Navajo

Member of an American Indian people, who migrated from Canada to southwest USA (Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah) in about AD 1000. They are related to the Apache, and speak an Athabaskan language, belonging to the Na-Dene family. During World War II, Navajo code talkers in the US Marine Corps transmitted radio messages directly in their native language, which the enemy could not translate. The Navajo were traditionally cultivators, although many now herd sheep, which they acquired from the Spanish. Renowned for their artistry, their painted pottery, woven rugs and blankets, and silver and turquoise jewellery are sold internationally; tourism also generates income. They are the second-largest group of American Indians, numbering about 269,200 (2000).

The Navajo refer to themselves as Dine (‘people’). Originally nomadic hunter-gatherers, they came under the influence of Pueblo Indians in the southwest, from whom they learned to cultivate maize. The Navajo lacked a centralized political organization, being formed instead into small kinship-based bands led by a headman or chief. Navajo origin myths relate the story of how the first people emerged from under the earth, while other myths provide the basis for their many rituals. Their religious rituals vary from simple ones carried out by individuals to complex healing rituals requiring specialist expertise and sometimes involving thousands of people. Other rituals involve elaborate sand-paintings for which they are well known.

The Navajo fought a continuous war with the Spanish, who tried to enslave them, and eventually withdrew into the mountains where Canyon de Chelly became their major stronghold in Arizona. The US government attempted to make a treaty with the Navajo in 1846, after occupying Santa Fe, but found it impossible to gain the signatures of all the individual chiefs. Persistent raiding of white settlers resulted in an attack on Canyon de Chelly by Kit Carson and US troops in 1863. The Navajo were rounded up and endured the ‘Long Walk’ to New Mexico, where they were imprisoned with the Mescalero Apache, their rivals. In 1868, under a new treaty, they were allowed to return to Canyon de Chelly, and farming-stock killed during the Carson raid was replaced.

The Navajo Indian Reservation was created in 1878. The largest in the USA, it covers an area of 65,000 sq km/25,000 sq mi. The reservation lies mainly in northeastern Arizona but extends into northwest New Mexico and southeast Utah. Land disputes with the neighbouring Hopi have resulted in a number of boundary changes. Government of the Navajo Nation is centred on Window Rock, Arizona, while Canyon de Chelly is now a US national monument. The reservation is too arid to support the entire population and many Navajo now work as itinerant labourers in several US cities. Uranium and natural gas extracted on the reservation provides a large income.