BEGINNINGS (1491-1607)
1.1. Pre-Columbian Era: New World Groups and Societies
(Lecture and Informal Class Discussion)
Objectives:
- Explain and discuss the characteristics of the various New World groups and societies who occupied the region prior to contact with Europeans.
- Emphasize how these groups represented diverse cultures and societies that built complex civilizations.
- Push students to move away from a monolithic view of Native American peoples.
NCHE Habits of Mind:
- Acquire a comprehension of diverse cultures and shared humanity
- Understand the relationship between geography and history as a matrix of time and place, and as a context for events
NCHE Vital Themes and Narratives:
- Civilization, Cultural Diffusion, and Innovation
- Human Interaction with the Environment
Key Concepts:
1.1. Before the arrival of Europeans, native populations in North America developed a wide variety of social, political, and economic structures based in part on interactions with the environment and each other.
Lecture Notes:
I. 2,000 Separate Cultures
Historians differ on exactly when the first Americans reached the Western Hemisphere. They do, however, agree as to where they entered the region: the Bering Strait between Siberia and Alaska.
- Most scholars place the arrival at between 15,000 and 30,0000 years ago. Scholars surmise that the receding waters exposed enough of a land bridge over the 56 miles that separate North America and Asia for groups to migrate across on at least two occasions.
- The Asian travelers were probably following large game animals, such as mammoths, bison, and giant ground sloths.
- The small group of early American explorers gradually spread across North and South America, and there is evidence that some reached the tip of South America by 9000 B.C.E.
Thus, by the time of the European “discovery” of the New World, there were already as many as 100 million Native Americans populating the region and who were developing complex cultures and societies.
II. New World Societies in South and Central America
The First Americans were comprised of numerous diverse cultures scattered throughout the Americas. The most elaborate of these societies emerged in South and Central America and in Mexico.
In what is now Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and the Yucatan region of Mexico, the Maya built a sophisticated culture with a written language, a numerical system similar to Arabic (and superior to the Roman), an accurate calendar, and an advanced agricultural system.
- The Spanish invaders destroyed most of the written records of the Mayas. The first ceremonial buildings appear to have been constructed about 1000 BCE.
- The Mayas were sophisticated farmers who used raised fields to plant maize, the cereal grain that is the ancestor of modern corn.
- The Mayan Empire went into decline around 800 CE. They were organized as smaller city-states when the Spanish conquest began in the 1520s.
In present-day Peru, the Incas created a powerful empire of perhaps 6 million people. They created a complex political system and a large network of paved roads that welded together the populations of many tribes under a single rule.
- They also developed a system of terraces to effectively farm on the steep hillsides and used canals and aqueducts to irrigate crops. The potato and the tomato were two of the Incan contributions to world diets.
- By 1500, the Incas were the largest and richest of the ancient empires of the Americas.
The Aztecs were a once-nomadic warrior tribe from the North. They were the last of the three advanced civilizations to develop.
- In the late thirteenth century, they established a precarious rule over much of what is now central and southern Mexico. Their central city, Tenochtitlan, which is located at present-day Mexico City, featured intricate temples and canals and boasted a population of over 100,000.
- They also built elaborate administrative, educational, and medical systems comparable to the most advanced in Europe at the time.
- The Aztecs developed a highly organized society ruled by a king and included a class of priests and tax collectors, a warrior elite, and an active merchant class.
While their cultures differed, the economies of all three civilizations were primarily based on agriculture and their societies did feature substantial cities. Some of these cities were as large as the greatest capitals of Europe (i.e. Tenochtitlan), with impressive and majestic public buildings.
III. North American Societies
The peoples north of Mexico, that is those who inhabited the lands that would become the United States and Canada, did not develop empires as large or political systems as elaborate as those of their southern counterparts. They did, however, build complex civilizations of great variety.
To the North of Mexico, the first mainly agricultural societies developed in the deserts of the present-day American Southwest.
- The Hohokam, for instance, cultivated Indian corn, cotton, squash, and beans in Arizona and northern Sonora, building irrigation canals to draw water from nearby rivers.
Also, in the American Southwest the desert-dwelling Anasazi, ancestors of modern Pueblo Indians, built large irrigation systems to allow farming on their relatively dry land.
