The conditions at Bosque Redondo caused the suffering to be far from over for the Navajo once they arrived. Bosque Redondo, a barren reservation land in Eastern New Mexico, was meant to hold the many Navajo transported there as well as to “indoctrinate Navajos to white American ways.” (Denetdale 56) The Navajo were supposed to build a new life there on the reservation with no supplies except what they had brought from home that survived the walk and useless tools given to them by the U.S. (Broken Rainbow)
In Navajo we call it Hwéeldi: The place of suffering.
-Clarence Clearwater (about Bosque Redondo and Fort Sumner)
This picture shows American soldiers guarding a group of Navajo on Bosque Redondo. The Navajo were wrapped in loose blankets and are shown here huddling for warmth. The soldiers are armed with guns and any Navajo who resisted any orders the soldiers said was shot. (The Long Walk, Denetdale)
(Navajo captives under U.S. Army guard at Bosque Redondo, New Mexico, circa 1864–1868. Digital image. The Long Walk of the Navajo | Peoples of the Mesa Verde Region. Crow Canyon Archeological Center, 2014. Web. 11 Mar. 2017.) |
The U.S. said it was being generous by giving the Navajo seeds of plants that they did not know how to grow and giving them minuscule rations for their first winter on the reservation. The already meager rations were often cut in half. (Broken Rainbow) Gerald Thompson, an author and professor at Carnegie Mellon University, “calculated the caloric intake of the daily issuance of food at 1,000 calories, well below the number needed to sustain a healthy lifestyle.” (Denetdale 81) Aside from the poor quality and small quantity of the food given to them, the Navajo were given food they were unsure of how to prepare. Many got sick and died from the coffee beans that they tried to eat, unaware that coffee is prepared through boiling and draining the beans.
Officials called it a reservation, but to the conquered and exiled Navajos it was a wretched prison camp.
- David Roberts, Smithsonian Magazine
The picture to the right, most likely taken by a U.S. army officer, shows a woman on Bosque Redondo with her child. Of the few children who weren't killed, left behind, or died from some other cause on The Long Walk, very few survived internment on Bosque Redondo. The minimal food, epidemics of disease from unclean water, and freezing temperatures made it hard enough for adults to survive, and there was an extremely high infant mortality rate. The survival rate for children on The Long Walk and at Bosque Redondo was 15%. (The Dine Death March) Years after The Long Walk American army logbooks record how the population of Navajo, as would be expected, had very few members born from around 1860 to 1870. (Broken Rainbow)
(U.S. Army Signal Corp. Navajo Woman and Baby. Digital image. NPR. Library of Congress, 1866. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.) |
This picture taken at Bosque Redondo shows some of the better homes made by the Navajo, which had skins and blankets to cover them.
(Bosque Redondo. Digital image. New Mexico Historic Sites. Bosque Redondo Memorial, ~1864. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.) |
Some of the other problems that the Navajo encountered once they reached Bosque Redondo were a “lack of adequate shelter, a constant shortage of food, the harsh climate, and bouts of epidemic diseases.” (Denetdale 73) Poor shelter on Bosque Redondo was one of the most harmful things that the U.S. did to the Navajo. (The Navajos of Utah, Maryboy and Begay) As a Navajo storyteller Dugal Tsosie Begay said, “Most homes at Fort Sumner… were made by digging holes in the ground. Laid across the holes were logs and branches. On top of the logs and branches were piles of dirt.” (Navajo Stories of the Long Walk Period, Roessel) Some of the better homes had blankets laid across the logs instead of just dirt. Even with blankets though, the houses did not protect from temperatures that could drop below freezing. Though the actual walking portion of the Navajo relocation killed hundreds of people, it was Bosque Redondo that was the most merciless cruelty of the U.S. (Broken Rainbow)
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