What animals, indigenous to the Americas, could have been domesticated and put to work by the Native Americans, the way the Europeans domesticated horses and cattle, camels, etc.?
This came out of a question I asked the other day, wondering if the American Indian nations would have developed very differently if they’d had domestic horses for the last 10,000 years, rather than just the last 300.
Observing members:
0
Composing members:
0
72 Answers
Bats. I wouldn’t screw with them if they had bats.
Llamas were domesticated long before the arrival of the Spanish and used for meat, textiles and pack animals.
Reindeer. Great at pulling sleighs.
Well, Lamas might explain the great successes of the Incas and Aztecs then.
Here is a list of the animals that were around during that era. Most of them became extinct when humans began to spread through the region. Bison and some species of ox survived but most species were wiped out. Why? Here are three theories: overhunting, environmental changes, imported disease.
I just don’t see animals getting hunted to extinction in a land as vast and unpopulated as North America was.
I recommend reading Jared Diamonds Guns, Germs and Steel . It answers this question quite well. If you don’t feel like reading it however, there is a 3 part documentary.
I read about the Passenger pigeon recently, @Dutchess_III, and part of the problem there was that they needed vast forest land and lived very communally. The combination of killing huge numbers of the birds and cutting down the forests led to their extinction.
There’s a snowball effect mentioned in @LuckyGuy‘s link, in that any number of critters that depended on the PP then died out. You kill one animal out, and all the animals that are dependent on that animal for existence die out, and on and on and on.
But during the time frame we’re talking about, prior to, say, 1400, there weren’t enough humans on the continent to hunt an animal to extinction. I mean, it doesn’t seem like there could be.
No, you’re right, @Dutchess_III, that was largely due to Europeans. But @LuckyGuy had answered the larger question with his link – anything on the list similar to an animal used since would answer. Seemed like cheating to draw my answer from a posted link.
Of course, his list is just mammals.
If the Indians had domesticated those animals and depended on them for food and work, the Indians might be extinct today.
But what animals in North America could be domesticated?
And why would the Indians be extinct if they domesticated an animal? Just the opposite tends to happen.
If the Indians had domesticated peccaries and been dependent on them for food, then when the peccaries became extinct, the Indians would be deprived of a serious source of food.
What if Martians landed and caused the extinction of cows, pigs and chickens, in quick succession, while infecting us with diseases we had no defense against? Then started killing humans, in large numbers? All but the loss of major food sources happened to the Indians.
First of all, they aren’t extinct. If they WERE going extinct, and the Indians had domesticated them and bred them, then they wouldn’t have gone extinct.
Sorry, @Dutchess_III, I thought you had read @LuckyGuy‘s link.
So to answer your OQ, peccaries, tapirs and Passenger pigeons.
Turkeys. Hard to ride true, and not much of a beast of burden but good eats if you breed em and raise them and we know they can be domesticated.
And, just imagine if they had managed to domesticate the buffalo and used them in lieu of horses, both for riding and for draft animals. Custer would have been trampled to death, not shot down.
Peccaries are not extinct.
The thing is, to domesticate the animals you have to be settled. It would be had to migrate in and out with the seaons with a bunch of animals, especially things like pigs and birds.
Domestic wolves, eagles,mountain lions and F’ing buffalo. I can imagine riding a massive buffalo into battle against the European invaders, THAT would have been a sight to see!
...Grizzly bears too.
@Here2_4 They didn’t have horses before 1500. That fact that they domesticated them when they did show up shows that they considered domestication.
Now, how could you domesticate a bison? I just don’t see it happening. Or an ocelot, and what would they domesticate an ocelot FOR?
@ARE_you_kidding_me Why would they want to domesticate a mountain lion?
@Dutchess_III As a hunting animal, for meat, and for companionship.
@Dutchess_III ” there weren’t enough humans on the continent to hunt an animal to extinction. I mean, it doesn’t seem like there could be.”
Sadly, that’s not even close to accurate. Native Americans were responsible for the extinction of many large predators and herbivores in North America. Also, are you familiar with a shell midden ?
Far to often it seems people romanticize indigenous tribes as being “one with nature”
There are some animals that are truly to wild to domesticate. I mean, even our house cats…we can only manage them because they’re small. If my cat was as big as a mountain lion I probably wouldn’t be alive today!
Thank you for that information @El_Cadejo. Learn something new every day.
Mine wasn’t a “one with nature” argument. I just didn’t think the population was enough to overwhelm an animal, but I guess it could have been, especially if that animal is confined to a small section of the continent, and can’t easily hide, as your article noted.
@Dutchess_III I don’t really think we could have domesticate big cats either unless we bred them to be smaller and smaller. I’m not sure the genetics of cats would make them as malleable as dogs though.
