(1)コロンブス到着以前のネイティブアメリカ人

[1990a] (11-7) The First American. Fifty thousand years ago, huge herds of animals roamed across North and South America. Wild horses, bison, and camels grazed in vast fields. Jaguars stalked their prey. Woolly mammoths -- large, shaggy-haired elephants with long, sweeping tusks -- wandered from present-day Alaska to Texas. Exactly when and how people came to be a part of this landscape is uncertain, though scientists have a general idea. Peopling a Continent. Most scientists believe that the first humans crossed into America during one of the ice ages in prehistoric times. As vast amounts of water froze into glaciers, the depth of oceans dropped by 200 or 300 feet (60 or 90 meters). Underwater ridges were exposed and formed a land bridge from Asia across the Bering Strait into presentday Alaska. Scientists believe that when herds of animals moved eastward across the bridge, Asian hunters followed, tracking them throughout the Americas. They may have come as early as 60,000 years ago, or as recently as 12,000 years. Although scientists do not agree when the earliest inhabitants arrived, most agree that about 10,000 years ago the environment changed in the Americas. The glaciers retreated, temperatures warmed, lakes dried up, and many animal species became extinct. The oceans rose and the land bridge to Asia closed, isolating American cultures from the rest of the world. The Rise of Agriculture. The changes in climate forced prehistoric peoples to alter their way of life. As some regions became hot and dry and others warm and wet, people living in different areas had to develop different skills to survive. When the huge game animals disappeared, people hunted smaller game. Groups living near the sea became expert at catching fish. More important for the development of civilization was the rise of agriculture. Some groups who gathered wild fruits, roots, and vegetables began raising their own crops. As the cultivation of crops spread, different groups began experimenting with varieties of beans, squash, and corn. The first Americans no longer had to move from place to place in an endless search for food. They were able to settle in permanent communities. By 1400 A.D., sharp contrasts existed between cultures in the Americas. Some groups were still hunting and gathering while others lived in highly organized societies with cities, roads, and taxes. And hundreds of other cultures fell somewhere in between. Each had its own forms of government, religion, and art, reflecting its culture. Life in the West. Many of the early Americans who lived in the western region extending from the Arctic Circle to the warm Pacific coast of California lived by hunting, fishing, or gathering plants. Among these groups were the Eskimo, the peoples of the Northwest Coast and the Great Basin region. Eskimo. The Eskimo lived on the plains and seacoasts of the Arctic. Bitter cold and heavy snows tested the skills of these early Americans. Because few plants grow in the frigid climate, the lives of the Eskimo revolved around hunting and fishing. Animals such as the seal, walrus, whale, and caribou were a source not only of food but also of clothing, tools, weapons, boats, and household implements. The successful use of every bit of these animals often meant the difference between life and death. Northwest Coast Indians. The mild climate of the northwest Pacific coast made life easier for the settlers there. Salmon and other fish thrived in the many streams and rivers. Offshore the seas teemed with seals, whales, and otters, while on land herds of deer, moose, and elk roamed the thick forests. The food supply was plentiful. Under these favorable conditions, the people of the northwest Pacific had time to do something other than search for food. They built very big, elaborately decorated houses, fashioned striking copper shields, carved massive totem poles and canoes, and made beautiful wooden masks, furniture, and utensils. Gradually, they developed a complex society based on wealth. Each person's status depended on his or her possessions. To demonstrate their prosperity, people held feasts called potlatches (PAHT latch ehz). At these ceremonies, the host family entertained guests lavishly for several days and gave away valuable possessions. Those who received gifts held their own potlatches in return. Anyone who could not do this lost social standing in the community. Great Basin Indians. The groups living in the Great Basin, between the Sierra Nevadas and the Rocky Mountains, had a more difficult life. The region supports few animals or edible plants. Peoples such as the Ute and Shoshone were forced to move about in small bands, often no larger than a single family, in order to gather what food they could. Men dominated the bands. Women and children held low status. The Desert Tradition. A harsh environment made survival a struggle in much of the region that is now part of Arizona, New Mexico, southern Utah, and northern Mexico. In the north, rapidly flowing rivers had carved steep-walled canyons into the land or washed away the soil to form huge mesas* thousands of feet high. [*mesa: "mesa," which means table in Spanish, is a high, flat plateau or tableland with steep sides.] In the south, foothills and mountains gave way to flat stretches of desert. There, summer temperatures reached over 100 Fahrenheit (38 Celsius) and winter temperatures dropped well below 0 Fahrenheit (-18 Celsius). Anasazi. Despite these extreme conditions, several imposing civilizations emerged in the area. One of the earliest groups was the Anasazi (ah nah SAH zee). Skilled people, they turned the desert into productive farmland with an irrigation system of dams and canals. Within the remote canyons of much of today's Southwest, they built cliff dwellings resembling modern high-rise apartments. On the rock walls of the canyons they drew pictograms, pictures conveying their ideas about life. The Anasazi were also excellent weavers, basketmakers, and potters. Pueblo. Although the Anasazi disappeared mysteriously, several later groups traced their origins to them. One group, the Pueblo,* lived in the area of present-day Arizona and New Mexico. [*pueblo: "pueblo" (PWEHB loh), which means town in Spanish, is the name given to these people in the 1500s by Spanish explorers, who thought the settlements looked like European towns.] The Pueblo were farmers who grew beans, cotton, tobacco, squash, and gourds -- a difficult task in a region that received so little rain. Like the Anasazi, the Pueblo often built their dwellings on the mesas or along the sides of steep cliffs. Made of stone and adobe, sun-dried clay brick, the structures were several stories high. The Pueblo grouped the buildings around a broad, open space, forming a kind of town with a main square. At the center of each town was an underground room called a kiva. Pueblo men met there to conduct religious ceremonies. Some of their rites were held to bring rain, others to cure the sick, and still others to please the gods. The kiva societies emphasized conformity and the importance of society over the individual. A warrior class enforced the rules of conduct. The Pueblo were a matrilineal society. In other words, they traced descent within a family through the mother's line. Women headed the families and held all property rights. A wife who wanted to divorce her husband merely put his belongings outside her door -- a signal that the husband had to return to his mother's house. Pueblo women were exceptionally skilled potters and basketweavers -- crafts that were probably passed down to them from the Anasazi. Navajo. During the 1500s, another important southwestern group, the Navajo (NAV uh hoh), migrated into what is now northern New Mexico. There, the Navajo came under the influence of their Pueblo neighbors, from whom they learned farming and weaving. Navajo religion, heavily influenced by that of the Pueblo, emphasized that a person's life should be in harmony with the universe. Immortal beings called Holy People, who had to be pleased through strict rituals, could affect the lives of mortals, called Earth Surface People. On the Great Plains. As you have read, between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River lies a large area of relatively flat grasslands known today as the Great Plains. For thousands of years, most inhabitants of the Great Plains lived near rivers so they could be sure of a water supply for farming. Women were responsible for the farming and plowed their garden plots with digging sticks and hoes made from large animal bones. Maize, squash, beans, and sunflowers were the principal crops. For most of the year, the Plains people lived in fairly permanent villages. There they built lodges by covering log frames with brush and sod. But during the summer, the men often left for weeks to hunt buffalo. Sometime in the mid-1500s, most of the Plains people became more nomadic. Instead of living in permanent villages, they moved from place to place, building temporary settlements near water and food supplies. Migrations were on foot. Dogs dragged travois* carrying the owners' possessions. [*travois (trah VOI): two poles with an animal skin mounted between them. After the Spanish reintroduced horses to the Americas, the Plains people used horses rather than dogs during their migrations.] The nomadic settlements relied on farming for much of their food, but the men often hunted. On the hunt, they lived in portable teepees made from buffalo hides. Farther west, Americans who were completely nomadic lived in teepees year-round. The semiagricultural, seminomadic groups of the Plains included the Osage, Missouri, Omaha, Kansas, Iowa, Wichita, and Mandan, as well as the Pawnee. The Blackfeet achieved the greatest power in the western part of the Great Plains. The Crow hunted the land between the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers, and the Comanche, Kiowa, and Apache dominated the southern plains. In the Eastern Woodlands. Three major peoples lived in the woodlands east of the Mississippi River: the Algonquin (al GAHN kwihn), the Iroquois (IHR uh kwoi), and the Muskogean (muhs KOH gee ehn). Algonquin. The Algonquin lived in the dense forests that covered the Northeast from present-day Labrador and Quebec as far south as Maryland and Virginia. They lived in small bands, hunting deer and caribou or gathering wild nuts and berries. The Algonquin also used the resources of the forest to build efficient transportation: snowshoes and toboggans in the winter, canoes in the summer. Algonquin society was relatively simple. Families within the band hunted primarily in one area they regarded as theirs. But they willingly shared their catch with others. Food was often scarce during the harsh winters, and every family knew that one day it might have to depend on another's support. Iroquois. The Iroquois were several related tribes that originally lived in southeastern North America. Around 1300, they migrated north to the area of present-day New York State and drove out the Algonquin. However, not long after the departure of the Algonquin, the Iroquois began to feud among themselves. During the 1500s, the warfare became especially bitter and threatened to undermine the Iroquois people. According to legend, two reformers, Dekanawidah, a Huron religious leader, and his disciple Hiawatha, a Mohawk chief, began preaching the idea of a political confederation, or alliance, of the Iroquois tribes. They believed that such a union would not only end the bloodshed but would also provide a strong defense against their enemies. The goal of the two reformers was finally achieved during the 1500s. Five tribes -- the Mohawk, the Seneca (SEHN ih kuh), the Cayuga (kay YOO gah), the Oneida (oh NI duh), and the Onondaga (ahn uhn DAH guh) -- gradually formed a confederation known as the Iroquois League. The league, whose values were based on those of traditional Iroquois culture, proved successful. A representative council, consisting of the chiefs of each tribe and 50 specially chosen leaders called sachems (SAY chehms), governed the league. The sachems were responsible for regulating relations among the tribes. Iroquois society, like Pueblo society, was matrilineal. All property passed from generation to generation on the female side of the family. Women owned the gardens and the spacious longhouses in which several related families lived. Although they did not serve on the league council, women who headed the clans appointed the male sachems. Muskogean. Other eastern woodlands groups also had complex social and political systems -- the Muskogean, for example. These farming people had a highly structured class system based on worship of the sun. At the top was the chief, called the Great Sun. Just below him in status were the nobles, known as Suns. Below them were the Honored People, and at the very bottom were the Stinkards. The reigning Great Sun, worshipped as a god, had the power of life and death over the Muskogean. The group's complicated marriage rules insured that membership in each class changed over time so that no one family could hold the position of Great Sun indefinitely. Over several generations, a Great Sun's descendants would become Stinkards. Empires to the South. Many scholars believe that the Muskogean and other southeastern peoples were influenced by cultures that had developed to the southwest of them, in present-day Mexico. The first of these great civilizations was created by the Maya, who flourished on the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico and in present-day Guatemala from about 300 to 900 A.D. Maya. The largest Mayan cities boasted as many as 40,000 inhabitants. While they were centers of trade, their most important purpose was religious. Towering over all the other buildings in the city were huge temple-pyramids covered with carved pictures. Within these structures, brightly costumed priests conducted religious ceremonies. Aztec. Farther to the north, in the Valley of Mexico, the Aztec rose to power sometime after 1200 A.D. As their power grew, they conquered their neighbors and forced them to pay tribute of food and labor. They erected a spectacular capital city, Tenochtitlan (tay NOHCH tee TLAHN), on an island in the middle of a large saltwater lake. An enormous pyramid, the Pyramid of the Sun, dominated the other structures in the city. Here Aztec priests sacrificed humans to Huitzilopochtli (WEE tsee loh POHCH tlee), the chief god. Floating artificial islands, made by piling dirt on log rafts, surrounded Tenochtitlan. Some formed the foundations for homes; others were cultivated as vegetable gardens. Fresh water flowed into the city through aqueducts. Several long causeways connected the island-city to the mainland. Inside the city, paved streets led to the elaborate homes of the wealthy, to beautiful temples, and to zoos, orchards, and parks. Even the few surviving remains make it clear that both the Aztec and Maya were brilliant builders and engineers. The priests of both cultures also excelled in astronomy. Their calendars were more exact than European systems of the day, and Aztec and Maya could predict eclipses of the sun and moon. The Aztec and Mayan religions demanded a precise knowledge of how the stars in the heavens moved. Inca The engineering feats of another civilization, the Inca, surpassed even those of the Aztec and Maya. By 1400, the Inca dominated settlements stretching along a band 1,500 miles (about 2,400 kilometers) long on the western coast of South America. Incan cities were often constructed on the tops of mountains or along the faces of steep cliffs. Even today, Incan buildings survive earthquakes that demolish modern structures. The carefully fitted stones move apart under stress, then slide back together. The Maya, the Aztec, and the Inca were among the first Americans to feel the impact of European exploration in the late 1400s. Although their complex civilizations fell to invaders, the remains of their huge stone temples and public buildings have left an indelible imprint on the imagination of the world. (12) [Map] Hundreds of cultural groups lived in North America in the 1500s. Each had its own form of government, art, and religion. In the map below, color indicates groups with similar styles of living. Compare this map with the map of physical regions on page 7. What conclusions can you draw about the influence of geography on the way people live? (13) [Picture] Plentiful food along the northwest Pacific coast allowed early Americans leisure time to develop their crafts. Blankets that adorned their homes became more than useful objects -- they were works of art. In this Paul Kane painting, one woman weaves cloth while another spins wool into yarn. Weavers used wool from mountain goats as well as white hair from dogs bred especially for their fine coats. (15) [Picture] In this painting, two young Indians of the eastern woodlands play a game while a third watches. The Indians made good use of the natural resources of the eastern woodlands. They stripped bark from birch trees to make sturdy and light canoes, such as those shown in the painting. (17) [Picture] Great warriors and builders, the Aztec excelled in many fields. Tenochtitlan was home to many artisans who worked with gold, silver, and feathers. The artisan at right is crafting a royal headdress, such as the one shown above. The headdress, more than four feet high, once belonged to the last ruler of the Aztec nation. It is a very rare example of this fine art.

 

[1990b] (6-8) 2. Before discovery. If it hadn't been for Columbus, years might have passed before the people of Europe "discovered" America. But it was only for the people of Europe that America had to be "discovered." Millions of Native Americans were already here! For them, Columbus, and all the sailors, explorers, and settlers who came later provided their "discovery" of Europe! For Europeans the "discovery" of America offered vast lands, treasures of gold and silver and timber, places to build cities and places of refuge. For them this was a happy discovery. In the long run it would be a great discovery for the world. But for the millions of Native Americans already here their "discovery" of Europeans was not quite so happy. For some it meant the end of their Native American civilization. For some it meant slavery. For nearly all of them Europeans brought shock, disease, and change. The first people to come to America were the ancestors of those who Columbus by mistake called Indians. No one knows when they came. A widely held theory is that sometime between 35,000 and 11,500 years ago during the last great ice age the first small groups arrived. They were people on the move. They had come from Northern China and Siberia. So much of the sea had frozen into ice that it lowered the water in the Bering Strait. Then as they tracked wild game they could walk across the 56 miles from Siberia to Alaska. Without knowing it, they had discovered two large continents that were completely empty of people but were full of wild game -- huge mastodons and mammoths, giant ground sloths, camels, antelopes, and great long-horned bison. In the thousands of years afterwards many other groups followed. These small bands spread all across North and South America. The high mountains and broad rivers separated the communities. There were hundreds of languages and many different styles of life. Some small bands of people had no fixed homes. They followed their quarry and lived the wandering life of hunters. Others settled down and after centuries built vast kingdoms with flourishing cities, temples and palaces, and lively commerce. Mayas, Incas, and Aztecs. The grandest of these Native American cultures astonished the Europeans. South of the present United States-from central Mexico to Peru-they found the Aztecs, the Mayas, and the Incas. In the mountains, deserts, and rain forests of Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and Mexico the Mayas had built temples and pyramids clustered about broad plazas. We can still climb them. The Mayas invented their own writing. Although they had no telescope, they built their own kind of observatory and made accurate calendars. Their "Indian corn" (maize) had never been seen in Europe. It was originally a wild grass, but would become a staple food for the world. In Peru the Incas had constructed palaces surrounded by high walls, and had connected their mountain-towns with a network of roads. To farm their steep land they had built terraces. Where water was scarce, they had cut canals and erected stone aqueducts to irrigate their crops. The Incas gave us the potato and the tomato. When European explorers came to Peru, they were amazed by the Incan government. They never expected to find such powerful rulers so well organized in the mountain wilderness. The Incas had succeeded even without a system of writing. No Americans were richer. In Cuzco, the mountain capital of the Incan empire, even the buildings were covered with gold! The Aztecs were a warlike people who lived in central Mexico. They were clever architects. Like the Mayas, they too built grand temples and high pyramids. Their capital, where Mexico City is today, was a bustling metropolis. And they fashioned their gold into jewelry so ornate as to make European kings jealous. These peoples had found their own ways of progress -- different from the ways of Europe. They had never invented the wheel. They had no iron tools. Their beasts of burden were the dog and, in Peru, the llama. Unlike the peoples of Europe, they had not built ships to cross the oceans. They had not reached out to the world. In their isolation they found it hard to learn new ways. When the Spanish came, it seemed that the Incas, the Mayas, and the Aztecs had ceased to progress. They were ripe or conquest. North American Indians. Of course there was no census of early America. But in 1500 the people in Mexico probably numbered about 12 million. Farther north in what is now the United States and Canada there were only some 4 million. The great empires of old America-of the Mayas, the Incas, and the Aztecs-were all in Mexico or south. North of Mexico most of the people lived in wandering tribes and led a simple life. North American Indians were mainly hunters and gatherers of wild food. An exceptional few -- in Arizona and New Mexico-settled in one place and became farmers. The most advanced Indians of North America lived in the Southwest. The Anasazi came to be known as Pueblo Indians, after their style of building. A "pueblo" was a kind of apartment several stories tall, built of stone or adobe. The Anasazi also built cliff dwellings where they could defend themselves against enemy tribes. They and their descendants -- the Hopi, Zuni, and Acoma -- made pottery, textiles, and baskets which we still admire. When the Europeans came, the largest population of Indians north of Mexico was in California. They were a tenth of all the Indians in what is now the United States. They and the Indians of the Northwest lived by hunting and fishing and by gathering the plentiful nuts and berries. Before Columbus and the Spanish came to America, there were not many Indians on the Great Plains. They walked for miles in pursuit of the herds of buffalo. The buffalo supplied them with skins to wear, meat to eat-and even (in dried buffalo chips) with fuel for their fires. Their only beast of burden was the dog. There were no horses in America until the Spanish brought them. In the Eastern Woodlands the many tribes were mainly hunter-food gatherers, but they also did some farming. Some of them had joined in their own small version of a United Nations. Five tribes of Huron-Iroquois-speaking people-the Mohawk, Seneca, Oneida, Onondaga, and Cayuga -- in upper New York State formed the Iroquois League. The council of chiefs who governed the league was chosen by certain women of high station. The council had no power to make war but planned defense. The powerful Chief Powhatan formed his own league (in Virginia), and there were others. Down south in Mississippi the Natchez Indians seemed more like the Mexican Indians. Mainly farmers, they were divided into nobles and commoners, and were ruled by a man they called the Great Sun. The Indians of North America were as varied as the peoples of Europe. There were countless tribes and hundreds of languages. Some tribes made elegant gold jewelry, but others were still in the Stone Age. Some wove handsome rugs and wore textiles of beautiful design. Others knew only skins and furs. Their meat depended on the place. Deer were nearly everywhere, and on the plains were herds of buffalo. The seashores and streams abounded in fish and shell food. The Indians planted corn, which made their bread, and beans, squashes and many other crops. They knew where to find, and how to enjoy, the nuts and berries and mushrooms and other delights of the woods. They raised and smoked tobacco. Because the Indians lived so close to nature, most of them had religions in which natural things played a major role. The Indians saw and worshiped Nature. They had learned to know the stones, the animals, and the plants. They were adept at using what they found for food, shelter, and clothing.

 

[1990c] (20-5) The Earliest Americans, 30,000 B.C. - A.D. 1492. Origins of the Native Americans. A Flight Toward the Rising Sun. Fear of enemies behind them drove Omuk the Leader and his small band along. Out of the fog these enemies had come 2 days earlier. They were men and women dressed in furs, looking much like the people Omuk led. There were at least 100 of these enemies. But Omuk's band had no more than 20 fit fighters. Omuk and his people had fled. The enemies had not followed for long. But they had taken over the good hunting grounds that Omuk and his followers had enjoyed. Now Omuk must find food for his people, or else they all would die. The flight had led the band away from familiar landmarks. Now Omuk the Leader was lost. He kept the open water to the side of him as he moved on. Always he moved in the direction of the rising sun. Omuk and his band may have been the first people to enter America. We do not know that there was really a man named Omuk. But we do know there were people like Omuk in prehistoric times that is, in those early years before there were written records. Archaeologists (ar ke ol' o jists) say that the flight of this prehistoric band of people might well have taken place. Archaeologists study objects, ruins, and other evidence of human life in the past. A Land Bridge from Asia. Omuk the Leader and others like him lived at a time known as the Ice Age. Huge sheets of ice called glaciers had pushed down from the north to cover much of North America. Beneath the ice a narrow strip of land connected Siberia, in Asia, and Alaska, in North America. As the Ice Age ended, the glaciers melted. In time, the water from the melting ice covered the land bridge. Today the land that Omuk and his band walked on is covered by the waters of the Bering Strait, which separates Siberia and Alaska. Most scholars today accept the idea that the first people in America came across the land bridge from Asia. But there are other ideas advanced by some. Some Other Explanations. Some people believe that these first people in America were descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel. Others believe that America's earliest inhabitants were related to ancient Egyptians or Greeks or perhaps to the Phoenicians or Romans. Some think that the first Americans crossed the Atlantic by way of a lost continent called Atlantis. It may be, some have said, that the ancestors of the American Indians were from Wales or Ireland and were blown in their boats to North America by an Atlantic storm. Still others think that the first Americans crossed the Pacific Ocean by boat or raft from China, Japan, or the islands of Polynesia (pol o ne' zhe). There is indeed some physical evidence that they did come from an Asian land, whether by boat, by raft, or by the land bridge. Physical Evidence. The American Indians are of the Mongoloid race. So are the people of China. The American Indians and the people of China differ in many ways. Yet in some ways they are much alike. Most Indians have a fold of skin along the inner edge of their eyes. So do Asiatic people of the Mongoloid race. This fold probably developed over thousands of years, passed along from generation to generation. Such a physical characteristic would help the people having it to survive the harsh climate. Certainly it would have helped Omuk as he narrowed his eyes to peer into the fog and snow along the Ice Age bridge. Babies of the first Americans probably had a bluish-black spot on the lower back. Many American Indian babies are born with this spot. The spot tends to disappear when they grow older. The same thing happens to the spot that marks most of the children of eastern Asia. The mark is called the Mongoloid spot. American Indians vary in appearance. However, many have straight black hair on their heads but little hair on the rest of their bodies. Many have dark brown eyes and reddish or brownish-red skin. These are physical characteristics of the Mongoloid race. Indian and Chinese babies often resemble each other. This may be one more indication that the ancestors of the American Indians came from Asia. Life in the Ice Age. Omuk and his Ice Age descendants lived by hunting. They hunted animals that are now extinct that is, they hunted kinds of animals that have died out. Among them were ancient bison and huge elephantlike animals called mammoths. No doubt the lives of these first Americans were harsh and short. (See the picture on page 21) Still the number of people increased. The first group to come across the land bridge was followed by others. However, the main increase in population came from the children born in the new land. Though many died young, enough lived to populate hundreds of places. Moving Southward. Omuk's people and their descendants roamed from place to place, depending on the climate and food supply. Slowly they spread eastward and southward into the Yukon River valley, away from the coast. They moved southward from Alaska into western Canada. Finally they reached lands the glaciers had left uncovered. As time passed, some small bands joined together and formed larger groups called tribes. By the time the Ice Age ended, these early Americans had reached at least as far as present-day New Mexico. How do we know this? We know it partly through a find made by a black cowhand on a ranch in northeastern New Mexico. His name was George McJunkin. The Mysterious Buried Bones. One day in the spring of 1926, George McJunkin was following the trail of some missing cows. The trail led him along the edge of Dead Horse Gulch. McJunkin saw some bones sticking out of the mud on the side of the gulch. Being a curious person, he got off his horse to take a closer look at the bones. The bones were about the size of cow bones and buried 20 feet (6 m) below the surface. This seemed strange to McJunkin. Even stranger was the flint spearhead he pried from a bone with his cattle knife. It had a groove, or channel, on each side and was different from any other spearhead that George McJunkin had ever seen. Why, he asked himself, were the animal bones and the flint spearhead buried so deep? This also seemed strange to the people whom McJunkin told of his discovery. As the news spread, an expert on animal bones came to have a look. He found that the bones belonged to a kind of bison that had lived in North America during the last years of the Ice Age. The spearhead proved that human beings were living in New Mexico thousands of years ago. Bones of other ancient bison were dug up at the site of McJunkin's discovery. Several more flint spearheads were found. These discoveries were all made near the town of Folsom, so whoever made the spearhead and killed the bison came to be known as the Folsom man. No human bones were found at the site of McJunkin's discovery. Scholars guessed that the bison bones might have come from a single hunt. Perhaps a herd of the ancient bison drank from a pool or lake that no longer exists. The Folsom people might have surprised the bison, killing them on the spot. They might then have cut up the dead animals and carried the meat back to their campsite. This would explain the absence of human bones near the bison bones. How Long in America? How long have people been in America? Geologists (je ol' o jists) are scientists who learn about the earth and its history mostly through the study of rocks. They are able to tell much about the Ice Age but nothing that helps a great deal in dating the time that Omuk and his people crossed the land bridge from Asia. Nor are they able to give more than a very rough estimate of the time when the Folsom people lived. Counting tree rings on the ends of logs or the stumps of trees is one way of time dating. Each tree ring shows a year's growth. Another method is counting the layers of soil or gravel laid down at the bottom of what was once a glacial lake. The most accurate method of time dating, however, makes use of what scientists have discovered about living matter and radioactivity. Radioactivity is caused when atoms change and give off energy. Carbon Dating. Scientists have discovered that all living things have a radioactive substance called carbon 14. In living matter the amount of carbon 14 is always the same. But when a living thing dies, the carbon 14 in it decreases at a fixed rate. Think of a kettle of water boiling dry as the water evaporates. This is much like the way once-living matter gives off radiation. It is known that a pound of carbon 14 will be reduced by radioactivity to half a pound in 5,568 years. In another 5,568 years it will weigh only a quarter of a pound. Even then it will continue to throw off radiation. Delicate instruments can measure the amount of carbon 14 in anything that has been alive. By carbon dating we know that the bison at Dead Horse Gulch died about 10,000 years ago. In Sandia Cave, near Albuquerque, New Mexico, hunters left the bones of ancient camels, mastodons, and small horses. All these animals have long been extinct. But by using carbon 14 dating, we find that hunters killed the camels, mastodons, and small horses about 25,000 years ago. No one has ever found conclusive evidence of the date when the first people crossed the Ice Age land bridge from Asia. Probably no one ever will. Nevertheless, that crossing must have been made more than 25,000 years ago according to the evidence found in Sandia Cave. Other finds have pushed the date back even further. For example, mammoth bones found on Santa Rosa Island, off the coast of California, date back about 30,000 years. The southward journey of the Ice Age people did not stop in New Mexico or California. They pushed on into Mexico and South America. In fact, there is proof that humans lived in Fell's Cave, near the southern tip of South America, from 8,000 to 10,000 years ago. If prehistoric people had spread so far across the American continents by that time, their date of entry must have been very early indeed.

 

[1990d] (6-11) Over a long lifetime, Opechancanough painfully experienced the meeting of people from three continents. His land was one of many that would be penetrated by Europeans over the next three centuries, as Christian civilization girdled the globe. On the Chesapeake Bay, this clash of cultures formed the opening chapter of what we know as American history. That history, in turn, was one scene in a much broader drama of European colonization and exploitation of many indigenous cultures thousands of miles from the Old World. The nature of this violent intermingling of Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans is an essential part of early American history. But to understand how the destinies of red, white, and black people became intertwined in Opechancanough's land, we must look at the precontact history and cultural foundations of life in the homelands of each of them. THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA BEFORE COLUMBUS. Thousands of years before the European voyages of discovery, the history of humankind in North America began. Nomadic bands from Siberia, hunting big game animals such as bison, caribou, and reindeer, began to migrate across a land bridge connecting northeastern Asia with Alaska. Geologists believe that this land bridge existed most recently between 28,000 and 12,000 years ago, when massive glaciers locked up much of the earth's moisture and left part of the Bering Sea floor exposed. Ice-free passage through Canada was possible only briefly at the beginning and end of this period, however. At other times melting glaciers flooded the land bridge and blocked foot traffic to Alaska. Paleo-anthropologists remain divided on the exact timing, but the main migration apparently occurred either about 12,000 to 14,000 or 25,000 to 28,000 years ago. Hunters and Farmers. For thousands of years, these early hunters trekked southward and eastward, following vegetation and game. In time, they reached the tip of South America and the eastern edge of North America, thousands of miles from their Asian homeland. Thus did people from the "Old World" discover the "New World" thousands of years before Columbus. Archaeologists have excavated ancient sites of early life in the Americas, unearthing tools, ornaments, and skeletal remains that can be scientifically dated. In this way they have tentatively reconstructed the dispersion of these first Americans over an immense landmass. Although much remains unknown, this archaeological evidence suggests that as centuries passed and population increased, the earliest inhabitants evolved into separate cultures, organizing life and adjusting to a variety of environments in distinct ways. Europeans who rediscovered the New World thousands of years later would indiscriminately lump together the myriad societies they found. But by the 1500s, the "Indians" of the Americas were enormously diverse in the size and complexity of their societies, the languages they spoke, and their forms of social organization. Archaeologists and anthropologists have charted several phases of "Native American" history. A long Beringian epoch ended about 14,000 years ago. From that time a rich archaeological record indicates that the hunters had developed a new technology. Big game hunters now flaked hard stones into spear points and chose "kill sites" where they slew whole herds of Pleistocene mammals. This more reliable food source allowed population growth, and nomadism began to give way to settled habitations or local migration within limited territories. In another phase of evolution, the Archaic era, from about 10,000 to 2,500 years ago, great geological changes brought further adaptations to the land. As the massive glaciers of the Ice Age slowly retreated, a warming trend deprived vast areas from Utah to the highlands of Central America of sufficient water and turned them from grasslands into desert. The Pleistocene mammals could not survive more arid conditions, but human populations ably adapted. They learned to exploit new sources of food, especially plant life. In time a second technological breakthrough, the "agricultural revolution," occurred. When Native Americans learned to "domesticate" plant life, they began the long process of transforming their relationship to the physical world. To learn how to harvest, plant, and nurture a seed was to gain partial control over natural forces that before had been ungovernable. Anthropologists believe that this process began independently in widely separated parts of the world-Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas-about 7,000 to 9,000 years ago. Though agriculture developed very slowly, everywhere it eventually brought dramatic changes in human societies. Over the millennia, humans progressed from doorside planting of a few wild seeds to systematic clearing and planting of bean and maize fields. As the production of domesticated plant food ended dependence on gathering wild plants and pursuing game, sedentary village life began to replace nomadic existence. The increase in food supply brought about by agriculture triggered other major changes. As populations grew, large groups split off to form separate societies. Greater social and political complexity developed because not everyone was needed as before to secure the society's food supply. Men cleared the land and hunted game, while women planted, cultivated, and harvested crops. Many societies empowered religious figures, who organized the common followers, directed their work, and exacted tribute as well as worship from them. In return they were trusted to protect the community from hostile forces. Everywhere in the Americas, regional trading networks formed. Along trade routes carrying commodities such as salt, obsidian rock for projectile points, and copper for jewelry also traveled technology, religious ideas, and agricultural practices. By the end of the Archaic period, about 500 B.C. (to use the Christian European method of dating), hundreds of independent, kin-based groups, like people in other parts of the world, had learned to exploit the resources of their particular area and to trade with other groups in their region. Native Americans in 1600. The last epoch of pre-Columbian development, the post-Archaic phase, occurred during the 2,000 years before contact with Europeans. It involved a complex process of growth and environmental adaptation among many distinct societies-and crisis in some of them. In the American Southwest, for example, the ancestors of the present-day Hopi and Zuni developed carefully planned villages composed of large terraced buildings, each with many rooms. By the time the Spanish arrived in the 1540s, the indigenous Pueblo people were using irrigation canals, check dams, and hillside terracing to bring water to their arid maize fields. In their agricultural techniques, their skill in ceramics, their use of woven textiles for clothing, and their village life, Pueblo society resembled that of peasant communities in many parts of Europe and Asia. Far to the east were the mound-building societies of the Mississippi and Ohio valleys. When European settlers first crossed the Appalachian Mountains a century and a half after arriving on the continent, they were amazed to find hundreds of ceremonial mounds, some of them 70 feet high, and gigantic sculptured earthworks in geometric designs or in the shapes of huge humans, birds, or writhing serpents. Believing all "Indians" to be forest primitives, they reasoned that these were the remains of an ancient civilization that had found its way to North America-perhaps Phoenicians, survivors of the sunken islands of Atlantis, or the Lost Tribes of Israel spoken of in European mythology. The mound-building societies of the Ohio valley declined about 1,000 years before Europeans reached the continent, perhaps because of attacks from other tribes or severe climatic changes that undermined agriculture. Several centuries later, another culture, based on intensive cultivation of beans, maize, and squash, began to flourish in the Mississippi valley. Its center, a city of perhaps 40,000, stood near present-day St. Louis. Great ceremonial plazas, flanked by a temple that rose in four terraces to a height of 100 feet, marked this first metropolis in America. This was the urban center of a far-flung "Mississippi" culture that radiated out to encompass thousands of villages from Wisconsin to Louisiana and from Oklahoma to Tennessee. Several centuries before Europeans arrived in North America, the mound-building cultures of the continental heartlands began to decline. But their influence had already passed eastward to transform the woodlands societies along the Atlantic coastal plain. The numerous small tribes that settled from Nova Scotia to Florida never equaled the larger societies of the mid-continent in earthwork sculpture, architectural design, or development of large-scale agriculture. But they were far from the "savages" that the first European explorers described. They had added limited agriculture to their skill in exploiting natural plants for food, medicine, dyes, and flavoring and had developed food procurement strategies that used all the resources around them -- cleared land, forests, streams, shore, and ocean. Most of the eastern woodlands tribes lived in waterside villages. Locating their fields of maize near fishing grounds, they often migrated seasonally between inland and coastal village sites or situated themselves astride two ecological zones. In the Northeast, their birchbark canoes, light enough to be carried by a single man, gave them a means of trading and communicating over immense territories. In the Southeast, population was denser and social and political organization more elaborate. As European exploration of the Americas drew near, the continent north of the Rio Grande contained perhaps 4 million people, of whom perhaps 500,000 lived along the eastern coastal plain and in the piedmont region accessible to the early European settlers. The colonizers were not coming to a "virgin wilderness," as they often described it, but to a land inhabited for thousands of years by people whose village existence in many ways resembled that of the arriving Europeans. Contrasting World Views. Colonizing Europeans called themselves "civilized" and typically described the people they met in the Americas as "savage," "heathen " or "barbarian." But the gulf separating people in Europe and North America was not defined so much by how the two cultures extracted a food supply from the land, housed themselves, or organized family life as by how they viewed their relationship to the environment and defined social relations in their communities. In these areas, a wide difference in values existed. This created the potential for a dangerous conflict once the Atlantic Ocean that had separated two ancient civilizations had been transformed from a barrier to a bridge by a technological and scientific leap forward by western Europeans in the fifteenth century. In the view of Europeans, the natural world was a resource designed for man's use. "Subdue the earth," read the first book of the Old Testament, "and have dominion over every living thing that moves on the earth." God ruled the cosmos, bringing floods, droughts, and earthquakes, but humans could reshape their physical surroundings into a productive and secure world. Man's relationship to the natural environment was a secular matter, even if God, in the sacred sphere, sometimes intervened. Native Americans, in contrast, were "a people that are contented with Nature as they find her," as one colonist phrased it. In their ethos, every part of the natural environment was sacred. Rocks, trees, and animals all possessed spiritual power, and all were linked to form a sacred whole. To injure the environment, by overfishing or abusing it in any way, was to offend the spiritual power present throughout nature and hence to risk spiritual retaliation. In the villages of Europe, peasant people had similarly believed in spirits residing in trees and rocks, but such "superstition" was fading. Regarding the soil as a resource to be exploited for man's benefit, Europeans believed that land should be privately possessed. Individual ownership of property became a fundamental concept, and an extensive institutional apparatus grew up to support it. Fences symbolized private property, inheritance became the mechanism for transmitting land from one generation to another within the same family, and courts gained the power to settle property disputes. Property was the basis not only of sustenance but also of independence, material wealth, political status, and personal identity. The social structure directly mirrored patterns of land ownership, with a land-wealthy elite at the apex of the social pyramid and a mass of propertyless individuals forming the broad base. Native Americans also had concepts of property, and tribes recognized territorial boundaries. But they believed that land was invested with sacred qualities and should be held in common. As one German missionary to the Delaware Indians explained their view in the eighteenth century, the Creator "made the Earth and all that it contains for the common good of mankind. Whatever liveth on the land, whatsoever groweth out of the earth, and all that is in the rivers and waters . . . was given jointly to all and everyone is entitled to his share." Communal ownership sharply limited social stratification in most tribal communities. Accustomed to wide disparities of wealth, Europeans often found this remarkable. Observing the Iroquois of the eastern woodlands in 1657, a French Jesuit noted with surprise that they had no almshouses because "their kindness, humanity and courtesy not only makes them liberal with what they have, but causes them to possess hardly anything except in common. A whole village must be without corn, before any individual can be obliged to endure privation." Not all Europeans were acquisitive, competitive individuals. The majority were peasants scratching a subsistence living from the soil, living in kin-centered villages with little contact with the outside world, and exchanging goods and labor through barter. But in Europe's urban centers a wealth-conscious, striving individual who celebrated wider choices and greater opportunities to enhance personal status was coming to the fore. In contrast, Native American traditions stressed the group rather than the individual. Holding land and other resources in common, Indian societies were usually more egalitarian and their members more concerned with personal valor than personal wealth. Exceptions to this cultural system occurred in the highly developed and populous Aztec and Inca empires and, in North America, among a few tribes such as the Natchez. But on the eastern and western coasts of the continent and in the Southwest-the regions of contact in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries-the European newcomers encountered a people whose cultural values differed strikingly from theirs. European colonizers in North America also found disturbing the matrilineal organization of many tribal societies. Contrary to European practice, family membership among the Iroquois, for example, was determined through the female line. A typical family consisted of an old woman, her daughters with their husbands and children, and her unmarried granddaughters and grandsons. When a son or grandson married, he moved from this female-headed household to one headed by the matriarch of his wife's family. Divorce was also the woman's prerogative. If she desired it, she merely set her husband's possessions outside their dwelling door. Clans were composed of several matrilineal kin groups related by a blood connection on the mother's side. To Europeans this was a peculiar and dangerous reversal of their sexual hierarchy in which men, from time immemorial, had been supreme. In Native American societies, women also held subordinate positions, but not nearly to the extent as among European women. For example, European women, with rare exceptions, were entirely excluded from political affairs. By contrast, in Native American villages, again to take the Iroquois example, designated men sat in a circle to deliberate and make decisions, but the senior women of the village stood behind them, lobbying and instructing. The village chiefs were male, but they were named to their positions by the elder women of their clans. If they moved too far from the will of the women who appointed them, these chiefs were removed -- or "dehorned." The role of women in the tribal economy reinforced the sharing of power between male and female. Men were responsible for hunting, fishing, and clearing land, but women controlled the cultivation, harvest, and distribution of food. When the men were away on hunting expeditions, women directed village life. Europeans, imbued with the idea of male superiority and female subordination, perceived such a degree of sexual equality as another mark of the uncivilized nature of tribal society. In the religious beliefs of Native Americans, the English saw a final cultural defect. Europeans built their religious life around the belief in a single god, written scriptures, an organized clergy, and churches. Most Native American societies, sharing no literary tradition, expressed their religious beliefs in a less structured way. Animated by a belief in a spirit power dwelling throughout nature (polytheism), they seemed to Europeans to worship the devil. European settlers, their fear and hatred of infidels intensified by the Protestant Reformation, saw a holy necessity to convert-or destroy-these enemies of their God.

