The Navajos and the Peace Commission of 1867

Many scholars have noted that the Navajo Treaty of 1868 marked a turning point in the history of the Navajo tribe.Several authors, including John Upton Terrell and Ruth M. Underbill, have written careful survey histories of the Navajo people.Recently Peter Iverson has added The Navajo Nation to the historical literature of the tribe.Unlike other works, Iverson concentrates on twentieth century Navajo history.Others have authored works concerning only a segment of Navajo history.Frank D. Reeve, in a series of articles published in the New Mexico Historical Review, presented a balanced picture of Navajo-white relations from the time of Spanish contact until 1880, and Frank McNitt, in his Navaj o Wars, concentrated on Navajo-American conflicts up to 1861.The Long Walk, by Lynn R. Bailey, traced Navajo history from the initial American contact through the Bosque Redondo era.This history of the Bosque Redondo experiment was thoroughly researched by Gerald Thompson in his The Army and the Navajo.Surprisingly, important as the Treaty of 1868 has been interpreted there has been very little published concerning the Peace Commission of 1867, whose members brought an end to the Bosque Redondo reservation, allowing the Navajos to return to their homeland.Douglas C. Jones in The Treaty of Medicine Lodge, told the story of the Peace Commission's council with the southern plains tribes in 1867, but no IV