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The Navajo (also Navaho) people of the southwestern United States call themselves the Diné (pronounced ), which roughly means "people". They speak the Navajo language, and many are members of the Navajo Nation, an independent government structure which manages the Navajo reservation in the Four Corners area of the United States.
Early history
The Navajo and Apache tribal groups of the American Southwest speak dialects of the language family referred to as Athabaskan. Athabaskan peoples in North America fan out from west-central Canada where some Athabaskan-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.
The Navajo were part of a greater group of plains Apaches Athabaskan speakers that also included the Lipan, Jicarilla, and Mescalero Apaches and other bands who 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:
- "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)
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).
Although there is some evidence that Athabaskan 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 austere set of tools and material goods. Sites where early Athabaskans may have lived are difficult to locate, and even more difficult to identify firmly as culturally Athabaskan.
Trade between the long-established Pueblo peoples and the Athabaskans 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. Athabaskans 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) specifically in the 1620s, referring to the people in the Chama valley region east of the San Juan River, and north west of Santa Fe. By the 1640s, the term Navaho was applied to these same people. By the 1670s they were living in a region called Dinetah, which was about sixty miles west of the Rio Chama valley region, and by the 1780s they were migrating south west and west to the Mount Taylor and Chuska Mountain regions of New Mexico. Why they moved is a consequence of a combination of unrelenting and intermittent warfare between them and their enemies the Spanish colonist and their allies the Pueblo, Ute and Commanche Indians.
Conflict with Europeans
Over the next 200 years, since the 17th century, the Navajo expanded their area of settlement, living in areas of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Because of increasing contact with the Pueblo Indians and the Spanish in the 1600's, the Navajo experienced a revolution in life-style and economy. During conflicts with the Spanish, many Pueblo people took refuge with Navajo bands. This allowed the Navajo to learn many of the customs of their neighbors, including weaving, pottery making, and farming. In addition, rather than simply eating sheep obtained in raids, the Navajo slowly built up their herds as a source of meat and wool for weaving clothing and blankets. The Navajos could eventually support themselves without raiding and pillaging and became known as one of the wealthiest tribes in the Southwest.
The Navajo were often raided by Mexicans looking for Navajo children for the Mexican slave trade. Navajo retaliation against Mexican communities to the south created a deadly cycle as Mexican soldiers were sent north to stop the Indian raids. During these conflicts, the Navajo left their villages and returned to the nomadic raiding life of their ancestors until the troops were gone.
The Navajo resisted white settlers and military groups encroaching onto their land. As the expanding United States turned its attention toward the Southwest, the Navajos sometimes attacked Anglo-American explorers and traders traveling on the Santa Fe and Gila trails. After the United States assumed ownership of the Southwest territories, Brigadier-General James H. Carleton, the new commander of the Federal District of New Mexico, initiated a series of military actions against the Navajo. He ordered Colonel Kit Carson of the New Mexico volunteer militia to lead an expedition against the Navajos under a scorched earth policy, burning Navajo fields and homes, and stealing or killing their livestock. The troops were aided by other Native American tribes with long-standing enmity toward the Navajos, chiefly the Utes. There were no pitched battles and only a few skirmishes in the Navajo campaign. During the six-month sweep, Carson’s soldiers reportedly killed only 78 of the estimated 12,000 Navajos, experiencing few casualties themselves. Carson's militia thoroughly disrupted the Navajo way of life and rounded up and took prisoner every Navajo they could find. In January 1864, Carson led forces, including Utes auxiliaries, into Canyon de Chelly to attack the last Navajo stronghold under the leadership of Manuelito. He commanded his men to cut down all the peach trees that were growing in Canyon de Chelle, some 1,000 to 1,200 trees. Although a remnant fled the canyon, the Navajo were eventually forced to surrender due to the destruction of their livestock and food supplies.