- They also constructed substantial towns that became centers of trade, crafts, and religious and civic rituals. As well, they built a system of roads that reached villages up to 400 miles away.
- Their densely populated settlements at Chaco Canyon and elsewhere consisted of stone and adobe terraced structures, known today as pueblos, many of which resembled the large apartment buildings of later eras in size and design.
- While their irrigation system was impressive, it was not enough to overcome the prolonged drought of the thirteenth century. This drought, the effects of which were compounded by attacks by neighboring tribes contributed to their decline.
The tribes that lived in the Mississippi Valley found conditions that were much less harsh and thus more favorable to continued settlement.
- This region provided rich soil and a network of rivers that allowed for fishing, hunting, and trade.
- Beginning about 800 CE travelers to this area, perhaps from the Yucatan peninsula, planted new strands of maize and beans.
- This development helped create some of the first sedentary societies of North America, which featured large trading networks based on the corn and other grains grown in the rich lands.
- So called-Mound Builders, believed to be the ancestors of the Creeks, Choctaws, and Natchez, created the first permanent settlements.
- The mound-building societies formed enormous earthworks into various shapes and sizes. Some mounds featured multiple terrace levels on which hundreds of houses were built.
As in the Southwest, cities emerged as trading and political centers among mound-builder societies. Among these cities was Cathokia (near present-day St. Louis), which at its peak in 1200 CE had a population of 40,000 and contained a great complex of large pyramid mounds.
- These huge earthen pyramids reveal a sophisticated religious system. Cathokia featured more than 100 of these temple mounds. The main pyramid at Cathokia covered over 15 acres and extended over 35 feet high.
- Residents of the city traded with groups throughout the eastern half of what is now the United States, including tribes on the Atlantic coastline.
- The people of the Cathokia disappeared for unknown reasons sometime in the fourteenth century, though it is thought that over population, warfare, and urban diseases such as tuberculosis took huge tolls.
Other Mississippi Valley societies persisted after the early Mound Builders and expanded their settlements and trading networks.
- They also built massive mounds that served as burial and ceremonial sites.
- As these people became more proficient at farming and fishing, they remained longer in one location and developed substantial dwellings.
- Clusters of the societies settled in the Ohio Valley, along the Mississippi River, and as far west as present-day Oklahoma.
One group of Mississippi Valley residents that emerged from the early mound-builder societies and survived well past the arrival of Europeans were those known as the Natchez.
- Their ruler, known as the Great Sun, presided over a class-based society. Advisors to the Great Sun comprised the noble class and served as chiefs of villages.
- The mass of peasants, called Stinkards, cultivated the land. The Natchez were also organized into confederacies of local farming villages.
The Eastern Woodland Indians of North America occupied the lands east of the Mississippi River. In general, they resided between the Atlantic Ocean and the Appalachian Mountains. The groups of the Eastern Woodland Indians were loosely linked together by common linguistic roots.
- The largest of the language groups was the Algonquin tribes, who lived along the Atlantic seaboard from Canada to Virginia. For example, most of the Indians living between the St. Lawrence River and Chesapeake Bay (Pequots and Delware) spoke Algonquian languages. The Powhatan Confederation of Virginia was also a part of the eastern-Algonquian language groups.
- More elaborately organized was the Five Nations of the Iroquois (Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, and Mohawk). These peoples inhabited the area between the Hudson River and the Great Lakes, and spoke Iroquoian languages.
- The tribes in the Southeast, such as the Choctaw, Chickasaws, Seminoles, and Creeks spoke Muskhogean language dialects.
Though they had significant cultural differences, great similarities also exited among the Eastern Woodland Indians.
- For example, these groups usually lived in small, self-governing clans of related families, and were governed by clan elders.
- Unlike the Aztec or Mayan rulers, however, these kinship-based systems used consensus, rather than coercion, to govern.
- These groups also primarily held land cooperatively, and not as individuals.
- In short, nature-based religions and the kinship group were extremely important to the various peoples of this region.
- In some tribes, such as those that were a part of the Five Nations of the Iroquois, the eldest women selected the clan chief, and inheritance of goods was matrilineal, with rights to land and other property passing to daughters from mothers.
