Cambridge Silversmiths

Navajo
Housing
The Navajo have traditionally lived in houses called hogans octagonal. Hogans are houses fork and brush-covered land. According to Kehoe, this style of accommodation is the distinctive Navajo, even going so far as to say that "today, solidly built, log-walled Hogan is preferred by many Navajo families. However, the Navajos have a Another style of housing. Around the 17th century, the Navajos have built stone houses called rectangular pueblitos. pueblitos These are believed to have been adopted by the Navajo, Pueblo culture, and resemble small houses Pueblo.
Subsistence
Until they came into contact with the Spanish and the Pueblos, Navajos were hunters and gatherers. They adopted the techniques of breeding and culture of Pueblo, growing mostly maize, beans and squash. Due to Spanish influence, they began raising sheep and goats, according to them for their use in trade and the food. (Kehoe, 133) They have turned the harvesting of wool blankets and clothing that could be used for commercial or personal use. They also depended on their flocks of sheep for meat. Their lives depend on sheep so that for the Navajos, the sheep were in a currency effect and a mark of social status.
History
Beginnings
The Navajo / Din speak dialects of the language family called Athabaskan. These people were once a single ethnic group that probably came from near the Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories of Canada's modern, having crossed the Bering bridge thousands of years ago. In addition to speakers of a language resides in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Athabaskan speakers is also now living in Alaska and in parts of northern Canada. An indigenous people known as the Dene living in an area centered around Great Slave Lake and the communities in the far north of adjacent provinces. The Apache, living in the south-western United States and other neighboring regions, are also Southern Athabaskan speakers and are closely related to the Navajo / Din. Despite the time elapsed, these people might have even understand the language of their long lost cousins, the Navajo. [Citation needed]
Archaeological and historical suggest that the ancestors of the Athabaskan Navajo and Apache entered the Southwest after 1000, with a substantial increase in population occurred in the 13th century. Navajo oral traditions are said to retain references of this migration.
Navajo oral history also suggests a long relationship with Pueblo and a willingness to adapt foreign ideas to their own culture. Trade between the Pueblo peoples long established and Athabaskan was important for both groups. The Spanish records say by the mid 16th century, the Pueblos exchanged goods of woven cotton and corn for buffalo meat, hides and materials for stone tools Athabaskans that is made to their life or their surroundings. In the 18th century, the Spaniards reported that the Navajo had large numbers of livestock and large areas of crops. The Navajo probably adapted many Pueblo ideas in their own very different culture.
The Spanish use the first word ("Apachu of Nabajoa") especially in the 1620s, Navajo, referring to the people of the Chama valley region east of the San Juan River and northwest of Santa Fe By the 1640s, the term Navajo was applied to these same people. The Spanish recorded in 1670, they lived in an area called Dinetah, which was about sixty miles (100 km) west of the Rio Chama valley region. In the 1780s, the Spanish were sending military expeditions against the Navajo in the south and west of this zone in the Mount Taylor and Chuska mountain regions of New Mexico.
In 1000 years, the Navajos have a history of expanding their range and refining their own identity and their importance to other groups. This is probably the result of a combination of cultural warfare endemic (raid.