Musician Clarence Clearwater, like so many Navajos, has moved off the reservation for work. He performs on the Grand Canyon Railway, the lone Indian among dozens of cowboys and train robbers entertaining tourists.
"I always tell people I'm there to temper the cowboys," says Clearwater. "I'm there to give people the knowledge that there was more of the West than just cowboys."
About 50 years ago, Clearwater retraced his great-great-great-grandfather's footsteps along what Navajo and Mescalero Apache people call the Long Walk. In a series of marches starting in 1864, 9,500 Navajo and 500 Mescalero Apache were forced by the U.S. Army to walk 400 miles from their reservation in northeastern Arizona to the edge of the Pecos River in eastern New Mexico; like the forced march known as the Trail of Tears, thousands died.
Legacy Of Forced March Still Haunts Navajo Nation : NPR
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