Trading Goods, Disseminating Knowledge: Indigenous Intercommunication across the Greater Southwest

Abstract

Native trade networks are well described for the Greater Southwest from the archaeological and ethnohistoric records: trade goods passed between the Pacific and the Rio Grande along established pathways. But were the goods—including abalone shells from the Chumash and blue woolen blankets from the Hopi—transacted in a blind series of material relays, or do they embody geographic and sociocultural knowledge that was actively intercommunicated? According to Francisco Garcés, by June 1769, O’odham of the middle Gila River were already aware of the Portolá expedition’s arrival at San Diego at most two months after it occurred. And in 1771, during his travels in the Colorado delta, Garcés was asked by Kamia if he was looking for Hopis and Zunis. How far did Native knowledge networks extend? Focusing on Garcés’s accounts (1768–1776), this paper inquires into the active transmission of geographic and sociocultural intelligence throughout the Greater Southwest.