Site Audio Tour
Site Audio Tour: Stop 5
The Story
My name is Wes Studie and I welcome you to this historic place. Telling the story of Fort Sumner and the Bosque Redondo Indian Reservation is to respect the significant cultural, spiritual and physical pain suffered here by the Navajo and Mescalero Apache and to acknowledge United States policies, policies which contributed to one of the most tragic eras in American history. This history reaches into the cultures of the Navajo, Mescalero Apache and U.S. Military, for each was affected deeply- and differently - and continues to be, as a consequence of their roles here.
Step outside to the surroundings. To the west, the Pecos River flows. During the 1860s, 450 Mescalero Apache prisoners lived here, on either side of the river. The Navajo prisoners, about 8,500 of them, lived to the north. In the 1860s, a forest of cottonwoods and willows grew along the banks of the Pecos. But with so many prisoners, firewood was always scarce. Juniper grew, but hardly enough to keep the prisoners warm or for their cooking rations. Crews were sent 20 to 30 miles upriver where they floated wood down to the fort on the spring flood. The trees in the area now include salt cedar, willow, Russian olive and native cottonwood.
