The Navajo are a Native American people from the American Southwest. The Athabaskan ancestors of the Navajo and Apache arrived in the Southwest around 1400, and they were largely hunters and gatherers until the arrival of the Pueblo and the Spanish. The Navajo believe that they moved from the lower world to the Earth's surface because of witchcraft practiced against them, and the original Navajo are said to be present in the form of natural objects such as rocks, mountains, wind, and rain. The Navajo celebrate their ancestors with several "sings".
The Navajo later co-opted Pueblo farming techniques and began herding sheep and goats and growing corn, beans, and squash, and they also spun and wove wool. In 1680, the Navajo helped the Pueblo and Hopi overthrow the Spanish, but the Spanish reoccupied the area and pushed the Navajo into the southwestern desert in 1693. In the 1770s, the Spanish sent military expeditions against the Navajo, but the Spanish, Navajo, and Hopi later allied against the Apache and Comanche bands. In 1846, the Navajo came into conflict with the US Army during the Mexican-American War, and the Navajo went to war with the Hopi in 1850 over resources.
In 1863, the US hired Kit Carson to capture the Navajo under the guise of a peace conference, and he killed the Navajo livestock to create starvation. Beginning in the spring of 1864, 9,000 Navajo were forced to walk 400 miles to Fort Sumner, New Mexico in the "Long Walk", with thousands dying. In 1868, the US government agreed to a treaty with the Navajo in which they were allowed to return to their original land in a large reservation, which was generously apportioned due to the Navajo tribe's relatively passive reaction to American expansionism. However, they were put on the same reservation as their Hopi rivals.
From 1873 to 1895, the Navajo were even used as scouts for the US Army. From the 1930s to the 1950s, the US government imposed livestock reduction upon the Navajo, hoping to solve land erosion problems on the Navajo reservation; the Navajo were concerned about the destruction of their old customs. By 2015, the Navajo had a population of 300,460 people, mostly living in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah.
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