Ethnozoology of the Tewa Indians

Henderson, Junius; Harrington, John

The fauna of a region, like its flora and geology, bears an intimate relation to the culture of its human inhabitants. A nomadic people is generally of necessity dependent on animal life for sustenance, while a sedentary people, if numerous, remaining for a long period in permanent habitations, must be dependent more largely on direct products of the soil, except perhaps when having on the seashore, where almost inexhaustible fisheries furnish abundant food, or near the range of such animals as the caribou or the now nearly extinct American bison. A large number of people remaining constantly in one place and depending the year round on the game of the region would soon destroy their food supply. A nomadic tribe, wandering hither and thither, is constantly penetrating new game preserves and allowing the game in the old preserves to increase in abundance. The ancient peoples, the remains of whose dwellings are found so abundantly in the country of the Tewa Indians, northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, were surely too numerous to have derived any considerable part of their sustenance for even a few months from the native mammals, birds, and other animals of the region, even if game were much more abundant than now, a condition which may well be doubted. If the simultaneous occupancy of only a small proportion of the ruins be supposed, there still would not have been enough game to support the population. However, it is probable that wild game formed an important supplement to the products of their cornfields and the native plants.