View source for Fort Sumner

{{Other uses|Fort Sumner (disambiguation)}}
{{Distinguish|Fort Sumter}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=March 2025}}
{{shortlead|date=June 2023}}
{{coord|34|24|07|N|104|11|41|W|display=title}}
{{Infobox NRHP
| name = Fort Sumner Ruins
| nrhp_type = 
| designated_other1_name = New Mexico Historic Site
| designated_other1_abbr = NMHS
| designated_other1_color = #FFE978
| designated_other1_link = New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs#Divisions, museums, and historic sites
| designated_other1_date = 1968<ref name="NMHS date">{{cite web|title=About New Mexico's Historic Sites|url=http://www.nmmonuments.org/index/about|publisher=[[New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs]]|access-date=December 22, 2016|archive-date=October 30, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161030192039/http://nmmonuments.org/index/about|url-status=dead}}</ref>
| designated_other2 = New Mexico
| designated_other2_date = January 9, 1970
| designated_other2_number = [https://web.archive.org/web/20141110122215/http://www.nmhistoricpreservation.org/assets/files/registers/2012%20Report_%20Section%203_%20Arranged%20by%20Number.pdf 139]
| designated_other2_num_position = bottom
| image = FORT SUMNER RUINS.jpg
| caption = Fort Sumner
| nearest_city = [[Fort Sumner, New Mexico]]
| area = {{convert|50|acre}}
| built = {{Start date|1862}}
| architect = Alexander LaRue
| added = August 13, 1974
| refnum = 74001194<ref name="nris">{{NRISref|version=2010a}}</ref>
}}

'''Fort Sumner''' was a [[Fortification|military fort]] in [[New Mexico Territory]] charged with the internment of [[Navajo]] and [[Mescalero|Mescalero Apache]] populations from 1863 to 1868 at nearby '''Bosque Redondo'''.

==History==
On October 31, 1862, [[Congress of the United States|Congress]] authorized the construction of Fort Sumner. General [[James Henry Carleton]] initially justified the fort as offering protection to [[settler]]s in the [[Pecos River]] valley from the [[Mescalero|Mescalero Apache]], [[Kiowa]], and [[Comanche]]. He also created the Bosque Redondo [[Indian reservation|reservation]], a {{convert|1600|sqmi|km2 acre|adj=on}} <ref>[http://www.nmstatemonuments.org/bosque-redondo "Fort Sumner Historic Site/Bosque Redondo Memorial"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160613162431/http://www.nmstatemonuments.org/bosque-redondo|date=2016-06-13}}, New Mexico Historic Sites website</ref> area where over 9,000 [[Navajo]] and Mescalero Apache were forced to live because of accusations that they were raiding white settlements near their respective homelands. The fort was named for General [[Edwin Vose Sumner]].<ref>https://www.newmexico.org/fort-sumner/, New Mexico website</ref>

The [[Indian reservation|reservation]] was to be self-sufficient, while teaching Navajo and Mescalero Apache how to be modern [[farmer]]s. General [[Edward Canby]], whom Carleton replaced, had first suggested that the Navajo people be moved to a series of reservations and be taught new skills. Some in [[Washington, D.C.]] thought that the Navajo should not be moved and that a reservation should be created on their own land. Some [[New Mexico]] citizens encouraged killing the Navajo or at least removing them from their lands. The 1865 and 1866 [[Maize|corn]] crop was sufficient, but in 1867 it was a total failure. [[United States Army|Army]] officers and [[Indian agent]]s realized that Bosque Redondo was a failure, as it had poor water and too little [[firewood]] for the numbers of people who were living there. The Mescalero soon ran away; the Navajo stayed longer, but were permitted to return to their native lands in May 1868.

When the Bosque Redondo was established, General Carleton ordered Colonel [[Kit Carson]] to do whatever necessary to bring first the Mescalero and then the Navajo there. All of the Mescalero Apache had been relocated by the end of 1862, but the Navajo were not resettled in large numbers until early 1864. The Navajo refer to the journey from Navajo land to the Bosque Redondo as the [[Long Walk of the Navajo|Long Walk]]. More than 300 Navajo died making the journey.<ref>Brown, Dee. ''Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West''. Thirtieth Anniversary Edition. Henry Holt and Company, 2000. pp. 28–29.</ref> It was a bitter memory to many Navajo. One man described it as follows: "By slow stages we traveled eastward by present [[Gallup, New Mexico|Gallup]] and Shushbito, Bear spring, which is now called [[Fort Wingate]]. You ask how they treated us? If there was room the soldiers put the women and children on the wagons. Some even let them ride behind them on their horses. I have never been able to understand a people who killed you one day and on the next played with your children...?"<ref>Very Slim Man, Navajo elder, quoted by Richard Van Valkenburgh, ''Desert Magazine'', April, 1946, p. 23.</ref>

[[File:FortSumner.jpg|300px|left|thumb|US troops at Fort Sumner.]]

