Made it to double digits. How about that. Keith got up very early (4am) and decided he’d slept enough for a while. I had not. I tried to sleep but didn’t work out as well as I planned. But he took the dog for a long walk and that did allow me a little extra sleep. He saw 2 jackalopes and 2 deer on his walk. No pictures though but I still believe him. After forcing myself uo at 7:30 we had pancakes again for breakfast and Joey and I took another walk. Took one of the hiking trails, which was beautiful. Didn’t go too far because I did’t want to encounter any snakes or scorpions. Yuk. But all was good.
After coming back, cleaning up a bit and Keith getting a nap (figures) we took a trip down to Fort Sumner. Fort Sumner was a Native American concentration camp imprisoning the 11,000 native americans from the Mescalero Apache and Navajo tribes. The fort is gone but a memorial has been set up called Bosque Redondo for the Bosque Redondo Indian Reservation as the encampment was called. This was during the civil war and the military in New Mexico wanted to relocate these tribes so white people could settle their land. They truly believed in Manifest Destiny. Apparently not much has changed for a lot of white ameicans. But the military forced them to walk, sometime up to 450 miles away from they’re homes and ancesters, to settle this part of New Mexico. It lasted from 1863 to 1868 and was a complete disaster. They expected these tribes, who were enemies and didn’t even speak the same language, to farm the land and not fight back or they would be killed. But the only water was the Pecos River and that water was undrinkable and killed the crops. There was not food, no wood to build houses and what there was the military took first for themselves. By 1868 a lot of the native american ran away, risking being killed by the military that dying of starvation and cold. In 1868 the federal government decided to give them back their original land. Not all of it mind you but at least they could go home. But they had lost 20% of their population by this time. It was a sad, moving and horrific example of white people again feeling that they can just take what they want. This trip has really shown me what horrible people white people are. Again we can’t forget what happened. As a side on the way to the memorial we passed the burial place of Billy the Kid. Stopped for the photo op.
We drove home a little sad at what we had seen. When we got back, after taking many pictures along the way, we made dinner of chicken and roasted potatoes with sour cream cucumbers and finished listening to the audible book we had on while we drove. It was “Fried Green Tomatos at the Whistle Stop Cafe”. That just topped off the somber afternoon. After another long walk for Joey we turned in early. I was really tired.
Somber Day 10