New Characters
Manuelito: Navaho chief, led attacks against the Army and resisted being sent
to Bosque Redondo reservation before finally surrendering.
Colonel Edward Richard Sprigg Canby: Army colonel at Fort Fauntleroy who is
later killed by Captain Jack.
General James Carleton: Ruthless Army general, commanded New Mexico Army in
campaigns against Navahos.
Kit Carson: Former trader, negotiated with Navahos before successfully
campaigning against them.
Summary
In 1860, Manuelito and his fellow Navahos are in conflict with both the
American soldiers, who stole his livestock and burned his hogans, the log
structures in which the Navahos lived, and the Mexicans, who stole Navaho
children to be used as slaves. When the Americans build Fort Defiance and take
possession of the pasture land around the fort, the Navahos, who are upset by
this seizure and the slaughter of their animals by a company of mounted
soldiers, raid the fort on April 30, 1860. After a time of minor scuffling
between the Navahos and the Army, a horse race between Manuelito and an Army
lieutenant is held at the new Fort Fauntleroy in September, 1861. The
lieutenant wins the race by using trickery, and when a dispute over the race
arises, the Army massacres the Navahos who had gathered to watch. General
Carleton then pushes the Mescalero Apaches into the Bosque Redondo reservation
and orders the Navahos to go to the reservation as well. When they refuse, the
Army’s scorched-earth campaign forces many Navahos to surrender and go to the
reservation. Navaho resistance continues to weaken as more and more Apache
surrender, but Manuelito and his band of warriors remain defiant. Manuelito
finally surrenders in 1866, and the Navahos sign a treaty on June 1, 1868,
proclaiming that war between them and the U.S. would cease.
Analysis
Brown's history is clearly designed to evoke sympathy for the Indians with
readers. The violence the U.S. Army inflicts upon Manuelito's warriors is
extensive. Similarly, the fraudulent horse race and the soldiers’ subsequent
massacre of the Navahos make it difficult for any reader to take the side of
the Army. This suspicion deepens when Kit Carson, former friend of many
Indians, turns to leading his troops against the Navahos and conducts a
scorched-earth campaign throughout the summer and fall of 1863.
Readers learn, too, of General Carleton’s ferocity against the Indians and
his great hunger for tribal land and the minerals found on it. This, together
with the settling of the Navahos on the wretched Bosque Reservation before they
returned home to their new reservation and saw much of their best lands taken
by the white settlers, makes the readers wonder if things will be any better
for other tribes encountered later in the book. Brown strongly indicates that
things will not improve by writing that the Navahos “would come to know that
they were the least unfortunate of all the western Indians.”