Because of the decisions of General James Carleton and the decisions made by many other Americans, the Long Walk’s conditions were especially hurtful. Carleton, who was in charge of the U.S. Army Department, was insistent that the Navajo must be moved from where they currently resided. In the fall of 1862, he ordered Kit Carson to instigate a removal process. (The Long Walk, Denetdale) With five companies of men and the help of some Ute Native Americans who didn't like the Navajo, Kit Carson used scorched-earth policies (a military strategy that targets anything that might be useful to the enemy while moving through their territory) to defeat morally and physically the Navajo. (Broken Rainbow) The soldiers and Ute burned Navajo crops, shot their livestock, contaminated their water, killed many of the men, and raped many women and children of the towns that they raided. Before a raid, a Navajo village might have had anywhere from two days to two minutes of warning. They had to grab whatever they could carry, and leave with the soldiers when they came, on penalty of death. (The Dine Death March)
Say to them, ‘Go to Bosque Redondo, or we will pursue and destroy you.... This war will be pursued against you if it take years, until you cease to exist or move.'
-Carleton, in a letter to Carson, September 19, 1863
(The American Southwest. Canyon De Chelly National Monument. Digital image. Canyon De Chelly and Spider Rocks. The American Southwest, n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.)
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The soldiers would take the captured Navajo to the nearest fort where they were kept with hundreds of others
until they could be transported to Fort Sumner on Bosque Redondo reservation. By the winter of 1864, the last of the Navajos hiding in Canyon de Chelly, pictured to the left, surrendered to the soldiers so that they would not freeze to death or die of hunger. (The Navajos of Utah, Maryboy and Begay) |
He tried to flush out the Navajo by contaminating their water, killing their livestock, burning their crops.
-Anderson Norcross on Kit Carson's tactics
Only one group of Navajo avoided capture. They hid on the Black Mesa, pictured to the right, and survived because of their superior knowledge of the rough terrain. (The Dine Death March) This group of escapees enabled the Navajo to restart their life after the complex emergency because they could continue maintaining the fields and breeding what little livestock they had left while all of the other Navajos were being controlled by the U.S. (The Long Walk, Denetdale)
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(Lund, Ken. Black Mesa Area. Digital image. Flickr. N.p., 20 Nov. 2005. Web. 11 Mar. 2017.)
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The way they’ve been treated, yeah, they gave up. They put on their white flags and went to Fort Defiance, but still it didn’t matter. They had to walk.
-Kee Yazzie on his ancestors who survived the walk