Navajo History after 1500 AD

(Click here for Navajo History before 1500)

Navajo people moved south into the south-west part of North America from their home in Canada about 1400 AD. So when the Spanish invaders came in the 1500's, the Navajo (Dine is what they call themselves) were themselves pretty new to the area.

When the Navajo arrived, they had been nomads, who lived mainly by raiding the Pueblo people. But they soon began to learn new ways from the Pueblo people and began to settle down to farm corn and beans like them. Still, when the Spanish settlers brought sheep to North America for the first time, the Navajo were happy to give up farming and instead, in the 1600's, they began to herd sheep and goats. They learned how to shear the sheep and weave the wool into blankets and rugs and clothes, and they were able to trade their lamb and mutton and their blankets and rugs and clothes to Pueblo people and to the Spanish settlers for the corn and beans that they didn't grow themselves.

But through the 1700's the Navajo also continued to get some of their stuff by raiding their neighbors - the Pueblo people, the Ute, and the Spanish settlers. Navajo raiders took sheep, horses, corn and beans, silver jewelry and steel tools, and people to sell to the Spanish as slaves. With horses, the Navajo were able to do a lot more raiding. This raiding made the Navajo a lot of enemies.

In 1804, with more and more Spanish people living in New Mexico, the Spanish government decided to stop the Navajo raiding. The Spanish army attacked the Navajo and killed many of them with their new powerful rifles (guns). In 1823, however, when Mexico became independent of Spain, the new Mexican government had other things to worry about and left the Navajo alone. So the Navajo went back to their raiding. In 1848, when the United States government took Arizona and New Mexico away from the government of Mexico, they still pretty much left the Navajo alone.

But now English settlers came to move into Arizona and New Mexico. When Navajo raiders took their horses and their sheep, these new settlers complained to the United States government.

In 1863, in the middle of the Civil War, the United States government decided to stop Navajo men from raiding European settlers in Arizona. They were also worried that the Navajo, who were great fighters, might fight on the Confederate side. The army sent the general Kit Carson to stop the Navajo. Carson brought many Spanish troops with him, who hated the Navajo because of their raids, and he brought many Ute and Pueblo men, who had also suffered from Navajo raids. Many Navajo men were killed, and their houses, orchards, and crops were destroyed. Carson and his army killed or stole all the sheep, and they often captured women and children to sell into slavery in Mexico. Soon people were starving, and they had to surrender to Kit Carson, who forced all the people who surrendered to walk to a camp in the desert at Bosque Redondo in 1864.

People call this the "Long Walk." Many Navajo people died on the way, and many more died at Bosque Redondo of smallpox and of hunger. Finally in 1868 the Navajo chief Barboncito managed to make a treaty with the United States government so that the Navajo could go back to their own land if they promised they would never fight with their neighbors again.

Finally the Navajo were back on their own land. The Navajo reservation is the biggest one in the United States, with 140,000 people living on 16 million acres of land, mostly in Arizona.