Thank goodness somethings change. Once the called the Indian Gardens on land the national Park Services took from the Havasupai tribe to create the Grand Canyon. Now renamed the Havasupai Gardens.
I don’t think it makes up for the uprooting of people from their land after generations of occupation but it is acknowledgement and that is something. The ghosts approve!
Today most of the Havasupai people, or the Havasu ‘Baaja, live in Supai, a tributary canyon to Grand Canyon. But historically, they lived across a broader expanse, as far south as Bill Williams Mountain and east to the Little Colorado River. They moved up and down the vertical layers of the Grand Canyon, depending on seasons. During the fall and winter, they lived on the Colorado Plateau (the level of the Canyon’s rim), hunting and gathering food. In the spring and summer, Havasupai families farmed the Tonto Platform (including Indian Garden) and other arable areas, harvesting corn, beans, squash, melons and pumpkins. They did not encounter any European explorers until the Spanish priest Francisco Garcés traveled to Havasu Canyon in 1776. Garcés later traveled east to the Hopi mesas, and it is his report that tells of another Havasupai village as far east as Moencopi Wash, well beyond the Grand Canyon.
