Johnston] 



NAVAHO POPULATION 127 



Maps 4 through 7 illustrate the changes which have occurred in the 

 distribution of the population of the Navajo Eeservation, together 

 with the growth of this population in the period from 1935-36 to 1957. 

 The estimated population of each land management district for the 

 years 1935-36, 1947, and 1957, were supplied through the courtesy of 

 J. Nixon Hadley of the Division of Indian Health, U.S. Public Health 

 Service. A comparison of map 4 with maps 5 and 6 reveals the most 

 significant movements of tlie population in this area at this time; to 

 the southeast and to the northeast. The former movement reflects 

 increasing participation of Navahos in off-reservation economic ac- 

 tivities. The latter movement reflects their participation in the de- 

 velopment of the oil resources of the Aneth region and the uranium 

 and other mineral resources that are processed in the Shiprock region. 

 The population increases shown in map 7 demonstrate the high growth 

 rate that is characteristic of most of the districts on the reservation 

 at the present time.^^ 



A SUMMARY OF NAVAHO POPULATION GROWTH 



Despite the three centuries of Spanish hegemony in the Southwest, 

 contacts between the Spanish and the Navaho appear to have remained 

 extremely tenuous. In his account of the first century of Spanish 

 colonial activity in this region, Fray Zarate-Salmeron refers to the 

 "populous, warlike, and valiant nation of the Apaches," said to occupy 

 the vast reaches of a mythical land, the "Gran Teguayo." His report 

 contained no population estimates, but it did refer to a stretch of 

 mountains to the west of Santa Fe as the "Casa fuerte o Nabajii" 

 (Zarate-Salmeron, 1949, pp. 67-71). ^« 



The first known explicit estimate of the Navaho population to be 

 found by me is that of Fray Alonso de Benavides, who, with 

 disarming simplicity, estimated their number as "over 200,000 souls." 

 His painfully naive account of the procedure whereby he arrived at 



" It should be noted that, since 19'57, the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam on the 

 Colorado River just below the Utah boundary has attracted large numbers of Navaho and 

 Hopi worliers. This construction, together with the development of improved roads in the 

 western part of the reservation, will undoubtedly result in the establishment of a larger 

 population in this area. 



''^ It is apparent that the range of mountains referred to here as the "Casa fuerte o 

 Nabajti" was the southeastern tip of the San Juan Mountains, an area about 70 miles 

 northwest of Santa Fe, N. Mex., between the Chama and Rio Grande Rivers. This same 

 region is identified as "old Navajo country" on a map of Navaho country in 1776, based 

 on a map of the expedition of Fathers Dominguiz and Escalante in that year (Van Vallsen- 

 burg and McPhee, 1938, p. 6). 



It is interesting to note, albeit in a speculative vein, that the first outsider actually to 

 come into contact with Navahos may have been an African. Fray Marcos de Niza, 

 reporting on his discovery of Cibola (Zuni Pueblo) in 1539, mentions the fact that he 

 ordered Stephen Dorantez, the Negro, to proceed northward from the vicinity of Zuni, 

 where he obtained an abundance of "turquoise and hides of cattel." (See Bandelier, 1890, 

 pp. 207 and 214.) 



Sixty years later, in 1599, Don Juan de Oiaate completed an extensive journey throughout 

 the region (the province of Teguas or Teguayo), visiting the Hopl, Zuni, Taos, and other 

 pueblos. He estimated that the entire region contained 70,000 Indians, which would not 

 be much less than its present Indian population (Bolton, 1916, p. 216). 



