Reservation Era Begins 1850-1878
1864-1868
Navajo (Dine’) “Longest Walk” and imprisonment at Bosque Redondo
On January 8,1864, 500 to 10,000 Dine’ are forcibly removed from their homes in Arizona and New Mexico under U.S. military gunpoint and marched over 300 miles to a remote military internment camp along the Pecos River in eastern New Mexico, at Bosque Redondo, Fort Sumter. Along the way, over 200 Dine’ women, children, and elders die of starvation and exposure to the elements. Over the four years of internment, the U.S. Army imprison over 10,000 Dine’ at the camp and keep them in “holes in the ground, with extremely scarce rations” (Mandelbaum, 2013). Approximately 3,500 Dine’ die in the camp. In 2013, journalist Lia Mandelbaum noted that Adolf Hitler was inspired by the treatment of Dine’ for the development of concentration camps during WWII: “it shook me to my core” when “[I] learned that the genocidal mentality and actions of the U.S. policymakers [from 1862 to 1890] would find similar expression years later when the Nazis, under Hitler, studied the plans of [‘The Long Walk of the Navajo’] to design the concentration camps for Jews.” After enduring genocidal conditions at Bosque Redondo, the Dine’ sign the U.S.-Navajo Treaty of 1868. The Treaty allows Dine’ to return to a small portion of their original homelands. Additionally, in exchange for laying down weapons and ceasing resistance, the Dine’ would be given basic services. Finally freed, the Dine’ march home on June 18, 1868.