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Navajo people

Housing

The Navajo traditionally live in octagonal houses known as hogans. Hogans are houses of forked poles and brush covered with earth. According to Kehoe, this style of housing is distinctive to the Navajo, even going as far as saying that, "even today, a solidly constructed, log walled Hogan is preferred by many Navajo families." However, the Navajo have another style of housing. Around the 17th century, the Navajo built rectangular stone homes known as pueblitos. These pueblitos are believed to have been adopted by the Navajos from Pueblo culture, and resemble small Pueblo houses.

Subsistence

Until they came into contact with the Spanish and Pueblos, the Navajo were hunters and gatherers. They adopted farming techniques and crops from the Pueblo people, growing mainly corn, beans, and squash. As a result of Spanish influence, they began herding sheep and goats, depending on them for their use in trade and food. (Kehoe, 133) They turned harvested wool into blankets and clothing which could be used for trading or personal use. They also depended on their flocks of sheep for meat. Their lives depended on sheep so much that, to the Navajo, sheep were in a sense currency and a mark of social status.

History

Early history

The Navajo/Din speak dialects of the language family referred to as Athabaskan. These people were once a single ethnic group that probably came from near the Great Slave Lake, in the modern Northwest Territories of Canada, having crossed the Bering land bridge thousands of years previously. In addition to language speakers residing in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona, Athabaskan speakers are also found living today in Alaska and parts of northern Canada. An aboriginal people known as Dene live in an area centered around Great Slave Lake and have communities in the far north of adjacent provinces. The Apache, living in the American Southwest and other nearby areas, are also Southern Athabaskan speakers and are closely related to the Navajo/Din. Despite the time elapsed, these people reportedly can still understand the language of their long-lost cousins, the Navajo.[citation needed]

Archaeological and historical evidence suggests that the Athabaskan ancestors of the Navajo and Apache entered the Southwest after 1000 AD, with substantial population increases occurring in the 13th century. Navajo oral traditions are said to retain references of this migration.

Navajo oral history also seems to indicate a long relationship with Pueblo people and a willingness to adapt foreign ideas into their own culture. Trade between the long-established Pueblo peoples and the Athabaskans was important to both groups. The Spanish records say by the mid 16th century, the Pueblos exchanged maize and woven cotton goods for bison meat, hides and material for stone tools from Athabaskans who either traveled to them or lived around them. In the 18th century, the Spanish reported that the Navajo had large numbers of livestock and large areas of crops. The Navajo probably adapted many Pueblo ideas into their own very different culture.

The Spanish first use the word Navajo ("Apachu de Nabajo") specifically in the 1620s, referring to the people in the Chama valley region east of the San Juan River and northwest of Santa Fe. By the 1640s, the term Navajo was applied to these same people. The Spanish recorded in 1670s they were living in a region called Dinetah, which was about sixty miles (100 km) west of the Rio Chama valley region. In the 1780s, the Spanish were sending military expeditions against the Navajo in the southwest and west of that area, in the Mount Taylor and Chuska Mountain regions of New Mexico.

In the last 1,000 years, Navajos have a history of expanding their range and refining their self-identity and their significance to other groups. This probably resulted from a cultural combination of endemic warfare (raids) and commerce with the Pueblo, Apache, Ute, Comanche and Spanish peoples, set in the changing natural environment of the Southwest.

Conflict with Europeans

The Spanish started to establish a military force along the Rio Grande in the 17th century to the east of Dinetah (the Navajo homeland). Spanish records indicate that Apachean groups (which might include Navajo) allied themselves with the Pueblos over the next 21 years, successfully pushing the Spaniards out of this area following the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. Raiding and trading were part of traditional Apache and Navajo culture, and these activities increased following the introduction of the horse by the Spaniards, which increased the efficiency and frequency of raiding expeditions. The Spanish established a series of forts that protected new Spanish settlements and also separated the Pueblos from the Apaches. The Spaniards and later Mexicans recorded what are called punitive expeditions among the Navajo that also took livestock and human captives. The Navajo in turn raided settlements far away in a similar manner. This pattern continued, with the Athabaskan groups apparently growing to be more formidable foes through the 1840s until the United States Army arrived in the area.

New Mexico Territory

Manuelito, Navajo chief

Officially, the Navajos first came in contact with forces of the United States of America in 1846, when General Stephen W. Kearny invaded Santa Fe with 1,600 men during the Mexican American War. The Navajo did not recognize the change of government as legitimate. In September, Kearny sent two detachments to raid and subdue the Navajo. Kearny later took 300 men on an expedition to California from Santa Fe. As they traveled past Navajo homelands, his force lost livestock. He ordered another expedition against the Navajo, and this resulted in the first treaty with the United States government in November at Canyon de Chelly.

In the next 10 years, the U.S. established forts in traditional Navajo territory. Military records state this was to protect citizens and Navajo from each other. However, the old Spanish/Mexican-Navajo pattern of raids and expeditions against one another continued. New Mexican (citizen and militia) raids increased rapidly in 186061 earning it the Navajo name Naahondzood, "the fearing time."

In 1861 Brigadier-General James H. Carleton, the new commander of the Federal District of New Mexico, initiated a series of military actions against the Navajo. Colonel Kit Carson was ordered by Carleton to conduct expedition into Navajoland and receive their surrender on July 20, 1863. A few Navajo surrendered. Carson was joined by a large group of New Mexican militia volunteer citizens and these forces moved through Navajo land killing Navajos and destroying any Navajo crops, livestock or dwellings they came across. Facing starvation, Navajos groups started to surrender in what is known as The Long Walk.

