page_title: Williams v. Lee
section_title: History of the tribe
hierarchical_section_title: Williams v. Lee / Background / History of the tribe
caption_attribution_description: Wearing period blankets and footwear.
context_page_description: Williams v. Lee, 358 U.S. 217, was a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the State of Arizona does not have jurisdiction to try a civil case between a non-Indian doing business on a reservation with tribal members who reside on the reservation, the proper forum for such cases being the tribal court.
  The Navajo tribe has lived in the southwestern United States and first came into contact with the United States government in 1846, signing a treaty with the government in 1849. In the early 1860s, the government removed the tribe from their traditional area to eastern New Mexico at the Bosque Redondo. In 1868, the United States and the tribe signed a new treaty to put it back on a reservation in their traditional lands, where the tribe focused on raising sheep and goats.
context_section_description: The Navajo tribe came into contact with the United States in 1846 after General Stephen W. Kearney marched to Santa Fe during the Mexican–American War. The tribe signed its first treaty with the United States in 1849, and signed another treaty in 1868.  The 1849 treaty was immediately suspect among tribal members because of the actions of Colonel John Macrae Washington that resulted in the death of Navajo leader Narbona. With relations strained, in 1862 the United States began a military campaign under Kit Carson to remove the tribe from the mountains of Arizona to the Bosque Redondo on the Pecos River near present-day Fort Sumner, New Mexico, which resulted in the Long Walk of the Navajo, removing the tribe from their home and relocating them to eastern New Mexico. The 1868 treaty was signed at Fort Sumner and provided for the tribe's return to the current reservation and traditional homeland, but also for 15,000 head of sheep and goats and 500 cattle to be provided to the tribe by the U.S. government. Unlike many other treaties, it was celebrated by the Navajo as preserving the majority of their land for the tribe.
caption: Reenactment of the Long Walk
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