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North America: Na Dene/Athapaskan archaeology and linguistics

R. G. Matson and M. P. R. Magne

The Athapaskan languages, together with their relatives in Siberia, Alaska, and Pacific coastal Canada, record some intriguing episodes of long-distance hunter-gatherer migration during the late Holocene, culminating in the establishment of Apache and Navajo peoples in the southwestern United States.

Speakers of the Athapaskan (also spelled Athabascan) languages are currently spread out across the northern part of North America, in Alaska and western Canada, south-western Oregon and northwestern California, the southwestern United States, and into northern Mexico. We first review their distribution and then discuss how they spread out over this large area, stressing what is known and what is hypothetical.

The Athapaskan languages proper encompass a single large continuous area across interior Alaska to central Canada (the Northern Athapaskans), and two outlying regions, one of the Pacific Athapaskans in southern Oregon and northern California, and the Apacheans (Apache and Navajo) in the Southwest. A few small, intermediate isolates are not discussed here. In our view, there were five different traditional lifeway adaptations in these three areas. Following Dyen and Aberle (1974), the Northern Athapaskans appear to have had two separate adaptations. Those in the Pacific Drain-age had a lifeway that was dependent to various degrees on salmon, although they generally did not have the high population densities and settlement sizes associated with Northwest Coast cultures. Northern Athapaskans further east were more mobile, had less permanent settlements, and were more dependent on winter lake fish and large land mammals. Both adaptations fit the generalizations usually associated with hunters and gatherers.

The Pacific Athapaskans in Oregon and California were salmon fishers, and shellfish and acorn gatherers. They were dependent on stored salmon, lived in relatively per-manent winter villages, and had much smaller and more densely populated territories than Northern Athapaskans. They also dropped many cultural traits associated with

The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, Edited by Immanuel Ness.© 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.DOI: 10.1002/9781444351071.wbeghm843

Figure 43.1 The distributions of Na Dene languages and White River volcanic ash.

Na Dene Languages

North Lobe ofWhite River Ash

East Lobe ofWhite River Ash

ALASKA

CANADA

USA

MEXICO

Boundary betweenPacific and Arctic Drainages

WesternApache

Chiricahua

Mescalero

Lipan

Toboso

JicarillaAPACHEAN

PACIFIC ATHAPASKAN

WASHINGTONATHAPASKAN

Nicola

Chilcotin

Carrier

Sekani Beaver

Chipewyan

NavajoKiowaApache

BIG HORN BASIN

Tlingit

Eyak

HAIDA GWAII

North Lobe

East Lobe

NORTHERNATHAPASKAN

NORTHERNATHAPASKAN

Sarsi(Tsuu T’ina)

Columbia River

Pacific Ocean

north america: na dene/athapaskan archaeology and linguistics 3

Northern Athapaskans, even though their languages remain quite similar. The Apache-ans of the US Southwest showed two more adaptations, one of maize agriculture (adopted before European contact) with stock raising (adopted from Europeans), and the other a Plains/montane bison-hunting adaptation, using horses in historical times, best illustrated by the Kiowa-Apache. The first maize and stock-raising adaptation, that of the Navajo, was fairly sedentary, but did not include settlements of any significant size. Despite the very different economic adaptations and cosmologies of the Apache-ans, their languages are very similar to a number of Northern Athapaskan ones.

In addition to the Athapaskan speakers proper, there is widespread agreement that the Tlingit, the northernmost members of the Northwest Coast Culture Area, speak a language closely related to the Athapaskan family. Next to the Tlingit, the Eyak have a similar relationship to Athapaskan. The Haida, on Haida Gwaii, known until recently as the Queen Charlotte Islands, also members of the Northwest Coast Culture Area, speak a language that may also be related to Athapaskan. The overall linguistic group-ing of Athapaskan, Tlingit, Eyak, and Haida languages is often referred to as Na Dene, a controversial macrofamily that has waxed and waned in popularity over the last 100 years. There has been a recent surge in its acceptability, although the inclusion of Haida remains contentious.

Migrations

Many archaeologists and linguists believe in the likelihood of a tripartite migration to the Americas, with Paleoindians (Amerindian languages) arriving first (see chapter 8), Na Dene second, and the Inuit-Aleut last (see chapters 44, 45). Since recent research has revealed that Ket, the only remaining member of the Yeniseian language family in central Siberia, is also related to Athapaskan (Kari & Potter 2010), it is possible that the pre-Na Dene language originated in Northeast Asia (but see below).

The origins of language families tend to be located in areas where their primary subgroups are most highly differentiated. In the Athapaskan case proper, such a region is located at the junction of British Columbia, Yukon, and Alaska, and this is also where the Tlingit and Eyak territories touch Athapaskan language territories. If Haida is indeed related to the Tlingit, Eyak, and Athapaskan languages, the location of greatest Na Dene linguistic diversity and the homeland for the Athapaskan languages did not differ significantly.

