Rugs, Textiles (Non-Navajo)

The Navajo (also Navaho) people of the southwestern United States call themselves the Diné (pronounced ), which roughly means "the people". more...

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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 of the American Southwest speak dialects of the language family referred to as Athabaskan. Athabaskan speakers can also be found living in Alaska through west-central Canada and in a few areas on the Pacific coast. Linguistic and cultural similarities indicate the Navajo and the other Southern Athabaskan speakers (known today as Apaches) were once a single ethnic group (linguistically called Apachean) that probably came from the Great Plains. Archaeological and historical evidence suggests these people entered the Southwest after 1000 AD, with substantial population noted by the Spanish in the 1500s. Navajo oral traditions are said to retain references of this migration.

Although there is some evidence that Athabaskan peoples may have entered the Southwest as early as 1000 AD, many scientists believe that their numbers became significant by the 1200s, a few decades before the Spanish. Coronado observed Plains people ("dog nomads") wintering near the Pueblos in established camps, who may have included Navajo. In 1540 Coronado reported the modern Western Apache area as uninhabited, yet in the 1580s other Spaniards first mention Apache living west of the Rio Grande who shared corn with them. The early Athabaskan way of life complicates accurate dating, primarily because they constructed less durable dwellings than other Southwestern groups. They also left behind a more austere set of tools and material goods. Sites where early Athabaskans speakers may have lived are difficult to locate, and even more difficult to identify firmly as culturally Athabaskan.

Whenever the Navajo actually arrived, they occuppied areas the Pueblos peoples had abandoned during prior centuries. The Navajo people traditionally hold the four sacred mountains as the boundaries of the homeland they should never leave: Blanca Peak(Tsisnaasjini' - Dawn or White Shell Mountain) in Colorado, Mount Taylor (Tsoodzil - Blue Bead or Turquoise Mountain) in New Mexico, the San Francisco Peaks (Doko'oosliid - Abalone Shell Mountain) in Arizona, and Hesperus Mountain (Dibé Nitsaa - Big Mountain Sheep) in Colorado.

Navajo oral history seems to indicate a long relationship with Pubelo people (Hosteen Klah page 102 and others) and a willingness to adapt ideas into their own culture. Trade between the long-established Pueblo peoples and the Athabaskans was important to both groups. The Spainish records say by the mid 1500s, the Pueblos exchanged maize and woven cotton goods for bison meat, hides and material for stone tools from Athabaskans who either traveled to them or lived around them. In the 1700s the Spanish say the Navajo had large numbers of livestock and acres of crops. The Navajo probably adapted many Pueblo ideas, as well as practices of early Spainish settlers, into their own very different culture.

Read more at Wikipedia.org