The Canine Question: The Role of Dog Husbandry in Athapaskan Migration and Plains-Pueblo Exchange

Summary

Plains-Pueblo Exchange is the study of interregional interactions during the Protohistoric Period (ca. AD 1450 to 1700) between the people and cultures of the Southern Plains and the eastern, frontier Pueblo communities associated with the Rio Grande Valley and its tributaries. Plains-Pueblo research has focused generally on issues of culture contact, culture history, and social evolutionary trajectories leading up to European Colonization, but has skirted the increasingly obvious fact that Plains participants were Athapaskan. Ambiguities in the testimonies of early Spanish chroniclers concerning the identities of named groups on the Plains detract from these occasionally, detailed accounts, which consistently emphasize the Athapaskan practice of long-distance trade and communal hunting aided by pack dogs. The maintenance of large packs, on the order of several hundred head or more, implies a significant commitment to sustained and intensive bison hunting in order to supply for the needs of so many animals. This paper considers the implications of Protohistoric Plains Apache dog husbandry for the Athapaskan migration, the transformation of Southern Plains economies, and ethnic interactions in the American Southwest.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Implications of the Promontory, Dismal River, and Franktown Archaeological Records for Apachean Prehistory

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15318