 

[1990e] (162-3) Native American cultures developed over many centuries. When Christopher Columbus reached the Caribbean islands at the end of the 15th century, he was under the impression that he had landed in the Indies in Asia. As a result, he mistakenly called the people he met "Indians." The lands and people he reached, however, were not a part of the "Old World," as Columbus had expected. Instead, Columbus had landed in a "New World" that had experienced a long and complex history of its own. As you read in the chapter introduction, we know very little of this history because most of the Native American cultures were destroyed or greatly weakened by contact with Europeans. For example, Spanish conquerors killed many of the Indian leaders, tore down their temples, and burned their books because they were convinced that the idols and writings of the Indians were works of the devil. As a result, very few Indian writings survived. From these few remaining texts and from the often sketchy accounts of Indian life written by European conquerors has come much of our knowledge of 16th-century American cultures. For the earlier periods, archaeologists are limited to studying the many artifacts left by early cultures. Of course, archaeologists, in their continuing study of the region, are still uncovering previously unknown artifacts. In the process our knowledge of ancient American cultures is constantly being expanded and revised. The first North Americans probably came from Asia. Most scientists now believe the Americas were peopled by nomads who crossed a land bridge between Alaska and northeastern Asia between 40,000 and 20,000 years ago. These people followed the migrations of herds of wild animals. At that time the Ice Age had caused much of the earth's water to be locked up in glaciers. As a result, waters had receded from the Bering Strait -- the narrow strip of water that now separates North America from Asia near the Arctic Ocean. The land beneath the waters of the Bering Strait was exposed above water, providing a pathway for travel. Throughout the next thousands of years, many separate migrations of peoples are believed to have crossed over the strait into the Americas. The prehistoric people of the Americas had a paleolithic culture. They used stone tools, wore skin clothing, and hunted with domesticated dogs. Most of these early Americans lived simply as hunters or gatherers. During the centuries before the coming of the Europeans, descendants of these people settled all throughout the Americas, from the Alaskan peninsula in the north to the tip of South America. Most evidence indicates that the American Indians were isolated from the civilizations of the Old World. A few researchers believe that some daring seafarers crossed the Pacific or Atlantic oceans to reach America centuries before the Vikings or Columbus. Most scholars believe, however, that the Indians developed their cultures independently. They maintain that the presence of similar inventions in the Eastern and Western hemispheres indicate only that peoples often hit upon similar ideas when they face the same problems. The development of farming changed North American life. Perhaps as early as 7000 B.C., some Americans learned to grow crops. As time passed, the people developed new varieties of plant life. The most important of these new crops was corn, which was developed about 3000 B.C. in Mexico. Corn became as important in the Western Hemisphere as wheat was in the Eastern Hemisphere. The development of farming allowed people in the Americas, as it had in the Middle East, to settle in communities, to develop such skills as weaving and pottery making, and to set up a division of labor. These skills spread slowly throughout the Americas. As people all around the world have done, the people of North America learned to live with the conditions of their natural environment. Since the climate and geography of the huge North American continent are so varied, people in different parts of the continent developed different cultures. Hundreds of distinct groups developed over the centuries, with different physical characteristics, different languages, and different customs. The way of life a group followed depended heavily on the land and other available resources, such as food, water, and shelter. One group, the Inuit [in'u it], is an example of a people living in an extremely cold environment. As you can see from the map on page 341, the Inuit lived in the frozen lands of the extreme north. The short growing season in this northern region prevented the Inuit from growing crops. Instead, the people fished and hunted for food, particularly walrus, whales, seals, small fish, and caribou. They used the bone and ivory of some of these animals to make tools such as needles, knives, fishhooks, and harpoons, and with the skins they made clothing and tents. The Inuit also built houses, called igloos, out of snow and ice. They lived in small family groups since the resources of the extreme north were not great enough to support a large, centralized population. As a result, the Inuit never needed to develop a form of central government. (341-2) North America supported a variety of cultures. As you learned in Chapter 9, the peoples of North America were a diverse mix of cultures and life-styles. By the 15th century, Indian groups dominated the coasts, woodlands, and plains. Indians adapted their lives to their resources. In a heavily forested area that reached from southern Alaska to the present state of Washington lived the North Pacific Coast Indians. They hunted and fished for food, gathering wild berries from the forest as well. These Indians lived in villages and used the plentiful resources of their forested territory to build wooden houses. The people of the North Pacific groups were divided into nobles, common people, and slaves, whom they captured from other groups. One important custom of the nobles, the people of the highest status, was a ceremony called "potlatch." On special occasions, particularly those marking events in their children's lives -- such as the day a daughter gathered her first berries -- noble families would hold a potlatch. This ceremony would include an elaborate feast put on by the family. At the feast, the family would give away its most prized and beautiful possessions because these Indians considered giving to be a greater virtue than receiving. In the eastern part of the continent, in the northeast woodlands, the Indians were not only hunters but also farmers. These Woodland Indians lived in villages and built long, dome-shaped houses called wigwams, which were made out of poles covered with bark and skins. Around the year 1400, five Iroquois groups joined together to form a confederation called the Five Nations. Through this political organization, the five groups acted together on matters of common interest. Rivalry among the groups was strong and frequently erupted in war, but the union remained quite powerful into the 1700s. Some historians believe that this league may have influenced the political design of the confederation of states that later became the United States of America. In the river valleys of central North America, most of the Indians were farmers until the 1600s. At this time, when the Spanish brought horses to America, some Indians, such as the Sioux and the Cheyenne, became buffalo hunters. Pueblo Indians were peaceful farmers. One of the oldest and most complex cultures north of the Rio Grande was that of the Pueblo, an Indian group that lived in what is now the southwestern United States. The Pueblo used adobe to build several-storied houses that have been called the first American apartment buildings. These adobe houses were grouped into villages. Within the village, the people chose their own chiefs. Pueblo Indians were master farmers who developed a system of irrigation canals. Their main crop was corn, but they also gathered seeds and berries. As a safeguard against drought, each family built up a supply of food that was held in reserve. In addition, the Pueblo Indians produced excellent pottery, finely woven cotton cloth, and baskets. Pueblo Indians, a group that included the Hopi and Zufii, were peaceful people. They rarely fought wars, and then only when necessary for survival. An example of their peaceful nature is a long cleansing ritual, intended to get rid of their "madness," in which warriors returning from battle had to participate. The religion of the Pueblo Indians taught that people should live in harmony with nature, that they should respect the life of others and the traditions of the past, and that they should do things in moderation. Native Americans made many enduring contributions. All Native American peoples, even those without writing, had literature. It was passed on by word of mouth from generation to generation. Most of the literature took the form of poetry and often expressed religious ideas or group traditions. In arts and crafts, Indians produced beautiful baskets, weaving, embroidery, metalwork, painting, sculpture, and architecture. Indians also made fine pottery, especially in what is now the southwestern United States. Indians also are credited with many inventions and discoveries still in use today. They invented the snowshoe, toboggan, and canoe. In medicine, they first used quinine, cocaine, and the bulb syringe. They first discovered the properties of rubber, developed adobe for building, and invented the game of lacrosse. Indian ingenuity also provided such technical contributions as cochineal [koch'e nel'] dye, a red dye made from the dried bodies of an insect, and henequen [hen'e kin], a fiber from the leaves of a desert plant used for making rope. The most important contributions of the early peoples of the Americas, however, were in the field of agriculture. Although most of the early Europeans who conquered the Indians had eyes only for the gold and silver they could carry home, it was the humble farm products they took back that made the most lasting impression on world civilization. The Indians were the first to grow corn, potatoes, tomatoes, squash, pumpkins, avocados, and several kinds of beans. From them other peoples of the world also learned about pineapples, strawberries, vanilla, cinnamon, tapioca, and chocolate. Indians were also the first to make maple sugar and to develop chicle [chik'el], the main ingredient in chewing gum. All these products greatly increased the quantity and variety of the food supply in Europe and Africa. In Ireland and much of northern Europe, for example, the white potato became a major food crop. (See the "Mystery in History" in Chapter 22 for more details.) When Europeans began settling in the New World, it was these foods, as well as the farming techniques that the Indians taught them, that made it possible for the European colonists to survive and flourish.

 

[1991]   (3-6) CHAPTER 1. The First Americans (Beginnings-1500). 1 Peopling the Americas. Section Focus. Key Terms: anthropologist, archeologist, artifact, Paleo-Indian, hunter-gatherer, domestication, cultural diffusion. Main Idea: People first arrived in the Americas many thousands of years ago, developing ways of life as varied as the landscapes they encountered. Objectives: As you read, look for answers to these questions: 1. How did the peopling of the Americas take place? 2. What was the cultural significance of the rise of agriculture? An early scholar to think seriously about the origin of the Indians was Thomas Jefferson. The man who would become the third President of the United States had a consuming interest in all things far and near, past and present. Where, he asked two centuries ago, did America's native people come from? Jefferson speculated that the eastern inhabitants of Asia had passed into America across the Bering Strait. The proof, he said, would be found in the study of languages. But no one 200 years ago, or even 100 years ago, had the evidence to prove Jefferson right or wrong. Today scientists have proof. Studies of languages, of blood types, of teeth, of bones, even of climate, all point to the answer. Jefferson was right. STUDYING THE INDIANS. In 1492, when Christopher Columbus first met the inhabitants of the Caribbean island of San Salvador, he did not wonder about their origin. He thought he knew. Believing he had reached the Indies, the fabled spice islands of Asia, Columbus called the people Indians. The Indians, Columbus reported, were a simple people who would make good servants and who would benefit from Christianity, for he thought they had no religion. Columbus, in short, assumed that Europeans were superior to the Indians. For centuries, arriving Europeans would share this assumption. Not until this century have people recognized the achievements of the Native Americans. Much of the groundwork has been done by anthropologists and archeologists. Anthropologists study human culture and development, both ancient and modern. Archeologists study artifacts -- human-made objects such as tools and pottery -- to learn about the past. They often work closely with other experts such as art historians, botanists, geologists, and linguists. Through their efforts a history of pre-Columbian (before Columbus) America is emerging. THE PALEO-INDIANS. During the last Ice Age massive glaciers locked up so much water that the ocean level dropped. When that happened the Bering Strait between Asia and North America became dry land, a grassy "bridge" 1,000 miles wide between the two continents. The first humans in the Americas were probably hunters who wandered across the land bridge following herds of animals. It is hard to say precisely when the first Paleo-Indians arrived here from Asia. (Paleo comes from a Greek word meaning "old.") Some came as early as 20,000 or even 40,000 years ago. Most, however, moved into North America about 12,000 years ago. At the height of the Ice Age the Paleo-Indians could go no farther than western Alaska, for walls of ice blocked their way. But about 12,000 years ago the climate began to warm up. As the glaciers started melting, great grassy corridors opened up between the mountains of ice. Bands of hunters migrated south through these corridors. In recent years scientists have learned much about Indian migration from the study of teeth. The precise form of human teeth changes little from generation to generation. Therefore, scientists have compared the teeth of Asian people and of American Indians. Using dental evidence, scientists have traced the movement of peoples all the way from southeast Asia around the Pacific Basin to southern Chile. The waves of immigrants were not all the same. They spoke different languages and varied physically. In general, however, they shared certain traits. Their hair was black and straight. They had little facial or body hair. And their skin color ranged from yellowish brown to light copper. As the Paleo-Indians moved south, they found a lush land that supported abundant game. On the whole, rains were heavier than now. The Paleo-Indians survived primarily by hunting large game -- such as woolly mammoths -- that gathered at water holes or springs. These animals provided them with food and with skins for clothing. The Paleo-Indians used tools and weapons made of stone and bone. Some of these artifacts have been found in grave sites. We can infer from this fact that the Paleo-Indians believed in an afterlife. HUNTINO AND GATHERING. As the climate warmed up, North America became drier. Within 2,000 years, the huge game animals became extinct. No one knows why for certain. Perhaps the Paleo-Indians killed them all off. Or maybe the climate changed so quickly that the large animals could not adapt. Whatever happened, about 10,000 years ago the Paleo-Indians had to change their way of life to survive. Instead of depending on the meat of the giant mammoth, they had to learn to hunt smaller animals like deer. Their tools thus changed from huge throwing spears to small spears, and finally to the bow and arrow. In adapting to a new environment, the Indians broadened their food-gathering patterns. Some came to depend on shellfish. Others became skilled at weaving nets to catch fish. People began to dig roots and gather berries, fruits, nuts, and grass seeds. Among their artifacts are digging sticks, baskets, fish hooks, and stone mortars for grinding seeds. Such people who depend for food on the wild plants and animals of their environment are called , hunter-gatherers. THE RISE OF AGRICULTURE Successful hunter-gatherers learned from observation. A woman collecting grass seeds, for instance, would have recognized that seeds germinate and grow in moist and fertile soil. From that recognition it was but one step to sowing seeds. Peoples the world over chose to take that step. About 10,000 years ago agriculture began in the river valleys of the Near East with the domestication of both plants and animals. (Domestication is breeding plants or animals to meet specific human needs, such as food and transportation.) People of the Near East domesticated the wild grasses that became wheat and barley. The first animal they domesticated was the nimble and hardy goat. By 5,000 years ago people had begun to cultivate rice in southern China. At about the same time, people in central Mexico began to sow the seeds of wild corn. The cobs of this wild corn were tiny, about the size of a strawberry. Through selective breeding, the Indian farmers developed a corn cob like the one today. The domesticated corn had a closed husk that prevented birds from eating the kernels. Dried, the corn would last months and even years. The domestication of corn thus meant a more stable food supply. Throughout these centuries the Indians were learning from each other. This process of influencing and being influenced by neighboring peoples is called cultural diffusion. Thus, although corn was first developed in central Mexico, its cultivation spread south to Peru and north to what is now the United States. In time the Indians would domesticate more than 100 plants. In Mexico people learned to cultivate pumpkins, peppers, beans, and tomatoes. Indians in Peru domesticated gourds, lima beans, and potatoes. Other domestic plants once unique to the Western Hemisphere include pineapple, bananas, peanuts, tobacco, and cacao. (2) The first Americans migrated to the Western Hemisphere from Asia. This copper profile of a human head, which comes from the Caddoan culture if present-day Oklahoma is more than 500 years old. (4) [Pictures] A modern-day artisan shows how Paleo-Indians made spear points 10,000 years ago. Using stone and bone tools, skilled workers created the points from chunks of flint. They made a groove in the point so it could be tied to a shaft. TECHNOLOGY: Judging from the size of the finished points, what animals might have been hunted with them? (5) [Picture] By studying artifacts, scientists have been able to reconstruct ancient settlements. This model shows what a Paleo-Indian settlement in the American Southwest might have looked like. TECHNOLOGY: Name some of the items in the picture that the Indians created themselves by hand. What kinds of materials did they ,use? Where did the materials probably come from? [Picture] BIOGRAPHY. LUCY M. LEWIS (1900?- ) is a Native American potter from New Mexico. Lewis follows a pottery-making tradition that is more than 1,000 years old. She is one of the few Acoma Indians who still dig their own clay, work it by hand, and fire it using dried cow dung for fuel. Here she coils clay to make a pot. The Acoma believe that creating pottery is a spiritual process. Lewis says, "I mix my clay with me." The development of agriculture produced revolutionary changes in the way people lived. Agricultural peoples, unlike hunter-gatherers, did not have to move constantly in search of food. Thus they could stay in one place, building permanent settlements. They also had more leisure time, since farming allowed people to build up stocks of food. Because they had increased leisure time, individuals could draw on their creative energy to develop specialized skills and talents. Arts and crafts flourished. Living in settled communities, people could afford to own more possessions. As societies became more complex -- larger, wealthier, more densely populated -- systems of government became more complex as well. (6-12) 2 Ancient Indian Cultures. Section Focus. Key Terms: civilization, Mesoamerica, Olmec, glyphic writing, Maya, Aztec, tribute, Inca, Hohokam, Anasazi, Hopewell culture, Mississippian culture. Main Idea: Highly advanced Indian societies developed in Middle America and Peru. Indian cultures of North America included the agricultural societies of the Southwest and the mound builders of the Eastern Woodlands. Objectives: As you read, look for answers to these questions: 1. How did great Indian civilizations develop in Middle America and Peru? 2. What ways of life did the Hohokam and Anasazi introduce to the Southwest? 3. What kinds of societies did Indians of the Eastern Woodlands develop? From an agricultural base, the Indian societies of Middle America and Peru developed distinct and highly developed cultures, or civilizations. That is, they had complex political, social, religious, and economic institutions. Their massive public works are witness to their mathematical knowledge, organizational skill, and religious devotion. MESOAMERICAN CIVILIZATION. The first Indian civilization in the Western Hemisphere developed in Mesoamerica, or Middle America. The "waist" of the Western Hemisphere, this tropical region extends from central Mexico in the north to Panama in the south. It was here that corn was first domesticated. The "mother culture" of Mesoamerica was that of the Olmecs. The Olmec culture developed on the Gulf of Mexico near the present city of Vera Cruz. It was an unlikely place for a culture to bloom. This was a rain forest, humid and swampy. Yet, in this area about 1000 B.C. the Olmecs introduced traditions and skills that would influence Middle America for centuries. The Olmecs built, not cities, but large religious centers that featured earthen temple mounds. They were the first in this hemisphere to devise glyphic writing=the use of symbols and images to express words and ideas. They may also have been the first to develop a calendar system. The Olmecs conducted a vigorous commerce by land and sea with other parts of the hemisphere. In this way their culture spread. Among those who learned from the Olmecs were the Mayas, a people living in the tropical rain forest of what is now Guatemala. They too had ceremonial centers, home to the priests and nobles who controlled the surrounding region. The power of these leaders probably came from their knowledge of astronomy and the calendar. Maya culture in the Guatemala lowlands declined starting about A.D. 900. It continued for :several centuries more, however, at sites in the Yucatan Peninsula. Olmec culture also influenced people living in the Valley of Mexico, the site of present-day Mexico City. By A.D. 300 they had built the city of Teotihuacan (tay-oh-tee-wah-KAHN). This was a ceremonial center, but it was also a true city, with neighborhoods for both artisans and merchants. Rising above the city was a pyramid 20 stories high, now called the Pyramid of the Sun. Ranking at the top of the city's 250,000 people were the priest-rulers. One temple within Teotihuacan was dedicated to the god Quetzalcoatl (ket-sahl-koh-AHT-ul), symbolized by a feathered serpent. Quetzalcoatl was considered the carrier of civilization and the defender of good against evil. To keep such gods happy, the people of Teotihuacan made sacrifices of birds, animals, and, on occasion, humans. THE AZTECS. No amount of sacrifice, however, could protect the city when waves of war-loving barbarians began swooping out of the north about A.D. 700. They burned and plundered Teotihuacan. In time the invaders adopted much of the culture of the conquered, but warriors replaced priests as rulers. A time of almost constant warfare began. The last of the barbarian waves from the north was that of the Aztecs, who moved into the Valley of Mexico about 1325. There they settled at Tenochtitlan (ten-och-tee-TLAHN), a snake-infested island in Lake Texcoco (tay-SKOH-koh). A practical people, they ate the snakes. Then they proceeded to turn the island into a base of operations from which to conquer neighboring city-states. The conquered peoples were forced to pay the Aztecs tribute in goods and produce. With tribute flowing in, the Aztecs were free to develop their army and conquer even more peoples. In this way, the Aztecs came to control most of central Mexico. They were a warrior people, whose most important god was the war god Huitzilopochtli (wee-tsee-loh-POHTCH-tlee). This god, Aztecs believed, had a voracious appetite for human hearts. The Aztecs believed that as long as they kept their god happy he would reward them with military victories. One purpose of war, therefore, was to collect captives who could be sacrificed to the god. It is said that more than 20,000 people were sacrificed when the temple to Huitzilopochtli was dedicated in 1490. THE INCA EMPIRE. Along the west coast of South America there arose another great civilization. Much of that area was either desert or mountains. Yet there, in what is now Ecuador and Peru, the Indians developed highly efficient farming communities. To make the best use of their land, they farmed on hillside terraces. Large-scale aqueducts carried water from the mountains to fields in the dry coastal valleys. The people also domesticated the llama and the guinea pig. With time, Peruvian political, social, and religious structures grew in complexity. Powerful city-states developed that were ruled by a class of nobles and priests. One of these city-states was that of the Incas, whose capital was Cuzco. Cuzco, with an altitude of over 11,000 feet, is the oldest continually inhabited city in the Americas. In 1438 the Incas began to conquer neighboring states. By 1532 their empire stretched for 2,000 miles between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes. In area it was larger than California, Oregon, and Washington combined. Great stone roads knit the empire together. Armies as large as 30,000 enforced Inca authority Probably about 6 million people lived in the Inca Empire. CONTACT FROM ACROSS THE OCEANS? How did the Incas develop a complex society? Did they do it themselves, independent of outside forces? Or were they influenced by other peoples, far or near? Some anthropologists have suggested that peoples from across the oceans -- from Asia, Africa, or Europe -- might have influenced the development of culture in the Western Hemisphere. This process is known as "transoceanic diffusion." No one doubts that an occasional boat got blown off course and ended on American shores. Given the pattern of winds and currents, that is quite possible. But did these outsiders have an impact? Yes, say the diffusionists. First of all, they point out that transoceanic migration was possible. To prove it, archeologist Thor Heyerdahl has crossed both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in primitive craft. Diffusionists also point out that the Chinese 2,000 years ago had boats that could sail into the wind. By the fourth century the Chinese were using a compass. The Polynesians too were excellent navigators who colonized islands across the Pacific, including those of Hawaii. To these oceangoing peoples, the ocean was not a barrier but a highway. Then the diffusionists point to evidence uncovered in the Americas. The earliest examples of pottery in the Western Hemisphere have been found at the site of a village in Ecuador. This is not crude pottery such as one might make accidentally by playing with clay. It reflects a developed craft tradition. It also is almost identical to pottery then being made in Japan. Furthermore, some of the cultural traditions of the Olmecs were similar to those of the Chinese of the same time. These included placing a piece of jade in the mouth of a dead person to ensure eternal life. Another example of possible Chinese influence is the pottery of Teotihuacan, which is similar to that found in China of the same centuries. In general, scholars are willing to accept the possibility of Asian influences on Western Hemisphere cultures. They are skeptical, however, about African or European influences because there is less evidence of these. What evidence there is, however, is intriguing. The Olmecs carved huge statues of heads with distinctly Negroid features. West African myths tell about people going west across the ocean on rafts. Is it possible that the Olmecs were West African in origin? There is no evidence for this theory; however, other than the features of the carved heads. Evidence of European influence includes Roman coins found in Venezuela. And on a wall in the once-buried Roman city of Pompeii is a painting of a pineapple, a plant native to the Western Hemisphere. In a twelfth-century tomb in Mexico, archeologists found a clay head that was made in third-century Rome. Suppose ancient Europeans or Africans did reach the Americas. Does that mean they influenced the development of Indian cultures? Most scholars say no, the available evidence does not support such a theory. THE HOHOKAM AND ANASAZI. Although scholars are still debating transoceanic diffusion, they do not question that Mesoamerican culture influenced Indian peoples to the north. The first influence was agriculture. The desert people of the Southwest began raising corn and squash 4,000 years ago. Later they learned to grow beans. Over time, they developed distinct farming cultures that depended on what the Indians called the Three Sisters-corn, squash, and beans. The Hohokam people may have migrated from Mexico about 300 B.C. to settle in what is now central Arizona. To get water to their crops, they dug lengthy canals using only digging sticks as tools. The major canals in this system were more than 30 miles long. The Hohokam culture broke up in the 1400s, perhaps because turbulent times in Mexico cut off trade and contact. The Hohokam people then became more like their neighbors. They survived through hunting, gathering, and a little farming. During the same centuries, the Anasazi people of the Colorado Plateau also developed a culture based on agriculture. The ghost towns of the Anasazi remain in the recesses of canyon walls and in secluded canyon bottoms. Every village had one or more kivas, large round chambers partly underground, that the men used for religious ceremonies and as workshops. The Anasazi were good farmers. Like the Hohokam, they built irrigation ditches to catch water, and they farmed on terraces to prevent erosion. To supplement their crops, they hunted game and gathered wild plants and nuts. The Anasazi were also traders. Roads 30 feet wide radiated out from Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon. A thousand years ago people traveled these roads carrying wood from the mountains, along with pottery, cloth, baskets, and turquoise. Pieces of the turquoise would end up in the markets of faraway Mexico. By 1300, however, the Anasazi had abandoned their villages. No one knows exactly why. From the study of tree rings, scientists do know that a terrible, 25-year drought began in 1275. The drought might have been too much for these desert farmers to survive. Whatever the cause, the Anasazi moved to other sites in the Southwest, including the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico. Their descendants -- the Pueblo Indians -- live there still. ANCIENT WOODLAND CULTURES. To the east, meanwhile, complex cultures were emerging in the Eastern Woodlands -- roughly the region between the Mississippi River and the Atlantic Coast. People there developed complex cultures based primarily on trade. As early as 3000 B.C. the Woodland Indians were engaged in long-distance trading of useful and decorative stones, copper tools, and carved beads. The later Crystal River culture along Florida's Gulf Coast, for example, carried on an extensive trade that reached south to the Olmecs of Mexico and north to the Great Lakes. It is possible that the Crystal River culture was the first society north of Mexico to build pyramid mounds. Other Woodland cultures north of Florida also adopted this practice. Perhaps their traders returned home from Florida not just with beautiful shells but also with ideas -- including the idea of building a mound. Elaborate burial mounds became the most distinctive feature of the Hopewell culture, situated in the Ohio Valley. This culture, which emerged about 500 B.C., would last for about 1,200 years. The religious energies of the Hopewell culture focused on death rituals. The people buried their leaders in huge mounds located in ceremonial centers. With the dead, they buried all the wealth that the deceased would need in the next world. Hopewell nobles must have dressed in splendid fashion. From one burial site alone, archeologists recovered thousands of pearl beads, necklaces of grizzly-bear teeth, copper ear ornaments, bracelets, and breastplates. The Hopewell artists made beautiful objects of mica and carved stone as well as copper. Many of their objects were representations of animals and birds. The Hopewell people began cultivating corn about A.D. 450. With the beginning of agriculture, some say, their trading activities declined and the communities became more isolated from each other. About 300 years later they took to the hills, where they built large defensive earthworks. Obviously there was unrest in the land, perhaps an invading people. These earthworks are the last evidence of the Hopewell culture. THE MISSISSIPPIAN CULTURE. About A.D. 900 another mound culture emerged in the Southeast and Mississippi Valley. This is known as the Mississippian culture. This culture had clear ties with Mexico. Communities in the Mississippian culture clustered on the river flood plains. Such locations were good for farming because floods constantly renewed the fertility of the soil. Their towns featured large flat-topped mounds on which were built temples, meeting houses, and residences of chiefs and priests. Common symbols in their art were the falcon and the jaguar, both of which had long been revered in Mesoamerica. The crown jewel of the Mississippian culture was Cahokia, in western Illinois. In its heyday, Cahokia boasted 30,000 residents and more than 1,000 mounds. The tallest mound at Cahokia rises ten stories from a sixteen-acre base, rivaling Mexico's Pyramid of the Sun in size. Near the mound, archeologists have discovered a circular pattern of posts. The posts may have served as a solar calendar, telling farmers when to plant. By the time European explorers arrived in the region, the Mississippians had abandoned Cahokia. Though Mississippian culture was fading, explorers caught a glimpse of the society's splendor. A member of a Spanish expedition described a temple along the Savannah River in Georgia. Said the chronicler, the "ceiling . . . from the walls upward, was adorned like the roof outside with designs of shells interspersed with strands of pearls. Among the decorations were great headdresses of different colors of feathers. . . . It was an agreeable sight to behold." The Mississippian culture declined rapidly Later Indians of the region could not say who had built the mounds. Yet there seems to be little doubt that the major tribes of the Southeast were descendants of the mound builders. These include the Cherokees, Catawbas, Creeks, Chickasaws, and Choctaws. (7) [Picture] During the 1400s, Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, was larger than any European city. The Aztecs used canals and causeways for transportation. GEOGRAPHY: Why does the map show flames in the mountains above the city? (8) [Pictures] The Incas built stone-walled farming terraces (top) to use their mountainous land more efficiently. Many of these finely engineered fields are still in use. Above, Peruvian Indians, descendants of the Incas, travel with their llamas along a surviving stretch of the Inca highway. CULTURE: How do Inca building projects provide evidence of a complex, developed society? (9) [Picture] The mysterious Olmec culture produced colossal stone sculptures. This helmeted head, which may represent an Olmec ruler, is from a site in southern Mexico. CULTURE: About how many years ago did Olmec culture develop? (10) The Anasazi of Mesa Verde in present-day Colorado built the spectacular Cliff Palace in this canyon's sandstone walls. The settlement, seen here in winter, contains more than 200 rooms and 23 kivas. GEOGRAPHY: What advantages might cliff dwellings have had? (11) [Picture] Hopewell artisans created beautiful objects for use as grave offerings. The mica cutout of a hand and the copper falcon come from a mound in southern Ohio. The wooden catlike figure was found in Florida. CULTURE: Why, do you think, did the Hopewell admire the falcon? (12) [Picture] The largest Mississippian burial mounds may have taken a century or longer to reach their maximum size. This painting from 1850 shows a cross section of a mound in Louisiana. RELIGION: Why, do you think, did the Indians hold religious ceremonies on top of the mounds? (13-7) 3 North American Indians in 1500. Section Focus. Key Terms: egalitarian, slash-and-burn farming, ecology, shaman. Main Idea: Indians consumed natural resources, but unlike Europeans, they stressed a spiritual relationship with the environment. The coming of the Europeans introduced new attitudes to the environment that threatened Indian survival. Objectives: As you read, look for answers to these questions: 1. What differences were there among the Indians of North America? What similarities? 2. What spiritual views of the earth did most Indians share? 3. What environmental changes did the arrival of Europeans introduce? The first European explorers and settlers in the Americas left vivid accounts of the Indians they encountered. Yet these accounts have tended to "freeze" the Indians in time and place. This is because the Europeans assumed that the Indians had always lived in the same place and in the same way: But that is not true. Like peoples the world over, Indian groups moved from one territory to another. As they did, they changed their way of life when it was necessary to do so. MOVEMENT AND DIVERSITY. The Cheyenne, for instance, are usually thought of as Plains Indians who hunted buffalo. Originally, however, they were farmers in southern Minnesota. Once they migrated to the Plains, the Cheyenne continued a life that included both farming and hunting-gathering. Then, when the Spanish brought horses to the Plains in the mid-1500s, the Cheyenne abandoned farming to rely on hunting. The Indian societies in North America were a diverse lot. Some devoted themselves to warfare. Others were peaceful, fighting only if necessary. Some societies were egalitarian. (That is, all members were considered equal.) Others were organized into social classes, often with slaves as the lowest class. Some societies emphasized the importance of individual feats of valor or of possessions to increase status. Others discouraged individualism and personal status-seeking. Chiefs headed most Indian societies. The chief, either male or female depending on tradition, had only as much authority as the group was willing to give. Important decisions were made in consultation with other village leaders. Sometimes a village chief might bow to the authority of the chief of a more powerful neighbor. LIVING FROM THE LAND. Concerned with survival rather than conservation, Indians did not always live in harmony with the earth. Many scientists, for example, think ancient big-game hunters may have hunted horses to extinction in the Western Hemisphere. They also think the Anasazi stripped large areas of forests and ruined the topsoil. Today there are wooded areas in northern Mexico where one listens and looks in vain for a squirrel, a bird, or a deer. Such over-hunting, some think, may have forced Mesoamericans to develop agriculture. A major change in the use of the American land came with the rise of agriculture. In the Southwest the Indians adopted methods of irrigation. In the Eastern Woodlands the Indians practiced slash-and-burn farming. To prepare a field, they slash would kill the trees by cutting away strips of bark from around their trunks. Then they would burn the underbrush. The ashes helped fertilize the soil. Between the dead trees, the Indians used sticks to poke holes in the ground. In the holes they planted corn, beans, and squash, often mixing the seeds together. It was not unusual to see vines of beans or squash growing up next to stalks of corn. Whenever the soil became exhausted, usually after eight years, the Woodland Indians would move on to clear another plot and build another village. Meanwhile, forests would retake the old fields, thus renewing the land. The Woodland Indians also used fire to reshape the forests. When Europeans first looked on the Eastern Woodlands, they praised the "good ground," the plentiful animal life, and the park-like woods. They did not realize that the look and abundance of the woodlands were actually a creation of the Indians. Groups such as the Algonquin not only lived on the land; they managed it. Their principal tool of management was fire. They regularly and systematically set fire in the woods to destroy the underbrush. These were low-heat fires that swept through an area quickly, not burning well-established trees. One effect of these fires was to make ashes that added nutrients to the soil. Another effect was that grass and berries were likely to establish themselves on the fire-cleared ground. The grass and berries in turn attracted animals such as deer, bears, and wild turkeys. By firing the woods, therefore, the Indians created an environment more supportive of wildlife. The cleared woods were also easier to travel through. The Woodland Indians were not alone in using fire to shape the environment. This technique was used throughout the continent. In California, for instance, the Indians set fire to the meadowlands each fall to ensure a good harvest of grass seed for the coming year. A SPIRITUAL RELATIONSHIP WITH THE EARTH. "All things are alive in this profound unity in which are all elements, all animals, all things. . . ." -- Kiowa poet and scholar. N. Scott Momaday. To live on the earth means to affect and to be affected by it. This interaction with the land -- its plants, animals, and natural resources -- has been an ongoing theme in the history of what would become the United States. Scientists call the relationship between living things and their environment ecology. For Indians, this relationship was spiritual, full of magic and wonder. In seeking to explain the Indian attitude toward the world, Kiowa poet and scholar N. Scott Momaday wrote: All things are alive in this profound unity in which are all elements, all animals, all things. . . . My father remembered that, as a boy, he had watched . . . the old man Koi-khan-hole, "Dragonfly," stand in the first light, his arms outstretched and his painted face fixed on the east, and pray the sun out of the ground. His voice, for he prayed aloud, struck at the great, misty silence of the Plains morning, entered into it, carried through it to the rising sun. His words made one of the sun and earth, one of himself and the boy who watched, one of the boy and generations to come. The Indians believed that all things were part of a larger whole. They also believed that each life form had certain powers. By establishing the right relationship with an animal or plant, stone or star, storm or cloud, a person could share its spirit or essence. As a result, even hunting was more than an economic activity. It was also a spiritual activity. To the Indian, success in the hunt was not a one-sided affair. It also called for a creature to give up its life. The hunter acknowledged that gift and thanked the creature's spirit. Because Indians had strong spiritual beliefs, religious leaders called shaman wielded great influence. Shamans could, it was said, communicate with the spirit world. They used their knowledge of curative plants to treat ailments. They also drove evil spirits -- the cause of sickness, according to Indians -- from the bodies of the ill. THE CLASH OF CULTURES. The coming of the Europeans introduced new environmental factors to North America that would change the land and its people. The Europeans brought deadly new diseases that ravaged the Indians. The Europeans' attitude toward land use, as well as their technology, destroyed the hunting-gathering environment on which the Indians depended. Disease was the silent conqueror. The Indians had had no contact with diseases that were commonplace in the rest of the world. These included chicken pox, measles, smallpox, and flu. As a result, what was an ordinary case of flu to a European meant certain death for an Indian. With death rates as high as 90 percent, the social and economic foundations of whole tribes were wiped out. Millions died. The Indian population of North America dropped from about 10 or 12 million in 1500 to about half a million in 1900. This destruction of life was without precedent. A Kiowa folk story from the 1800s captures some of the horror of the new diseases. The main character of the story is named Saynday. Off across the prairie, Saynday saw a dark spot coming toward him from the east, moving very slowly. . . . After a while , Saynday saw that it was a man on a horse. "Who are you?" the stranger asked. "I'm Saynday. . . . Who are you?" "I'm Smallpox. . . . I come from far away, across the eastern ocean. I am one with the white men -- they are my people as the Kiowas are yours. Sometimes I travel ahead of them, and sometimes I lurk behind. But I am always their companion and you will find me in their camps and in their houses." When Saynday asked Smallpox what he did, the horseman, who was dressed in black and spotted with red dust, had an answer. "I bring death. My breath causes children to wither like young plants in spring snow. . . . No people who have looked on me will ever be the same." CONFLICT OVER LAND USE. Those Indian communities which survived the initial onslaught of disease were generally neighborly to the first white settlers. The English settlers on the Atlantic Coast, however, did not understand the Indians' use of the woods. For the English, a solidly agricultural people, the best use of land was to improve it by farming. Rather than getting meat and skins through hunting, they preferred to raise cattle, sheep, and pigs in enclosed corrals or pastures. Differences over the meaning of land ownership became a principal source of conflict between the white and Indian cultures. To a white person, land ownership meant controlling what happened to the land. For the Indians, land ownership meant having access to the things on the land during different seasons of the year. No one could own the land itself, only have rights to its produce. Disagreements between Indians and white settlers over the use of the land led to war. This is because the settlers' use of the land threatened the Indian way of life, the very basis of their culture. In the end, the whites won because of their superior numbers and superior technology. Technology was the Europeans' trump card against the Indians. From the beginning of contact the Indians had eagerly traded for such things as steel knives, guns, and iron kettles. They did not, however, learn to produce these items themselves. In time they might have done so. If European technology had changed but slowly, the contact between cultures might have produced strong and independent Indian nations. By the end of the 1800s, though, the white invaders were using the telegraph for communication, the railroad for transportation, and the steel plow for cutting the prairies. The Indians could not withstand a technology that allowed people to invade and destroy their hunting grounds. Thus the fast-expanding technology of white people smashed the last resistance of the Indians. The legacy of the Indians remains, however. It remains in the names of our states, our rivers, our towns. It remains among Indians today who seek to transmit their language, their knowledge, and their world view to their children. It remains in the words of Indians, past and present, who urge people to re-establish a bond with the earth. The words of Chief Seattle in 1854 did not die with him. In addressing the President he said, 'Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself." (14) [Map] INDIAN CULTURE AREAS IN 1500. MAP SKILLS. Anthropologists group Native American peoples and nations according to the environments that helped shape their ways of life. These groupings are called culture areas. To which culture area does the Cherokee nation belong? Which empires were located in Mexico and Middle America? CRITICAL THINKING: Row might life among native Americans in the Caribbean culture area have differed from that in the Great Plains? (15) [Picture] Woodland Indian women from the Mandan tribe bring firewood to a village on the Missouri River. Plains Indians moved from their lodges on river bluffs to tree-protected lodges inland during winter. GEOGRAPHY: Why might Indians have preferred a riverside location in good weather? (16) [Picture] This painting by American artist George Catlin shows an Indian shaman in ceremonial dress. RELIGION: Why did the shaman wear such a frightful costume?

