Ron Garnenez interview

Ron Garnenez
My name is Ron Garnenez and I'm from Oak Springs, Arizona, north of Red Valley. (says name/where from in Navajo) My story about the Long Walk was told to me by my elders; my grandfathers, my grandmothers.  They told me that my maternal great grandmother, at a young age, snuck away into canyons north of San Juan River. Behind, we called it the White Mountain, and they hid there for four years, but they did a lot of things while they were waiting for the return of the tribe.  And then my paternal grandfather--his story is they were driven to Fort Sumner from Canyon de Chelly, and they were rounded up and actually they were starved out of these canyons; all of the their crops, their peach orchards, their livestock's were slaughtered, and one winter they had nowhere else to turn--their children were starving.  So they turned themselves into Fort Defiance and then from there, those that turned themselves in were given food, the ration food, and then they were sent back out to the rest of the their people into the canyons and the mountains and told them that there was no starvation there--there's food there, and that's what they were told.  And how they were all rounded up was like all of the other tribes that surround the Navajos--the Pueblos, the Utes, the Apaches--they were, even the Navajos themselves, were scouts for the soldiers, and so they were the ones who brought all of the Navajos out and gathered them at Fort Defiance.  And by enticing them there with food and promising them a place far to the east and that they would be moved there one spring in wagon trains, so a lot of them gave up themselves to that.  And then they said little did they know that there were going to be no wagon trains, no horses.  A lot of their horses... I guess the Navajos by that time were pretty wealthy.  They had a lot of horses, they had lots of sheep and they just, you know, became too wealthy and then they were moved to Fort Wingate. And Fort Wingate they said they were put on a forced march into Albuquerque, and some died along the way because they were going at a fast past, and if you couldn't keep up, they said the soldiers would shoot you.  And so that's how some of them died.  And then they weren't protected from the other tribes also like with the Apaches and the Utes.  I guess they kept following them, taking them as slaves and killing some of them.  And they made it to the Rio Grande River, and the Rio Grande River, I guess during the spring run-off, was swollen with water, and they said a lot of them drowned.

Interviewer
Why don't you back up a little bit... you were talking about the treatment of the soldiers that if they couldn't keep up they were shot...

Ron Garnenez
The people--the old people, the very young--some of them couldn't keep up; the sick ones couldn't keep up, so apparently they were just shot and killed on the spot there.  Women that gave birth along the way had to abandon their babies because they weren't given time to nurse, or they themselves were hungry and starving by that time. And then also, you know they mentioned rape that went on too as they were being marched. And at the Rio Grande, the river was so high that a lot of people drowned trying to cross there. And then from there they went further east into Fort Sumner, and they were told that they would be called to wait there and grow their own food, and the first year they tried and the soil wasn't good so a lot of the seeds that they planted did not grow.  And then some of the sheep that they took with them were stolen by the Comanche's because there was no protection.  They were told to give up their guns and their arrows when they were rounded up, so they themselves had nothing to protect themselves with. And that's how they made it to Fort Sumner.  And that Fort Sumner, the same thing; they had nothing to protect themselves with.  As far as food went, they said there was barely any food. 

Interviewer
We're talking about Fort Sumner and the conditions they faced there especially in terms of food.

Ron Garnenez
Well in Fort Sumner, when their crop failed, they went into further starvation, and with not being familiar with the place, they said that young women and young men would go out to gather wood and sometimes they would never return. And it was understood that sometimes they were stolen by the Comanches, and then as far as gathering food in the surrounding area, there was really nothing.  The soil there apparently was too alkaline that corn wouldn't grow.  And there, also, the soldiers would tease them with food, and one day they were given a ration and they had no idea how to use bacon powder, how to boil coffee.  They tried to boil coffee like beans, and then they ate bacon powder.  A lot of it killed them; they thought it was flour.  Things like that happened, and also they said that the soldiers made fun of them.  They would take their young women to their quarters and use them as sex slaves, so that's what they endured at Fort Sumner.  But yet they had their prayer; they hung on to their prayer.  They said their prayers three times a day, and then those that were here that were left behind, that were hiding in the canyons, also did the same thing.  My grandmother's uncle I guess went, and they were holding ceremonies, and then they needed one thing and they went back to Canyon de Chelly and could not find any footprints, so he actually snuck into Fort Sumner to get footprints of the captives there and brought them back--snuck out of Fort Sumner again and brought the sand back to what we called it our land between The Four Sacred Mountains.  They did the ceremony. And they did this for four years, and at the end they were released and they were so happy to return.

Interviewer
How do you feel about your ancestors who were on the Long Walk?  How do you feel about the way they were treated?

Ron Garnenez
When you think nowadays you hear about how people are treated and you think this is how my ancestors were treated also.  They survived--that was the main thing.  We are here as... you know, the survivors, and I teach my children the same thing; your ancestors endured this with their language and so you better learn your language. 

They said that Canyon de Chelly, the whole canyon floor was like a forest of peach trees, and they were all chopped down and burned, and a lot of the food they had; they grew corn, beans and squash down in there, and they were stored away for the winter, and they found all of that, and destroyed them also.  And a lot of the sheep that they had, which is today now known as the Navajo Churros, were driven off into the canyons, and that's how a lot of them were slaughtered. 

This story was told by my great grandmother to my grandmother.  As a young girl she heard that the soldiers were marching up Canyon de Chelly, so their father took them to the rim of the canyon, the three sisters, and were told to run and don't ever return.

My great grandmother's story is she and her sisters were told to run from Canyon de Chelly and go into hiding, so they met up with other people that went running, and they went all of the way across the San Juan River into Canyon lands and hid there for four years, and my great grandmother, I guess had... they were shucking corn during the time that this happened so she took off with an ear of corn that was her doll.  And she kept that through the first year, and even though they were starving, she wouldn't give it up.  They lived on a lot of cedar berries.  The corn was her doll so she didn't want to give that up as food, but I guess she would go down by the stream and play down there and some of the seeds would drop, and then by springtime they noticed... or by the summertime they noticed that was corn growing down in there, and that's how they started cultivating corn in Canyonlands within the next three years that they were there.  They said they had an abundance of corn when their relatives returned.