kids encyclopedia robot

Hopi-Tewa facts for kids

Kids Encyclopedia Facts
"Tamos" redirects here. For the ancient Egyptian, see Tamos (Egyptian admiral).

The Hopi-Tewa (also Tano, Southern Tewa, Hano, Thano, or Arizona Tewa) are a Tewa Pueblo group that resides on the eastern part of the Hopi Reservation on or near First Mesa in northeastern Arizona.

Synonymy

The name Tano is a Spanish borrowing of an older Hopi-Tewa autonym tʰáánu tééwa. Tano is often encountered in the anthropological literature referring to the ancestors of the Arizona Tewa before they relocated to Hopi territory. The name Hano, similarly, is a borrowing of tʰáánu into Hopi as hááno, háánòwɨ, which was then Anglicized. Hano in English also refers to Tewa Village, one of the main Arizona Tewa settlements. Other historical names include Tamos, Tamones, Atmues, Tanos, Thanos, Tagnos, Janos. Tewa is the preferred autonym (over Hano, Tano, and Hopi-Tewa) because the Tewa language refers to its people as "Tewas."

History

The Hopi-Tewa are related to the Tewa communities living in the Rio Grande Valley, such as Santa Clara Pueblo and Ohkay Owingeh.

The long contact with Hopi peoples has led to similarities in social structure with their kinship system and their organization to clans being almost identical with the Hopi (the other Tanoan Pueblo groups do not have clans). However, the Tewa dual moiety has been preserved.

Language

Many Hopi-Tewa are trilingual in Tewa, Hopi, and English. Some speakers also speak Spanish and/or Navajo. Hopi-Tewa is a variety of the Tewa language of Tanoan family and has been influenced by Hopi (which is an unrelated Uto-Aztecan language). Arizona Tewa and the forms of Rio Grande Tewa in New Mexico are mutually intelligible with difficulty.

What is remarkable about this speech community is that the influence of the Hopi language on Hopi-Tewa is extremely small in terms of vocabulary. Arizona Tewa speakers, although they are trilingual, maintain a strict separation of the languages (see also Code-switching: Example). These attitudes of linguistic purism may be compared with other Tewa speech communities in New Mexico where there has been very little borrowing from Spanish even though the Tewa and Spanish have had long periods of contact and the Tewa were also bilingual in Tewa and Spanish.

Traditionally, the Hopi-Tewa were translators for Hopi leaders and thus also had command of Spanish and Navajo. This contrasts with the Hopi who generally can not speak Tewa (although they may have limited proficiency in Navajo).

Notable people

kids search engine
All content from Kiddle encyclopedia articles (including the article images and facts) can be freely used under Attribution-ShareAlike license, unless stated otherwise. Cite this article:
Hopi-Tewa Facts for Kids. Kiddle Encyclopedia.