Long Walk

Main article: Long Walk of the Navajo

Starting in the spring of 1864, around 9,000 Navajo men, women and children were forced on The Long Walk of over 300 miles (480 km) to Fort Sumner, New Mexico. This was the largest reservation (called Bosque Redondo)[citation needed] attempted by the U.S. government. It was a failure for a combination of reasons. It was designed to supply water, wood, supplies, and livestock for 4,0005,000 people, it had one kind of crop failure after another, other tribes and civilians were able to raid the Navajo, and a small group of Mescalero Apaches had been moved there. In 1868, a treaty was negotiated that allowed the surviving Navajos to return to a reservation that was a portion of their former nation.

Conflict on the Reservation

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The United States military continued to maintain the forts. Some Navajo were employed by the military as ndian Scouts through 1895. A Navajo Tribal Police operated between 1872 and 1875 and was used by the Navajo themselves to stop raiders from their tribe; it was created by Manuelito.

By treaty, the Navajo people were allowed to leave the reservation with permission to trade. Raiding by the Navajo essentially stopped, because they were able to increase the size of their livestock and crops, and not have to risk losing them to others. However, while the initial reservation increased from 3.5 million acres (14,000 km) to the 16 million acres (65,000 km) of today, economic conflicts with the non-Navajo continued. Civilians and companies raided resources that had been assigned to the Navajo. Livestock grazing leases, land for railroads, and mining permits are a few examples of actions taken by agencies of the U.S. government who could and did do such things on a regular basis.

Navajo woman & child

Regional newspapers have many accounts of Navajo and non-Navajo conflicts in this period. These conflicts were often embellished, for political purposes, by regional politicians. In some of these accounts, every Navajo was just about to leave the reservation and pillage the countryside or worse. While it is probably true that some Navajo strayed, it is equally true that some white citizens clearly strayed from the laws of the land themselves. In their reports, the U.S. Military never seemed to be that alarmed about a Navajo uprising, and they clearly did not want the Navajo stirred up by their neighbors.

In 1883, Lt. Parker went up to the San Juan River to separate Navajos and citizens who encroached on Navajo land with 10 enlisted men and two scouts. In the same year, Lt. Lockett, with the aid of 42 enlisted soldiers, was joined by Lt. Holomon at Navajo Springs. Evidently, citizens of the surname(s) Houck and/or Owens had murdered a Navajo chief's son and 100 armed Navajos were consequently looking for them.

In 1887, citizens Palmer, Lockhart, and King fabricate a charge of horse stealing and attack a random home on the reservation. Two Navajo men and all three whites died, but a woman and a child survived. Capt Kerr (with two Navajo scouts) examined the ground and then met with several hundred Navajo at Houcks Tank. Rancher Bennett, whose horse was allegedly stolen, pointed out to Kerr that his horses were stolen by the three whites to catch a horse thief. In the same year, Lt. Scott went to the San Juan River with two scouts and 21 enlisted men. The Navajo believed Lt. Scott was there to drive off the whites who have settled on the reservation and have fenced off the river from the Navajo. Scott tells them to wait, and he finds evidence of many non-Navajo ranches. However, only three are active, and the owners refuse to leave, wanting payment for their improvements. Scott ejected them.

In 1890, a local rancher refuses to pay the Navajo a fine of livestock. The Navajos try to collect it, and whites in southern Colorado and Utah claim that 9,000 of the Navajo people are on a warpath. A small military detachment out of Fort Wingate restores white citizens to order.

In 1913, an Indian agent orders a Navajo and his three wives to come in, and then arrests them for having a plural marriage. A small group of Navajo use force to free the women and retreat to Beautiful Mountain with 30 or 40 sympathizers. They refuse to surrender to the agent, and local law enforcement and military refuse the agent's request for an armed engagement. General Scott arrives, and with the help of Chee Dodge, defuses the situation.

In the 1930s, the United States government took action against the Navajo that was as culturally and economically devastating as the Long Walk. The United States government claimed the Navajos livestock was overgrazing the land. In another experiment, it decided to immediately kill over 80% of their livestock in what is known as the Navajo Livestock Reduction and start a permit system.

There were people who were sympathetic to the plight of the Navajo. In 1937, Mary Cabot Wheelright and Hastiin Klah, an esteemed and influential Navajo singer, or medicine man, founded The Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian as a repository for sound recordings, manuscripts, paintings, and sandpainting tapestries of the Navajo people and a place to sense the beauty, dignity, and profound logic of Navajo religion. When he met Cabot in 1921, Klah had witnessed decades of relentless efforts by the United States government and by missionaries to assimilate the Navajo people into mainstream society. Children were removed from their homes and placed in boarding schools, where they were punished for speaking their language and forced to adopt Christianity. The museum was founded to preserve the religion and traditions of the Navajo people, which Klah was sure would soon be lost forever.

In the 1940s, during World War II, the United States denied the Navajos relief because of the Navajos communal society. Eventually, in December 1947, the Navajos were provided relief in the post war period to relieve the hunger that they had to endure for many years.

Culture

A Navajo boy on horseback, in 2007, in Monument Valley, Arizona

Sheep remain an important aspect in Navajo Tradition and Culture.

The name avajo comes from the late 18th century via the Spanish (Apaches de) Navaj "(Apaches of) Navaj", which was derived from the Tewa navah "fields adjoining a ravine". The Navajo call themselves Din, which means "the people". Nonetheless, most Navajo now acquiesce to being called "Navajo."

