The earliest inhabitants of the region are the Hopi, Navajo and Apache tribes. The most visible are the Navajo, many of whom live on a 16 million acre reservation in northeast Arizona. The huge reservation wraps around a smaller Hopi Reservation, home to one of the oldest continuously surviving tribes in America. Cousins of the Navajo are the White Mountain Apache and San Carlos Apache tribes to the north and east of Phoenix. With a population of about 300,000 today, Arizona is second only to Oklahoma in its population of Native Americans.
Though Spanish explorers passed through the region centuries before, Spain made who made what is now Arizona a Spanish province in 1821. Their legacy is the widely used red-tiled Spanish architecture. Though some Spaniards stayed, soon afterwards Spain ceded control of the land to the American government.
African Americans trace their beginnings here to 1868 when the first Black resident, housemaid Mary Greene, arrived in 1868. After the Civil war, the US Army commissioned Buffalo Soldiers to serve throughout the Southwest. Buffalo Soldiers based at Fort Huachuca were instrumental in forming the 9th and 10th Calvary Regiments and the 24th and 25th Infantry Regiments. They were nicknamed by Native Americans for their hair's resemblance to curly buffalo hair and they were respected for their courageous fighting. Black cowboys flourished in Arizona's territorial days. (1863-1912) as well as in the cattle, cotton, and copper industries. This was the staple work which attracted the earliest African Americans to the region.
Some converted their cowboy earnings to more durable businesses. William "Curly" Neale, a confidant and Army scout for Buffalo Bill Cody, owned the Coral Gables Corral in Tucson and later the Mountain View Hotel. African-American leaders such as Calvin C. Goode, who after graduation from the eighth grade, was refused admittance to the local high school in Gila Bend, went on to succeed at Carver High, the only high school in Phoenix at that time for African-Americans. Goode became the longest serving member of the Phoenix City Council history. Other leaders such as the Rev. George Brooks, Winston Hacket and the late Lincoln Ragsdale became powerful voices for civil rights. Others became influential entrepreneurs in the region.
