Centuries ago, Southwest tribal nations tended vast orchards of peach trees. But in 1863, thousands of those trees were cut down by the United States government when it ordered the Diné to leave their land as part of the Long Walk. Horticulturalist Reagan Wtysalucy wants to bring that those Southwest peaches back. Want to hear more Indigenous science? Email us at [email protected] to let us know!Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What is the history of Southwest peaches?
You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Reagan Whitesalusi was eight years old. when her dad told her a story. How centuries ago, at the four corners where Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado meet, there were thousands and thousands of peach trees.
They were planted like that among the tribal nations in the Southwest. Vast orchards grew along the Rio Grande. All the way out into Hopi and a lot of the Grand Canyon communities.
Growing up as a member of the Navajo Nation, Reagan had never seen a peach tree, but she learned the stories. How the peaches were a vital food source. eaten fresh or boiled or dried in the sun and stored, how many tribal communities in the Southwest begin their spring dances when the peaches start blooming.
And when the peaches are done blooming, then they stop their dances. Even for Navajo, there's sacred prayers given to the peaches during certain times of the year.
The peaches were so important that they became part of a scorched earth policy to drive the people out. It happened in 1863, when the U.S. government ordered the Navajo, also known as the Diné, to leave their land, to move to an internment camp called Bosque Redondo. And Colonel Christopher Kit Carson led his cavalry regiment to cut down over 4,000 peach trees.
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Chapter 2: How did U.S. government policies affect peach orchards?
And it was kind of the final act of destruction of livestock and destruction of other crops that caused the Navajo people to surrender to the government and go on over a 400-mile journey. over to Bosque Redondo and lived there for four years. So that's, you know, massive destruction within what we call the breadbasket of the Navajo Nation. That journey became known as the Long Walk.
But some escaped that ordeal. Among them, as Reagan later learned, her third-generation great-grandfather, Chief Hoskinini.
He has many names. That is one of them. It translates to the angry one. He took our family to an area where there were still orchards that existed that the cavalry lost their trail and they weren't found.
Chapter 3: Who is Chief Hoskinini and what is his significance?
For four years, Hoshkinini stayed hidden, subsisting on peaches and food stores in the canyon. He raided the cavalry camps to steal livestock and he rounded up feral livestock that remained so that when those who survived the poor conditions of Bosque Redondo returned, Hoshkinini could help them replant peace trees and other crops and essentially rebuild their lives.
And when the people came back, because he was giving them startup herds of livestock to reestablish themselves in the homeland, they started calling him the good one or the generous one.
Today, the Navajo Nation is the largest federally recognized tribe in the United States. And when Reagan was in college studying agriculture, she told her advisor all about these heirloom peaches.
She said, I want to be able to be a person that can help support bringing this crop back in addition to many others that are being lost within our communities. And he kind of tipped me off and was like, That sounds really interesting. Let's get you on a research project.
Her dad, who told her about the peaches and their significance to the Diné people, encouraged her to pursue this research too. But there was a problem. In 2013, when Reagan began this project, there weren't that many peach trees left.
The trees have been dying off in large numbers, and the original caretakers have been passing away. So now we're going through a period of our young individuals, including myself, are trying to seek and understand, well, who are we? What did we lose? How much can we hold on to? And what is it that we need to preserve and protect?
And, you know, what's the most important pieces and how can we retain this and get it back?
Today on the show, bringing back Southwest peaches. The race to recover an heirloom crop and bring together Indigenous knowledge with agricultural science. You're listening to Shorewave, the science podcast from NPR. Hey Shorewavers, Emily Kwong here. Before we get back to the show, I have an update about planet Earth. It's almost completed.
It's 365 days, six hour and nine minute orbit around the sun. Those six hours add up to an extra day every fourth year. And that's why we have leap years. And 2024 was a leap year, which means we had one more day this year to bring you stories about astronomy, scuba diving lizards, social media algorithms, the COVID endemic. Yes, not pandemic. How Rubik's cubes work.
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Chapter 4: What challenges do Southwest peaches face today?
Yeah, I was able to start comparing westernized practices for food production versus Native American traditional practices of food production.
Practices based often in observation, in changes that people have witnessed with their own eyes, and practices that have been passed down through speech.
Even though Native Americans don't have... A large, like, written, documented process of their history or methods in all the things that they do, it's all orally taught, does not mean that it's not valid. Or because there's no scientific, hard data to correlate with it, that it should be negated as a truth.
Chapter 5: How is Reagan working to revive heirloom peaches?
For instance, the elder she spoke to said the traditional peach trees, once they matured, actually didn't need a ton of water.
And I... Took samples from dead trees, from orchards that were no longer being taken care of. We did tree ring analysis and saw that the tree ring growth patterns and the variability between the tree ring growths correlated very well with just what was verbally communicated.
And that's just one example of how gathering both the traditional knowledge and these heirloom seeds has helped Reagan put the puzzle back together. She dreams of one day establishing what she calls genetically pure orchards in rural areas.
Those would be really different from commercial breeding programs, where peaches are selected to enhance the size of the fruit and the sugar content, and all the trees are genetically identical.
There's asexual propagation techniques that go into play to make sure that everything is very uniform. The peach trees are all the same in many duplications, whether they're grafted or not. whatever it is. So that way harvesting is the same or harvestability or shelf life is the same.
By comparison, her orchards are propagated purely from the seeds. So each tree comes from a seed in the ground.
And so every tree is its own individual unique.
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Chapter 6: What role does traditional knowledge play in agriculture?
characteristics from seeds that are uniquely adapted to the local climate. Preliminary studies have even shown that southwest peaches are more drought resistant and have a higher pest tolerance, and that could be critical to peach production in the future. But for now, Reagan is focused on gathering genetic information about the peaches of the Four Corners region.
And word about her project is traveling among southwest tribal nations.
They've been reaching out from all over the country saying, we have peaches that look exactly like yours. And Similar places of remote locations. Nobody's taking care of them. We don't know that there's anybody that owns them and they've been getting samples and sending them to me. Also, a lot of people that have reached out and been like, can we have some seeds? We just want to start some trees.
We want to support this. We would like to have these be a part of our backyard fruit trees.
I mean, how do you feel about the fact that this was a community effort in the sense that you would not have these trees if the Southwest communities hadn't held on to these seeds at all?
You know, it's just kind of... I feel... I just feel blessed to... be doing this project. I always prayed to ask for guidance for this project. And there's multiple times where I have been given direction. I have been shown through dreams, through many things of all the things that I need to do and all the things that will come. I feel very confident to say that this is my calling.
if you have a story about plants and indigenous science you'd like us to look into send us an email at shortwave at npr.org and follow our show on apple and spotify it makes a huge difference This episode was produced by Jessica Young. It was edited by our showrunner, Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts. Gilly Moon was the audio engineer.
Beth Donovan is our senior director, and Colin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy. I'm Emily Kwong. Thank you, as always, for listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.
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