Jennifer Denetdale interview

Jennifer Denetdale
Jennifer Denetdale, Assistant Professor of History at the University of New Mexico.

Interviewer
Describe the people of the era.  Where did they come from and what kind of people were they?

Jennifer Denetdale
The Dine of the mid-nineteenth century were a people who were known to be a wealthy people.  They were autonomous.  They had their own political, economic and social systems, and very much saw themselves as a people who were in charge of their own futures and their own destinies. 

Interviewer
Tell me how they lived.  What was the family structure? 

Jennifer Denetdale
Families were situated or organized by extended families; by clan and then by extended families and they were matrilineal and each clan or group of people they were under a nau, aunie or a leader so they lived together in a group sometimes five, ten or fifteen extended families that lived together, and by this time they had also developed a very strong pastoral lifestyle and so they followed the seasons in terms of following their flocks, from what we call the flat areas, then up into the mountains just following the season and pasturing lands.  They also grew corn.  They had cornfields in addition to their livestock.

Interviewer
Tell me again about the Navajo people of that era.  What kind of people were they and where did they come from?

Jennifer Denetdale
The Navajo people, the Dine of the mid-nineteenth century prior to 1863, were a people in charge of their own destiny.  They were seen by a lot of people in the area as very wealthy and very influential.  At this time they had huge, substantial livestock and they grew… they had agriculture.  They put a lot of status--and wealth came--from the blankets that the women wove that were used as wearing blankets. And the Dine came from the first world, the origins then came out into this world, which depending on who you speak to, is either the fourth or the fifth world to this present world. And from the emergence into this world we were given values and lessons to live by the holy people; and so to this day, many Dine continue to live by the guidelines that were set down through the teachings of the origin stories and that are past on through the ceremonies like the Blessingway. 

Interviewer
Tell me about how these people lived.  What was their family structure in this era?

Jennifer Denetdale
Families relied on their... a lot of them were very pastoral in terms of, and organized their social structures around extended families. And extended families often consisted of a woman and her husband and her daughters and their families and husbands, and groups of them were also directed or led by aunut aunie, a chief, a leader, and they followed a pastoral life and moved seasonally up and down the mountains, like in the Canyon de Chelly area or the Chuska Mountains. So that's how family life was situated. And women were very important in the social structures.  Today we continue to be matrilineal in terms of our identity as Navajos start with the women with our matrilineal lines. 

Interviewer
Talk just a little bit about the origins of the Navajo.  Where did they come from? 

Jennifer Denetdale
The Navajo people are... I think I said this earlier... we came into this world in what we call "Dinetah", old Navajo country from the first world, second world, third world, and each time that we journeyed through these worlds.  And so part of the Navajo philosophy of who we are is the basis of are philosophy is "sa anna...," which means the journey of old life to happiness and old age, and so, that's who we are as a people.  So the ancestors came through a reed to this world and one of the reasons they had to move was because of the transgressions they had committed in the lower worlds.  And they brought those lessons as well as the lessons given to them by the holy people from... to this world.  You will have, and this is, you know one of the things of the Dine is that the way in which we know ourselves and who we are as a people sometimes contrast dramatically with what archeologists and anthropologists have to say about our origins. And they say (and some Navajos would not dispute them) that Navajos migrated into what is now the Southwest around the... it depends on who you talk to, the 1400's or the 1500's and so that's also another story of the people's journey into the old Southwest.  And there were places where the stories also overlap. 

Interviewer
What was their history at Chaco Canyon?  How did they relate to Chaco Canyon?

Jennifer Denetdale
There is work coming out which is very interesting, for example Harry Walters, Harris Francis who works with Claire Kelly, an anthropologist, and Richard Begay who used to work with the Historic Preservation Department.  They have charted through ceremonial stories and songs... provided some evidence and explanations that the Dine had relationships with people at Chaco, with the people who were at Mesa Verde, and that also some of our ceremonial knowledge was shaped and influenced by their contact with these early people. 

Interviewer
Tell me a little bit about the Long Walk.  Why did the Long Walk happen?

Jennifer Denetdale
American native peoples have a similar kind of history, and almost all native peoples that you can speak of had their trail of tears in terms of being removed in the face of white expansion. And the same thing happened to the Dine in the 1860's when the Americans claimed this territory--this land from the Mexicans who claimed control of it in 1846--and at that time the Americans… you know, you look at some of the early narratives from this period and they looked favorably upon the Dine and noted that they seemed to practice a kind of democracy that they could admire.  They admired the people's wealth and autonomy.  And then soon after that they realized that the Dine didn't think that the Americans were any different than the Mexicans, and so in the face of white settlement, American expansion there also was... one of the things that was also different for the Navajo is the large amount of slavery that was going on here in the Southwest.  Apache women and children were the ones who were being taken captive and so this is one of the main reasons for the cycles of war and peace with the Dine in the mid-nineteenth century. 

