{"id":3487,"date":"2012-01-22T11:52:51","date_gmt":"2012-01-22T19:52:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travelthruhistory.com\/?p=3487"},"modified":"2020-07-22T12:19:32","modified_gmt":"2020-07-22T19:19:32","slug":"arizona-the-navajos-long-walk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/travelthruhistory.com\/arizona-the-navajos-long-walk\/","title":{"rendered":"Arizona: The Navajo’s Long Walk"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Canyon<\/p>\n

by Jenna Vandenberg<\/em><\/p>\n

You can tell that thousands of Navajo Indians have walked up this canyon. Years and years of constant steps have worn natural footholds up and down the orange walls. They look as if they\u2019ve been intricately carved. And in a way, they had been.<\/p>\n

\u201cCould you ever get lost up here?\u201d Amanda asked Calvin, our sure-footed Navajo guide.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo.\u201d He answered.<\/p>\n

\"NavajoI smiled at the typical mono-syllabic answer, but Amanda and I kept up our lines of questions. When pressed, he finally told us of the time he had been sent out in the middle of the night to find a group of Park Ranchers who\u2019d gotten lost here in Canyon de Chelly (pronounced de Shay). He\u2019d talked them down one cliff and walked them up another. He knows this place by heart, even in the dark.<\/p>\n

Calvin isn\u2019t exactly a Park Ranger, although he had been one in the past. He is part of a small group of Navajo\u2019s who grew up in the Canyon de Chelly valley. When the US National Parks Service wanted to protect and nationalize the park, they did so with the stipulation that Navajos could continue to live here in conjunction with the National Park Service. The only way tourists can go down into the canyon floor is with a Navajo tour guide.<\/p>\n

\"LandscapeThis is a rule that I can get behind, especially after Calvin pulled our 4×4 from the mud and told us about pulling hikers from of flash flood waters. But the guided-only rule isn\u2019t just for safety. It\u2019s a respect thing. The Navajo\u2019s don\u2019t want anyone else messing with their land. They\u2019ve had enough of that. Bitter stories of conquistadors or explorers had made their way through my tours of the Zuni and Acoma pueblos, but Calvin\u2019s story of The Long Walk hit me the hardest.<\/p>\n

Calvin started talking about fires, Kit Carson, and The Navajo\u2019s Long Walk once we reached the top of a cliff and were staring down below. We were sitting on the orange sandstone rocks, overlooking the farms and traditional hogan homes that were tucked around trees in the valley below. It was fall, so those trees were decked out in brilliant yellow and red colors. Gorgeous colors, but reminiscent of fire.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe burned all this,\u201d Calvin said, spreading his arms out across the valley below us. The \u201che\u201d of Calvin\u2019s accusations was Colonel Christopher Carson, better know as Kit Carson.<\/p>\n

By the time that Kit Carson strode into the southwest, the US army was knee deep in their so-called \u201cIndian Problem.\u201d American settlers wanted land, security, and distance between themselves and Native Americans. Colonel James Carleton and Kit Carson were the ones who were going to solve the \u201cproblem.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Carleton and Carson, Canyon de Chelly was the root of the Navajo problem. The crevices in the sandstone walls and hidden footpaths across the canyon gave the Navaho a distinct home field advantage here. Many had hidden and sought refuge in the canyon during battles in the past. Navajos continued to do so during this \u201cFearing Time\u201d when the threats and guns of Kit Carson\u2019s men could be heard around the canyon walls.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n

\"NavajoKit Carson knew how to solve this canyon problem though. Fire. In 1863 his \u201cScorched Earth Campaign,\u201d burned all Navajo property in and around the canyon was burned. Traditional hogan homes, peach trees, and grazing animals were all destroyed. With no crops, little food, and only the charred remains of their homes, Navajo\u2019s fled up the walls of Canyon de Chelly. But without canyon protection, they were easy targets for Carleton and Carson\u2019s men and the many Ute Indians who were working with the colonels. Navajos spotted were giving a choice to make at gunpoint: surrender or be shot on site. Although a few people escaped, the majority of the tribe surrendered. Kit Carson\u2019s plan worked.<\/p>\n

Thus began the long walk. Navajos walked past Mt. Taylor where they believe that First Woman threw a turquoise stone to create the southernmost of their four sacred mountains. Navajos walked past the Laguna and Acoma pueblo people, Natives whom were used to mistreatment themselves. Navajos walked past Albuquerque and the Sandia Mountains. Some Navajos were forced to detour north through Santa Fe, where they were marched down the capitol city streets and plazas in a parade of shame. The Navajos then headed towards Texas, stopping in the barren salt flats of eastern New Mexico. Water, firewood and fertile soil were not plentiful here.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s I-40 runs roughly along the nearly 500 miles that the Navajo\u2019s walked. As seems to be the case with all of history\u2019s forced marches, conditions were not good. Elderly people, slow walkers, and women giving birth were shot as they failed to keep up the twelve-mile-a-day pace. The freezing weather, dysentery, raids along the way, and lack of general provisions led to the death of an estimated 1\/10th of Navajo Natives during The Long Walk.<\/p>\n

