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The Navajo are a Native American people of the Southwestern United States.
With more than 399,494 enrolled tribal members as of 2021, the Navajo Nation is the largest federally recognized tribe in the United States; additionally, the Navajo Nation has the largest reservation in the country. The reservation straddles the Four Corners region and covers more than 27,325 square miles of land in Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. The Navajo Reservation is slightly larger than the state of West Virginia. The Navajo language is spoken throughout the region, and most Navajos also speak English.
The states with the largest Navajo populations are Arizona (140,263) and New Mexico (108,306). More than three-fourths of the enrolled Navajo population resides in these two states.
Besides the Navajo Nation proper, a small group of Navajos are members of the federally recognized Colorado River Indian Tribes.
History
Early history
A 19th-century hogan
Navajo spinning and weaving on vertical loom
The Navajo are speakers of a Na-Dené Southern Athabaskan language which they call Diné bizaad (lit. 'People's language'). The term Navajo comes from Spanish missionaries and historians who referred to the Pueblo Indians through this term, although they referred to themselves as the Diné, meaning '(the) people'.[5] The language comprises two geographic, mutually intelligible dialects. It is closely related to the languages of the Apache; the Navajo and Apache are believed to have migrated from northwestern Canada and eastern Alaska, where the majority of Athabaskan speakers reside.[6] Additionally, some Navajo speak Navajo Sign Language, which is either a dialect or daughter of Plains Sign Talk. Some also speak Plains Sign Talk itself.[7]
Archaeological and historical evidence suggests the Athabaskan ancestors of the Navajo and Apache entered the Southwest around 1400 AD.[8] The Navajo oral tradition is said to retain references of this migration.[citation needed] For example, the Great Canadian Parks website suggests the Navajo may be descendants of the lost Naha tribe, a Slavey tribe from the Nahanni region west of Great Slave Lake.[9]
Initially, the Navajo were largely hunters and gatherers. Later, they adopted farming from Pueblo people, growing mainly the traditional Native American "Three Sisters" of corn, beans, and squash. They adopted herding sheep and goats from the Spaniards as a main source of trade and food. Meat became essential in the Navajo diet. Sheep became a form of currency and familial status.[10] Women began to spin and weave wool into blankets and clothing; they created items of highly valued artistic expression, which were also traded and sold.
Oral history indicates a long relationship with Pueblo people[11][full citation needed] and a willingness to incorporate Puebloan ideas and linguistic variance. There were long-established trading practices between the groups. Mid-16th century Spanish records recount that the Pueblo exchanged maize and woven cotton goods for bison meat, hides, and stone from Athabaskans traveling to the pueblos or living nearby. In the 18th century, the Spanish reported that the Navajo maintained large herds of livestock and cultivated large crop areas.[citation needed]
Western historians believe that the Spanish before 1600 referred to the Navajo as Apaches or Quechos.[12]: 2–4 Fray Geronimo de Zarate-Salmeron, who was in Jemez in 1622, used Apachu de Nabajo in the 1620s to refer to the people in the Chama Valley region, east of the San Juan River and northwest of present-day Santa Fe, New Mexico. Navahu comes from the Tewa language, meaning a large area of cultivated lands.[12]: 7–8 By the 1640s, the Spanish began using the term Navajo to refer to the Diné.
During the 1670s, the Spanish wrote that the Diné lived in a region known as Dinétah, about 60 miles (97 km) west of the Rio Chama Valley region. In the 1770s, the Spanish sent military expeditions against the Navajo in the Mount Taylor and Chuska Mountain regions of New Mexico.[12]: 43–50 The Spanish, Navajo and Hopi continued to trade with each other and formed a loose alliance to fight Apache and Comanche bands for the next 20 years. During this time there were relatively minor raids by Navajo bands and Spanish citizens against each other.
In 1800, Governor Chacon led 500 men to the Tunicha Mountains against the Navajo. Twenty Navajo chiefs asked for peace. In 1804 and 1805, the Navajo and Spaniards mounted major expeditions against each others' settlements. In May 1805, another peace was established. Similar patterns of peace-making, raiding, and trading among the Navajo, Spaniards, Apache, Comanche, and Hopi continued until the arrival of Americans in 1846.[12]
In 1937, Boston heiress Mary Cabot Wheelright and Navajo singer and medicine man Hastiin Klah founded the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe. It is a repository for sound recordings, manuscripts, paintings, and sandpainting tapestries of the Navajos. It also featured exhibits to express the beauty, dignity, and logic of the Navajo religion. When Klah met Cabot in 1921, he witnessed decades of efforts by the US government and missionaries to assimilate the Navajos into mainstream society. The museum was founded to preserve the religion and traditions of the Navajo, which Klah was sure would otherwise soon be lost forever.
The Navajo Nation (Navajo: Naabeehó Bináhásdzo), also known as Navajoland,[3] is a Native American reservation of Navajo people in the United States. It occupies portions of northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southeastern Utah. The seat of government is located in Window Rock, Arizona.
At roughly 17,544,500 acres (71,000 km2; 27,413 sq mi), the Navajo Nation is the largest land area held by a Native American tribe in the U.S., exceeding ten U.S. states. It is one of a few indigenous nations whose reservation lands overlap its traditional homelands.
In 2010, the reservation was home to 173,667 out of 332,129 Navajo tribal members; the remaining 158,462 tribal members lived outside the reservation, in urban areas (26 percent), border towns (10 percent), and elsewhere in the U.S. (17 percent).[4] In 2020, the number of tribal members increased to 399,494,[5] surpassing the Cherokee Nation as the largest tribal group by enrollment.[6]
The U.S. gained ownership of what is today Navajoland in 1848 following the Mexican-American War. The reservation was first established in 1868 within New Mexico Territory, initially spanning roughly 3.3 million acres; it subsequently straddled what became the Arizona–New Mexico border in 1912, when the states were admitted to the union. Unlike many reservations in the U.S., it has since expanded several times since its formation, therefore reaching its current boundaries in 1934.
Notable Navajo
Please use Geni naming conventions for Native Americans for Geni profiles.
- Navajo Code Talkers Heros of WWII and The Navaho/Navajo Nation