Interviewer
Tell me how this raiding and slaving worked. 

Jennifer Denetdale
The place of slave taking in the Southwest has a long history that began with the Spanish Conquest and when the Spaniards came, one of the things that they did immediately was to claim the indigenous people's resources--their land, and immediately, also their labor.  So, you know there was some slaving that went on prior when the Spaniards came, but then it really escalated when the Spaniards came, and you find a few accounts of Spanish campaigns into Navajo land--and those were to look for slaves.  In addition to that, slaving (going into Navajo country), that also dramatically transformed the relationships between the Dine and various Pueblo communities that were throughout this area because Navajos also had... most people will talk about Navajo and Pueblo relations as mostly hostile and that's just not true.  Navajos, by clan, had trading relationships and friendships that they had developed for generations with different Pueblo groups.  One of the groups they had good relationships with were the Haymus(?) people, and so that changed a lot in terms of there was a lot of resentment and hostilities that happened when Pueblo people began to go with the Spaniards and then the Mexicans into Navajo country to look for slaves. And if you look at the number of slaves that were taken, captives that were taken in the 1860's, you will note that the slave raids into Navajo country escalated and increased in the mid-nineteenth century and so the hostilities were at an all-time high during that period, and it was directly related to the slave-taking that was going on.  There are references in a lot of the primary documents that note that when there is a treaty negotiated between Americans and Navajo leaders, one of the provisions is that Navajos will return captives to the Mexicans.  And then there are documents that say that even though there was this provision in the treaties, Navajos rarely, if ever, received back their own family members who had been taken captive. And this is always a sore point in the documents that's noted. 

Interviewer
Lets talk just a little bit about Canyon de Chelly.  Tell me what the significance that Canyon de Chelly is to the Navajo culture. 

Jennifer Denetdale
I think in the mid-nineteenth century, one of the things that was really important about Canyon de Chelly is that it was the Navajo fortress.  This was the one defense that the Spaniards and the Mexicans, and then the Americans found just formidable--and the Dine warriors used it to their advantage.  It was their stronghold.  And when Kit Carson and his men stormed Canyon de Chelly that was the beginning of the defeat of the Dine. 

Interviewer
Tell me about Kit Carson.  What happened at Canyon de Chelly and how was he viewed?

Jennifer Denetdale
How was Kit Carson viewed by Navajos?  This is an ongoing debate that I often get involved in because the Dine don't really have a lot of good things to say about Kit Carson.  They see Kit Carson as the person who was responsible for the senseless slaughter of over 2,500 Navajo men, women and children and that he was completely uncompassionate when he conducted his "burn and scorch" policy.  He completely humiliated and brutalized the Navajo people when he burned their hogans, slaughtered their livestock, destroyed their cornfields.    And so that brought about the final military defeat of the Navajo people, and to this day we haven't forgotten it.

Interviewer
Talk a little bit about General James Henry Carleton.  How was he viewed?

Jennifer Denetdale
There is not a lot of Navajo stories about Carleton.  They are mostly about... the stories the Navajo people tell are mostly about Kit Carson.  Carleton was the one who had masterminded creating the Bosque Redondo reservation and he was the one who had plans to remove the Navajos to this reservation, and there are some of this reports in which he was interested in the natural resources and he thought there was gold in Navajo country.  But people remember more Kit Carson.

Interviewer
Describe the Long Walk and its importance to the Navajo people.

Jennifer Denetdale
The meaning of the Long Walk to the Dine?  The Dine still have a very long memory about the trauma that their ancestors experienced during the Long Walk. And the Long Walk is really actually a series of forced marches that began either at Fort Defiance or Fort Wingate, and people, depending on whatever route was chosen, went from anywhere from 250 to 450 miles to the Bosque Redondo reservation at New Fort Sumner, New Mexico.  And the people's stories tell very much about just the day-to-day experiences, the day-to-day hardship.  My father tells me about his grandmother, one of his aunts who was taken captive and ended up at Zuni, and she managed to escape from the Zuni and went to Fort Wingate, and from there went to Hweeldi, which is what the Navajos call it, called Bosque Redondo.  They call it Hweeldi.  And the stories that the Navajo people tell about being so hungry and so starved... some of the soldiers' reports say that when the Navajos walked into the Fort, a lot of them were almost completely naked.  They might just have a piece of fabric to cover their private parts, and would say that, you know, we gave them a few things--a little bit of cloth to put on and something to wear.  They were not use to the food that was offered to them as rations.  You had white flour; beans, green coffee beans, rancid bacon and they weren't use to that so a lot of them ate it.  They didn't know how to prepare it and then they died.  They got diarrhea and dysentery and died from the food as well.  They also tell stories about how the food had just been destroyed and they would have to resort to having to eat coyote and crow to discover that they were just utterly inedible.  And the women... they tell stories about the pregnant women and the elders who couldn't keep up were taken out of line and shot by the soldiers.  Women were raped and violated.  And so this was a very, very traumatic time for my people, and we still haven't forgotten.  It's still very much a part of our memories. 

