Treaty of Bosque Redondo
[8]: 38 [1] This culminated in the Long Walk of 1864, wherein some 8,000 to 10,000 Navajo and Apache, including women and children, were forced to march over 350 miles from their native land near the Four Corners area.
[8]: 38 [9]: 364 According to Carleton's planned assimilation, while at Bosque Redondo the Navajo would "become farmers, would live in villages, and would be instructed in Christianity and other American practices".
"[11] After negotiating the Second Treaty of Fort Laramie, peace commissioners William Tecumseh Sherman along with Samuel F. Tappan departed to treat with the Navajo and bring an end to their current arrangement.
[14][15] Sherman and Tappan arrived at Fort Sumner on May 28, 1868, with full authority granted by Congress earlier that year to negotiate a treaty.
"[11] Sherman telegraphed to Senator John B. Henderson, who had assumed the chair of the Indian Affairs Committee, advising him that "the Navajos were unalterably opposed to any resettlement in Texas, or any place further east, and would not remain at the Bosque Redondo without the use of overwhelming military force.
"[10]: 465 Tappan had been in favor of a return to their homeland from the outset, and Sherman relented, convinced that the land was unfit for white settlement, and that he had failed in his efforts to divert the Navajo elsewhere.
[20]: 75–6 [21]: 62 Provisions of the treaty included the following: In more specifics, each of the thirteen articles can be summarized by excerpts from their primary document as follows: "The actual cost of removal of the tribe...", "The purchase of fifteen thousand sheep and goats...", "The purchase of five hundred beef cattle and a million pounds of corn...", "The balance, if any, of the appropriation to be invested for the maintenance of the Indians", "The removal of this tribe to be made under the supreme control and direction of the military commander of the Territory of New Mexico" The signing of the treaty, as a treaty, and so defined by the US government as "an agreement between two nations", effectively established the sovereignty of the Navajo Nation, although still dependent on the federal government.
[e] However, according to historian Jennifer Nez Denetdale, the treaty was also "the point at which the Navajo people lost their freedom and autonomy, and came under American colonial rule.
[26]In their "Long Walk Home", the Navajo became a rare example in US history of native people successfully returning to their ancestral lands after being forcibly removed.
[27] The group arrived too late in the year to their homeland for the planting season, and were "forced to rely on rations, wild foods" and those Navajo who had avoided the long captivity at Bosque Redondo and had maintained their herds.
[30] Ceremonies commemorating the 150th anniversary were also held at the Bosque Redondo Memorial, established in 2005, which includes a museum where the second surviving copy was displayed.
