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Some Navajos were able to escape Carson’s campaign but were soon forced to surrender due to starvation and the freezing temperature of the winter months. The “Long Walk” started in the beginning of spring 1864.
Anthropologists hypothesize that the Navajo split off from the Southern Athabaskans and migrated into the Southwest between 200 and 1300 A.D. Between 900 and 1525 A.D. the Navajos developed a rich and complex culture in the area of present-day northwestern New Mexico.
When did the Navajo Long Walk start?
August 1864
Long Walk of the Navajo/Start dates
How was life for Native Americans during the Great Depression?
A significant amount of the tribal estate was taken from Native Americans through fraud and state tax sales. In fact, thousands of newly created Native-American citizens saw their lands removed from federal protection and sold out from under them during the 1920 and 1930s.
In a forced removal, the U.S. Army drives the Navajo at gunpoint as they walk from their homeland in Arizona and New Mexico, to Fort Sumner, 300 miles away at Bosque Redondo. Hundreds die during 18 days of marching. About 9,000 Navajos reach the fort, where 400 Mescalero Apaches are already held.
Legacy Of Forced March Still Haunts Navajo Nation In a series of marches that began in 1864, the U.S. Army forced thousands of Navajo and Mescalero Apache people to walk 400 miles to an isolated reservation; more than a third died. Some say today’s ills in Indian Country — severe poverty, suicide, addiction — have their roots in the “Long Walk.”
Where did the Navajos go during the Long Walk?
Navajo Conflicts. These and other Navajos were compelled to walk to a reservation, Bosque Redondo, at Fort Sumter in New Mexico. Navajo history records this crushing forced expulsion in a spring blizzard as the Long Walk, on which many died or were killed. The Navajo were confined to the reservation until 1868.
How did the Treaty of Fort summer help the Navajo?
The 1868 Treaty at Fort Summer established an official Navajo reservation, allowing them to return from four years of internment to but a small portion of their ancestral homeland. The reservation could not sustain the growing Navajo population; through piecemeal legislation it was eventually enlarged to its present size.