This is the final painting in a seven-part series of Southwestern history murals that the Gallup public schools commissioned J. R. Willis to paint through the Public Works of Art Project between 1935 and 1936—and that still hang in the Gallup High School library.
Willis concludes his series with an image of one of the last American military offensives against Native peoples in the Southwest. Starting in 1863, Kit Carson, at the command of the US Army, led the forced removal of Diné (Navajo) people to Fort Sumner/Bosque Redondo Reservation. Carson employed a “scorched earth” coercion strategy, destroying Diné homes and food sources. In 1864, he waged a final assault in Canyon de Chelly, where Diné people had taken refuge, which culminated in what is known as the Long Walk, a violent march of Diné people hundreds of miles to Bosque Redondo Reservation.
Willis’s mural whitewashes the historical narrative. In it, Carson appears as a somewhat passive armed guard, simply keeping order and guiding the Diné people to their destination. For their part, the Diné people—erroneously and stereotypically depicted in Plains-style buckskin clothing—appear fully cooperative and hardly distressed.
