Traditionally Associated Tribes
There are 11 tribes that have historic connections to the lands and resources now found within Grand Canyon National Park. These tribes have deep ancesteral roots to the ancient peoples who used to call this area home. The entire area has significant spiritual roots to these ancient civiliations. Today these modern tribles have long standing ties to the ancient peoples and land of this area
Havasupai Tribe – AZ
Hopi Tribe – AZ
Hualapai Tribe – AZ
Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians – AZ
Las Vegas Band of Paiute Indians – NV
Moapa Band of Paiute Indians – NV
Navajo Nation – AZ
Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah – UT
San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe – AZ
The Pueblo of Zuni – NM
Yavapai-Apache Nation – AZ
People have been living in and on the Grand Canyon Mesa for over 12,000 years. Before the pyramids in Egypt or the Colosseum in Rome were built, Native Americans were here in the Grand Canyon. And have remained here continously ever since. If you look closely, you can see the evidence of Native American history in the Grand Canyon. When you hike down Bright Angel Trail, you’re following in the footsteps of countless Indigenous people. Scan the walls for pictographs and petroglyphs. These Petroglyphs along with "Split twig figurines" are the oldest evidence of ancient human presence in the area. Dating back to the last Ice Age.
The Grand Canyons vertical walls and projecting plateaus have a rich human history dating back to the Ice Age, a time when large mammals still foraged on the North American continent. During what scientists term the Pleistocene era (9,500 B.C. to 6,500 B.C.), Paleo-Indians fashioned large stone spearheads to hunt mammoths, giant sloths and other large game. Across the Grand Canyon Mesa (Plateau/Colorado Plateau) archaeologists have found tons of evidence of such early human occupation. In the Grand Canyon, only a few spear points are left today to tell us of those early hunter/gatherers, but the evidence that has survived give us a good idea of the storu.
Roughly 11,000 years ago, as the earth’s climate warmed; glaciers melted and weather systems morphed. Over time, the large Pleistocene mammals became extinct, forcing humans to adapt their hunting practices – and tools – to smaller creatures such as bighorn sheep, elk, bison and deer. This human history was not recorded in books; rather, it has been sewn together by archaeologists and paleoanthropologists studying those fragments of remains that survived across the millennia – large spear points gave way to smaller ones and finally to arrow points to correspond with the smaller game animals. As time wore on, the evidence left behind by humans in the Grand Canyon accumulated.
Civilian Conservation Corps workers in 1933 discovered small split-twig figurines in Grand Canyon caves. Since then, hundreds of similar figurines, shaped like deer or bighorn sheep, were found in ten caves in the Grand Canyon as well as in seven caves from Utah to California. Radiocarbon dating tells us they were made between 2000 and 1000 B.C., which puts them in what archaeologists call the Archaic Period (6500 B.C. to 300 A.D). In the Grand Canyon, indigenous people left the figurines in caves on the north walls in the Redwall Limestone cliffs strata. Because the caves are hard to reach and show no evidence that they were living quarters, anthropologists believe that the figurines were part of a ritual. Perhaps these Archaic hunters created the figurines and carried them to the caves as a way to ensure a successful hunt.
The figurines the Archaic people left were all made in the same pattern, usually from split willow branches but sometimes cottonwood or other materials. They fit in the palm of a hand, and whoever left them put them in shallow holes and covered them with rocks. Some of the animal figurines had been “speared” through the chest with a sharpened twig.
The Archaic people were semi-nomadic, living in small groups and moving with the seasons up and down the canyon levels. They collected wild fruits and seeds, hunted bighorn sheep, elk, bison and deer by following the game trails traversing the canyon walls from the rim to the Colorado River. Those trails extended as trade routes beyond the Grand Canyon Mesa. While other artifacts of the Archaic people did not survive, there is more evidence of their existence at the Grand Canyon. Perhaps the most impressive evidence of early human habitation at the Grand Canyon can be found in pictographs on some Canyon walls.
With the discovery of how to cultivate corn, bands of former nomads started building semipermanent villages on canyon terraces sometime before 1000 b.c. Two millennia later, by a.d. 1000, at least three distinct peoples flourished within the canyon, but their identities and ways of living remain poorly understood. From a.d. 1150 to 1400, there may have been a hiatus during which the entire canyon was abandoned—why, we can only guess. Only 3.3 percent of the Grand Canyon has been surveyed, let alone excavated.” Only in the past 50 years have archaeologists
focused significant attention on the Grand Canyon—sometimes digging in places so remote they had to have helicopter support—and only recently have their efforts borne much fruit.
Today, just one group of Native Americans—the Havasupai—live within the canyon. Even though their elders can recite origin stories with unblinking self-assurance, the tribe presents anthropologists with puzzles every bit as vexing as the ones that cling to the vanished ancients. I read a great book recently that I really want to recommend: I am the Grand Canyon:The Story of the Havasupai People by Steven Hirst. I Am the Grand Canyon is the story of the Havasupai people. From their origins among the first group of Indians to arrive in North America some 20,000 years ago to their epic struggle to regain traditional lands taken from them in the nineteenth century, the Havasupai have a long and colorful history. The story of this tiny tribe once confined to a toosmall reservation depicts a people with deep cultural ties to the land, both on their former reservation below the rim of the Grand Canyon and on the surrounding plateaus. Again, I get no monetary compensation for recommending this book, it wasx just such a great read , so insightful into the People of the Canyon.
