Lesson 5: Kit Carson and the Navajos, Roman Nose and Major Forsyth
In this lesson the Navajos struggle to stay alive at the Bosque Redondo Reservation. General Sherman selects Generals Harney and Hazen to supervise Indian affairs. The Cheyenne are refused some of their annuities and go on the warpath while General Philip Sheridan becomes the new commander in Kansas. Cheyenne Chief Roman Nose receives a magical war bonnet that has deadly taboos concerning it. Major George Forsyth forms a troop of scouts. Captain Frederick Benteen attacks and kills several Indians. Forsyth, with fellow officer Beecher, track and find a large party of Indians and fight the Battle of Beecher’s Island. Roman Nose is killed.
Introduction
When it became time for the Peace Commission to return to Washington D.C. the treaty was left at Fort Laramie with the hopes that Red Cloud would come in and sign it. But it did not happen. The Sioux were now occupied with hunting and preparing meat for the long winter to come. Perhaps when meat gathering was completed, they replied in a message to the fort.
In the meantime, one group on the Southern Plains had welcomed the Peace Commission. They were the Navajos. Since having been subdued by Kit Carson four years previously, the Navajos had struggled to stay barely alive on the detestable reservation at Bosque Redondo that had been established on the Pecos River of eastern New Mexico. There, the Navajos endured Comanche raiders who stole and destroyed their sheep herds. They watched as their crops withered and died beneath the scorching sun, and insects completed the destruction. What the sun and insects did not take, floods did until the Navaho only existed on the meager handouts that were issued to them by their begrudging keeper.
Pecos River, New Mexico
Sherman offered the Navajos a reservation in Indian Territory but he soon realized that the only way to reduce the mounting cost of Bosque Redondo was to send the Navajos back to their homeland. The Navajos gladly signed the treaty offered them, then joyously went home.
Land of the Navajo
Joy and happiness was not the case on the Central Plains. Indian strife reached, in fact, as far as Oregon and Idaho, while in the Southwest Apache raids were devastating and reached far into Texas. The Apaches were not the only tribes causing unrest in these regions. Kiowas and Comanches, while living somewhat peacefully at this time along the Arkansas River, continued their bloody war against Texas settlers.
The Native Americans may have been waring out in Oregon Country but there was more than just Indians there. Oregon also had coyotes. In fact, they still do. Want to know where you can go in Oregon, today, to hear these western pups sing their evening song?
Coyotes Howl in Oregon By Sue Barton http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/oreg...
The source for this introductory section is:
Utley, Robert M. The Indian Frontier of the American West, 1846-1890. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. 1984.
