Page:The American Indian.djvu/58



domestication of animals and methods of transportation may be treated as a single division of our subject, because from the standpoint of Old World culture, one of these concepts calls the other promptly to mind, and even in aboriginal America there is found some relation between the two. The most common domesticated animals were the dog, the llama, and the related alpaca. There were no others. It is true that we have on record instances of individual animals of other species being tamed, but in no case were they propagated.

Of birds, we have the turkey of Mexico and of the Pueblo tribes of the United States. Lawson is responsible for the statement that in Carolina cranes were bred in captivity, while, according to Roger Williams, the Narragansett trained hawks to guard their fields. But all these are exceptional cases. Also, eagles and serpents were sometimes confined for ceremonial reasons, but not truly domesticated. The bee was domesticated in Mexico by the Aztec and the Maya, as is still the case among some groups of natives in Central America and northwest Brazil.

The dog appears in Paleolithic Europe in close association with the remains of man and was practically universal in aboriginal America. The history of its development and dispersion over the earth would in a large measure be the history of man’s cultural achievements. It is thus quite natural that we have a large body of literature on the dog. Unfortunately, this is largely speculative, whereas what we need for our discussion is actual investigation.

The available data indicate that in the New World dogs served at least four purposes: transportation, hunting, guarding and companionship, or food, according to locality. They