Navajo

Navajo or Dine they call themselves is the largest tribe of North American Indians. Long ago the ancestors lived in Northwestern Canada and Alaska. Over 1,000 years ago they began to travel south and reached the southwestern United States. They met farmers who are known as Pueblo Indians, and the Navajo began to settle near them and learn from them. The Navajo learned how to plant corn, beans, squash, and melons. The Navajo also began to learn a similar style of weaving making clothing and art from the Pueblo Indians. The Navajo Indians lived in homes called Hogan. They are made from wooden poles, tree bark, and mud. The doorway opened to the east so they could welcome the Sun.
The Navajo Nation Reservation covers about 27,000 square miles of land, occupying all of northeastern Arizona, and extending into Utah and New Mexico, and is the largest land area assigned primarily to a Native American jurisdiction within the United States. The 2000 census reported 253,000 Navajo members, of whom 131,166 lived in Arizona. 17,512 of these lived in Maricopa County, which includes the city of Phoenix.