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| Photo courtesy Museum of New Mexico Photo Archive/fort sumner state monument -- Navajos who survived the Long Walk to the U.S. prison camp of Bosque Redondo, near Fort Sumner, N.M., in the 1860s endured abysmal living conditions until the Treaty of 1868 allowed them to return to their homelands. |
BIG MOUNTAIN, Ariz. - Viewing a photo of Navajo children at Bosque Redondo for the first time, Louise Benally wondered which ones were her great-grandparents who endured the Long Walk to Fort Sumner, N.M. and suffered in the prison camp for four years.
''On my mother's side they went: and my great-grandfather was just 5 years old. He had seen a lot of hard times, where parents and other relatives were killed,'' Benally told Indian Country Today.
''My grandma passed on three years ago - she was 116 years old. When she left, she would tell us that they did some healing ceremonies which were called 'Without Songs.' She would sometimes have me perform this one: 'The Blacken Way.''' She remembered her great-grandfather and other Navajos who were driven from their beloved homeland by the U.S. Army on foot for hundreds of miles while witnessing murders, rapes and starvation.
One-third of the 9,000 Navajo and Mescalero Apache who suffered at the prison camp from 1863 - '68 succumbed to pneumonia, dysentery, starvation and exposure.
She also noted that some Navajos who eluded capture secretly helped others. ''On my father's side of the family, they didn't go on this march. But, as supporters from the outside, they brought food in the night and other health supplies.''
Benally is among the Navajos who are resisting forced relocation from her home on Big Mountain. The Navajo descendants of Long Walk survivors at Big Mountain gained strength and fortitude from their ancestors for their 30-year struggle to remain on the land as protectors, she noted.
Benally pointed out that the so-called ''Navajo and Hopi land dispute'' resulted from legal maneuvers, documented by Colorado professor Charles Wilkinson, to remove Navajos from the land to make way for the expansion of coal mining on Black Mesa.
New Mexico State Monuments Director Jose' Cisneros said the new Bosque Redondo Monument, to be dedicated on June 4 in a ceremony at Fort Sumner, will be a tribute to the Navajo and Mescalero Apache who suffered at the camp. The public is invited to attend.
Designed by Navajo architect David Sloan, the memorial is located on the south bank of the Pecos River.
''There was little to indicate that the Navajo had ever been to Bosque Redondo when I first visited Bosque Redondo in 1979,'' Sloan said in a statement. ''There was nothing that welcomed Navajo visitors.''
Sloan and project manager Delbert Billy believe Bosque Redondo is imbued with a long-absent ''spirit of place,'' the result of creative landscaping and a 6,345-square foot visitor's center whose exhibits tell the story.
Cisneros said the memorial has been a long time coming. Earlier, the Village of Fort Sumner purchased a section of Bosque Redondo and deeded it to the State of New Mexico. In 1969, the site was proclaimed a New Mexico State Monument; a modest visitor center was constructed in 1970, revealing the events of the Long Walk period.
However, Cisneros said the actual memorial languished until state House and Senate memorials in 1992 and 1993 created momentum. The Senate memorial called for a site at Fort Sumner to ''commemorate the Long Walk that the Navajo people took back to their homeland and to commemorate the healing that has taken place since that event.''
On June 14, 2002, the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs signed a memorandum of agreement with Kelsey Begaye and Sarah Misquez, then-presidents of the Navajo Nation and Mescalero Apache respectively, authorizing the memorial's construction.