It gets even stranger, Dr Nancy Yaw Davis makes a compelling case in her book The Zuni Enigma that the Japanese replaced the American Indians in that area.
The Zuni language and blood type is unlike all other American Indians. The Japanese were on a search for the center of the earth and decided that they had found it there.
"For many years, anthropologists have understood the Zuni in the American Southwest to occupy a special place in Native American culture and ethnography. Their language, religion, and blood type are startlingly different from all other tribes. Most puzzling, the Zuni appear to have much in common with the people of Japan. "