Traditionally, like other Apacheans, the Navajo were semi-nomadic from the 16th through the 20th centuries. Their extended kinship groups would have seasonal dwelling areas to accommodate livestock, agriculture and gathering practices. As part of their traditional economy, Navajo groups may have formed trading or raiding parties, traveling relatively long distances.

A Navajo man working as a tourist guide, in 2007, in Monument Valley, Arizona

Historically, the structure of the Navajo society is largely a matrilocal system in which only women were allowed to own livestock and land. Once married, a Navajo man would move into his bride's dwelling and clan since daughters (or, if necessary, other female relatives) were traditionally the ones who received the generational inheritance. Any children are said to belong to the mother's clan and be "born for" the father's clan. The clan system is exogamous, meaning it was, and mostly still is, considered a form of incest to marry or date anyone from any of a person's four grandparents clans.

Navajo hogan

A hogan is the traditional Navajo home. These eight-sided houses are made of wood and covered in mud, with the door always facing east to welcome the sun each morning.

For those who practice the Navajo religion the hogan is considered sacred. The religious song "The Blessingway" describes the first hogan as being built by Coyote with help from beavers to be a house for First Man, First Woman, and Talking God. The Beaver People gave Coyote logs and instructions on how to build the first hogan. Navajos made their hogans in the traditional fashion until the 1900s, when they started to make them in hexagonal and octagonal shapes. Today they are rarely used as actual dwellings, but are maintained primarily for ceremonial purposes.

The Navajo people traditionally hold the four sacred mountains as the boundaries of the homeland they should never leave: Blanca Peak (Tsisnaasjini' Dawn or White Shell Mountain) in Colorado, Mount Taylor (Tsoodzil Blue Bead or Turquoise Mountain) in New Mexico, the San Francisco Peaks (Doko'oosliid Abalone Shell Mountain) in Arizona, and Hesperus Mountain (Dib Nitsaa Big Mountain Sheep) in Colorado.

Arts and crafts

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Silver Work

19th Century Navajo jewelry with the popular concho and dragonfly designs.

Silversmithing is said to have been introduced to the Navajo while they were in captivity at Fort Sumner in eastern New Mexico in 1864. At that time Atsidi Sani learned silversmithing and began teaching others the craft as well. By 1880 Navajo silversmiths were creating handmade jewelry including bracelets, tobacco flasks, necklaces, bow guards. Later smiths also made earrings, buckles, bolos, hair ornaments and pins. Turquoise has been used with jewelry by the Navajo for hundreds of years, but they did not use turquoise inlay, in silver, until the past century.

Weaving

Navajo weaver with sheep

Though some people say the Navajo learned the art of weaving from the Pueblo people, the origins of Navajo weaving may never be known. The first Spaniards to visit the region wrote about seeing Navajo blankets. By the 18th century the Navajo had begun to import yarn with their favorite color, Bayeta red. Using an upright loom the Navajos made almost exclusively utilitarian blankets. Little patterning and few colors on almost all blankets, except for the much sought after Chief's Blanket, which evolved from the 1st Phase, few wide bands, to the 2nd phase, wide bands with squares on the corners, to the 3rd Phase, which made more and more use of patterns and colors. Around the same time the Navajo people, who had long started traded for commercial wool, often from the uniforms of soldiers, rewove these into intricate multicolored blankets called Germantown.

Navajo art

Some early American settlers moved in and set up trading posts, often buying Navajo Rugs by the pound and selling them back east by the bale. Still these traders encouraged the locals to weave blankets and rugs into distinct styles. They included "Two Gray Hills" (predominantly black and white, with traditional patterns), "Teec Nos Pos" (colorful, with very extensive patterns), "Ganado" (founded by Don Lorenzo Hubbell), red dominated patterns with black and white, "Crystal" (founded by J. B. Moore), oriental and Persian styles (almost always with natural dyes), "Wide Ruins", "Chinlee", banded geometric patterns, "Klagetoh", diamond type patterns, "Red Mesa" and bold diamond patterns. Many of these patterns exhibit a fourfold symmetry, which is thought by Gary Witherspoon to embody traditional ideas about harmony or hzh.

Notable Navajo artists, dancers, and musicians

Ryan Singer, Navajo painter

Orville Tsinnie, silversmith/goldsmith

Atsidi Sani, silversmith

Raven Chacon, composer

Hosteen Klah, weaver

R.C. Gorman, painter

Yazzie Johnson, jeweler

Gerald Nailor, Sr., painter

R. Carlos Nakai, musician

Clara Sherman, weaver

Tommy Singer, silversmith

Jock Soto, ballet dancer

Douglas Spotted Eagle, musician

Emmi Whitehorse, painter

Melanie Yazzie, printmaker

Blackfire, rock band

James and Ernie, comic duo

Reggie Mitchell, martial artist

James Bilagody, Comedian, Song Writer, Recording Artist

Healing and spiritual practices

Navajo man in ceremonial dress with mask and body paint, c. 1904.

Navajo spiritual practice is about restoring health, balance, and harmony to a person's life. One exception to the concept of healing is the Beauty Way ceremony: the Kinaald, or a female puberty ceremony. Others include the Hooghan Blessing Ceremony and the "Baby's First Laugh Ceremony." Otherwise, ceremonies are used to heal illnesses, strengthen weakness, and give vitality to the patient. Ceremonies restore Hozh, or beauty, harmony, balance, and health.

When suffering from illness or injury, Navajos will traditionally seek out a certified, credible Hataii (medicine man) for healing, before turning to Western medicine (e.g., hospitals). The medicine man will use several methods to diagnose the patient's ailments. This may include using special tools such as crystal rocks, and abilities such as hand-trembling and Hata (chanting prayer). The medicine man will then select a specific healing chant for that type of ailment. Short prayers for protection may only take a few hours, and in some cases, the patient is expected to do a follow-up afterwards. This may include the avoidance of sexual relations, personal contact, animals, certain foods, and certain activities; it is not unlike a doctor's advice.

