In the mid-1800s, U.S. Cavalry troops burned Navajo villages, destroyed their crops and orchards, and drove them into the canyons until they either surrendered or starved to death. Thousands of Indians were then forced to march to Fort Sumner in the infamous “Long Walk” in which hundreds of Navajos perished. As far as Anita, Jimmy, and their mother were concerned, I was a descendent of the white settlers who pushed them off their ancestral lands and corralled them onto reservations. Yet they accepted me with open arms.
Ironically, the Navajos are considered to be one of the “luckier” tribes. With some 170,000 members, their tribe is the largest in the USA (approximately one in seven Native Americans in the USA is a Navajo). Moreover, at 27,000 square miles, their reservation—which they call “Navajo Nation”—is also the biggest. It encompasses breathtaking landscapes such as the red buttes and mesas of Monument Valley, a landmark and tourist attraction that has become a considerable source of income for the tribe.
Daphne and I encountered a great deal of pride and optimism during our short stay in Navajo Nation. As Leroy Teeasyatoh, a guide at Monument Valley, put it: “I grew up hearing that living on the reservation was a hardship … but I think it all depends on the way we look at it. It is up to us and our culture to get by. This is my habitat; this is a place where I can rehabilitate myself. It is my home. You can’t take me to Alaska. This is where I am from.”
We heard a similar sentiment from another tribe we visited—the Timbisha Shoshone of Death Valley. For centuries, the Shoshone peacefully lived in the mountains and valleys of California, hunting and gathering food and making baskets. Like the Navajo, their fate changed forever with the arrival of European-American settlers. Among the first were a pack of gold-rushers who entered the desert in December of 1849 with hopes of finding a shortcut to the wealth. They didn’t. One actually died in the oppressive heat as the families struggled to find a way out of the salty valley floor. This gave rise to the ominous name “Death Valley,” but it didn’t halt the waves of miners who came to the valley in search of gold, silver and copper a few decades later. In more recent years, tourists have come to explore the stunning landscape.
