Poker Alice
Well-Known Member
What kind of place is Navajo?
Yes, it is true Navajo describes a native people and many of those people were spread out over the west because they didn’t always adhere to government regulations.
The US gained ownership of Navajoland in 1848 after the Mexican American war and in 1868 a Navajo Nation reservation spanning 3.3 million acres was declared on what is presently New Mexico and Arizona.
The territory deserves recognition after what came to be known as the “Long Walk” of the people. One account of that event reads...
It was said that some ancestors were on the Long Walk with their daughter, who was pregnant and about to give birth. The daughter got tired and weak and couldn't keep up with the others or go further because of her condition. So my ancestors asked the Army to hold up for a while and to let the woman give birth, but the soldiers wouldn't do it. They forced my people to move on, saying that they were getting behind the others.
The soldier told the parents that they had to leave their daughters behind. "Your daughter is not going to survive, anyway; sooner or later she is going to die," they said in their own language. "Go ahead," the daughter said to her parents, "things might come out all right with me,"
But the poor thing was mistaken, my grandparents used to say. Not long after they had moved on, they heard a gunshot from where they had been a short time ago.
- The Long Walk
Yes, it is true Navajo describes a native people and many of those people were spread out over the west because they didn’t always adhere to government regulations.
The US gained ownership of Navajoland in 1848 after the Mexican American war and in 1868 a Navajo Nation reservation spanning 3.3 million acres was declared on what is presently New Mexico and Arizona.
The territory deserves recognition after what came to be known as the “Long Walk” of the people. One account of that event reads...
It was said that some ancestors were on the Long Walk with their daughter, who was pregnant and about to give birth. The daughter got tired and weak and couldn't keep up with the others or go further because of her condition. So my ancestors asked the Army to hold up for a while and to let the woman give birth, but the soldiers wouldn't do it. They forced my people to move on, saying that they were getting behind the others.
The soldier told the parents that they had to leave their daughters behind. "Your daughter is not going to survive, anyway; sooner or later she is going to die," they said in their own language. "Go ahead," the daughter said to her parents, "things might come out all right with me,"
But the poor thing was mistaken, my grandparents used to say. Not long after they had moved on, they heard a gunshot from where they had been a short time ago.
- The Long Walk
I've been through there many times and can assure you it is a real place and full of incredible anthropological history dating back to the first inhabitants. For more juicy deets, google Ancestral Puebloans and dive on in.