 

[1992a]

 

[1992b]

 

[1992c] (17) LONG BEFORE THE Vikings arrived in what would come to be called America, bands of hunters and gatherers from central Asia had entered the area from Siberia across a land bridge into Alaska, which rising oceans fed by melting glaciers would later wash away, creating the Bering Strait. Certainly by 10,000 B.C., and perhaps as much as tens of thousands of years earlier, these people spread across two continents, slaughtering wooly mammoth and establishing many and varied cultures. Some, like the Eskimos and Inuits in the North, continued to hunt and gather in small tribal bands; others, like the Olmecs and the Chavin in Central and South America, developed complex societies. By the time Europeans first discovered their "New World," millions of those they eventually called "Indians" had occupied the land for so long that they must be considered a native and indigenous population.

 

[1992d] (6-10) 2. Before discovery. If it hadn't been for Columbus, years might have passed before the people of Europe "discovered" America. But it was only for the people of Europe that America had to be "discovered.” Millions of Native Americans were already here! For them, Columbus, and all the sailors, explorers, and settlers who came later, provided their "discovery" of Europe! For Europeans the "discovery" of America offered vast lands, treasures of gold and silver and timber, places to build cities and places of refuge. For them this was a happy discovery. In the long run it would be a great discovery for the world. But for the millions of Native Americans already here their "discovery" of Europeans was not quite so happy. For some it meant the end of their Native American civilization. For some it meant slavery. For nearly all of them Europeans brought shock, disease, and change. The first people to come to America were the ancestors of those who Columbus by mistake called Indians. No one knows when they came. A widely held theory is that sometime between 35,000 and 11,500 years ago during the last great ice age the first small groups arrived. They were people on the move. They had come from northern China and Siberia. So much of the earth's water had frozen into ice that it lowered the level of the sea in the Bering Strait. Then as they tracked wild game they could walk across the 56 miles from Siberia to Alaska. Without knowing it, they had discovered two large continents that were completely empty of people but were full of wild game -- huge mastodons and mammoths, giant ground sloths, camels, antelopes, and great long-horned bison. In the thousands of years afterwards many other groups followed. These small bands spread all across North and South America. The high mountains and broad rivers separated the communities. There were hundreds of languages and many different styles of life. Some small bands of people had no fixed homes. They followed their quarry and lived the wandering life of hunters. Others settled down and after centuries built vast kingdoms with flourishing cities, temples and palaces, and lively commerce. Mayas, Incas, and Aztecs. The grandest of these Native American cultures astonished the Europeans. South of the present United States-from central Mexico to Peru-they found the Aztecs, the Mayas, and the Incas. In the mountains, deserts, and rain forests of Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and Mexico the Mayas had built temples and pyramids clustered about broad plazas. We can still climb them. The Mayas invented their own writing. Although they had no telescope, they built their own kind of observatory and made accurate calendars. Their "Indian corn" (maize) had never been seen in Europe. It was originally a wild grass, but would become a staple food for the world. In Peru the Incas had constructed palaces surrounded by high walls, and had connected their mountain-towns with a network of roads. To farm their steep land they had built terraces. Where water was scarce, they had cut canals and erected stone aqueducts to irrigate their crops. The Incas gave us the potato and the tomato. When European explorers came to Peru, they were amazed by the Incan government. They never expected to find such powerful rulers so well organized in the mountain wilderness. The Incas had succeeded even without a system of writing. No Americans were richer. In Cuzco, the mountain capital of the Incan empire, even the buildings were covered with gold! The Aztecs were a warlike people who lived in central Mexico. They were clever architects. Like the Mayas, they too built grand temples and high pyramids. Their capital, where Mexico City is today, was a bustling metropolis. And they fashioned their gold into jewelry so ornate as to make European kings jealous. These peoples had found their own ways of progress -- different from the ways of Europe. They had never invented the wheel. They had no iron tools. Their beasts of burden were the dog and, in Peru, the llama. Unlike the peoples of Europe, they had not built ships to cross the oceans. They had not reached out to the world. In their isolation they found it hard to learn new ways. When the Spanish came, it seemed that the Incas, the Mayas, and the Aztecs had ceased to progress. They were ripe for conquest. North American Indians. Of course there was no census of early America. But in 1500 the people in Mexico probably numbered about 12 million. Farther north in what is now the United States and Canada there were only some 4 million. The great empires of old America -- of the Mayas, the Incas, and the Aztecs -- were all in Mexico or south. North of Mexico most of the people lived in wandering tribes and led a simple life. North American Indians were mainly hunters and gatherers of wild food. An exceptional few -- in Arizona and New Mexico -- settled in one place and became farmers. The most advanced Indians of North America lived in the Southwest. The Anasazi came to be known as Pueblo Indians, after their style of building. A "pueblo" was a kind of apartment several stories tall, built of stone or adobe. The Anasazi also built cliff dwellings where they could defend themselves against enemy tribes. They and their descendants -- the Hopi, Zufii, and Acoma -- made pottery, textiles, and baskets which we still admire. When the Europeans came, the largest population of Indians north of Mexico was in California. They were a tenth of all the Indians in what is now the United States. They and the Indians of the Northwest lived by hunting and fishing and by gathering the plentiful nuts and berries. Before Columbus and the Spanish came to America, there were not many Indians on the Great Plains. They walked for miles in pursuit of the herds of buffalo. The buffalo supplied them with skins to wear, meat to eat -- and even (in dried buffalo chips) with fuel for their fires. Their only beast of burden was the dog. There were no horses in America until the Spanish brought them. In the Eastern Woodlands the many tribes were mainly hunter-food gatherers, but they also did some farming. Some of them had joined in their own small version of a United Nations. Five tribes of Huron-Iroquois-speaking people -- the Mohawk, Seneca, Oneida, Onondaga, and Cayuga -- in upper New York State formed the Iroquois League. The council of chiefs who governed the league was chosen by certain women of high station. The council had no power to make war but planned defense. The powerful Chief Powhatan formed his own league (in Virginia), and there were others. Down south in Mississippi the Natchez Indians seemed more like the Mexican Indians. Mainly farmers, they were divided into nobles and commoners, and were ruled by a man they called the Great Sun. The Indians of North America were as varied as the peoples of Europe. There were countless tribes and hundreds of languages. Some tribes made elegant gold jewelry, but others were still in the Stone Age. Some wove handsome rugs and wore textiles of beautiful design. Others knew only skins and furs. Their meat depended on the place. Deer were nearly everywhere, and on the plains were herds of buffalo. The seashores and streams abounded in fish and shell food. The Indians planted corn, which made their bread, and beans, squashes, and many other crops. They knew where to find, and how to enjoy, the nuts and berries and mushrooms and other delights of the woods. They raised and smoked tobacco. Because the Indians lived so close to nature, most of them had religions in which natural things played a major role. The Indians saw and worshiped Nature. They had learned to know the stones, the animals, and the plants. They were adept at using what they found for food, shelter, and clothing.

 

[1992e] (6-10) 2. Before discovery. If it hadn't been for Columbus, years might have passed before the people of Europe "discovered" America. But it was only for the people of Europe that America had to be "discovered." Millions of Native Americans were already here! For them, Columbus, and all the sailors, explorers, and settlers who came later, provided their "discovery" of Europe! For Europeans the "discovery" of America offered vast lands, treasures of gold and silver and timber, places to build cities and places of refuge. For them this was a happy discovery. In the long run it would be a great discovery for the world. But for the millions of Native Americans already here their "discovery" of Europeans was not quite so happy. For some it meant the end of their Native American civilization. For some it meant slavery. For nearly all of them Europeans brought shock, disease, and change. The first people to come to America were the ancestors of those who Columbus by mistake called Indians. No one knows when they came. A widely held theory is that sometime between 35,000 and 11,500 years ago during the last great ice age the first small groups arrived. They were people on the move. They had come from northern China and Siberia. So much of the earth's water had frozen into ice that it lowered the level of the sea in the Bering Strait. Then as they tracked wild game they could walk across the 56 miles from Siberia to Alaska. Without knowing it, they had discovered two large continents that were completely empty of people but were full of wild game -- huge mastodons and mammoths, giant ground sloths, camels, antelopes, and great long-horned bison. In the thousands of years afterwards many other groups followed. These small bands spread all across North and South America. The high mountains and broad rivers separated the communities. There were hundreds of languages and many different styles of life. Some small bands of people had no fixed homes. They followed their quarry and lived the wandering life of hunters. Others settled down and after centuries built vast kingdoms with flourishing cities, temples and palaces, and lively commerce. Mayas, Incas, and Aztecs. The grandest of these Native American cultures astonished the Europeans. South of the present United States-from central Mexico to Peru-they found the Aztecs, the Mayas, and the Incas. In the mountains, deserts, and rain forests of Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and Mexico the Mayas had built temples and pyramids clustered about broad plazas. We can still climb them. The Mayas invented their own writing. Although they had no telescope, they built their own kind of observatory and made accurate calendars. Their "Indian corn" (maize) had never been seen in Europe. It was originally a wild grass, but would become a staple food for the world. In Peru the Incas had constructed palaces surrounded by high walls, and had connected their mountain-towns with a network of roads. To farm their steep land they had built terraces. Where water was scarce, they had cut canals and erected stone aqueducts to irrigate their crops. The Incas gave us the potato and the tomato. When European explorers came to Peru, they were amazed by the Incan government. They never expected to find such powerful rulers so well organized in the mountain wilderness. The Incas had succeeded even without a system of writing. No Americans were richer. In Cuzco, the mountain capital of the Incan empire, even the buildings were covered with gold! The Aztecs were a warlike people who lived in central Mexico. They were clever architects. Like the Mayas, they too built grand temples and high pyramids. Their capital, where Mexico City is today, was a bustling metropolis. And they fashioned their gold into jewelry so ornate as to make European kings jealous. These peoples had found their own ways of progress -- different from the ways of Europe. They had never invented the wheel. They had no iron tools. Their beasts of burden were the dog and, in Peru, the llama. Unlike the peoples of Europe, they had not built ships to cross the oceans. They had not reached out to the world. In their isolation they found it hard to learn new ways. When the Spanish came, it seemed that the Incas, the Mayas, and the Aztecs had ceased to progress. They were ripe for conquest. North American Indians. Of course there was no census of early America. But in 1500 the people in Mexico probably numbered about 12 million. Farther north in what is now the United States and Canada there were only some 4 million. The great empires of old America -- of the Mayas, the Incas, and the Aztecs -- were all in Mexico or south. North of Mexico most of the people lived in wandering tribes and led a simple life. North American Indians were mainly hunters and gatherers of wild food. An exceptional few -- in Arizona and New Mexico -- settled in one place and became farmers. The most advanced Indians of North America lived in the Southwest. The Anasazi came to be known as Pueblo Indians, after their style of building. A "pueblo" was a kind of apartment several stories tall, built of stone or adobe. The Anasazi also built cliff dwellings where they could defend themselves against enemy tribes. They and their descendants -- the Hopi, Zufii, and Acoma -- made pottery, textiles, and baskets which we still admire. When the Europeans came, the largest population of Indians north of Mexico was in California. They were a tenth of all the Indians in what is now the United States. They and the Indians of the Northwest lived by hunting and fishing and by gathering the plentiful nuts and berries. Before Columbus and the Spanish came to America, there were not many Indians on the Great Plains. They walked for miles in pursuit of the herds of buffalo. The buffalo supplied them with skins to wear, meat to eat -- and even (in dried buffalo chips) with fuel for their fires. Their only beast of burden was the dog. There were no horses in America until the Spanish brought them. In the Eastern Woodlands the many tribes were mainly hunter-food gatherers, but they also did some farming. Some of them had joined in their own small version of a United Nations. Five tribes of Huron-Iroquois-speaking people -- the Mohawk, Seneca, Oneida, Onondaga, and Cayuga -- in upper New York State formed the Iroquois League. The council of chiefs who governed the league was chosen by certain women of high station. The council had no power to make war but planned defense. The powerful Chief Powhatan formed his own league (in Virginia), and there were others. Down south in Mississippi the Natchez Indians seemed more like the Mexican Indians. Mainly farmers, they were divided into nobles and commoners, and were ruled by a man they called the Great Sun. The Indians of North America were as varied as the peoples of Europe. There were countless tribes and hundreds of languages. Some tribes made elegant gold jewelry, but others were still in the Stone Age. Some wove handsome rugs and wore textiles of beautiful design. Others knew only skins and furs. Their meat depended on the place. Deer were nearly everywhere, and on the plains were herds of buffalo. The seashores and streams abounded in fish and shell food. The Indians planted corn, which made their bread, and beans, squashes, and many other crops. They knew where to find, and how to enjoy, the nuts and berries and mushrooms and other delights of the woods. They raised and smoked tobacco. Because the Indians lived so close to nature, most of them had religions in which natural things played a major role. The Indians saw and worshiped Nature. They had learned to know the stones, the animals, and the plants. They were adept at using what they found for food, shelter, and clothing. (7) More from Boorstin: "Columbus reported to his surprise and somewhat to his disappointment, that 'in these islands I have so far found no human monstrosities, as many expected, on the contrary, among all these peoples good looks are esteemed. . . . Thus I have neither found monsters nor any report of any, except . . . a people . . . who eat human flesh . . . they are no more malformed than the others.' These Indians, he reassured the Spanish sovereigns, were 'very well built, of very handsome bodies and fine faces.'" (From The Discoverers) (8) Geography and History: Interaction Refer students to the map on page 9. Have them locate all Indian tribes mentioned in Section 2. Ask: What do the colors on the map mean? (The colors signify culture areas.) Ask: Why would tribes living in particular areas share a similar culture? (Over time, people adapt to the conditions of their environments, and their cultures reflect these adaptations. Groups living within a particular geographic region would necessarily share certain cultural values, economic and political systems, and technologies.) (2C-D) Section 2 (pages 6-10). Before Discovery. FOCUS. To introduce the lesson, direct students to open their books to the physical map of North America on page 948 of their texts. Have students locate the Bering Strait area. Explain that it is believed that North America and Asia were joined here by a land bridge during the last Ice Age, 25,000 to 40,000 years ago. Over that land bridge, the first humans traveled to America. INSTRUCT. Explain. (1) Tell students that the authors use quotation marks around the word "discovered" on page 6 because there were flourishing civilizations and active cultures in the Americas before European explorers arrived; and (2) that archaeologists are still learning about the Mayas, Aztecs, Incas, and Indian groups of North America. Writing Process Activity. Drawing Conclusions. Have students imagine they are members of a North American Indian tribe who visited an Aztec, Mayan, or Incan city. In preparation for creating a tale about their experience, have them brainstorm details about environment, Lifestyle, economy, and culture of the people whose city they visited. As they write their tales, have them concentrate on capturing audience interest and on recreating their visit vividly. Students should revise for narrative impact and specific detail. After proofreading carefully, students can read their tales aloud as if they were delivering them at a campfire. Section Review Answers. Section 2, page 10. 1. a) an Indian civilization in Central America, b) an Indian civilization in what is now Central Mexico. They were great warriors, architects, and jewelers. c) an Indian civilization in what is now Peru, that developed a strong, very organized government, sophisticated farming techniques, and impressive roads. d) a loose association for defense formed by five tribes who lived in what is now upper New York State. e) Anasazi Indians of the American Southwest. The Spanish gave them the name "Pueblo" because they lived in pueblos, adobe houses built on top of each other. f) the body of water separating what is now Alaska and the Soviet Union. 2. South and Central American Indians such as the Incas, Aztecs, and Mayas lived in permanent settlements. On the whole, their political, social, and cultural life was more advanced that that of Indians living north of present-day Mexico. Most North American Indians, by contrast, were wandering hunters and gatherers, although some groups, such as the Anasazis, were farmers, living in permanent settlements. CLOSE. To conclude the lesson, refer the students to the text where it states that the Indian civilizations of Central and South America were "ripe for conquest" (p. 8). Ask and discuss the following: What about their way of life made Indians vulnerable to European domination? What yardsticks might be used as a measure of a culture's advancement or sophistication. (Generally, only economic, technological, and scientific factors are considered. Be sure students understand that such cultural factors as religion and family structure cannot be considered "advanced" or "primitive.") Discuss why the Europeans had such a wide technological lead at this time. You might also want students to consider what other factors contributed to the European success.

 

[1992f]  (2-9) CHAPTER 1. Three Discoveries of America. America was discovered three times, each time by accident. The first time was about 30,000 years ago, when people from northern Asia touched foot on American soil in what is now Alaska. The second discovery of America occurred about the year 1000, but we know little about the Viking sailors who reached Newfoundland. The third discovery, 500 years ago, was made by a persistent Italian who sailed under the colors of Spain and claimed what he believed to be the Indies for King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Thus began a Golden Age of discovery and conquest of the Americas by Spain. Would Spain come to dominate the New World? 1. THE FIRST AMERICANS. The Ice Age. Today Asia is separated from America by the Bering Strait, a body of water between Alaska and Siberia more than 50 miles (80 kilometers) wide. When early people first came to America from Asia, the strait was dry land. The earth was then passing through a great Ice Age, a period when the weather was much colder than at present. What in warmer times would have fallen as rain and drained back into the oceans fell as snow instead. Gradually, enormous amounts of this snow piled up in the northern and southern regions of the earth, far more than could melt during the short summers. Vast ice fields called glaciers formed. So much water was trapped in these thick glaciers that the water level of the oceans dropped sharply, exposing a land bridge between Asia and North America. Plants froze, but their seeds and spores lay dormant until warmer weather came. With each period of warmth the plants that grew from the seeds and spores spread to new areas. Eventually they spread across the land bridge into North America. The animals that fed on them followed. The bones of ancient Asian elephants, called mammoths, and of saber-toothed tigers have been found in dozens of places in the United States. Following the animals came people, the first Americans. The exact year, decade, or century when the first Americans arrived will never be known, for no historian recorded the adventures of these pioneers. Their graves are unmarked. The ashes of their campfires have been scattered by the winds of the ages. These were accidental discoverers, hunters following wild game or herders driving their flocks over the next hill to find greener pastures. The first American immigrants came in waves, for there were warmer periods when some of the ice melted and the water level rose. The last crossed about 10,000 years ago. At about that time the great glaciers began to melt, and the Bering land bridge was flooded over by the rising ocean. The Great Migration. What did it feel like to be among the first people to reach this great, empty land? We know what the first astronauts experienced when they set foot on the moon. They were aware that they were doing something no one had ever done before. We do not know exactly what the first Americans experienced. They did not know that they were exploring a new continent. Understanding the difference calls for an act of historical imagination. Having a good historical imagination means being able to look at past events, keeping in mind what the people of the day knew, but at the same time remembering what they did not know. Once in North America, the wanderers moved slowly southward and to the east, following the life-giving game. The distances they covered were enormous. It is 15,000 miles (24,000 kilometers) from their homeland in Asia to the southern tip of South America and 6,000 miles (9,600 kilometers) to what is now New England. Many thousand years passed before they had spread over all this land. As they advanced and multiplied, the first Americans gradually changed their ways of life. Some made their homes In fertile valleys, others in tropical jungles. Some settled in mountainous regions or in deserts. Each group had different problems, and each learned to see the world in different ways. As a result each society created its own culture. A society is a group of people who live in a specific geographic area and who have a common culture. The culture of a society consists of those values and behavior patterns held in common: language, government, family relationships, how they make a living, how they educate their children, and the objects they create. Some sense of how many different cultures developed comes from the fact that the peoples of North and South America spoke between 1,000 and 2,000 languages. A few researchers think that people from other continents may have arrived in the Americas many hundreds of years ago. They point out that the Chinese and Polynesians were excellent sailors and had boats capable of making the voyage. And pottery found in Ecuador is quite similar to that being made in Japan during the same period. Others claim that free Africans came to America long before the first black slaves were brought. They find evidence in the Negroid features of ancient statues found in Mexico. Still others say Roman coins found in Venezuela suggest that Europeans reached the New World even before the Vikings. Early American Cultures. By the 1400s there were perhaps 50 million people living in North and South America. Only about 1 or 2 million of these inhabited what is now the United States and Canada. Partly because they were so few in number and spread over such a huge area, these people had developed a number of distinct cultures. Many cultural differences stemmed from the ways groups dealt with the basic problem of scarcity. Like all societies these groups had to make choices about how best to use their limited resources to meet basic needs. Some hunted and gathered wild plants. Others turned to farming. Those who planted seeds and cultivated the land were able to develop a more secure and comfortable life than those who relied on hunting and gathering. People who had mastered farming, or agriculture, could settle in one place instead of roaming in constant search of food. They built permanent houses. Their societies grew to include more members. None of the groups made much progress in developing simple machines or substituting mechanical or even animal power for their own muscle power. They had no wagons or other vehicles with wheels and no horses or oxen to help plow the land. Their tools and weapons were made of wood or stone or bone. Aside from a few copper objects and some gold and silver jewelry, they had no metals. Anthropologists call this stage of development the Stone Age. It ended with the arrival of Europeans and their technology. Most leaders, or chiefs, were chosen in a fairly democratic manner. That is, most chiefs ruled with the consent of their societies, not by force or written law. Life was mostly governed by tradition and custom. People tended to work in groups rather than alone. Usually they did not own their land as individuals. Their "hunting ground" or homeland was the general region in which the group lived. It was not an area with specific boundaries. This was true even of the farmers, who could not go far from the crops they tended. These agricultural people were mostly peaceful, though they could fight fiercely to protect their fields. The hunters and gatherers, on the other hand, were quite warlike because their need to move about brought them frequently into conflict with other groups. Some early American cultures were matrilineal, which means that kinship was traced through the female side. When a man and woman married in such a society, the man became a member of his wife's social group, or clan. A typical household might consist of an older woman, her daughters, and her granddaughters. Of course, the woman's husband, her sons-in-law, and her grandsons would also live in the household group. But only the female members were truly permanent members of the clan. All of these statements are generalizations, broad statements that link loosely associated facts. They are true of most of the groups we are discussing. Yet every one of these communities was somewhat different from all the others. No generalization about them can be completely accurate. History is full of such "mostly but not entirely true" statements. This is unfortunate, but we must learn to live with this weakness. Remember, as you read, to add words like "usually" or "nearly always" when you spot a generalization. Early American Societies. Land and climate strongly influenced the way the first Americans lived. They adjusted to nature -- their environment -- far more than they tried to change it. A brief look at some of the early American societies gives us an idea of the variety of American Indian cultures that evolved over hundreds of years. The Southwest. As much as 1,000 years ago in the Southwest, the Hopi and Zufii were building with adobe -- sun-baked brick plastered with mud. Their homes looked remarkably like modern apartment houses. Some were four stories high and contained quarters for perhaps a thousand people, along with storerooms for grain and other goods. These buildings were usually put up against cliffs, both to make construction easier and for defense against enemies. They were really villages in themselves, as later Spanish explorers must have realized since they called them pueblos. Pueblo is Spanish for town. The people of the pueblos were peaceful and gentle. They raised what they called the three sisters -- corn, beans, and squash. They made excellent pottery and wove marvelous baskets, some so fine that they could hold water. The Southwest has always been a dry country, with water scarce. The Hopi and Zufii brought water from streams to their fields and gardens through irrigation ditches. Water was so important that it played a major role in their religion. They developed elaborate ceremonies and religious rituals to try to bring rain n . The Great Basin. The way of life of less settled groups was simpler and more strongly influenced by nature. Small tribes such as the Shoshone and Ute wandered the dry and mountainous lands between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. They gathered seeds and hunted small animals such as rabbits and snakes. The Far North. In Alaska and northern Canada the ancestors of today's Eskimos hunted seals, walruses, and the great whales. They lived in igloos built of blocks of packed snow. When summer came, they fished for salmon and hunted the lordly caribou. The Northwest. Fishing was the mainstay of the Kwakiutl, Nootka, and Tlingit tribes. These people lived mostly on salmon and other fish caught in northwestern coastal waters. The magnificent forests of redwood, pine, and cedar that grew right down to the ocean supplied them with lumber to build their homes and canoes and to carve their ancestral totem poles. The Great Plains. The Cheyenne, Pawnee, and Sioux tribes, known as the Plains Indians, lived on the grasslands between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River. They hunted bison, commonly called buffalo. Its meat was the chief food of these tribes, and its hide was used to make their clothing and the covering of their tents and teepees. Every part of the animal was used, even its waste, which when dried served as fuel for cook fires in that treeless region. Little wonder that the buffalo was an important symbol in the religious life of the Plains Indians. The Southeast. The Ohio Valley was once the home of the ancestors of such important tribes as the Choctaw and the Creek. They were called the Mound Builders because they buried their dead in elaborate earthen mounds built in the shape of birds or snakes, or in human form. These were very large, as high as an eight-story building, and one has been found that covers an area as large as 50 modern city blocks. We know that the people of the mounds traded with tribes as far away as the Rocky Mountains and the Gulf of Mexico because objects made of stone and ornaments made of the teeth of sharks and alligators have been found in their settlements. Tribes such as the Cherokee, Natchez, and Choctaw gradually moved southeast from the Ohio Valley. The Eastern Woodlands. The Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca made up a group of tribes that was later called the Five Nations or League of the Iroquois. They lived in the densely wooded central region of what is now New York State. The Iroquois confederation, a loose association of tribes, was very powerful because it could assemble many warriors. The Iroquois men were hunters, the women farmers. The Iroquois women also participated in tribal decision making, choosing new chiefs, for example. For thousands of years these tribal societies knew nothing of the rest of the world. They were as isolated from their original homeland in Asia and from Europe and Africa as if they were on the moon. Uncovering the Past. Since the first Americans did not record their history in books, we must reconstruct it from those objects they created that have survived the centuries. These include campsites and buildings, engraved stones, clay pots, tools and weapons, jewelry -- what are known as artifacts. Putting together these fragments is like solving an enormous jigsaw puzzle with many missing pieces. It is a difficult but fascinating task. Scientists called archaeologists search for and study artifacts. In America archaeologists have located and carefully dug up ancient camps, burial grounds, and entire cities. They have found hundreds of thousands of artifacts from arrowheads to huge stone statues. We can estimate the age of these artifacts by using the technique called carbon-14 dating. Carbon is present in all living things, and some of this carbon takes a form called carbon-14. When a living thing dies, its carbon begins to break down at a very slow but steady rate. Thus, by measuring what remains of the carbon-14 in, say, a human bone or even a piece of charcoal from a campfire, an expert can tell about how long ago the person was alive or the fire put out. Carbon-14 dates are accurate only to within a few hundred years. They are not much use for studying recent events. But for learning the history of the peoples who first settled America, the method is most useful, In addition to what archaeologists can tell us about the first Americans, we can also learn by studying their living descendants. The scientists who do this research are called anthropologists. Some anthropologists live with and observe the descendants of the first Americans. They ask how these people explain their relation to one another. What are their religious ideas and other values? Do they tell stories called folk tales that have been handed down from generation to generation? What are their habits 'and traditions? The answers to these questions throw light on how early Americans lived and thought. In such ways historians have been able to learn a great deal about these first settlers of America. (3) [Picture] This jaw of a saber-toothed cat was found in the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. This and other fossils from the Pleistocene era; may be viewed today at the museum on Wilshire Boulevard. How do fossils help us understand the past? [Map] MIGRATION TO AMERICA c. 25,000-10,000 B.C. LEARNING FROM MAPS. The Asiatic wanderers who came to the Americas spread slowly across the lands. What physical barriers hindered their spread to the east and west in North America? (4) [Picture] This agate point was wade into a weapon sharp enough to hill mammoths and bison. When the point was attached to a spear, and the spear was flung by an atlatl -- a device for holding and throwing -- it changed the way people hunted. Use your historical imagination to describe two hunts: one before these weapons existed and one after. (5) [Picture] This water jar was one of the pieces of clay pottery made by the Zuni who lived in the desert of the Southwest. After reading page 6 about the Zuni environment, why do you think it was important that jars were watertight? [Picture] What is this animal with horns? Nobody today seems to know. It was carved around the first century by the early residents of the Hopewell site in Ohio. The tail has a rattle, the heed is horned, and little feet are pressed to the body How do you suppose the early Americans used this carving? (6) [Picture] Pueblo Bauito was the greatest Anwazi village in Chaco Canyon. New Mexico. At least 1,200 people lived there once. Drought ended most great pueblos in the last years of the 13th century How might modern environmental studies have helped save Pueblo Bonito? (7) [Picture] An early Pawnee astronomer painted this star chart on buckskin to show the stars and planets of the might shy A reverence for the heavens was a part of the Pawnee tradition. How might the star chart have been used? (8) [Picture] This Kwakiutl ceremonial mask was carved from wood and painted. One head contains another. When opened, its heads look in three directions -- perhaps to past, present, and future. Early Americans of the Northwest carved masks and totem poles to represent their ancestors. How many different works of art in this chapter would you classify as religious? How many are made for everyday use? Can you wake a generalization about the kinds of artifacts that are usually preserved? (9) [Picture] The Anwazi of the Pueblo period around 1100 made this classic pottery in black on white. The vessels were painted with a dye. (10-3) America's Indian Heritage. (10) [Map] MAJOR CULTURAL REGIONS AND INDIAN TRIBES OF NORTH AMERICA, c. 1500. This map shows the geographic location of the major cultural groups into which American Indian tribes have been divided. It also shows some of the hundreds of tribes in each group. Of course many tribes moved about a great deal, so the locations shown are approximate. [Picture] This stone pipe found in Oklahoma shows a wan playing chunkey, a game popular everywhere in the region of the Mound Builders. Games lasted all day. Chunkey was a bit like bowling; a bit like the javelin toss. [Picture] The Hopewell mounds yielded this mica serpent. Mica is a mineral silvery in color and so fine it is translucent -- diffused light passes through. (11) [Picture] Powhatan's Mantle was worn by the great leader of the Algonquins, who lived on the Virginia tidewater -- lands just inland from the ocean. It is the oldest historical example of American Indian art. The cloak is made of tanned buckskin and decorated with shells. [Picture] Pocahontas, daughter of the great Powhatan, is seen here in a 1616 painting. She married John Rolfe of Jamestown and was taken to England. In 1617 she died of smallpox. [Picture] This painted fish bowl was made by the Mimbres, a Mogollon people of southern New Mexico. The Mogollon were among the first people of the Southwest to wake pottery They are best remembered for their black-on-white ware. [Picture] A fragment of a; woven basket was found at Hogup Cave near the Great Salt Lake in Utah. The baskets were so tightly woven that they could hold water into which hot stones were lowered to boil stews. (12) [Picture] The Hiawatha; Belt shows the unity of the five Iroquois tribes. The squares are connected to a central tree, or heart. The beads from which the belt is fashioned were probably brought to America by Europeans. [Picture] The mask of painted wood below depicts the moon. It was carved by the Haida, a people of the Queen Charlotte Islands; which are west of British Columbia. [Picture] The men of the Hopi spun cotton yarn on a spindle. Weaving was also primarily man's work. [Picture] The wooden deer mask was made by inhabitants of Key Marco, off Florida's swampy coast. [Picture] A thunderbird -- the mythical creator of the storms that rolled over the Great Plains -- swoops out of the sky, hurling lightning flashes au this Pawnee ceremonial drum. (13) [Picture] Those who knew the old ways wove this Navajo blanket. [Picture] The great photographer of the American West was Edward Sheriff Curtis. He took "A Piegan Dandy" showing traditional Indian dress and hairstyle. More recently Norman New Rider, a Pawnee Indian, was expelled from school for refusing to cut his braided hair. The Court held that his hair style had no direct link to long-standing tradition or religious identity. [Picture] George Catlin was one of America’s greatest painters of western Indian life. His 1832 portrait of Black Rock shows Catlin's attention to detail. The chief of the Two Kettele tribe of the Black foot nation wears a split-horn ermine cap with a trail of eagle feathers, the mark of the bravest of leaders.

