Navajo Nation

Navajo Nation (Navajo: Naabeehó Dine'é) is the name of a sovereign Native American nation established by the Diné. The Navajo Indian Reservation covers about 27,000 square miles (70,000 square kilometres) of land, occupying all of northeastern Arizona, and extending into Utah and New Mexico, and is the largest land area assigned primarily to a Native American jurisdiction within the United States. The 2000 census reported 298,215 Navajos living throughout the United States, of which 173,987 were living within the Navajo Nation boundaries. 131,166 lived in Arizona. 17,512 of these lived in Maricopa County, which includes the city of Phoenix. Because the Navajo Nation encompasses land in three states, its Division of Economic Development has extracted census date for the Navajo Nation, as a whole, and sends a representative to the Census Board.

History

The Navajo (Diné) and Apache tribal groups of the American Southwest speak dialects of the language family referred to as Athapaskan. Athapaskan peoples in North America fan out from west-central Canada where some Athapaskan-speaking groups still reside. Linguistic similarities indicate the Navajo and Apache were once a single ethnic group. Archaeological and historical evidence suggests a recent entry of these people into the American Southwest, with substantial numbers not present until the early 1500s. Navajo oral traditions retain mention of this migration.

Related Topics:
Apache - Athapaskan - Canada

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Athapaskan speakers probably moved into the Southwest from the Great Plains where 16th-century Spanish accounts identified them as "dog nomads". These mobile groups hunted bison, lived in tents, and used dogs to pull travois loaded with their possessions. In April 1541, while traveling on the plains east of the Pueblo region, Francisco Coronado wrote:

Related Topics:
Great Plains - 16th-century - Spanish - Bison - Travois - 1541 - Francisco Coronado

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:"After seventeen days of travel, I came upon a rancheria of the Indians who follow these cattle (bison). These natives are called Querechos. They do not cultivate the land, but eat raw meat and drink the blood of the cattle they kill. They dress in the skins of the cattle, with which all the people in this land clothe themselves, and they have very well-constructed tents, made with tanned and greased cowhides, in which they live and which they take along as they follow the cattle. They have dogs which they load to carry their tents, poles, and belongings." (Hammond and Rey)

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The Spaniards described Plains dogs as very white, with black spots, and "not much larger than water spaniels". Plains dogs were slightly smaller than those used for hauling loads by modern northern Canadian peoples. Recent experiments show these dogs may have pulled loads up to fifty pounds (twenty-three kilograms) on long trips, at rates as high as two or three miles an hour (three to five kilometres an hour) (see Henderson).

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Although there is some evidence that Athapaskan peoples may have visited the Southwest as early as the 13th century, most scientists believe that they arrived permanently only a few decades before the Spanish. The Athabaskan nomadic way of life complicates accurate dating, primarily because they constructed less substantial dwellings than other Southwestern groups. They also left behind a more austure set of tools and material goods. Sites where early Athapaskans may have lived are difficult to locate, and even more difficult to identify firmly as culturally Athapaskan.

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Trade between the long-established Pueblo peoples and the Athapaskans become important to both groups by the mid 16th century. The Pueblos exchanged maize and woven cotton goods for bison meat, hides and material for stone tools. Coronado observed Plains people wintering near the Pueblos in established camps. In 1540, Coronado reported the modern Western Apache area as uninhabited and other Spaniards first mention Apache living west of the Rio Grande in the 1580s. So, it is likely that the Apaches moved into their current southwestern homelands in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Athapaskans expanded their range through the 17th century, occupying areas the Pueblos peoples had abandoned during prior centuries. The Spanish first mention the "Apachu de Nabajo" (Navaho) in the 1620s, referring to people in the Chama region east of the San Juan River. By the 1640s, the term was applied to Athapaskan peoples from the Chama on the east to the San Juan on the west.

Related Topics:
Maize - Cotton - 1540 - Western Apache - Rio Grande - 1580s - 17th - 1620s - San Juan River - 1640s

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