34°24′07″N
104°11′41″W
/
34.40194°N 104.19472°W
/
34.40194; -104.19472
United States historic place
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Fort Sumner Ruins
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![](//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/62/FORT_SUMNER_RUINS.jpg/250px-FORT_SUMNER_RUINS.jpg) Fort Sumner
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Nearest city
| Fort Sumner, New Mexico
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Area
| 50 acres (20 ha)
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Built
| 1862
(
1862
)
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Architect
| Alexander LaRue
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NRHP reference
No.
| 74001194
[1]
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NMSRCP
No.
| 139
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Added to NRHP
| August 13, 1974
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Designated NMHS
| 1968
[2]
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Designated NMSRCP
| January 9, 1970
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Fort Sumner
was a
military fort
in
New Mexico Territory
charged with the internment of
Navajo
and
Mescalero Apache
populations from 1863 to 1868 at nearby
Bosque Redondo
.
History
[
edit
]
On October 31, 1862,
Congress
authorized the construction of Fort Sumner. General
James Henry Carleton
initially justified the fort as offering protection to
settlers
in the
Pecos River
valley from the
Mescalero Apache
,
Kiowa
, and
Comanche
. He also created the Bosque Redondo
reservation
, a 1,600-square-mile (4,100 km
2
; 1,000,000-acre)
[3]
area where over 9,000
Navajo
and
Mescalero Apaches
were forced to live because of accusations that they were raiding white settlements near their respective homelands. The fort was named for General
Edwin Vose Sumner
.
[4]
The
reservation
was to be self-sufficient, while teaching
Mescalero Apache
and
Navajo
how to be modern
farmers
. General
Edward Canby
, whom Carleton replaced, had first suggested that the Navajo people be moved to a series of reservations and be taught new skills. Some in
Washington, D.C.
thought that the Navajo should not be moved and that a reservation should be created on their own land. Some New Mexico citizens encouraged killing the Navajo or at least removing them from their lands. The 1865 and 1866
corn
crop was sufficient, but in 1867 it was a total failure.
Army
officers and Indian Agents realized that Bosque Redondo was a failure, as it had poor
water
and too little
firewood
for the numbers of people who were living there. The Mescalero soon ran away; the Navajo stayed longer, but in May 1868 were permitted to return to their native lands.
When the Bosque Redondo was established, Gen. Carleton ordered Col.
Christopher "Kit" Carson
to do whatever necessary to bring first the Mescalero and then the Navajo there. All of the Mescalero Apache had been relocated by the end of 1862, but the Navajo were not resettled in large numbers until early 1864. The Navajo refer to the journey from Navajo land to the Bosque Redondo as the
Long Walk
. More than 300 Navajos died making the journey.
[5]
It was a bitter memory to many Navajo. One man described it 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 children...?"
[6]
U.S. troops at Fort Sumner.
In April 1865 there were about 8,500 Navajo and 500
Mescalero Apache
interned at Bosque Redondo. The
Army
had planned only 5,000 would be there, so lack of sufficient food was an issue from the start. As the Navajo and Mescalero Apache had long been enemies, their enforced proximity led to frequent open fighting. The environmental situation worsened. The
interned
people did not have clean water; it was full of
alkali
and there was no
firewood
to cook with. The water from the nearby
Pecos River
caused severe
intestinal
problems, and disease quickly spread throughout the camp. Food was in short supply because of
crop
failures, Army and Indian Agent bungling, and
criminal
activities. In 1865, the
Mescalero Apache
, or those strong enough to travel, managed to escape. The Navajo were not allowed to leave until May 1868 when the
U.S. Army
agreed that Fort Sumner and the Bosque Redondo
reservation
was a failure.
The 1868
Treaty of Bosque Redondo
was negotiated with the Navajo and they were allowed to return to their homeland, to a "new reservation". They were joined by the thousands of Navajo who had been hiding out in the
Arizona Territory
hinterlands. This experience resulted in a more determined Navajo, and never again were they surprised by raiders of the
Rio Grande
valley.
[7]
In subsequent years, they have expanded the "new reservation" into well over 16 million acres (65,000 km
2
).
Fort Sumner was abandoned in 1869 and purchased by
rancher
and cattle baron
Lucien Maxwell
. Maxwell rebuilt one of the officers' quarters into a 20-room house. On July 14, 1881, Sheriff
Pat Garrett
shot and killed
Billy the Kid
in this house, now referred to as the
Maxwell House
.
Fort Sumner Historic Site
[
edit
]
A hundred years after the signing of the treaty that allowed the Navajo people to return to their original homes in the
Four Corners
Region, Fort Sumner was declared a
New Mexico
State Monument in 1968.
The property is now managed by the
New Mexico
Historic Sites (formerly State Monuments) division of the
New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs
. On June 4, 2005, a new
museum
designed by Navajo
architect
David N. Sloan was opened on the site as the
Bosque Redondo Memorial
. Congress had authorized the establishment of the memorial by the Secretary of Defense in 2000, making federal funds available for construction.
[8]
The Bosque Redondo Memorial and Fort Sumner Historic Site are located 6.5 miles (10.5 km) southeast of
Fort Sumner, New Mexico
: 3 miles (4.8 km) east on
U.S. Route 60
/
U.S. Route 84
, then 3.5 miles (5.6 km) south on Billy The Kid Road.
See also
[
edit
]
Notes
[
edit
]
- ^
"National Register Information System"
.
National Register of Historic Places
.
National Park Service
. July 9, 2010.
- ^
"About New Mexico's Historic Sites"
.
New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs
. Archived from
the original
on October 30, 2016
. Retrieved
December 22,
2016
.
- ^
"Fort Sumner Historic Site/Bosque Redondo Memorial"
Archived
2016-06-13 at the
Wayback Machine
, New Mexico Historic Sites website
- ^
https://www.newmexico.org/fort-sumner/
, New Mexico website
- ^
Brown, Dee.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West
. Thirtieth Anniversary Edition. Henry Holt and Company, 2000. pp. 28?29.
- ^
Very Slim Man, Navajo elder, quoted by Richard Van Valkenburgh,
Desert Magazine
, April, 1946, p. 23.
- ^
Indian Depredations in New Mexico,
John S. Watts, Wash. D.C., 1858, 66 pages.
- ^
"Public Law 106-511 ? Title II?Bosque Redondo Memorial"
.
uscode.house.gov
. Retrieved
2019-04-01
.
References
[
edit
]
External links
[
edit
]