HWÉÉLDI & THE WAY BACK

etween 1864 and ’65 soldiers marched some 9,000 Diné more than 300 miles to the Bosque Redondo reservation at Fort Sumner, on the banks of the Pecos River in eastcentral New Mexico Territory. The captives wore tattered clothes and were low on provisions and spirit. Mount Taylor (Tsoodził, or Turquoise (“the Fort”) they were allowed to build traditional forked-stick hogans in loose family clusters, though most of the homes at Bosque Redondo were little more than holes in the ground with roofs of branches and dirt. The people dug irrigation ditches, tilled alkaline soil. Insects and storms razed corn and wheat crops. Mosquitos breeding in the stagnant, brackish water spread malaria. Pneumonia and dysentery further weakened the prisoners. Parents often hid children the soldiers tried to take for schooling.