The situation relating to the Yeneseian Ket language, as reported in Kari and Potter’s (2010) work, is difficult to reconcile with existing linguistic and archaeological data and ideas on Athapaskan origins. First, the Ket language appears to be too similar to Athapaskan languages to have been separated from them for the 10,000 year time depth often applied to Na Dene prehistory. Ket may even be more closely related to Tlingit than to Athapaskan, which would indicate that it separated well after the period of early Na Dene migration. If Ket is actually representative of a 10,000-year separation from Na Dene, then much linguistic understanding about language change will be in error, since some languages must have changed at rates remarkably slower than others.

4 north america: na dene/athapaskan archaeology and linguistics

In terms of the archaeological record, microblades, often seen as markers of the Na Dene migration from Asia (Magne & Fedje 2007), arrived in Alaska perhaps as early as 9500 bce, after the macroblade and bifacial-point progenitors of Clovis. An associa-tion of microblade technology with Yeniseian languages in Northeast Asia remains to be systematically investigated. The only other archaeologically documented migration from Asia is the Arctic Small Tool or Paleoeskimo tradition (chapter 45), convention-ally seen as evidence of the initial Eskimo-Aleut migration, perhaps four to six thou-sand years ago.

Archaeological and linguistic solutions to the Dene-Yeniseian dilemma include:

1 Ket actually did separate from Na Dene more than 10 kya and has changed very slowly;

2 Na Dene should instead be identified with the Arctic Small Tool tradition, making it later in time than commonly thought, and microblades should be identified with the Eskimo-Aleut migration;

3 Ket is a “reflux” migration, from the Americas or from easternmost Northeast Asia (eg. the Chukotka Peninsula), approximately four to six thousand years ago.

Option 2 disagrees with current archaeological and genetic evidence, but neither Option 1 nor 3 are supported by positive evidence. Option 3 has the virtue of not having any evidence against it. In these early days of understanding of Ket, its associa-tion with Athapaskan and Tlingit appears convincing to most linguists who have examined the issue, but the precise relationships remain to be delimited.

Within Northern Athapaskan languages there is only moderate variability, suggest-ing that the first linguistic deviations occurred circa 400 bce according to glotto-chronology (other linguistic estimates are similar; see Matson & Magne 2007: 133–134). With some exceptions, most of the Athapaskan languages in interior Alaska are very similar, indicating a recent spread. A similar pattern is found to the east. It has been suggested that these two expansions were the result of the North Lobe of the White River volcanic eruption at c.300 ce along the Alaska/Yukon border (Clague et al. 1995), which pushed people both east and west. The linguistic diversity present fits with such an event. The eastern Northern Athapaskan languages, in particular, tend to show continuous variation, rather than being discrete, geographically separate languages, which points towards a recent expansion. This volcanic event may have also caused Northern Athapaskans to move further south into British Columbia, spreading into the interior areas where the salmon storage adaptation existed among Salishan-speaking groups. No technological reason has yet been proposed for this spread, but Northern Athapaskan kinship and social values were preadapted to explore new areas and adopt new technology (Ives 1990; Matson & Magne 2007: 152). A much larger eruption occurred c.800 ce and this has been associated with the migrations to the south, as well as to the east. Although some have questioned that this ash fall would actually have had large and long lasting effects, recent genetic work (Kuhn et al. 2010) shows a decrease in genetic variation at about this time in the caribou herds of this region, one of the most important food resources.

As the Pacific Athapaskan languages appear to be marginally more different from Northern Athapaskan languages than Apachean, this Pacific migration has often been

north america: na dene/athapaskan archaeology and linguistics 5

seen as occurring slightly before that to the southwest. The differences between Apachean and Northern Athapaskan languages on the one hand, and between Pacific Atha-paskan languages and Northern Athapaskan languages on the other, are in accord with a separation between the Northern Athapaskans and the two southern groups around the time of the second ash fall. The Pacific Athapaskans likely originated in British Columbia, where they had adopted the stored salmon economy, since a remnant group is found in western Washington state. The originating group probably migrated down the Columbia River and up the Willamette River into southern Oregon. The oldest coastal villages there and in northern California are associated with Athapaskan (and Algic) speakers and appear to date about 1500 ce (Fredrickson 1984; Matson & Magne 2007: 148–149), which is in accord with the linguistic diversity among the Pacific Athapaskans. It may be that the Athapaskans introduced the salmon storage economy to this region.

Two additional points should be noted about the Pacific Athapaskans. First, tradi-tional culture-historical archaeology in the area, and thus the archaeological identifica-tion of prehistoric Athapaskans, lags considerably behind that in British Columbia and the US Southwest. Second, the slightly greater differences in language from Northern Athapaskan than is exhibited by the Apacheans may be not the result of greater time depth, but of a splitting into small linguistic communities with small territories and more sedentary lifeways.