 

[1992g] (26) A Multicultural Nation. From the beginning the American land was host to not one, but many peoples. As early as 70,000 years ago, the first people came to America from Asia by crossing the Bering Strait into Alaska. Over thousands of years, they spread throughout North America and then into South America. When Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean from Europe in 1492, millions of Native Americans lived in North and Central America. (37) The First North American Economies. Before European settlers arrived, Native Americans had a variety of economic systems. Some Indians were primarily hunters, tracking deer in the forests or buffalo on the plains. Most also harvested the fruits and vegetables they found. Others, such as the Pueblos, planted fields of beans, corn, and squash, which they irrigated with a system of canals. Many Native American groups traded with their neighbors and with nations father away. For example, Indians living in Illinois traded for copper bracelets made by people living near Lake Superior. They also received alligator teeth from Indians living in Florida. Western groups of Indians would meet to trade at gathering spots each year. (37) [Picture] An Indian Hunts for Food. In Hunting Moose Deer in Winter, an American artist, George Catlin, shows an Indian following his prey. Catlin painted many scenes of traditional Indian ways, which were soon to vanish as settlers moved west. Technology: How is the Indian traveling across the deep snows? What advantages does this give him over the moose?

 

[1992h] (1-6) CHAPTER ONE. Serving Time in Virginia. As has become clear, the historian's simple act of selection irrevocably separates " "history" from "the past." The reconstruction of an event is quite clearly different from the event itself. Yet selection is only one in a series of interpretive acts that historians perform as they proceed about their business. Even during the preliminary stages of research, when the historian is still gathering information, interpretation and analysis are necessary. That is because the significance of any piece of evidence is seldom apparent at first glance. The historian quickly learns that the words evidence and evident rarely mean the same thing. For historians attemptlng to reconstruct an accurate picture of the first English settlements in Virginia, the difficulty of taking any document at face value becomes quickly apparent. The early Virginians were, by and large, an enterprising lot. They gave America its first representative assembly, gave England a new and fashionable vice, tobacco, and helped establish slavery as a labor system in the New World. These actions raise perplexing and important questions for historians, and yet the answers to them cannot be readily found in the surviving source materials without a good deal of work. The difficulty does not arise entirely from lack of information. Indeed, some Virginians were enterprising enough to write history as well as make it, not the least of them being Captain John Smith. Captain Smith wrote an account of the young colony entited A Generall Historte of Virginia, published in 1624. Much of his history is based on eyewitness, firsthand knowledge. At a vigorous age twenty-seven, he joined the expedition sent to Virginia in 1606 by the Virginia Company of London. Once there, he played a crucial role in directing the affairs of the inexperienced Jamestown colony. Yet Smith's evidence cannot be accepted without making some basic interpretive judgments. Simplest and most obvious -- is he telling the truth? If we are to believe his own accounts, the young captain led a remarkably swashbuckling life. Before joining the Virginia expedition, he had plunged as a soldier of fortune into a string of complicated intrigues in central Europe. There he waged desperate and brave warfare on behalf of the Hungarian nobility before being taken prisoner by the infidel Turk. Once a prisoner, he likely would have spent the remainder of his years as a slave had he not won the affections (so he relates) of a Greek princess with the romantic name of Charatza Trabiganza. The smitten princess helped Smith make his escape, and he subsequently worked his way back to England in time to join the expedition to Virginia in 1606. In Virginia the adventures came nearly as thick and fast as in Hungary. While the colony's governing council quarreled at Jamestown, Captain Smith went off on an exploring and food-gathering mission. He established the first European contact with many of the Indian tribes around Chesapeake Bay, succeeded in buying needed corn from them, and when captured by Chief Powhatan, once again managed to get himself rescued by a beautiful princess -- this one, the chief's young daughter Pocahontas. How much of this romantic adventure story do we believe? The tone of Captain Smith's narrative makes it reasonably apparent that he was not the sort of man to hide his light under a bushel. Indeed, several nineteenth-century scholars, including Henry Adams, challenged Smith's account of his Indian rescue. Adams pointed out that the Pocahontas story did not appear in Smith's earliest published descriptions of the Virginia colony. Only in 1624, when the Generall Htstorie was issued, did the public first read of the Indian maiden's timely devotion. Captain Smith. Adams argued, probably invented the story out of whole cloth, in order to enhance his reputation. We can, of course, look for independent evidence that would corroborate Smith's claims. But in the case of the Pocahontas story no independent records survive. Yet recent historians have defended Smith, Philip Barbour prime among them. Barbour has checked Smith's tales against available records in both Hungary and England and found them generally accurate as to names, places, and dates. Smith claimed, for example, that he used an ingeniolis system of torch signals to coordinate a nighttime attack by his Hungarian friends, "Lord Ebersbaught" and "Baron Kisell." No other records mention Smith's role, but we do know such an attack was launched -- and that it was led by two Hungarians named Sigismund Eibiswald and Jakob Khissl. Similarly, although the records show no Greek princess named Charatza Trabiganza, that may have been Smith's fractured pronunciation of the Greek koritsi [girl] Trapedzoandos [from Trebizond]. Quite possibly, when he asked his captors the identity of his saviour, they merely replied, "koritsi Trapedzoandos" -- a "girl from Trebizond. " Yet even if we grant Smith the virtue of honesty, significant problems remain when using his account; problems common to all historical evidence. To say that Smith is truthful is only to say that he reported events as he saw them. The qualification is not small. Like every observer, Smith viewed events from his own perspective. When he set out to describe the customs of the Chesapeake Indians, for instance, he did so as a seventeeth-century Englishman. Behind each observation he made stood a whole constellation of presuppositions, attitudes, and opinions that he took for granted without ever mentioning them. His descriptions were thus necessarily limited by the experience and education -- or lack of it -- that he brought with him. The seriousness of these limitations becomes clearer if we take a hypothetical example of what might happen were Captain Smith to set down a history, not of Indian tribal customs, but of a baseball game between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees: Not long after, they tooke me to one of their greate Counsells, where many of the generalitie were gathered in greater number than ever I had seen before. And they being assembled about a great field of open grass, a score of their greatest men ran out upon the field, adorned each in brightly hued jackets and breeches, with letters cunningly woven upon their Chestes, and wearinge hats uppon their heades, of a sort i know not what. One of their chiefs stood in the midst and would at his pleasure hurl a white ball at another chief, whose attire was of a different colour, and whether by chance or artyfice I know not the ball flew exceeding close to the man yet never injured him, but sometimes he would strike att it with a wooden club and so giveing it a hard blow would throw down his club and run away. Such actions proceeded in like manner at length too tedious to mention, but the generalitie waxed wroth, with greate groaning and shoutinge, and seemed withall much pleased. Before concluding any more than that Smith would make a terrible writer for the New York Post (we don't even know if the Yankees won!), compare the description of the baseball game with one by the real Smith, of Chesapeake Indian life: In this place commonly are resident seaven [7] Priests. The chiefe differed from the rest in his ornaments, but inferior Priests could hardly be knowne from the common people, but that they had not so many holes in their eares to hang their jewels at. The ornaments of the chiefe Priest were certaine attires for his head made thus. They tooke a dosen, or 16, or more snakes skins and stuffed them with mosse; and of Weesels and other Vermines skins a good many. All these they tie by their tailes, so as all their tailes meete in the toppe of their head, like a great Tassell. Round about this Tassell is as it were a crown of feathers, the skins hang round about his head, necke, and shoulders, and in a manner cover his face. The faces of all their Priests are painted as ugly as they can devise, in their hands they had every one his Rattle, some base, some smaller. Their devotion was most in songs, which the chiefe Priest beginneth and the rest followed him: sometimes he maketh invocations with broken sentences, by starts and strange passions; and at every pause, the rest give a short groane. Without having read the account of the baseball game first, it would not be anywhere near as obvious just how little Smith has told us about the Indian rituals. Indeed, anyone who reads the Generall Historie or any of the captain's writings will be impressed by their freshness, their wealth of detail, and their perceptiveness. But that is because we, like Smith, are unfamiliar with the rituals of the seventeenth-century Chesapeake Indians. Quite naturally -- almost instinctively -- we adopt Smith's point of view as our own. Furthermore, the perspective that is embedded in Captain Smith's description unconsciously diverts us from asking questions to which Smith does not have the answer. What, after all, is the point of the communal ritual? the significance of the fur tassels covering the priest's face? Is priest even the right word to use? Or is Smith choosing an English term that distorts the Indian's status from the beginning? In addition, the Captain's very presence has added a new dimension to the ceremony. What effect will English culture have on Indian social structures and belief systems? How much will the traditional tribal authority of the "priests" be undermined by the arrival of a technologically superior culture? These and many other questions remain unanswered or, more to the point, unasked. They are beyond Smith's interest, his competence, or his ken. If historians are to answer them, they must make a conscious effort to raise the questions in the first place. It is easy enough to see how a point of view is embedded in the facts of an eloquent narration. Smith is, after all, not only headstrong and unabashed, but he is also consciously writing for a wider public. He intends his book to be read and, in being read, to convince. But consider for a moment evidence recorded by one of the pedestrian clerks whose jottings constitute the great bulk of history's raw material. The following excerpts are taken from the records of Virginia's General Assembly and the proclamations of the Governor: We will and require you, Mr. Abraham Persey, Cape Marchant, from this daye forwarde to take notice, that . . . you are bounde to accepte of the Tobacco of the Colony, either for commodities or upon billes, at three shillings the beste and the second sorte at 18d the punde, and this shalbe your sufficient dischardge. Every man to sett 2 acres corn (Except Tradesmen following their trades) penalty forfeiture of corn & Tobacco & be a Slave a year to the Colony. No man to take hay to sweat Tobacco because it robs the poor beasts of their fodder and sweating Tobacco does it little good as found by Experience. Here we face the opposite of Smith's description: small bits of information dependent on a great deal of assumed knowledge. Whereas Smith attempted to describe the Indian ceremony in some detail because it was new to him, Virginia's General Assembly knows all too much about tobacco prices and the planting of corn. Policy is stated without any explanation, just as the scorebox in the paper lists the single line, "Yankees 10, Red Sox 3." In each case the notations are so terse, the "narratives" so brief, that the novice historian is likely to assume they contain no point of view at all, only the bare facts. But the truth is, each statement has a definite point of view that can be summed up as simple questions: (1) Did the Yankees win and if so by how much? (2) Should the price of tobacco be three shillings or eighteen pence or how much? (3) What should colonists use hay for? And so on. These viewpoints are so obvious, they would not bear mentioning -- except that, unconsciously, we are led to accept them as the only way to think about the facts. Since the obvious perspective often appears irrelevant, we tend to reject the information as not worth our attention. But suppose a fact is stripped of its point of view -- suppose we ask, in effect, a completely different question of it? Historians looking back on twentieth-century America would undoubtedly learn little from baseball box scores, but at least by comparing the standings of the 1950s with those of the 1970s, they would soon discover that the Giants of New York had become the Giants of San Francisco and that the Brooklyn Dodgers had moved to Los Angeles. If they knew a bit more than Captain Smith about the economic implications of major league franchises, they could infer a relative improvement in the economic and cultural status of the West Coast. Similarly, by refusing to accept the evidence of tobacco prices or corn planting at its face value, historians might make inferences about economic and cultural conditions in seventeenth-century Virginia. In adopting a perspective different from any held by the historical participants, we are employing one of the most basic tactics of sociology. Sociologists have long recognized that every society functions, in part, through structures and devices that remain unperceived by its members. "To live in society means to exist under the domination of society's logic," notes sociologist Peter Berger. "Very often men act by this logic without knowing it. To discover this inner dynamic of society, therefore, the sociologist must frequently disregard the answers that the social actors themselves would give to his questions and look for explanations that are hidden from their own awareness." Using that approach, historians have taken documents from colonial Virginia, stripped them of their original perspectives, and reconstructed a striking picture of Virginia society. Their research reveals that life in the young colony was more volatile, acquisitive, rowdy, raw -- and deadly -- than most traditional accounts have assumed. Between the high ideals of the colony's London investors and the disembarkation points along the Chesapeake, something went wrong. The society that was designed to be a productive and diversified settlement in the wilderness soon developed into a world where the singleminded pursuit of one crop, tobacco, made life as nasty, brutish, and short as anywhere in the hemisphere. And the colony that had hoped to pattern itself on the free and enlightened customs of England instead found itself establishing something which the government of England had never thought to introduce at home: the institution of human slavery. (3) [Picture] "Their clubs were raised, and in another moment I should have been deed, when Pocahontas, the King's dearest daughter, a child of ten years old finding no entreaties could prevail to save me, darted forward, and taking my head in her arms, laid her own upon it, and thus prevented my death, " In Robert Vaughan's illustration for the Generall Historie (1624), Pocahontas apparently is pictured twice, once at Smith's side, and again, larger than life, pleading for mercy. (4) [Picture] "In this place commonly are resident seaven [7] Priests . . . The faces of all their Priests are painted as ugly as they can devise. in their hands they had every one his Rattle, some base, some smaller." Presumably, the dark figure to the right of Captain Smith is the chief priest with his headdress of snakeskins stuffed with moss. Illustration by Robert vaughan.

 

[1993a] (3-4) MAKING USE OF A NEW WORLD. The first American was an immigrant. Although anthropologists disagree about where the human race first appeared on earth, no one claims the honor for the Western Hemisphere, which had probably never been seen by human eyes until twenty or thirty or at most forty thousand years ago. Presumably the earliest immigrant came by way of the Bering Straits and was followed by hundreds, perhaps thousands, more who trickled slowly southward spreading out across North America and funneling through Mexico into Central and South America, venturing across the water to the Caribbean islands and perhaps much farther to the South Pacific. The immigration may have gone on for centuries, and it probably included people from various parts of Asia, Africa, and Europe. For these early arrivals America was no melting pot. The people we lump together as Indians, or Native Americans, were divided into hundreds of tribes, enormously varied in physical appearance, language, and civilization. Those who made their homes south of the present United States were unquestionably the most numerous and the most skillful in exploiting their territory. They were the inventors of Indian corn (maize) , as efficient a method of transforming earth into food as has ever been devised. Corn is so civilized a plant, so highly bred, that botanists have only recently been able to track down the wild ancestors from which the Indian plant breeders developed it. The early inhabitants of Mexico and South America were skilled in other ways too. They built great cities of stone, richly carved and ornamented. They knew enough mathematics and astronomy to construct a calendar that required no leap year and to predict eclipses of the sun. And they knew enough political science to construct strong governments under which they worked out an advanced division of labor. In central Mexico their economy supported a population of several million and a city (Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City) that ranked in size with those of Europe. By contrast, the Indians who lived north of Mexico were primitive. They made less effective use of the land, and it supported far fewer of them, probably not many more than ten million in the present area of the United States. They grew some corn and other vegetables but also relied on nuts and berries, game and fish, and starved when these were unavailable. In parts of the Southeast they organized governments with real authority, the Powhatan Confederacy in Virginia and the Creek Confederacy in the Gulf Plains. But most often they joined together only loosely in tribes or clans under leaders or chiefs whose authority depended on the respect that their fierceness in war and their wisdom in peace could elicit from the other members of the tribe. They had dignity in abundance, self-reliance, and self-control -- it was rare for Indians to show anger or even to raise their voices. Indeed, they were so self-reliant, so individualistic, that even in war it was apt to be every man for himself; and in peace they did not achieve the cooperation and organization, the division of labor, needed to make the most of the country's resources or to defend it against strangers better organized than they.

 

[1993b]

 

[1994a] (1-4) Chapter 1. Migrants to America. The first Americans were immigrants. Many thousands of years ago they came on foot in small groups across a bridge of dry land between Asia and Alaska -- a pathway that is now underwater. Gradually they spread into all of North, Central, and South America, and as they did so they developed a wide variety of societies. These "Indians " were the first Americans. Much later, 500 years ago, people came by sea from western Europe and from West and west-central Africa. The Europeans thought they had found a "new world." The nations of western Europe, especially England, France, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands, began settling this laud, often with disastrous consequences for the earliest inhabitants. The Indians died very rapidly, largely from new diseases imported from Africa and Europe. Measles and smallpox killed millions of Indians, who had had no previous contact with the microbes that cause them. Christopher Columbus, an Italian navigator and ship captain working for the monarchs of Spain, "discovered " this ancient laud. He died thinking he had reached Asia, not America. THE FIRST AMERICANS. The Native Americans of the eastern woodlands, in the region stretching from what is now Georgia to Maine, had many common characteristics, even though the various groups differed from one another as much as the European nations did. Anthropologists usually sort them into three large groups, principally on the basis of language. The Algonquian tribes lived along the coast from Canada to North Carolina, and for the early English migrants they seemed the "typical" Indians. Further south and west were several large tribes who spoke Muskogean languages. A third language group, the Iroquoian, prevailed especially in the area around the eastern Great Lakes. The Iroquoian peoples were probably relative newcomers, having come from the Mississippi River valley into what is now upstate New York and neighboring parts of Canada. Indian Economic Life All these Native American peoples had common cultural characteristics, but varying climates and available supplies of food and housing made for important differences. Although they possessed a few technological skills that Europeans lacked, their lack of other skills put them at a severe disadvantage when they were confronted by the migrants from northern Europe. The Iroquois and Algonquins had developed a highly efficient means of transportation at a time when roads in most parts of the world were inferior to the highways of ancient Rome. The Indian elm and birch-bark canoes were brittle but light enough to carry between lakes and streams. Hollowed-Out logs were also used, more often along the Atlantic coastline. Many of the coastal Indians fished with great efficiency in shallow waters, using nets and weirs. They were not, however, fishers of the deep sea, for they had not developed sails. All the eastern woodland Indians grew corn (maize) and various kinds of squash, pumpkins, and beans. And of course they hunted deer, which provided clothing as well as food, and they trapped and hunted a variety of smaller animals unknown in the Old World, such as beaver, opossum, and raccoon. Hunting was done with bows and arrows, which in skillful hands were as accurate as European muskets and much more rapid-firing. They also used tomahawks in warfare, and the Muskogean carried, in addition, spears and shields woven from bark and vines. Their housing usually consisted of bent poles covered with thatch or hides. The word "wigwam" is the Algonquian term for "house." Metalworking was unknown, so stones and shells served as weapons and tools. These Indians lacked three other technological advantages widely used by Europeans: the wheel, the plow, and draft animals, such as oxen and horses. Nature and Society. Eastern woodland Indians lived closer to nature than Europeans did, though of course Europeans then lived much closer to nature than we do now. They still kept time by the sun or moon or by walking specific distances, in an age when Europeans were increasingly using clocks and calendars. The Indians had a close psychological rapport with animals and even with trees and mountains; many tribes believed that animals had souls. Their religious faiths reflected their strong ties with natural surroundings. Most -- perhaps all -- believed in a high god, a single deity who was superior to other deities, who were often identified with specific animals, vegetation, or places. This closeness with nature also reflected the way that they thought about their societies. Many tribes considered themselves to be divided into clans, groups of people thought to be related to one another, and these clans were often identified by such names as wolf, bear, deer, and beaver. The Indians were strongly attached to their land, which they felt was theirs by reason of tradition and use, not because they "owned" it. The land almost seemed to own them. This way of thinking about territory was very different from the one that prevailed in Europe, where various groups of people staked out their own turf by means of national boundaries, and where they carved up those national spaces among individuals who then "owned" land as "real estate." The gap between these two concepts of land was to prove an enduring source of conflict between Indians and Europeans in America. The social and political organizations of the tribes varied considerably, but it is impossible today to describe them accurately, largely because early Europeans tended to talk about Indian tribes in terms of their own societies. European observers expected to find kings, nobles, and commoners, and they became confused when they discovered that such groups did not fit the societies they were describing. There was similar confusion about the different Indian groups, which the English variously called nations, tribes, or simply "sorts." It is clear, however, that there were at least a hundred Algonquian tribes; sometimes groups of them were shaped into confederacies by forceful leaders. The famous League of the Iroquois in upstate New York came about because five tribes fashioned a sophisticated and powerful political alliance. Each tribe sent a specific number of representatives to a central council for decisions about war and diplomacy. The Iroquois fascinate historians and anthropologists because of the unusual strength of their confederation and also because of other distinguishing aspects of their society: their longhouses, which were huge wigwams occupied by four to six families; their reputation as fierce warriors; their reliance on communal interpretation of individual dreams; and the powerful influence of Iroquois women, who not only farmed while their men hunted and warred but also chose which men would lead them in both war and peace. Among all eastern Indians, political leadership depended on maturity, wisdom, and forcefulness much more than on heredity or wealth. The woodland Indians were no more peaceful than Europeans. They fought frequently against each other, but more for sport and manhood than for territory. By European standards, casualties were low. Silence and surprise were the usual methods of attack. Many tribes either ritually tortured and killed their captives or formally adopted them into their own group. Their style of peace resembled their style of war; Europeans were struck by their quiet dignity in diplomatic negotiations. Carefully weighing their words, they spoke with brief eloquence, confident that those few words would sea] whatever agreement was being made. THE OLD WORLD MEETS THE NEW. People from the Old World had discovered Indian America at least twice, but the first discovery had little effect. The impact of the second discovery was momentous in Europe as well as in America. In each instance "America" was not discovered as a whole. Rather, European navigators stumbled onto particular landfalls, not in the least aware that they had found numerous islands and two "new" continents. The Norse. The Norse (Norwegian) contacts with America took place about a thousand years ago. Norwegians had long been settled in Iceland; from there they pushed westward. About 980 they established tiny settlements near the southern tip of Greenland. Some 4000 Norse people lived there for centuries, but for unknown reasons they lost contact with Europe in the 1400s and died out for lack of food and supplies. But the Norse thrust westward had gone further. In 986, Biarni Heriulfson set sail from Iceland and ended up cruising along a shore he was sure could not be Greenland because it was "a flat and wooded country" and had no mountains of ice. He was, in fact, running along the coasts of Baffin Island and Labrador, but he did not venture ashore. Although Heriulfson was the first European we know of who saw the American coastline, Leif Ericson was the first to set foot on North American soil. He landed on Baffin Island and then sailed south along the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland. At last the voyagers came ashore at a place they called Vinland. This original European discovery of America remained unknown, except in some obscure old Norse stories, until the nineteenth century. Some people have made claims for earlier contact with Indian America -- by ancient Phoenicians from the Mediterranean, by black Africans, and even by Chinese and Pacific islanders. None of these claims are totally improbable, but all are very far from firmly established. Much more to the point, if such contacts did occur, they had no widespread effect. The voyages of Christopher Columbus did. (2) [Picture] Secota, an unfortified village on the Carolina coast, as drawn by John White.

 

[1994b] (6-14) The People of America Before Columbus. Thousands of years before the European voyages of discovery, the history of humankind in North America began. Nomadic bands from Siberia, hunting big game animals such as bison, caribou, and reindeer, began to migrate across a land bridge connecting northeastern Asia with Alaska. Geologists believe that this land bridge existed most recently between 25,000 and 14,000 years ago, when massive glaciers locked up much of the earth's moisture and left part of the Bering Sea floor exposed. Ice-free passage through Canada was possible only briefly at the beginning and end of this period, however. At other times melting glaciers flooded the land bridge and blocked foot traffic to Alaska. Paleoanthropologists remain divided on the exact timing, but the main migration apparently occurred between 12,000 and 14,000 years ago, although possibly much earlier. Hunters and Farmers. For thousands of years, these early hunters trekked southward and eastward, following vegetation and game. In time, they reached the tip of South America and the eastern edge of North America, thousands of miles from their Asian homeland. Thus did people from the "Old World" discover the "New World" thousands of years before Columbus. Archaeologists have excavated ancient sites of early life in the Americas, unearthing tools, ornaments, and skeletal remains that can be scientifically dated. In this way they have tentatively reconstructed the dispersion of these first Americans over an immense landmass. Although much remains unknown, this archaeological evidence suggests that as centuries passed and population increased, the earliest inhabitants evolved into separate cultures, organizing life and adjusting to a variety of environments in distinct ways. Europeans who rediscovered the New World thousands of years later would indiscriminately lump together the myriad societies they found. But by the 1500s, the "Indians" of the Americas were enormously diverse in the size and complexity of their societies, the languages they spoke, and their forms of social organization. Archaeologists and anthropologists have charted several phases of "Native American" history. A long Beringian epoch ended about 14,000 years ago. From that time a rich archaeological record indicates that the hunters had developed a new technology. Big game hunters now flaked hard stones into spear points and chose "kill sites" where they slew whole herds of Pleistocene mammals. This more reliable food source allowed population growth, and nomadism began to give way to settled habitations or local migration within limited territories. In another phase of evolution, the Archaic era, from about 10,000 to 2,500 years ago, great geological changes brought further adaptations to the land. As the massive glaciers of the Ice Age slowly retreated, a warming trend deprived vast areas from Utah to the highlands of Central America of sufficient water and turned them from grasslands into desert. The Pleistocene mammals could not survive more arid conditions, but human populations ably adapted. They learned to exploit new sources of food, especially plant life. In time, a second technological breakthrough, the "agricultural revolution," occurred. When Native Americans learned to domesticate plant life, they began the long process of transforming their relationship to the physical world. To learn how to harvest, plant, and nurture a seed was to gain partial control over natural forces that before had been ungovernable. Anthropologists believe that this process began independently in widely separated parts of the world -- Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas -- about 7,000 to 9,000 years ago. Though agriculture developed very slowly, everywhere it eventually brought dramatic changes in human societies. Over the millennia, humans progressed from doorside planting of a few wild seeds to systematic clearing and planting of bean and maize fields. As the production of domesticated plant food ended dependence on gathering wild plants and pursuing game, sedentary village life began to replace nomadic existence. The increase in food supply brought about by agriculture triggered other major changes. As populations grew, large groups split off to form separate societies. Greater social and political complexity developed because not everyone was needed as before to secure the society's food supply. Men cleared the land and hunted game, while women planted, cultivated, and harvested crops. Many societies empowered religious figures, who organized the common followers, directed their work, and exacted tribute as well as worship from them. In turn they were trusted to protect the community from hostile forces. Everywhere in the Americas, regional trading networks formed. Along trade routes carrying commodities such as salt, obsidian rock for projectile points, and copper for jewelry also traveled technology, religious ideas, and agricultural practices. By the end of the Archaic period, about 500 B.C. (to use the Christian European method of dating), hundreds of independent kin-based groups, like people in other parts of the world, had learned to exploit the resources of their particular area and to trade with other groups in their region. Native Americans in 1600. The last epoch of pre-Columbian development, the post-Archaic phase, occurred during the 2,000 years before contact with Europeans. It involved a complex process of growth and environmental adaptation among many distinct societies -- and crisis in some of them. In the American Southwest, for example, the ancestors of the present-day Hopi and Zuni developed carefully planned villages composed of large terraced buildings, each with many rooms. By the time the Spanish arrived in the 1540s, the indigenous Pueblo people were using irrigation canals, dams, and hillside terracing to bring water to their arid maize fields. In their agricultural techniques, their skill in ceramics, their use of woven textiles for clothing, and their village life, Pueblo society resembled that of peasant communities in many parts of Europe and Asia. Far to the east were the mound-building societies of the Mississippi and Ohio valleys. When European settlers first crossed the Appalachian Mountains a century and a half after arriving on the continent, they were amazed to find hundreds of ceremonial mounds, some of them 70 feet high, and gigantic sculptured earthworks in geometric designs or in the shapes of huge humans, birds, or writhing serpents. Believing all "Indians" to be forest primitives, they reasoned that these were the remains of an ancient civilization that had found its way to North America -- perhaps Phoenicians, survivors of the sunken island of Atlantis, or the Lost Tribes of Israel spoken of in European mythology. The mound-building societies of the Ohio valley declined many centuries before Europeans reached the continent, perhaps because of attacks from other tribes or severe climatic changes that undermined agriculture. But about A.D. 600 another mound-building culture, based on intensive cultivation of beans, maize, and squash, began to flourish in the Mississippi valley. Its center, a city of perhaps 40,000, stood near present-day St. Louis. Great ceremonial plazas, flanked by a temple that rose in four terraces to a height of 100 feet, marked this first metropolis in America. This was the urban center of a far-flung Mississippi culture that radiated out to encompass thousands of villages from Wisconsin to Louisiana and from Oklahoma to Tennessee. Several centuries before Europeans arrived in North America, the mound-building cultures of the continental heartlands began to decline. But their influence had already passed eastward to transform the woodlands societies along the Atlantic coastal plain. The numerous small tribes that settled from Nova Scotia to Florida never equaled the larger societies of the mid-continent in earthwork sculpture, architectural design, or development of large-scale agriculture. But they were far from the "savages" that the first European explorers described. They had added limited agriculture to their skill in exploiting natural plants for food, medicine, dyes, and flavoring and had developed food procurement strategies that used all the resources around them -- cleared land, forests, streams, shore, and ocean. Most of the eastern woodlands tribes lived in waterside villages. Locating their fields of maize near fishing grounds, they often migrated seasonally between inland and coastal village sites or situated themselves astride two ecological zones. In the Northeast, their birchbark canoes, light enough to be carried by a single man, gave them a means of trading and communicating over immense territories. In the Southeast, population was denser and social and political organization more elaborate. As European exploration of the Americas drew near, the continent north of the Rio Grande contained perhaps 3-4 million people, of whom perhaps 500,000 lived along the eastern coastal plain and in the piedmont region accessible to the early European settlers. Though estimates vary widely, perhaps 40-60 million people lived in the entire hemisphere when Europeans first arrived. This contrasted with some 70-90 million in Europe about 1500 and about 40-70 million in Africa. The colonizers were not coming to a "virgin wilderness," as they often described it, but to a land inhabited for thousands of years by people whose village existence in many ways resembled that of the arriving Europeans. Contrasting World Views. Colonizing Europeans called themselves "civilized" and typically described the people they met in the Americas as "savage," "heathen," or "barbarian." But the gulf separating people in Europe and North America was not defined so much by how the two cultures extracted a food supply from the land, housed themselves, or organized family life as by how they viewed their relationship to the environment and defined social relations in their communities. In these areas, a wide difference in values existed. This created the potential for a dangerous conflict once the Atlantic Ocean that had separated two ancient civilizations had been transformed from a barrier to a bridge by a technological and scientific leap forward by western Europeans in the fifteenth century. In the view of Europeans, the natural world was a resource designed for man's use. "Subdue the earth," read the first book of the Old Testament, "and have dominion over every living thing that moves on the earth." God ruled the cosmos, bringing floods, droughts, and earthquakes, but humans could reshape their physical surroundings into a productive and secure world. Man's relationship to the natural environment was a secular matter, even if God, in the sacred sphere, sometimes intervened. Native Americans, in contrast, were "a people that are contented with Nature as they find her," as one colonist phrased it. In their system of values, every part of the natural environment was sacred and interconnected. Rocks, trees, and animals all possessed spiritual power, and all were linked to form a sacred whole. To injure the environment, by overfishing or abusing it in any way, was to offend the spiritual power present throughout nature and hence to risk spiritual retaliation. In the villages of Europe, peasant people had similarly believed in spirits residing in trees and rocks, but such "superstition" was fading. Regarding the soil as a resource to be exploited for man's benefit, Europeans believed that land should be privately possessed. Individual ownership of property became a fundamental concept, and an extensive institutional apparatus grew up to support it. Fences symbolized private property, inheritance became the mechanism for transmitting land from one generation to another within the same family, and courts gained the power to settle property disputes. Property was the basis not only of sustenance but also of independence, material wealth, political status, and personal identity. The social structure directly mirrored patterns of land ownership, with a landwealthy elite at the apex of the social pyramid and a mass of propertyless individuals forming the broad base. Native Americans also had concepts of property, and tribes recognized territorial boundaries. But they believed that land was invested with sacred qualities and should be held in common. As one German missionary to the Delaware Indians explained their view in the eighteenth century, the Creator "made the Earth and all that it contains for the common good of mankind. Whatever liveth on the land, whatsoever groweth out of the earth, and all that is in the rivers and waters . . . was given jointly to all and everyone is entitled to his share." Communal ownership sharply limited social stratification in most tribal communities. Accustomed to wide disparities of wealth, Europeans often found this remarkable. Observing the Iroquois of the eastern woodlands in 1657, a French Jesuit noted with surprise that they had no almshouses because "their kindness, humanity and courtesy not only makes them liberal with what they have, but causes them to possess hardly anything except in common. A whole village must be without corn, before any individual can be obliged to endure privation." Not all Europeans were acquisitive, competitive individuals. The majority were peasants scratching a subsistence living from the soil, living in kin-centered villages with little contact with the outside world, and exchanging goods and labor through barter. But in Europe's urban centers a wealth-conscious, ambitious individual who valued and sought wider choices and greater opportunities to enhance personal status was coming to the fore. In contrast, Native American traditions stressed the group rather than the individual. Holding land and other resources in common, Indian societies were usually more egalitarian and their members more concerned with personal valor than personal wealth. Exceptions to this cultural system occurred in the highly developed and populous Aztec and Inca empires and, in North America, among a few tribes such as the Natchez. But on the eastern and western coasts of the continent and in the Southwest -- the regions of contact in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries -- the European newcomers encountered a people whose cultural values differed strikingly from theirs. European colonizers in North America also found disturbing the matrilineal organization of many tribal societies. Contrary to European practice, family membership among the Iroquois, for example, was determined through the female line. A typical family consisted of an old woman, her daughters with their husbands and children, and her unmarried granddaughters and grandsons. When a son or grandson married, he moved from this female-headed household to one headed by the matriarch of his wife's family. Divorce was also the woman's prerogative. If she desired it, she merely set her husband's possessions outside their dwelling door. Clans were composed of several matrilineal kin groups related by a blood connection on the mother's side. To Europeans this was a peculiar and dangerous reversal of their sexual hierarchy in which men, from time immemorial, had been supreme. In Native American societies, women also held subordinate positions, but not nearly to the extent found among European women. For example, European women, with rare exceptions, were entirely excluded from political affairs. By contrast, in Native American villages, again to take the Iroquois example, designated men sat in a circle to deliberate and make decisions, but the senior women of the village stood behind them, lobbying and instructing. The village chiefs were male, but they were named to their positions by the elder women of their clans. If they moved too far from the will of the women who appointed them, these chiefs were removed -- or "dehorned." "Our ancestors," the Oneida chief Giod Peter explained, "considered it a great transgression to reject the counsel of their women, particularly the female governesses. Our ancestors considered them mistresses of the soil. . . . The women, they are the life of the nation." The role of women in the tribal economy reinforced the sharing of power between male and female. Men were responsible for hunting, fishing, and clearing land, but women controlled the cultivation, harvest, and distribution of food. They were responsible for probably three-quarters of their family's nutritional needs. When the men were away on hunting expeditions, women directed village life. Europeans, imbued with the idea of male superiority and female subordination, perceived such a degree of sexual equality as another mark of the uncivilized nature of tribal society. In the religious beliefs of Native Americans, the English saw a final cultural defect. Europeans built their religious life around the belief in a single god, written scriptures, an organized clergy, and churches. Most Native American societies, sharing no literary tradition, expressed their religious beliefs in a less structured way. Animated by a belief in a spirit power dwelling throughout nature (polytheism), they seemed to Europeans to worship the Devil, European settlers, their fear and hatred of infidels intensified by the Protestant Reformation, saw a holy necessity to convert -- or destroy -- these enemies of their God.

