Bosque Redondo and the First Smiths: Silversmithing Before and After the Long Walk

From 1864 to 1868, approximately eight thousand Navajo people were forcibly removed from their homeland and held at Bosque Redondo, a military internment site on the Pecos River in eastern New Mexico. Whether Navajo silversmithing began before, during, or after this period is the central dating dispute in the scholarly record. The primary oral sources — those closest to the founding generation — consistently deny that the craft was learned or practiced there.

Mateo's Field Notes

The documentary record on this period is thin. The primary sources — Adair (1944), Bedinger (1973), Rosnek & Stacey (1976) — do their best to square oral testimony against the limited written evidence from the fort itself. What follows is what the silver books document.

The internment is known in Navajo as Hwéeldi. In 1864, under the command of Kit Carson, Navajo people were forced on what is called the Long Walk to Bosque Redondo (Fort Sumner), held there as prisoners of war for four years, then returned to their homeland under the Treaty of 1868.

On the question of silver during that period, the primary witnesses are unambiguous. Grey Moustache, who learned directly from Atsidi Sani and whose testimony Adair records at length, stated flatly: "At this time Atsidi did not yet work with silver. It was not until the Navajo came back from Fort Sumner that he learned how to make silver jewelry. It is not true that the Navajo learned silversmithing from the Mexicans while they were there." (Adair 1944, p. 4)

Chee Dodge, who knew Atsidi Sani personally and was himself a figure of historical stature among the Diné, told Adair: "The Navajo didn't make any silver of their own while they were at Fort Sumner [1864–68]. How could they? The Navajo were locked up there just like sheep in a corral. They had only a very little silver in those days, which they bought from the Mexicans." (Adair 1944, p. 5) Red Woman, another informant, recalled: "We had no silver at Hwelce — only a little copper." (Bedinger 1973, ~p. 15, citing Woodward 1946)

Three additional informants — Old Lady Gordy, Wide-Earrings, and Long Moustache — all corroborate the post-Sumner origin. (Adair 1944, fn. 4, p. 6)

The documentary evidence cuts the other way. Major Wallen, the Fort Sumner commandant, wrote in April 1864 — early in the internment, before all Navajos had arrived — "Some of them are quite clever as silversmiths." (Rosnek & Stacey 1976, ~p. 58) Newspaper accounts from 1863–64 describe Navajos as "skilled enough to make good bridle bits and other articles of horse equipage in iron and silver" and able to produce "silver buttons of their own execution and design." (Bedinger 1973, ~p. 14, citing Woodward 1953)

Bedinger, who reviewed all available evidence, offered the most careful resolution: "Perhaps it is a question of what is meant by 'making silver.' If one means doing it professionally, that is, spending much of one's time in this way, then the date will be 1869, after the return from Exile. But if the first groping efforts are meant, then it seems to me one must agree with Woodward and use the date 1853." (Bedinger 1973, ~p. 15)

Adair himself concluded that the oral testimony he gathered — spanning multiple independent informants from Atsidi Sani's own generation — was consistent and credible. His own position: the art "may have been taken over from the Mexicans as early as 1850 or as late as 1870," but he "favors the year 1868." (Adair 1944, p. 6)

Rosnek and Stacey (1976) noted a dimension beyond the historical debate: "In the Navajo mind the creation of silver jewelry as an art form is associated with the great surge of liberation from their desperately unhappy years as prisoners of war at Fort Sumner." (Rosnek & Stacey 1976, ~p. 58) Whatever the exact chronology, the return from Bosque Redondo is where the tradition finds its cultural beginning.

Related Entries

For the life of Atsidi Sani, the first known Navajo silversmith: Atsidi Sani. For the eyewitness account of these years: Grey Moustache. For the broader origins of the tradition: Origins of Navajo Silversmithing. For the next chapter: First Turquoise Setting.