MODULE 8

THE NAVAJO

Printer Friendly Version

Key Concepts:
Dine
Athapaskan
Enemyway
sing (chant)
singer (chanter)
hozho
Changing Woman
Monster Slayer
Born-for-Water
The Long Walk
Bosque Redondo (Fort Sumner)
Stock Reduction
hogan
kinaalda
handtrembler
stargazer
crystalgazer
listener
Native American Church
Navajo Codetalkers
Dine College (Navajo Community College)

Reading Assignment, Text: Chapter 9, "The Navajo," pp. 304-359

The Navajo and various Apache tribes are known as the Southern Athapaskans, for their languages belong to the Athapaskan language family, which is divided into three geographic divisions, the Pacific Coast, Northern, and Southern. Scholars agree that the nucleus of Athapaskan speakers is located in the Mackenzie Basin of Canada, and various Athapaskan-speaking groups spread out from this region. Athapaskan-speakers live in Alaska and northern California as well as Canada and the American Southwest. Until about A.D. 1300, the Southern Athapaskans were a single group or several closely related groups; they arrived in the Southwest at least by A.D. 1400.

They left Canada as hunter-gatherers adapted to a cold climate: the men hunted big game with bows and arrows, and fished in rivers and lakes, while the women gathered berries, processed hides, and made buckskin clothing decorated with porcupine quillwork, and wove baskets rather than made pottery. The Southern Athapaskans arrived in the Southwest in small bands of undifferentiated migratory peoples who had had to adapt to many ecological niches on their southward journey from Canada. Resilient and resourceful, they had had to adapt to many ecological niches on their southward journey. These same traits enabled them to learn quickly from their new neighbors, Puebloan and Plains peoples, incorporating many of their traits and reworking them to fit into their own unique cultural beliefs and practices.

Most Apaches were more influenced by the peoples of the Great Plains, especially the Kiowa-Apache who joined the Plains-dwelling Kiowa. Other groups, such as the Navajo (and, to a lesser extent, the Western Apache), borrowed many Pueblo traits, which they reworked into what became distinctly Navajo culture. Moving into the relatively unoccupied spaces of the region, the Navajo spread into the Four Corners area until they were encircled on every side, except to the north, by Puebloan peoples. As smaller groups of hunters and gatherers, the Navajo were able to live off country that would not support the agricultural villages of the Pueblos. Over time, the Navajo transformed their nomadic foraging existence into a more agriculturally based way of life. They took to farming more readily than any other Southern Athapaskan group, becoming known as nava hu ("place of large cultivated fields") in the language of the Tewa-speaking Pueblos. (The Navajo call themselves Dine, "The People.")