Long Walk of the Navajo

The Long Walk of the Navajo, also called the Long Walk to Bosque Redondo was an Indian removal effort of the United States government in 1863 and 1864.

The plan was originated Gen. James Carleton and executed by Kit Carson, who used a scorched earth campaign to divide the Navajo people, and starve them out of their traditional canyon refuges.

Led by the United States Army, thousands of Navajo (along with Mescalero Apaches from the Sacramento Mountains) were relocated from their native lands in eastern Arizona Territory and western New Mexico Territory to Bosque Redondo at Fort Sumner, New Mexico on the Pecos River Valley. Bosque Redondo means "Round Grove of Trees" in Spanish.

At least 200 died along the 300 mile (500 km) trek, and the reservation itself was little more than a prison camp. Between 8,000 and 9,000 people were settled on a 40 square mile (104 km²) area. By 1868 the experiment—meant to be the first Indian reservation west of Indian Territory—was declared a miserable failure, the victim of poor planning, disease, crop infestation and generally poor conditions for agriculture. The various nations were permitted to return from whence they came, and granted a 3.5 million acre (14,000 km²) area where they had previously resided. On June 18, 1868 they set off on the return journey, the Long Walk Home.

See also: Navajo War, Canyon de Chelly, Trail of Tears

External link

• New Mexico State University: The Long Walk (http://reta.nmsu.edu/modules/longwalk/default.htm)