Dinéjí Na`nitin: Navajo Traditional Teachings and History

2: The 1918–1919 Influenza Epidemic

44 DOI: 10.7330/9781607322177.c02 2 The 1918–1919 Influenza Epidemic A Cultural Response Divination, as discussed in the previous chapter , forewarns and forearms the Navajo for what lies ahead. Unfortunately, the 1918 Influenza Epidemic may have been foretold, but nothing in Navajo teaching and practice could stop this totally unfamiliar disease. No ceremonially prescribed cure existed. Not since the creation of the earth had the People faced such devastating consequences. Even First Man, who is credited with emplacing both sicknesses and their cures, could not have foreseen the effect this illness would have on the People. Today, it is still difficult to determine just how wide-ranging its impact was. What follows is a comparative study of how three different cultures—Anglo, Navajo, and Ute-Paiute—dealt with a sickness no one could control. Best practices seemed to favor the The 1918–1919 Influenza Epidemic 45 Anglos’modern medicine, with its germ theory of disease, but even then there were no guarantees; over a half million people in the United States permanently succumbed to its effects. For the Navajo, who stressed a religious approach, it appeared that the holy people were equally befuddled. Death lay all about. Not until the illness had run its course would the Diné and the holy beings return to their earlier ceremonial practices that had proven effective in the past. As the last cold months of 1918 drew to a close, the bloody annals of World War I became a part of history and a prelude to hopes for peace. Another enemy, however, was stalking the living to spread death and sadness throughout the world. Even in countries that were technologically advanced in healthcare, such as the United States, the disease known as Spanish Influenza took its toll, killing over 21,000 Americans in the last week of October alone.1 Transmitted primarily through the respiratory system, the sickness leaped from person to person, community to community , and region to region—inflicting the masses with an often not lethal but invariably difficult illness that infected patients for as long as a month. One of the best general studies of this contagion and its impact is Alfred W. Crosby’s America’s Forgotten Pandemic, which takes a global view of this illness that lasted less than six months. During that time, however, Crosby points out that a highly conservative estimate of deaths in the United States is 550,000, far more than all American battlefield casualties sustained in World War I, World War II, and the Korean and Vietnam conflicts (423,000 total).2 The oft-cited figure of 21 million deaths worldwide, he feels, is “a gross underestimation.” As for Native Americans in the United States: “American Indians suffered hideously in the pandemic. According to the statistics of the Office of Indian Affairs, 24 percent of reservation Indians caught flu from October 1, 1918, to March 31, 1919, and . . . the case mortality rate was 9 percent, about four times as high as that in the nation’s big cities.”3 The reason for this larger death rate, Crosby points out, was associated with the culture, its belief systems, the way it responded, and how quickly it reacted. Nothing was more true than the case of the Navajo. This chapter compares and contrasts reactions to the 1918–1919 Influenza Epidemic in a limited geographic area—primarily southeastern 46 Robert S. McPherson Utah and the neighboring Four Corners region—and shows how the cultural response influenced the severity of the disease. This area is ideal for analysis because of its demographic diversity, ranging from EuroAmerican to Native American and from scientific medicine to folk remedies to religious and ceremonial practices. What emerges is a more complete understanding of the cultural values that pervaded the societies in the Four Corners area during this time. The origin of Spanish Influenza is still not clear. Although this strain carries the title of “Spanish,” it most likely started in the United States and spread to Europe. Healthcare providers in Fort Riley, Kansas, reported the first cases of sickness when dust and smoke from burning manure infected soldiers, over 1,100 of whom became sick with 46 dying.4 Later, some of the troops training at Fort Riley deployed to Europe for service in the final stages of the war, and with them traveled the virus-causing disease. Influenza, identified as having three major strains, spontaneously shifted into...