How The West Was Lost

This episode relives the Long Walk of 2,400 Navajos from their home in Canyon de Chelly to the Bosque Redondo in Eastern New Mexico. It was 1864 when General James H. Carleton assigned Colonel Kit Carson to force the Navajos on the walk. During the trek, 200 Navajos died and the rest suffered horribly. It was one example of the European settlers forcibly removing Native Americans from their land. In 1868 Navajo leaders journeyed to Washington and convinced President Andrew Johnson to let their people go home and leave the disease and insect-ridden poverty of the Bosque Redondo. This episode includes interviews with direct descendants of the Navajo leaders.

Though the fledgling United States tried to respect Indian rights, the country couldn't restrain settlers' impulses to be "fruitful, multiply replenish the earth, and subdue it". Every Indian felt the pressure as the white men moved them to smaller tracts of land further west, into an area called "Indian Country." Despite being uprooted, the Cherokee enjoyed a Golden Age launched by an 1846 Treaty. They established public schools, and seminaries for men and women. (The female seminary was revolutionary since most Americans thought women were intellectually inferior to men). They also built homes and farms. But when the Civil War swept west, the railroads signalled the end of Cherokee sovereignty.