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Navaho Indian Tribe
Location
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 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 Resources
Notes About the Book:
Source: The Indian Tribes of North America, by John R. Swanton, 1953, Bureau of
American Ethnology, Bulletin 145, US Government Printing Office, Washington DC.
Online Publication: The manuscript was scanned and then ocr'd. Minimal editing
has been done, and readers can and should expect some errors in the textual
output.
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