A Prehistory of Western North America: The Impact of Uto-Aztecan Languages

6: Southern Arizona, the Tepiman Corridor, and Mesoamerica

99 CHAPTER 5 the american southwest and uto-aztecan The American Southwest (roughly presentday Arizona and New Mexico) is an area with several archaeological cultures : Anasazi and related neighboring traditions in the north, Hohokam in the south (largely in southern Arizona), and the Mogollon tradition in between Anasazi and Hohokam. The Patayan archaeological culture along the Colorado River to the west almost certainly represents ancestral Yuman speech communities. The Puebloan traditions include the Hopi speech communities, which make up an isolate within UA. This chapter focuses on the location and prehistory of the Puebloan cultural traditions because of the Puebloan commitment to agriculture (see chapter 8) and the interest in UA speech communities as possible agents of the spread of agriculture. The term Puebloan is used instead of Anasazi, which is a term that comes from Navajo and may be offensive to Pueblo people. The Puebloan culture area, in terms of mitochondrial DNA, has been distinct from prehistoric times into the present. Carlyle and colleagues (2000) sampled the mtDNA of ancient individuals and found that of the mtDNA matrilineages common in native North America (A, B, C, D, X) there was a moderate frequency of haplogroup A (22 percent), a high frequency of haplogroup B (56 percent), and a low frequency of haplogroup C (15 percent); there were no instances of D or X. This composition closely resembles the mtDNA array found in modern Puebloan people, and is markedly different from Athapaskan (Navajo, Apache) groups in the American Southwest. So, even though the ancient Puebloan culture area was multiethnic, the genetic profile does not reveal this. 100 map 5. The prehistoric American Southwest. The Hohokam and Chacoan regional systems are shown in relation to the speech communities connected to both systems. The Hohokam culture was river oriented, while the Chacoan archaeological culture was not. The southern extension of Keresan was probably absorbed into Acoma and Laguna (historical Western Keresan), just to the north. THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST AND UTO-AZTECAN 101 Ethnohistorically, the picture of the Pueblo language groups is complicated . Most Pueblo peoples have ethnohistories of migration, often multiple migrations, unlike the ethnohistories of the relatively in situ development of the Great Basin. the tanoan languages The Tanoan language family (also known as Kiowa-Tanoan) is made up of the following languages: Kiowan Kiowa Tiwan Northern (Taos, Picuris) Southern (Sandia, Isleta) Tewan Rio Grande Tewa (San Juan, Santa Clara, San Ildefonso, Tesuque, Pojoaque, Nambe) Arizona Tewan (Hano) Towan Jemez (Towa) Piroan Piro (Saline and possibly Tompiro) The Tanoan languages are all spoken in pueblos in northern New Mexico, except for Kiowa, which was first encountered on the Yellowstone River in Montana. Piro was spoken in the southern half of New Mexico along the Rio Grande. Initial sound correspondences indicate that Piro is a Tanoan language distinct from the other branches of the family. The language of Pecos Pueblo, whose final survivors joined Jemez in the early 1800s, is assumed to have been a Towan language, but there is little actual data for this. Literature reviews (including Piro) with a grammatical “snapshot” of Kiowa are in Mithun (1999:441–447; see also Campbell 1997:138–139). For Tewa specifically , see Yegerlehner (1957, 1959a, 1959b) and Speirs (1966). For Northern Tiwa (Taos), see Trager (1946); for Picuris, see Zaharlick (1977); for Towa (Jemez), see Sprott (1992) and Yumitami (1998); and for Kiowa, see Watkins (1984). Glottochronology (as a relative lexicostatistical measure within a wellestablished language family) indicates relative internal diversity. Davis (1959:76) has the following approximate datings for the separation of the Puebloan Tanoan languages; the estimated years of separation are given with approximate dates (calculated from AD 2000). CHAPTER 5 102 Towa 2,400 yrs. 400 BC Tewa 1,800 yrs. AD 200 Tiwan subfamily 1,200 yrs. AD 800 Trager (1965) locates the Tiwan (Northern Tiwa, Southern Tiwa) in the Rio Grande with in situ development; he gives glottochronological dates for the separation of Taos and Picuris (Northern Tiwa) as about 700 years before the present, or AD 1300. The separation of Kiowa from the other Tanoan languages is a key issue in the overall picture of Tanoan linguistic prehistory. The three sets of glottochronological dates for the separation of Kiowa from the rest of Tanoan (see below) range from about 4,000 years ago to 2,100 years ago, suggesting that Kiowa is the most divergent Tanoan language. Davis’s dates, made in the height of...