The Long Walk of the Navajo, also called the Long Walk to Bosque Redondo, was the deportation and ethnic cleansing of the Navajo people by the United States federal government and the United States army. Navajos were forced to walk from their land in western New Mexico Territory to Bosque Redondo in eastern New Mexico. Some 53 different forced marches occurred between AugustĀ 1864 and the end of 1866. In total, 10,000 Navajos and 500 Mescalero Apache were forced to the internment camp in Bosque Redondo. During the forced march and internment, up to 3,500 people died from starvation and disease over a 4 year period. In 1868, the Navajo were allowed to return to their ancestral homeland following the Treaty of Bosque Redondo. Some anthropologists state that the "collective trauma of the Long Walk...is critical to contemporary Navajos' sense of identity as a people".
Manuelito, studio portrait, c. 1897
Barboncito, c. 1865
Undated photo of Carson from the Library of Congress
A U.S. soldier stands guard over Navajo people during the Long Walk.
A death march is a forced march of prisoners of war or other captives or deportees in which individuals are left to die along the way. It is distinguished from simple prisoner transport via foot march. Article 19 of the Geneva Convention requires that prisoners must be moved away from a danger zone such as an advancing front line, to a place that may be considered more secure. It is not required to evacuate prisoners who are too unwell or injured to move. In times of war, such evacuations can be difficult to carry out.
Armenians being led away by armed guards from Harpoot, where the educated and the influential of the city were selected to be massacred at the nearest suitable site, May 1915.
Arab-Swahili slave traders and their captives on the Ruvuma River
American and Filipino POWs during the Bataan Death March.
A group of Croatians during the Bleiburg repatriations.