Native Heritage

According to Dineh Bahane, the Navajo Creation story, the Creator gave the area between four mountains to the “Dineh” (the Navajo) to live forever. These four mountains, Tsisnaasjini (Mount Blanca, Colorado), Tsoo'dzil (Mount Taylor, New Mexico), Doko'oosliid (San Francisco Peaks, Arizona) and Dibé Nitsaa (Mount Hesperus, Colorado) are pillars of Navajo land.

Scientists and archeologists believe the Navajo arrived in North America around 1100-1300 AD. These people are thought to be primarily hunters and gatherers and part of the Athabascans group that came from the north. This contradicts Dineh belief of having migrated through various worlds before entering this world, the Fourth World, from an underground location.

Early on the Dineh fought off the Spanish and then the Mexicans, who referred to the Dineh as Apache de Navajo, or the Long Knives of the Cultivated Fields, which was shortened to simply Navajo over time.

With the acquisition of New Mexico and Arizona in1848, the United States tried to force the Navajo people from the land. Due to resistance and broken treaties, war ensued. Finally in 1863, Colonel Kit Carson brought an army to Canyon de Chelly and captured close to ten thousand Navajo. He then forced them to march more than 300 miles on what is known as “The Long Walk” to Fort Sumner. A treaty signed in 1868 allowed them to return to their lands, which meant living on a reservation that had been set up for them.

Today approximately 200,000 Navajos live within Dinetah, the land of the Navajo, in one hundred and ten chapters, the Navajo equivalent of counties. The size of the original reservation has grown since 1868 to almost 27,000 square miles, about the size of Ireland or West Virginia.