Ganado () is a chapter of the Navajo Nation and census-designated place (CDP) in Apache County, Arizona, United States. The population was 883 at the 2020 census, reduced from 1,210 at the 2010 census.
Ganado is part of the Fort Defiance Agency, of the Bureau of Indian Affairs; and is the delegate seat for the district that encompasses the Jeddito, Cornfields, Ganado, Kinlichee, and Steamboat communities at the Navajo Nation Council. The Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site in Ganado is maintained as an example of a 19th-century trading post.
Geography Ganado is located at (35.702571, −109.553234).
According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of , all land. The greater Ganado area includes Ganado, Burnside, Cornfields, Kinlichee, Wood Springs, Klagetoh, and Steamboat and the family ranches dispersed amongst these sub-areas.
Climate According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Ganado has a semi-arid climate, abbreviated "BSk" on climate maps.
Demographics
Languages (2000) Percent Spoke Navajo at home 55% Spoke English at home 45% As of the census of 2000, there were 1,505 people, 422 households, and 321 families residing in the CDP. The population density was . There were 507 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the CDP was 87.3% Native American, 10.8% White, 0.1% Black or African American, 0.1% Asian, 1.1% from other races, and 0.5% from two or more races. 2.4% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.
There were 422 households, out of which 46.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 49.3% were married couples living together, 21.8% had a female householder with no husband present, and 23.7% were non-families. 21.6% of all households were made up of individuals, and 3.6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.5 and the average family size was 4.1.
In the CDP, the age distribution of the population shows 38.7% under the age of 18, 9.8% from 18 to 24, 26.6% from 25 to 44, 19.2% from 45 to 64, and 5.6% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 26 years. For every 100 females, there were 94.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 91.3 males.
The median income for a household in the CDP was $38,958, and the median income for a family was $43,281. Males had a median income of $36,250 versus $26,306 for females. The per capita income for the CDP was $7,500. About 10.3% of families and 18.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 29.8% of those under age 18 and 37.8% of those age 65 or over.
History
Ancients and legends The earliest peoples in the region are believed to have been nomadic hunters in search of big game roaming throughout the Four Corners region. The next wave of inhabitants are believed to have been smaller hunter-gatherer communities of similar nomadic characteristic. It is believed that archaic forms of agriculture came to the Little Colorado River basin around .
The first permanent residents of the Ganado region (comprising greater Ganado, Kinlichee, Burnside, and Cornfields) were the "Basketmaker" Ancestral Puebloan. The ruins of their homesteads are scattered throughout the Little Colorado River basin and Colorado Plateau, among the red clay hills surrounding Ganado, and on the escarpment to the west. Significant agricultural advancement was seen in the first millennium. The largest Puebloan ruin at Ganado is Wide Reeds Ruin, along the floodplain near the present-day Ganado Wash bridge; and it is believed to have been constructed around 1276.
Modern understanding of the historical record left behind by the Ancestral Puebloans exhibits a massive network of villages, storehouses, and fortified structures throughout the Colorado Plateau region. Stretching from Mesa Verde in the north, to Chaco Canyon in the east, to Keet Seel (Kitsʼiil) and Betatakin (Bitátʼahkin) and Wupatki in the west, trading routes can be traced through the Ganado region to as far south as Mexico. Pottery fragments found through the area show a wide array of design and utility, both local and foreign to Ganado. The largest population center in this era near Ganado, is to the north at Canyon de Chelly.
Between 1276 and 1299, archaeologists have recorded a period of "great drought," leading (among other causes) to the eventual end of influence of Puebloan culture and peoples on the Ganado region.
Apaches and Navajos It is not known when the ancestors of the current Ganado community arrived in the Ganado region, though some suggest after 1400. The historical record left behind shows that the first Navajo people were of hunter-gatherer communities, who evolved into a nexus of agrarian society and pastoral society as the conditions of the area suited. Empowered by evolutionary dry farming techniques acquired via the neighboring Puebloan peoples, the early Ganado community's main crops consisted of beans, corn, and squash.
The early Ganado Navajo, like the modern people today, were speakers of a Na-Dené Southern Athabaskan languages known as Diné bizaad (lit. 'People's language'). Archaeological data suggests these peoples arrived in the present day Four Corners & Colorado Plateau regions in approximately the 15th century. The Navajo language retains cultural and linguistic aspects of this primary dialect and is somewhat mutually intelligible with the Western Apache language.
When the Spanish Conquistadors arrived in the southwestern Arizona–New Mexico region, they encountered these peoples, and subsequently named them Apaches de Nabajó Though distant relatives of the Apache peoples, these Apaches de Nabajó were different in both lineage and pathways to the area, from other Apache bands.
Mythology (The following appears to be entirely based on the referenced oral history)
Jilhéél & Kin Naazinii (Upstanding House)
A mix of oral legend and archeology suggest that singer, and warrior/ runner Jilhéél came to the Ganado area in the early 18th century. It is believed that he traveled extensively and lived amongst the Puebloan people along the Rio Grande, and migrated with many of them to the refuge of Dinetah at the start of the Spanish invasion and occupation of modern-day Arizona and New Mexico.
