During the Pleistocene Ice Age, a period in the history of the planet earth that lasted from about 110,000 to 8,000 years BC, a large part of the northern hemisphere was covered by glaciers. So much water was contained in the glaciers, that the level of the worlds oceans was several hundred feet lower than it is today. Because of this, the Bering Straight, a body of water, about 51 miles wide, which today separates the Asian from the American continent, was dry land and formed the land bridge of Beringia. From the term "bridge" I had always assumed that this was a narrow strip of land. However, at an Elderhostel trip to Alaska we learned, that it was an area of tundra that was over 500 miles wide. Animals and humans could therefore, over a time of years or even generations, have migrated from Asia to America without becoming aware that they had crossed over to a different continent.
It is believed that in this way the first inhabitants of our continent, originally members of nomadic tribes of Siberian hunters, came to America. From Alaska they followed ice-free corridors and turned south. This migration, likely, occurred in several waves, the first happening about 30,000 years ago. Carbon-dated archaeological finds placed the immigrants in the Yukon at about 22,000 BC, in the Andes in Peru at about 18,000 BC, in Idaho at 18,000 BC and in Clovis, NM at 11,000 BC. Most of these finds consisted of butchered animal bones and stone tools, with the stone blades from Clovis being a distinctive type, which differed from earlier finds.
The Navajo or Diné
The last wave of migration over the land bridge, for which a time frame has not been established, divided into a number of groups which, eventually, became different Indian tribes. The common origin of these tribes can be deduced from their languages, which all belong to the same language family called Athapascan or Athabascan. Athapascan is actually a subgroup of a larger language family, called Na-Dené, which also includes the languages of the Tlingit and Haida in South-East Alaska. Some of these tribes remained in central Alaska or settled in northern Canada. However, some of them eventually moved southward in the American continent, not as a large tribe, but more likely as a sequence of small groups. Some time after 1400, they arrived in the region that today is the four-corner area. Originally they were nomadic hunters and gatherers, but during their travels they had learned to adopt practices and technologies from the other tribes they met. From the Pueblo Indian tribes they soon adopted agriculture, especially the growing of corn or maize, which the Pueblos had brought along in their migration from Central and South America. The most significant contribution, however, came from the Mexicans, who lived further south: domesticated farm animals, especially sheep. They were fast learners and soon excelled in farming and animal husbandry. They are first mentioned in a 1626 report by a Spanish priest who talks about an Indian tribe, which the Pueblos called "Apaches of Navaju". The word "Navajo" comes from the language of the Tewa Indians and means "great planted fields". The Navajos called - and still call - themselves Diné or Dineh, which simply means "the people". Their land they call Dinétah.
When the Navajo moved into the area they were not the first in the region. The Anazasi had moved out, but other tribes, from earlier migration waves, were still there. To the North of them there were the Utes, which later gave their name to the State of Utah. To the West of them were the Hopi, and further out the Yavapai and Havasupai. To the South-East, there were the Pueblo Indians. And, finally, to the East there were the Apaches. However, the land was vast and the number of people in all the tribes was small. Even if the areas, which might be claimed as hunting grounds by one of the tribes, might have overlapped, the tribes lived relatively peacefully with each other. An exception were the warlike Ute, who sometimes raided the Navajo to obtain life stock.
That changed when in 1598 a large group of Spanish and Mexican settlers arrived in the region. Their leader, Juan del Oñate, claimed the land for Spain and named it "New Mexico". Now the Navajo raided the New-Mexicans to obtain life stock. And the New-Mexicans raided the Navajo to get their life stock back and to get Navajo women and children as slaves. I was amazed to read that slavery was prevalent in the area at the time (it had not come up in our classes). However, this institution also existed at the time among the Tlingit and Haida tribes in South-East Alaska, as we had learned on an earlier Elderhostel trip.
