Diné

The Diné, or Navajo, are the people of Dinétah, country between San Juan River and Chama Valley in New Mexico, ringed by sacred peaks. They call themselves Diné, “the people”, speaking Diné bizaad, a Southern Athabaskan language; their ancestors left Athabaskan hunters in Canada and Alaska and migrated south along the Rocky Mountains roughly a thousand years ago, perhaps prompted by the 803 Saint Elias eruption.

Once hunter-gatherers, they learned maize, bean and squash farming from Pueblo peoples; mid-1500s Spanish records show them trading hides for maize and cloth. Spanish friars called them Apachu de Nabajo in the 1620s, from a Tewa word for cultivated lands; the name Navajo was in use by the 1640s.

In the 1700s they built great flocks of Spanish sheep and goats, women weaving the wool into blankets, a staple of their trade and art.