Navajo Houses after 1500
(Click here for early Navajo hogans)
When people met the first Spanish explorers in the 1500s
AD, most Navajo people were living in hogans.
By trading with the Spanish settlers in the 1500s and 1600s AD, Navajo
people were able to improve their hogans.
First people got sheep from the
Spanish settlers, and they began to sleep on sheepskins instead of on woven
grass mats. Then they learned how to spin
and weave the sheep's wool
into blankets so they could have warm wool blankets. And they traded with
the Spanish people to get steel
tools so people could cut bigger logs and build bigger hogans than they had
had before.
Can you see the sheepskins? How about the television? (1973)
In these bigger hogans, people sometimes put furniture, like beds and tables, and sometimes they made windows.
Navajo hogan with a stove (1946)
When people in North America began to have iron stoves in their houses, in the 1800s, many Navajo people also put stoves in their houses.
By the 1900s, some Navajo people began to live in plank houses like people of European descent. But even those who live in plank houses may still have a hogan nearby for religious ceremonies or for sick people.
Click on these books to buy them at Amazon and learn more about Navajo houses:
Why did people want to punch Socrates?
Where did Egyptians bury your liver?
How old are the Rocky Mountains?
What does a half-timbered house look like?
How do you spin wool?
(a project)
A
project with Ute architecture
More about Navajo people
Iroquois architecture
North American architecture
Main North America page
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