Possible causes of ailments could be the result of violating taboos. Contact with lightning-struck objects, exposure to taboo animals such as snakes, and contact with the dead are some of reasons for healing. Protection ceremonies, especially the Blessing Way Ceremony, are used for Navajos that leave the boundaries of the four sacred mountains, and is used extensively for Navajo warriors or soldiers going to war. Upon re-entry, there is an Enemy Way Ceremony, or Nid', performed on the person, to get rid of the evil things in his/her body, and to restore balance in his/her life. This is also important for Navajo warriors/soldiers returning from battle. Warriors or soldiers often suffer spiritual or psychological damage from participating in warfare, and the Enemy Way Ceremony helps restore harmony to the person, mentally and emotionally.

There are also ceremonies used for curing people from curses. Many people often complain of witches and skin-walkers that do harm to their minds, bodies, and even families. Ailments aren't necessarily physical. It can take any form it wishes. The medicine man is often able to break the curses that witches and skin-walkers put on families. Mild cases do not take very long, but for extreme cases, special ceremonies are needed to drive away the evil spirits. In these cases, the medicine man may find curse objects implanted inside the victim's body. These objects are used to cause the person pain and illness. Examples of such objects include bone fragments, rocks and pebbles, bits of string, snake teeth, owl feathers, and even turquoise jewelry.

There are said to be approximately fifty-eight to sixty sacred ceremonies. Most of them last four days or more; to be most effective, they require that relatives and friends attend and help out. Outsiders are often discouraged from participating in case they become a burden to others or violate a taboo. This could affect the turnout of the ceremony. The ceremony must be done in precisely the correct manner to heal the patient. This includes everyone that is involved.

Medicine men must be able to correctly perform a ceremony from beginning to end. If he does not, the ceremony will not work. Training a Hataii to perform ceremonies is extensive, arduous, and takes many years, and is not unlike priesthood, with the governing body or hierarchy omitted. The apprentice learns everything by watching his teacher, and memorizes the words to all the chants. Many times, a medicine man cannot learn all sixty of the ceremonies, so he will opt to specialize in a select few.

The origin of spiritual healing ceremonies dates back to Navajo mythology. It is said the first Enemy Way ceremony was performed for Changing Woman's twin sons (Monster Slayer and Born-For-the-Water) after slaying the Giants (the Y'ii) and restoring Hozh to the world and people. The patient identifies with Monster Slayer through the chants, prayers, sandpaintings, herbal medicine and dance.

Another Navajo healing, the Night Chant ceremony, is administered as a cure for most types of head ailments, including mental disturbances. The ceremony, conducted over several days, involves purification, evocation of the gods, identification between the patient and the gods, and the transformation of the patient. Each day entails the performance of certain rites and the creation of detailed sand paintings. On the ninth evening a final all-night ceremony occurs, in which the dark male thunderbird god is evoked in a song that starts by describing his home:

In Tsegihi [White House],

In the house made of the dawn,

In the house made of the evening light

(Sandner, p. 88)

The medicine man proceeds by asking the Holy People to be present, then identifying the patient with the power of the god and describing the patient's transformation to renewed health with lines such as "Happily I recover." (Sandner, p. 90). The same dance is repeated throughout the night, about forty eight times. Altogether the Night Chant ceremony takes about ten hours to perform, and ends at dawn.

In the media

In 2000 the documentary The Return of Navajo Boy was shown at the Sundance Film Festival. It was written in response to an earlier film, The Navajo Boy which was somewhat exploitative of the Navajo People involved. The Return of Navajo Boy allowed the Navajo People to be more involved in the depicting of their own people.

See also

Shonto Begay, Din painter

Blackfire

Navajo (disambiguation)

Navajo-Churro sheep

Navajo Code Talker

Navajo language

Navajo-language films

Navajo Nation

Navajo mythology

Navajo pueblitos

Notes

^ "The American Indian and Alaska Native Population: 2000". Census 2000 Brief. 2002-02-01. http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/c2kbr01-15.pdf. Retrieved 2007-03-10. 

^ a b Kehoe, 133

^ For example, the Great Canadian Parks website suggests that the Navajo may be descendants the lost Naha tribe, a Slavey tribe from the Nahanni region west of Great Slave Lake. "Nahanni National Park Reserve". Great Canadian Parks. http://canadianparks.com/northwest/nahninp/page2.htm. Retrieved 2007-07-02. 

^ Hosteen Klah page 102 and others

^ Nash, Gary B., Julie Roy Jeffrey, John R. Howe, Peter J. Frederick, Allen F. Davis, Allan M. Winkler, Charlene Mires, and Carla Gardina Pestana. The American People, Concise Edition Creating a Nation and a Society, Combined Volume (6th Edition), 847. New York: Longman, 2007.

^ Bernstein, Alison R. American Indians and World War II Toward a New Era in Indian Affairs. New York: University of Oklahoma P, 1999.

^ "Synopsis". navajoboy.com. http://www.navajoboy.com/press.htm. Retrieved 2009-02-26. 

References

Bailey, L. R. (1964). The Long Walk: A History of the Navaho Wars, 18461868.

Bighorse, Tiana. (1990). Bighorse the Warrior. Ed. Noel Bennett, Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Brown, Dee (1970). Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. ISBN 0-330-23219-3. 

