The Bosque Redondo Memorial is dedicated to the Navajo and Mescalero Apaches who endured a forced relocation at Fort Sumner, NM.
Named after former New Mexico military governor Edwin Vose Sumner, Fort Sumner was a military fort charged with the internment of nearby Navajo and Mescalero Apache populations from 1863 to 1868. The federal government closed the fort in 1868, and sold its buildings to Lucien Maxwell, a prominent New Mexico landowner, in 1870. Maxwell's son Pete befriended legendary outlaw Billy the Kid, and it was in his house that Billy was killed by sheriff Pat Garrett. Billy the Kid is buried in the old military cemetery in Fort Sumner as is Lucien Maxwell. On October 31, 1862, Congress authorized the creation of Fort Sumner. General James Henry Carleton initially justified the fort as offering protection to settlers in the Pecos River valley from the Mescalero Apaches, Kiowa, and Comanche. He also created the Bosque Redondo reservation, a 40-square-mile (100 km2) area where over 9,000 Navajo and Mescalero Apaches were forced to live because of accusations raiding white settlements near their respective homelands. The fort was named for General Edmond Vose Sumner. Gen. Carleton ordered Col. Christopher "Kit" Carson to do whatever necessary to bring first the Mescaleros and then the Navajos to the Bosque Redondo. All of the Mescalero Apache were there by the end of 1862, but the Navajo did not get there in large numbers until early 1864. The Navajos refer to the journey from Navajo land to the Bosque Redondo as the Long Walk. While a bitter memory to many Navajo, one who was there reports as follows: “By slow stages we traveled eastward by present Gallup and Shushbito, Bear spring, which is now called Fort Wingate. You ask how they treated us? If there was room the soldiers put the women and children on the wagons. Some even let them ride behind them on their horses. I have never been able to understand a people who killed you one day and on the next played with your "
Size: 4201px × 2795px
Location: Fort Sumner, New Mexico, USA, United States, America
Photo credit: © M L Pearson / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: america, apache, education, memorial, mescalero, mexico, navajo, southwest, tourism, travel, usa, west
