Long Walk of the Navajo

A Pattern of Warfare and Raiding

The 1840s through the early 1860s were times of intensified raiding as the Navajo economy shifted from agriculture to pastoralism. When the United States assumed control over the territories, the area was described as one of relentless intermittent warfare combined with extensive trade networks. Apache groups raided New Mexican homesteads and Pueblo communities for sheep, cattle, and horses. These groups in turn raided Apachean camps and took women and children as slaves, a well-established pattern that was intensifying as Euro-American and New Mexican Hispanic settlers moved onto Apachean lands. Utes and Comanches raided Navajos, and they in turn retaliated against communities that were not their trading partners. Anthropologist Edward Spicer estimated that between 1846 and 1850, 20,000 horses and mules and over 800,000 sheep and cattle were stolen in northwestern New Mexico by all parties. In addition, almost half of the Navajo population (as many as 6,000 women and children) were living as slaves with New Mexican families, and others had been taken to Mexico. The last Navajo slave was not freed until the late 1880s.

The United States had promised settlers protection, because of the small number of troops assigned, Navajo and Apache sociopolitical organization, and their scattered homes, the military was ineffective. Although the government and the Navajo had signed several treaties, only the members following their local leader were bound by these agreements; the Navajo had no centralized political authority. Though the military built forts on Navajo homelands, it could not keep New Mexican residents from invading Navajo lands. Many Navajo felt that acquiring livestock was payment for the theft of their land. In turn, New Mexican slave raiders considered taking and selling Navajo slaves as reimbursement for their economic losses. When many troops were pulled out for the Civil War in 1861, an already bad situation worsened. Scholars have described it as chaos, a cyclone of raids and counter-raids.

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