygiene.

Intestinal diseases like dysentery, and also ones like cholera, can lead to dehydration. This is true of any minor infection that leads to diarrhea, by the way. You expel so much fluid that you can get dehydrated. So the solution, of course, is to rehydrate. In the modern era, we do this with water and electrolytes, or with a salt solution. We also, of course, have antibiotics to help kill off any bad bacteria, right? 

Well, the Diné who were forcibly relocated to Bosque Redondo didn’t have any of that. Antibiotics weren’t discovered until the 20th century, and were only available on the market from 1933 onwards. So, not the mid-1860s. And as far as rehydrating with water, the Pecos River was not clean. It was alkaline and just poor quality. And I can imagine it was used for all manner of things, so I could bet there was fecal matter and other contaminants in the water. Exactly what you don’t want in a squalid camp where people are already sick, stressed, and starved.

Beyond things like agricultural issues and disease, there were also external forces picking off the Diné – notably, the Comanche, who would raid the Diné and other indigenous groups quartered off at the Bosque and steal women, children, and horses. So much for being under the protection of the US government.

And it was a flat, open area, so stragglers were also picked off by wild animals like wolves and pigs. And I’m not talking your nice, sweet Wilbur down on the farm… wild pigs are no joke and are very very dangerous.

And it wasn’t just the indigenous who were suffering. The following is from a soldier named George Pettis who served at Fort Sumner. Quote: 
[The fort is] a terrible place… [The river is] a little stream winding through an immense plain, and the water is terrible, and it is all that can be had within 50 miles; it is full of alkali and operates on a person like castor oil – take the water, heat it a little, and the more you wash yourself with common soap, the dirtier you will get.

You get the idea that it was just a horrible, squalid fort and camp where the people were left to get sick and slowly die. It was essentially just an internment camp, a place to put people who were being ethnically cleansed from the US.

Here is the dictionary definition of ethnic cleansing, taken from Brittanica. 
Ethnic cleansing – the attempt to create ethnically homogeneous geographic areas through the deportation or forcible displacement of persons belonging to particular ethnic groups.

And while the term was coined much later in history, attached to other contexts, this was exactly the point of the Long Walk. To create an ethnically homogenous area by removing those who aren’t part of that ethnicity. So, to remove the Diné from America because they weren’t Americans. And this was done through forcible displacement, sending them from their mountainous homeland to the flat, barren, disease-ridden Bosque Redondo. And the long term plan was to educate the children to not be like the Diné, and instead be indoctrinated into the American way of life.

In all, 2,000 Diné died at the Bosque Redondo, which amounted to about 25% of those who were interned there.

But luckily for the Diné, unlike those who endured the Trail of Tears decades earlier, Bosque Redondo did not become their permanent home.
The Return Home
After several years of imprisonment at the Bosque Redondo, Diné leaders managed to negotiate with the US government. Part of this stemmed from the fact that Carleton’s experiment had spectacularly failed. The Diné were not better off at this new location than they were in their ancestral home, and it was a growing stain on America’s conscience. So the US government sent in some men as peace commissioners to negotiate with the Diné.

And so, Diné leaders such as Barboncito and Manuelito negotiated with the government to allow the Diné to return home. To do so, they agreed to set up a reservation - that old idea of delineating space where the indigenous would run their own territory. 

General William Tecumseh Sherman was sent to the Bosque Redondo on behalf of the US government – the same William Tecumseh Sherman who was a Union General in the Civil War and who pioneered the idea of “total war” and once said “War is Hell.” Sherman was sent to negotiate a treaty. It wasn’t so much a matter of whether they would stay at the Bosque, but instead where they would go. Sherman wanted to send them into the nebulous “Indian Territory” that was still in the middle chunk of the country; his negotiating partner Samuel Tappan wanted to send them back to their home territory.

Here’s what Sherman said at the negotiating table. Quote:
You have no farms, no herds, and are now as poor as you were when the government brought you here.

End quote.

Simple and short, I like it. Barboncito replied, quote, 
Our grandfathers had no idea of living in any othe country except our own… When the Navajos were first created, four mountains and four rivers were pointed out to us, inside of which we should live, that was to be our country, and was given to us by the first woman of the Navajo tribe… I hope to God you will not ask me to go to any other country than my own. It might turn out another Bosque Redondo. They told us this was a good place when we came, but it is not.

End quote.

The end result worked out in Barboncito’s favor - they were to go back to their ancestral homeland.

The Diné left the Bosque Redondo on June 18th. They walked together in a line that stretched for 10 miles, retracing the steps where many of their kin had died only a few years prior.

The land they returned to was their own, although it wasn’t quite what the US promised; Sherman said he’d grant them six million 400 thousand acres, but they got a little over half that amount. It wasn’t a sufficient enough base for the Diné, but the good news was that their territory wasn’t delineated by a fence, so the Diné just… moved onto the lands they considered theirs within the original four mountains. In this way, their reservation ended up growing about four times in size.  

They still had to contend with destroyed cropslands, broken orchards, and no livestock… but they could rebuild. And they were back home. And to this day, the Long Walk remains part of the Diné cultural identity. For the Diné, it is a story of generational trauma and pain, but also one of resilience and survival.
Outro
Thanks for joining me for this episode of A Popular History of Unpopular Things! My name is Kelli Beard, and I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode on the Navajo, or Diné, Long Walk. Thank you for tuning into my podcast, and check out some of the other episodes if you want more!

If you want to support the show, I’ve got a link in the description for Buy Me A Coffee, a site where fans can fund small creators like me, but without having to sign up for an account. I would of course appreciate any help you can give me, but honestly, I just appreciate that you listened to me talk about cool history stuff. 

Be sure to like and follow my podcast, available wherever you listen, so you know when new episodes are dropped. And stay tuned to get a popular history of unpopular things.

Sources
Books
Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West by Hampton Sides
Diné: A History of the Navajos by Peter Iverson feat. photographs by Monty Roessel
Navajo Stories of the Long Walk Period, publ. By Navajo Community College Press

Articles
Hwéeldi - The Long Walk - https://Dinélanduse.org/hweeldi/

Documentaries/Videos
The Long Walk: Tears of the Navajo (2009) on PBS
Sisnaajini: A Navajo Story - Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve on YouTube