SNOQUALMIE
The Snoqualmie or Snoqualmu were a small Salishan tribe of the Pacific Coast. Salmon was their main food, canoeing their form of traveling. The men fished and hunted, the women wove baskets and made mats of cedar bark. They believed they were descended from mythical animals, such as the wolf. By 1854 the Snoqualmies had shrunk to a population of some 200. A handful of Snoqualmies finally went to the Tulalip Reservation in Washington to settle among their Snohomish cousins.
TEWA
The Tewa are a group of Pueblo Indians related by language. Today they live in six villages near the Rio Grande, all north of Santa Fe, namely, Nambe, Pojoaque, Tesuque, San Ildefonso, Santa Clara, and San Juan. According to legend, the Tewa entered this world by ascending from Sipofene, a mythical place beneath a lake. In some Tewa villages it is said that the people climbed up a Douglas fir rising out of the lake, and that the first one up was Poseyemu, the Tewa culture hero, a supernatural being sometimes called the son of the sun, who taught the art of living to the people.
Ancient beliefs and traditions are still strong among the Tewa. Their pueblos are divided into two parts, so-called moities, the summer and the winter people.
TIWA
The Tiwa (in Spanish, Tigua or Tiguex) form a Pueblo language group. Tiwa-speaking villages are the northern Rio Grande pueblos of Taos and Picuris and the more southern villages of Sandia and Isleta in the Albuquerque region. The early Spanish explorers described the Tiwas as cultivating corn, squash, beans, and melons, and as wearing cotton garments and long robes made of feathers. The Spaniards plundered and destroyed several Tiwa pueblos, killing, according to their own chronicler, Castaneda, every male and enslaving the women and children. It was in Taos pueblo that the great Pueblo Revolt of 1680 was planned by Popé, a Tewa spiritual leader from San Juan pueblo. Taos is the northernmost of the pueblos, a natural meeting place for Pueblos and southern Plains Indians. The people of Taos therefore show a number of Plains traits, such as the braided hair worn by the men.
TLINGIT
The Tlingit, the northernmost of the great Northwest Coast tribes, lived in numerous villages from Prince William Sound down to the Alaska Panhandle. Like the Haida, Tsimshian, and Kwakiutl, they occupied large, rectangular, decorated and painted wooden houses; fished in big dugout canoes; held potlatches upon the death and burial of important persons; and made war to capture slaves as well as the booty necessary for giveaways during the potlatch. The sea provided nearly their entire diet. The Tlingit were also great sculptors and carvers of totem poles, masks, ceremonial rattles, bowls, and painted boxes. Their women wove the famous Chilkat blankets and also fine, multicolored baskets. Their dress was highly decorative, often covered with the images of eagles and other animals, the outlines formed of round pieces of pearl shells or buttons acquired from whites. Women wore ornaments in their lower lips, so-called labrets.
The Tlingit were harshly treated and exploited by Russian fur traders. Today some 250 Tlingits live at Craig on Prince of Wales Island in Alaska.
TOLTECS
The Toltecs created a splendid civilization in the Valley of Mexico, their chief cities being Tula and Teotihuacán, the latter the site of the great Pyramid of the Sun thirty miles northeast of present-day Mexico City. The Toltec cities, in which must be included Chichén Itzá, the Mayan site in Yucatán once dominated by the Toltecs, were as much ceremonial centers as they were population centers. Traders and artisans, workers in metal, clay, cotton, obsidian, stone, and feathers, the Toltecs spread the cult of the gentle god Quetzalcoatl, represented by the Plumed Rattlesnake, as well as the practice of the ritual ball game. The Toltecs’ empire reached its zenith around A.D. 900 and later declined as a result of foreign and civil wars.
TSIMSHIAN
The Tsimshian, or People of the Skeena River, are a typical Pacific Northwest Coast tribe, culturally related to the Haida and Kwakiutl and, like them, artistic carvers and weavers of Chilkat blankets. Their main food was salmon, halibut, cod, and shellfish, and they also hunted whales. Their original home was on the Skeena River in British Columbia. In 1884 a Church of England clergyman persuaded them to move to Alaska. About a thousand Tsimshian now occupy the Annette Island reserve of 86,500 acres in southeastern Alaska and take an active political and economic role in the state.
