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Navaho Indian
Tribe
Navaho, Navajo. From Tewa
Navaho, referring to a large area of cultivated land and applied to a
former Tewa pueblo, and by extension to the Navaho, known to the Spaniards
as "Apaches de Navajó," who intruded
on the Tewa domain or who lived in the vicinity, to distinguish them from
other so-called Apache bands Also called:
Bagowits, Southern Ute name.
Dacabimo, Hopi name.
Devaxo, Kiowa Apache name.
Dine', own name.
Djene, Laguna name.
Hua'amti'u, Havasupai name.
I'hl-dene, Jicarilla name.
Moshome, Keresan name.
Oop, Oohp, Pima name.
Pagowitch, southern Ute name, meaning "reed knives."
Ta-cab-ct-nyu-mflh, Hopi name.
Ta'hli'mnin, Sandia name.
Tasamewe, Hopi name (Ten Kate, 1885) meaning "bastards."
Te'liemnim, Isleta name.
Tenye, Laguna name.
Wild Coyotes, Zuni nickname translated.
Yabipais Nabajay, Garces (1776).
Yntilatldvi, Tonto name.
Yoetand or Yutahra, Apache name, meaning "those who live on the
border of |
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the Ute." |
Yu-i'-ta, Panamint name.
Yutflapaa, Yavapai name.
Yutilatlawi, Tonto name. |
Connections. With the
Apache tribes, the Navaho formed the southern division of the Athapascan
linguistic family.
Location. In northern New
Mexico and Arizona with some extension into Colorado and Utah.
History. Under the
loosely applied name Apache there may be a record of this tribe as early
as 1598 but the first mention of them by the name of Navaho is by
Zarate-Salmeron about 1629. Missionaries were among them about the middle
of the eighteenth century, but their labors seem to have borne no fruits.
For many years previous to the occupation of their country by the United
States, the Navaho kept up an almost constant predatory war with the
Pueblo Indians and the White settlers. A revolution in their economy was
brought about by the introduction of sheep. Treaties of peace made by them
with the United States Government in 1846 and 1849 were not observed, and
in 1863, in order to put a stop to their depredations, Col. "Kit" Carson
invaded their country, killed so many of their sheep as to leave them
without means of support, and carried the greater part of the tribe as
prisoners to Fort Sumner and the Bosque Redondo on the Rio Pecos. They
were restored to their country in 1867 and given a new supply of sheep and
goats, and since then they have remained at peace and prospered greatly,
thanks to their flocks and the sale of their famous blankets.
Population. Mooney (1928)
estimates that there were 8,000 Navaho in 1680. In 1867 an incomplete
enumeration gave 7,300. In 1869 there were fewer than 9,000. The census of
1890, taken on a faulty system, gave 17,204. The census of 1900 returned
more than 20,000 and that of 1910, 22,455. The report of the United States
Indian Office for 1923 gives more than 30,000 on the various Navaho
reservations, and the 1930 census 39,064, while the Indian Office Report
for 1937 entered 44,304.
Connection in which they have
become noted. This tribe has acquired considerable fame from its early
adoption of a shepherd life after the introduction of sheep and goats, and
from the blankets woven by Navaho women and widely known to collectors and
connoisseurs. The name has become affixed, in the Spanish form Navajo, to
a county, creek, and spring in Arizona; a post village in Apache County,
Ariz.; a mountain in New Mexico; and a place in Daniels County, Mont. In
southwestern Oklahoma is a post village known as Navajoe. The tribe has
attracted an unusual amount of attention from ethnologists and from
writers whose interests are purely literary.
Additional New Mexico Indian Resources
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