Brugge, David M. (1968). Navajos in the Catholic Church Records of New Mexico 16941875. Window Rock, Arizona: Research Section, The Navajo Tribe. 

Clarke, Dwight L. (1961). Stephen Watts Kearny: Soldier of the West. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press a

Downs, James F. (1972). The Navajo. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

Dyke, Walter (1967). Son of Old Man Hat. Lincoln, Nebraska: Bison Books & University of Nebraska Press. LCCN 44-2654. 

Forbes, Jack D. (1960). Apache, Navajo and Spaniard. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. LCCN 60-13480. 

Gilpin, Laura. (1968). The Enduring Navaho. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Gold, Peter (1994). Navajo & Tibetan Sacred Wisdom: The Circle of the Spirit. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions International. ISBN 0-89281-411-X. .

Hammond, George P. and Rey, Agapito (editors) (1940). Narratives of the Coronado Expedition 15401542. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Henderson, Richard.(1994). eplicating Dog Travois Travel on the Northern Plains. Plains Anthropologist, V39:14559

Iverson, Peter. (2002). Din: A History of the Navahos. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 0-8263-2714-1

Kehoe, Alice Beck. North American Indians a comprehensive account. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Prentice-Hall, 2005. Print.

Kelly, Lawrence (1970). Navajo Roundup, Pruett Pub. Co., Colorado.

Kluckholm, Clyde & Leighton, Dorothea (1946). The Navaho. Cambridge: Oxford University Press.

Loewen, James. W. (1999). Lies Across America. Pages 100101; The New Press.

McNitt, Frank. (1972). Navajo Wars. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Newcomb, Franc Johnson (1964). Hosteen Klah: Navajo Medicine Man and Sand Painter. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press. LCCCN 64-20759. 

Plog, Stephen. Ancient Peoples of the American Southwest. Thames and London, LTD, London, England, 1997. ISBN 0-500-27939-X.

Compiled (1973). Roessel, Ruth (editor). Navajo Stories of the Long Walk Period. Tsaile, Arizona: Navajo Community College Press.

Compiled (1974). Roessel, Ruth. ed. Navajo Livestock Reduction: A National Disgrace. Tsaile, Arizona: Navajo Community College Press. ISBN 0-912586-18-4. 

Terrell, J. U. (1970). The Navajos.

Underhill, Ruth M. (1956). The Navahos. Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press.

Witherspoon, Gary. (1977). Language and Art in the Navajo Universe. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Witte, Daniel. Removing Classrooms from the Battlefield: Liberty, Paternalism, and the Redemptive Promise of Educational Choice, 2008 BYU Law Review 377 The Navajo and Richard Henry Pratt

Zaballos, Nausica. (2009). Le systme de sant navajo. Paris: L'Harmattan. ISBN: 978-2-296-07975-5

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Navajo

Middle Ground Project of Northern Colorado University with images of U.S. documents of treaties and reports 18461931

Navajo People information by State of Utah

A Brief Overview of the Navajo People (as of October 18, 2004)

Navajo Silversmiths, by Washington Matthews, 1883 from Project Gutenberg

Navajo Institute for Social Justice

Navajo Jewelry Information

Navajo Artcrafts Website created by students of GreyHills Academy High School in Tuba City AZ.

Navajo weaving

Historic photos of Navajo people, Timothy H. O'Sullivan, photographer

Spanish-Navajo dictionary on line AULEX

Navajo Tourism Website for the Navajo Tourism Department

Non-Profit Navajo Arts & Crafts Enterprise

 "Navajo Indians". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Navajo_Indians. 

The Long Trail, by Jessa Gamble, Up Here magazine (Yellowknife, NT). Archaeological ties between Dene and Dineh.

archive.org search for archive collections about the navajo

The Return of Navajo Boy, a documentary showing how Navajos have been depicted historically

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Navajo Nation

People and culture

Navajo people  Navajo language  Navajo music  Navajo mythology  Din College  Supreme Court of the Navajo Nation   Navajo Nation Council Chamber   Chapter houses   Navajo rug   Navajo-Churro sheep

History

Navajo Wars  Long Walk of the Navajo  Navajo Scouts  Navajo pueblitos  Code talker  Dinetah  Barboncito  Manuelito  Narbona