Except in parts of Canada and far northern New England, the peoples of the Eastern Woodland Indians also had a mixed economy of agriculture, gathering, fishing, and hunting.
- Women were responsible for raising corn, squash, beans, and, in the Chesapeake region, especially tobacco. They also gathered nuts and fruit, built houses, made clothing, took care of children, and prepared meals.
- Men primarily cleared the land, hunted, fished, and protected the villages from enemies.
IV. New World Societies on the Eve of Contact
In the centuries before the arrival of Europeans, Native Americans—like the peoples in other areas of the world—were experiencing an agricultural revolution.
- In all the regions of what was to become the United States (albeit in varying degrees from place to place), tribes were becoming more sedentary and were developing new sources of food, clothing, and shelter.
- The development of agriculture by Native Americans sparked cultural innovations. Hunters who previously roamed the land like nomads were establishing permanent villages. As well, corn, sun, and water were becoming focal points for many societies and played strong roles in religious ceremonies. In some cultures, control of the corn surplus was directly linked to power and authority.
- Most regions were also experiencing significant population growth. And, virtually all were developing the sorts of elaborate social customs and rituals that only relatively stationary societies could produce.
For example, in what is now the northeastern United States, the tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy came to rely on agriculture to multiply and prosper.
- To this end, farming allowed these peoples to accumulate large quantities of food that could be stored for long periods.
- This helped to decrease the threat of starvation, especially during the winter, and ultimately led to population growth since more food was available and more hands were needed to cultivate and harvest crops.
Many North American Native American groups also developed sophisticated planting techniques that allowed them to take full advantage of the land and make the most out of the time and effort they put into their agricultural work.
- One of the more unique procedures, called “three-sister” farming, involved a high-yielding strain of bean that grew on the corn stalks while squash grew at the base of the plant to help retain moisture in the soil.
- This procedure allowed farmers, who were usually the females of the tribe, to harvest three different crops from the same field.
- These crops became an important commodity as farmers traded portions of their harvest to hunters for animal furs, bone, and meat.
Beginning in the mid-fourteenth century, however, the climate in North America underwent significant cooling. As the climate grew colder, groups still centered on hunter-gathering economies (Mi’kmaqs) as well as the increasingly agricultural-based societies (Iroquois) had to expand their subsistence territory.
- Due to this development, new world groups came into frequent conflict with their neighbors.
- As warfare became more common, groups increasingly formed alliances for mutual defense—systems like the Iroquois League and Powhatan Confederacy.
- But, alliances among these various Indian societies (even among those with common languages) were fragile, since the peoples of the Americas did not think of themselves as members of a single civilization.
- In some cases, Native Americans also found it initially beneficial to welcome the European newcomers into their midst as trading partners bearing new tools and as allies in the evolving conflicts with neighboring groups.
Thus, when Europeans arrived Native Americans generally viewed the potential threat in terms of how it affected their own community and tribe, not in terms of how it affected any larger “Indian nation.”
All in all, in 1492, highly complex and differentiated societies existed in North and South America.
- Dense populations inhabited parts of South, Central, and North America. Throughout the hemisphere, Indian people had distinctive cultures tied to the resources of their environment.
- Despite the wide variety of languages and cultures, most Europeans adopted the single name that Columbus would mistakenly give them: Indians.
- An alternative the colonists used was “savages.” As we shall see, this view of many Europeans that Native Americans had undifferentiated, uncivilized, and inferior societies ended up justifying the conquest and seizure of their lands.
Assessment:
Making it Real…
- Pretend it is 2,000 years in the future and you are an anthropologist whose mission it is to gain an understanding of the people and culture of North America in the early twenty-first century. All written records are mysteriously gone. What kinds of conclusions might you reach about the former residents as you dig through the layers of debris?
Discussion Questions…
- How does the information that we have covered challenge the conventional/popular view of Native American peoples as a monolithic group?
- Similarly, how does the information that we have covered challenged the conventional/popular of Native American history as unchanging, static, and less civilized?
Key Question…
- As Indian settlers migrated and settled across the vast expanse of North America, they developed quite different and increasingly complex societies. How did these societies adapt to and transform their diverse environments?