Dendrochronological Recognition of Two Traumatic Events in Navajo History: The Fearing Time/Long Walk and the 1918 Influenza Pandemic

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Tree-Ring Materials as a Basis for Cultural Interpretations" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Over recent centuries the Navajo of the Southwestern U.S. have faced several traumatic periods that affected their culture and lives. Two of the most dynamic of these were the Fearing Time/Long Walk of the 1850s and 1860s and the 1918 Influenza Pandemic. The Fearing Time resulted in the Navajo seeking refuge and safety in protected locations while the Long Walk involved the roundup of most of the Navajo population and their forced relocation to a reservation far from their homeland. The flu, within a period of a few months, caused the death of over 10% of the Navajo population. Utilizing a corpus of over 800 tree-ring dated Navajo archaeological sites from Northeastern Black Mesa, Arizona, we examine the time periods around both events to determine if they are identifiable in the tree-ring records of our sample. Our analysis of relevant sites explores the ways in which both events are, indeed, reflected in the tree-ring record.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Tree-Ring Materials as a Basis for Cultural Interpretations   •
• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51020