By Keli Holt,
When Americans think of the Civil War (1861-1865), they usually focus on Confederate Gen. Robert Lee and his ultimate defeat by Ulysses Grant on the East Coast. The war that rent America in two, however, also raged in the American West. For the Confederate leadership were expansionist and dreamed of expanding plantation slavery to California and into Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and beyond.
In early 1862, the Confederacy, with an army of Texans, invaded New Mexico, to try and seize all territory on the eastern side of the Rio Grande. The goal was to reach the silver mines in Colorado before turning west to California and its gold. The Confederates, however, were repulsed by a combination of overextended (and virtually nonexistent) supply chains, as well as several Union victories fueled by the intense dislike many New Mexicans felt towards their Tejano invaders. (Visit Prime Time’s archives at primetimenm.com for previous stories.)
The Civil War’s central quarrels over slavery and state’s rights were not the only issues raised in the Land of Enchantment during the four long years of war. The simmering series of conflicts among Native Nations in the New Mexico Territory (which included Arizona) and the Americans in control of Santa Fe flared again once American soldiers emptied out of the U.S. military forts. The forts had been erected in the 13 intervening years between the defeat of Mexico in 1848, and the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, to fight back East.
American settlers had followed the American army after 1848, and these forts had become economic and military centers from which Americans eyed traditional Native lands. Native Nations like the Navajo, Ute, and Apache began to resist as Americans proved more capable than their Mexican and Spanish predecessors at encroaching onto Native territories. The years between the two wars were marked by periods of violence, and the U.S. military built a series of forts deep within Native lands to assert America’s dominance.
By the 1860s, as drought added further fuel to the volatile mix of Native Nations, Hispanic settlers and Americans grappling for limited resources and political control, the Navajo took the lead in fighting back. As we saw last month, the Navajo warrior, Manuelito, the son-in-law of one of the 19th century’s most powerful Navajo leaders, Narbona, attacked one of the conspicuous symbols of American encroachment, the aptly named Fort Defiance built in the heart of Navajo lands (northwestern Arizona). While Manuelito’s attack was repulsed, the assault motivated the leadership in Santa Fe to try to end the cycles of violence with the Navajo for good.
By the summer of 1862, the Confederate dream of seizing New Mexico had failed and the last rebels limped back to Texas. A few months later, Union Gen. James Carleton arrived in New Mexico from California to help evict the Confederates. With the rebels already gone, Carleton now had an army with no objective. He quickly turned his attention toward solving what he called, “The Navajo Problem.”
Carleton tapped a long-standing New Mexican resident and famous mountain man, Kit Carson, to carry out his “solution.” Carleton believed the only way to save the Navajo, and indeed all Native Nations, was to separate them from Americans and enclose them on reservations.
In California, Carleton had witnessed firsthand the almost complete annihilation of several Native Nations. The combination of racist American policies, destruction of Native lands in the struggle to mine for gold, disease from which few tribes had immunity, and the genocidal actions of local American posses had decimated local tribes. Men like Carleton believed reservations were the last chance to “save” Nations like the Navajo. What Carleton failed to understand was that destroying what it meant to be Navajo was itself its own form of genocide.
Carleton ordered Carson to invade Navajo territory to force their relocation to a reservation called Bosque Redondo at Fort Sumner in eastern New Mexico. Rather than fight Carson’s well-armed force, many Navajo took refuge in their stronghold, Canyon de Chelly.
Carson pursued a scorched earth policy, killing livestock and burning all crops. Half starved but still resilient, the Navajo retreated further into the canyon, hoping to wait out the onslaught. While Carson and his men traversed the sacred canyon in search of Navajo to defeat, it was starvation that forced the surrender.
Thus began what the Navajo refer to as “The Long Walk” of roughly 300 miles to Bosque Redondo. As the Civil War raged back East, the reservation never received adequate supplies from its American commanders. Pests, disease, spoiled provisions, and attacks from traditional Navajo enemies caused horrible privations. In 1868, years after Carleton had gone, Gen. William Sherman of Atlanta fame finally closed Bosque Redondo. As we shall see, the idea of confining Native Nations to reservations sadly did not die alongside the failure of Bosque Redondo.
