The Government then decided that the Navajos should return to a part of their old homeland. A new treaty signed on June 1, 1868, stated that the tribe and the United States were at peace, and in it the Navajos pledged to stop their raiding. In return, the Government promised the tribe school facilities and a reservation that included Canyon de Chelly in its total area of 3,500,000 acres. The Navajos were to stay within this reservation.
Twenty-nine Navajo chiefs and council members signed the treaty, and the Navajos began leaving Fort Sumner almost immediately, slipping away family by family. Those without horses or who had old or sick persons in their family awaited Government transportation. On June 15, a wagon train with a military escort carried the last Navajos from Fort Sumner to Fort Wingate. There the tribe waited while final arrangements were worked out.
By November the new reservation boundaries had been surveyed and shown to the tribe’s head men, and a headquarters for the Indian agent had been prepared at Fort Defiance. At long last the Navajos were allowed to go home. They were now united into a single tribe with leaders, appointed by the Indian agents, to represent them in their dealings with the whites. But their troubles were not over.
Only a fraction of the Navajos’ sheep had survived Carson’s slaughter and the years of famine at Fort Sumner. The treaty had promised sheep and goats to replenish the herds, but more than a year passed before any were received. Meantime, hunger pursued the Navajos, and they had to exist on army issue rations of beef, coffee, and flour.
The treaty also promised that during the first 10 years—called the Treaty Years—each family head who took up farming would receive $25 worth of agricultural tools and supplies every 2 years to help him in his new pursuit. It was 14 years before this promise was fulfilled, and the tribe was badly hampered in their efforts to fill out their slender larder through agriculture.
During these years the Navajos eked out a living through their traditional crafts of weaving and silver working. Blankets and wool were beginning to find a market in the expanding settlements of the Rio Grande Valley, at army posts, and in the Mormon settlements of Utah. In 1869, the first trading post was established on the reservation, and it provided the tribe with a source of supplies and an outlet for their wares. As Navajo blankets, wool, and silverwork became more important, other traders entered the Navajo country.
Still there was little substantial change in either the Navajo’s mode of life or their economy by the end of the Treaty Years in 1878. True, the tribe and their flocks had increased in numbers especially after 1872, when the U.S. Government distributed 10,000 sheep among them. The coming of the railroad in 1881-82, however, accelerated change and growth in the Navajos more than any other event. New techniques for making a living, learned from working with construction crews, and new possessions brought by the railroad, started the people toward the modern world.
One vexing problem that has confronted the Navajos since their days at Fort Sumner is the lack of adequate grazing land to support an expanding population. The reservation boundaries have been enlarged many times over the years, but now there is no space for further expansion. Today the tribe numbers over 120,000 members, and tribal lands cannot support that large a population nor the uncontrolled grazing that it causes.
The old way of life is gradually being replaced. In 1924, Congress granted citizenship rights to all Indians in recognition of their service during World War I when their men enlisted by the hundreds, even though exempt from the draft. After 1923 Navajo tribal business became less of a haphazard affair. A tribal council, made up of elected delegates, began to handle contacts with the world beyond the reservation. Little or no work was done to remedy undesirable conditions on the reservation until the public works program of the 1930’s, when a good many schools and hospitals were built. During World War II, hundreds of young Navajo men enlisted in the armed forces and other thousands went into war work. These involvements in American society demonstrated that an education was essential if Indians were to compete successfully in the outer world, and so the tribal council passed a compulsory schooling law in 1947. Many schools and hospitals were built in the 1950’s and 1960’s.
