The Lands of Navajo Nation

GLO Record of the Week for November 29, 2020

The Long Walk of the Navajo

The Navajo tribe of Native Americans lives in the southwestern lands of the modern-day United States, in the Four Corners region of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. Believed to have initially settled there around the year 1400, the Navajo were primarily hunters and gatherers and transitioned to become farmers and herders as they were influenced by Spanish Colonists in the 1600s.

As the United States assumed control of the New Mexico Territory in 1849 following the Mexican-American War, settlers and troops began to establish a presence in the Navajo's native homeland. Over the next 10 years, tensions between the two groups escalated, as both the Navajo and New Mexican settlers engaged in raids and skirmishes with each other, and attempts at treaties between both parties were widely disregarded. In 1861, the U.S. Army began a series of military actions designed to bring local Navajo and Apache tribes under control. U.S. tactics centered around the destruction of Navajo crops and property, forcing large groups of Navajo to head to Fort Defiance, Arizona, in search of relief through 1864.

In 1864, the U.S. Army forced about 9,000 Navajo to walk over 300 miles from Fort Defiance to Fort Sumner, New Mexico for internment at Bosque Redondo. The walk was arduous, and the Navajo were provided with inadequate resources once they arrived, leading to a dark period in their history known as "The Fearing Time." Four years later, the U.S. established the Navajo Indian Reservation, allowing the tribe to return to their homeland.

Mural in Gallup, New Mexico, commemorating the Long Walk of the Navajo

Establishment and Expansion

The Navajo Indian Reservation was established in the Treaty of 1868 when the United States granted approximately 5,200 miles of land to the Navajo tribe for permanent settlement. The boundaries of the reservation were defined as "the 37th parallel in the north; the southern border as a line running through Fort Defiance; the eastern border as a line running through Fort Lyon; and in the west as longitude 109°30′." The Navajo Reservation is one of the few Native American reservations established by the U.S. government that allowed a tribe to return to their historical homeland.

From 1868-1934, the Navajo Reservation grew in size due to several additions granted by the U.S. government. Most of these additions were granted through executive orders, including the first expansion of 1878, when President Rutherford Hayes ordered that the boundary be pushed 20 miles west.

Another notable expansion was the addition of the 1882 Executive Order Reservation, which included 2.5 million acres containing most of the Hopi tribal villages. While this area was included in the Navajo Reservation, it was occupied by both Navajo and Hopi people, who peacefully coexisted except for some minor skirmishes over land and water use. This land would later be divided, creating the Hopi Tribal Reservation within the Navajo one.

Navajo lands also continued to expand eastward outside of official reservation boundaries due to the Dawes Act of 1887. The act allocated land to Navajo tribal members in small plots for subsistence farming, in an attempt to assimilate them with European American culture. Lands from this area were not initially considered to be part of the reservation, and were available for sale to non-Native Americans, leading to the patchwork appearance of the current eastern boundary of the reservation.

Today, the lands of the Navajo Nation cover over 27,000 square miles across Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico, making them larger than 10 states in the U.S. The initial reservation of 1868 can be seen relative to today's boundaries on the Navajo Nation's flag, established 100 years later in 1968.