The Fort Bayard Historic Preservation Society will host its annual membership dinner on Saturday evening, October 21, at the Cross Point Church in Silver City.  Doors will open at 6 p.m. with dinner and program to follow at 6:30.  Cost of the dinner is $20 per person.   Reservations are required, and may be made by emailing to historicfortbayard.org, or calling Dr. John Bell at 575-574-2573.  Deadline for reservations is October 14th. 

The featured speaker will be John Lewis Taylor, who will speak on the Navajo Scouts and their role in the Apache Wars of the late 1800s.  Mr. Taylor is a longtime educator in western New Mexico, having served as a teacher and principal for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and as an instructor at the University of New Mexico-Gallup.  He is enthralled with the history of the American Southwest and retirement has allowed him the time to research and write about his passion.

Mr. Taylor’s talk will center on the relationship between the Navajo people with the United States military and how that relationship developed.  He will outline why some Navajos chose to join the United States military so soon after the “Long Walk”, and discuss the legacy of the Navajo Scouts, profile some famous scouts, and explore how in the1920s, veteran scouts gained military pensions.   His goal is to provide information that will allow for a better understanding of the determination of the Navajo people to retain their homeland.