Interviewer
How many people died on the Long Walk?

Jennifer Denetdale
How many people died on the Long Walk?  There is really no way to know how many people died on the Long Walk.  The estimate that is mostly used is around 2,500 people died.  Over 8,000 were imprisoned at the Bosque Redondo reservation and a lot of them just died from starvation and from the cold.  I mean a lot of the march happened in like March and February where it was just bitterly cold.  I was just reading and account of one military commander who was so relentless in getting the people there that he was driving them twenty miles a day, and that when he got there, there was a substantial number of the people had died because of his relentless determination to get them to the reservation.  The other thing is that what followed the marches, the captives walking... you also had slave raiders picking them off and stealing the women and children as well.  So it was really a horrendous time for the people. 

Interviewer
Talk about the Bosque Redondo…  what happened there and what were the conditions like?

Jennifer Denetdale
The Bosque Redondo, when they first... I think... when the first group of people came there was probably a very small group... When the people got to the Bosque Redondo, the first group of people to come was around fifty captives that were taken to Bosque Redondo and then a couple two or three months later there was another group that was taken in.  These were the people of Antonio Sandoval who was known as A Nai, the enemy Navajo because they had, since the Spanish time, consorted with the enemy and he was often involved with capturing his own people for the slave trade. So Navajos didn't want to particularly be around him and even though he'd allied himself with the Americans, his band was one of the first groups to be taken prisoner and taken to the Bosque Redondo.  When the people got there, there wasn't really a lot of buildings established.  One of the reports say that the commanding officer who brings this first group says that he has his Navajo prisoners comfortably settled in old settler tents.  And so the conditions were not very good, especially given that winter was coming on as they were taking the first trains of captives to the Bosque Redondo.  It was very, very difficult.  They wanted... one of Carleton's plans was to have them live in Pueblo-like villages, and Navajos just didn't live that way.  We weren't use to that kind of living arrangement, and so that didn't work out very well, plus the people were living in open pits and sometimes they had brush put on the top of them.  There was never enough food and their rations were starvation rations, and eating it was very, very difficult.  You also had diseases, epidemic diseases; you know that would come about.  And so it was very difficult and it was very harsh for the people.  There was... there had been originally a grove of cottonwood trees there, but that was soon depleted for the soldier's use.  And so the people had to go further and further out to look for wood and it was very dangerous because you had Comanche raiders and New Mexicans waiting for the unsuspecting Navajo woman or child to take for the slave trade.  So it was also a very dangerous time.  There is an account I read of when, I think his name was Delgado, I'm not sure...There was one of the first Navajo leaders who took his people to the Bosque Redondo, and by the time he had gotten there he had lost 15 people of his band.  He gets there and the officer records notes that he was met with such emotion by his kin-people who were already there, and they hugged him and embraced him.  He said there was much tears as they met and greeted each other.  So it was very difficult.  You can look at the pictures from this period; the photographs of this period of Fort Sumner and you can see that buildings, barracks have been created.  There is a commissary, there are officer's quarters, and this was in a large part built with Navajo labor.  In some of the pictures you can also see firewood that's stacked up against the wall and that was for the use of the military.  Navajos had to go out and scrounge around for pieces of wood and in the Navajo stories it was a particular kind of wood, I think it was greasewood that they would use for warmth.  And so it was very harsh.  There are stories also of people being so hungry the boys would go out and follow the horses, and when the horses had left their dung they would pick through it and look for undigested corn and roast that and eat it. So it was a very, very harsh time there for them.  There was attempts to provide them some sort of schooling for the children, but that wasn't very successful, I mean, when you're starving the first thing on your mind is not paying attention to your schooling.

Interviewer
How did the people die at the Bosque Redondo and what were the numbers like?

Jennifer Denetdale
I think that 2,500 numbers of people that died includes the people who were at the Bosque Redondo.  There's no record of how many people died during the forced marches and so that figure that I've read includes the people who were at the Bosque Redondo.  The rations were very, very skimpy, starvation rations in terms of how much beef was given to them, how much corn was given to them....

