N A V A JO P E O P L E S of N O R T H A M E R I C A Southwestern Arrival A lthough they are today known as a southwestern tribe the Navajo did not arrive in the Southwest until sometime between a d 1000 and 1500 Before that time the ancestors of the Navajo lived far to the north in Alaska western Canada and present-day California and Oregon There they hunted caribou moose and bears gathered wild nuts and berries and caught fish They lived in cone-shaped homes covered with bark or animal hides and traipsed through the snow using snowshoes and dogs pulling sleds ANTHROPOLOGISTS call these ancestral Navajo the Athapaskans because of the language they spoke which belongs to the Athapaskan language family Many Athapaskan-speaking peoples remained in the north But at some point groups of them began to move south from their homeland perhaps because of food shortages or war with neighboring peoples The groups likely made their way through the Rocky Mountains or along the Great Plains stopping for periods of time and then starting again Eventually after traveling more than 2,000 miles 3,219 km they reached southwestern North America Most of the Athapaskans moved onto lands east of the Rio Grande They became known as the Apache But one group settled on the Colorado Plateau The Athapaskans moved away from the Arctic land of Alaska and its caribou to the hotter climate of the Southwest 9
From their earliest days in Dinetah through the 20th century Navajo women tended their families crops in the northern section of present-day New Mexico and later spread into parts of Arizona Utah and Colorado They soon became known as the Navajo Although they had arrived in a new land the Navajo continued to live as hunters and gatherers They may have begun to plant small gardens too using ag ricultural techniques they had picked up on their long journey south Soon though the Navajo began to farm more extensively taught by the PUEBLOAN peoples who lived around them Navajo farmers began to raise fields of corn squash and beans As the Navajo and Pueblo interacted more frequently the Pueblo influenced Navajo crafts and religion as well Although the Navajo adopted many aspects of Puebloan cul ture relations between the groups varied from friendly to hostile They worked together to defeat the Spanish in battle in 1680 for example But when the Pueblo later allied themselves with the Spanish they became the target of frequent Navajo raids Navajo relations with the Utes to the north and the Comanche to the east were generally unfriendly The Utes especially often raided the Navajo But on many occasions the Navajo allied with some of the Apache tribes who lived to the south and east When they weren’t fighting the Navajo and Pueblo were trade partners The Navajo provided the Pueblo with meat hides and salt in return for goods such as cotton cloth and metal tools obtained from the Spanish In the 1600s the Pueblo introduced the Navajo to horses and sheep brought by the Spanish The Navajo traded for these animals Or more often they obtained them by raiding Pueblo or Spanish herds Soon the Navajo had adopted the lifestyle of shepherds When they moved to the Southwest the Navajo began to live 10
C T H E G I F T O F S P I D E R W O M A N c The Navajo believed they had been taught to weave by Spider Woman whose loom was made of sunrays and lightning bolts In honor of this gift Navajo weavers left a tiny hole in the middle of their blankets like the center of a spiderweb They believed that if they didn’t Spider Woman would cause them to go insane When traders later refused to buy blankets with holes the weavers compensated by sewing a thin line from the center of the blanket to the edge o j a v a N g n i e B
