Navajo Tribe Essay

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The Navajo are the largest Indian tribe in the United States. They live on the largest reservation in the U.S. which covers over three states on 17 million acres in the Four Corners area of the southwest. The states include Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and a small part of Colorado. The current population is at least 160,000 and projected to grow to a quarter of a million by the year 2000. Growth in commerce on the reservation promises to make the Navajo one of the wealthiest tribes in the country, but it does not seem that way. Like the other Athapascan-speaking people in the southwest, the Apaches, they arrived later than most tribes in the region. Archaeological evidence indicates that the Navajos migrated from the north about A.D. 1025 and the earliest Apache bands arrived about A.D. 825.The Navajo Indians are the largest federally recognized Native American Indian tribe in the United States. Their reservation is spread out through out the four corners of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado. The Navajo use the name Dine because it refers to a term from the Navajo language that means people. The first Navajo Indians lived in the western part of Canada a little over a thousand years ago. They belonged to an American Indian group called the Athapaskans. The Navajo Indian tribes began to travel south, and most settled along the Pacific Ocean. Their tribe today is called the Northwest Coast Indian Tribe. The Navajo Indians who settled in southern Arizona and New Mexico then became the different Apache tribes. When they reached the Southwest, they began to learn a lot of things from the Pueblo Indians. They learned weaving, how to make clothing, and art. By the 1600s the Navajo had become capable of raising their own food, and making their own blankets, clothes etc. The Navajo Indians lived in homes called hogans, which were made from wooden poles, tree bark, and mud.

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