The Navajo

3 Pages 866 Words

Dine (the people) is what the Navajo call themselves in their own language. Until 1969, non natives called these people “Navaho,” but is now spelled Navajo. The Spanish borrowed the word Navahu meaning “the valley in which there are fields.” The Navajo speak a language that belongs to the Athopaskan language group. Which most of Athopaskan languages are found in central Alaska and the inland areas of western Canada. At some point in history although it is unclear, the ancestors of the southern Athopaskan people, the Apache and the Navajo at one point migrated south out of the sub arctic region. It is believed that about 1,000 years ago these people followed the Rocky mountains south in small groups of hunters, gatherers, and fishermen.
During a confrontation between the Navajo and the United States troops on August 31, 1849 in the Chuska Mountains, Narbona Primero, a local Navajo leader was killed. After he was killed even the friendliest of Navajos were convinced that coexistence with whites would not come easy. In the fall of 1862, brigade General James Carleton arrived in Navajo country to prevent the territory from invading confederate troops. It was also his job to prevent Indian raids against the Overland mail route. Colonel Christopher Kit Carson and Carleton met with leaders of a Navajo contingent to try and avoid war, and convinced them to move to Bosque Redondo. All Navajos who had not showed up to Bosque Redondo by July 20, 1863 were to be taken there by force. Most Navajos lived dispersed all over the west, so most Navajo did not even hear about the ultimatum. Carson and his men started a campaign that would destroy fields, orchards, villages, poison watering holes, and slaughter livestock. At the end of this scorched earth policy, was 301 Navajo dead, 87 wounded, 703 captive; the Army reported 17 dead, and 25 wounded. In 1868 congress ratified the treaty and the survivors returned to their homela...