Hweeldi – Place of Suffering

Hweeldi – Place of Suffering - November 15

Seared in Navajo national memory is the terrible four years they spent in forced exile from their homeland between 1864-68. During this time 9,000 Navajo captives endured the Long Walk, a forced march of 450 miles to an internment camp in a barren area of New Mexico, called Bosque Redondo. This was Hweeldi, or their place of suffering for four terrible years. Almost 20 percent of the Dine died during the three week forced march or at the camp, from disease, hunger, despair and the poor conditions they endured. While visiting the Navajo reservation we frequently heard about the Long Walk and Hweeldi, but visiting the Bosque Redondo Memorial a few days ago provided a moving statement about the traumatic events that happened there 150 years ago. The Memorial was established by the state of New Mexico in collaboration with the Navajo and Mescalero Apache people (also interned there though in much smaller numbers than the Navajo).

With Navajo resistance a major impediment to American colonial ambitions, Hweeldi was the U.S. Military’s ultimate answer to this “Navajo problem.” For the Navajo it became a watershed in their history, never to be forgotten. It was the culmination of 15 years of on-and-off conflict, a number of failed treaties, and numerous battles and atrocities (including the U.S. murder and scalping of the moderate Navajo leader Narbona in 1849). In 1863, Kit Carson led U.S. troops in a scorched earth campaign against the Navajo throughout their homeland, culminating in an attack on their citadel of Canyon de Chelly. Seeing their homes torched, crops destroyed, livestock seized, water poisoned, and resistance defeated, and facing starvation as a result, the Navajo surrendered. They did not imagine what would befall them however. Beginning in mid-1864, as they surrendered to the military they were forced under guard to march to the internment camp, with only the clothes on their backs and even sometimes walking in horrific winter conditions. Many were brutalized by the guards along the way. (Actually the Long Walk was many long walks as they went in groups over a number of months.)

While the U.S. hoped that Bosque would become a permanent reservation for the Indians it was a disaster: conditions were inadequate for the Navajo to grow their traditional foods so food was scarce and hunger rampant; trees were inadequate to allow them to build traditional hogans so they dug pits and provided whatever protection they could; there was inadequate protection against the cold of the winter; disease ravaged them and they had no access to traditional plant medicines; and they longed for their homeland. The Navajo resisted these horrible conditions and demanded repatriation. Finally the U.S. agreed and a treaty was signed in 1868 that allowed the Navajo to return as a defeated people to a reduced homeland in Arizona which became their reservation as it is to this today (though their national boundaries have expanded since 1868). It is a story of defeat, suffering and death, but ultimately it is also a story of strength, survival and new beginnings.