Categories: Navajo tribe | Utah NavajosHidden categories: "Related ethnic groups" needing confirmation | All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements from April 2008 | Articles with unsourced statements from November 2009 | Articles needing additional references from April 2009 | All articles needing additional references | Articles needing cleanup from March 2009 | All pages needing cleanup
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1. Yukon                 The Yukon, the vast, rugged, thinly populated expanse of land located above the 60th parallel in northwestern Canada which shares its border with Alaska and accurately earns its self-proclaimed slogan of “larger than life,” is a topographically diverse, serenely beautiful, and intoxicatingly attractive territory of barren, treeless plains, boreal forests, rugged mountains, glaciers, and mirror-reflective lakes and rivers inhabited by Canada’s First Nations people and abundant wildlife.   Because of its high latitude, it experiences more than 20 hours of daylight in the summer, but fewer than five in the winter, replaced, instead, by the northern lights known as the “aurora borealis. ”  Aside from the major “cities,” most communities are only accessible by floatplane or dogsled.                 The Yukon’s history is, in essence, that of the Gold Rush.   Sparked by the August 16, 1896 discovery of a gold nugget in northwestern Canada at the confluence of the Yukon and Klondike Rivers, it began when some 100,000, seeking wealth and adventure, set off on what had later been designated the Klondike Gold Rush Trail between 1897 and 1898.   The event, which produced an instantaneous population boom and ultimately shaped the territory, traces its path to five significant locations in both the United States and Canada.                 The first of these, Seattle, Washington, had served as the gateway to the Yukon.   Advertised as the “outfitter of the gold fields,” it sold supplies and gear stocked ten feet deep on storefront boardwalks, grossing $25 million in sales by early-1898, and was the launching point for the all-water route through the Gulf of Alaska to St. Michael, and then down the Yukon River to Dawson City.   Despite the high fares, which few could afford, all passages had been sold out.                 Dyea and its Chilkoot Trail, the second location, had provided a slower, more treacherous, alternate route, via the 33-mile Chilkoot trail which linked tidewater Alaska with the Canadian headwaters of the Yukon River.                 Skagway, Alaska, the third location, quickly replaced Dyea as the “Gateway to the Klondike” because of its more navigable White Pass route which, although ten miles longer than that of the Chilkoot Trail, had entailed a 600-foot-lower climb.   The trail, quickly destroyed because of overuse, had ultimately been replaced by the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad whose construction, financed by British investors, had commenced in May of 1898 and had extended to the White Pass Summit by February of 1899, Bennett Lake by July of 1899, and Whitehorse by July of the following year.   Skagway itself had been metamorphosed from a cleared, tent-dotted field to boardwalk-lined streets sporting wooden buildings with 80 saloons in the four-month period between August and December 1897.                 At Bennett Lake, the fourth location, 30,000 stampeders awaited the spring thaw, constructing 7,124 boats from whipsawn green lumber and launching their flotilla on May 29, 1898, fighting the Whitehorse rapids before following the Yukon River to Dawson City.                 Dawson City itself, the fifth location, had been the site of the first gold nugget discovery and had begun as a small island between the Yukon and Klondike Rivers hitherto only occupied by the Han First Nations people, but exploded into Canada’s largest city west of Winnipeg and north of Vancouver with up to 40,000 gold seekers covering a ten-mile area along the river banks.   Thirty cords of firewood were used to burn shafts through the permafrost to the mines themselves.   Of the 4,000 who actually discovered gold, only a few hundred ultimately emerged “rich. ”  2. Whitehorse                  Whitehorse, the Yukon’s wilderness capital on the banks of the Yukon River with a population of 23,000, had itself been shaped by the gold rush and the transportation means which developed to facilitate it.   Named for the rapids on the Yukon River, which resembled the flowing manes of charging white horses, the area had first served as a fishing encampment of the Kwanlin Dun First Nations people.   In 1987, the tent-comprised Canyon City served as the operational base of a horse-drawn tramway which, for a fee, carried people and goods, particularly gold rushers, round the treacherous White Horse Rapids on log rails.                 Three years later, in 1900, the tracks of the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad reached the city, today the only international narrow gauge railroad still operating in North America, and passengers transferred to the extensive riverboat service, which completed the journey to Dawson City by the Yukon River.                 In 1942, the US Army completed the 1,534-mile Alaska Highway in a record eight months, 23 days, and Whitehorse had been incorporated as a city in 1950.   Three years later, it replaced Dawson as the capital of the Yukon.                 Whitehorse itself is accessible by multiple travel modes.   The paved Alaska, Haines, and Klondike Highways provide road access within the territory and to Alaska, while the gravel Dempster Highway connects Dawson City with Inuvik above the Arctic Circle in the Northwest Territories.   The Alaska Marine Highway and multiple, daily cruise ships serve Skagway and Haines, Alaska, during the summer season.   The White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad connects Skagway with Fraser and Bennett Lake, British Columbia, with service soon to be extended to Whitehorse.   And the Whitehorse airport offers daily service, via Air North, Air Canada Jazz, First Air, and Condor, to Yellowknife, Dawson, Fairbanks, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, and Frankfurt, Germany.   Floatplanes provide remote community access.                 The story of Whitehorse can be traced by its many diverse sights and attractions.                 The MacBride Museum, for instance, toted as “Yukon’s first museum” and housed in a log structure with a sod roof, had been established in 1951 by historian Bill MacBride in order to explore the Yukon’s history.   It features stuffed wildlife in its upper gallery; “Rivers of Gold,” an exhibit depicting Yukon prospecting and placer mining since 1883, and Yukon’s First Nations people, in its lower gallery; and early copper mining equipment, blacksmithing, and Sam McGee’s original, 1899 cabin in one of two outside exhibition areas.   The other contains overland stages used by the White Pass and Yukon Route between Whitehorse and Dawson, an 1895 Northwest Mounted Police Patrol cabin, and Engine number 51, built in 1881 and used on the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad seven years later in 1898.                 