By Keli Holt,
This month’s history column veers from its usual chronological narrative of America’s past and its impact on our state to examine the Native Nations of New Mexico, beginning with the Navajo.
The modern Navajo Nation is the largest reservation in America, bigger than 10 U.S. states. The Navajo call themselves the Diné, or the people, and their sacred land, the Dinétah, or land of the people. It is believed that the Navajo arrived around 1500AD. They are thought to have migrated south from Canada alongside their relatives, the Apache and Ute, with whom they share a Southern Athabaskan language. Even today, relatives in Alaska understand their languages.
As they migrated south, the Navajo settled in the northwestern corner of New Mexico and began planting crops. The Apache and Ute remained nomadic hunter-gatherers moving across vast territories, including the Dinétah. These three nations were destined to become competitors for resources in an arid region.
The Navajo came across the ruins built by people they called the Anasazi (“ancient enemy” or “ancestors of our enemies”), who were the Ancestral Puebloans. The Ancestral Puebloans built many large communities like Mesa Verde in Colorado and Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, consisting of large multistory “great houses.” They were excellent stonemasons, astronomers and traders, and linked their communities by roads, which can still be seen today.
However, around 1200, these communities were abandoned. This was most likely due to over-population and a change in climate that led to droughts and social disruptions. As the Navajo encountered these abandoned great houses, they learned a lesson about the dangers of concentrating large populations in arid lands.
The Navajo preferred to live in small groups of decentralized clans. Even today when Navajo introduce themselves, they give their name, followed by the names of the four clans to which they belong. Each person belongs to four clans – their mother’s, father’s, maternal grandfather’s and paternal grandfather’s – and they are encouraged not to marry anyone with whom they share their mother or father’s clans.
The Diné are matrilineal, as kinship is traced through the mother. They are also matrilocal, meaning that after marriage the husband leaves his clan to join that of his wife.
The number 4 is sacred for them, hence the four clans. They also respect four sacred mountains that mark the four cardinal directions within the Dinétah’s historical boundaries: Hesperus and Blanca Peaks in Colorado, San Francisco Peaks in Flagstaff and Tsdoodzil (Mt. Taylor) in New Mexico. They believe that the further the Diné stray outside these boundaries, the less effective their sacred rituals and medicine are.
Not long after the Navajo settled in the Four Corners region, the Spanish arrived. They initially came on a quest for gold. Later, they arrived on a mission to Christianize tribes and make them tax-paying Spanish citizens. The Spanish were willing to resort to violence to achieve these goals. While the Navajo had no interest in becoming sedentary farmers, they did adopt two transformative animals from the Spanish – sheep and horses.
With the introduction of sheep, the Navajo became pastoral, following their flocks in a constant search for grass while planting crops like corn, beans and squash. They also maintained orchards that kept them returning to certain areas at specific times.
Navajo women became excellent weavers. In fact, their blankets were often more valuable than gold on the frontier. Traditional blankets are intentionally sewn to include an imperfection, called a “spirit line,” due to the belief that only the divine can achieve perfection.
The adoption of the horse greatly increased the range of Navajo herds. The Ute and Apache also adopted the horse but for a vastly different reason – to amplify their already bellicose warrior societies. The Navajo, by contrast, were not known as a great warrior society. The Diné avoided killing whenever possible and had a strong revulsion of death. When a person died inside a traditional Navajo Hogan, a round, windowless home made of mud and wood, the entire Hogan had to be destroyed. A complex set of rituals followed to ensure that the deceased’s spirit would not threaten the living.
The horse did allow the Navajo to perfect the art of raiding, usually in search of sheep held by Spaniards. In response, the Spanish would launch punitive military expeditions into the Dinétah often seizing Navajo women and children as slaves.
These cycles of violence repeated for centuries, first with the Spanish, then after Mexican independence with the Mexicans, and finally after 1848, with the Americans. Undoubtedly the lack of understanding of one another’s cultures added fuel to these fires.
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