The cold howling winds swept the snow powdered ground of the Arizona territorial desert as more than 2,000 Navajo captives began their Long Walk from Fort Canby (later renamed Fort Defiance) and headed east towards Fort Sumner, New Mexico. It was March 4, 1864 but the wintry weather prolonged, necessitating the need for outerwear to protect against the low temperature. Aged men and women covered with army issue blankets provided some comfort, but they looked to the 400-mile journey with apprehension and uncertainty. Infants and young children were strapped to their mothers backs. The sad procession began.
Some Navajos families were allowed to bring their herd of sheep and horses. The animals were prodded along with the beleaguered souls in the direction of the Fort, a recently constructed concentration camp where the interned would suffer hardships from 1864 to June 1868.
U.S. government had empowered General James H. Carleton and Christopher Kit Carson to round up the Indians because of the latters depredation of continued theft of livestock and kidnappings of children and adults of New Mexico settlers. The government ordered the Navajos punished.
A few miles out of Fort Canby on the way, Yonebah, than 20, gave birth to a baby girl in one of the wagons that the government soldiers drove. Silago Tsosiih (slim soldier), the babys older brother shambled along with the multitude while a five-year-old sister was permitted aboard the lumbering vehicle for a distance then dropped off to wait for relatives to catch up.
Resembling the Bataan death March that took place in 1942 involving American and Filipino soldiers, the Navajos foot march took its toll on the way. Those that fell behind mostly the sick and lame were either shot by soldiers or left along the trail to die.
Earlier, the families were given rations of flour and coffee and along the way, the people, not being instructed about the proper way of preparing the commodities, either consumed the flour as gruel or ate it raw. The uncooked food caused severe stomach cramps and as a result the affected fell by the wayside to curl up and to die a torturous death.
My great grandmothers parents passed the story of the concentration camp experience to her. She stated that a Navajo man had stolen morsels of sheep parts from other Navajos who butchered their sheep and smuggled them to the famished family.
Some parents, pressed to survive, traded their daughters chastity to obtain food items from garrison soldiers who took advantage of the plight of the people. As a result, the diseases of gonorrhea and syphilis spread among the Navajos who were already oppressed by dysentery caused by consumption of alkali polluted Pecos River that snaked by the encampment.
At last freedom finally came for the interned population that peaked about 10,000 in 1866, when remnants of 7,000 made a treaty with the U.S. Government to be released on terms worked out between the parties on June 1, 1868.1
The baby (my great grandmother) survived the disease ridden and famine imposed four years ordeal and was released with her parents to return to Table Mesa region of the Navajo Reservation. She grew to womanhood and her parents gave her in marriage to a young Navajo gentleman. The mans name then is unknown, but later in his life probably in the 1880s, he worked for a Caucasian farmer surnamed Barber in Waterflow and across the San Juan River from Nenahnezaad, New Mexico.
The farmer allowed the Navajo farm hand to travel back and forth across the river in the employers small boat. The employer also bestowed upon the Navajo, the farmers family name of Barber because the worker needed a designation that could set him apart from others.
Married to the man with the inherited name, my great grandmother became Baba bi Asah (Barbers wife). From this time onward, the title has been passed on to subsequent generations on my mothers side.
In the early 1950s my great grandmother would relate to us, the descendants, her familys Fort Sumner experience. This testimony of intrigue and adventure seemed fictional and from another time ancient. And indeed, she was from another century. She lived to be 109 years old, dying in 1973.
The Fort Sumner ex-prisoner couple produced four daughters all named Baba Bi Tsi (barbers daughter). Two of those daughters became the brides of my grandfather. With this marriage, my grandfather was furnished the title Baba bada neh (Barbers son-in-law). In his time, if a man had plenty of livestock and had the means to support, he could have more than one wife. My grandfather had nearly 300 heads of sheep and thirty horses.
One of my grandfathers wives bore my mother, Flora Barber in 1918 who later was to become Flora B. Dickson when she joined Joe Dickson in a traditional Navajo marriage ceremony sometime in 1931.
In those days in Navajo society, there was no such thing as courtship or engagement. When a man wanted a wife, his parents would start searching until they found a young woman who was not related by blood or clan to the groom-to-be. Sometimes the bride met the man for the first time at the wedding ceremony. If the man did not fit the idea or desires of the young woman, it was too late. The man also had to settle for this bride as she was presented.
The Dicksons first child arrived about 1933 but the infant boy succumbed to sickness of pneumonia and died a month later. A girl followed about 1935 but she too died in infancy and so did the little boy that was born in about 1936. The children were all home born so there are no certificates verifying their births. There also are no records of their deaths.
Being delivered with the help of midwives, my siblings and I came in this order: Thomas, 1938; Lucy, 1940; the author, 1942; Harry, 1945 and Mary born in 1947. Twelve years after Mary, Kenneth came into the world. He was the only one born in the modern medical facility.
Except for Mary and Kenneth, my mother had preserved a two-inch section of our umbilical cords rolled up in cloths and she kept them in a wooden chest as keepsakes. Traditionally, Navajo parents buried their childrens placenta connections in sheep and horse corrals, farmland, mountaintop, etc. To keep them hidden from the searching eyes of the child and to ensure that the young Navajo grew to be a successful sheep keeper, horseman, farmer and that he/she not abandon his/her ties to the land.
My father most likely had been given a Navajo name like his other Navajo peers but his family lacked a surname to pass on to the generations that would come. A maternal uncle named John Dickson, sensing the situation, conferred upon my father and his siblings the name of Dickson and thenceforth our household has been distinguished by this European surname.
Navajos obtained their names from various sources. In the 1940s and prior, most of the English names came from white missionaries, traders and boarding school officials. Some knowledgeable Navajos gave other families surnames. The majority of names conferred were titles that reflected respect. There were some individuals named after famous people like Calvin Coolidge, John Wayne, Clark Gable, Esther Williams, etc.
1 The Long Walk 1964, L. R. Baily, Westernlord Press
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