Bosque Redondo = model for Auschwitz

In response to my posting on Kit Carson, correspondent DMarks found the following:

Why is the Bosque Redondo Memorial called the Site of Conscience?Tourists passing along N. M. State Highway 60/84 whiz by a sign demarcating Billy the Kid's grave. Little do they realize that a recently erected sign announcing a newly declared New Mexico state monument marks the location of the greatest holocaust ever wrought on a single site upon American soil and upon American conscience: a prison camp which held thousands of Americans against their will without trial by jury, never having been accused of a crime, and in which thousands died of starvation, exposure to the elements, contaminated drinking water, venereal disease, and rotten food, and from having been worked to death--buried, nameless, faceless, without record, in mass graves.How bad was it?"Hweeldi," meaning in the Navajo tongue "the place of suffering," was a forced labor prison camp which was subsequently studied by Nazis in order to perfect their death camps for Jews. It served as a prototype for Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau and other sites of mass murder of the Third Reich.Comment:  As I said, I debated someone on whether Bosque Redondo qualified as a concentration camp. Answer: Yes, it does.

The posting above reads like a newspaper article copied from somewhere. There's no source for the claim that the Nazis used Bosque Redondo as a model for Auschwitz and the other death camps.

I've heard that Hitler modeled the whole Holocaust on the genocide of American Indians. These claims seem plausible to me, but I'm not sure they're true.

For more on the subject, see Adolf Hitler:  A True American and America's Concentration Camps.

Kit Carson: Hero or villain?

Hampton Sides, author of Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West, discusses whether Kit Carson was a hero or villain, or both:

Frontiersman’s complex identity

By Carol BerryCarson was part of a widespread depiction of the American West that was “old and stale and hackneyed and full of stereotypes,” perpetuated by cheap fictional narratives of the time known as “blood-and-thunders,” Sides said.

Although Carson was portrayed as larger than life–seven feet tall, blond, blue-eyed and handsome, rescuing the damsel in distress–in fact he was about 5 feet, 4 inches in height, illiterate, from Missouri, and eager to escape the notoriety accorded him via the dime-fiction accounts.

Carson seemed to embody the Anglo-American notion that the West was “supposed to be ours, or something,” traveling westward on the Santa Fe Trail as a youth after his father died, then becoming a mountain man and trapper at a time when beaver pelts were prized by hatters in the U.S. and abroad.

Rather than epitomizing quintessentially Anglo values, however, he spoke several Native languages, was married into the Arapaho and Cheyenne nations, and was close to Ute and Spanish communities, as well.Carson's role in the Long Walk:The brutality of the Army campaign attributed to Carson, who was commissioned a colonel, actually may have belonged to Gen. James H. Carleton, who offered to “solve the Indian problem for once and all” by instituting reservations. Carson himself never entered Canyon de Chelly, last refuge of Navajo resistance, saying he was “spooked by the place,” and he believed that if reservations were to be created, they should be on ancestral lands.

Attempting to force agriculture at the Bosque Redondo was “destined to fail, anyway,” Sides noted. “It was an arrogant way of trying to say, ‘We don’t like the way you’re living now; you should live an entirely different life.’”

Somewhat like a Mafia character, Carson lived in a violent world but mostly remained true to his personal code and to tribal alliances despite a propensity for violence and hair-trigger temper, he said.

In assigning hero and villain roles to the historical figures, Carson’s closeness to–and, some said, betrayal of–Native cultures was a defining characteristic, especially his closeness to the Ute nation and his use of Ute scouts against the Navajo in Canyon de Chelly.Comment:  Sounds like the correct answer is "both."

I have Blood and Thunder but haven't read it yet. A few years ago I debated someone on the subject. Specifically, someone who got upset when I quoted someone who labeled Bosque Redondo a "concentration camp." (Because it fits the definition of one.) The person thought I was criticizing Carson too, but I wasn't.

For more on the subject, see How America Became Cowboy Country and Docudrama About Yellow Woman.

Two eras of people fleeing

Iconic sign evokes connection to Long WalkThe yellow signs have ... become popular with people on both sides of the contentious issue. It made the cover of The Economist. Replicas adorn T-shirts and political statements. There is even a copy of the sign displayed at the Smithsonian. It has become the symbol for illegal immigration.

But Hood’s sketch was partly inspired by another migration--a forced one. Hood, made a connection between the plight of illegal immigrants and his ancestors that were caught between Kit Carson’s soldiers and the Navajos’ determination to remain in their homes in the 1860s.

“[In the] stories from my tribe there is a history of my tribe being rounded up like cattle, and I have heard stories of people running away from soldiers and things like that.

“So, a lot of them died along the away. Some of that came to mind, imagining some of those things. It’s something deep within the mind, soul and the heart that comes to life and you have this awareness,” said Hood, who still calls the Navajo reservation in northeastern New Mexico home despite living in San Diego for nearly 30 years.
Comment:  For more on the subject, see Navajo Made Famous Road Sign.

Below:  Navajos fleeing from soldiers during the Long Walk?