By Jennifer Nez Denetdale (Diné)
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Recently, my family and I visited Fort Sumner, New Mexico. We came in anticipation of the official establishment of a memorial to the Diné’s Long Walk and their Bosque Redondo experiences, which will take place in June 2005 (see “Happening,” May/ June 2005). As we drove the two and half hours from Albuquerque, we were often silent, left with our own thoughts, imagining the trek on foot.
The memorial will commemorate a horrendous time in our history. Beginning at the end of 1863 and into 1866, more than 10,000 Diné were forced to walk to the Bosque Redondo reservation that we called Hwéeldi. It was a series of horrific journeys. If the children, the elderly and the pregnant women could not keep up, the soldiers shot them. Many drowned crossing the Rio Grande. New Mexican and Comanche raiders followed the prisoners, waiting for an opportune moment to capture women and children, for in the mid-1860s Navajos brought premium prices on the slave-trade market.
We drove past the museum dedicated to Billy the Kid and stopped at the Bosque Redondo site. It was one of those days where the cool breeze could easily turn into a bitter whipping wind. Few signs indicated that the U.S. military had ever set up operations dedicated to turning Navajos into white men. Floods in 1904, 1937 and 1941 obliterated almost all traces of Navajo and military presence.
Forced removal of the Diné was part of the cycle of invasion, conquest, removal and colonization that facilitated white settlement of America. The Diné suffered at Hwéeldi for four years. The land did not recognize them. The cornfields failed as droughts and pests took their toil. They starved and succumbed to diseases. The alkali water sickened them. Women were subjected to sexual assaults.
Looking around, I thought of the photographs from the era. Photos show that the military had more comfortable housing, as soldiers stand around barracks built with Navajo labor. Firewood meant for military use is stacked against building walls. Navajos are shown in their quarters—holes dug into the ground and covered with brush. Navajos had to forage for their wood, walking miles and risking capture by the slave raiders.
Walking around the site, we came upon a mound of assorted rocks in which nestled offerings of tobacco ties, coins, sage and sweet grass. In 1971, Navajos created the rock cairn to remember our ancestors’ trials. My father offered corn pollen with his prayer.
He reminded us that when our ancestors left this forsaken place, they had admonished their people to never return, for our destiny is to look to the future. “We are not supposed to be here,” he said. “I asked the Holy People for their understanding. Nihimásání dóó nihicheii tih dahooznii’. T’áá a_tsxo bikei tiháahoznii’. Ch’éi náh yik’ei tihdahooznii’. (Our grandmothers and grandfathers suffered greatly. Everything that could be suffered and endured on this earth, they suffered and endured. The stresses were so great.).”
My parents have told me stories passed down from their kin. My father’s grandmother—he calls her Bah—was taken as a slave and managed to escape, only to end up at Hwéeldi. But she eventually found her way home. My great-great-great-grandparents, Hastiin Ch’il Hajin (Man from Black Weeds, also known as Manuelito) and Asdzáá T_’ógi (Lady Zia/Weaver, also known as Juanita), were survivors of the war on Navajos. In 1866, Hastiin Ch’il Hajin, injured and ill, with his wife Asdzáá T_’ógi, and other kin, surrendered and went to Hwéeldi.
In 1868, Navajo leaders signed a treaty with the Americans. The treaty meant that the people were going home. Our ancestors’ prayers facilitated their return home and reestablished Hózhó—the path to beauty and harmony.
We walked alongside the Pecos River and around the grounds where the fort once stood, looking for evidence that our ancestors had been here and we remembered. Stories of the war against our people, their extreme hardship, and their determination to recover from devastation are sources for inspiration and renewal. We would not be here if our ancestors had not persevered.
The Bosque Redondo Memorial will connect a place to Diné stories and be the beginning of this country’s acknowledgement of its shameful treatment of its indigenous peoples. As our elders have declared, when we acknowledge the painful past, we begin to heal and move toward recovery in every sense of the word.
Jennifer Nez Denetdale is a Diné historian of the T_’ógi (Zia) and `Ashiih (Salt) clans. She is assistant professor of history at the University of New Mexico. Her articles appear in the American Indian Culture and Research Journal, the Journal of Social Archaeology and the New Mexico Historical Review. She received her Ph.D. in history from Northern Arizona University in 1999.
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