The Ethnobotany of Hualapai Food Harvesting Equipment

The Hualapai Tribe of Nothern Arizona utilized specialized harvesting tools and implements made from local plants.  These played a crucial role in resource acquisition that had been fine tuned and perfected over millenia to meet the challenges of adapting to their landscape.  The information presented will examine the types of tools and implements used for harvesting subsistence resources; plant and animal.  It will describe what plants the tools and harvesting implements were made from, and for what resource they were used for.  It will describe what knowledge still remains in the community, and what has been lost in the past centuries.  Investigating this little examined arena sheds light on sophisticated tools and implements that were crafted using local plant materials, for highly effective harvesting techniques necesary to survive and thrive in a harsh environment of extremes, as well as what is needed to preserve these key cultural practices.