The Navajo Long Walk (Look West Series)

From the Look West Series -- ""The Navajo Holocaust"" is what Laurence W. Cheek calls it in this volume of the Look West series. In Navajo history it is commonly known as the Long Walk. The disaster began in 1863 when Gen. James Henry Carleton decided to move the Navajo people forcibly from their traditional Arizona homeland to a reservation on the high plains of northern New Mexico. Winter was coming on. ""By the best estimate now possible 1,500 to 3,000 people--up to a fifth of the Navajo population at the time--died either en route or in what amounted to a concentration camp,"" writes Cheek. ""It became known as the Long Walk--the Southwestern counterpart to the Cherokees Trail of Tears.