Navajos are still divided over the idea of designating a historic trail commemorating the Long Walk, a series of routes thousands of their ancestors were forced to take from their homeland to Bosque Redondo in 1864, many dying or taken as slaves along the way.

The National Park Service is currently seeking public comment on a draft study evaluating the suitability of such a trail.

When the Park Service invited comment on the trail designation four years ago, many elderly Navajos said they believe the painful past shouldn't be revisited, while younger people said they feel it's important to establish the trail to make sure future generations understand what happened.

Opinions haven't really changed, suggested Judy Martin, cultural specialist with the Navajo Nation Historic Preservation Department and a tribal member.

"There's no way to put closure to this era, the way I look at it," said Martin, who grew up at Wheatfields in the Navajo Nation. "Look at 9/11. These things are instilled in your mind for a very long time. For people to just kind of let things like this go is very painful."

Ed Natay, half Navajo, or Diné, and half Santa Domingo Pueblo, and a National Park Service employee for 52 years, said he thinks the Long Walk story "should be told with the heavy input and perspective of Navajo and Apache people."

The Long Walk is deeply embedded in the cultural memories and stories of Navajo people the way the Civil War and Vietnam War are for many Americans.

In 1863 and 1864, as the Civil War raged, federal soldiers under the command of Kit Carson captured thousands of Navajo men, women and children and force-marched them from their homes in northern Arizona and New Mexico hundreds of miles to a reservation at Bosque Redondo in Southern New Mexico. In different groups numbering up to 1,000 people at a time, they walked a corridor from Canyon de Chelly in Arizona past Albuquerque, to Santa Fe and Galisteo, Anton Chico, Canyon Piedra Pintado and finally to Fort Sumner.

The Navajo phrase for the forced march translates to "time of fear, a time when people herded to this confined place," Martin said. "They called it a place of death. Along the way, a lot of elderly and ill people were shot to death. People remember those things. It was a brutal time, a time of inhumane treatment of our people."

Martin's great-great-grandmother was among those stolen during the walk and sold as a slave to a Spanish family, she said. Relatives took her back, but by then she had a baby. The aftermath of the incident is still visible in the sometimes reddish, curly hair and lighter skin among some of her family generations later, she said.

Eventually, 8,500 Navajo joined the 500 Mescalero Apache people similarly forced to Bosque Redondo. By 1867, Navajo leaders estimated half their people had died.

Natay remembers his dad, who was Navajo, talking about stories his grandmother told from her memories of Bosque Redondo. "He talked about the people boiling old moccasins for more sustenance, picking corn kernels from horse poop and washing them so they could cook them. Coffee and flour (handed out at the fort) were new to them and they didn't know how to cook it," Natay said.

Plains tribes raided Bosque Redondo and stole women, children, cattle and horses, according to historical reports.

"Thousands of Indian people died while being taken to or while living at Bosque Redondo," according to the National Park Service draft study. "Instead of leading to assimilation and conversions to Christianity, the effort led to staggering costs and extreme suffering, disease, depredation and death."

The Apache made a mass escape in 1865 and returned to their homelands.

Many Navajo people stayed until an agreement was signed in 1868 allowing them to return home. The Navajo walked back along many of the same trails they had been forced to take to Bosque Redondo.

In 2002, Congress directed the National Park Service to study possibly designating a Long Walk Historical Trail. The agency was to determine if a trail was "physically possible" and if it would be "financially feasible."

The draft feasibility study proposes four alternatives. One would not designate a trail. Two options would establish the trail in different ways. The fourth alternative would not designate a trail, but Congress would provide grants to help protect the trail and establish education centers on tribal lands.

The public has until June 22 to review and comment on the study.

The National Park Service will provide Congress a copy of the final feasibility study after considering the comments. Congress will decide if the Long Walk trail should be designated.

The Navajo Tribal Council voted against the trail designation in 2006 out of deference to the elderly people who opposed it. The National Park Service will be presenting the draft study to the Tribal Council again.

The National Park Service is hosting four meetings about the trail study in the Navajo Nation: Monday in Crownpoint, Tuesday in Window Rock, Wednesday in Chinle and Thursday in Tuba City.

To see the Long Walk National Historic Trail draft study online, visit http://parkplanning.nps.gov/documentsList.cfm?parkId=456&projectId=12406 and click on document list.

Contact Staci Matlock at 986-3055 or smatlock@sfnewmexican.com.