The Burden Basket Struggle

Just 81 words tell the story—but they’re powerful enough to represent the struggle and courage of the Yavapai-Apache people of Arizona’s Verde Valley. Those 81 words come from William T. Corbusier’s book, Verde to San Carlos, which recounts his army surgeon father’s memories of the forced relocation of these people to the San Carlos Reservation that began on February 27, 1875—1,476 people carried everything they owned in burden baskets over 180 miles in the winter. He wrote: “O