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The Navajo say they came from three (or four) worlds before (and below) this one. They feel they were created to live where they are today between the four sacred mountains. Some people think the other worlds symbolically records migrations. People who speak related languages live in northern Canada and Alaska and the Pacific Northwest and northern California.

Most people think that before the Navajo were Navajo (corn growing, weaving people of the southwest living in hogans and using corn pollen to pray and having elaborate ceremonies) they and their linguistic cousins the Apache came from somewhere to the north. What route and when is in much dispute. There are early Athabaskan remains in the Southwest that have been found dated in the 1200s and perhaps as early as the 900-1100s.

The Navajo count their generations as a full lifespan of 102 years. By their count they emerged from the world before around the 1100 or 1200s. By the 1300 there is evidence of people who are starting to be recognizably Navajo and not like other southern Athabaskan groups. There are other stories about clans created on the Pacific coast who came west. Perhaps Athabaskans did come from there and join the Navajo. There certainly were well established trade routes to the Pacific and Abalone shell is culturally important to the Navajo who live no where near it.

In any case they were there when the Spanish first went into the area in the 1600s and have been there every since.

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11y ago

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