After the Mexican-American War in 1846 Mexico ceded all lands between Texas and the Pacific Ocean to the United States. The Americans had their own ideas how to deal with the Indian tribes. They considered them "savages", and made them wards of the government. Each tribe was assigned an area on which to live, called a
"Reservation". An attempt to round up and relocate the Navajo in an area in New Mexico failed because the land was unsuitable. This forced relocation, the"Long Walk" took place in 1864. Later a more suitable reservation was assigned to the Navajo which was generally centered on the area the tribe had once occupied, however, it was much more much more limited in size. The map shows the reservation of the Navajo as well as the adjacent one of the Hopi in 1882.The "Bureau of Indian Affairs"or BIA, part of the Department of the Interior, which was administering the Indians and their reservations, however, had not taken the vitality of the Navajo in consideration: the Navajo have large families and the tribe continued to grow in size. An official census taken in the year 1875 counted 11,768 people. In the US Census for the year 2000, for the first time, detailed questions were asked about the race of the persons. In Question 6, the third multiple-choice block that could be checked was labeled: "American Indian or Alaska Native - print name of enrolled or principal tribe". The people who checked this block and wrote in "Navajo" numbered 269,202, which made the Navajo the second largest tribe after the Cherokee with 281,069. (143,405 of the Navajo lived on the reservation. 28,995 had listed multiple racial affiliation. See the Census 2000 Brief). In the 125 years between the two census counts the Navajo population increased more than 22-fold, or by about 2.5% per year (for comparison: today the annual population gain in Mexico is 1.9%). This time period even included events like the "Spanish Flu" epidemic of 1916, which resulted in many fatalities in all parts of the USA, which, most likely, caused a net loss in population. The BIA, therefore, had little choice but to increase the size of the Navajo reservation. Fortunately for the Navajo, the land to the west was very arid and had never appealed to any non-Indian homesteaders. An obstacle to the expansion of the Navajo reservation, however, was the adjacent Hopi reservation. The map shows the reservations of the two tribes in 1980: the Navajo reservation now completely surrounds the Hopi reservation, which has shrunk in size. Understandably, the Hopi were not very happy of this situation, which resulted in an ongoing "land conflict" between the tribes. Fortunately, this conflict is fought in the courts rather than with guns, as some other land conflicts currently are. As I am, what the Navajo call a "bilagaana" and the Hopi a "bahana", namely a "white man" and outsider, I feel not qualified to judge the merits of this conflict. Today Dinéta, the Navajo Nation, with approximately 16 million acres or 27,000 square miles, is the largest Indian reservation in the USA and is larger than 10 of the 50 States of the United States.
All native Americans, the American Indians as well as the Eskimos and Aleuts of Alaska, if they were born in the USA, were granted full citizenship in June of 1924 by the Snyder Act. The tribal lands of the reservations, however, are held in trust fur the tribes by the BIA. Several states used this to deny Indians living on reservations their voting rights with the argument, that they were "wards of the government" and therefore, like the inmates of penitentiaries and state hospitals, had no voting rights. It took many lawsuits until finally in 1962 the last state, New Mexico, gave full voting rights to all Native Americans.
Today the Indian Nations have almost full autonomy: they have their tribal governments, their tribal police forces and their tribal laws. There even are tribal courts and tribal attorneys, which in Dinéta are members of the Navajo Nation Bar Association. The Navajo Tribal Government, which was founded in 1923 and reorganized in 1991, forms a three-branch system like the federal government, with executive, legislative and judicial branches. The Navajo Council, consisting of 88 elected members which represent the 110 chapters or communities of the Navajo Nation, meets normally four times each year. When the council is not in session, legislative work is done by 12 standing committees of the council.
The Great Seal of the Navajo Nation, shown at right, is surrounded by 50 arrow heads, which represent the 50 states of the United states. Within the rainbow, open in the East (at top) are two corn plants and the four sacred mountains of the Navajo. The center shows a horse, a cow and a sheep, representing the Navajo lifestock industry.In summer the Navajo Nation even has their own time. The State of Arizona does not switch to daylight savings time, however, the Navajo Nation does (the Hopi go with the State of Arizona).
Many Indian reservations, in the East as well as in California, have used their autonomy to open gambling casinos. The Navajo, as well as the Hopi have decided not to use gambling as a source of revenue.