Ben Teller: "They Shot Us Down Like Dogs"

Canyon de Chelly, AZ (Canyon del Muerto)
DAY 9
FRI 5 OCT 2012

Canyon del Muerto is a legendary place, one that figures prominently in Diné oral history.

Ben tells us the story of Kit Carson & his men who rode through the canyon in 1864 during their "scorched earth" attempt to bring the Navajo to their knees. Close to 9,000 Navajo were rounded up and captured, then forced to march - known as the "Long Walk" - to an internment camp in southeastern New Mexico where they were held as prisoners for 4 years, until General Sherman allowed them to return to their ancestral homelands in 1868.

The Navajo still talk about this tragedy as though it happened yesterday, and nowhere is this more keenly felt than at Canyon de Chelly.

Excerpt from the book Native American Testimony: A Chronicle of Indian-White Relations from Prophecy to the Present, 1492-2000, Revised Ed. by Peter Nabokov, pub. Penguin Books

"They rode out in small parties in every direction and killed all the Navajo sheep, goats, horses, and cows that they could find. They killed the herders with the sheep, little boys, and grown men, and chased them through the rocks. The soldiers took the wheat to feed their horses and mules and cut down all the corn. The Mexicans and Utes and Zuňis all trailed the Navajo everywhere and robbed them and stole their women and children.
The Navajos went further up the Canyon de Chelly, but the Mexican soldiers followed them. They cut down their peach trees and corn and chased the Indians up over the rocks, so high that their bullets would not reach,. Then they tried to starve them out. But the Navajo had taken many water bottles with them and had hidden lots of corn in the caves, and at night while the soldiers were asleep, they would slip down and bring back more water.
Every day the Mexicans and the Utes would ride out over the canyon, and whenever they found sheep or pony tracks, they would follow them and kill the herders."

-- as related by Chester Arthur, clan relative of Henry Chee Dodge.