Native Americans

The plaque frames Native people as a vanished chapter, but the Hopi and Diné who live here would correct it. The cliff-dwelling farmers once called Anasazi, a Navajo word for enemy ancestors that their descendants reject, are more rightly the Hisatsinom, the ancestral Puebloans, and the Hopi carry their line unbroken to the mesas south of here. The Diné, who reached this country by the 1400s, are not their successors but their own nation. Both peoples are present tense, not history left in the rock.

What the plaque says

Humans first entered North America via the Bering Land Bridge sometime after 16,500 years ago as the last ice age lost its grip. Evidence of human populations in the Page area begins about 12,000 years ago. Since then a succession of Native Americans have inhabited the region, most famously the Ancestral Puebloans (also known as the Anasazi, the ancestors of today's Hopi Indians) until about 1300 CE. followed by Today's Navajo Indians (or Diné) beginning about 1400 CE.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Antelope Canyon — 6.2 mi
  Tsé bighánílíní — where the water runs through the rock

More markers nearby

• Major John Wesley Powell — steps away
• Rainbow Bridge National Monument — steps away
• Colorado River Storage Project — steps away
• Navajo Generating Station — steps away