Bosque Redondo: a memorial in the making

Abstract

Between 1863 and 1868, over 9000 Native Americans were interned under US military guard at the Bosque Redondo reservation in New Mexico. The objectives for internment were to end Indian raids of military forts and to assimilate native people. The prisoners' survival despite inhumane conditions is now commemorated at the Bosque Redondo Memorial, which opened to the public in 2004. This paper recounts the history of the site before it was a memorial, exploring why such designation was not established sooner, and it addresses the aspiration for the Memorial to become an accredited member of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience.

Keywords:

• sites of conscience
• memorials
• Native American
• Bosque Redondo

Notes

1. Bosque Redondo, a Spanish name meaning ‘round grove,’ refers to the concentration of cottonwood trees at the site (Linford 2000, 12); Navajo people (Diné) refer to the historic site of internment as Hwéeldi, which ‘is probably the Navajo approximation of the Spanish word fuerte (fort), or a possible corruption of the Navajo awáalyadi (at the prison)’ (Wilson and Dennison 1995, 8).

2. Based on the research in the National Archives and Records Administration, archeologist Neil Ackerly enumerates over 50 instances in which soldiers escorted a total of 16,000–18,000 Navajo prisoners to Fort Sumner. An untold number died, escaped or were kidnapped along the way, and an estimated 3000 people died during their internment. Based on a count of distributed rations at Bosque Redondo, the population of prisoners peaked at more than 9000 people.

3. The current-day Village of Fort Sumner, incorporated in 1910, is located approximately 4.5 miles northwest of the historic town.

4. Some Navajos retain a cultural prohibition against going to Bosque Redondo because the evil that occurred at a particular place does not die thus can attach itself to living people and wreak havoc (Roberts and Shilstone 1997).

5. I examined the visitor comment books at Bosque Redondo in May 2012. The earliest entry was made in April 2004 and the most recent on the last day of my research, 8 May 2012 (though not all records from 2010 and 2011 could be located). The comments I cite are in no way intended to be methodologically representative of 250+ entries that I read.

6. I visited the Memorial during a period of administrative transition. The manager for the Bosque Redondo Memorial and Fort Sumner Monument had retired and not yet been replaced, and a new Director of the New Mexico State Monuments had been selected but not yet named.

7. People who explicitly identified themselves as Mescalero Apache were far fewer than those who identified themselves as Navajo. The internment has less cultural historical significance to the Mescalero Apache people than it has to the Navajo, in part because the Apache prisoners escaped en masse in 1865, whereas the Navajo remained interred until signing a treaty with the US government.