The Indians attempted to preserve their lands and life-styles by warring with the encroaching white settlers. One government solution to the problem was to isolate the Indians on remote reservations, such as the Bosque Redondo in New Mexico. But by 1862, continuing Apache and Navaho depredations in New Mexico called for new solutions. In August, Brigadier General James H. Carleton became the new military commander of the area. Colonel Kit Carson was ordered to subdue the Mescalero Apaches while Carleton established the new military post of Fort Sumner at Bosque Redondo in the eastern part of the state. The army used Indian-like guerilla tactics in their ceaseless pursuit of the Indians. By November 1862, the Apache chiefs were ready to make peace. Carleton insisted that those interested in peace must move to the new reservation and adopt an agrarian life-style. By March 1863, most of the tribe had come to Bosque Redondo.’
Carleton's attention then turned to the Navahos. He issued an ultimatum: all Navahos who wanted peace must come to the new reservation by July 20, 1863, or be considered hostile and treated accordinglyFaced with starvation as the military destroyed their crops and livestock, 6,000 Navahos surrendered. They made their way under military escort to Bosque Redondo on the infamous 'Long Walk', when nearly 200 Indians died. By the end of 1864, 8,000 Navahos - almost three-quarters of the tribe - had gathered at Bosque Redondo with the Apaches.’
Carleton then began an experiment to transform the Indians by creating what he hoped would be a model reservation. While continuing his military rule, he planned to 'teach their children how to read and write, teach them the arts of peace, teach them the truths of Christianity. Soon they will acquire new habits, new ideas, new modes of life, the old Indians will die off.' He also noted that 'you can feed them cheaper than you can fight them'.*
The Bosque Redondo experiment soon proved to be a disaster. The Navahos and Apaches were enemies, and neither were agriculturalists by tradition. This might have been overcome if nature had not prevailed against them. Even though irrigation ditches had been dug, crops failed year after year due to droughts, inappropriate soil, alkaline water and insects. At the same time, government rations, already inadequate, were reduced still further. The model reservation had become a prison for hungry, diseased and demoralized Indians'” who were not to find relief until after the American Civil War.
Once the War ended in 1865, the government turned its attention back to Indian affairs to prepare for the future. White expansion had not been halted by the War — indeed, with the exception of modern-day Oklahoma, all areas of the West had been organized into either states or territories.® Indian resistance increased. The government tried to solve the problems by receiving peaceful Indian delegations, by taking military action, and by increasing the efforts towards confinement. Secretary of the Interior James Harlan summed up the administration's new Indian policy in a letter to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs:
The nation having now triumphed over the gigantic rebellion... the President deems the present an auspicious and fitting time for the renewal of efforts to impress upon the Indians... the rapidly increasing and pressing necessity for the abandonment of their wild and roving habits, and the adoption... of the more peaceful and industrial arts of life.’
In July 1867, Congress created a Peace Commission. This Commission was to negotiate treaties whereby the Indians would give up their nomadic life and settle on reservations, in exchange for schools, instruction in farming, and temporary support in the form of clothing and food. If, however, the Commission failed, the military would be called in.
The Commission was primarily interested in the Plains tribes, but also turned its attention to the appalling conditions at the Bosque Redondo Reservation. In May 1868, Lieutenant-General William Sherman and Samuel Tappan met with the Indians. On June 1, a treaty was signed finally allowing the Navahos to return to their original homeland, which was now designated a reservation.
Few photographers covered the events at Bosque Redondo. William A. Smith was the photographer during an investigation of conditions by special Indian Commissioner Julius K. Graves. Although Smith recorded taking wet-plate negatives and tintypes, no images have been located.” In his diary, now in the Museum of New Mexico History Library, Smith reveals that another photographer, J. G. Gaige, also recorded events at the Bosque Redondo." A third photographer of the Bosque Redondo has also
4.1 The Indians’ response to missionary preaching. Drawing by James E. Taylor.
Been identified. In 1868 Swedish immigrant Valentine Wolfenstein set up a studio at Fort Sumner, and was present during the Bosque Redondo Peace Commission meetings; he also made glass negatives and tintypes of the event. A photograph of guarded Navahos awaiting a head-count at Bosque Redondo (plate 4.2) may have been the work of any of these men.
World History
