American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Between 1863 and 1868, the US Army waged a war on the Navajo people that ended in the Army holding perhaps half of all Navajos at Fort Sumner, New Mexico. The Navajo homelands before this time extended from southeastern Utah and southwestern Colorado across northeastern Arizona and northwestern New Mexico. Fort Sumner was hundreds of miles to the east. In 1868, a dozen Navajo headmen inscribed their Xes on a treaty with the US Army, which set aside a reservation in the middle of their much larger traditional homeland. Released from captivity, the Navajos gravitated to their former homes, including those off‘ the reservation. Other tribal members who escaped the Fort Sumner entrapment also resettled in their homeland. But things were different than they were before the forced march. The Navajos were to be governed from Fort Defiance, located near the new reservation’s southern boundary, by military authorities temporarily and by civilian authorities ultimately. The Navajos were to receive rations at Fort Defiance, so many settled nearby, at least until they could restore their sheep herds. In 1866 Congress set aside a swath of land south of the treaty reservation for a transcontinental railroad that would travel through the middle of the Navajos’ traditional homeland. The grant, alternate square-mile sections in a corridor soon expanded to 100 miles wide, was supposed to generate funds to finance railroad construction.“