Manuelito | Navajo Leader, Warrior, Diplomat (2024)

Manuelito (died 1893, Navajo Reservation, New Mexico Territory, U.S.) was a Navajo chief known for his strong opposition to the forced relocation of his people by the U.S. government.

Little is known of Manuelito’s early life. He was already an established leader by 1864 when U.S. Army Colonel Kit Carson, after a war of attrition in which Navajo crops, homes, livestock, and equipment were destroyed, had 8,000 Navajos confined to the Bosque Redondo, an arid, alkaline piece of land south of Santa Fe in New Mexico Territory. Manuelito and about 4,000 of his people would not surrender, however. Instead, they withdrew into the mountains and waged guerrilla warfare. Carson continued his policy of killing wild game and horses and destroying crops. By the autumn of 1866 Manuelito and his people were starving and so finally surrendered. They were taken to the Bosque Redondo. Conditions were so bad that by the spring of 1868 Manuelito and a few other leaders were permitted to go to Washington, D.C., to petition the government for a new reservation. He pleaded his cause successfully, and by that autumn the Navajos were allowed to move to a new reservation, located in the area that had been their traditional homeland.