Agency and missionary physicians variously diagnosed cases occurring prior to
May 1921 as severe influenza, “black measles” or typhoid fever. Drs. Waller and Tappan
of the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) correctly identified the epidemic as
typhus in May. They based their diagnosis on the sudden onset, the characteristic fever,
the mottled and petechial (small red spots) eruption appearing on the fifth to the seventh
day of the disease, the profound stupor, the foul condition of the mouth, the recovery by
crisis (sudden drop in temperature and clinical improvement) in many cases, the age
distribution of the fatal cases (very young and very old) and control of the disease by
destruction of the louse infestation in exposed persons. “Dr. John G. Griffin, the Agency
Physician at Shiprock, New Mexico, and Dr. George H. Davis, the medical missionary at
Red Rock, probably died of the disease, each believing, however, that he had influenza”
(2).
Inasmuch as the Navajo at that time had no accurate method of recording time
according to the Gregorian calendar, the exact onset of the earliest cases was difficult to
establish. Cases probably began occurring around November 1920 and followed at
intervals throughout December 1920, January, February, March, April, May and June
- Infection tended to occur in three main foci: River Agency, Red Rock and Tosito
located at 30-35 mile intervals approximately from each other at the apices of an
equilateral triangle in the reservation.
The first known case of typhus occurred in the Red Rock district involving a 55-
year old “medicine man.” Early in November he went to Farmington, New Mexico where
he “sang” over a patient and was away about one week. Three or four days after his
return home he became ill and died on December 10, 1920. Before his death, at intervals,