The Old Log Church Museum, an Anglican cathedral built in 1900, is one of the oldest buildings in Whitehorse and tells the story of the early Yukon missionaries, including that of the priest who survived a winter expedition by eating his own boots for sustenance.                 Perhaps the most popular sight, and one which serves as the very city symbol, is the S. S. Klondike, a National Historical Site of Canada.   The largest of the 250 sternwheelers to have plied the Yukon River at 64 meters long and 12. 5 meters wide, it had been constructed in 1920 by the British Yukon Navigation Company, a subsidiary of the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad, in the city of Whitehorse itself, and had been an integral part of the inland water transportation system which connected Whitehorse with the remainder of the territory and hence served as the principle element of its own growth.                 The design, which traced its lineage as far back as 1866 when the first such steam-powered riverboat reached Selkirk, the S. S. Klondike I, with a 1,362. 5-ton gross weight and powered by two 525-hp compound jet-condenser engines, had featured a revolutionary hull which enabled it to offer 50 percent more cargo volume than previous configurations without sacrificing shallow draft instability, enabling it to accommodate more than 300-ton loads for the first time, along with 75 first and second class passengers.   Of its three decks, the first, or main, deck housed the engines, boilers, and cargo; the second the lounge, communications office, dining room, galley, and sun deck; and the third the bridge and the crew quarters.                 Succeeded by the dimensionally identical Klondike II after the initial vessel ran aground in 1936, itself completing the 460-mile downstream run from Whitehorse to Dawson in 36 hours with only one or two wood-replenishing stops, it had been operated as a cargo boat between 1937 and 1952 and had ultimately been converted into a small cruise ship for service until 1955.                 The current dry-docked boat appears in its 1930 guise.                 The Whitehorse Train Depot, which replaced the originally constructed, but later fire- consumed structure, reflects the typical western Canadian architecture of the early 20th century, although alterations had been made during World War II and during the Alaska Highway project.   After scheduled railway service had been discontinued in 1982, the Yukon government had purchased the building and restored it, its passenger waiting room now reflecting its 1950s heritage.                 The Whitehorse Waterfront trolley, using the narrow-gauge White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad tracks and paralleling the Yukon River with stops at Rotary Peace Park, the Tourist Information Center, the White Pass Train Depot, Wood Street, Shipyard’s Park and Kishwoot Station, and Spook Creek, provides an excellent introduction to the city, using a single trolley car, number 531, for its hourly round-trip service.                 The car itself, in its original yellow color scheme, had been partially built by the J. G. Brill Company of Philadelphia in 1925 for the Lisbon Electric Company which subsequently assembled the kit in its Santo Amaro shop.   Of the 202 cars constructed there, 24 had been of the car 531 type.                 Trolley 531 had operated in Lisbon until 1976, at which time it had been acquired for the Lake Superior Museum of Transportation in Duluth, Minnesota, where it remained until the Yukon government had purchased it in 1999.   Flatbed truck transport, through bitter cold and ice, enabled it to reach the White Pass and Yukon Route engine restoration shed in Whitehorse on January 6, 2000.                 The double-ended tram car, with controls at either end, has two 25-hp General Electric motors and two k. 3 controllers, and had been intended to operate off of overhead electrical lines with a power pole, but the lack of such facilities in Whitehorse necessitated the temporary provision of a trailer-installed electrical generator.   The present 600-volt operation replaces its originally intended 550-volt current, and the installation of railroad wheels permits it to run on the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad’s 36-inch tracks, although it had been designed, with its original trolley wheel base, to utilize the narrower, 34. 5-inch rail width.                 Because of the equally standard-gauge body, it permits four-abreast, two-two, seating, sporting a varnished hardwood oak, mahogany, and cherry interior with original signs still in Portuguese.                 The Whitehorse Rapids Fish Ladder and Hatchery, located five minutes out of town, had resulted from the late-1950s construction of the Whitehorse Rapids Hydroelectric Facility by the Northern Canada Power Commission.   The Alaska and Klondike Highways, linking many communities and obviating the need for the then-vital sternwheeler river transportation system, ultimately led to the transfer of the Yukon’s capital from Dawson to Whitehorse, and its population expansion could no longer be supported by the downtown diesel generator electricity method.   Construction of the greater-capacity hydroelectric dam, commencing in 1956, formed Schwatka Lake, and this produced the city’s first electricity two years later, in 1958.                 Although the facility improved the quality of life for the human population, it proved the detriment to the salmon species in the river.   Salmon had traveled up the Yukon River to spawn for thousands of years, laying their eggs in gravel which, after the winter gestation period, hatched into alevins in early-spring, and fed and developed in the cold, clear waters for up to two years.   Swimming out to the ocean, they returned several years later to the exact location of their births to lay their own eggs and begin the process anew.                 In order to circumvent the new hydroelectric dam and permit them to continue their life cycles, the world’s longest wooden fish ladder, at 366 meters, had been built in 1959.   Progressively rising in steps by 15 meters from the Yukon River to Schwatka Lake, it enables salmon to safely pass round the dam and continue their migration process.                 A two-hour boat cruise on Schwatka Lake by the appropriately-named m/v Schwatka, a 28-ton, dual-decked, 40-passenger boat, provides an excellent introduction to Whitehorse’s wilderness side and sails through Miles Canyon, the turbulent “Devil’s Punchbowl,” and the Yukon River itself.                 Several interesting attractions are located along the Alaska Highway, up Two Mile Hill Road.                 The Copperbelt Mining Railway and Museum, the first of these, provides a 1. 8-kilometer figure-eight loop from its red McIntyre Station building through the skinny spruce forest, using an abandoned spur line of the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad located in the historic Whitehorse Copper Belt mining district.   Its two engines, 10- and 20-hp Loke diesels, were manufactured by the Jenacher Werks in Austria in 1969 and 1967, respectively.                 The Yukon Transportation Museum depicts the territory’s Gold Rush transportation heritage, displaying unusual travel modes associated with the north, from the snowshoe to the dogsled to the airplane.   