Encounter the People

Havasupai

Havasupai Arts & Crafts

The Havasupai are best known for their handcrafts, which include basketry and cradleboards, and for the beautiful land surrounding Supai Village.  The landscape they inhabit offers an aesthetic experience that rivals the superior arts they create.  Traveling to the Havasupai reservation you pass through historic Seligman Arizona, and five miles before the reservation turn off is Grand Canyon Caverns which is home to the largest dry cavern in the U.S, http://www.gccaverns.com/. To learn more about Havasupai arts and crafts and how to make hiking/camping reservations with the tribe, log on through the following NANACT menu choices: Havasupai Basketry, Havasupai Cradleboards, Havasupai Art, and Havasupai Tourism.

Interesting Facts about the Havasupai

The Havasupai have inhabited the area from Supai village to the top of the Grand Canyon plateau, between Williams and Flagstaff, for centuries.  Because they have lived in such a small, guarded section of the canyon, outside influence did not affect the Havasupai until 1880 (Schwartz), with the original reservation being established.  Until that time, they lived in the canyon, growing crops and adhering to a vegetarian diet until they moved atop the plateau.  On the plateau they gathered food and hunted deer, but many families killed only one to two deer per winter.  The Havasupai didn’t fish or eat birds and stuck mainly to the foods they knew best, which were the crops they grew in abundance at the bottom of the canyon (Hirst).

Supai Village from Apache Trail
Photo by Ophelia Watahomigie-Corliss

The Havasupai knew of Native peoples losing their land almost one hundred years [before outsiders reached the bottom of the canyon.  When Spaniards invaded the Zuni and Hopi, looking for the fabled Seven Cities of Gold, the displaced people of those tribes fled to Havasupai.  When wars broke out between western settlers and the Navajo and Hualapai, people from those displaced Native groups also fled to Havasupai (Schwartz).  However, Supai Village was so far into the canyon that it was not until the 1880’s before non-Native outsiders found the settlement and started ethnological studies on its inhabitants.  When the reservation was established, Havasupai leader “Chief Navajo” was very cooperative with the army, because he didn’t want his people to be forced to leave their home, captured or harmed (Hirst).

Havasupai Paradise in Arizona

In 1975, after many years of struggle and visits to Washington D.C., the Federal Government granted 160,000 acres of land back to the Havasupai as reservation land and 95,000 acres of land for permanent tribal use in Grand Canyon National Park (Hirst).  The Havasupai have transformed their home to allow visitors to experience the beauty that surrounds the area, offering them a glimpse of what it is like to live in the Canyon on a daily basis.  One of the most beautiful—if not the most beautiful—places in Arizona; it is truly a paradise on earth.  Havasupai is an unexpected Eden that lies deep within the desert and at the bottom of The Grand Canyon.  A rich area of land where the water envelops the earth, it has allowed the Havasupai and Mother Earth to live in harmony throughout time.

Additional Information

Readings:

• Hirst, Stephen. I am the Grand Canyon: The Story of the Havasupai People. Grand Canyon, AZ: Grand Canyon Association, 2006; originally published as: Life in a Narrow Place: The Havasupai of the Grand Canyon. New York: D. McKay, 1976.
• Schwartz, Douglas W. "Havasupai," in Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 10, Alfonso Ortiz, ed. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1983, 13-24.