The Native American Tribes of the Southwest: The History and Culture of the Region’s Indigenous Peoples

From the “Trail of Tears” to Wounded Knee and Little Bighorn, the narrative of American history is incomplete without the inclusion of the Native Americans that lived on the continent before European settlers arrived in the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the first contact between natives and settlers, tribes like the Sioux, Cherokee, and Navajo have both fascinated and perplexed outsiders with their history, language, and culture.At the same time, when European settlers and later American settlers came into contact with Native American tribes on the continent, they were frequently unable to differentiate between the subcultures within individual tribes, leading to all kinds of misunderstandings. When the Spanish came into contact with different tribes in the Southwest, they categorized several of them as Pueblo. Thus, while most Americans have heard of the Pueblo and Navajo, many remain unfamiliar with distinctions within the tribes.The Pueblo fascinated those who came across their settlements, especially those located in desert regions and the sides of cliffs that involved the use of adobe mud, stone, carving homes out of cliffs. One such settlement, Oraibi, was created around 1100 A.D. and remains one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in North America. The Spanish were so intrigued by the structure of the communities that they gave the natives the name Pueblo, a term they used to measure certain sizes for their own settlements.The Navajo are one of the most famous tribes in the United States, even though many of the important events in the people’s history have been overlooked with the passage of time. Still one of the biggest Native American groups in America, the Navajo are typically associated with the Southwest and other tribes like the Pueblo, and they are popularly remembered for the Code Talkers of World War II, who used the Navajo language to provide the American military with a code that could not be deciphered by enemy cryptologists. Unfortunately, the 19th century was full of hardships for the Navajo, particularly as American settlers pushed west in the later stages of the 1800s. They engaged in conflicts with the Americans, but eventually they had to make the Long Walk, a march of over 300 miles from their homes to a reservation. Like the Cherokee’s Trail of Tears, the Long Walk was an unmitigated disaster for the Navajo, who only suffered more adversity in the years after the Long Walk as their lands and livelihoods were reduced.Among all the Native American tribes, the Spanish, Mexicans, and Americans learned the hard way that the warriors of the Apache were perhaps the fiercest in North America. Based in the Southwest, the Apache fought all three in Mexico and the American Southwest, engaging in seasonal raids for so many centuries that the Apache struck fear into the hearts of all their neighbors.Given the group’s reputation, it’s fitting that they are inextricably associated with one of their most famous leaders, Geronimo. Descendants of people killed by “hostile” Apache certainly considered warriors like Geronimo to be murderers and thieves whose cultures and societies held no redeeming values, and even today, many Americans associate the name Geronimo with a war cry. The name Geronimo actually came about because of a battle he fought against the Mexicans.While the Comanche are still a federally recognized nation today and live on a reservation in part of Oklahoma, they have remained a well-known tribe due to their 19th century notoriety. Indeed, the conflict between the Comanche and white settlers in the Southwest was particularly barbaric compared to other native tribes. During Comanche raids, all adult males would be killed outright, and sometimes women and children met the same fate. On many occasions, older children were taken captive and gradually adopted into the tribe. Read more