Fort Sumner in the Bosque Redondo Reservation would be the Navajo\u2019s new home. General Carleton described the area as a paradise for Navajos (\u201cCarletonia,\u201d he dubbed it), where the Natives would cast off their \u201clatent longings for murdering and robbing,\u201d and become \u201cthe happiest and most delightfully located\u2026Indians.\u201d Happiness surely did not come the first year, as crops failed in the poor soil. Nor did it come the second year when hundreds of Navajos froze to death as they attempted to plow their useless fields. The four years the Navajos spend at Fort Sumner were marked by death and loneliness, not joyful westernization and utopia.<\/p>\n

Conditions were so bad at the Fort that even soldiers recognized things were not going as advertised or planned. In 1867, General Carleton was relieved from his command, and the next year several Navajos were appointed to travel to Washington D.C. They met with President Andrew Johnson, and under the Navajo leadership of Manuelito and Barboncito, negotiations were made that allowed the Navajo\u2019s to return back to home. On June 18th, 1868, the Navajos started their long walk back home.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n

They returned to Mt. Taylor and to Shiprock and to Canyon de Chelly. Inside the canyon, Calvin\u2019s great-grandparents and then grandparents re-built their hogans, and re-laid their crops, and found new goats and sheep to herd within the canyon walls. Life began again and The Long Walk was not often discussed. Calvin explained to me that his grandparents did not like to \u201creturn to that time of suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"WhiteBut Calvin knows all his grandma\u2019s stories \u2013 even the sad ones. According to Navajo tradition, the grandmother chooses one grandchild (out of dozens, in Calvin\u2019s case) to keep in the ancestral home and instruct in traditional Navajo ways. So as Calvin\u2019s parents and siblings eventually left the enclosed walls of Canyon de Chelly for jobs in Gallup and Phoenix, Calvin stayed behind. He played in the prehistoric cliff dwellings high in the canyon walls and he tended to goats on the valley floor. He hunted skinwalkers and slept in hogans and learned from his grandmother. When he was twelve, the US government discovered that there was an un-schooled child living down in the canyon and officials came to take him to school at Fort Wingate. Upon overhearing that his long hair would be chopped off the next day, Calvin embarked on a mini-long walk of his own, finding his way back to his grandmother and those orange canyon walls. She had breakfast waiting for him.<\/p>\n

Calvin did return back to school in the following days (hiding underneath his grandma\u2019s bed could only last so long), but his heart and ancestral land are still within Canyon de Chelly. Although he admits to being a snowbird, heading towards warmer Arizona cities in the winter, Calvin still spends most of his time down in Canyon de Chelly. He points out cliff dwelling and ancient rock paintings to travelers, and takes hikers and campers (like Amanda and me) into the canyon. He tells people about The Long Walk and laments that more Navajo kids don\u2019t understand the secrets and stories of Canyon de Chelly. \u201cAll they know of \u2018canyon\u2019 is it is a hole in the ground,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

By the end of our hike, I realized that I\u2019d been wrong about Calvin. I thought that I had to keep asking questions to pry words out of him, but these stories were ones that he had wanted to tell all along. The Long Walk may not be as well known at the Cherokee\u2019s Trail of Tears, but Calvin and other Canyon de Chelly guides are in the eager business of sharing their canyon and its tales of the past.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nAncient Spirits of the Canyon from Flagstaff<\/a><\/p>\n

If You Go:<\/h3>\n

www.bluedesertguideco.com<\/a>\u00a0– To tour Canyon de Chelly with Calvin, contact Amanda and Vino. They can customize tours around Native history, outdoor activities, shopping, or sightseeing.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

About the author:<\/em>
\nJenna Vandenberg is a Seattle based writer, runner and teacher. She has taught middle schoolers in China, Norway, and Las Vegas. Although she often gets sidetracked keeping score at baseball games and eating muffalettas in New Orleans, she is currently working on running a race in every state. Follow the quest at runningthroughthisworld.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All photographs are by Jenna Vandenberg.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Jenna Vandenberg You can tell that thousands of Navajo Indians have walked up this canyon. Years and years of constant steps have worn natural footholds up and down the orange walls. They look as if they\u2019ve been intricately carved. And in a way, they had been. \u201cCould you ever get lost up here?\u201d Amanda […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[290],"class_list":{"0":"post-3487","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-north-america-travel","8":"tag-arizona-travel","9":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/travelthruhistory.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/travelthruhistory.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/travelthruhistory.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travelthruhistory.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travelthruhistory.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/travelthruhistory.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travelthruhistory.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/travelthruhistory.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travelthruhistory.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travelthruhistory.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}