NAAL TSOOS SANÍ
(The Old Paper)
The Navajo Treaty of 1868, Nation Building and Self-Determination
BY JENNIFER NEZ DENETDALE
Signed on paper torn from an army ledger book, the Navajo Nation Treaty, signed June 1, 1868, reunited the Navajo people with the land taken from them. On Feb. 20, 2018, the Museum installed the 20-page original document in its exhibition Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations. In May, the treaty moves to the Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock, Ariz., where it will be on display for the 150th anniversary of its signing. The following on the treaty’s history are excerpts from the Nation to Nation catalogue by Dr. Jennifer Nez Denetdale (Diné) and Museum staff.
............................... he 19th
Treaty with the Navajo, page 18. June 1, 1868. Fort Sumner, N.M. Ledger book paper, ink. 12" × 8". National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. The list of signatures on this page of the 1868 treaty includes the marks of Barboncito and Manuelito.
24 AMERICAN INDIAN SUMMER 2018 T century was a time of
dispossession and dislocation for many Native nations.1 Yet not all tribal groups lost or were banished from their homelands. Though wrenched
from their aboriginal territories, in 1868 the Navajo managed to return to and regain a significant portion of their tribal estate in the Four Corners area of the Southwest, and they continued to expand their nation’s boundar- ies in the late 19th
and 20th centuries. The Navajo paid dearly for their territo-
ries. Beginning in late 1863, the United States uprooted about 10,500 Navajo men, women and children from their homes and force- marched them 450 miles to Bosque Redondo, an internment camp on the Pecos River in southeastern New Mexico. After four years of suffering, starvation, disease and death, the exiles convinced U.S. officials to allow them to return to their “beloved country” in 1868.2
In
the Treaty they signed that year, the Navajo ac- cepted a 3.4-million acre reservation in what is now northeastern Arizona and northwest- ern New Mexico. Although it included only about one-fourth of the Navajo’s traditional territories,3
the reservation provided a haven
in which to regroup and repopulate – and from which to reclaim additional homelands. Today, the Navajo Nation is the largest Indian reservation in the United States, encompass- ing about 25,000 square miles across Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.4
E
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