 

[1994c] (6) Chapter l. The First People of the Americas. The air was freezing cold. Icy winds howled out of the north. Much of the land from the Arctic Circle to south of the Great Lakes was covered by enormous sheets of moving ice. These ice sheets are called glaciers (GLAY-shurz). Prehistoric animals, such as huge woolly mammoths short-faced bears and saber-toothed tigers, roamed the land. This was what the first people who came to the Americas saw. Historians think that the first people of America walked here from Asia across a land bridge. The land bridge connected Siberia in Asia with Alaska in North America. These people were following the herds of animals that were their main source of food.... (12) Chapter 2. Native Americans of the North and the Pacific Coast Regions. Young Matka was very excited to be on his first whale hunt. His people, the Nootka, were proud of their skill in hunting these giant sea animals in open water. Whales were the Nootka's chief source of food and most of their belongings. They feasted on the whale's delicious meat and fat. The Nootka women used the whale's sinews to make long ropes. They used the animal's intestines to make containers. Just as important, they used the oil from the whale's fat to heat and light their homes. Matka knew that one day he would become the chief harpooner, or spear thrower, like his father. He would need to be very strong to drive the long harpoon into the whale. The many different groups of Native Americans developed special ways of living that suited their needs. In each region of the Americas, the early people developed new cultures. Culture is a people's way of life. A culture includes people's beliefs and customs, the way they organize their society, their language, their buildings and art, and many other things.... (18) Chapter 3. Native Americans of the Mid-Continent. The two cowboys rode their horses slowly along the trail. Snow was beginning to fall, and they still had not found their lost cattle. As the cowboys rode their horses into the snowy valley, they saw a sight they would never forget. There, in the walls of the canyon, high above them, were stone houses. As they looked more closely, they were even more amazed. The stone houses were part of a village that people had built far above the valley. On that snowy afternoon in December 1888, these cowboys discovered Mesa Verde. This village in southern Colorado had been built nearly 600 years earlier by early Native Americans called the Anasazi. (24) Chapter 4. Native Americans of the Eastern Woodlands. Sixty men on each team were lined up, ready for the game to start. Each player held two sticks with a webbed loop at the end for catching a leather ball. The object of the game was to catch a ball and throw it between the opposing team's goal posts. As the game began, the players dashed about the field trying to get the ball. They tackled each other and kicked and hit as hard as they could. This game, similar to lacrosse today, was played by the Muskogee (mus-KOH-gee) people during their harvest celebration. The game was taken seriously as practice for fighting in war. As part of the harvest celebration, the Muskogee also went without food, took steam baths, and drank dark herb tea. Then at the end they lighted new fires and roasted the first green ears of corn. This harvest celebration was very important to the Muskogee, for they were celebrating their first crop of the year. Like many other Native Americans of the Eastern Woodlands, the Muskogee were skilled farmers. (30) Chapter 5. Native Americans of Latin America. 1. One day in 1839, an American named John Lloyd Stephens was on ah expedition deep in the rain forests of Central America. Suddenly, in the dense jungle, Stephens and his companions came upon the ancient city of Copan. It was overgrown with trees and creeping vines. Yet everywhere Stephens saw huge stones and carved pillars where great buildings had once stood. "All was mystery," Stephens later wrote. The great city of Copan was in ruins. The only sounds he heard were "the scrambling of monkeys and the chattering of parrots." After Stephens's discovery, scientists and historians began to study this great city and the Maya people who had built it. The Mayan civilization was one of three great Native American civilizations that developed in Latin America.

 

[1994d] (6) COMPARING ART FORMS: NATIVE AMERICAN COMMUNICATION. Throughout history art has been used by many people as a way of communicating. Art can tell a story, describe something, or express deep feelings. Art in the form of totem poles, pictographs, masks, and other works was a part of the life of Native Americans. A. Shaman mask, Iroquois. B. Totem pole, Haida. C. Pictograph from Texas. COMPARING ART FORMS. The illustrations show three different forms of Native American art. The mask (A) is an Iroquois mask. The totem pole (B) is from the northwest coast of North America. The last Native American art (C) is a pictograph found in Texas. Look at the pictures carefully. Answer the following questions. 1. Which of the art works has been used to show a scene from a story, A, B, or C? What is the scene? C; The pictograph shows two warriors fighting. 2. Masks had many purposes among Native Americans. Mask A had a religious purpose. Explain how this mask might be used against evil spirits. Possible answer: The mask is ugly and was probably intended to frighten evil spirits away. 3. A totem pole, which was often placed in front of a family's home, showed people's faces and an animal that was worshiped. What meaning do you think such an object had for the family? Possible answer: The totem pole may have identified the family who lived in the home and shown pride and respect for the animal and the family portrayed. (7) INTERPRETING AN ILLUSTRATION: TRANSPORTATION FOR NATIVE AMERICANS. Native Americans traveled either by foot, by horse, or by boat. The fastest way to travel was by water. The canoe was the most commonly used boat, but other kinds of boats, such as coracles and dugouts, were also used. A. INTERPRETING AN ILLUSTRATION The picture at the right shows coracles used by Native Americans of the Great Plains called Mandans. Look at the picture carefully. Answer the following questions. Mandan women crossing a river in coracles. 1. Why do you think such a craft was well suited for river travel? Possible answer: The craft is light and probably could cross the river quickly and was easily carried over land to other rivers. 2. Why might this craft be unsuitable for fishing in the ocean or in a large lake? Possible answer: The craft is not strong enough for large bodies of water, where strong storms could sink it. B. COMPARING AND CONTRASTING and contrast. Use the information in Chapters 2 and 4 to compare l . How was the use of waterways by the Pacific Coast tribes and those of the Eastern Woodlands a. alike? In both areas, the waterways were used for fishing and for transportation. b. different? Pacific Coast tribes often fished and traveled on the ocean; Eastern Woodlands peoples, on rivers and lakes. (8) USING A MAP: NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURE REGIONS OF WESTERN NORTH AMERICA. Each Native American culture region in Western North America supported a distinctive way of life. Use the map below and in your textbook on page 13 to do the exercise below. MATCHING. Match the Native Americans in the right column with their culture region in the left column. E 1. Pomo D 2. Pueblo. G 3. Tlingit C 4. Comanche C 5. Crow. a. Arctic b. Subarctic c. Plains d. Southwest e. California f. Northern Mexico g. Northwest Coast. (9) USING A MAP: NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURE REGIONS OF EASTERN NORTH AMERICA. Each Native American cultural region in eastern North America supported a distinctive way of life. Use the map below and the map in your textbook on page 28 to do the exercise below. MATCHING. Match the Native Americans in the left column with their culture region in the right column. C 1. Mohegan D 2. Creek D 3. Cherokee C 4. Iroquois C 5. Algonquin F 6. Cheyenne. a. Arctic b. Subarctic c. Eastern Woodlands d. Southeast e. Central America f. Plains. (10) COMPLETING A CHART: COMPARISON OF NATIVE AMERICANS. Before the arrival of Europeans in the Western Hemisphere, many different Native American peoples lived on the two continents of the Americas. Each people had its own culture and occupied its own region. Native Americans lived as far apart as Alaska and Mexico. The chart below shows the main characteristics of some of these Native American cultures. NATIVE AMERICAN CULTIRES. A. COMPLETING A CHART. Use the information below to complete the chart. Along the Northwest Coast, the Pacific Coast peoples lived chiefly by fishing. In the river valleys of the Southwest, most tribes were farmers. In the Southeast, many peoples, like the Creek, based their way of life mainly on farming along with some hunting. Farther south, in the tropical rain forests of Yucatan, Mexico, the Maya lived mainly by farming. (11) B. TRUE OR FALSE. Use the chart to decide whether the following statements are true or false. In the blank next to each statement write T or F. F 1. The Iroquois lived in the far Southwest. T 2. Pacific Coast peoples lived chiefly from fishing. F 3. In the southern climates, most Native Americans lived mainly from hunting. F 4. The Maya lived near the Missouri River. T 5. The Anasazi made their homes near river valleys. C. SENTENCE COMPLETION. In the blank provided, write the word or words that best complete each of the following statements. Use the chart and the information from the textbook. l. The Northwest Pacific Coast peoples made their homes in the area from the state of Oregon to the state of Alaska. 2. In the northeastern regions, the Iroquois made their living by hunting and farming. 3. The Iroquois consisted of a group of tribes: Cayuga the Mohawk, Oneida, Seneca, ,and Onondaga. 4 The people who lived m the Yucatan region of Mexico were the Maya. 5. The people who brought most of central Mexico under their control in the 1300s were the Aztecs. D. MULTIPLE CHOICE. Underline twice the answer that best completes each of the following sentences. l. The Mandans lived close to the a. Pacific Ocean (b.) Missouri River c. Ohio River d. Atlantic Ocean. 2. A people who lived in present-day Alabama and Georgia were the (a.) Creek b. Incas c. Anasazi. 3. The main lifestyle of the Maya was a. fishing (b.) farming c. basket weaving d. pottery making. 4. The Native American group that lived where the present-day states of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah meet were the a. Incas b. Maya c. Iroquois (d.) Anasazi.

 

[1995a]

 

[1995b] (3) THE EARLIEST AMERICANS. Introduction. Evidence is mounting that indicates North America has been inhabited by people, whom Columbus called "Indians," for at least 20,000, and perhaps 40,000, years. Most historians believe that the earliest of these people came from Asia, most likely Siberian Asia. They carried themselves, their children, and their scanty possessions over a land bridge, since sunken and replaced by the Bering Strait. They had no beasts of burden, and they did not know the use of the wheel. They obtained their food by hunting, fishing, or gathering. Yet, over a period of several thousand years they managed to populate every region of North America and South America a remarkable people and a remarkable feat. Suggestions for Teaching. 1. Supply your students with photocopies of the map and text on the facing page, and the question page that follows it. Have your students find the answers to the questions from the map and the accompanying information. After the questions have been answered discussions can take place with supplemental questions and comments made. 2. How many Indians are living in the United States today? The most reliable and up-to-date statistics are furnished by the Statistical Abstract of the United States and are listed in the next column. Make the statistics available to your students via the chalk board. Then, have them show the data on the incomplete graph on page 5. Remind them that each symbol is to represent 20,000 Indians, and that it may be necessary to have a partial symbol at the end of a line of symbols for a particular state. The Ten States with the Greatest Indian Population. Oklahoma (OK): 250,000, California (CA): 240,000, Arizona (AZ): 200,000, New Mexico (NM): 130,000, North Carolina (NC): 80,000, Washington (WA): 80,000, Texas (TX): 60,000, New York (NY): 60,000, Michigan (MI): 60,000, South Dakota (SD): 50,000. Notes: 1. The statistics for each state have been rounded to the nearest 10,000. 2. The term "Indian" does not include Eskimo and Aleut. 3. National Geographic (October, 1991) gave a figure of some 2,000,000 Indians in North America at the time of Columbus's landing in 1492. Indian Sign Language Even though there were many different Indian languages and dialects spoken in pre- and after- Columbus America, various tribes still were able to communicate effectively through signs. Even today many of the signs used for communicating with the hard-of-hearing resemble Indian signs. You can bring your students' attentions to some aspects of Indian sign language through the illustrations that follow. It might be amusing to use some of the signs in class, for example, the signs for "Yes" and "No." (4) Early People of North America: The information on this page is about the earliest people, later to be called "Indians," who migrated from Asia to North America. The process took thousands of years. Each group that came into North America either settled in camps abandoned by earlier settlers or moved on and beyond to establish settlements of their own. Bering Strait - Once a land bridge, now a strip of water about 50 miles long . . .before the land sank could be crossed by walking, later crossed by small boat or by walking on ice in winter. . . . Isthmus of Panama - Land bridge used by early people to enter South America from North America, now the site of the Panama Canal. . . . Food Eaten by Early People Huge mammoths (now extinct), caribou, and smaller animals; nuts, berries, roots; fish. . . . Clothing of Early People Made from skins of animals sewn together with leather thongs . . . no knowledge of weaving as a means of making cloth. . . . Shelter of Early People Caves, tents made of skin, ice houses (igloos). Weapons - Spears, sticks, stones no bows and arrows in the earliest groups. . . . Method of Travel -- Walking and carrying possessions on their backs, some rafting if currents carried them in the desired direction. . . . of interest. Before the earliest people came to North America, horses roamed the land. Then, for unknown reasons, the horses either died or wandered north and crossed the land bridge into Asia. They returned with the Spanish explorers in the early 1500's. Eventually the Indians, as they were called, captured some of the horses and learned how to ride them and use them for transporting possessions from place to place . . . Eastern Woodlands Indians began farming about three thousand years ago, but it took many years for farming to become their most important way of obtaining food. When this happened it meant that more time could be spent on developing permanent homes and villages, government, art and other forms of culture. . . . All of the Indian tribes scattered over the continent had to adapt to the environment in which they lived. Thus, Indian tribes developed different ways of living. Arctic Indians and Northwest Coast Indians depended on fish and, later, whales for food, but the Great Plains Indians depended upon the buffalo. Southwest Plains Indians built homes on the sides of cliffs; Great Plains Indians built tents of skins or constructed sod houses; Northwest Indians erected homes of wood and bark, and so on. . . .

 

[1995c]

 

[1996a] (11-5) EARLY NORTH AMERICAN CULTURES. The Americas were a new world only to European latecomers. To the Asian peoples and their native American descendants who had settled the continents tens of thousands of years earlier, Columbus' new world was their own old world. But it is doubtful that the first nomadic hunters who crossed from Siberia over the Bering Strait to Alaska considered themselves discoverers or recognized what they had found -- a truly new world, one wholly uninhabited by humans. The First Inhabitants. The first passage of people from Asia to America probably took place during a prehistoric glacial period -- either before 35,000 B.C. or about 10,000 years later -- when huge amounts of the world's water froze into sheets of ice. Sea levels dropped so drastically that the Bering Strait became a broad, grassy plain. Across that land bridge between the two continents both humans and animals escaped icebound Siberia for ice-free Alaska. Whenever the first migration took place, the movement of Asians to America continued, even after 8000 B.C. when world temperatures rose again and the water from melting glaciers flooded back into the ocean, submerging the Bering Strait. Over a span of 25,000 years settlement spread down the Alaskan coast, then deeper into the North American mainland, and finally throughout Central and South America. Native Americans remained nomadic hunters and gatherers for thousands of years, as did many Europeans, Africans, and Asians of those millennia. But American cultures gradually diversified, especially after about 5500 B.C., when the peoples of central Mexico discovered how to cultivate food crops. As this "agricultural revolution" spread slowly northward, native American societies were able to grow larger and develop distinctive forms of economic, social, and political organization. By the end of the fifteenth century, the inhabitants of North America, perhaps 5 to 10 million people, spoke as many as 1000 languages. Although later Europeans, like Columbus, lumped these societies together by calling them Indian, any cultural unity had vanished long before 1492. The simplest Indian societies were those that still relied on hunting and gathering, like the Eskimos of the Arctic and the Serrano, Cahuilla, Luiseno, and Dieguefio of southern California, Arizona, and the Baja peninsula of Mexico. Stark deserts and frozen tundra defied cultivation and yielded food supplies that could sustain nomadic bands numbering no more than about 50 people. Families occasionally joined together for a collective hunt or wintered in common quarters, but for most of the year they scattered across the landscape, the women gathering plants and seeds, making baskets, and cooking meals while the men hunted for meat and hides. Political authority lay with either the male family head or the "headman" of a small band. "Shamans"-any tribesmen claiming spiritual powers-enlisted the supernatural to assist individuals. Societies of Increasing Complexity Hunters and gatherers. In the densely forested belt that stretched from Newfoundland to the Bering Strait, resources more generous than those of the tundra to the north made for larger populations and more closely knit societies. Northeastern bands like the Montagnais, the Micmac, and the Penobscot and northwestern tribes like the Yellowknife and the Beaver traveled forests in moccasins and snowshoes, stalking deer, elk, moose, bear, and caribou; they speared fish in icy lakes and streams from birch-bark canoes. Their environment encouraged cooperative economic pursuits. Leading men assigned several families to specific territories that they hunted together, dividing the returns among the whole band. Religious beliefs strengthened the ties of kinship: each family had a "totem," a particular animal from which they claimed descent. Women in agricultural societies. While men dominated Indian bands based on hunting, women assumed more influence in societies that relied for part of their food on settled agriculture. Among the Pueblo peoples of Arizona and New Mexico, the Hopi and Zufii tribes, men hunted bison and cultivated corn and beans, but women owned the fields, the crops, and even the tools. They also owned the sun-baked dwellings of adobe and stone, some of which rose to several stories, that housed the families of their daughters. By 1540 some 70 Pueblo villages flourished, as more reliable food supplies swelled the size and number of clans (families sharing a common ancestry). A council of religious elders drawn from the different clans governed each village. Pueblo religious ceremonies, in contrast to those of simpler Indian societies, involved elaborate rituals celebrating tribal unity and seeking the gods' blessing for hunts and harvests. Thousands of miles to the northeast, in a natural setting far different from the semiarid Southwest, the Iroquois created a remarkably similar culture. More complex Indian civilizations arose in the bountiful environments of the Pacific Northwest and the coastal region reaching from Virginia to Texas. The seas and rivers from eastern Alaska to northern California teemed with fish, humpback whales, seals, and otters. In the Southeast fertile soil and temperate climate encouraged the cultivation of maize, rice, and a variety of fruits. By harvesting these resources and developing techniques to preserve food supplies, settlements could become larger and more complex. Far less egalitarian than nomadic hunting bands or even the Pueblo and Iroquois, these tribes developed elaborate systems of status. Among southeastern tribes like the Natchez, below the chief or "Great Sun," stood a hereditary nobility of lesser "Suns," who demanded elaborate displays of respect from the lowly "Stinkards," the common people. Mesoamerican Empires. Even more advanced were the vast agricultural empires of Mesoamerica -- south and central Mexico and Guatemala. As the Roman empire was declining in Europe, the civilization of the Mayas was flourishing in the lowland jungles of Central America. They built cities filled with palaces, bridges, aqueducts, baths, astronomical observatories, and temples topped by pyramids. Their priests developed a written language, their mathematicians discovered the zero, and their astronomers devised a calendar more accurate than any then existing. Rise of the Aztecs. The Aztecs, who invaded central Mexico from the north in the fourteenth century, built on the Mayas' achievements. Within a century Aztec conquest had created an empire of several million people. The capital, Tenochtitlan, was a glittering island metropolis with a population in 1400 of perhaps a quarter of a million several times the size of London. The Great Temple of the Sun dominated the center of the city, and through the canals leading to Tenochtitlan flowed gold, silver, exotic feathers, cocoa, and millions of pounds of maize -- all trade goods and tribute from other Mexican city-states conquered by the Aztecs. Warfare enriched the empire, but its primary purpose was to maintain a steady supply of human captives for sacrifice. Aztecs believed that they were the chosen people -- chosen to nourish the earth by sustaining the life of the sun. Each year priests wielding razor-sharp obsidian knives sliced open the chests of thousands of captives and offered up to the sun hearts still beating. Human sacrifice shocked early modern Europeans. Yet the sense of religious mission that underlay Aztec rituals resembled the convictions that inspired bloody Christian crusades against "Muslim infidels." Similarities between Aztec and European cultures. In other ways, too, the world of the Aztecs paralleled the societies of early modern Europe. Like Europe's peasants, Aztec farmers lived in permanent villages. Aztec merchants and specialized craftworkers clustered in large cities, organized themselves into guilds, and clamored for protection from the government. And, as in Europe, noble and priestly classes took the lead in politics and religion, demanding tribute from the common people. For all their similarities there was at least one crucial difference between Aztec and European civilizations. Aztec expansion did not take the form of colonial settlements that spanned the oceans indeed, the globe. That difference reflected a host of distinctive changes in European social, economic, and political development during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It was these transformations that made it possible for bold sailors like Columbus and Cabot or anonymous fisher-folk and traders to dream of profit, glory, and empire. (12) [Map] INDIANS OF NORTH AMERICA, CIRCA 1500. (14) EYEWITNESS TO HISTORY. A Spanish Conquistador Visits the Aztec Marketplace in Tenochtitlan. On reaching the market-place . . . we were astounded at the great number of people and the quantities of merchandise, and at the orderliness and good arrangements that prevailed, for we had never seen such a thing before. . . . Every kind of merchandise was kept separate and had its fixed place marked for it. Let us begin with the dealers in gold, silver, and precious stones, feathers, cloaks, and embroidered goods, and male and female slaves who are also sold there. They bring as many slaves to be sold in that market as the Portuguese bring Negroes from Guinea. Some are brought there attached to long poles by means of collars round their necks to prevent them from escaping, but others are left loose. Next there were those who sold coarser cloth, and cotton goods and fabrics made of twisted thread, and there were chocolate merchants. . . . In this way you could see every kind of merchandise to be found anywhere in New Spain, laid out in the same way as goods are laid out in my own district [in Spain] of Medina del Campo, a center for fairs, where each line of stalls has its own particular sort. So it was in this great market. There were those who sold sisal cloth and ropes and the sandals they wear on their feet . . . and in another part were skins of tigers and lions, otters, jackals, and deer, badgers, mountain cats, and other wild animals. I must also mention, with all apologies, that they sold many canoe-loads of human excrement, which they kept in the creeks near the market. This was for the manufacture of salt and the curing of skins, which they say cannot be done without it. I know that many gentlemen will laugh at this, but I assure them it is true. I may add that on all the roads they have shelters made of reeds or straw or grass so that they can retire when they wish to do so, and purge their bowels unseen by passers-by; and also in order that their excrement shall not be lost. [Bernal Diaz, The Conquest of New Spain, translated by J M Cohen (New York: Penguin Classics, 1963), pp. 232-233. Copyright © J M Cohen, 1963.]

 

[1996b] (2-8) AMERICAN SOCIETIES. Human beings probably originated on the continent of Africa, where humanlike remains about three million years old have been found in what is now Ethiopia. Over many millennia, the growing human population slowly dispersed to the other continents. Some people crossed a now-submerged stretch of land that joined Asia and North America at the site of the Bering Strait. Paleo-Indians. The forerunners of the American population are known as Paleo-Indians. The earliest confirmed evidence of their presence in the Americas dates to approximately twenty-eight thousand years ago. The Paleo-Indians were nomadic hunters of game and gatherers of wild plants. They spread throughout North and South America, probably moving as extended families or bands. (Tribes were composed of allied bands.) By about 11,500 years ago, the Paleo-Indians were making fine stone projectile points, which they attached to wooden spears and used to kill and butcher the large mammals then living in the Americas. But as the Ice Age ended and the human population increased, all the large American mammals except the bison (buffalo) disappeared. Scholars cannot agree whether their demise was caused by overhunting or by a change in climate. In either case, deprived of their primary source of meat, the Paleo-Indians had to find new ways to survive. The most significant innovation was the development of agriculture. By approximately seven thousand years ago, the residents of what is now central Mexico began to cultivate food crops, especially maize (corn), squash, beans, and peppers. Centuries before, people living in the Andes Mountains of South America had started to grow potatoes. As knowledge of agricultural techniques improved and spread through the Americas, vegetables and maize proved more reliable sources of food than hunting and gathering. Except for those living in the harshest climates, most Americans started to adopt a more sedentary style of life so they could tend fields regularly. Some established permanent settlements; others moved several times a year among fixed sites. They became adept at clearing forests through the use of controlled burning. All Native American cultures emphasized producing sufficient food to support themselves. Although they traded goods, no tribe ever became wholly dependent on another group for items vital to its survival. Wherever agriculture dominated the economy, more complex civilizations flourished. Such societies were able to accumulate wealth, produce ornamental objects, and create elaborate rituals and ceremonies. In North America, the successful cultivation of nutritious crops seems to have led to the growth and development of all major civilizations: first the large city-states of Mesoamerica (modern Mexico and Guatemala), then the urban clusters known collectively as the Mississippian culture and located in the present-day United States. Each society reached its height of population and influence only after achieving success in agriculture, and each declined and collapsed after reaching the limits of its food supply. Even the powerful Aztec empire that the Spaniards encountered in 1519 is thought to have been approaching the point at which it could no longer sustain its population. The Aztecs were the heirs of a series of Mesoamerican civilizations. The first great civilization in the region was that of the Olmecs, whose Olmecs and Mayas. culture mysteriously appeared in the swampy lowlands near the Gulf of Mexico more than three thousand years ago and just as mysteriously disappeared about one thousand years later. The Olmecs created urban centers with ceremonial plazas flanked by temple pyramids, a construction style that would be adopted by all later Mesoamerican societies. Their chief deity was a jaguar god, an image that would reappear in the pantheons of later civilizations. The Olmec civilization, like its successors, was a highly stratified society ruled by an elite priestly caste that claimed the exclusive ability to communicate with the gods. After the decline of the Olmec cities, the Mayan civilization developed in the Yucatan Peninsula. The Mayas also built large cities containing tall pyramids and constructed temples. They studied astronomy, created the first writing system in the Americas, and developed a richly symbolic religious life in which rituals of bloodletting played a major role. The kings of the great Mayan city-states vied with each other for power. By the fifth century C.E. (common era), or about fifteen hundred years ago, they had begun to engage in open warfare. But no king or city could win total victory: Eventually, the constant fighting combined with overpopulation and the resulting environmental stress to cause the collapse of the most powerful cities. By the time the Spaniards arrived, only a few remnants of the once-mighty Mayan civilization remained. The City of Teotihuacan. The largest Mesoamerican metropolis was a contemporary and a major trading partner of the Ma as. Teotihuacan founded about 300 B.C.E. (before the common era)some twenty-three hundred years ago -- in the Valley of Mexico, was one of the largest cities in the world in the fifth century C.E., with an estimated population of up to two hundred thousand. The rulers of Teotihuacan gained their position through commerce rather than warfare, and their trading network extended hundreds of miles in all directions. Teotihuacan also served as a religious center; pilgrims must have come long distances to visit the impressive Pyramids of the Sun and Moon and the great temple of Quetzalcoatl -- the feathered serpent, the primary god of central Mexico. Teotihuacan's influence was felt so widely in Mesoamerica before its decline in the eighth century C.E. that some scholars have argued that this great Mexican city-state also influenced societies farther north, in what is now the United States. Although unproved, Teotihuacan and later Mesoamerican empires, like that of the Aztecs, may have affected the development of the Mississippian culture, which flourished around 1000 C.E. in what is now the midwestern and southeastern United States. Like those to the south, the civilization of Teotihuacan was based on the cultivation of maize, beans, and squash. Not until about 700 to 900 C.E. were these crops grown successfully in what is now the United States; soon after their introduction, large cities with plazas and earthen pyramids first appeared in the region. The largest of the cities was Cahokia, near modern St. Louis. At its peak (before 1250 C.E.), Cahokia had a population of about ten thousand -- small by Mesoamerican standards but far larger than any other northern community. Like Teotihuacan, Cahokia seems to have been a center for religion and trade. Its main pyramid, today called the Monk's Mound, was the largest earthwork built in North America and stood about half as high as the Pyramid of the Sun. Other Mississippian sites were located in present-day Alabama and Georgia. Traces of this civilization remained when Spaniards first visited the area in the sixteenth century. Aztecs. Aztec histories tell of the long migration of their people (who called themselves Mexica) into the Valle of Mexico during the twelfth century. The uninhabited ruins of Teotihuacan, which by then had been deserted for at least two hundred years, awed and mystified the migrants. The Aztecs' primary god, Huitzilopochtli, was a god of war, represented by an eagle. Aztec chronicles record that Huitzilopochtli directed them to establish their capital at the spot on an island where they saw an eagle eating a serpent (thus symbolizing Huitzilopochtli's triumph over the traditional deity, Quetzalcoatl). That island city became Tenochtitlan, the center of a rigidly stratified society composed of hereditary classes of the earth and all people who lived on it had been destroyed. They predicted that their own world would end in earthquakes and hunger. In the Aztec year Thirteen Flint, volcanoes erupted, sickness and hunger spread, and an eclipse of the sun darkened the sky. Did some priest wonder whether the Fifth Sun was approaching its end? But nothing ominous happened, at least not immediately, Eventually; the Aztecs learned that their year Thirteen Flint was called 1492 by the Europeans. NORTH AMERICAN IN 1492. Over the centuries, the Americans who lived north of Mexico adapted their once-similar ways of life to quite different geographical settings, thus creating the diverse cultures that the Europeans encountered when they first arrived (see map). Hunter-gatherer bands lived in environments not well suited to agriculture. Within the area of the present-day United States, these tribes included the Paiutes and Shoshones, who inhabited the Great Basin (now Nevada and Utah). Because of the difficulty of finding food sufficient for more than a few people, such bands were small. Where large game was more plentiful and food supplies therefore more certain, as in present-day Canada and the Great Plains, bands of hunters were somewhat larger. In more favorable environments, larger groups combined agriculture with gathering, hunting, and fishing. Tribes that lived near the seacoasts, like the Chinooks of present-day Washington and Oregon, consumed fish and shellfish in addition to growing crops and gathering seeds and berries. Tribes of the interior (for example, the Arikaras of the Missouri River valley) hunted large animals and cultivated maize, squash, and beans. The Algonkian tribes of what is now eastern Canada and the northeastern United States also combined hunting and agriculture. The Algonkians typically moved four or five times a year. Once crops were well established, villages broke into small mobile bands to engage in gathering, hunting, and fishing. Villages reassembled for harvest, then dispersed again for the fall hunting season. Finally, the people would spend the harsh winter months together in a protected location before returning to their fields in the spring. Every few years, they would use controlled burning techniques to clear new fields and ensure continuing fertility. Sexual Division of Labor in America. Societies that relied primarily on hunting large animals like deer and buffalo assigned that task to men, allotting food-processing, clothing-production, and child-rearing chores to women. Before such nomadic bands acquired horses from the Spaniards, women -- occasionally assisted by dogs -- also carried the family's belongings whenever the band relocated. Such a sexual division of labor was universal among hunting tribes. By contrast, agricultural societies differed in how they assigned cultivating crops to the sexes. In what is now the southwestern United States, the Pueblo peoples defined agricultural labor as men's work. In the East, Algonkian, Iroquoian, and Muskogean peoples allocated agricultural chores to women, whereas men hunted and cleared the land. In all farming societies, women gathered wild foods, prepared food for consumption or storage, and cared for children. The southwestern and eastern agricultural peoples had similar social organizations. They lived in villages, sometimes sizable ones with a thousand or more inhabitants. Pueblo villages had large, multistory buildings and were built on terraces along the sides of cliffs or other easily defended sites in what is now New Mexico and Arizona. Northern Iroquois villages (in modern New York State) were composed of large, rectangular, bark-covered structures, or longhouses; the word Iroquois means People of the Long House. In the present-day southeastern United States, Muskogeans and southern Algonkians lived in large houses made of thatch. Most eastern villages were surrounded by wood palisades and ditches to aid in fending off attackers. The defensive design of such villages and of the western pueblos suggests the significance of warfare in pre-Columbian America. In all these agricultural societies, each dwelling housed an extended family defined matrilineally (through a female line of descent). Mothers, their married daughters, and their daughters' husbands and children lived together. Matrilineal descent did not imply matriarchy or the wielding of power by women, but rather served as a means of reckoning kinship. Extended families were linked into clans, also defined by matrilineal ties. The nomadic bands of the Great Plains, on the other hand, were most often related patrilineally, through the male line. Native American Politics and Religion. The authority of American leaders rested ultimately on the consent of the other tribal members, but political structures in the various tribes differed considerably. Among Pueblo and Muskogean peoples, the village council was the highest political authority; there was no government at the tribal level. By contrast, the Iroquois had an elaborate political hierarchy that incorporated villages into tribes and tribes into a widespread confederation. All North American cultures divided political power between civil and war leaders who wielded authority only so long as they retained the confidence of the people. Consensus rather than autocratic rule characterized these political systems. The political position of women varied from tribe to tribe. Women were more likely to assume leadership roles among agricultural peoples than among nomadic hunters. For example, women led certain Algonkian villages, but they were never chosen to lead hunting bands of the Great Plains. Iroquois women did not become chiefs, yet tribal matrons exercised political power. Probably the most powerful female chiefs were found in what is now the southeastern United States. In the mid-sixteenth century, a female ruler known as the Lady of Cofitachequi governed a large group of villages in what today is western South Carolina. Early English settlers in New England also noted in nearby villages the presence of female chiefs, most of whom were the wives, sisters, or widows of male leaders. Americans' religious beliefs varied even more than did their political systems, but all the peoples were polytheistic, worshipping a multitude of gods. One common thread was their integration with nature. Thus each tribe's most important beliefs and rituals were closely tied to its economy. The major deities of agricultural peoples were associated with cultivation, and their chief festivals centered on planting and harvest. The most important gods of hunting tribes were associated with animals, and their major festivals were related to hunting. A tribe's economy and women's role in it helped to determine women's potential as religious leaders. Women held the most prominent positions in those agricultural societies (like the Iroquois') in which they were also the chief food producers. A wide variety of cultures, comprising perhaps four to six million people, inhabited mainland North America when the Europeans arrived. In modern Mexico, hereditary rulers presided over vast agricultural empires. Along the Atlantic coast of the present-day United States, Americans likewise cultivated crops, but their political systems differed greatly from those of Mesoamerica. To the north and west, in what is now Canada and the Great Plains, lived nomadic and seminomadic societies primarily dependent on hunting large animals. Still farther west were the hunter-gatherer bands of the Great Basin and the agricultural villages of the Southwest. Finally, on the Pacific coast lived tribes that based their subsistence chiefly on fish. All told, these diverse groups spoke well over one thousand different languages. For obvious reasons, they did not consider themselves one people, nor did they for the most part, think of uniting to repel the European invaders. (6) [Map] Native Cultures of North America. The natives of the North American continent effectively used the resources of the regions in which they lived. As this map shows, coastal tribes relied on fishing, residents of fertile areas engaged in agriculture, and other tribes hunted (often combined with gathering) as a primary mode of subsistence.