Interviewer
Talk about their rations...

Jennifer Denetdale
A lot of people died... they starved because of the meager rations.  They were starvation rations.  They were given some meat and a lot of times the meat was rancid.  They didn't know how to cook the bacon they were given.  The flour--they had no idea how to prepare and so they would mix it with water and you know, eat it like a paste or gruel, and they would get sick from that and many died from that as well.  And so a lot of them died from starvation, but there was also disease that was coming through the camps periodically and killing people as well.  And then the water was very alkaline and didn't agree with them as well. 

Interviewer
Weren't the people vulnerable to Comanche raiders and other raiders of any type that wanted to come in?

Jennifer Denetdale
The people were very vulnerable to the raiders who were always at the perimeter of the reservation, and when they went out looking for wood, they'd have to go miles looking for wood, and they tried to set up farming and they used their Navajo labor to construct irrigation channels.  They were vulnerable to all kinds of things; the climate, the diseases, the lack of food, the lack of adequate shelter, clothing--they just didn't have enough clothing as well. 

Interviewer
When you think of your ancestors on the Long Walk and also at the Bosque, what are your feelings about those people?

Jennifer Denetdale
It's still very difficult for us to talk about these stories.  It makes me cry, and it makes me sad and it makes me angry, and at the same time we also are very appreciative that our ancestors had the courage and resilience to keep on going in the face of just incredible catastrophe and incredible trauma that we think that they must have been thinking about us.  And so at the same time that we are appalled at what they lived through--the utter inhumanity and injustice shown to our ancestors--we also are thankful to them.  Traditionally Navajo people don't go to the Bosque Redondo because when they left the medicine people did a ceremony and they said, "we are never to return to this place of horror and many of us have broken that and gone back to remember our ancestors."  And so when we remember them we also are thankful, very thankful and grateful to them for showing such fortitude and courage.

Interviewer
Tell me about the Mescalero experience there.  How did the Navajo and Mescalero get along?

Jennifer Denetdale
What was the relationship of the Mescalero and the Navajos at the Bosque Redondo?  The Mescalero Apaches were the first to go to the Bosque Redondo.  Around 500 people under Kit Carson's command were defeated and sent to the Bosque Redondo, so the Mescalero Apache were there first, and then the Navajos came later and from what I understand, there wasn't a good relationship between the Navajos and the Mescaleros and the Indian agent for the Apaches... he was always trying to be, you know, supportive of the group of people that he was responsible for, and so there never was really a good relationship between the Mescalero Apache and the Navajos who were both at the Bosque Redondo.  Early on the Apaches did eventually leave the reservation and go back to their former homes. 

Interviewer
Tell me a little bit about Manuelito.  What kind of man was he?

Jennifer Denetdale
Manuelito was known to the Navajo people, to the elders even today.  He is still best known for as (Navajo name), which means "man from black weeds."  He was also known as (Navajo name), which means "holy boy."
Manuelito is a man of great stature; he was one of our greatest leaders.  He was known to the Navajo people as (Navajo name), which means "man from black weeds."  He was also known as (Navajo name), which means "holy boy" and (Navajo name), which means "son in law of Narbona."  He was a very imposing man I think.  He was over six feet three in height and I think just had this aura about him that people knew immediately that he was a leader.  When he was born his father came, he was a newborn, he was born in the Barriers Mountains in Southern Utah, and when his father learned of his son's birth he went over there and took his son outside and presented him to the sun and prophesized that his son would be a great leader and that people would listen to his words and be moved by his speech, and so he was a great orator and he was a great leader.  He was one of the most fearsome leaders, warriors, I think.  Historians, American historians have talked about the Navajo resistance, looking at the documents that are available where American soldiers and commanders said that we will not have defeated the Navajos until we have either killed or defeated Manuelito.  And so he was known as the defiant spirit of the Navajos. 

Interviewer
Tell me a little bit about Barboncito.  What kind of a man was he?

Jennifer Denetdale
Barboncito was also one of our great leaders.  I think he is best known for his role in negotiating the treaty of 1868.  All of these leaders were incredible orators--they could speak very well.  So when Barboncito was selected to negotiate the treaty of 1868 on behalf of the Navajo people, he did just a really excellent job on behalf of the Navajo people because the original plan had been that the Dine would be removed to Indian territory in what is now Oklahoma, and Barboncito argued eloquently that we should go back to our homeland and that we would not accept going to Indian territory in Oklahoma. 

