C.S. Arizona: Bosque Redondo
1863-1868
Now for the sad part of the trip: Bosque Redondo.
Bosque Redondo literally translates to Round Forest; more about all that later.
I had been looking forward to going to Bosque Redondo for some time, I kept telling Carol it was an important if not well known site that figure significantly into the story of the Navajo Nation. I told her this is no small part of the reason it’s so hard to get around on the Navajo lands, the events leading up to Bosque Redondo and the place itself had left lasting scars on the Navajo people. All of the events that had happened were performed by a Union Army recruited to fight Confederates. So we drove across from I-40 for what seemed like a million miles get there.
I had been told about the Visitors Center and how good it is so I drove up to the gate with high expectations only to find it locked. Two very nice women shoed up right after me also to be dumbfounded by the gate; the senior of the two told me she was a Mescalero Apache and her grandfather had been interned there and how important it was to put a rock on a wall at the entrance in memory of the ancestors. She was talking about climbing over the gate, they had come a long way, too and I thought seriously about giving her a boost. Instead, we all left disappointed victims of short state budgets and furlough days. They shouldn’t have scheduled the furlough day the Friday of Memorial Day weekend.
So here is the reason why she wanted in. Kit Carson’s boss General James H. Carleton came across Bosque Redondo while on a scouting party early in his carrier. While he didn’t care much for New Mexico, he was really taken with Bosque Redondo for some reason and wanted the army to build a fort there. There is something about this round forest surrounded by grassy plains that is almost startling and perhaps the very long ride by horseback to get there affected Carlton making him see more than there really was to see.
The army didn’t build forts just anywhere, there had to be a reason, like an Indian Tribe to guard or something. There were no Tribes living there so the army saw no reason to build a fort.
The Tribes had obviously got to the New Mexico Territory before everybody else and had taken all of the best spots; and they hadn’t taken the Round Forest, the Spanish, who were the next on scene hadn’t taken it either. This should have been a tip off that Bosque Redondo might not have been such a great place, but Carleton was determined to find a reason to build a fort there.
After chasing the Texans out of New Mexico the New Mexico Volunteers were no disbanded or sent east to join the rest of the army, rather Carleton instructed Carson to lead them west in to the Navajo and Mescalero Apache lands to round up all of the people by any means necessary and march them to Bosque Redondo: Seriously. Carleton had some kind of a story about gold in Canyon de Chelly but I don’t think even he believed it. Even if he did, why would he have the Mescalero rounded up, they had nothing to do with the canyon.
The Navajo had been trading with the Spanish for 200 years before the arrival of the Anglos, if there had been gold in the canyon it would have figured into the trade between them, but nowhere is there a record of any such of a trade in gold between the Navajo and the Spanish. I hate to say it, but I really think Carlton had his mind set on building a fort at Bosque Redondo and he need someone guard to do it.
The whole thing was a disaster from start to finish. To get the Navajo out of their canyon fortress Carson resorted to scorched earth warfare and starvation. It meant that the Navajo who surrendered and were sent on a 400 mile trek across the desert were already weak and worn down before they started. The place they were sent to was the tail end of the Pecos where the water disappeared into the sand, so it was warm and brackish. Furthermore, when the Navajo planted the staple of their diet, corn, worms descended on their fields and destroyed the crops. There were good reasons nobody lived there.
After three years of trying to make the whole thing work, Carson finally convinced Carleton that the whole thing was a bad job and the Navajo should be allowed to go home. The Mescalero who were much more nomadic that the Navajo, who were sheep herders and really quite settled, had long since left and gone home on their own. Who could blame them? Even Carleton didn’t question the Mescalero’s leaving.
The Navajo held a nationwide meeting, forming a large circle in which a coyote was trapped; the people waited to see what the coyote would do. When the animal broke for freedom it broke west toward the Navajo homeland, Navajo spokesmen told Carson they were going home, they weren’t asking, they were going and Carson didn’t argue the point.
As a final note, nobody ever found any gold in the Canyon de Chelly of course, the geology is all wrong.
Next: The Battle of Carthage