While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
Domestication. The Indian learned a great deal from and
was helped in his efforts by the actions of animals in their wild state. The
period of domestication began when he held them in captivity for the
gratification of his desires or they be came attached to him for mutual benefit.
In this process there are gradations:
1. Commensalism begins when food is left for serviceable animals to devour, so
that these may give notice of danger or advantage. The coyote is said tore-veal
the presence of the mountain lion. Small animals are tolerated for their skins
and flesh. Plants would be sown to attract such creatures as bees, and tame
animals would be regularly fed at later stages.
2. Confinement is represented by such activities as keeping fish and other
aquatic animals in ponds; caging birds and carrying off their young,
gallinaceous fowl last; tying up dogs or muzzling them; corralling ruminants,
and hobbling or tethering wild horses so as to have them near, keep them away
from their enemies, or fatten them for eating. The aborigines had no difficulty
in breeding some animals in confinement, but few wild birds will thus propagate,
and the Indians could obtain those to tame only by robbing nests. Lawson says of
the Congaree of North Carolina that "they take storks and cranes before they can
fly and breed them as tame and familiar as dung-hill fowls."
3. Keeping animals for their service or produce, as dogs for retrieving game or
catching fish, hawks for killing birds; various creatures for their fleece,
hides, feathers, flesh, milk, etc., and taming them for amusement and for
ceremonial or other purposes, were a later development. Roger Williams says the
Narraganset Indians of Rhode Island kept tame hawks about their cabins to
frighten small birds from the fields.
4. Actually breaking them to work, training dogs, horses, and cattle for
packing, sledding, hauling travois, and, later, for riding, constitutes complete
domestication.
In pre-Columbian times the dog was the most perfectly subdued animal of the
North Americans, as much so as the llama in w. South America. But other species
of mammals, as well as birds, were in different degrees rendered tractable.
After the coming of the whites the methods of domesticating animals were
perfected, and their uses multiplied. More over, horses, sheep, cattle, donkeys,
hogs, and poultry were added to the list, and these profoundly modified the
manners and customs of many Indian tribes.
Domestication of animals increased the food supply, furnished pets for old and
young, aided in raising the Indian above the plane of low savagery, helped him
to go about, multiplied his wants, furnished a standard of property and a medium
of exchange, took the load from the back of women, and provided more abundant
material for economic, artistic, and ceremonial purposes.
Domestication had a different development in each culture area. In the Arctic
region the dog was preeminent; it was reared with unremitting care, the women
often suckling the puppies; all its life it was trained to the sled. As the dogs
were never perfectly tamed, it was no easy task to drive a team of them; yet by
the aid of dogs and sleds, in combination with umiaks, the whole polar area of
America was exploited by the Eskimo, who found these an excellent means of rapid
transit from Asia to the Atlantic. In recent years the successful introduction
of the reindeer among the Alaskan tribes has proved a blessing. The
Mackenzie-Yukon district is a canoe country, and domestication of the dog was
not vigorously prosecuted until the Hudson s Bay Company gave the stimulus. But
southward, among the Algonquian and Siouan tribes of the great lakes and the
plains, this animal attained its best as a hunter and a beast of burden and
traction. It was also reared for food and for ceremonial purposes. Not more than
50 pounds could be borne by one dog, but twice that amount could be moved on a
travois. The coming of the horse (q. v. ) to the great plains was a boon to the
Indian tribes, all of which at once adopted the new instrument of travel and
transportation. The horse was apotheosized; it became a standard of value, and
fostered a greater diversity of occupations. But the more primitive methods of
domestication were still practiced throughout the middle region. In the N.
Pacific area dogs were trained to hunt; but here and elsewhere this use of the
dog was doubtless learned from the whites. Morice w r rites of the Athapascan
tribes of the interior of British Columbia: "Owing to the semi-sedentary state
of those Indians and the character of their country, only the dog was ever
domesticated among them in the common sense of the word. This had a sort of
wolfish aspect, and was small, with pointed, erect ears, and uniformly gray,
circumstances which would seem to imply that the domesticating process had
remained incomplete. The flesh of those wolf dogs was relished by the employees
of the Northwestern and Hudson s Bay companies, w r ho did not generally eat
that of those of European descent, in a broader sense, those aborigines also
occasionally domesticated and have continued to domesticate other animals, such
as black bears, marmots, foxes, etc., which they took when young and kept as
pets, tied up to the tent post or free. Such animals, as long as they remained
in a state of subjection, were considered as members of the family and regarded
as dogs, though often called by the endearing names of sons, daughters,
grandsons, etc. Birds were never caged, but might be seen at times hobbling
about with the tips of their wings cut."
In the California-Oregon area birds of gay plumage were caged, plucked, and then
set free. On Santa Catalina id. birds called large crows by the Spaniards were
kept and worshipped, recalling Boscana's story of the Shoshonean condor cult on
the adjacent California coast. In the S. W., the desert area, the whole
development of domestication is seen. The coyote was allowed to feed about the
camps. The Querecho ( Vaquero Apache) of Coronado in 1541 had a great number of
large dogs which they obliged to carry their baggage when they moved from place
to place (see Travois). Some of the Pueblo tribes practiced also the caging of
eagles, the rearing of turkeys, and, since the coming of the Spaniards, the
herding of sheep, goats, burros, and horses. (O. T. M.)
This site
includes some historical materials that may imply negative stereotypes
reflecting the culture or language of a particular period or place. These
items are presented as part of the historical record and should not be
interpreted to mean that the WebMasters in any way endorse the stereotypes
implied .
Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, Frederick Webb Hodge, 1906
