The Navajo Treaty of 1868 allowed about seven thousand Navajo people to return from incarceration in New Mexico to a one hundred-square-mile reservation bordering Arizona and New Mexico. The treaty ended many decades of Navajo conflict with the Spanish, the Mexicans, and U.S. forces, and began the process of unifying the Navajo people into a single legal entity.
The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo established the authority of the United States in Navajo country. Fort Defiance was built in 1851 in the heart of this area, but the Navajos resisted U.S. control for two more decades. The most intense conflict occurred from 1863 to 1866 when Americans assisted by the trader Kit Carson forced the Navajos to surrender and move to the desolate Bosque Redondo region of eastern New Mexico. The infamous "Long Walk" of eight thousand tribesmen across nearly three hundred miles of New Mexico desert took place in 1864. The 1868 treaty reversed this process and promised the tribe a future of peace within the borders of its original homeland.
Two of the most prominent Navajo resistance fighters from the early 1860s, Barboncito and Manuelito, were among the twenty-nine signers of the 1868 treaty. The American negotiators were S. F. Tappen and Lieutenant-General William T. Sherman, both members of a Peace Commission established to end the frontier violence in the West. The treaty stipulated that "all war between the parties ... shall forever cease" and that the U.S. government would "insure the civilization of Indians" by providing schools, farm equipment, clothing, and blankets.
After the treaty was signed, the Navajos experienced a period of recovery. One million acres were added to the reservation in 1875, leaders such as Barboncito and Manuelito became tribal officials, and conflicts with non-Indians ceased. During this same period sheep and cattle herds grew, trading expanded, and the tribal population rose from nine thousand in 1868 to twenty-one thousand in 1900.
See also
Manuelito.