UTE
The Utes, who belong to the Uto-Aztecan language family, are a Shoshonean tribe of western Colorado and eastern Utah. They shared many cultural traits with the more northern Plains tribes; they performed the sun dance and lived in tipis. They acquired horses in 1740 and ranged from southern Wyoming down to Taos. The Utes were generally friendly to the whites; their best-known chief, Ouray, made a treaty of peace and friendship with the government. He was a welcome guest, as well as host, among white silver miners.
The Utes now raise cattle for a living. Some 700 southern Utes live on a reservation of 300,000 acres at Ignacio, Colorado. The northern Weminuche Utes consist of some 1,800 people on 560,000 acres on the Ute Mountain Reservation in Colorado. Still another 1,200 Utes live on the million-acre Uintah and Ouray Reservation at Fort Duchesne, Utah.
WASCO
The Wasco (meaning “small bowl of horn”) are a Chinookian tribe of sedentary fishing people living along the banks of the Columbia River in Oregon. Their food, such as salmon, sturgeon, and eels, came mainly from the river. They caught salmon in the spring with dip nets or by spearing, and bartered pounded and dried salmon with other tribes. During the cold season they lived in partially underground winter houses with roofs of cedar bark; in summer they moved to lighter dwellings made of fir poles. They maintained ceremonial sweat houses, practiced head flattening, and performed puberty rites for both boys and girls. The Wasco are famous for their beautiful twined baskets. They share the Warm Springs Reservation in Oregon with the northern Paiutes and Warm Springs Indians.
WHITE MOUNTAIN APACHE
(See APACHE)
WINNEBAGO
The Winnebago (from Winipig—People near the Dirty Water), a Midwestern woodlands tribe, belong to the Siouan family. Among their deities and supernaturals, to whom they made offerings, are Earth Maker, Disease Giver, Sun, Moon, Morning Star, Night Spirit, Thunderbird, Turtle, and the Great Rabbit. The tribe is divided into two so-called phratries, the upper or air people, and the lower or earth people.
During the War of Independence and the War of 1812, the Winnebago sided with the British. Between 1829 and 1866, whites forced the Winnebago to give up their land and go to new homes no less than seven times. Some Winnebago joined Black Hawk in his war of 1832. They were removed to the Blue Earth River in Minnesota but were driven from there by white settlers, who were afraid of Indians after the great Sioux uprising. Today some 800 Winnebago live on their own reservation in Thurston County, Nebraska.
WINTU
Wintu refers both to a language group and a tribal community, several of which still occupy what is now northern California, above the Bay Area of San Francisco.
YAKIMA
The Yakima occupy the high mountain country of eastern Washington and live on one of the biggest reservations in the northwest. It is a large and thriving community with a very viable and intact culture.
YAVAPAI
The Yavapai, People of the Sun, also known as Mojave-Apaches, once roamed over a large part of Arizona. A tribe of hunters and gatherers, they are linguistically and culturally related to the Hualapai and Havasupai. Nomads in search of wild crops, their staples were mescal, saguaro fruit, sunflower seeds, piñon nuts, and other wild plants. They also raised corn and hunted deer and rabbit. They lived in caves or primitive brush shelters which could be put up in a short time. Their beliefs were shamanistic. About 700 Yavapais now live on the Camp Verde and Yavapai Reservations in Arizona.
YUMA
The home of the Yuma (from Yah Mayo—Son of the Chief) was situated on both sides of the Colorado River. They were primitive but effective farmers, growing corn, melons, mesquite beans, and pumpkins.
Onate visited them in 1604–1605 and reported that they were fine physical specimens. Early Spaniards said of them: “The men are well-formed, the women fat and healthy,” and gave the collective name “Diegueños” to a small group of Yuma tribes and rancherías near present-day San Diego. Some 60 Yumans now live on the 600-acre Cocopah Reservation in Yuma County, Arizona.
ZUKI
The Zuni were the first Pueblo encountered by the Spanish. Fray Marcos de Niza saw the Zuni village from afar. The light adobe walls glistened like gold in the evening sun, and he reported back to the Spanish viceroy in Mexico City that he had found the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola, whose streets were paved with gold. As a result Don Francisco de Coronado, with a large party of heavily armed adventurers, appeared in 1540 at Hawikuh and, on July 7th of that year, stormed and plundered the pueblo. At the time of their reconquest by the Spaniards in 1692, twelve years after the Pueblo Revolt, the Zuni fled to one of their strongholds on top of a high, inaccessible mesa. Eventually they built one single village on the site of their ancient pueblo of Halona, and have dwelled there ever since.
Today about 5,000 Zuni live on their 40,000-acre reservation some 30 miles south of Gallup, New Mexico.
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