Last night I finished the book I've been reading, Navajo stories of the Long Walk. It's been an interesting read, because all the stories were passed down to the tellers who contributed to the book by relatives who had either endured or escaped the ordeal, with few exceptions. When the stories were collected, in 1973, the tellers were mostly elderly, ranging from 70 to 100. A couple of them who were younger had heard the tales from their parents who had been born after the tribe returned to their homeland. After twenty or more stories, they began to take on the characteristics of modern-day urban legend, with some very unlikely happenings mixed in with those that were no doubt as true as memory could make them.
Admittedly, the reading of one book doesn't make anyone an expert on the true happenings of the time, so the following observations are simply what came to mind as I read. I found myself wondering what life had been like for the tribe prior to the traumatic events of the early part of the 1860s. From the stories, it appears that this time so disrupted the normal life of the Dineh that they have little memory of how it was before. One storyteller did mention that at the time of the happenings he was telling, it had been about 200 years by his estimate since the Dineh had known peace.
I found a university article stating that the tribe had consisted of a population of about 12,000 at the beginning of these events. They evidently did not live in large villages or groups, but were semi-nomadic, with extended families assisting each other in farming, hunting, and gathering during the warm seasons, and subsistence during the winters. Earlier in the century, encroachments into the territory the Dineh considered their lands of origin by Mexican and American settlers created pressures that resulted in Navajo raiders taking livestock and occasionally killing the people. Soldiers were dispatched to the territory to try to negotiate peace between the various factions, but according to the article, events escalated until in 1864 when a force of some 1000 Navajo attacked Ft. Defiance, a US Army post about 30 miles from Canyon de Chelly as the crow flies. In other accounts, I have read that the US Army at the time believed the Navajo would not have been defeated as easily as they were if they had been a centrally-governed tribe, with a strong chief or council to direct the fighting. From the Navajo stories, it seemed that the raiding bands were never more than a handful of men, sometimes characterized by the storytellers as 'bad' Navajo.
The famous Kit Carson was ordered to suppress the fighting and did so by waging a brutal war of economics in addition to killing. The Navajo found their corn crops destroyed and their livestock killed or rounded up and herded away. The Dinah who weren't killed were told to report to Ft. Defiance to be given food and shelter. In the winter of 1864, some 8000 who had either reported voluntarily or been forced to Ft. Defiance were then forced to walk approximately 300 miles to Ft. Sumner, in present-day New Mexico, and were interned there for the next four years.
From the Navajo point of view, it seems that many Dineh were unaware of why they were being hunted and killed, but they accepted the reasons they were given. The storytellers speak of extreme poverty and a bare subsistence lifestyle for the majority. They talk about the hopelessness of defending themselves when they had only bows and arrows or ancient muzzle loaders that didn't work very well, compared to the Army's rifles. They also believed that their traditional enemies, the Apaches, Comanches, Utes and eventually Hopi, were issued horses and rifles by the US government to help annihilate them. And, almost all of the storytellers say that it was because of some bad Navajos who were raiding, stealing and killing thereby bringing this catastrophe upon them.
Whether through well-intentioned ignorance or some other motivation, the food that the Army supplied to the Navajo both during their brief stay at Ft. Defiance and on the Long Walk was unfamiliar to the Navajo and caused serious illness. The stories speak of not knowing how to cook it, so that they attempted to make something like cornmeal mush out of flour, boiling bacon as they would mutton or trying to eat unground coffee beans. Dysentery and dehydration caused many deaths, as did the extreme cold.
There are stories of people who could not keep up with the march being shot and left where they dropped--old people, women with babies or who needed to stop in order to give birth. Sometimes the stories become formulaic, which is why they began to seem like urban legend to me. Perhaps one woman who was in labor was shot, and became a 'relative' in the stories of countless others. Or perhaps the brutality was more widespread. Whatever the case, it is ingrained in the memories of these people as an injustice that they didn't deserve.
Upon arrival at Ft. Sumner, the hardship didn't cease. The little available water was bitter and caused illness, the food was still a problem and there was little firewood to sustain the people through the winter, much less for the next four years. And the Army proved incapable of preventing raids on the Navajo by the local Comanches and vice versa. It is estimated that 25% of the tribe perished during this time. Whether that number pertained to the 8000 who started for Ft. Sumner or the entire tribe, I don't know. Many had been killed in the fighting, and some hid in the canyons in this area and north of Navajo Mountain.
Particularly interesting to me because of our sojourn here at Canyon de Chelly, or Tseyi in the Navajo language, were the many stories of those who fled here to resist the roundup by hiding in this rough country. Although Col. Carson did pursue them into the canyons and kill many (also destroying crops and livestock here as elsewhere) a few escaped and continued to hide, never making the trip to Ft. Defiance or Ft. Sumner. Others surrendered after clan members were sent to tell them they would be safe if they reported to the encampment at Chinle. The stories are interesting as they speak of numbers; often they said 'everyone was killed except two'. Yet, in recounting what happened with those survivors, there were often families of 3 or more mentioned. I came to the conclusion that these were again formulaic aspects of the stories; that the numbers weren't to be taken literally but to indicate severe losses.
In 1868, treaties were finally established, and the defeated Navajo survivors were allowed to return to their homelands. Some of the stories have to do with the hardships endured on the return trip also.
Next time I post, I want to talk about the story formulas and another interesting aspect of how they are told.
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