02/12/2021
Kill All You Can
by Rebekha C. Crockett
This week we share a glimpse into the volatile interactions between soldiers and the Navajo (Dine) and Mescalero Apache (N’de) during the 1860s. At this time, a campaign of scorched earth warfare was launched against both tribes by the U.S. Military. Belongings were destroyed, crops and homes burned, livestock slaughtered, water sources contaminated, and men of the tribes were shot on sight with women and children often being killed in the crossfire. As they surrendered to forts near their homelands, in the case of the Dine some such forts were Fort Defiance and Fort Wingate, they were gathered and then forced to march hundreds of miles to a desolate reservation called Bosque Redondo on the Pecos River. At the various forts where they were held, they were often forced to preform manual labor, with rations used as leverage. The reports below show the fear and uncertainty experienced the needless brutality as the military followed orders, and the bravery and resilience of native peoples in the face of such an impossible situation.
On February 13th, 1865, Major Ethan W. Eaton at Fort Wingate wrote to headquarters: “…during most of the winter there has been about 50 Navajoe Indians encpd about one mile from this Post. These Indians were in the habit of coming to the Post daily, brining wood, carrying water, and doing small jobs generally. After receiving notice from the Dptmt. Commander that they could be sent to the reservation and that runners should be sent to those yet back, I notified these here that they could now get rations and would be sent to the reservation as soon as possible, that they might be there in time to plant the coming season. Two of these Indians were sent with the interpreters to notify the balance. On the 11th inst. I noticed that there were no Navajoes about the Post, and sent the interpreter to see the reason. He returned at about 5-1/2 o’clock in the afternoon, reporting that they had all left, probably the day before about noon. This showed bad faith on their part and I at once ordered Capt. Montoya with 25 enlisted men (on foot) to pursue and overtake them if possible… I directed Capt. Montoya to inform them that they must return and go to the reservation, that if they returned, they would be fed and cared for. If they refused to return and resisted, to bring them by force and if they fought, to kill all he could—Women & children to be spared as much as possible…The Indians had about 30 hours head start.
In his report, made on the same day, Captain Donaciano Montoya wrote: “…I stared from this Post on the 10th inst. at 7 o’clock at night in pursuit of a party of Navajo Indians that had left this post the night before. My command consisted of 2 noncommissioned officers, 23 men, …and citizen Jose Morales as guide and interpreter. My guide having seen the trail of the Indians in the daytime, I lost no time in finding it at night, and I followed it all night until daylight, having traveled about 35 miles among rocky cañons and steep mountains. When it was perfectly clear I stopped to give the men time to get breakfast and to rest a little from the fatigues of the night’s march. I rested there until 9 o’clock A.M. and at that hour renewed my march, but not on the whole trail which I followed in the night, for the Indians had divided themselves into little parties and went in different directions. The ground being frozen I could discover no more than the tracks of one Indian, 2 squaws and one child. I followed this trail all day and overtook the party at sundown, but they saw my command when it was about 400 yards from their ranchos and they immediately fled. All my men being on foot it would have been impossible to overtake the, and they would have escaped, had it not been that I mounted the interpreter on my own horse with instructions to overtake the Indians and tell them to return; that I did not want to do them any harm, that the commandant wanted them to go to the Post where they would receive rations until means of taking them to the Bosque Redondo should be obtained. The interpreter told them this but they resisted saying that they did not want to return, that they were going to their native country. The interpreter then, as he had orders to fire upon them if they would not return, began to fire at them with a pistol and the warrior who was with the squaws began to defend his family, fighting valiantly until one of the soldiers arrived at the place where the interpreter was, when he fled; but the interpreter acted promptly and putting the soldier up behind him, the 2 mounted on one horse, again overtook the Indian and killed him. During the fight the interpreter received an arrow wound in one leg but it is not serious. After the Indian was killed and the squaws captured, I asked one of the latter, through the interpreter, why they had left the fort, and she replied, because the men wanted to hide their families in the mountains, and then join in a campaign to go and rob at Abiquiu […]This indicated that the robberies which were committed on the Rio Grande were committed by those thieves who yet remain in their native country and not by those who are at the reservation at the Bosque Redondo as some citizens think. After receiving this information from the squaw, and after having burnt all they had in their ranchos, I returned to the post. It would have been impossible to catch more Indians, because they had by this time gone into the rocky places in the mountains where loaded mules could not go….”
In forwarding Captain Montoya’s report, Major Eaton notes that, after questioning the women himself, they left in large part because of report that they were all to be killed at the Bosque Redondo. While conditions at Bosque Redondo were notoriously horrendous and many died, there is no evidence that the Military ever planned an outright massacre; nevertheless, this was understandably a common belief. Many were never brought to Bosque Redondo, but rather spent those years in their homeland, constantly threatened by soldiers and struggling just as much to survive.