Exhibits include a Canadian Pacific DC-3 mounted on an outside pedestal; a full-size riverboat, the “Neecheah,” and a steam locomotive.   Inside exhibits include a gasoline-powered Casey car, which transported workers on the rails; a passenger car used by the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad; a White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad model train layout; a Ryan B-1 Bougham designated “Queen of the Yukon,” a sister ship to Lindbergh’s “Spirit of St. Louis,” which served as the first commercial airplane to have operated in the Yukon after its purchase from the San Diego factory by Yukon Airways and Exploration, Ltd. , in 1927 for $10,200. 00; dog sleds; a 1927 Chevrolet convertible; a five-cylinder Kinner engine; a Lycoming R-680 engine; a 1965 International Travelall ambulance; a welded steel frame from a Fairchild FC-2W2; a Smith DGA-1 “Miniplane” homebuild; a bus from the B. Y. N. Bus Lines; military vehicles, including a seven-passenger Dodge Carryall used by the US Army’s Northwest Service Command during construction of the Alcan Highway; and a log rail tramway which used parallel logs as “tracks. ”                 The Yukon Beringia Interpretive Center examines Beringia, a sub-continent of the last Ice Age which had been located in the Bering Strait and had encompassed Siberia, Alaska, and the Yukon.   Although the remainder of Canada had laid under massive ice sheets, Beringia itself had been untouched by glaciers because of the 125-meter reduction in sea levels, producing tundra whose tough, dry grasses had supported a wide range of herbivores and carnivores.                 The woolly mammoth, among them, had been the predecessor to the modern Asiatic elephant and the museum sports a full-size cast of the largest example ever recovered.   The short-faced bear, which had been one foot taller than today’s grizzly counterpart, had been the largest, most powerful land carnivore in North America during the last Ice Age.   The museum also features a reconstruction of the 24,000-year-old Bluefish Cave archaeological site.                 The earliest human inhabitants, following bison and mammoth herds 24,000 years ago, had migrated from western Beringia to current Canada.   3. Kluane National Park                                One of four contiguous national and provincial parks, inclusive of the Yukon’s 21,980 square-kilometer Kluane National Park, Alaska’s 52,600 square-kilometer Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska’s 13,360 square-kilometer Glacier Bay National Park, and British Columbia’s 9,580 square-kilometer Tatshenshini-Alsek Provincial Park, Kluane National Park itself is topographically diverse, encompassing massive mountains, valleys, lakes, boreal forests, valley glaciers, and ice fields.   Of the two mountain ranges—the Kluane and Icefield—the latter sports Canada’s highest peak, Mount Logan, at 19,545 feet.   The largest non-polar ice field in the world, a remnant of the last Ice Age, is also located here.                 Of the two types of populations—human and animal—the former includes the Southern Tutchone people, who had previously lived a nomadic lifestyle, but continue to practice a culture which closely revolves round the natural world, and the latter includes grizzly bears, lynx, mountain goats, moose, wolves, black bears, caribou, coyotes, 180 species of birds, and the world’s largest concentration of dall sheep.                 Haines Junction, which is located two hours from Whitehorse via the Alaska Highway and serves as the national park’s base, is a year-round, full-service village whose modern history began in 1942 with the completion of the Alaska Highway itself at Milepost 1016.   A year later, a branch road, over the Chilkat Pass, connected it with Haines, Alaska, and Kluane National Park had been designated a preserve in 1972.                 Its few sights, always flanked by the breathtaking, purple-hued St. Elias Mountains, include the Village Monument, a local wildlife sculpture; the eight-sided log St. Christopher’’s Anglican Church; and the Our Lady of the Way Catholic Church, which had been constructed in 1954 from an old army Quonset hut remaining from the Alaska Highway project.                 The ubiquitous slender, dark green spruce, encountered during my own tour of the national park, lined either side of the deserted Haines Highway, the vertical ridges of the St. Elias Mountains of Kluane National Park on the right side hues of purple, chocolate brown, and velvet-green at their bases.   The silver surface of Kathleen Lake reflected between them.                 Kluane National Park and the adjacent Wrangell-St. Elias National monument across the border in the United States had been jointly nominated to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1979.   Together, the properties present an unbroken, pristine natural system, with a rich variety of vegetation, patterns, and ecosystems.                 The first stop of my own drive revealed a pebble beach, which, acting like a threshold, led toward the emerald green water of Kathleen Lake, bracketed on either side by tall, silent, fragrant spruce, the water itself interfacing with the green-carpeted mountain on the far side in seamless transition, taking the eye up to the brown, vegetationless top, from which a slender “s” of snow still snaked, a remainder of the long winter and short summer “pause” between the next frigid cycle.   Since it had been August, that beginning had not been very far way in these northern latitudes.                 The Kokanee salmon, living in the fresh water lake for the first three years of its life, swims the short distance to Sockeye Lake in the fourth year, at which time it dies.   In the 1700s, the Lowell Glacier had surged across the Alaska River, blocking its drainage into the Pacific Ocean and thus creating an enormous lake.   When the dam suddenly burst in 1856, the waters had been released in torrential floods, draining the basin.                 Kluane National Park sports both glaciers of ice and rock, the latter formed in cold, alpine environments on mountain slopes.   During the last 8,000 years, brittle bedrock shattered into fragments by the freezing and thawing action of the winter-summer cycle.   Lubricated by meltwater and riding a core of glacial ice, a continually accumulating mass of rock slowly ground its way down the mountainside, forming rock glaciers.                 The huge, deep blue of Dezadeash Lake, encountered at another stop, had been surrounded by considerably-distanced mountains, whose soft-curved, inverted bowl-like peaks had been reduced to gray and green, almost indistinguishable silhouettes in the early-afternoon beneath the high, unobstructed, gleaming sun.   The sky had been a flawless blue.                 Klukshu Village, dotted with tiny log cabins and a gift shop, had been an important place for many Champagne and Aishihik families, particularly during salmon-spawning season between June and September when king, sockeye, and coho salmon migrate up the river.   4. Conclusion                  The Yukon, with its capital city of Whitehorse and wilderness Kluane National Park, indeed provides an interesting journey through its Gold Rush legacy and the transportation means which had developed to facilitate it.

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