In Jilhéél, it is also believed, came many of the cultural, architectural and agricultural influences to the greater Ganado region. Research suggests that Jilhéél contributed to the construction of fortifications to the north and south, notably in the hills east of Wide Ruins to the southeast of Ganado. Archaeologist David M. Brugge offers that Jilhéél "might have been a local headman of the mid-1770s, possibly a refugee from Awatobi, considering his clan (Táchiiʼnii) and his move to Black Mesa, a refuge of Tobacco Táchiiʼnii people from Awatobi." Oral history research suggests that he inhabited "Wide Ruins, (meaning the Ancestral Puebloan site) and, a few miles north up Wide Ruins Wash, at" the citadel of "Kin Naazinii (Upstanding House)"; if not contributed to its construction – with the help of elder Daalgai – "a Navajo fortified 'pueblito' that archaeologists date at 1720–1805 (NLC, site S-MLC-UP-L; Bannister and others 1966:8; Navajo Nation 1967:263, 271, 285; Gilpin 1996)." Thus, Jilhéél is believed to have traveled between here "north to Canyon de Chelly" regularly.
Oral histories tells of a Jilhéél who carried "gigantic arrows, and had enormous feet. The sight of his footprints struck terror in his enemies. Some say he was a hunter who could run down deer; others say he knew various healing and war ceremonies. Some say he was of the Red Streak into Water (Táchiiʼnii) clan and later moved to Black Mesa." His fame amongst Navajo oral history is well known amongst various historical families. "Some of his attributes may reflect late pre-" Hispanic "iconography (big feet, for example, a common petroglyph motif). These pre-" Hispanic " associations of Jilhéél, together with the idea that Wide Ruins was some kind of 'boundary' place between Hopi and Zuni zones ..., makes one wonder if the north-south travel corridor through Wide Ruins to Canyon de Chelly could have been a late 'everyone's land' as conceptualized by LaBlanc (1999:70, 333) between settlement clusters" much older.
"The north-south corridor that Jilhéél stalked encompasses a string of places with names that came from incidents of raiding and warfare before the Fort Sumner captivity. Several recorded Navajo oral histories tell the stories (HUTR oral history interviews 21, 36, 44, 142; Kelley and Francis 1993–2005, project KF9906, 5/21 and 6/17/99, and project KF9507, 8/14/98). The place names, from south to north, are Anaaʼ Hajiina (Where the Enemy Came Up) north of Chambers; Dzilgha Adahjééʼ (Where the White Mountain Apaches Ran Down or Hilltop Descent), near Ganado", and the modern day location of Ganado Mucho's burial site; "and Dzilgha Haaskai (White Mountain Apaches Went Up, or Hilltop Ascent) near Chinle, Arizona (see Map 1). The places near Ganado and Chinle are places where Apaches came from the south up the corridor and massacred Navajos. (See also Nequatewa 1967:52 and Stephen 1930:1018–1019 for Hopi accounts of a killing of Hopis by Navajos in 1858 west of Ganado; local Navajo accounts apparently of the same incident have been recorded [HUTR interviews 44 and 142], one of which describes the massacre as an Apache attack on Navajos, perhaps reflecting confusion between the name for White Mountain Apaches and the almost identical word for hilltop)."
New Spain
As a result of Ganado's location at the crossroads of ancient trade routes and pueblos, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado's exploration party passed near the Ganado area in 1540–1542 en route to the famous Hopi Villages to the west. "Spanish colonial and later sources beginning with the 1540 Spanish Entrada (a detachment of the Coronado expedition) record indigenous trails linking the Wide Ruins area to Zuni and Awatobi. As the silver mines funded greater and greater Spanish expansion into the frontier of "New Spain," King Philip II of Spain directed Conquistador Juan de Oñate to begin establishing Holy See missions in Nuevo México. As Roman Catholicism spread, by the 1629, "the mission of San Bernardino was established at Awátobi by a party of four Franciscans headed by Father Francisco de Porras", as the Hopi villages were architecturally accommodating as built up population centers.
Spanish traffic was sustained from La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asís to the outlying Hopi mission up until the 1680 Popé's Rebellion. In the "spring of AD 1700 Father Juan Garaycoecha visited the remains of the Hopi mission at the request of the inhabitants"; later that year, the remaining mission was soon after destroyed. The years 1778 to 1780 saw the first recorded drought to be experienced by the European and tribal historians alike, and was devastating to the regional population. The Spanish withdrawal from the region encompassing Ganado, continued until the American invasion of the 1800s.
Navajo and Hopi oral traditions tell how some people escaped and joined Navajos in the surrounding countryside near and far, giving rise to the Tobacco Táchiiʼnii clan (Clinton 1990, Brugge 1985, 1994; Courlander 1971).
Invasion and Ganado Mucho The Ganado area remained relatively independent from rebellions of European ethnicity at Santa Fe until 1849. Ganado's first event under the American government came when a Hopi delegation was sent to Santa Fe in 1850. In 1858, Joseph Christmas Ives led an expedition through the area near Ganado. From 1821, the Navajo people had been engaged in the Navajo Wars against the Spanish, Mexican, and American invaders until the 1864 forced removal from their homelands. This exodus known as the Long Walk, would not see legal Navajo return until June 18, 1868.
One Navajo elder said of the Long Walk: