While the Civil War still raged in the east, the Union Army and the Southwest had matters

well in hand.

There was no longer a Confederate threat, so the Army turned its attention to making the

West safer for white settlers.

General James Carlton, commander of the 9th military department of the United States,

had cordoned himself in Santa Fe.

His most pressing concern was the Navajo.

Carlton wanted to round up all the Navajo in their homeland in northeastern Arizona

and northwestern New Mexico and heard them to a new reservation called Bosque Rdondo.

Carlton had established the reservation along the PAKUS River in eastern New Mexico, and

he built an outpost called Fort Sumner to supervise it.

Kit Carson, who was a colonel for the Union Army, had already corralled the Mescalero Apache

and moved them to Bosque Rdondo.

Now Carlton wanted Kit to do the same with the Navajo.

Instead, Kit resigned his commission and went home to his family in Tauce.

He'd done his duty in the Civil War by helping to stop the Confederate threat in New Mexico.

He had no stomach for another Indian campaign, especially one he knew was daunting and likely

to end in disaster.

Moving the Mescalero Apache onto the new reservation was a different task than the one Carlton

contemplated for the Navajo.

The Mescalero already lived in the area of the reservation, and their total numbers were

only about 500 people.

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