Navajo oral histories recount the scorched earth campaign launched by General Carlton in the Four Corners Region. The histories tell of ancestors in hiding and their struggle to survive, of soldiers tracking the Navajo, as bands of families fled, of merciless killing. This was war.
For the Navajo, the Long Walk and the years at the Bosque Redondo Indian Reservation present a watershed in history. Navajo oral histories are interrupted by these years, resuming afterwards with short narratives of the tragic times. The histories describe such pain, that many are brief.
Histories tell of mounted soldiers galloping after Navajo who walked in single file to hide at such outcroppings as Black Mesa. Navajo oral histories confirm the military orders to kill Navajo men and take their women and children as prisoners. Navajo who tried to flee were killed.
On the Long Walk from the Four Corners Region to the Bosque Redondo, Navajo clans of men, women, the elderly and children, were forced to march despite winter cold, pregnancies, fatigue, injury, illness or hunger. Those who delayed the journey were shot or left behind to die. This policy was a direct application of 19th century American expansionist ambition under Manifest Destiny. American expansion into the west would happen despite any preceding culture.
As the military aggressed, Navajo fled, less for fear of imprisonment than for fear of removal from their home. Then and now, the Navajo are inextricably connected to their homeland where each towering mesa or shimmering rock represents an element of their origin.
