Navajo rugs, blankets and weavings
Dinetah phase Navajo migration southwest - page 3 of 5

Even the earliest hogan sites in the Gobernador tell us that these settlers were farmers long before the arrival of the Spanish. They depended as much on corn, beans, squash, and other crops as the Ancestral Pueblo farmers who first broke ground here. Sheep and goats, horses and mules, and a livestock-based lifeway came later.

What about the pueblitos? Some were built to shelter farm families during raids, others shielded religious leaders and the elderly, still others served as lookouts and signaling sites. Each tells us more about a time when frontiers were crossed, alliances made and broken, the worlds of Pueblo, Navajo, Spanish, and Ute met, and the Southwest was changed forever.

During the Gobernador Phase, 1680-1780 A.D., the Navajo population was still small, estimated at approximately 3500. The Pueblo Revolt marks the beginning of the phase. Settlement was concentrated in the Dinetah area, considered the Navajo homeland, along the Gobernador and Largo canyons of northwestern New Mexico. Most of the occupation of the Gobernador Phase is early 18th century, not during the Pueblo Revolt. There are sites with both masonry rooms and forked-stick hogans, and trade items from both the Spanish and the Pueblos. Some of the ceramics of the phase are decorated polychrome, and the plain pottery has fillets below the rim. It was originally thought that the Gobernador Phase was a period in which Pueblo and Navajo people lived together, but recent discovery suggests the Navajo built these structures for defense from Spanish and Ute. Many have dead-end entries, serpentine passages, encircling defensive walls, single points of access, loopholes for gun ports, and removable logs for ladders and bridges. By this time, the Navajo clearly show the incorporation of features from Spanish and Pueblo influence, especially corn, sheep, weaving, and polychrome pottery manufacture. The Navajo moved to the south and west at the end of the 18th century, probably because of conflict with both the Ute and Comanche.

The most striking sites of the Gobernador are the "pueblitos" which guard the canyons and their memories. These stone fortresses, nearly invisible against the forested horizon or at the base of the canyon walls, sheltered families and their foodstuffs from about 1680 through the 1750s. Even earlier, though, are the mud and wood hogans, sweatlodges, windbreaks and ramadas which cluster on mesa tops throughout the Gobernador. The hogans, single room, earth-sheltered homes with a log and pole frame, have yielded tree-ring building dates going back to at least 1541. Future archaeological research may well reveal earlier houses.

The pottery of Dinétah gives us details of the Gobernador's history which no written account or oral history has recorded. Whole pots and pieces, from each of the neighboring Pueblo communities are found side by side with Navajo-made vessels, Spanish Colonial imports, and even fine china from the Orient.

Gobernador phase Navajo migration southwest - page 4

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