 

[1996c] (15) 1-1 DRAW! It is critical that students learn geography and begin to appreciate how it can affect historical developments. Tracing a map or just filling in information on a ready-made map will not have the same learning value as actually creating it. By drawing the shape of the landforms, seas, and lakes themselves, your students will be far more engaged and will therefore learn more. Some of your students will not believe they can draw a map. Be sure to encourage them that they can do it. Some of their creations will not be exact, but that is not important; they will remember the geography if they must recreate it themselves! Also, it is important for students to understand that the Europeans and Africans did not just "fill up" an empty continent! They need to know the extent of the Native American civilizations that existed here before foreigners arrived. (19) 1-1 DRAW! The map below shows where many of the Native American tribes and nations (Dakota, Cherokee, etc.) lived before European colonization. It also shows the seven Native American cultural regions (Eastern Woodlands, Great Plains, etc.). Using a larger piece of paper (legal size or larger construction paper), a pencil, and your eyes, redraw this map. Do not trace or use an overhead projector to enlarge the image! You can do it! Using colored pencils or markers, color each Native American cultural region differently. Then, with a black pencil or marker, write in the names of all the nations and tribes. This will give you an idea of the many different Native American cultures that existed before the Europeans arrived!

 

[1996d]

 

[1996e] (12) Early North American Culture. The people who first settled the Americas were descendants of Asian migrants who crossed the Bering Strait to Alaska many millennia before 1492. When Europeans first arrived in the Americas, these Indian cultures were numerous and diverse, ranging from the hunting and gathering societies of the Great Plains to the sophisticated civilization of the Aztecs in Mesoamerica. Indeed, the Aztec economy and society encountered by Spanish explorers was similar in some respects to that of sixteenth-century Europe. One crucial difference, however, was that Aztec expansionism did not take the form of exploration and colonization across the seas. (14) KEY EVENTS. Ca. 50,000-25,000 B.P, First Asian penetration of the Americas: initial human settlement of the two continents. Ca. 1300, Rise of the Aztec empire: the Indian civilization encountered by the Spanish in present-day Mexico. (15) LEARNING OBJECTIVES When you have finished studying this chapter, you should be able to: 1. Describe the character of Indian cultures and western European society in the fifteenth century, identifying comparisons and contrasts. 2. Explain why western Europeans were able to establish colonies across the Atlantic during the early modern period. 3. Describe the Spanish empire in America and discuss its impact on European development. 4. Explain the ways in which English efforts at colonization in the sixteenth century shaped their eventual settlements in North America. 5. Explain the significance of the Protestant Reformation and its relationship to western Europe's expansion. Review Questions. (16-7) MULTIPLE CHOICE. 4. Although misnamed "Indians" by Columbus, the Native Americans in the Western Hemisphere were the descendants of Asians who came to the "New World" thousands of years before the Europeans by: a, crossing a temporary land bridge across the Bering Strait from Siberia to Alaska. b. sailing large, sophisticated ships from islands in the central Pacific. c. sailing small, simple boats from what is now China, Indonesia, and the Philippines. d. migrating across Antarctica, then moving further and further north over generations. (p. 11). 5. Starting in Mexico around 5500 BC, a major change occurred among native tribes in the Western Hemisphere with the discovery of a. lucrative trade routes to Asia, b. how to cultivate food crops. c. silver by Spanish conquistadors. d. a single, universal language, (p. 11-12). 6. One major difference between Aztec civilization and that of the Spanish was that the Aztecs: a. did not practice slavery. b. did not possess a written language. c. still remained hunters and gatherers, and had no urban centers of great size. d. lacked the navigational expertise to sail across the ocean. (pp. 14-15, 17). 7. Aztecs were known for all of the following EXCEPT: a. participating in a lively trade in various goods. b. engaging in mass human sacrifice to the Sun god. c. having a strong, centralized government and friendly alliances with neighboring tribes. d. a high susceptibility to small pox and other diseases brought by the Spanish. (pp. 14-15, 20-21). IDENTIFICATION QUESTIONS. You should be able to describe the following key terms, concepts, individuals and places, and explain their significance: Terms and Concepts. agricultural revolution, privateers, encomienda, reconquista, Black Legend, indulgences, Protestant Reformation, doctrine of the calling, quadrant, Black Death, Price Revolution, caravel, justification by faith alone. Individuals and Places. Marco Polo, Bartholomeu Dias, Arawaks, Pueblo Indians, Hernando de Soto, Bartolome de Las Casas, John Calvin, Martin Frobisher, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, Prince Henry of Portugal, Vasco da Gama, Amerigo Vespucci, Ferdinand Magellan, Moctezuma, Martin Luther, Puritans, Francis Drake. (20) MAP IDENTIFICATIONS On the map below, label or shade in the following places. In a sentence, note their significance to the chapter. (For reference, consult the map in Nation of Nations on page 19.) 1. Aztec Empire: 2. Mesoamerica: 3. The Spanish Main: 4. The West Indies: 5. Caribbean Sea: (21) ESSAY QUESTIONS. 1. Discuss the conditions that encouraged early modern Europeans to undertake voyages of exploration and discovery. 2. Describe the conditions under which native American cultures became more complex and elaborate. 3. How did Portuguese exploration prepare the way for the Spanish discovery of North America? 4. Characterize the Protestant Reformation as both an ecclesiastical revolution and a response to social conditions. 5. What factor was most essential in encouraging early modern Europeans to undertake voyages of discovery and exploration? 6. "Under such vibrant, often chaotic conditions a sense of crisis mixed with a sense of possibility.” Explain why this blend of desperation and idealism made the newly discovered Americas so attractive to Europeans. Critical Thinking. EVALUATING EVIDENCE (MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS). 1. What does the scope of English and French exploration shown by the map on page 17 indicate about the evolution of relations between those nations with Spain in the sixteenth century? 2. What was the dominant mode of subsistence among North American Indian tribes, as indicated by the map on page 12? 3. What is the significance of the ivory mask fashioned by a West African artist shown on page 9? What does the mask indicate about the African perception of the Portuguese?

 

[1997a] (3-16) Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress. Arawak men and women, naked, tawny; and full of wonder, emerged from their villages onto the island 's beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the strange big boat. When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly; the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts. He later wrote of this in his log: They. . .brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned . . . . They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features. . . . They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane. . . . They would make fine servants. . . . With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want. These Arawaks of the Bahama Islands were much like Indians on the mainland, who were remarkable (European observers were to say again and again) for their hospitality, their belief in sharing. These traits did not stand out in Renaissance Europe, dominated as it was by the religion of popes, the government of kings, the frenzy for money that marked Western civilization and its first messenger to the Americas, Christopher Columbus. Columbus wrote: As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts. The information that Columbus wanted most was: Where is the gold? He had persuaded the king and queen of Spain to finance an expedition to the lands, the wealth, he expected would be on the other side of the Atlantic the Indies and Asia, gold and spices. For, like other informed people of his time, he knew the world was round and that he could sail west in order to get to the Far East. Spain was recently unified, one of the new modern nation-states, like France, England, and Portugal. Spain's population, mostly poor peasants, worked for the nobility, who were 2 percent of the population and owned 95 percent of the land. Spain had tied itself to the Catholic Church, expelled all the Jews, driven out the Moors. Like other states of the modern world, Spain sought gold, which was becoming the new mark of wealth, more useful than land because it could buy anything. There was gold in Asia, it was thought, and certainly silks and spices, for Marco Polo and others had brought back marvelous things from their overland expeditions centuries before. Now that the Turks had conquered Constantinople and the eastern Mediterranean, and controlled the land routes to Asia, a sea route was needed. Portuguese sailors were working their way around the southern tip of Africa. Spain decided to gamble on a long sail across an unknown ocean. In return for bringing back gold and spices, Ferdinand and Isabella promised Columbus lo percent of the profits, governorship over newfound lands, and the fame that would go with a new title: Admiral of the Ocean Sea. He was a merchant's clerk from the Italian city of Genoa, part-time weaver (the son of a skilled weaver), and expert sailor. He set out with three sailing ships, the largest of which was the Santa Maria, perhaps one hundred feet long, and thirty-nine crewmembers. Columbus would never have made it to Asia, which was thousands of miles farther away than he had calculated, imagining a smaller world. He would have been doomed by that great expanse of sea. But he was lucky. One-fourth of the way there he came upon an unknown, uncharted land that lay between Europe and Asia the Americas. It was early October 1492, thirty-three days since he and his crew had left the Canary Islands, off the Atlantic coast of Africa. Now they saw branches and sticks floating in the water. They saw flocks of birds. These were signs of land. Then, on October 12, a sailor called Rodrigo saw the early morning moon shining on white sands, and cried out. It was an island in the Bahamas, the Caribbean sea. The first man to sight land was supposed to get a yearly pension of ten thousand maravedis for life, but Rodrigo never got it. Columbus claimed he had seen a light the evening before. He got the reward. So, approaching land, they were met by the Arawak Indians, who swam out to greet them. The Arawaks lived in village communes, had a developed agriculture of corn, yams, cassava. They could spin and weave, but they had no horses or work animals. They had no iron, but they wore tiny gold ornaments in their ears. This was to have enormous consequences: it led Columbus to take some of them aboard ship as prisoners because he insisted that they guide him to the source of the gold. He then sailed to what is now Cuba, then to Hispaniola (the island that today consists of Haiti and the Dominican Republic). There, bits of visible gold in the rivers, and a gold mask presented to Columbus by a local Indian chief, led to wild visions of gold fields. On Hispaniola, out of timbers from the Santa Maria, which had run aground, Columbus built a fort, the first European military base in the Western Hemisphere. He called it Navidad (Christmas) and left thirty-nine crewmembers there, with instructions to find and store the gold. He took more Indian prisoners and put them aboard his two remaining ships. At one part of the island he got into a fight with Indians who refused to trade as many bows and arrows as he and his men wanted. Two Arawaks were run through with swords and bled to death. Then the Nina and the Pinta set sail for the Azores and Spain. When the weather turned cold, the Indian prisoners began to die. Columbus's report to the royal court in Madrid was extravagant. He insisted he had reached Asia (it was Cuba) and an island off the coast of China (Hispaniola). His descriptions were part fact, part fiction: Hispaniola is a miracle. Mountains and hills, plains and pastures, are both fertile and beautiful . . .the harbors are unbelievably good and there are many wide rivers of which the majority contain gold . . . . There are many spices, and great mines of gold and other metals. . . . The Indians, Columbus reported, "are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone . . . ." He concluded his report by asking for a little help from their Majesties, and in return he would bring them from his next voyage "as much gold as they need and as many slaves as they ask." He was full of religious talk "Thus the eternal God our Lord gives victory to those who follow His way over apparent impossibilities." Because of Columbus's exaggerated report and promises, his second expedition was given seventeen ships and more than twelve hundred men. The aim was clear: slaves and gold. They went from island to island in the Caribbean, taking Indians as captives. But as word spread of the Europeans' intent they found more and more empty villages. On Haiti, they found that the sailors left behind at Fort Navidad had been killed in a battle with the Indians, after they had roamed the island in gangs looking for gold, taking women and children as slaves for sex and labor. Now, from his base on Haiti, Columbus sent expedition after expedition into the interior. They found no gold fields, but had to fill up the ships returning to Spain with some kind of dividend. In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route. The rest arrived alive in Spain and were put up for sale by the archdeacon of the town, who reported that, although the slaves were "naked as the day they were born," they showed "no more embarrassment than animals." Columbus later wrote: "Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold." But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death. The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed. Trying to put together an army of resistance, the Arawaks faced Spaniards who had armor, muskets, swords, and horses. When the Spaniards took prisoners, they hanged them or burned them to death. Among the Arawaks, mass suicides began, with cassava poison. Infants were killed to "save" them from the Spaniards. In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the two hundred fifty thousand Indians on Haiti were dead. When it became clear that there was no gold left, the Indians were taken as slave labor on huge estates, known later as encomiendas. They were worked at a ferocious pace, and died by the thousands. By the year 1515 , there were perhaps fifty thousand Indians left. By 1550, there were five hundred. A report of the year 1650 shows none of the original Arawaks or their descendants left on the island. The chief source and, on many matters, the only source of information about what happened on the islands after Columbus came is Bartolome de las Casas, who, as a young priest, participated in the conquest of Cuba. For a time he owned a plantation on which Indian slaves worked, but he gave that up and became a vehement critic of Spanish cruelty Las Casas transcribed Columbus's journal and, in his fifties, began a multivolume History of the Indies. Women in Indian society were treated so well as to startle the Spaniards. Las Casas describes sex relations: Marriage laws are nonexistent: men and women alike choose their mates and leave them as they please, without offense, jealousy or anger. They multiply in great abundance; pregnant women work to the last minute and give birth almost painlessly; up the next day, they bathe in the river and are as clean and healthy as before giving birth. If they tire of their men, they give themselves abortions with herbs that force stillbirths, covering their shameful parts with leaves or cotton cloth; although on the whole, Indian men and women look upon total nakedness with as much casualness as we look upon a man's head or at his hands. The Indians, Las Casas says, "put no value on gold and other precious things. They lack all manner of commerce, neither buying nor selling, and rely exclusively on their natural environment for maintenance. They are extremely generous with their possessions and by the same token covet the possessions of their friends and expect the same degree of liberality. . . ." Las Casas tells about the treatment of the Indians by the Spaniards. Endless testimonies . . .prove the mild and pacific temperament of the natives. . . . But our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy; small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then. . . . The admiral, it is true, was blind as those who came after him, and he was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians. . . Total control led to total cruelty; The Spaniards "thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades." Las Casas tells how "two of these so-called Christians met two Indian boys one day, each carrying a parrot; they took the parrots and for fun beheaded the boys. '' While the native men were sent many miles away to the mines, their wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants. Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides. . . they ceased to procreate. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and famished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7,000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desperation. . . . In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk. . . and in a short time: this land which was so great, so powerful and fertile . . . was depopulated. . . . My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write. . . . When he arrived on Hispaniola in 1508, Las Casas says, "there were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery; and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this?" Thus began the history, five hundred years ago, of the European invasion of the Indian settlements in the Americas, a history of conquest, slavery, and death. But in the history books given to children in the United States, for generation after generation, it all starts with heroic adventure there is no bloodshed and Columbus Day is a celebration. Only in recent years do we see droplets of change. Past the elementary and high schools, there have been only occasional hints of something else. Samuel Eliot Morison, the Harvard historian, was the most distinguished writer on Columbus, the author of a multivolume biography, and was himself a sailor who retraced Columbus's route across the Atlantic. In his popular book Christopher Columbus, Mariner, written in 1954, he tells about the enslavement and the killing: "The cruel policy initiated by Columbus and pursued by his successors resulted in complete genocide." That is on one page, buried halfway into the telling of a grand romance. In the book's last paragraph, Morison sums up his view of Columbus: He had his faults and his defects, but they were largely the defects of the qualities that made him great his indomitable will, his superb faith in God and in his own mission as the Christ-bearer to lands beyond the seas, his stubborn persistence despite neglect, poverty and discouragement. But there was no flaw, no dark side to the most outstanding and essential of all his qualities-his seamanship. One can lie outright about the past. Or one can omit facts which might lead to unacceptable conclusions. Morison does neither. He refuses to lie about Columbus. He does not omit the story of mass murder; indeed he describes it with the harshest word one can use: genocide. But he does something else. He mentions the truth quickly and goes on to other things more important to him. Outright lying or quiet omission takes the risk of discovery, which, when made, might arouse the reader to rebel against the writer. To state the facts, however, and then to bury them in a mass of other information is to say to the reader with a certain infectious calm: yes, mass murder took place, but it's not that important it should weigh very little in our final judgments; it should affect very little what we do in the world. It is true that the historian cannot avoid emphasis of some facts and not of others. This is as natural to him as to the mapmaker, who, in order to produce a usable drawing for practical purposes, must first flatten and distort the shape of the earth, then choose out of the bewildering mass of geographic information those things needed for the purpose of this or that particular map. My argument cannot be against selection, simplification, or emphasis, which are inevitable for both cartographers and historians. But the mapmaker's distortion is a technical necessity for a common purpose shared by all people who need maps. The historian's distortion is more than technical, it is ideological; it is released into a world of contending interests, where any chosen emphasis supports (whether the historian means to or not) some kind of interest, whether economic or political or racial or national or sexual. Furthermore, this ideological interest is not openly expressed in the way a mapmaker's technical interest is obvious ("This is a Mercator projection for long-range navigation for short-range, you'd better use a different projection"). No, it is presented as if all readers of history had a common interest that historians serve to the best of their ability. To emphasize the heroism of Columbus and his successors as navigators and discoverers, and to de-emphasize their genocide, is not a technical necessity but an ideological choice. It serves unwittingly to justify what was done. My point is not that we must, in telling history, accuse, judge, condemn Columbus in absentia. It is too late for that; it would be a useless scholarly exercise in morality. But the easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress (Hiroshima and Vietnam, to save Western civilization; Kronstadt and Hungary, to save socialism; nuclear proliferation, to save us all, that is still with us. One reason these atrocities are still with us is that we have learned to bury them in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth. The treatment of heroes (Columbus) and their victims (the Arawaks) the quiet acceptance of conquest and murder in the name of progress is only one aspect of a certain approach to history, in which the past is told from the point of view of governments, conquerors, diplomats, leaders. It is as if they, like Columbus, deserve universal acceptance, as if they the Founding Fathers, Jackson. Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy, the leading members of Congress, the famous justices of the Supreme Court represent the nation as a whole. The pretense is that there really is such a thing as "the United States," subject to occasional conflicts and quarrels, but fundamentally a community of people with common interests. It is as if there really is a "national interest" represented in the Constitution, in territorial expansion, in the laws passed by Congress, the decisions of the courts, the development of capitalism, the culture of education, and the mass media. "History is the memory of states," wrote Henry Kissinger in his first book, A World Restored, in which he proceeded to tell the history of nineteenth-century Europe from the viewpoint of the leaders of Austria and England, ignoring the millions who suffered from those statesmen's policies. From his standpoint, the "peace" that Europe had before the French Revolution was "restored" by the diplomacy of a few national leaders. But for factory workers in England, farmers in France, people of color in Asia and Africa, women and children everywhere except in the upper classes, it was a world of conquest, violence, hunger, and exploitation a world not restored but disintegrated. My viewpoint, in telling the history of the United States, is different: that we must not accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners. Thus, in that inevitable taking of sides which comes from selection and emphasis in history, I prefer to try to tell the story of the discovery of America from the viewpoint of the Arawaks, of the Constitution from the standpoint of the slaves, of Andrew Jackson as seen by the Cherokees, of the Civil War as seen by the New York Irish, of the Mexican War as seen by the deserting soldiers of Scott's army, of the rise of industrialism as seen by the young women in the Lowell textile mills, of the Spanish-American War as seen by the Cubans, the conquest of the Philippines as seen by black soldiers on Luzon, the Gilded Age as seen by southern farmers, the First World War as seen by socialists, the Second World War as seen by pacifists, the New Deal as seen by blacks in Harlem, the postwar American empire as seen by peons in Latin America. And so on, to the limited extent that any one person, however he or she strains, can "see" history from the standpoint of others. My point is not to grieve for the victims and denounce the executioners. Those tears, that anger, cast into the past, deplete our moral energy for the present. And the lines are not always clear. In the long run, the oppressor is also a victim. In the short run (and so far) human history has consisted only of short runs, the victims, themselves desperate and tainted with the culture that oppresses them, often turn on other victims. Still, understanding the complexities, this book will be skeptical of governments and their attempts, through politics and culture, to ensnare ordinary people in a giant web of nationhood pretending to a common interest. I will try not to overlook the cruelties that victims inflict on one another as they are jammed together in the boxcars of the system. I don't want to romanticize them. But I do remember (in rough paraphrase) a statement I once read, "The cry of the poor is not always just, but if you don't listen to it, you will never know what justice is." I don't want to invent victories for people's movements. But to think that history writing must aim simply to recapitulate the failures that dominate the past is to make historians collaborators in an endless cycle of defeat. If history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should, I believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together occasionally to win. I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past's fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare. That, being as blunt as I can, is my approach to the history of the United States. The reader may as well know that before going on. What Columbus did to the Arawaks of the Bahamas, Cortes did to the Aztecs of Mexico, Pizarro to the Incas of Peru, and the English settlers of Virginia and Massachusetts to the Powhatans and the Pequots. It seems there was a frenzy in the early capitalist states of Europe for gold, for slaves, for products of the soil, to pay the bondholders and stockholders of the expeditions, to finance the monarchical bureaucracies rising in Western Europe, to spur the growth of the new money economy rising out of feudalism, to participate in what Karl Marx would later call "the primitive accumulation of capital." These were the violent beginnings of an intricate system of technology; business, politics, and culture that would dominate the world for the next five centuries. Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in the Americas, was set up inside the territory of an Indian confederacy; led by the chief, Powhatan. Powhatan watched the English settle on his people 's land, but did not attack, maintaining a posture of coolness. When the English were going through their "starving time" in the winter of 1610, some of them ran off to join the Indians, where they would at least be fed. When the summer came, the governor of the colony sent a messenger to ask Powhatan to return the runaways, whereupon Powhatan, according to the English account, replied with "no other than proud and disdainful answers." Some soldiers were therefore sent out "to take revenge." They fell upon an Indian settlement, killed fifteen or sixteen Indians, burned the houses, cut down the corn growing around the village, took the queen of the tribe and her children into boats, then ended up throwing the children overboard "and shooting out their brains in the water." The queen was later taken off and stabbed to death. Twelve years later, the Indians, alarmed as the English settlements kept growing in numbers, apparently decided to try to wipe them out for good. They went on a rampage and massacred 347 men, women, and children. From then on it was total war. Not able to enslave the Indians, and not able to live with them, the English decided to exterminate them. According to historian Edmund Morgan, "Within two or three years of the massacre the English had avenged the deaths of that day many times over." In that first year of the white man in Virginia, 1607. Powhatan had addressed a plea to John Smith that turned out prophetic. How authentic it is may be in doubt, but it is so much like so many Indian statements that it may be taken as, if not the rough letter of that first plea, the exact spirit of it: I have seen two generations of my people die. . . . I know the difference between peace and war better than any man in my country. Why will you take by force what you may have quietly by love? Why will you destroy us who supply you with food? What can you get by war? Why are you jealous of us? We are unarmed, and willing to give you what you ask, if you come in a friendly manner, and not so simple as not to know that it is much better to eat good meat, sleep comfortably, live quietly with my wives and children, laugh and be merry with the English, and trade for their copper and hatchets, than to run away from them, and to lie cold in the woods, feed on acorns, roots and such trash, and be so hunted that I can neither eat nor sleep. When the Pilgrims came to New England, they too were coming not to vacant land but to territory inhabited by tribes of Indians. The Pequot Indians occupied what is now southern Connecticut and Rhode Island. The Puritans wanted them out of the way; they wanted their land. So, the war with the Pequots began. Massacres took place on both sides. The English developed a tactic of warfare used earlier by Cortes and later, in the twentieth century, even more systematically: deliberate attacks on noncombatants for the purpose of terrorizing the enemy So the English set fire to the wigwams of villages. William Bradford, m his History of the Plymouth Plantation written at the time, describes John Mason's raid on the Pequot village: Those that escaped the fire were slain with the sword; some hewed to pieces, others rune throw with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatched, and very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire. A footnote in Virgil Vogel's book This Land Was Ours (1972) says: "The official figure on the number of Pequots now in Connecticut is twenty-one persons." For a while, the English tried softer tactics. But ultimately, it was back to annihilation. The Indian population of ten million that lived north of Mexico when Columbus came would ultimately be reduced to less than a million. Huge numbers of Indians would die from diseases introduced by the whites. Behind the English invasion of North America, behind their massacre of Indians, their deception, their brutality, was that special powerful drive born in civilizations based on private property. It was a morally ambiguous drive; the need for space, for land, was a real human need. But in conditions of scarcity, in a barbarous epoch of history ruled by competition, this human need was transformed into the murder of whole peoples. Was all this bloodshed and deceit from Columbus to Cortes, Pizarro, the Puritans a necessity for the human race to progress from savagery to civilization? If there are necessary sacrifices to be made for human progress, is it not essential to hold to the principle that those to be sacrificed must make the decision themselves? We can all decide to give up something of ours, but do we have the right to throw into the pyre the children of others, or even our own children, for a progress that is not nearly as clear or present as sickness or health, life or death? Beyond all that, how certain are we that what was destroyed was inferior? Who were these people who came out on the beach and swam to bring presents to Columbus and his crew, who watched Cortes and Pizarro ride through their countryside, who peered out of the forests at the first white settlers of Virginia and Massachusetts? Columbus called them Indians, because he miscalculated the size of the earth. In this book we too call them Indians, with some reluctance, because it happens too often that people are saddled with names given them by their conquerors. Widely dispersed over the great landmass of the Americas, they numbered approximately seventy-five million people by the time Columbus came, perhaps twenty-five million in North America. Responding to the different environments of soil and climate, they developed hundreds of different tribal cultures, perhaps two thousand different languages. They perfected the art of agriculture and figured out how to grow maize (corn), which cannot grow by itself and must be planted, cultivated, fertilized, harvested, husked, and shelled. They ingeniously developed a variety of other vegetables and fruits, as well as peanuts and chocolate and tobacco and rubber. On their own, the Indians were engaged in the great agricultural revolution that other peoples in Asia, Europe, and Africa were going through about the same time. While many of the tribes remained nomadic hunters and food gatherers in wandering, egalitarian communes, others began to live in more settled communities where there was more food, larger populations, more divisions of labor among men and women, more surplus to feed chiefs and priests, more leisure time for artistic and social work, for building houses. From the Adirondacks to the Great Lakes, in what is now Pennsylvania and upper New York, lived the most powerful of the northeastern tribes, the League of the Iroquois. In the villages of the Iroquois, land was owned in common and worked in common. Hunting was done together, and the catch was divided among the members of the village. Women were important and respected in Iroquois society. The women tended the crops and took general charge of village affairs while the men were always hunting or fishing. As Gary B. Nash notes in his fascinating study of early America, Red. White, and Black, "Thus power was shared between the sexes and the European idea of male dominancy and female subordination in all things was conspicuously absent in Iroquois society." Children in Iroquois society, while taught the cultural heritage of their people and solidarity with the tribe, were also taught to be independent, not to submit to overbearing authority. All of this was in sharp contrast to European values as brought over by the first colonists, a society of rich and poor, controlled by priests, by governors, by male heads of families. Gary Nash describes Iroquois culture: No laws and ordinances, sheriffs and constables, judges and juries, or courts or jails the apparatus of authority in European societies were to be found in the northeast woodlands prior to European arrival. Yet boundaries of acceptable behavior were firmly set. Though priding themselves on the autonomous individual, the Iroquois maintained a strict sense of right and wrong. . . . He who stole another's food or acted invalourously in war was "shamed" by his people and ostracized from their company until he had atoned for his actions and demonstrated to their satisfaction that he had morally purified himself. Not only the Iroquois but other Indian tribes behaved the same way So, Columbus and his successors were not coming into an empty wilderness, but into a world which in some places was as densely populated as Europe itself, where the culture was complex, where human relations were more egalitarian than in Europe, and where the relations among men, women, children, and nature were more beautifully worked out than perhaps any place in the world. They were people without a written language, but with their own laws, their poetry, their history kept in memory and passed on, in an oral vocabulary more complex than Europe's, accompanied by song, dance, and ceremonial drama. They paid careful attention to the development of personality, intensity of will, independence and flexibility, passion and potency, to their partnership with one another and with nature. John Collier, an American scholar who lived among Indians in the 1920s and 1930s in the American Southwest, said of their spirit: "Could we make it our own, there would be an eternally inexhaustible earth and a forever lasting peace.” Perhaps there is some romantic mythology in that. But even allowing for the imperfection of myths, it is enough to make us question, for that time and ours, the excuse of progress in the annihilation of races, and the telling of history from the standpoint of the conquerors and leaders of Western civilization.

 

[1997b] (22-7) The Earliest Americans. 38,000 B.C.-10,000 B.C.: PEOPLE CROSS LAND BRIDGE TO NORTH AMERICA. ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE INDICATES THAT ACROSS THE WIDE, GRASSY LAND BRIDGE THAT ONCE CONNECTED ASIA AND NORTH AMERICA TREKKED THE FIRST PEOPLE TO SETTLE IN NORTH AMERICA. With spears poised they may have pursued a mammoth, the huge game animal that once strode the earth. Today Beringia, the land bridge that allowed passage from Asia to Alaska, lies underwater. At several periods during the Ice Age, the glaciers that covered most of North America lowered sea levels by as much as 300 feet (91.44 m) -- sufficient to expose a 1,000-mile (1609-km) wide passageway between continents. The first settlers stalked big game such as mammoths and bison. Later settlers came by boat, hunting seals and whales. Gradually, over thousands of years, the press of a growing population prompted the southward and eastward migration of smaller groups. Seeking new hunting grounds, the migrants followed their animal prey through the narrow pass between towering glaciers. When they reached the plains of North America, the earliest people beheld a paradise of plenty: animals from the antelope to the saber-toothed tiger; and berries, nuts, and grasses for the picking Over the centuries, groups continued breaking off and migrating farther southward and eastward, About 8,000 B.C. melting glaciers again boosted the sea level, burying Beringia underwater and drowning the land bridge back to Asia. Scientists disagree on when people first came to the Americas and on how many waves of settlement they rode. Beringia, the land bridge, surfaced during 3 separate periods: between 70,000 and 30,000 years ago; between 25,000 and 15,000 years ago; and between 14,000 and 10,000 years ago. Some archaeologists speculate that people arrived from Asia as early as 40,000 years ago. Others suggest a much later date or a series of arrivals. Nevertheless, on several facts scientists do agree: by 10,000 B.C. people had spread 15,000 miles (24,135 km) south to Tierra del Fuego, the southern tip of South America, and 6,000 miles (9,654 km) east to the East Coast of North America. After generations of adapting to diverse climates and terrains, Native Americans practiced a staggering variety of lifeways and spoke several thousand languages. They became most populous in Mexico and Central America (Mesoamerica), but Native Americans also developed distinctive cultures throughout North America. There -- in the deserts of the Southwest, along the fertile banks of the Mississippi, and in the woodlands of the East Coast -- three contrasting cultures arose. Cliff Dwellers of the Southwest: From Nomads to Farmers. During the Ice Age, descendants of the nomadic people who had followed their prey to North America hunted huge game animals such as mastodons in the southwestern part of what is now the United States. In time the weather warmed and the glaciers melted. As the climate grew drier, the larger game disappeared. The challenge of human survival in a newly arid environment launched a desert culture that depended on fishing, hunting small birds and animals, and on collecting edible foods that grew in the wild. This Southwestern desert culture survived for thousands of years. Development of Agriculture. Between about 8,000 B.C. and 5,000 B.C., agriculture began to develop independently in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. As in other parts of the world, the cultivation of crops in the Southwest ushered in dramatic social changes. These changes included giving up a nomadic, or wandering, lifestyle for a more sedentary, or settled, one. A more dependable food supply stimulated population growth and reduced the amount of time people had to work to obtain food. Less time spent foraging afforded people more time for developing socially, politically, and religiously, In most places the growth of agriculture also decreed the division of labor. Now men hunted game and cleared the land that women then planted and cultivated. Like their modern Pueblo descendants, but unlike most other highly developed early peoples, the Anasazi fostered an egalitarian culture in which people functioned as equals. Without kings, chiefs, or other official authority figures to compel cooperation, members of Anasazi farming villages built dams, reservoirs, and irrigation systems that harnessed the region's precious moisture to water corn and other crops. Beginning around A.D. 900, the Anasazi also constructed 400 miles (643.6 km) of roads and broad avenues leading to Chaco Canyon in northwest New Mexico, which became the heart of a thriving turquoise trade. Anasazi Architecture. The leisure that accompanied the farming culture's prosperity allowed the Anasazi to turn out beautiful baskets and pottery, but their greatest creativity flowered in architecture. Generation after generation of Anasazi had lived in underground houses whose stonework walls and strong roofs provided shelter from the harshness of the seasons. Now, adapting their aboveground food storage houses for living quarters, the Anasazi transformed their underground pit houses into spiritual centers, or kivas. Some kivas in the populous valley held as many as 500 people. Constructing these kivas without horses (which were not brought to the Americas until the 1500s) required people to transport tons of timber to reinforce kiva roofs. The Anasazi also began to build huge apartment complexes. At one dwelling site, Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon, more than 1,000 residents lived in a freestanding 600-room structure. From the plaza amphitheater, some apartment sections towered 5 stories above the canyon floor. Until a larger apartment building went up in New York City in 1882, the size of this Anasazi building of the tenth century remained unsurpassed in the world. When drought or a devaluation of turquoise prompted the Anasazis to abandon Chaco Canyon, about 3,000 Anasazi built stunning multifamily apartments within the protected cliff walls of Mesa Verde in Southwest Colorado. From their rooms in the cliff walls, the farmers used toeholds to clamber to the mesa top, where they cultivated corn, beans, and squash. The largest structure in Mesa Verde, later named the Cliff Palace, boasted 220 rooms that may have housed as many as 350 people. By 1300, perhaps driven by drought or enemies, the Anasazi abandoned their homes in Mesa Verde. Among their descendants are today's Zuni, Hopi, and Taos Pueblo. The Taos Pueblo people of New Mexico repeat this myth about their beginnings, a story that may well have been told in this part of the world for more than 1,000 years: "The boy cried and cried. The blood came out, and finally he died. With his tears our lakes became. With his blood the red clay became. With his body our mountains became, and that was how Earth became." Moundbuilders' Rich: Culture Metropolis on the Mississippi. About 1,000 years before the Anasazis began to farm mesa tops and construct apartment buildings in the dry Southwest, a friendlier eastern landscape had given rise to a very different culture. In the lushly watered country near the Ohio River, Native Americans farmed, hunted, and foraged for food. They also built gigantic earth mounds by the tens of thousands. The First Moundbuilders. Used primarily as burial and ceremonial sites, the earth mounds rose as high as 70 feet (21.3 m). Their grandeur baffled the colonial settlers, who came upon the mounds after crossing the Appalachian Mountains in the late 1700s. Because the settlers had stereotyped eastern Native Americans as primitive forest dwellers, they invented myths to explain the imposing structures. Perhaps, they thought, survivors of the legendary sunken island of Atlantis or descendants of the ancient Egyptians had constructed the huge mounds. Instead the mounds had been built by Native American people during the first century A.D. The building of such gigantic structures suggests a high degree of cooperation, that required powerful leaders. These leaders were adorned at death and buried in special locations. Many excavations have shown individuals of high rank in the center of a group of people of secondary importance who had died earlier. One archaeologist described a Moundbuilder grave of a high-ranking female: At the head, neck, hips and knees of the female and completely encircling the skeleton were thousands of pearl beads and buttons of wood and stone covered with copper; extending the full length of the grave along one side was a row of copper ear ornaments; at the wrists of the female were copper bracelets . . . [she wore a necklace] of grizzly bear canines and [a] copper breastplate on the chest. -- quoted in Joy Hakim's The First Americans, 1993. The contents of the burial mounds revealed the Moundbuilders as brilliant metalworkers and sculptors. The materials they worked with depended on a far-flung trading network, most likely based on a relay system. The tentacles of the Moundbuilders' trading network reached west to Yellowstone (present-day northwest Wyoming) for obsidian, a natural glass used to make ceremonial blades; north to the Great Lakes for copper nuggets to beat out breastplates; east to the Appalachians for mica to fashion into decorated combs; and south to the Gulf of Mexico for turtle shells and alligator teeth to beautify ornaments. The population of the Moundbuilders, ancestors of today's Creek, Choctaw, and Natchez, began to decline by about A.D. 500, perhaps due to the enmity of rivals or to a lingering cold spell that made farming and foraging less productive. West along the Mississippi River, however, another Moundbuilding culture arose. Centered at what is now East St. Louis, Illinois, on the Missouri border, this Mississippian culture encompassed thousands of villages from Wisconsin to Louisiana and from Oklahoma to Tennessee. Cahokia. Like the Moundbuilders of the Ohio River valley, the Mississippians had strong leaders who directed the raising of huge mounds for burial and ceremonial purposes. The largest mound, built between A.D. 900 and 1100 rises 100 feet (30.5 m) from a rectangular base covering nearly 15 acres (6.1 ha) and containing 22 million cubic feet (616,000 cubic m) of earth. Its size surpasses that of the base of the Great Pyramid of Egypt. This gigantic earthwork faces the site of a palisaded city that contains 100 smaller burial mounds and the remains of a busy urban settlement that archaeologists call Cahokia. Deemed "America's first metropolis" by one archaeologist, Cahokia once housed as many as 35,000 people. The city's residents worked at a variety of tasks, from jewelry making and weaving to hide dressing and salt making. Mysteriously, the metropolis on the Mississippi lay abandoned centuries before the Europeans arrived on the Atlantic Coast. Before they disappeared, however, both the Mississippians and the Ohio River Moundbuilders passed on key agricultural skills to their trading partners in the Eastern Woodlands. Eastern Woodland Native Americans: From varied Lifeways, an Alliance. Like the Mississippians, the Native Americans who lived along the Eastern seaboard ate the fish they caught and the animals they hunted. Occasionally the men would don a deer head with antlers as a hunting ruse. Fertilizing the young plants with fish heads, the women cultivated corn, beans, and squash -- which were called "the three sisters" -- in the same plots. The sister plants supported each other as they grew, bean vines curling themselves around a supporting cornstalk. In addition, the nitrogen that beans brought to the soil benefited the other plants. Like the Mississippians, the Eastern Woodland Native Americans also cleared their chosen planting grounds by girdling the trees. First they slashed the bark all the way around the trunk, leaving the tree to die. After burning the branches and leaves, they hoed the rich ash into the ground as a fertilizer. The Mississippians passed on another influence, too. With their clusters of domed wigwams, occasionally surrounded by a palisade, the villages of many Eastern Woodland groups resembled the villages most Mississippians had called home. No Eastern Woodland village ever competed in size or sophistication with Cahokia. Still, excavation of one Huron town in the Great Lakes region revealed that it had housed about 5,000 people in more than 100 large structures. Its size exceeded that of the average European village of the 1500s. The roquois Alliance. Eventually, the Iroquois became the most populous and powerful of all the groups that lived along the eastern seaboard. The group controlled territory from the Adirondack Mountains to the Great Lakes and from Pennsylvania to northern New York. The power of the Iroquois derived from a longstanding alliance of 5 Native American groups -- the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. Europeans later called the Iroquois alliance the League of the Iroquois. The Iroquois themselves called their alliance Ganonsyoni or The Lodge Extended Lengthwise, after the lodges, or longhouses, that as many as 20 families shared. In an Iroquois longhouse, a woman and her female relatives ruled. The women owned the house and all its belongings. Women also controlled the fields where they planted their crops. When a son married, he left his mother's longhouse to move in with his wife's family. Iroquois women held power in the outside world as well. They chose the chiefs, or sachems, and could also depose them. Though only men could speak in the community councils, women exerted behind-the-scenes influence determining, for example, the fate of captive warriors from enemies. At one time, the 5 groups that formed the Iroquois League had themselves been enemies. By the late 1400s the constant feuding that had rendered the Iroquois people powerless in the face of their mutual enemy, the powerful Algonquian people, spurred them to form the league for mutual protection. In Iroquois legend the league began when a Mohawk sachem named Hiawatha had a vision. In Hiawatha's vision a spirit named Dekanawidah dictated how the five groups should affiliate with one another. According to the legend, Dekanawidah spoke these words: We bind ourselves together by taking hold of each other's hands so firmly and forming a circle so strong that if a tree should fall upon it, it could not shake nor break it, so that our people and grandchildren shall remain in the circle in security, peace, and happiness. -- quoted in Gary Nash's Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early America, 1982. European Attitudes. The Europeans who colonized the eastern seaboard wrongly considered the Native Americans to be ignorant savages. Nevertheless, they praised the organization of the Iroquois League. Benjamin Franklin wrote, "It would be a very strange Thing, if six Nations of ignorant Savages should be capable of forming a Scheme for such a Union . . . and yet that a like Union should be impracticable for ten or a Dozen English Colonies, to whom it is more necessary." For the European colonists, the Iroquois League offered a model for achieving unity among disparate states. For the Native Americans, the Iroquois League proved a powerful tool that enabled them to deal shrewdly with the European newcomers. (22) [Picture] Land of Plenty. As people moved south into the Americas, they found abundant herds of bison and other grazing animals such as mammoths. (23) [Map] MIGRATION TO NORTH AMERICA. By 10,000 B.C. people occupied North America from present-day Alaska to the tip of what is now Chile. In which areas did Native Americans become most populous? (24) [Picture] Ancient City. In the Southwest, the Anasazi built cities of cliff-side dwellings, such as this one at Mesa Verde, Colorado, which was constructed around 1100. What are the possible explanations for why the Anasazi abandoned Mesa Verde? (25) [Picture] Burial Site. The quarter-mile-long Great Serpent Mound in Ohio was made of earth and stone carried on Moundbuilders' backs. Moundbuilders often buried artifacts like the terra-cotta figurine, right, with their dead. How , were the Moundbuilder cultures of the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys alike? (26) [Map] EASTERN NATIVE AMERICAN GROUPS, 1500S. Native American groups in eastern North America supported themselves to varying degrees with agriculture. In what areas are most groups of Native Americans concentrated? (27) [Picture] THE IROQUOIS LONGHOUSE. In the world of the Iroquois, nothing expressed the idea of community more than the longhouse. How did women affect the group's decision to go to war? The Iroquois followed a community philosophy based on equality, individual responsibility, and inner strength. At its center was the hearth of the longhouse. Iroquois women directed and advised the men at community meetings. Women, because they maintained control over food, moccasins, and other supplies needed for conducting warfare, helped to determine when the community went to war. WHO LIVED IN A LONGHOUSE? Based on her maternal bloodline a woman lived in one of the multiroom dwellings with her daughters and granddaughters, their husbands, and any single male family members. (28-9) Geography: Impact on History. HUMAN/ENVIRONMENT INTERACTION. Native American Housing. Long before European settlers arrived, Native Americans had adapted to a broad range of environments, finding food and building homes using locally available resources. From the upper reaches of the Arctic to the Great Plains, the natural environment shaped Native American cultures. Living on the Plains. On the Great Plains, Native American hunters and their families followed herds of millions of buffalo across the rolling grasslands. The Dakota, the Blackfeet, the Crow, and other Native American groups used the buffalo as a source of food, clothing, and shelter. They adapted their lifestyles to enable them to follow the buffalo, living nomadically in portable homes called tepees. The Native Americans of the Plains built conical tepees by stretching buffalo hides across a frame of pine or cedar timbers. The tepees could be assembled and taken apart quickly, Because timber was scarce in the grasslands, the tepee poles were bundled together with the hides and transported from camp to camp. The hides formed a platform for carrying goods and even people across the Plains. Northwest Coast Villages. In the rainy, mountainous forests of the Northwest Coast of North America, people lived in an environment of abundance. Rivers, streams, and the ocean teemed with fish, and the forest provided wild plants, berries, and a variety of game. Because a reliable supply of food was locally available, the people of the Northwest developed a sedentary culture and lived in permanent homes and villages. Using timbers hewn from the immense trees that blanketed the coastal mountains, the Native Americans of the Northwest built sturdy multi-family dwellings. Huge beams composed the frameworks of the houses. Planks made from split logs covered the frames. Pitched roofs shed the frequent rains. Craftspeople also made seaworthy canoes from hollowed-out logs. Water travel was a common form of transportation. Native American villages nestled along narrow beaches or river shores. In only a few months' work each spring, villagers gathered enough food to last for the remainder of the year. Fishers caught large quantities of salmon, halibut, cod, and trout. The fish were dried on racks in the rafters of the houses and used as needed until the following spring. Abodes of the Arctic. In the icy reaches of the Arctic, the Inuit used a variety of strategies to survive in an often-harsh environment. Arctic peoples hunted and fished, moving in a rhythm that followed the seasons and the habits of their prey, Although they sometimes traveled great distances when hunting, the Inuit often built permanent homes and villages to which they returned between expeditions. The Aleuts lived in small communities beside the sea. They built semisubterranean houses framed with whalebones and driftwood and covered with dirt, stone, and layers of sod. After a time, grass and other plants created a living roof that insulated against the cold. Most of their sustenance came from the sea, where they caught fish, hunted whales, seals, and other marine mammals, and gathered mussels and seaweed. During the cold season, Inuit whalers moved north onto the Arctic ice to hunt seals. They traveled by dogsled and on foot, carrying few possessions. Lacking timber and other building materials, the whalers built ingenious dwellings called igloos from blocks of snow. The igloo's walls insulated occupants from the cold and wind. A small oil lamp or fire heated the igloo. Occupants carefully controlled the heat to prevent the igloo from melting. (28) [Map] NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURAL AREAS, 1500s-1800s. Many Native American groups used more than one type of dwelling, according to the season. Why did Native American housing types vary by region? (29) [Picture] Scraping Hides Cheyenne women scrape and stretch hides for use in tepee covers. Why was the buffalo critical to the livelihood of the Native Americans of the Plains?

