Moki Woman Modelling a Clay Jug.
Photograph by F. S. Dellenbaugh.
Those in the farmer condition were the people of the extremely arid south-western quarter where large game was scarce, and where crops of maize and beans, grown with considerable difficulty and labour, were the principle reliance. With maize as a basis of food supply it was possible for a tribe to be far more sedentary than when subsistence was obtained by the chase. Hostile neighbours could be avoided. A whole tribe could occupy fortifications, like the Pueblo villages for example, in the midst of some wide valley, near a river or other water supply, or could retire to some fastness of cliff or mountain, easily defended, where ample crops could be grown on bottom lands, and where recesses in cliffs afforded sites for secure and comfortable homes, as well as great quantities of fallen débris for building purposes. Such were hundreds of villages scattered over the South-west as far north as the southern parts of Utah and Colorado; and even perhaps to Salt Lake. There was no need of sallying forth to the confines of hostile country in search of food; and, before the coming of the whites placed the gun and horse at the service of the more predatory tribes, they would not readily risk an attack on such strongholds.
The cultivation of maize was increasing, except on the immediate Pacific Coast, where it was not cultivated at all. Even the Pai Utes, who lived largely on grass seeds and edible plants and roots, had begun to have small gardens where beans, pumpkins, melons, and maize grew. East of the Mississippi and south of the Great Lakes enormous quantities of the great staple of the New World were produced before the white people arrived. Tribes to the north in the region of Minnesota were beginning to understand its cultivation, and the importance of having a food supply under control. In the South-west, for an unknown period, it had been the mainstay. There it was cultivated by irrigation whereas in the eastern part of the continent the rainfall was, of course, sufficient. In the South-west the men did the work in the fields, leaving the management of the household to the women; even the building of the houses in fact. But in districts where the products of the soil formed only a minor part of the subsistence, or where it was mainly or entirely wild meat, the men for so large a part of their time were engaged in the pursuit of game that the camp and household duties, as well as what tending of crops might be necessary, fell to the women. Their labours were intermittent, and when the men returned from the chase, sometimes worn out if game were scarce, the women waited upon them just as a white woman waits on her cross husband when he comes home tired from the shop.
Earthenware from Moki Region. ½.
