By the time of the American Civil War, the Navajo constituted the largest nation in the Southwest and one of the largest remaining Native American nations within the United States. Colonel Christopher H. "Kit" Carson had been conducting a successful military campaign against the Navajos using a scorched earth policy, which involved destroying homes, food, and supplies. Despite these efforts, by November 1863 Carson had only managed to send 200 people to the reservation at Bosque Redondo. In response, Brigadier General James H. Carleton ordered Carson to advance into the Navajo stronghold located in Canyon de Chelly. The canyon had been explored previously in 1858 by Colonel Dixon S. Miles, who had recommended against any future military command re-entering the area.
The Battle of Canyon de Chelly was fought in 1864 and represented the final major military engagement between the Navajo and the Americans. The operation was led by Colonel Kit Carson under the orders of Brigadier General James H. Carleton. The Navajo forces in the canyon were members of bands led by Manuelito and Barboncito, among others. The battle resulted in the fall of the main Navajo settlements within Canyon de Chelly in present-day northern Arizona.
The engagement proved to be a successful operation for the United States Army and had profound historical consequences for the Navajo people. The battle precipitated the Long Walk, a forced removal and relocation of the Navajo nation. This campaign marked a turning point in the conflict between the Navajo and American forces, effectively ending major organized military resistance in the region.
The Indian Wars encompass more than three centuries of armed conflict between the United States government, American settlers, and Indigenous nations — from the Powhatan Wars of the 1620s through the final Plains campaigns of the late 19th century. The eastern conflicts — King Philip's War (1675–1676), the Tuscarora War (1711–1715), and the Creek and Seminole Wars — largely ended organized Indigenous resistance east of the Mississippi by the 1840s. On the Great Plains, the Sioux Wars (1854–1890), Red River War (1874–1875), and Nez Perce War (1877) followed the displacement wrought by the transcontinental railroad and the near-extinction of the American bison — an estimated 30 to 60 million animals reduced to fewer than 1,000 by 1890. The Ghost Dance religious movement and the massacre at Wounded Knee (December 29, 1890), in which US cavalry killed approximately 250 Lakota men, women, and children, marked the effective end of armed resistance. The Dawes Act (1887) allotted reservation land to individual families, opening millions of acres to white settlement and reducing Indigenous landholdings by about two-thirds over the following decades.
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