NAVAJO HISTORY THROUGH A JOURNALIST’S LENS

You won’t often find avid readers flipping through a history textbook—of course, they’d rather be engaged in a story. That’s where Matt Fitzsimons comes in; a history buff with a little extra time on his hands during the early days of the pandemic, Fitzsimons undertook a casual, niche research project that led him to explore the war against the Navajo. What he thought might make an interesting magazine story ended up as a full blown chronicle of the war and what choices ultimately led to it. Fitzsimons will tell you firsthand that the best way to share information is through a story, and “The Counterfeiters of Bosque Redondo” does just that.

ATM: Where’d you grow up, and how did you get started with this – on some levels – niche subject matter?

MATT FITZSIMONS: I grew up in California, and always had an interest in history. I went on to work as a newspaper reporter, mostly covering crime and justice. I’m also a fan of Native American art. All these things came together to produce this book.

ATM: How did you transition from reporting to writing this? Of course, it’s still nonfiction, but the format is quite different.

MF: I love history, but I think history books can be a little tedious. I wanted to tell this in the form of a story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. The parts of stories I enjoy most—whether it’s a novel or a news story—are usually the dialog and quotes. Obviously, I couldn’t interview anyone who was around in the 1860s. So as much as possible, I tried let participants speak directly to readers through letters, transcripts, and other primary-source materials.

ATM: What was the catalyst for your research?

MF: I stumbled across a reference to a counterfeiting operation run by Diné/ Navajo prisoners in the 1860s. Thousands of military ration tokens were duplicated to feed imprisoned families at a time of mass starvation. It was early on in the pandemic, and I had a little

THE COUNTERFEITERS OF BOSQUE REDONDO: SLAVERY, SILVER AND THE U.S. WAR AGAINST THE NAVAJO NATION

By Matt Fitzsimons The History Press

160 Pages

$21.99 extra time, so I set about trying to solve the whodunnit.

ATM: How long did it take you to write the book, from inception to finish, research and all?

MF: About two years. I spent about 18 months researching it, then another six months writing it.

ATM: Is there any fact that you came across while writing this that surprised you?

MF: So many things surprised me. I had no idea that an Indigenous slave system existed in America alongside the Southern plantation system. The most striking thing was the strength and resilience of the families at Bosque Redondo.

ATM: Where do you see your writing go from here? Do you want to continue focusing on New Mexico’s Native history?

MF: I think Native histories are generally best left to Native scholars and writers. What I am interested in is investigating colonization, to help separate the myth of the West from its reality.

ATM: For people unfamiliar with the ins and outs of Navajo history, what’s the key takeaway from this book?

MF: In the 1860s, the U.S. Army weaponized slavery in order to pry the Navajo from their land, all under the misguided belief that the country was rich with gold. This is the story of how the survivors ended up at a prison camp hundreds of miles away, and how after five years of exile, they overcame the odds to get back home again.

ATM: What was the most challenging aspect of writing the book?

MF: My publisher set a tight word limit, which served to keep the story focused, but it was a challenge to cover so much ground in a relatively short book. Another challenge was trust. A lot of Native scholars and oral historians have shared information with outsiders, only to see it distorted in print. I recognized I had some work to do, convincing folks that I was genuinely after the truth. It makes me even more grateful to those who were willing to take a chance. —ET