Kevin Janssen, age 13, of Phoenix, Ariz., for his question:
WHICH IS THE LARGEST TRIBE OF AMERICAN INDIANS?
Navajo Indians are members of the largest Indian tribe in the United States. The Navajo reservation, which covers 14 million acres of land, ranks as the nation’s largest reservation. It spreadsout to include parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.Navajo is also spelled Navaho sometimes. Here’s how you pronounce the word: Nav ah hoe.
About A.D. 1000, the ancestors of the Navajo migrated to the southwestern United States from what is now Alaska and Canada. Their Pueblo neighbors taught them to raise crops.
During the 1600s, the Navajo started to raise sheep. An increasing number of white settlers established ranches on the Navajo lands and the Indians fought to drive the ranchers away. In 1864, United States Army troops led by Kit Carson destroyed the farms and homes of most of the Navajo.
The soldiers then forced about 8,000 Indians to march more than 300 miles to Fort Sumter, New Mexico. The Navajo call this march the “Long Walk.” Thousands of Indians died during the march and their imprisonment at Fort Sumter.
In 1868, the Navajo agreed to settle on the reservation.
Long before the white man came to North America, the Navajo medicine men created symbolic sand paintings during religious rituals to help heal the sick.
Today about 100,000 of the 150,000 Navajo in the United States live on the reservation. Some of the people live in traditional tribal houses called hogans, which are made of logs and earth. Many also continue to practice the tribal religion.
Large numbers of the tribe today are farmers or sheep ranchers, but others are engineers, miners, teachers or technicians. Skilled Navajo craftsmen weave wool blankets and make turquoise jewelry. Businesses owned by the Navajo, including coal mines, an electronics firm and a lumber mill, earn millions of dollars each year.
Navajo Community College, the first college owned and operated by Indians, is in Tsaile, Arizona, near Lukachukai, on the Navajo reservation.
The growth of industry on the Navajo reservation promises to make the residents one of the country’s wealthiest tribes.
A Navajo named Manuelito was a leader who played an important part in the fight to prevent white settlers from taking over the Navajo’s land.
In 1860, following conflicts between the Navajos and the settlers, Manuelito helped lead an attack on Fort Defiance in what is now Arizona. The next year, he and other Navajo leaders signed a peace treaty with the United States. But fighting soon broke out again.
In 1863 and 1864, Kit Carson’s troops captured thousands of Navajos. The Army didn’t capture Manuelito, however. But he did resign in 1866.
When the government established the Navajo reservation, Manuelito headed the first Navajo police force, which was founded in 1872.