Peoples of the Mesa Verde Region

What Other Indian Tribe is Related to the Navajo?

The Apache. The Navajo and Apache are descended from the same group of Athabaskan-speaking hunter-gatherers that scholars believe migrated from present-day Canada to the American Southwest sometime after A.D. 1300. Some settled in the Four Corners area, including the Mesa Verde region, and adopted agriculture and a more settled way of life—these people became the Navajo. Others continued south and east and retained their nomadic hunting-and-gathering ways—they became the Apache.

Today, several groups of Apaches live on reservations throughout Arizona and New Mexico. Closest to the Mesa Verde region is the Jicarilla Apache Reservation, which abuts the southern boundary of the Southern Ute Reservation at its east end.