The Power Of Bosque Redondo's Assassination

Following his arrival to the American Southwest in 1862, Brigadier General James Henry Carleton of the Union Army would oversee the process of destroying Native American powers throughout the Territory until his reassignment in 1867. The Navajo were one such power that Carleton set about destroying, and will be the tribe focused on within this paper. The process of destruction took many forms, and was itself simultaneously literal and figurative, as the tribes faced both a physical and cultural assault from the American military, New Mexican citizens, and rival tribes of Native Americans. In its final stage, this destruction took form as Bosque Redondo; a reservation planned as an experiment by Carleton to finalize the pacification of Native

He feared that so long as the Navajos remained within their homeland, they maintained the potential to act as a threat. Regarding what would occur should the Navajos be allowed to remain upon their land, Carleton stated, “more murders, more robberies; then another war and - then what? Why, of course, another treaty; and so on forever, in that inevitable circle, which had become as fatal to the prosperity of New Mexico, as the shirt of Nessus to Hercules.” He addressed the similar concern of allowing the Navajos to leave Bosque Redondo, stating in a letter that allowing the Navajos to return to their lands, following their internment Bosque Redondo, that should this occur, “There would come a new war, and so on, ad infinitum.” Bosque Redondo was intended as a permanent solution to the Navajos which had been ‘poisoning’ the prosperity of New

He referred to the reservation as an experiment, noting in a letter that it was a “very important and interesting experiment in colonizing the wild Indians of New Mexico.” Under Carleton, the ‘colonization’ of Native Americans was intended as a process of transformation, rather than exploitation of the tribes as a resource. So concerned about the exploitation of the reservation’s residents, Carleton even forbid the sale of produce grown on the reservation to outsiders, preferring that the food be used to sustain the Native Americans. Despite his refusal to see the interned tribes exploited in the development of the territory, this process of ‘civilizing’ Native Americans was, in his mind, tied directly to the wealth of the territories which he oversaw. Carleton noted in another letter his hopes that the government would likewise see the benefit in Bosque Redondo stating, “The government seems to have taken great interest in this experiment of placing nomadic Indians on reservations, and this exodus of Navajo people from their country, to become a domesticated race, is an interesting subject to us all, and one fraught with great questions so far as the prospective wealth and advancement of New Mexico may