@El_Cadejo , I can’t find it now, but I recently saw an article numbering Native Americans in the tens of millions 5,000 years ago or so.
It is true that many animals are hunted out due to the native human population, but over time they learned from their mistakes, and became more cautious about such gluttonous behavior.
Right, but they didn’t domesticate them, @Here2_4. I wonder why not…..
Hm. Can you teach a cat to hunt, AND to give up it’s prey?
I don’t know that they could have understood that they caused it.
Eventually, duh. After numerous species are gone, a pattern has formed. None of these events occurred in a day, or week.
Anyway, you asked what animals could have been domesticated, not which ones were. Bison could certainly have been domesticated, ocelots, and just as handy, no more so, than wolves. They simply didn’t have me around to point out the benefits of doing so.
The condors could have been such a great asset, clearing food waste, locating herd activity, and locating enemy locations.
Also, elephants are awfully intelligent. I’m not sure that bison are. They just seem mean tempered.
Still handy to keep corralled in a box canyon.
Again, the people would have to be sedentary, and many of them weren’t.
These Indians domesticated wolves.
Elk. Now that would be glorious to be seen riding upon.
Some animals lend themselves to domestication. There just weren’t many of those kinds on animals in North America.
Okay, @Dutchess_III. Flat-headed peccaries, since they were herd animals.
Bison can’t be domesticated??
Wait. I bought mine at Walmart.
Yeah, all those sedentary ranchers, just sitting around waiting for all those bison moo-cows to fatten themselves up!
Again, a way of keeping them corralled and controlled.
When I was a kid, a farmer had some buffalo in a big field. Saw them everyday from the bus.
“Still handy to keep corralled in a box canyon.” I quote @Here2_4
IF they stay in the area year around, @ibstubro. What do they do with them when they move south for the winter?
Plus I don’t think there is much graze to be had in a box canyon. Those kinds of canyons are susceptible to flash flooding, too. Oops. There goes the herd.
Domesticated means bred to encourage certain traits, including to be fairly easy to work with. That, by itself, needs a certain stability.
You watched bison from the bus, and claim they cannot be domesticated?
Stability is not equated with sedentary. Generally the opposite.
Then your question becomes, “Why didn’t the American Indians domesticate more animals?”
Answer, “Game was abundant, so there was no need..”
You asked:
Can you teach a cat to hunt and to give up it’s prey?
Apparently the Egyptians did. There are hieroglyphic paintings describing just such a scenario. The cats look just like the modern day Sphynx cat with which we are familiar and they are shown bringing down birds and subsequently the man taking away the bird from them.
My guess is that the primary reason this was possible is because the cats were so well fed from the abundance of mice around the Egyptians’ grain storage that giving up a bird or two was no hardship.
Had the cats not had full bellies and been so pampered and well cared for by the humans, I imagine it would have been a different story.
www.ancientegyptonline.co.uk/cat
Thank you @Buttonstc. I look that up tomorrow. I sure am learning a lot! My favorite kind of thread.
Obviously they can be domesticated @ibstubro, but obviously it isn’t common. Domestic cattle far out number domestic bison.
The field was surrounded by a metal and electric wire fence. Just because we have the technology to domesticate bison, doesn’t mean much when you think about what the Indians had to work with, which was nothing compared to what we have today.
The pioneers had cows, not bison.
Trenching, such as is used nowadays at wildlife parks.
you learned nothing at all from any of my links?
You’re talking about future inventions @Here2_4. And a sedentary civilization.
Geese! Why didn’t they domesticate geese? You know, I’m starting to wonder if many tribes, or peoples DID domesticate some animals. I mean, corn was domesticated and specially bred in the Mexican part of North America. The indigenous people wound up with the the corn we know today. And maize.
I just think much of it comes down to the creation of super population centers, such as the Aztecs and Mayans had. They did start domesticating plants.
What would have happened, given another 10,000 years?
The pioneers had cows, not bison.
Yet I thought your question was about Indians?
The point, @ibstubro, is that the domesticated cattle were easier to handle than the buffalo. Hence, the pioneers had cattle, which they had to ship over.
Future inventions? What future inventions?
Sedentary? Only you keep saying my suggestions require a sedentary lifestyle. I have provided links to support myself. You have nothing to support what you say except two lungs. Did you bother reading what I bothered posting? They did domesticate turkeys. Sedentary? Whatever. Fact is fact. They farmed. They domesticated wolves and turkeys. That is supported fact. I don’t know why you are being so argumentative. You asked could, not did. I provide plenty of support to show they could have domesticated any of the animals I mentioned.
Your question details did not specify easy, or desirable to only you. Now you turn away what everyone says.
I will go this far. I think they did domesticate camels. PROVE to me they did not.