In April 1865, there were about 8,500 Navajo and 500 Mescalero Apache interned at Bosque Redondo. The Army had planned only 5,000 would be there, so lack of sufficient food was an issue from the start. As the Navajo and Mescalero Apache had long been enemies, their enforced proximity led to frequent open fighting. The environmental situation worsened. The interned people did not have clean water; it was full of [[alkali]] and there was no [[firewood]] to cook with. The water from the nearby [[Pecos River]] caused severe intestinal problems, and disease quickly spread throughout the camp. Food was in short supply because of crop failures, Army and Indian agent bungling, and criminal activities. In 1865, the Mescalero Apache, or those strong enough to travel, managed to escape. The Navajo were not allowed to leave until May 1868 when the US Army agreed that Fort Sumner and the Bosque Redondo reservation was a failure.

The 1868 [[Treaty of Bosque Redondo]] was negotiated with the Navajo and they were allowed to return to their homeland, to a "new reservation". They were joined by the thousands of Navajo who had been hiding out in the [[Arizona Territory]] hinterlands. This experience resulted in a more determined Navajo, and never again were they surprised by raiders of the [[Lower Rio Grande Valley|Rio Grande Valley]].<ref>''Indian Depredations in New Mexico'', John S. Watts, Wash. D.C., 1858, 66 pages.</ref> In subsequent years, they have expanded the "new reservation" into well over 16 million acres (65,000 km<sup>2</sup>).

Fort Sumner was abandoned in 1869 and purchased by [[rancher]] and cattle baron [[Lucien Maxwell]]. Maxwell rebuilt one of the officers' quarters into a 20-room house. Maxwell's daughter, [[Paulita Maxwell|Paulita]], was a friend of [[Billy the Kid]]. On July 14, 1881, Sheriff [[Pat Garrett]] shot and killed Billy the Kid in this house, now referred to as the '''Maxwell House'''.

==Fort Sumner Historic Site==
A hundred years after the signing of the treaty that allowed the Navajo people to return to their original homes in the [[Four Corners]] region, Fort Sumner was declared a New Mexico State Monument in 1968.

The property is now managed by the New Mexico Historic Sites (formerly State Monuments) division of the [[New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs]]. On June 4, 2005, a new [[museum]] designed by Navajo [[architect]] David N. Sloan was opened on the site as the '''Bosque Redondo Memorial'''. Congress had authorized the establishment of the memorial by the Secretary of Defense in 2000, making federal funds available for construction.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://uscode.house.gov/statviewer.htm?volume=114&page=2369#|title=Public Law 106-511 – Title II–Bosque Redondo Memorial|website=uscode.house.gov|access-date=2019-04-01}}</ref>

The Bosque Redondo Memorial and Fort Sumner Historic Site are located {{convert|6.5|mi|km}} southeast of [[Fort Sumner, New Mexico]]: {{convert|3|mi|km}} east on [[U.S. Route 60 in New Mexico|US Route 60]]/[[U.S. Route 84 in New Mexico|US Route 84]], then {{convert|3.5|mi|km}} south on Billy the Kid Road.

==See also==
{{Portal|National Register of Historic Places}}
* [[National Register of Historic Places listings in De Baca County, New Mexico]]

==Notes==
<references/>

==References==
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20051201041058/http://www.southernnewmexico.com/Articles/Southeast/De_Baca/FortSumner/BosqueRedondo-destination.html Bosque Redondo – destination of the long walk]
* [http://www.desertusa.com/mag03/trails/trails09.html The Long Walk Trail Of The Navajos]
* Thompson, Gerald (1976). ''The Army and the Navajo: The Bosque Redondo Reservation Experiment 1863–1868''. Tucson, Arizona: The University of Arizona Press. {{ISBN|0-8165-0495-4}}

==External links==
{{Commons category}}
* [http://www.nmhistoricsites.org/bosque-redondo New Mexico State Historic Sites – Fort Sumner Historic Site/Bosque Redondo Memorial]
* [http://www.newmexicoculture.org New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs]
* [http://stratocat.com.ar/bases/26e.htm History of the NASA Scientific Balloon Flight Facility] from which are launched stratospheric balloons each year

[[Category:Forts in New Mexico|Sumner]]
[[Category:Military and war museums in New Mexico]]
[[Category:Museums in De Baca County, New Mexico]]
[[Category:New Mexico Territory]]
[[Category:Forts on the National Register of Historic Places in New Mexico|Sumner]]
[[Category:History of De Baca County, New Mexico]]
[[Category:History museums in New Mexico]]
[[Category:Ruins on the National Register of Historic Places]]
[[Category:1863 establishments in New Mexico Territory]]
[[Category:1868 disestablishments in New Mexico Territory]]
[[Category:National Register of Historic Places in De Baca County, New Mexico]]
[[Category:Internment camps in the United States]]