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Some anthropologists have suggested that the disappearance of the Anasazi from northern Arizona around AD 1300 was due to an invasion by hostile groups. The Navajo have been listed high on the roster of usual suspects and possible culprits, but this simple scenario has some inherent problems. The date of the arrival of the Navajo in the Four Corners region is uncertain, but there is little in the archaeological record to suggest that it was coincident with the abandonment of the large Arizona Anasazi dwellings and settlements. There is a high likelihood that the Navajo had reached the Four Corners area and settled down well before the crisis of the late-Thirteenth Century. It is possible that the combined demands on the land in northern Arizona by increasing populations of Anasazi, Ute, Paiute, and Navajo may have been more than the fields and hunting grounds could comfortably support during a period of meager rain at the end of the Thirteenth Century.
The timing of the first arrivals of the Paiute, Ute, and Navajo around Anasazi-land will probably never be known. The Anasazi agricultural bounty generally meant that their people had little dependence on game or wild foods. Their reliance on hunting or gathering of wild plants was relatively low. This meant that they could thrive, side-by-side with neighbors, as long as the neighboring hunter-gatherer populations were small.
The Anasazi did practice some hunting, but most of their sustenance came from their fields, not from hunting grounds. Unless wild game was extremely reduced, there would have been little conflict with neighboring peoples solely over deer, antelope or rabbits. Indeed, there is little evidence of any significant history of competition or resentment against the Ute or Paiute, who lived near the Anasazi, although, generally at a reasonable distance to the northeast, north, and northwest. The key seems to be that the Ute and Paiute never had large numbers of people moving across the Four Corners or Black Mesa at any one time.
The Navajo, on the other hand, once they began to settle down, became less mobile than the Ute and Paiute, even though many members of the nation continued their hunting practices. Also, the first Navajo settlements were cheek to jowl against Anasazi lands. The Navajo farmers also used the resource of the soil, which the Anasazi valued highly. The new, fixed base for the agricultural Navajo farmers kept Navajo hunters from ranging far and wide, as they once had and the Ute and Paiute still did. Much of the restricted roaming by the Navajo now took them repeatedly into sacred grounds and sites of the Anasazi, which the Navajo generally did not recognize or care about. Anasazi shrines were largely considered irrelevant by the Navajo, leading to animosity from the highly traditional and religious Anasazi, which the Hopi remember to this day.
None of these factors would have been an overwhelming problem if the Navajo population had remained small, as the Ute and Paiute populations did. The Navajo people, however, quickly began to multiply in this new land with their food needs largely supplied by the fields. The first significant competition for resources by the Navajo and the local Anasazi cannot be dated. It is known, however, that there was a Great Drought of 1276-1299 in the American West, and that it had far-reaching affects over much of the continent of North America.
Over the period of a few short decades;
In this generation-long drought, the fields were no longer able to supply the needs of all the Anasazi, plus their neighbors. Game was reduced as the wild vegetation of the plains and mesas became parched. Hunters from the Ute and Paiute, as well as the Navajo, were driven farther afield, and put increased pressure on the lands of northern Arizona. With a severe lack of rain, problems arose for all the peoples of the region. The Navajo may not have caused the demise of Anasazi culture, directly, but in a time of regional famine, the Navajo were not able to live long and prosper, in harmony with their neighbors.
The adoption of agriculture may have worked for a while for the Navajo, but once there was a significant growth in the numbers of their people, and a decrease in the yield of the soil, trouble became inevitable. The period of peaceful coexistence could not last. In fact, the idea of coexistence for more than a few years may be largely an illusion. It is likely that many of the relatives of the farming Navajo continued their traditional practices of hunting and gathering during much of the year, coming back to the new settlements of their agricultural relatives during the harsh months of winter. “Hunting and gathering” were practices that would to lead to problems between the Navajo and their neighbors. The entire Navajo nation was soon to be stigmatized by the practices of the wandering Navajo hunters.
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Proceed to Navajo Nomads and Their
Neighbors
Follow scholar Kokopelli to the Suggested
Reading List
Return with Kokopelli to the hogan page, the
Table of Contents
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Black Mesa Highlighted in Sunlight on a Stormy Day
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to
treeves@ionet.net
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Contents, including illustrations, copyright T. K. Reeves, 1997.
on 5 April, 1997.