In the spring of 1864, over 8,000 Navajo men, women and children were forced to march over 300 miles to Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Approximately 200 Navajo died during the two month long march, known as the Long Walk of the Navajo. Approximately 9,000 Navajo were interned at the Fort in poor conditions, held jointly with several hundred Mescalero Apache. There was no firewood for cooking and water from the nearby Pecos River caused severe intestinal problems and disease. Food was also in short supply. In 1865, those Mescalero Apache strong enough to travel managed to escape to their own territory. However, the Navajo were not allowed to leave until three years later when an 1868 treaty was negotiated which established a reduced area of their homeland, where the Navajo Reservation exists today.
Cultural characteristics
The name "Navajo" is the name given to the tribe by the Tewa Pueblo Indians, whose settlement preceded the Navajo. The word may mean "thieves" or "takers from the fields." (The names by which many Native American tribes are commonly known are derived from epithets used by their enemies.) The Navajo, who came to the Southwest millennia after the Tewa, call themselves Diné, which is often translated to mean "the people" (most Native American groups call themselves by names that mean "the people.") Nonetheless, many Navajo now acquiesce to being called "Navajo."
Historically, the structure of the Navajo society is largely a matriarchical system in which only women were allowed to own livestock and land. Once married, a Navajo man would move into his bride's dwelling and clan since daughters (or, if necessary, other female relatives) were traditionally the ones who received the generational inheritance (this is mirror-opposite to a patriarchical tradition).
A hogan is the traditional Navajo home. For those who practice the Navajo religion the hogan is considered sacred. The religious song "The Blessingway" describes the first hogan as being built by Coyote with help from beavers to be a house for First Man, First Woman, and Talking God. The Beaver People gave Coyote logs and instructions on how to build the first hogan. Navajos made their hogans in the traditional fashion until the 1900s, when they started to make them in hexagonal and octagonal shapes. Today they are rarely used as actual dwellings, but are maintained primarily for ceremonial purposes.
Silversmithing is said to have been introduced to the Navajo while in captivity at Fort Sumner in Eastern New Mexico in 1864. At that time Atsidi Saani learned the silversmithing and began teaching others the craft as well. By the 1880 Navajo silversmiths were creating handmade Navajo jewelry including braclets, tobacco flasks, necklaces, bow gaurds and eventually evolved into earings, buckles, bolos, hair ornaments and pins. Turquoise had been used with jewelry by the Navajo for hundreds of years, but not inset into the silver.
See also
External links
- Navajo People (as of November 24, 2004)
- A Brief Overview of the Navajo People (as of October 18, 2004)
- Navajo Silversmiths, by Washington Matthews, 1883 from Project Gutenberg
- Navajo Jewelry Information
References
- Bailey, L. R. (1964). The long walk: A history of the Navaho Wars, 1846-1868.
- Bighorse, Tiana. (1990). Bighorse the Warrior. Ed. Noel Bennett, Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
- Downs, James F. (1972). The Navajo. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
- Gilpin, Laura. (1968). The enduring Navaho. Austin: University of Texas Press.
- Hammond, George P. and Rey, Agapito (editors). Narratives of the Coronado Expedition 1540-1542. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1940.
- Henderson, Richard. “Replicating Dog Travois Travel on the Northern Plains.” Plains Anthropologist, V39:145-59, 1994.
- Iverson, Peter. (2002). Diné: A history of the Navahos. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 0826327141
- Kluckholm, Clyde; & Leighton, Dorothea. (1946). The Navaho. Cambridge: Oxford University Press.
- McNitt, Frank. (1972). Navajo wars. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
- Plog, Stephen. Ancient Peoples of the American Southwest. Thames and London, LTD, London, England, 1997. ISBN 0-500-27939-X.
- Terrell, J. U. (1970). The Navajos.
- Underhill, Ruth M. (1956). The Navahos. Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press.
- Witherspoon, Gary. (1977). Language and Art in the Navajo Universe. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
- Loewen, James. W. (1999 ). Lies Across America. Pages 100-101; The New Press.
- Roessel, Ruth (1973). Navajo Stories of the Long Walk Period Tsaile: Navajo Community College Press.
"Navajo people"