76 BUREAU OF AMEEICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 55 



II. Cultivated Plants 



INDIGENOUS PLANTS 



The Tewa Economy 



At the time of the Spanish discovery the Tewa were cultivating, it 

 would seem, maize, beans, pumpkins and other gourds, cotton, and 

 tobacco. The Spaniards added to the native resources by introducing 

 wheat,^ oats, barley, chile, onions, other kinds of beans, peas, water- 

 melons, muskmelons, peaches, apricots, and apples. The English- 

 speaking Americans have introduced no food plant of importance. 



No doubt the Spaniards' importations into New Mexico were not 

 accepted without a struggle, but at the present day most of these 

 plants constitute an indispensable factor of native life: they are re- 

 garded as "Indian food'' which may be eaten in tho estufa, and they 

 are named in the ritual formulas and prayers. Thus, a Tewa at San 

 Ildefonso described the people as praying in the estufa "for all the 

 things they want to have — corn, wheat, melons, watermelons, onions, 

 chiles, apples, peaches, all things they have to eat — and clothes, shoes; 

 and a long life, to live to be old men," 



The comparatively recent introduction of "store food" b}^ the Amer- 

 icans — machine-milled flour, sugar, bacon, lard, canned goods— tends 

 to invest all home-grown foods with a kind of autochthonous prestige. 



Even in Arizona, the refuge of those Pueblo peoples who detested the 

 Spanish rule and influence, melons and watermelons, chiles, and onions 

 won their way. But the ritual songs at Hano name no foreign plants, 

 only corn, beans, pumpkins, and cotton, sometimes coupled, with the 

 name of kwxlu {Peritoma serrulatum), an important wild food jjlant.^ 



These cultivated plants were supplemented by a very wide knowl- 

 edge and use of edible wild plants. But nowadays, although wild 

 berries and nuts are still gathered in autumn and green weeds are 

 eagerly sought and eaten in the spring, there is a very general and 

 increasing neglect of all but the most common and best-liked. For- 

 merly it was a matter of necessity that the housewife should know 

 them and store them; for although in normal years they were merely 

 a pleasant addition to the diet, yet drought, flood, fire, or a hostile 

 raid might destroy the crops at any time, thus making the wild prod- 

 ucts an indispensable resource.^ At times when old people ate only 

 once in three da3^s in order to leave food for the children, no eatable 



1 The wheat grown at Moenkapi, a Hopi farming village, is of more modern introduction. 



2Cf. W. Matthews, The Mountain Chant: a Navajo Ceremony (5fh Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. FAhn., p. 

 448 and plate xvn). A dry painting represents the four principal plants: The corn plant, painted 

 white, assigned to the god (Yay) of the east; the bean plant, blue, to the god of the south; the pump- 

 kin vine, yellow, to the god of the west; the tobacco plant, black, to the god of the north. 



^ Of. Hough, Aitier. Anthr., x, p. 37, 1S97. The Hopi call Acanlhnchiton wrightii "ancient Hopi food " 

 and say that it has often warded off famine, springing up as it does before the corn is filled out. 