 

[1998a] (13-7) EARLY NORTH AMERICAN CULTURES. The Americas were a new world only to European latecomers. To the Asian peoples and their native American descendants who had settled the continents tens of thousands of years earlier. Columbus's new world was their own old world. But it is doubtful that the first nomadic hunters who crossed from Siberia over the Bering Strait to Alaska considered themselves discoverers or recognized what they had found -- a truly new world, one wholly uninhabited by humans. The First Inhabitants. The first passage of people from Asia to America probably took place during a prehistoric glacial period -- either before 35,000 B.C. or about 10,000 years later -- when huge amounts of the world's water froze into sheets of ice. Sea levels dropped so drastically that the Bering Strait became a broad, grassy plain. Across that land bridge between the two continents both humans and animals escaped icebound Siberia for ice-free Alaska. Whenever the first migration took place, the movement of Asians to America continued, even after 8000 B.C. when world temperatures rose again and the water from melting glaciers flooded back into the ocean, submerging the Bering Strait. Over a span of 25,000 years settlement spread down the Alaskan coast, then deeper into the North American mainland, and finally throughout Central and South America. Diversity of cultures. Native Americans remained nomadic hunters and gatherers for thousands of years, as did many Europeans, Africans, and Asians of those millennia. But American cultures gradually diversified, especially after about 5500 B.C., when the peoples of central Mexico discovered how to cultivate food crops. As this "agricultural revolution" spread slowly northward, native American societies were able to grow larger and develop distinctive forms of economic, social, and political organization. By the end of the fifteenth century; the inhabitants of North America, perhaps 5 to 10 million people, spoke as many as 1000 languages. Although later Europeans, like Columbus, lumped these societies together by calling them Indian, any cultural unity had vanished long before 1492. The simplest Indian societies were those that still relied on hunting and gathering, like the Eskimos of the Arctic and the Serrano, Cahuilla, Luiseno, and Dieguefio of southern California, Arizona, and the Baja peninsula of Mexico. Stark deserts and frozen tundra defied cultivation and yielded food supplies that could sustain nomadic bands numbering no more than about 50 people. Families occasionally hunted together or wintered in common quarters, but for most of the year they scattered across the landscape, the women gathering plants and seeds, making baskets, and cooking meals while the men hunted for meat and hides. Political authority lay with either the male family head or the "headman" of a small band. "Shamans" -- any tribesmen claiming spiritual powers -- enlisted the supernatural to assist individuals. Societies of Increasing Complexity. Hunters and gatherers. In the densely forested belt that stretched from Newfoundland to the Bering Strait, resources more generous than those of the tundra to the north made for larger populations and more closely knit societies. Northeastern bands like the Montagnais, the Micmac, and the Penobscot and northwestern tribes like the Yellowknife and the Beaver traveled forests in moccasins and snowshoes, stalking deer, elk, moose, bear, and caribou; they speared fish in icy lakes and streams from birch-bark canoes. Their environment encouraged cooperative economic pursuits. Leading men assigned several families to specific territories that they hunted together, dividing the returns among the whole band. Religious beliefs strengthened the ties of kinship: each family had a "totem," a particular animal from which it claimed descent. Women in agricultural societies. While men dominated Indian bands based on hunting, women assumed more influence in societies that relied for part of their food on settled agriculture. Among the Pueblo peoples of Arizona and New Mexico, the Hopi and Zufii tribes, men hunted deer and cultivated corn and beans, but women owned the fields, the crops, and even the tools. They also owned the sun-baked dwellings of adobe and stone, some of which rose to several stories, that housed the families of their daughters. By 1540 some 70 Pueblo villages flourished, as more reliable food supplies swelled the size and number of clans (families sharing a common ancestry). A council of religious elders drawn from the different clans governed each village. Pueblo religious ceremonies, in contrast to those of simpler Indian societies, involved elaborate rituals celebrating tribal unity and seeking the gods' blessing for hunts and harvests. Thousands of miles to the northeast, in a natural setting far different from the semiarid Southwest, the Iroquois created a remarkably similar culture. More complex Indian civilizations arose in the bountiful environments of the Pacific Northwest and the coastal region reaching from Virginia to Texas. The seas and rivers from eastern Alaska to northern California teemed with fish, humpback whales, seals, and otters. In the Southeast fertile soil and temperate climate encouraged the cultivation of maize, rice, and a variety of fruits. Settlements became larger and more complex as tribes harvested these resources and developed techniques to preserve food supplies. Far less egalitarian than nomadic hunting bands or even the Pueblo and Iroquois, these tribes developed elaborate systems of status. Among southeastern tribes like the Natchez, below the chief, or "Great Sun," stood a hereditary nobility of lesser "Suns," who demanded elaborate displays of respect from the lowly "Stinkards," the common people. Mesoamerican Empires. Even more advanced were the vast agricultural empires of Mesoamerica -- south and central Mexico and Guatemala. As the Roman empire was declining in Europe, the civilization of the Mayas was flourishing in the lowland jungles of Central America. They built cities filled with palaces, bridges, aqueducts, baths, astronomical observatories, and temples topped by pyramids. Their priests developed a written language, their mathematicians discovered the zero, and their astronomers devised a calendar more accurate than any then existing. Rise of the Aztecs. The Aztecs, who invaded central Mexico from the north in the fourteenth century, built on the Mayas' achievements. Within a century Aztec conquest had created an empire of several million people. The capital, Tenochtitlan, was a glittering island metropolis with a population in 1400 of perhaps a quarter of a million -- several times the size of London. The Great Temple of the Sun dominated the center of the city, and through the canals leading to Tenochtitlan flowed gold, silver, exotic feathers, cocoa, and millions of pounds of maize -- all trade goods and tribute from other Mexican city-states conquered by the Aztecs. In many ways, the world of the Aztecs paralleled the societies of early modern Europe. Both worlds were predominantly rural, most of their inhabitants living in small villages and engaging in agriculture. In both worlds, merchants and specialized craftworkers clustered in cities, organized themselves into guilds, and clamored for protection from the government. And, as in Europe, Aztec noble and priestly classes took the lead in politics and religion, demanding tribute from the common people. The question of human sacrifice aside, there was at least one crucial difference between Aztec and European civilizations. Aztec expansion did not take the form of colonial settlements that spanned the oceans – indeed, the globe. That difference reflected a host of distinctive changes in European social, economic, and political development during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It was these transformations that made it possible for bold sailors like Columbus and Cabot or anonymous fisherfolk and traders to dream of profit, glory, and empire. (14) [Picture] An artist traveling with Francis Drake (probably in the 1590s) painted this Indian tending a tropical Caribbean garden. Maize com flourishes (right) as well as beans on two poles, while a papaya tree can be seen (upper left) as well as a manioc shrub (middle left) and gourds (lower left). Many of these crops -- corn and manioc especially -- eventually became important staples in diets around the globe. (15) [Map] INDIANS OF NORTH AMERICA, CIRCA 1500. (16) COUNTERPOINT. The role of human sacrifice. Some students of history, however, emphasize that the Aztecs differed from Europeans in one striking way: they practiced ritual human sacrifice. Every year, Aztec priests wielding razor-sharp knives sliced open the chests of thousands of captives and offered up to the sun hearts still beating, the essence of life. Indeed, the primary purpose of Aztec warfare was less to extend their empire than to maintain a steady supply of captives for such rites. Aztecs believed that they were the chosen people -- chosen to nourish the earth by sustaining the life of the sun with offerings of human blood. Put simply, the Aztecs slaughtered other human beings in the name of religion. As one recent historian noted, "In numbers, in the elevated sense of ceremony which accompanied the theatrical shows involved, as in its significance in the official religion, human sacrifice in Mexico was unique." But were the Aztecs really so different in this regard from invading Europeans? The sense of being a "chosen people" that underlay Aztec rituals also inspired Christians in their own crusades. They campaigned ruthlessly against "Muslim infidels," massacred Jews, and executed thousands of witches during the Middle Ages and even into the seventeenth century Put just as simply, European Christians, too, slaughtered other human beings in the name of religion. But it was a similarity that Europeans found convenient to overlook. They preferred to portray themselves as "civilizers" of a people whose "savagery" was proved by the practice of human sacrifice. (38-41) AFTER THE FACT: HISTORIANS RECONSTRUCT THE PAST. Tracking the First Americans. Sometimes the most ordinary circumstances end in the most extraordinary discoveries. One of those times was a morning in 1908 when George McJunkin, an African American cowboy scanning the range near Folsom, New Mexico, for stray cattle, dropped his gaze into a dry gully and spotted some large bones poking through the soil. Intrigued, he began digging and found a stone spearpoint lodged in the skeleton, He carried the lot back to his ranch, where they remained for the next seventeen years. Then McJunkin's curiosities somehow came to the attention of archaeologists, who identified the bones as those of a long-extinct form of bison which had ranged throughout the Southwest at least ten thousand years earlier. They realized, too, that only a spear-wielding human could have killed the bison. That discovery rocked the scientific community, which for the previous century had confidently declared that Indians had first arrived in the Americas only about 4000 years ago, Shortly thereafter, in 1932, another shock wave followed when some amateur collectors digging at Clovis, New Mexico, unearthed more bones and spearheads suspected to be even older. Finally, in 1949, scientists established the great antiquity of both finds by using "radiocarbon dating," a method for measuring decay rates of the radioactive isotope of carbon, which exists in organic matter like bone and starts to break down immediately after an organism dies. Tests revealed that the Indians whose hunting grounds were now called Folsom and Clovis had been turning bison into bones between 10,800 and 11,500 years ago. Those conclusions pointedly raised the question of exactly how much earlier the first American ancestors of such hunters had come to the New World. This tantalizing mystery puzzles (and divides) archaeologists and anthropologists, geologists and historians, right down to the present. Such men and women devote their lives to the hard work of digging in remote sites or exploring the ocean's floor, to the harder work of analyzing their finds in laboratories, and to the hardest work of all -- trying to make sense of what it all means, Their efforts have yielded much new evidence and increasingly sophisticated techniques for understanding its significance, but many important questions still remain unanswered. Even so. almost all of them agree on a number of points. First, whoever the first inhabitants of the New World were, they came, originally, from the Old World: scientists have found no fossil remains to support the view that human beings evolved into modem men and women in the Americas. Second, these first Americans were almost certainly fully evolved human beings, known as Homo sapiens sapiens -- not their less developed forerunners, the Neanderthals, or even earlier ancestors. These Homo sapiens sapiens excelled at surviving anywhere, armed as they were with the intellectual ability" to plan and project and the technology to sew warm clothing and to store food. About 35,000 years ago, these resourceful adapters came to predominate, edging out the Neanderthals, whose more limited skills had restricted their settlements to the tropical and temperate parts of the world. The new species multiplied rapidly; and the pressure of its growing population pushed many into settling in less hospitable regions -- including the arctic frontier of Siberia in northeastern Asia. Indeed, a third point of general agreement among scholars is that the descendants of these migrants to Siberia continued the wandering ways of their ancestors and somehow, at some time, wandered into North America by way of Alaska. The research of physical anthropologists documents key biological similarities between Siberians and American Indians. Both groups share not only certain genetic variants that suggest their descent from common ancient ancestors but also distinctive formations of the roots and crowns of their teeth known as Sinodonty. But how did Asians get to Alaska – a region now separated from Siberia by fifty miles of ocean known as the Bering Strait? It is not impossible that they sailed across, for some Homo Sapiens could build boats sturdy enough to navigate short stretches of open ocean. Archaeologists have discovered that Southeast Asians floated across 55 miles of ocean on rafts to reach Australia some 35,000 years ago. Could their contemporaries in northeast Asia, using bark canoes, have made a voyage of similar length over the Bering Strait? Not impossible, scientists conclude, but not likely either, if only because navigating calm, tropical waters of the southern Pacific is far less difficult than mastering the Bering Strait, which, even in summer, is choked with ice floes. Such an undertaking would have been even more daunting to the earliest Siberians, who, as anthropologists have discovered, were land-based hunters, not seafaring folk. So most scientists now believe that Siberians did not sail to the New World: instead, they walked. They were able to do that because the Bering Strait is not a timeless feature of arctic geography. On the contrary, geologists have discovered submerged far below the Bering Strait traces of a landmass that once connected Siberia to Alaska. Even in the late nineteenth century, some naturalists suspected that such a land bridge had once existed after noting that the vegetation and wildlife of Siberia was nearly identical to that in Alaska. By the 1930s, scientists had enough information to speculate that what turned a water-way into an exposed, inhabitable lowland plain was the coldest phase of the last Ice Age, which began about 30,000 years earlier when plunging temperatures caused the world’s oceans to drop in depth by freezing great expanses of seawater into sheets of ice. Those climatic changes formed “Beringia,” a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska that existed from about 25,000 B.P. (before the present) until about 15,000 B.P. During those millennia, most scientists now believe, Siberians gradually settled the length of this link to the Americas. Thereafter, when temperatures began to warm again and the seas rose and closed over Beringia, some of its inhabitants strayed into Alaska. But even now, there are some scientists who doubt this account. True, no one has yet discovered an archaeological site in Alaska – or anywhere else in the Americas – that can be positively dated to earlier than about 15,000 B.P. Yet a few archaeologists working mainly in South America claim to have found artifacts in rockshelters dating to 30,000 B.P. Many others argue that such “finds” are not the result of human manufacture but natural processes like erosion. Then, too, those scientists who take the position that the first Americans arrived 30,000 years ago or even earlier -- before the existence of the Beringia land bridge -- must prove the improbable: that Siberians crossed into Alaska by sailing across the Bering Strait, A recent discovery in the state of Washington is also prompting scientists to wonder whether the first inhabitants of the Americas might have included peoples other than Asians. In 1996, the sheriff of a small desert town, puzzled by a half-buried human skeleton found along the shores of the Columbia River, showed the bones to an anthropologist, James Chatters. Like McJunkin's find of almost a century earlier, this skeleton encased a stone spearpoint, and radiocarbon dating revealed it to be nearly as old (9300 years) as the Folsom bones. But unlike McJunkin's specimen, this is almost certainly -- and astonishingly -- the skeleton of a Caucasian. Such is the judgment of Chatters and other scientists who have carefully examined and measured its skull, which is far narrower than any Indian skull of similar antiquity. Within the last thirty years, other ancient skull remains with Caucasian features have been found, but none so well preserved as the Columbia River specimen, which even has some teeth intact. To date it is the strongest evidence that some people of European stock may have migrated across northern Asia and then joined Siberians in crossing to the Americas. Are today's Native. Americans descended from both Asians and Europeans? Other scientists are quick to point out that the evidence of one skeleton can hardly support such sweeping conclusions. For their part, many Indians still living along the Columbia River reject all scientific explanations of their origins in favor of religious accounts -- tribal creation myths which proclaim that their people have always lived in the Americas. Angered by the conduct of earlier anthropologists, who freely dug up Indian grave sites, they have demanded the right to rebury the skeleton under the terms of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. So the debates about America's first colonizers continue, and, if recent history is any guide, so too will the discoveries. This part of the past, like every other, holds in store many surprises for those in the present determined to probe its secrets. BIBLIOGRAPHY. Keeping up with recent discoveries in this field poses many challenges. New discoveries turn up frequently, and most reports of those findings are written in a highly technical language. Fortunately, a few well-written books provide a guide to both the early Asian migration to and throughout the Americas and the evolution of scholarly debate. Bryan M. Fagan. The Great Journey (London, 1987) is lucid, and the same author has more recently written a more detailed textbook on both ancient Native American archaeology and history., Ancient North America (1991). A less comprehensive but elegantly written treatment of these topics is William MacLeish's The Day before America (1994). Students seeking more advanced and specialized information should consult Stuart J. Fiedei. Prehistory of the America, (2d ed., Cambridge, 1992). Bear in mind, too, that the science section of each Tuesday's New York Times regularly features articles on the ongoing research of archaeologists, anthropologists, and geologists. For the report on the Columbia River skeleton, see The New York Times for September 30, 1996, A12. (38) [Picture] Arrowheads known as Clovis points found with the skeleton of a mammoth. (40) [Picture] UPPER JAW. (41) [Picture] Dr. James Chatters, an anthropologist found a skull approximately 9300 years old along the Columbia River in 1996. The skull’s Eurasian features suggest that at least some migrants over the Bering Strait may also have been of European stock.

 

[1998b] (1) Early North American Cultures The people who first settled the Americas were descendants of Asian migrants who crossed the Bering Strait to Alaska many millennia before 1492. When Europeans first arrived in the Americas, these Indian cultures were numerous and diverse, ranging from the hunting and gathering societies of the Great Plains to the sophisticated civilization of the Aztecs in Mezoamerica. Indeed, the Aztec economy and society encountered by Spanish explorers was similar in many respects to that of sixteenth-century Europe. One crucial difference, however, distinguished the direction of Aztec development from that of Europe: Aztec expansionism did not take the form of exploration and colonization across the Atlantic. (2-3) KEY EVENTS. Ca. 50,000-25,000 B.P.: First Asians arrive in the Americas: initial human settlement of the two continents. ca. 1300: Rise of the Aztec empire: the Indian civilization encountered by the Spanish in present-day Mexico. (3) LEARNING OBJECTIVES. When you have finished studying this chapter, you should be able to: 1. Compare and contrast Indian cultures with western European society m the fifteenth century 2. Explain why western Europeans were able to establish colonies across the Atlantic during the early modern period. 3. Describe the Spanish empire in America and discuss its impact on European development. 4. Explain the ways in which English efforts at colonization in the sixteenth century shaped their eventual settlements in North America. 5. Explain the significance of the Protestant Reformation and its relationship to western Europe's expansion. (4-5) Review Questions. MULTIPLE CHOICE. 4. After about 5500 B.C., native American society grew larger and their cultures more diversified because of the: a. discovery of how to cultivate food crops. b. spread of populations to more temperate regions. c. discovery of improved fishing techniques. d. growth of intertribal trading networks. (p. 13) 5. The most advanced native American cultures were located: a. along the Gulf Coast. b. on the Pacific Northwest Coast. c. among the Pueblo peoples of the southwest. d. in Mesoamerica. (pp. 16-17) (6) IDENTIFICATION QUESTIONS. You should be able to describe the following key terms, concepts, individuals and places, and explain their significance: Terms and Concepts; agricultural revolution, reconquista, encomienda, Black Legend, Protestant Reformation, quadrant, Price Revolution, privateers, justification by faith alone, repartimiento, indulgences, doctrine of the calling, Black Death, caravel. Individuals and Places; Marco Polo, Bartholomeu Dias, Arawaks, Pueblo Indians, Hernando de Soto, Bartolome de Las Casas, John Calvin, Martin Frobisher, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, Prince Henry of Portugal, Vasco da Gama, Amerigo Vespucci, Ferdinand Magellan, Montezuma, Martin Luther, Puritans, Francis Drake. (7) MAP IDENTIFICATIONS. On the map, label or shade in the following places. In a sentence, note their significance to the chapter. (For reference, consult the map in Nation of Nations on page 15.) 1. Aztec Empire, 2. Inca Empire, 3. Mezoamerica, 4. The Spanish Main, 5. The West Indies, 6. Caribbean Sea. (8) ESSAY QUESTIONS. 1. Describe the conditions under which native American cultures became more complex and elaborate. 2. How did Spain's colonial empire influence the development of western Europe during the sixteenth century? 3. Characterize the conditions and changes in sixteenth-century Europe that contributed to the Protestant Reformation. 4. What factor was most essential in encouraging early modem Europeans to undertake voyages of discovery in exploration? 5. Consider the motives of early English promoters of colonization like Gilbert, Raleigh, Frobisher, and the Hakluyts. What were their goals and motives? Critical Thinking. EVALUATING EVIDENCE (MAPS). 1. What does the scope of English and French exploration shown by the map on page 8 indicate about the evolution of relations between those nations with Spain in the sixteenth century? 2. What was the dominant mode of subsistence among North American Indian tribes, as indicated by the map on page 15? EVALUATING EVIDENCE (ILLUSTRATIONS). 1. What is the significance of the ivory mask fashioned by a West African artist shown on page 11? What does the mask indicate about the African perception of the Portuguese? 2. What image of native Americans is conveyed by the picture of Columbus meeting the natives on Hispaniola (page 33)? What is the image of Europeans?

 