Geese were domesticated thousands of years ago too. The ancient Romans used them as warning animals for attacks and invasions. They were also given as wedding gifts to signify loyalty and longevity.
North American animals at the time that could have provided both food, clothing and transportation would have been Bison.
They are very strong and nasty tempered, much harder to tame than a horse and can plow over telephone pole corrals. haha
Well the Book of Mormon says that the Jaredites (who arrived in America around 1500 BC) had the following:
“And also all manor of cattle, of oxen, and cows, and of sheep, and of swine, and of goats, and also many other kinds of animals which were useful for food of man.
And also they had horses, and asses, and there were elephants and curelons and cumons.”
-BOM Ether 9: 18 & 19.
Mormons believe that the Book of Mormon is absolutely true and that native Americans descendent’s of lost tribes of Isreal.
There you go. If it is written in the BOM then it must be true.
I am laughing too hard to get off the floor!
Yeah, as if we are all going to rush out and get a copy of the Book of Mormon so we can know what our history really was like:)~~
I think Jared Diamond’s book is a much better resource as was recommended upthread. It will answer so many of your questions and then some.
“Guns, Germs And Steel”
I learned so much from it. He really ties things together quite uniquely and it’s very thought-provoking.
I’m pretty sure you could also find the PBS documentary of the same name somewhere on the net since it came out quite a while ago. Give it a try. I think you’ll love it.
Yup, it’s available on YouTube in 3 parts and its part 2 which focuses upon the peoples and time period being discussed in this thread.
And as a bonus, it’s narrated by Peter Coyote who is really excellent and one of my favorite doc narrators.
Trust me, Joseph Smith was a delusional schizophrenic whose “visions” were actually hallucinations. The BOM is the work of a delusional mind. lol
The BOM is not The Bomb? Is that what you’re saying?
So, they could have been domesticated @Coloma, so the question is, why didn’t they?
Dedication to a Hunter/Gatherer lifestyle @Dutchess_III? I don’t know how difficult it is to herd geese but I can see traveling with a bunch of the flocking things as being more trouble than it is worth.
Yeah, because the geese have the urge to migrate, too. So unless they clipped their wings (making them helpless against predators) they’d just fly away.
I suppose they could have tried following the migration like the reindeer herders but I am thinking the geese (those not clipped) could cover more territory much quicker that the H/G’s
Domestic Geese are easy to herd, they don’t fly more than a few feet above ground level, but…they are slow on land and their poor little flappy feet get hurt easily walking on rocks and hard ground for long distances. The way to herd long distance would be from a canoe on water with a long stick. lol
Wild geese would not work out well but could have been penned up and fed, grown for meat, unless the native americans had invented an Ultra Light for LD moving of their flocks.
LOL! Yeah, just wouldn’t have worked. I’m going to find the history of chickens….they worked out well, didn’t they!
“What animals, indigenous to the Americas, could have been domesticated and put to work by the Native Americans?”
Relates to:
“The point, @ibstubro, is that the domesticated cattle were easier to handle than the buffalo. Hence, the pioneers had cattle, which they had to ship over.”
In what way, @Dutchess_III?
@Dutchess_III All domestic chickens evolved from the wild jungle fowl in asia.
I had a Jungle Fowl rooster once, magnificent bird, full of himself and very protective of his turf and family. haha
I imagine cows are more even tempered than a buffalo @ibstubro. If they weren’t, it stands to reason that we’d see a lot more buffalo farms here in Kansas, but we don’t. What buffalo we do see number less than 4 or 5 at a time. I think most buffalo farms are around so they can lease them out to movie producers.
At Cowtown, in Wichita, during the Riverfest, they serve buffalo burgers (so they say.) They’re good!
Going to google Asian Jungle Fowl!
Really interesting article about an experiment on domestication that they did on foxes in Russia.
Within a few generations the domestic more-like-dogs foxes started developing a wider variety of coat patterns, like spots.
@Dutchess_III I saw that, very interesting but I didn’t like their captivity and the way they were housed at all. Poor things.
Horses are actually indigenous to North America. They migrated outward, and the local populations went extinct around 10,000 years ago (as @Here2_4‘s link shows). They were later re-introduced by Europeans.
So, there was plenty of time for humans in North American to coincide with horse species. However, also according to that link, we only know of humans domesticating horses as early as 5500 years ago. It seems like the practice spread from Kazakhstan outward; I don’t think horses were domesticated spontaneously in different parts of the world. We might as well ask this same question of any other culture that hadn’t yet been exposed to domesticated horses.
Good link @Here2_4. It said “for there are no animals in America at this time strong enough to pull a plough” Well, they should have specified SOUTH America, where agriculture started, because a bison could pull a plow. They may not have been able to get one to do so, but it could.
Thanks @dappled_leaves.
Answer this question 
Composing members:
0
