What was the Navajo Long Walk? By the early 1860s friendship between the Navajo and American soldiers and settlers in northeastern Arizona had come to an end. The great Navajo chief, Manuelito, had led a successful raid on Fort Defiance in 1860. U.S. Army commanders began to plan for the removal of the Navajo from their Canyon de Chelly homes. In January 1864 Colonel Kit Carson ordered the destruction of all Navajo homes, fields, and property. With nothing to eat and their homes destroyed, the Navajo people began to surrender to the army. In March 1864 over 8,000 Navajo were forced to walk over 300 miles to Fort Sumner, New Mexico. There they were ordered to live until June 1868. The Navajo Long Walk is one of the sad and tragic stories in Arizona’s history. What happened to Arizona during the Civil War? When the Civil War started in 1861, the Butterfield Stage Line was shifted north through Utah. Arizona’s growth stopped. Soldiers stationed in Arizona went east to fight the South, then called the Confederate States of America. The North was called the Union, or the United States of America. With the army gone, the Apaches and Navajos fought to reclaim the land they had lost. Ranchers, miners, and settlers fled to Arizona City (the name then used for Yuma) and Tucson for safety. The Confederacy wanted a southern route over which to carry gold and supplies out of California. On February 28, 1862 Captain Sherod Hunter and 54 Confederate soldiers entered the gates of Tucson. He offered the people in southern Arizona protection from the Indian raiders in exchange for the use of their towns and roads. Most of the citizens of Tucson voted to join with the Confederacy. The land now became the Confederate Territory of Arizona. Captain Sherod Hunter   led the Confederate  troops that once occupied  Arizona in the first half   of 1862. Chapter 7 • Finding an Identity 75