The Apachean migration to the Southwest

The best-known Athapaskan migration is that of the Apacheans, and this began either at the same time as the Pacific Athapaskan, or slightly later. In contrast with the Pacific Athapaskan migration, a recently abandoned area in the US Southwest was available for the Apacheans. By 1300 ce, two neighboring areas of the Southwest became empty, probably in the wake of climatic changes: the northern Anasazi-occupied zone due to the well-known failure of maize agriculture in the Pueblo III era (Lipe 1995); and the eastern flanks of the central Rocky Mountains after the collapse of the Upper Republican archaeological culture, of which some members also grew maize.

The earliest well-accepted Apachean archaeological culture is the Tierra Blanca complex of the Texas Panhandle region of the southwestern plains (Habicht-Mauche 1992). This culture, dated from 1450 to 1600, is found in the area where the Coronado expedition found people termed “Querechos,” usually identified as Apaches, in 1541. The earliest well-accepted Navajo site is in northwest New Mexico and has a tree-ring date of 1541 (Towner 2003; Wilshusen 2010). Thus, we have two well-dated complexes that appear to date the appearance in the Southwest of the Apache and Navajo, both in or near their historical territories. The New Mexico region was part of the area abandoned by the Pueblo III people by 1300.

How did the Apacheans reach the Southwest, and from where did they begin their migration? The simplest hypothesis geographically, that the southernmost Athapaskans east of the Rocky Mountains (the Sarsi or Tsuu T’ina) simply moved down the foothills into the area abandoned by the Upper Republicans and then into the Southwest, is

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actually unlikely (Magne & Matson 2010). First, Tsuu T’ina is linguistically not as close to Apachean as several other Northern Athapaskan languages. Second, the current position of the Tsuu T’ina was greatly influenced by the early fur trade, and it is quite unlikely they were in their current position prior to European contact (Dyen & Aberle 1974: 250–251). Another Athapaskan group may have been present in that area, but this is a region where there is no archaeological identification of Athapaskans, so this idea is untested.

In contrast, the Carrier, an Athapaskan group in central British Columbia, are closer linguistically to the Apacheans – the second closest according to cognates, although not quite so close as the Chipewyans (Dyen & Aberle 1974: 12). The archaeological presence of Carrier (or a highly similar archaeological culture) is attested in central British Columbia by the time of the second White River ash fall (Matson & Magne 2007). This has led to another idea, that both the Pacific Athapaskan and Apachean migrations left this area at about the same time, with one proceeding southward just inland from the Pacific, and the other moving through Idaho and on to the montane plains, and then southwards. The absence of horses in Athapaskan rock art (the horse being introduced by the Spanish) in the Big Horn Basin in Wyoming supports the presence of Athapaskans (Francis & Loendorf 2002). However, the dating of this occur-rence needs to be better defined. It was first thought to date to about 1000 ce, but re-dating suggests c.1500 (Magne & Matson 2010).

The hypothesis of a single southward migration sees the Tierra Blanca complex of the Texas Panhandle region as representing the ancestors of both the Apache and Navajo. One variant hypothesis advocates the Navajo moving directly from the Upper Republican-vacated area of Colorado to northern New Mexico, and would have the Tierra Blanca complex being ancestral only to the Apaches (Towner 2003). Another variant would have two migrations originating in British Columbia, with the Apache-ans slightly later than the Pacific Athapaskans. A third hypothesis of an intermountain route west of the Rocky Mountains through the Great Basin, with the Fremont culture representing Athapaskans, can be rejected. Fremont material culture, including ethni-cally sensitive basketry, has no links to Athapaskan cultures, and the mtDNA conclu-sively rejects such identification (Matson & Magne 2007: 148).

The Athapaskan identity of both the Apacheans and Pacific Athapaskans has been long noted, with the former first recognized 150 years ago. It has also long been agreed that the Apachean and Pacific Athapaskans migrated from the north. There may well have been some later northerly movements among some groups, most notably the Kiowa Apache. Great distances and the lack of intervening archaeological information may have encouraged ideas based on simplistic map reading and long-distance com-parisons of specific material. An example of the latter is the Avonlea point type being seen as an Athapaskan marker, an idea that must now be rejected, as it fits with almost no other information (Walde 2006). As the blank spots on the map become filled in, there is less freedom for such proposals, but much remains to be done and large areas remain to be systematically examined. Understanding of process remains poor. For example, if the second White River ash fall was the initiation of the southward migra-tions, the conditions and motivations under which a migration might have continued, over such long periods and distances, are still unclear (Magne & Matson 2010).

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SEE ALSO: 8 The human colonization of the Americas: archaeology; 44 North America: Eskimo-Aleut linguistic history; 45: North America: Paleoeskimo and Inuit archaeology; 48 Mesoamerica and the southwestern United States: archaeology

References

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