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The Navajo (also Navaho) people of the southwestern United States call themselves the Diné (pronounced [d?n?]), which roughly means "the people". They speak the Navajo language, and many are members of the Navajo Nation, an independent government structure which manages the Navajo reservation in the Four Corners area of the United States.****************************The Navajo speak dialects of the language family referred to as Athabaskan. Athabaskan speakers can also be found living in Alaska through west-central Canada and in a few areas on the Pacific coast. Linguistic and cultural similarities indicate the Navajo and the other Southern Athabaskan speakers (known today as Apaches) were once a single ethnic group (linguistically called Apachean) that probably came from the Great Slave Lake area having crossed the land bridge thousands of years previous. Archaeological and historical evidence suggests these people entered the Southwest after 1000 AD, with substantial population increases occurring in the 1200s. The Spanish noted the presence of a significant population in the 1500s. Navajo oral traditions are said to retain references of this migration.*************** Coronado observed Plains people ("dog nomads") wintering near the Pueblos in established camps, who may have included Navajo. In 1540 Coronado reported the modern Western Apache area as uninhabited, yet in the 1580s other Spaniards first mention Apache living west of the Rio Grande who shared corn with them. The early Athabaskan way of life complicates accurate dating, primarily because they constructed less durable dwellings than other Southwestern groups. They also left behind a more austere set of tools and material goods. Sites where early Athabaskans speakers may have lived are difficult to locate, and even more difficult to identify firmly as culturally Athabaskan.****************Whenever the Navajo actually arrived, they occupied areas the Pueblos peoples had abandoned during prior centuries. The Navajo people traditionally hold the four sacred mountains as the boundaries of the homeland they should never leave: Blanca Peak (Tsisnaasjini' — Dawn or White Shell Mountain) in Colorado, Mount Taylor (Tsoodzil — Blue Bead or Turquoise Mountain) in New Mexico, the San Francisco Peaks (Doko'oosliid — Abalone Shell Mountain) in Arizona, and Hesperus Mountain (Dibé Nitsaa — Big Mountain Sheep) in Colorado. **************************** Navajo oral history seems to indicate a long relationship with Pueblo people and a willingness to adapt ideas into their own culture. Trade between the long-established Pueblo peoples and the Athabaskans was important to both groups. The Spanish records say by the mid 1500s, the Pueblos exchanged maize and woven cotton goods for bison meat, hides and material for stone tools from Athabaskans who either traveled to them or lived around them. In the 1700s the Spanish report that the Navajo had large numbers of livestock and large areas of crops. The Navajo probably adapted many Pueblo ideas, as well as practices of early Spanish settlers, into their own very different culture. **********************************The Spanish first use the word Navajo ("Apachu de Nabajo") specifically in the 1620s, referring to the people in 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 1670s they were living in a region called Dinetah, which was about sixty miles west of the Rio Chama valley region. In the 1780s the Spanish were sending military expeditions against the Navajo in the southwest and west of that area, in the Mount Taylor and Chuska Mountain regions of New Mexico. And then they all died every last one of them in a terrible fire. *********************************** Navajos seem to have a history in the last 1000 years of expanding their range, refining their self identity and their significance to others. In short this is probably due to a cultural combination of Endemic warfare(raids) and commerce with the Pueblo, Apache, Ute, Comanche and Spanish people, set in the changing natural environment of the Southwest.