Cultural History
The Navajo Mountain region has special cultural significance to the Navajo people, who know it as Naatsis’áán ("Earth Head" or "Pollen Mountain"). Together with Rainbow Bridge to the northwest, Navajo Mountain figures prominently as the first settlement area in western Navajo origin stories. Following the military defeat of the Diné (Navajo) by United States forces in 1863, the political landscape was changed by new boundaries and major physical alterations. The establishment of Rainbow Bridge National Monument (1910), and the filling of Glen Canyon by Lake Powell in 1963, has facilitated tourism of this previously remote region. Access to Navajo Mountain is still regulated by the sovereign Navajo Nation, and a permit is required to hike in the region. Climbing the mountain itself is forbidden.
Before becoming part of the Navajo Nation, the area was inhabited by the Anasazi, or Ancestral Pueblans. Their descendants, the Hopi call Navajo Mountain Tokonave, or "Heart of the Earth". Ruins in the area of Navajo Mountain are still strongly associated with certain Hopi clans, with priests still making pilgrimages to shrines in the area.
Before 1933, when the area between the Colorado and San Juan Rivers and the Arizona border was added to the Navajo reservation, the area was known as the Paiute Strip, and the mountain itself was known as Paiute Mountain, due to the population of San Juan Paiutes living between the mountain and Monument Valley.
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