15 Facts About Havasupai

Havasupai people are an American Indian tribe who have lived in the Grand Canyon for at least the past 800 years.

The local groups were composed of several extended family groups, living in small villages: The Havasupai were just the Havasooa Pa'a regional band of the Nyav-kapai of the Plateau People subtribe.

Havasupai are said to have existed within and around the Grand Canyon for over eight centuries.

The Havasupai sought protection from the intrusion of western pioneers on their land and sought out assistance, but to little avail.

Still, the Havasupai were not without enemies as they were consistently at odds with the Yavapai and the Southern Paiute, who would steal and destroy crops planted by the Havasupai.

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Loss of almost all of their land was not the only issue that the Havasupai were contending with: the increase in the number of settlers in the local region had depleted game used for hunting, and soil erosion touched off a series of food shortages.

However, it was not until 1928 that the Havasupai finally left Indian Garden, forced out by the National Park Service.

Issues regarding health within the Havasupai population reduced its growth to the point where almost an entire generation was lost due to infant and child mortality.

The Havasupai fought to keep their methods and traditions alive, but the federal government and the National Park Service generally held a dismissive attitude toward these efforts and accelerated the pace of actions such as razing residents' traditional homes and replacing them with cabins.

The court findings stated that the Havasupai had portions of their land taken from them illegally in 1882 and that the tribe was entitled to recover the land from the US at fair market value.

However, the momentum that the Havasupai gained from the ICC case followed them into the 1970s as the tribe continued to fight to have their traditional territory returned to them.

Historically the main crops for the Havasupai were corn, beans, squash, sunflowers, gourds, and some cotton.

Historically, the Havasupai hunted in large groups, and the distribution of game amongst the hunters was generally fair.

Havasupai is a dialect of the Upland Yuman language spoken by about 450 people on the Havasupai Indian Reservation in and around the Grand Canyon.

The Havasupai variety is nearly identical to the variety of the Hualapai, although the two groups are socially and politically distinct and employ different orthographies.