Interviewer
Tell me about the Long Walk home.  What were the emotions of people as they came back to their homelands?

Jennifer Denetdale
At the Bosque Redondo right prior to, or during the time that Navajos were imprisoned there, there are some reports by officers who say that Navajos… the prisoners would stop them and plead with them and beg them to allow them to go home.  And so when they negotiated the treaty of 1868, and they prepared, they had learned that they were going to return to their homelands. There was a caravan of Navajos ready to go--I can't remember how many days after the treaty had been signed, it was like June 4th or something--and the caravan was ten miles long they said, of people returning to their homeland. And one of the things that Manuelito also noted or said, was that, "when the elders saw... came within sight of our sacred mountain, Mount Taylor, they stopped and they cried because they were so happy to be returning to their homeland." 

Interviewer
What do you think are the lessons learned from the Long Walk experience?

Jennifer Denetdale
The lessons learned are... one of the major lessons that I have learned from listening to the songs and the stories and the prayers is that our ancestors got through this very traumatic time by remembering the lessons and the guidelines the holy people had given us to live by, and so when they returned home, they did their prayers.  And the prayers were (Navajo name), means "the journey to happiness and old age."  And so when they returned home, they once again set about establishing life as they had known it prior to 1868, and so the stories are about returning home, sustaining ourselves, and getting back to the business of life but never forgetting what happened to our people. And today it's still important to remember what happened because we still continue have to deal with discrimination and to deal with racism. And so it's a long history and we still strive to correct that in America. 

Interviewer
What did the people find when they got back to Canyon de Chelly and their homelands?

Jennifer Denetdale
Upon returning to Navajo land, many people went first to Fort Wingate because, you know, they had gotten home in June and they didn't have any seeds for planting and it was well past the planning period.  And so they came home and they didn't have enough food, and they needed time to set up the shelter, so many people went to Fort Wingate first while many other people went back to their former residences, and then according to the treaty of 1868, part of the annuities was livestock--sheep and goats and horses.  And so at Fort they were given these annuities and then people went back to their homes.  There is one song that they say was created at Fort Sumner.  It's this Navajo song called "Shin ah sha, shina ah sha" (Navajo) and what that means is "I will walk in beauty...I return home and I will walk in beauty," and so it talks about the great energy and the great emotion that they had about returning home and getting back to the business of life, you know... that I move with great energy and emotion. 

Interviewer
Part of the 1868 treaty was an education component that the Navajo children would go to schools.  Tell me a little bit about that experience and what was it like?

Jennifer Denetdale
One of the provisions of the treaty of 1968 is that Navajo people would accept American education for their children after 1868 and it really was difficult to first provide American education and then to have children go because of just the nature of our communities and our settlements.  Some people would consider us a very disperse people and return to the pastoral life.

The treaty of 1868 included a provision that Navajo people would allow American education for their children, and when they returned to "De nah, bee kai ya?" (Navajo). It was sort of difficult to do that to provide education, American education for Navajo children because first we were, some people would consider us a dispersed settlements.  It was difficult to get children to schools; there were still not roads.  A lot of places were still very remote and so getting that provision off to a good start didn't take place for a very long time, and because of how isolated places were, some of the first schools that the Navajo children were sent to were boarding schools both off and on the reservation.  Probably one of the first schools to be established was at Fort Defiance. 

Jennifer Denetdale
What was the experience of going to boarding school for children?  First I think one of the things that they had to do was compel parents to give up their children and many parents did not want to give up their children, and so in a lot of cases they were forced to relinquish their children--they love their children very much and they couldn't imagine having their children gone from them for years at a time.  And so children grew up, in many cases, away from their parents for years at a time.  They lived in a military-like institution and there was a real effort to keep Navajo children from speaking their language and practicing their cultural traditions and make them become Americans, like white Americans.  So it was very difficult and it was very traumatic in many, many cases.

Interviewer
We were talking about your ancestors and how you feel about your ancestors who went on the Long Walk.

Jennifer Denetdale
The Long Walk and the Bosque Redondo, the experiences of my ancestors to this day is still very difficult for many Navajo people to talk about.  When we hear the stories from our parents and out grandparents, if we're fortunate enough to hear them, we can't help but get tearful about what they went through--the horrible horrendous conditions that they lived through, the humiliation that they had to endure.  They were treated as less than animals, and so when we think about it and we hear their stories, and we get very tearful and we get very mournful, and I get appalled and angry at the treatment of my grandmothers and my grandfathers, and yet at the same time we also are very thankful and we marvel at our ancestor's courage and their integrity because if they hadn't endured this experience, we would not be here today, and so we always remember that.