BLUFFDALE, Utah — Carrying the scraps of their lives in plastic trash bags, citizens of the drowned city of New Orleans landed in a strange new place a week ago and wondered where they were. The land was brown, and nearly everyone they saw was white.

"I'm still not sure where I am — what do they call this, the upper West or something?" said Shelvin Cooter, 30, one of 583 people relocated from New Orleans to a National Guard camp here on a sagebrush plateau south of Salt Lake City, 1,410 miles from home.

"We're getting shown a lot of love, but we're also getting a lot of stares like we're aliens or something," Cooter said. "Am I the only person out here with dreadlocks?"

Hurricane Katrina has produced a diaspora of historic proportions. Not since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, or the end of the Civil War in the 1860s, have so many Americans been on the move from a single event. Federal officials who are guiding the evacuation say 400,000 to upwards of 1 million people have been displaced from ruined homes, mainly in the New Orleans metropolitan area.

Many say they will never go back, vowing to build new lives in strange lands. Others say they still feel utterly lost, uprooted from all that is familiar.

"The people are so nice, but this place is really strange to me," said Desiree Thompson, who arrived in Albuquerque, N.M., on Sept. 4 with six of her children and two grandchildren, along with about 100 other evacuees. "The air is different. My nose feels all dry. The only thing I've seen that looks familiar is the McDonald's."

It came as a shock to Thompson and others when they were told of their destination — mid-flight. They had boarded a military plane out of New Orleans last weekend, expecting to go to Texas, many of them said.

"In the middle of the flight they told us they were taking us to New Mexico," Thompson said. "New Mexico! Everyone said, 'My God, they're taking us to another country.' "

Not that New Mexico — the Land of Enchantment, rainbow-colored chili peppers and a black population of barely 3 percent — has not tried to make the exiled residents of New Orleans feel at home. Naomi Mosley offered free hair styling to a handful of women at her parlor, and the Rev. Calvin Robinson was one of the preachers doling out counseling and soul food at a church in Albuquerque.

"This is almost like the exodus of Moses," Robinson said. "These people have left everything behind. Their friends and relatives are far away. Most of what they had is gone forever. They feel abandoned by the government, but we are trying to make them feel at home."

Indeed, after he consumed two plates of mustard greens, fried chicken, potato salad and corn bread at God's House Church in Albuquerque, 67-year-old Walter Antoine said the dinner was the nearest thing to New Orleans comfort food he has had in more than a week.

Sitting outside at sunset, though, with the 10,000-foot-high Sandia Mountains in the background, Antoine was pining for home. "If I had a brother or sister or someone here, maybe I might stay. But I don't know anybody. If I'm gonna die, I want to die back in New Orleans."

With the prospect that New Orleans could remain uninhabitable for months, however, many of those displaced say they are eager to start anew and never go back.

"It's just time for another change, for me to start my life over," said Matthew Brown, 37, newly relocated to Amarillo, in the dusty panhandle of Texas. "I have a job and a couple of offers. The money's nice. People like me, treat me right."

Joseph Haynes moved his wife, a family friend and two grown sons to Seattle, arriving in two cars after a 2,100-mile journey from their home in New Orleans. Haynes said he left behind a house he owns and a mechanic's job that he suspects will never come back. He headed for Seattle because one of his sons lives here.

"What good is me going back with my family to a city that is dead?" he said. "Then my life would be dead. So I need to move on."

Here in Utah, more than a hundred of the evacuees have boarded buses from the shelter to go to Denver and Dallas, and then beyond. They said they needed to be closer to home. But others have already found jobs in the Beehive State, which has a black population of less than 1 percent according to the last census, and say they intend to stay.

"I didn't have a clue where they were taking us," said Reginald Allen, 36, smoking a cigarette outside his temporary home at Camp Williams. "But when they told us it was Utah, I just said, 'Well, it's a change. I gotta adapt.' And now I got a job, and I plan to make this my home. I think I could be a cold-weather guy."'