Native Tribes

Navajo Indians

Navajo or Dine they call themselves is the largest tribe of North American Indians. Long ago the ancestors lived in Northwestern Canada and Alaska. Over 1,000 years ago they began to travel south and reached the southwestern United States. They met farmers who are known as Pueblo Indians, and the Navajo began to settle near them and learn from them. The Navajo learned how to plant corn, beans, squash, and melons. The Navajo also began to learn a similar style of weaving making clothing and art from the Pueblo Indians. The Navajo Indians lived in homes called hogans. They are made from wooden poles, tree bark, and mud. The doorway opened to the east so they could welcome the sun.

Hopi Indians

The Hopi people have lived in this area for over a thousand years with one of its native villages on Third Mesa having the distinction of being the oldest continuously inhabited village in the United States.

Sioux Indians

The name Sioux is an abbreviation of the French spelling of the name by which they were anciently known to their eastern Algonquian neighbors and enemies.