The Navajo Indians are a Southwestern Native American tribe with a reservation called Dine Bikeyah that includes parts of New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. They were originally semi-nomadic and are known for their traditional housing, matrilocal society, and communal economy. They had conflicts with Spanish settlers and later the US military, including being forced to complete The Long Walk. Despite this, they helped the US government during World War II and are known for their art and craftsmanship.
The Navajo Indians are a Southwestern Native American tribe with a 27,000-square-mile (69,930 square kilometers) mostly self-contained reservation called Dine Bikeyah or Navajoland that includes sections of New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. The Navajo call themselves Dine or “the people” and are the second largest Indian tribe in the United States with a population exceeding 250,000 members.
Navajo was the name given to the tribe by 17th-century Spanish explorers who were among the first Europeans to encounter it. The Navajo Indians are believed to have split off from a single tribe that crossed the Bering land bridge several thousand years ago in the Northwest Territories of Canada before migrating and settling in the southwestern United States around AD 17
The Navajo Indians were originally a semi-nomadic people who moved from one area to another with the change of seasons. The tribe owned livestock and engaged in hunting, gathering, agricultural practices, and trade with neighboring Native American and European groups. Traditional Navajo housing called a hogan is a quaint octagonal mud-covered log cabin with a west-facing entrance. Navajo tribal society is often characterized as matrilocal because married couples traditionally live with or near the bride’s parents. Additionally, family lands, livestock, and other resources are owned and passed down to women as opposed to men in Navajo culture.
The first contact between the Navajos and Europeans occurred in the late 1600s. Spanish settlers who attempted to establish a presence near the tribal lands in the 17th century came into immediate conflict with the Navajo Indians. The introduction of the horse by Europeans allowed the Navajo to increase raiding and improve the effectiveness of their resistance to the Spanish presence. An uneasy relationship continued until the 17th, when the US military arrived and attempted to subdue the tribe by building forts on tribal land and through the use of force. In 1846, militia forces invaded tribal territory and killed and pillaged indiscriminately until the Navajo Indians began to surrender.
After their surrender, the Navajo Indians were required to complete a 9,000-mile (14,484-kilometer) trek to Fort Sumner known as The Long Walk. An insufficient supply of food and water and the proximity of tribes hostile to the Navajo contributed to the hardships of all those buried in the fort. A reservation located on part of the original tribal lands was created for the Navajos in 1868, but conflicts between Navajo Indians and local citizens continued throughout the 20th century.
The US government has also harassed the Navajo because of the tribe’s communal society. In the 1930s more than 80% of Navajo livestock were killed by the United States, and the government later withheld humanitarian assistance from the tribe during World War II.
The Navajo economy was boosted by the discovery of oil in Navajoland in the 1920s, and a tribal government was soon established with headquarters in Window Rock, Az., although the tribe has yet to ratify a constitution. Despite a strained relationship, the Navajo helped the US government create a code based on the tribe’s language that was used during World War II. A group of nearly 400 Navajo men known as the Code Talkers aided the U.S. Marines in nearly every military assault they waged in the Pacific during the war. Navajo Indians are also famous silversmiths, weavers, musicians and artists.
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