[1998c] (6-14) The People of America Before Columbus. Thousands of years before the European voyages of discovery; the history of humankind in North America began. Nomadic bands from Siberia, hunting big game animals such as bison, caribou, and reindeer, began to migrate across a land bridge connecting northeastern Asia with Alaska. Geologists believe that this land bridge, perhaps 600 miles wide, existed most recently between 25,000 and 14,000 years ago, when massive glaciers locked up much of the earth's moisture and left part of the Bering Sea floor exposed. Ice-free passage through Canada was possible only briefly at the beginning and end of this period, however. At other times, melting glaciers flooded the land bridge and blocked foot traffic to Alaska. Paleoanthropologists remain divided on the exact timing, but the main migration apparently occurred between 12,000 and 14,000 years ago, although possibly much earlier. Hunters and Farmers. For thousands of years, these early hunters trekked southward and eastward, following vegetation and game. In time, they reached the tip of South America and the eastern edge of North America, thousands of miles from their Asian homeland. Thus did people from the "Old World" discover the "New World" thousands of years before Columbus. Archaeologists have excavated ancient sites of early life in the Americas, unearthing tools, ornaments, and skeletal remains that can be scientifically dated. In this way, they have tentatively reconstructed the dispersion of these first Americans over an immense land mass. Although much remains unknown, this archaeological evidence suggests that as centuries passed and population increased, the earliest inhabitants evolved into separate cultures, organizing life and adjusting to a variety of environments in distinct ways. Europeans who rediscovered the New World thousands of years later would indiscriminately lump together the myriad societies they found. But by the 1500s, the "Indians" of the Americas were enormously diverse in the size and complexity of their societies, the languages they spoke, and their forms of social organization. Archaeologists and anthropologists have charted several phases of "Native American" history. A long Beringian epoch ended about 14,000 years ago. From that time, a rich archaeological record indicates that the hunters had developed a new technology. Big-game hunters now flaked hard stones into spear points and chose "kill sites" where they slew whole herds of Pleistocene mammals. This more reliable food source allowed population growth, and nomadism began to give way to settled habitations or local migration within limited territories. In another phase of evolution, the Archaic era, from about 10,000 to 2,500 years ago, great geological changes brought further adaptations to the land. As the massive glaciers of the Ice Age slowly retreated, a warming trend deprived vast areas from Utah to the highlands of Central America of sufficient water and turned them from grasslands into desert. The Pleistocene mammals were weakened by more arid conditions, but human populations ably adapted. They learned to exploit new sources of food, especially plant life. In time, a second technological breakthrough, the "agricultural revolution," occurred. We have sometimes imagined that these early people lived in a primordial paradise where they lived in harmony with their surroundings. But recent archaeological evidence points to examples of environmental devastation that severely damaged the biodiversity of the Americas. The first wave of intruders coming across the Bering land bridge found a wilderness teeming with so-called megafauna: saber-toothed tigers, woolly mammoths, gigantic ground sloths, huge bison, and monstrous bear. But by about 10,000 years ago, these animals were almost extinct. Many anthropologists believe that native hunters engaged in "Pleistocene overkill" of the giant species. However, a massive shift of climate that deprived the huge beasts of their grazing environment was also a cause. The depletion of the megafauna left the hemisphere with a much restricted catalogue of animals. Left behind were large animals such as elk, buffalo, bears, and moose. But the extinction of the huge beasts forced people to prey on new sources of food such as turkeys, ducks, and guinea pigs. Their reduced food supply may have gradually reduced their population. Over many centuries in the Americas, salinization and deforestation put the environment under additional stress. For example, in what is today central Arizona, the Hohokam civilization collapsed hundreds of years ago, much like that in ancient Mesopotamia, when the irrigation system became too salty to support agriculture. At Arizona's Chaco Canyon, the fast-growing Anasazi denuded a magnificently forested region in their search for firewood and building materials. This, in turn, led to the erosion of rich soil that impoverished the region for the Anasazi. When Native Americans learned to domesticate plant life, they began the long process of transforming their relationship to the physical world. Learning how to plant, cultivate, and harvest created a new relationship to natural forces that before had been ungovernable. Anthropologists believe that this process began independently in widely separated parts of the world -- Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas -- about 7,000 to 9,000 years ago. Though agriculture developed very slowly, everywhere it eventually brought dramatic changes in human societies. Over the millennia, humans progressed from doorside planting of a few wild seeds to systematic clearing and planting of bean and maize fields. As the production of domesticated plant food ended dependence on gathering wild plants and pursuing game, settled village life began to replace nomadic existence. The increase in food supply brought about by agriculture triggered other major changes. As more ample food fueled population growth, large groups split off to form separate societies. Greater social and political complexity developed because not everyone was needed as before to secure the society's food supply Men cleared the land and hunted game, and women planted, cultivated, and harvested crops. Many societies empowered religious figures, who organized the common followers, directed their work, and exacted tribute as well as worship from them. In return, the community trusted them to ward off hostile forces. Everywhere in the Americas, regional trading networks formed. Along trade routes carrying commodities such as salt, obsidian rock for projectile points, and copper for jewelry also traveled technology, religious ideas, and agricultural practices. By the end of the Archaic period, about 500 B.C. (to use the Christian European method of dating), hundreds of independent kin-based groups, like people in other parts of the world, had learned to exploit the resources of their particular area and to trade with other groups in their region. Native Americans in 1600. The last epoch of pre-Columbian development, the post-Archaic phase, occurred during the 2,000 years before contact with Europeans. It involved a complex process of growth and environmental adaptation among many distinct societies -- and crisis in some of them. In the American Southwest, for example, the ancestors of the present-day Hopi and Zuni developed carefully planned villages composed of large terraced multistoried buildings, each with many rooms. By the time the Spanish arrived in the 1540s, the indigenous Pueblo people were using irrigation canals, dams, and hillside terracing to bring water to their arid maize fields. In their agricultural techniques, their skill in ceramics, their use of woven textiles for clothing, and their village life, Pueblo society resembled that of peasant communities in many parts of Europe and Asia. Far to the east were the mound-building societies of the Mississippi and Ohio valleys. When European settlers first crossed the Appalachian Mountains a century and a half after arriving on the continent, they were amazed to find hundreds of ceremonial mounds, some of them 70 feet high, and gigantic sculptured earthworks in geometric designs or in the shapes of huge humans, birds, or writhing serpents. Believing all "Indians" to be forest primitives, they reasoned that these were the remains of an ancient civilization that had found its way to North America -- perhaps Phoenicians, survivors of the sunken island of Atlantis, or the Lost Tribes of Israel spoken of in European mythology. The mound-building societies of the Ohio valley declined many centuries before Europeans reached the continent, perhaps because of attacks from other tribes or severe climatic changes that undermined agriculture. But about A.D. 600, another mound-building culture, based on intensive cultivation of beans, maize, and squash, began to flourish in the Mississippi valley. Its center, a city of perhaps 40,000, stood near present-day St. Louis. Great ceremonial plazas, flanked by a temple that rose in four terraces to a height of 100 feet, marked this first metropolis in America. This was the urban center of a far-flung Mississippi culture that radiated out to encompass hundreds of villages from Wisconsin to Louisiana and from Oklahoma to Tennessee. While the mound-building cultures of the continental heartlands mysteriously declined, their influence had already passed eastward to transform the woodlands societies along the Atlantic coastal plain. The numerous small tribes that settled from Nova Scotia to Florida never equaled the larger societies of the midcontinent in earthwork sculpture, architectural design, or development of large-scale agriculture. But they were far from the "savages" that the first European explorers described. They had added limited agriculture to their skill in exploiting natural plants for food, medicine, dyes, and flavoring and had developed food procurement strategies that used all the resources around them -- cleared land, forests, streams, shore, and ocean. Most of the eastern woodlands tribes lived in waterside villages. Locating their fields of maize near fishing grounds, they often migrated seasonally between inland and coastal village sites or situated themselves astride two ecological zones. In the Northeast, their birchbark canoes, light enough to be carried by a single man, gave them a means of trading and communicating over immense territories. In the Southeast, population was denser and social and political organization more elaborate. As European exploration of the Americas drew near, the continent north of the Rio Grande contained at least 3 to 4 million people, of whom perhaps 500,000 lived along the eastern coastal plain and in the piedmont region accessible to the early European settlers. Though estimates vary widely, perhaps 40 to 60 million people lived in the entire hemisphere when Europeans first arrived. This contrasted with some 70 to 90 million in Europe about 1500 and about 50 to 70 million in Africa. The colonizers were not coming to a "virgin wilderness," as they often described it, but to a land inhabited for thousands of years by people whose village existence in many ways resembled that of the arriving Europeans. In some important ways, however, Indian culture also differed from that of Europeans. Horses, for example, were not available to the native peoples of the New World as they developed their methods of farming, transportation, and warfare. Without draft animals such as the horse or ox, they had not developed wheeled vehicles or, for that matter, the potter's wheel, which also uses the wheel-and-axle principle. Many inventions -- such as the technology for smelting iron, which had diffused widely in the Old World -- had not crossed the ocean barrier to reach the New World. The opposite was also true: Valuable New World crops, such as corn and potatoes, which had been developed by Indian agriculturists, were unknown in the Old World before Columbus. Contrasting World Views. Colonizing Europeans called themselves "civilized" and typically described the people they met in the Americas as "savage," "heathen," or "barbarian." The gulf separating people in Europe and North America was defined not only by their material cultures, but also by how they viewed their relationship to the environment and how they defined social relations in their communities. Having evolved in complete isolation from each other, European and Indian cultures exhibited a wide difference in values. Regarding the soil as a resource to be exploited for human benefit, Europeans believed that land should be privately possessed. Individual ownership of property became a fundamental concept, and an extensive institutional apparatus grew up to support it. Fences symbolized private property; inheritance became the mechanism for transmitting land from one generation to another within the same family; and courts gained the power to settle property disputes. Property was the basis not only of sustenance, but also of independence, material wealth, political status, and personal identity. The social structure directly mirrored patterns of land ownership, with a land-wealthy elite at the apex of the social pyramid and a mass of propertyless individuals forming the broad base. Native Americans also had concepts of property, and tribes recognized territorial boundaries. But they believed that land was invested with sacred qualities and should be held in common. As one German missionary to the Delaware Indians explained their view in the eighteenth century; the Creator "made the Earth and all that it contains for the common good of mankind. Whatever liveth on the land, whatsoever groweth out of the earth, and all that is in the rivers and waters . . . was given jointly to all and everyone is entitled to his share." Communal ownership sharply limited social stratification in most Indian communities. Accustomed to wide disparities of wealth, Europeans often found this remarkable. Observing the Iroquois of the eastern woodlands in 1657, a French Jesuit noted with surprise that they had no almshouses because "their kindness, humanity and courtesy not only makes them liberal with what they have, but causes them to possess hardly anything except in common. A whole village must be without corn, before any individual can be obliged to endure privation." Not all Europeans were acquisitive, competitive individuals. The majority were peasants scratching a subsistence living from the soil, living in kin-centered villages with little contact with the outside world, and exchanging goods and labor through barter. But in Europe's urban centers, a wealth-conscious, ambitious individual who valued and sought wider choices and greater opportunities to enhance personal status was coming to the fore. In contrast, Native American traditions stressed the group rather than the individual. Holding land and other resources in common, Indian societies were usually more egalitarian and their members more concerned with personal valor than personal wealth. Exceptions to this cultural system occurred in the highly developed and populous Aztec and Inca empires and, in North America, among a few tribes such as the Natchez. But on the eastern and western coasts of the continent and in the Southwest -- the regions of contact in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries -- the European newcomers encountered a people whose cultural values differed strikingly from theirs. European colonizers in North America also found disturbing the matrilineal organization of many tribal societies. Contrary to European practice, family membership among the Iroquois, for example, was determined through the female line. A typical family consisted of an old woman, her daughters with their husbands and children, and her unmarried granddaughters and grandsons. When a son or grandson married, he moved from this female-headed household to one headed by the matriarch of his wife's family Divorce was also the woman's prerogative. If she desired it, she merely set her husband's possessions outside their dwelling door. Clans were composed of several matrilineal kin groups related by a blood connection on the mother's side. To Europeans, this was a peculiar and dangerous reversal of their sexual hierarchy in which men, from time immemorial, had been supreme. In Native American societies, women also held subordinate positions, but not nearly to the extent found among European women. For example, European women, with rare exceptions, were entirely excluded from political affairs. By contrast, in Native American villages, again to take the Iroquois example, designated men sat in a circle to deliberate and make decisions, but the senior women of the village stood behind them, lobbying and instructing. The village chiefs were male, but they were named to their positions by the elder women of their clans. If they moved too far from the will of the women who appointed them, these chiefs were removed -- or "dehorned." "Our ancestors," the Oneida chief Giod Peter explained, "considered it a great transgression to reject the counsel of their women, particularly the female governesses. Our ancestors considered them mistresses of the soil. . . . The women, they are the life of the nation." The role of women in the tribal economy reinforced the sharing of power between male and female. Men were responsible for hunting, fishing, and clearing land, but women controlled the cultivation, harvest, and distribution of food. They were responsible for probably three-quarters of their family's nutritional needs. When the men were away on hunting expeditions, women directed village life. Europeans, imbued with the idea of male superiority and female subordination, perceived such a degree of sexual equality as another mark of the uncivilized nature of tribal society. In economic relations, Europeans and Indians differed in ways that sometimes led to misunderstanding and conflict. Over vast stretches of the continent, Indians had engaged in trading networks for centuries before Europeans arrived. This experience made it easy for them to engage in trade with arriving Europeans and incorporate new metal and glass trade items into their culture. But trade for Indian peoples was not only a way of acquiring desirable goods. It was also a way of preserving interdependence and equilibrium between individuals and communities. This principle of reciprocity displayed itself in elaborate ceremonies of gift giving and pipe smoking that preceded the exchange of goods. For Europeans, trade was an economic matter with the benefit of building good will between two parties, but the social and spiritual functions of trade were sharply limited in comparison with Indians. In the religious beliefs of Native Americans, the English saw a final damning defect. Europeans built their religious life around the belief in a single god, written scriptures, a trained and highly literate clergy and churches with structured ceremonies. Native American societies, sharing no literary tradition, expressed their religious beliefs in a less structured way At the core of their religion was a belief that spiritual power, mysterious and supernatural, existed everywhere in nature. Believing that human life could be affected -- positively or negatively -- by the spiritual power in rocks, water, sun, moon, and animals, Indian people sought to conciliate the spirits in nature -- even the spirits of the fish, beaver, and deer they hunted. Pueblo people, for example, living in arid lands where rainfall dictated their well-being, expressed their thanks for rain by performing frequent ritual dances. For Europeans, the Indians' polytheism was pagan and devilish. Europeans understood that Indians had religious leaders called shamans, who used medicinal plants and magical chants to heal the sick and facilitated the people's quests to communicate with the spiritual world. But Europeans regarded the shamans as especially dangerous because they occupied powerful roles among a spiritually misled people. Their fear and hatred of infidels intensified by the Protestant Reformation, Europeans saw a holy necessity to convert -- or destroy -- these enemies of their God.

 

[1999a] (11-5) EARLY NORTH AMERICAN CULTURES. The Americas were a new world only to European latecomers. To the Asian peoples and their native American descendants who had settled the continents tens of thousands of years earlier, Columbus' new world was their own old world. But the first nomadic hunters who crossed from Siberia over the Bering Strait to Alaska probably did not consider themselves discoverers or recognize what they had found -- a truly new world wholly uninhabited by humans. The First Inhabitants. The first passage of people from Asia to America probably took place during a prehistoric glacial period -- either before 35,000 B.C. or about 10,000 years later -- when huge amounts of the world's water froze into sheets of ice. Sea levels dropped so drastically that the Bering Strait became a broad, grassy plain. Across that land bridge between the two continents both humans and animals escaped icebound Siberia for ice-free Alaska. Whenever the first migration took place, the movement of Asians to America continued, even after 8000 B.C. when world temperatures rose again and the water from melting glaciers flooded back into the ocean, submerging the Bering Strait. Over a span of 25,000 years settlement spread down the Alaskan coast, then deeper into the North American mainland, and finally throughout Central and South America. Native Americans remained nomadic hunters and gatherers for thousands of years, as did many Europeans, Africans, and Asians of those millennia. But American cultures gradually diversified, especially after about 5500 B.C., when the peoples of central Mexico discovered how to cultivate food crops. As this ''agricultural revolution" spread slowly northward, native American societies were able to grow larger and develop distinctive forms of economic, social, and political organization. By the end of the fifteenth century; the inhabitants of North America perhaps 5 to 10 million people spoke as many as 1000 languages. Although later Europeans, like Columbus, lumped these societies together by calling them Indian any cultural unity had vanished long before 1492. The simplest Indian societies were those that still relied on hunting and gathering, like the Eskimos of the Arctic and the Serrano, Cahuilla, Luiseno, and Dieguefio of southern California, Arizona, and the Baja peninsula of Mexico. Stark deserts and frozen tundra defied cultivation and yielded food supplies that could sustain nomadic bands numbering no more than about 50 people. Families occasionally joined together for a collective hunt or wintered in common quarters, but for most of the year they scattered across the landscape, the women gathering plants and seeds, making baskets, and cooking meals while the men hunted for meat and hides. Political authority lay with either the male family head or the "headman" of a small band "Shamans" -- any tribesmen claiming spiritual powers -- enlisted the supernatural to assist individuals. Societies of Increasing Complexity In the densely forested belt that stretched from Newfoundland to the Bering Strait, resources more generous than those of the tundra to the north made for larger populations and more closely knit societies. Northeastern bands like the Hunters and gatherers. Montagnais, the Micmac, and the Penobscot and northwestern tribes like the Yellowknife and the Beaver traveled forests in moccasins and snowshoes, stalking deer, elk, moose, bear, and caribou; they speared fish in icy lakes and streams from birch-bark canoes. Their environment encouraged cooperative economic pursuits. Leading men assigned several families to specific territories that they hunted together, dividing the returns among the whole band. Religious beliefs strengthened the ties of kinship each family had a "totem," a particular animal from which they claimed descent. Women in agricultural societies. While men dominated Indian bands based on hunting, women assumed more influence in societies that relied for part of their food on settled agriculture. Among the Pueblo peoples of Arizona and New Mexico, the Hopi and Zufii tribes, men hunted bison and cultivated corn and beans, but women owned the fields, the crops, and even the tools. They also owned the sun-baked dwellings of adobe and stone, some of which rose to several stories, that housed the families of their daughters. By 1540 some 70 Pueblo villages flourished as more reliable food supplies swelled the size and number of clans (families sharing a common ancestry). A council of religious elders drawn from the different clans governed each village. Pueblo religious ceremonies, in contrast to those of simpler Indian societies, involved elaborate rituals celebrating tribal unity and seeking the gods' blessing for hunts and harvests. Thousands of miles to the northeast, in a natural setting far different from the semiarid Southwest, the Iroquois created a remarkably similar culture. More complex Indian civilizations arose in the bountiful environments of the Pacific Northwest and the coastal region reaching from Virginia to Texas. The seas and rivers from eastern Alaska to northern California teemed with fish, humpback whales, seals, and otters. In the Southeast fertile soil and temperate climate encouraged the cultivation of maize, rice, and a variety of fruits. By harvesting these resources and developing techniques to preserve food supplies, settlements could become larger and more complex. Far less egalitarian than nomadic hunting bands or even the Pueblo and Iroquois, these tribes developed elaborate systems of status. Among southeastern tribes like the Natchez, below the chief, or "Great Sun " stood a hereditary nobility of lesser "Suns," who demanded elaborate displays of respect from the lowly "Stinkards " the common people. Mesoamerican Empires. Even more advanced were the vast agricultural empires of Mesoamerica -- south and central Mexico and Guatemala. As the Roman empire was declining in Europe, the civilization of the Mayas was flourishing in the lowland jungles of Central America. They built cities filled with palaces, bridges, aqueducts, baths, astronomical observatories, and temples topped by pyramids. Their priests developed a written language, their mathematicians discovered the zero, and their astronomers devised a calendar more accurate than any then existing. Rise of the Aztecs. The Aztecs, who invaded central Mexico from the north in the fourteenth century, built on the Mayas' achievements. Within a century Aztec conquest had created an empire of several million people. The capital, Tenochtitlan, was a glittering island metropolis with a population in 1400 of perhaps a quarter of a million -- several times the size of London. The Great Temple of the Sun dominated the center of the city, and through the canals leading to Tenochtitlan flowed gold, silver, exotic feathers, cocoa, and millions of pounds of maize -- all trade goods and tribute from other Mexican city-states conquered by the Aztecs. In many ways, the world of the Aztecs paralleled the societies of early modern Europe. Both worlds were predominantly rural, most of their inhabitants living in small villages and engaging in agriculture. In both worlds, merchants and specialized craftworkers clustered in cities, organized themselves into guilds, and clamored for protection from the government. And, as in Europe, Aztec noble and priestly classes took the lead in politics and religion, demanding tribute from the common people. The question of human sacrifice aside, there was at least one crucial difference between Aztec and European civilizations. Aztec expansion did not take the form of colonial settlements that spanned the oceans -- indeed, the globe. That difference reflected a host of distinctive changes in European social, economic, and political development during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It was these transformations that made it possible for bold sailors like Columbus and Cabot or anonymous fisherfolk and traders to dream of profit, glory, and empire. (12) [Map] INDIANS OF NORTH AMERICA, CIRCA 1500. (14) EYEWITNESS TO HISTORY. A Spanish Conquistador Visits the Aztec Marketplace in Tenochtitlan. On reaching the market-place . . . we were astounded at the great number of people and the quantities of merchandise, and at the orderliness and good arrangements that prevailed, for we had never seen such a thing before. . . . Every kind of merchandise was kept separate and had its fixed place marked for it. Let us begin with the dealers in gold, silver, and precious stones, feathers, cloaks, and embroidered goods, and male and female slaves who are also sold there. They bring as many slaves to be sold in that market as the Portuguese bring Negroes from Guinea. Some are brought there attached to long poles by means of collars round their necks to prevent them from escaping, but others are left loose. Next there were those who sold coarser cloth, and cotton goods and fabrics made of twisted thread, and there were chocolate merchants. . . .In this way you could see every kind of merchandise to be found anywhere in New Spain, laid out in the same way as goods are laid out in my own district [in Spain] of Medina del Campo, a center for fairs, where each line of stalls has its own particular sort. So it was in this great market. There were those who sold sisal cloth and ropes and the sandals they wear on their feet . . . and in another part were skins of tigers and lions, otters, jackals, and deer, badgers, mountain cats, and other wild animals. I must also mention, with all apologies, that they sold many canoe-loads of human excrement, which they kept in the creeks near the market. This was for the manufacture of salt and the curing of skins, which they say cannot be done without it. I know that many gentlemen will laugh at this, but I assure them it is true. I may add that on all the roads they have shelters made of reeds or straw or grass so that they can retire when they wish to do so, and purge their bowels unseen by passers-by, and also in order that their excrement shall not be lost. (Bernal Diaz, The Conquest of New Spain, translated by J M Cohen (New York: Penguin Classics, 1963), pp. 232-233. Copyright © J M Cohen, 1963.) (15-6) COUNTERPOINT. The Role of Human Sacrifice. Some students of history; however, emphasize that the Aztecs differed from Europeans in one particularly striking way: they practiced ritual human sacrifice. Every year, Aztec priests wielding razor-sharp knives sliced open the chests of thousands of captives and offered up to the sun hearts still beating, the essence of life. Indeed, the primary purpose of Aztec warfare was less to extend their empire than to maintain a steady supply of captives for such rites. Aztecs believed that they were the chosen people -- chosen to nourish the earth by sustaining the life of the sun with offerings of human blood. Put simply; the Aztecs slaughtered other human beings in the name of religion. As one recent historian noted, "In numbers, the elevated sense of ceremony which accompanied the theatrical shows involved, as in its significance in the official religion, human sacrifice in Mexico was unique." But were the Aztecs really so different in this regard from invading Europeans? The sense of being a "chosen people" that underlay Aztec rituals also inspired Christians in their own crusades. They campaigned ruthlessly against "Muslim infidels," massacred Jews, and executed thousands of witches during the Middle Ages and even into the seventeenth century. Put just as simply, European Christians, too, slaughtered other human beings in the name of religion. But it was a similarity that Europeans found convenient to overlook. They preferred to portray themselves as "civilizers" of a people whose “savagery" was proved by the practice of human sacrifice.

 

[1999b]

 

[1999c] (5-14) American Origins. The forces that propelled Columbus toward the Western Hemisphere merely echoed other forces that had sent a population to the New World thousands of years before. These forces resulted from countless choices that countless individuals through time made as they struggled to better their lives and those of their children. Thus the process that led to the peopling of North America and the development of a unique set of cultures began many thousands of years before Columbus and is part of the larger drama of human development. Environment, Change, and Human History. Human culture apparently began about 4 million years ago in the east-central region of Africa. Within 1 to 2 million years, human beings were to be found throughout many parts of the Eastern Hemisphere. This expansion of human culture took place against a backdrop of extremely bad weather. The Quaternary era, or Great Ice Age, began about 2.5 million years ago and ended only about 10,000 years ago. During the height of the Ice Age, great sheets of ice advanced and withdrew across the world's continents, and temperatures were between fifteen and twenty degrees lower on the average than they are today, During the last Quaternary ice advance, the Wisconsin glaciation, a sheet of ice more than 8,000 feet thick, covered the northern half of both Europe and North America. So much water was frozen into this massive glacier that sea levels dropped as much as 450 feet. Finding vast regions closed to them by the imposing ice fields, people ventured into areas exposed by the receding sea. One such region, Beringia, lay between present-day Siberia on the Asian continent and Alaska in North America (see Map 1.1). Now covered by the waters of the Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean. Beringia during the Ice Age was a dry, frigid grassland, low lying and thus not subject to glacier formation -- a perfect grazing ground for animals such as giant bison and huge-tusked woolly mammoths, which thrived in the cold. Hosts of predators, including large wolves, saber-toothed cats, and humans, followed them into Beringia. Scholars who have analyzed soil samples, plant remains, animal bones, and other relics now conclude that sea levels were low enough to expose Beringia about 70,000 years ago and that the area remained above sea level continually until about 10,000 years ago. Archaeological evidence yields a wide variety of dates for when people first moved southward into North America, ranging from about 40,000 to about 12,000 years ago. Evidence based on blood DNA, differences in tooth shapes, and similarities in languages suggests that the majority of North America's original residents are descended from three separate migrating groups, each of which arrived at a different time. The first of these, the groups called Paleo-Indians, probably entered the continent between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago, and their descendants eventually occupied the entire area of the Western Hemisphere. The second group, collectively called the Na-Dene people, appears to have arrived very near the end of the Wisconsin era, between 10,000 and 11,000 years ago, and their descendants are concentrated in two areas: the subarctic regions of Canada and the southwestern United States, The final group, the Arctic-dwelling Inuits, or Eskimos, arrived sometime later, perhaps after the land connection between North America and the rest of the world was already gone (see Map 1.1). Even after the Ice Age came to an end, it took between four and five thousand years for the massive glaciers to melt, and during that time the melting ice kept the climate cold and damp everywhere on the continent. But by about 9,000 years ago, the glaciers were so reduced in size that they began to lose their influence over the North American climate. The elimination of this enormous temperature-regulating system resulted in the formation of many different climates and natural environments. Most important, as temperatures warmed and the grasslands disappeared, the gigantic Ice Age creatures whose presence supplied early hunters with their primary source of meat and whose movements set the tempo and pattern for Paleo-Indian life began to die out. The hunters faced the unpleasant prospect of following the large animals into extinction if they kept trying to survive by hunting big game. Seedtime for Native Cultures in North America. Over time, the changing environment forced the ancestors of the American Indians to change their ways, which marked the beginning of a host of new cultures. The first phase of the adaptation process began even as the climate change was occurring and lasted until about 3,000 years ago. Archaeologists call it the Archaic phase in Indian culture. During this period, people everywhere in North America abandoned nomadic big-game hunting. They began to explore new sources for food, clothing, shelter, and tools – sources that they found within newly emerging local environments. Archaic culture emerged at different times in different places. It appears that the western part of North America was hit earliest by the changing climate. At an archaeological site in southern Oregon, a place called Fort Rock Cave, archaeologists have unearthed very early evidence of people abandoning big-game hunting and adapting to local conditions. As long as 9,600 years ago, people in this region began inventing new tools and mastering new manufacturing skills. For example, investigators found a large number of different tools for grinding seeds, a sign that these people were eating less meat and more local grass seeds, nuts, and other vegetable foods. They also found baskets, sandals, and clothing woven from grasses and reeds, indicating less dependence on animals and greater reliance on local plants. Third, investigators found small spear points and fishing and bird-hunting equipment, implying that these early Indians had stopped chasing after mammoths and had begun to hunt and fish for animals that they could find close by Over the next several thousand years, people throughout western North America and then all over the continent made similar adaptations, differing only in the specific foods and types of materials they employed. In the forests that grew up to cover the eastern half of the continent, Archaic Indians developed finely polished stone tools, which they used to make functional and beautiful implements out of wood, bone, shell, and other materials. In the eastern forests and along the Pacific shore, people used large, heavy stone axes, chisels, and adzes to hollow out massive tree trunks, making boats from which they could harvest food from inland waterways and from the sea. During this time domesticated dogs were introduced into North America, probably by newly arriving migrants from Asia. Dogs provided companionship, protection, a domesticated food source, and hunting help, and they served as draft animals. With dogs to help carry loads on land and boats for river transportation, Archaic people were able to make the best use of their local environments by moving around to different spots during different seasons of the year. Thus they did not establish permanent towns or villages. Rather they followed an annual round of movement from camp to camp -- perhaps collecting shellfish for several weeks in one spot and then moving to where wild strawberries were ripening and then on to where maturing wild onions or sunflower seeds could be harvested. Such efficient use of local resources caused an enormous increase in two things during the Archaic period: population and spare time. Although Indian populations had grown enormously during the several millennia in which they remained primarily hunters, the precarious nature of nomadic hunting forced big-game hunters to live in small bands that could move quickly in pursuit of elusive prey, Archaic life was much more stable, and efficient manufacturing and harvesting helped prevent famine. After people began settling down, populations increased more quickly, Being freed from the constant need to track and kill big game for meat also gave Archaic people more time for other things. One result was the continuing invention of new tools and craft skills. Another was the emergence of art. Artwork played a prominent role in elaborate burial practices that emerged everywhere in North America during this period. In central Florida, for example, bodies of the dead, along with tools and carved animal effigies, were sewn into weighted woven bags and then staked to the bottom of shallow ponds. Elsewhere, the bones of the dead were stripped of flesh and painted bright colors before they were buried with an assortment of art objects. The connection between artwork and elaborate burials points to a rich religious and ceremonial life. Sculptures and pictures from the time indicate that nature lay at the heart of the Archaic religious world. Some anthropologists and religious scholars have speculated that these Archaic ancestors of modern Indians believed in and celebrated the animating spirits of the plants and animals that they knew so well and depended on for survival. Although these early Indians apparently worshiped nature and adapted well to conditions around them, they also left their mark on local environments. They used fire to clear forests of unwanted scrub and to encourage the growth of berries and other plants they found valuable, while discouraging the growth of weeds. In this way they produced vegetables for themselves and also provided food for browsing animals like deer, which increased in number while other species, less useful to people, declined. Plant Cultivation and the Rise of New Societies. A highly significant example of such environmental engineering comes from north-central Mexico, where archaeologists have found evidence that humans altered the natural growth of plants. Beginning perhaps 7,000 years ago, human intervention helped a wild strain of grass develop bigger seedpods with more nutritious seeds. Such intervention eventually transformed a fairly unproductive plant into an enormously nourishing and prolific food crop: maize. Maize (corn), along with beans, squash, and chilies, formed the basis for an agricultural revolution in North America, allowing many people to settle in larger villages for longer periods. From its origins in central Mexico about 3,500 years ago, maize agriculture spread like wildfire, reaching settlements in New Mexico and Arizona as early as 1,000 or 2,000 years ago. From there, the plant itself and knowledge about how to sow its seeds and care for and harvest it spread northward and eastward. Successful adaptation -- including plant cultivation and eventually agriculture -- along with population growth and the constructive use of spare time allowed some Indians in North America to build large, ornate cities. Generally these were not residential centers. Instead, most large Indian cities in North America were trading and ceremonial centers where large populations congregated from time to time. People, often from vastly different geographical and cultural settings, came to these places to trade goods and exchange knowledge and information. Large earthen mounds in various shapes-some like huge animals, others formed as pyramids or interesting geometrical patterns -- are prominent features at these sites, leading archaeologists to call these trading and ceremonial centers mound builder societies. The map of late Archaic America is dotted with such centers. Along the Ohio River, a complex of sites was constructed about 3,000 years ago. Archaeologists call this the Adena culture. Adena cities were centers of exchange and ceremony, Large quantities of both practical and purely decorative artifacts from all over North America have been found at Adena sites. In Illinois and elsewhere in eastern North America, Hopewell culture took the place of Adena culture. Hopewell culture reached its peak between 1,500 and 1,000 years ago at Cahokia, a site near the modern city of East St. Louis, Illinois. Cahokia was more than just a trading center. It was a central clearing-house for ideas from all over the Western Hemisphere. Archaeologists have found distinctive forms of pottery, tools, and religious and artistic objects spread in concentric rings outward from Cahokia. In addition, the people at Cahokia appear to have developed both the tools and the specific knowledge required for growing corn in that region. Despite its size and apparent influence, Cahokia probably did not have a large permanent population. Archaeologists believe that the people who came to Cahokia and to other Hopewell centers lived elsewhere, in small agricultural villages or in mobile hunting and gathering bands, and came to the centers to trade and to participate in ceremonial activities. Earthen mounds shaped like flat-topped pyramids are the most distinctive feature of late Hopewell sites. Although these pyramids were constructed over ornate graves, probably those of former leaders, they also served as a base for buildings. These buildings may have served a double function -- as places of worship and as administrative offices for priest-administrators who oversaw trading, planting, and invention. About 800 years ago, Cahokia and the entire Hopewell complex fell into decline. The people who once had congregated at the Hopewell centers withdrew to their villages or bands. From time to time, however, some of them returned to the ceremonial centers, digging passages into the pyramids in order to bury important individuals. The Complex World of Indian America. Although the broad shape of American Indian life was similar throughout North America, vast differences existed between various Indian groups, because Archaic cultures developed in direct response to local environmental conditions. Anthropologists have tried to make the extremely complicated cultural map of North America understandable by dividing the continent into a series of culture areas -- regions where the similarities among native societies were greater than the differences. The chapter-opening map shows eleven such areas. In one of these regions, the Southeast, life continued much as it had in the Adena and Hopewell cultures. Between 1,200 years ago and the time of European entry into the region in the 1700s, peoples speaking Siouan, Caddoan, and Muskogean languages formed a vibrant agricultural and urban society, which scholars have named Mississippian culture. Mississippian urban development, pyramid building, and political organization had ties with the earlier Adena and Hopewell cultures but were more directly influenced by contacts with adventurous traders from Mexico. At places like Natchez, fortified cities housed gigantic pyramids, and farmland radiating outward provided food for large residential populations. Unlike Adena and Hopewell sites, these were true cities, but like the earlier centers they were magnets attracting ideas, technologies, and religious notions from all parts of the Western Hemisphere. Farther north, in the region called the Eastern Woodlands, people lived in smaller villages and combined agriculture with hunting and gathering. The Iroquois, for example, lived in towns numbering three thousand or more people, changing locations only as soil fertility, firewood, and game became exhausted. Each town was made up of a group of longhouses, structures often 60 feet or more in length. Individual family apartments ranged down both sides of a long central hallway, in the middle of which were fireplaces that served the two families living across from each other. This hallway was the center for social and political life -- babies crawled, children played, men swapped hunting stories and gossip, and women cooked and cleaned in this communal space. Under the supervision of a dominant matriarch, the day-to-day tasks of running the household were shared out among its members. A tradition that may go back to the time when the Iroquois lived as nomadic hunters and gatherers dictated that men and women occupy different spheres of existence. The women's world was the world of plants, healing, nurturing, and order. The men's was the world of animals, hunting, war, and disorder. By late pre-Columbian times, the Iroquois became strongly agricultural, and since plants were in the women's sphere, women occupied places of high social and economic status in Iroquois society. Families were matrilineal, meaning they traced their descent through the mother's line, and matrilocal, meaning a man left his home to move in with his wife's family upon marriage. Women distributed the rights to cultivate specific fields and controlled the harvest. Clan matriarchs chose the men who would sit as judges and political council members. Variations on the Iroquois pattern were typical throughout the Northeast and in the neighboring Great Plains and the Southwest. Agricultural village life was the dominant lifestyle in each region before Europeans came. In fact, migrants into the plains probably came from the east carrying seed corn from the declining Hopewell settlements. Groups like the Mandans began settling on bluffs overlooking the many streams that eventually come together to form the Missouri River. Living in substantial houses insulated against the cold winters, these people divided their time between hunting, crop raising, and trade. Over a five-hundred-year period, populations increased and agricultural settlements expanded. By 1300, such villages could be found along every stream ranging southward from North Dakota into present-day Kansas. Just as agriculturalists in the Great Plains had strong connections to the Eastern Woodlands, Indians in the Southwest were closely tied to Mexico. As early as 3,200 years ago, corn appears to have been brought into the area. But the Southwestern Indians, unlike their contemporaries farther south, continued to engage in hunting and food gathering for a long time after experiencing the agricultural revolution. Not until about A.D. 400 did Indians in this region begin building larger and more substantial houses and limiting their migrations. The greatest change, however, came during the eighth century, when a shift in climate made the region drier and a pattern of late-summer thunderstorms created dangerous and erosive flash floods. There seem to have been two quite different responses to this drastic change in climate. Groups whom the Navajos would later call the Anasazi (ancient alien ones) expanded their agricultural ways, cooperating to build flood-control dams and irrigation canals. This need for cooperative labor meant forming larger communities, and between about 900 and 1300 the Anasazi responded by building whole cities of multistory apartment houses along the high cliffs, safe from flooding but near their irrigated fields. In these densely populated towns Anasazi craft specialists like potters, weavers, basket makers, and tool smiths manufactured goods for the community while farmers tended fields and priests attended to the spiritual needs of the society Another contingent of Southwestern Indians abandoned the region, moving southward into Mexico. Here they came upon the remnants of classical city-states like Teotihuacan, which had fallen on hard times. One of several highly developed societies of central Mexico, Teotihuacan was the largest city-state in the Western Hemisphere, with a population of nearly 200,000. However, by around A.D. 600 Teotihuacan and other such societies were in decline. Over the next several hundred years, migrants from southwestern North America -- so-called Chichimecs or "wild tribes" -- borrowed architectural and agricultural skills from the fallen societies and built new monumental cities. Tula, the first of these, entered its heyday in about the year 1000, but within another two hundred years a civil war brought that civilization to an end. Shortly thereafter, another Chichimec tribe rose to prominence in central Mexico. The Aztecs arrived in the Valley of Mexico shortly after 1200, settling on a small island in the middle of a brackish lake. From this unappealing center, a series of strong leaders used a combination of diplomacy and brutal warfare to establish a tributary empire as extensive and populated as the great empires of Europe. By the time Europeans entered Mexico in the early sixteenth century, the Aztecs may have ruled as many as 6 million people and had turned their island capital into a showplace that visitors compared favorably with the most advanced cities in Europe. Other major changes occurred in the Southwest after 1300. During the last quarter of the thirteenth century, a long string of summer droughts and bitterly cold winters forced the Anasazi to abandon their cities. They disappeared as a people, splitting into smaller communities that eventually became the various Pueblo tribes. These small communities found their survival more certain if they engaged in both agriculture and hunting and gathering. The arrival of an entirely new population to the region aided this adaptation. Related to the Na-Dene people, these hunter-gatherers brought new technologies, including the bow and arrow, into the Great Plains and then, splitting off from more northerly groups, they began a southward trek that eventually brought them into the Southwest. About half of them continued to be hunter-gatherers, and the rest borrowed cultivating and home-building techniques from the Pueblos. Europeans who later entered the area called the hunter-gatherers Apaches and the settled agriculturalists Navajos. In the balance of North America, agriculture was practiced only marginally, if at all. In areas like the Great Basin, desert conditions made agriculture too risky, and in California, the Pacific Northwest, and the Plateau region, the bounty of available wild foods made it unnecessary, In these regions, hunting and gathering remained the chief occupations, and lifestyles centered around the various activities that contributed to group well-being. The Nez Perces and their neighbors living in the Plateau region, for example, moved around from season to season hunting, fishing, and gathering as different plants and animals became available. Although they occupied permanent village sites in the winter, they did not stay together in a single group all year. Rather, they formed task groups -- temporary villages that came together to share the labor required to harvest a particular resource -- and then went their separate ways when the task was done. These task groups brought together not only people who lived in different winter villages but often people from different tribes and even different language groups. At the peak of the salmon-fishing season, for example, large villages consisting of Nez Perces, Cayuses, Palouses, Flatheads, and members of numerous other groups formed to catch, salt, dry, and package the fish that would feed their individual villages during the coming winter. In such groups, political authority passed among those who were best qualified to supervise particular activities. If the task group was hunting, the best and most senior hunters -- almost always men -- directed things. If the task group was gathering roots, then the best and most senior diggers -- almost always women -- directed things. Thus among Plateau people, political organization changed from season to season, and social status depended on what activities were most important to the group at a particular time. As these examples illustrate, variations in daily life and social arrangements in pre-Columbian North America reflected variations in climate, soil conditions, food supplies, and cultural heritages from place to place across the vast continent. The only generalization we can make is that pre-Columbian Indians adopted economic strategies, social conventions, and political systems that were well suited to their ecological and historical circumstances. It is a mistake, however, to assume pre-Columbian Americans lived in isolated tribes. Archaeological research continues to reveal complex trading patterns within and between ecological regions. In the West, for example, seed-grinding tools from the Great Basin are found at Plateau sites. Obsidian and other Plateau items are found in the Great Basin and beyond; varieties of shell found naturally only in the Northwest Coast region have been found in Indian villages as far away as Florida. Such findings reveal a far-reaching trading network that linked the people of North America into a single complex world of culture and experience. (24) Much that Vespucci and other Europeans found most objectionable about Native American peoples was the result of their trying to understand different cultures in their own terms. In some ways, the arrival of Europeans may have been easier for American Indians to understand and explain than the existence of American indians was for the Europeans. (25) Europeans and European goods slipped easily into this ceremonial trading system. The trade items – glass beads, mirrors, bras bells – that the Europeans generally offered to American Indians on first contact resembled closely the items that the Indians traditionally used to establish friendly spiritual and economic relations with strangers – mica, copper, and shells. Europeans perceived such items as nearly worthless trinkets, of value only because they were personal property and therefore legally sacred. Native Americans perceived these objects differently. According to their beliefs, all things have spirits of their own and belong to themselves. Thus a knife, for example – whether made by an Indian stone smith or by a European metalworker – was a living being that might become exclusively associated with one person, but only by mutual agreement. This belief baffled Europeans, especially when items that they regarded as their own lifeless personal property entered into exclusive kin relationships with Indians. Such transfers of ownership, which Europeans usually defined as theft, were often the cause of ill will and violence. Differing perceptions of land also led to misunderstanding. According to Indian belief, people cannot own land: the land is a living being – a mother – who feeds, clothes, and houses people as long as she receives proper respect. The idea of buying or selling land was unthinkable to Indians. When Europeans offered spiritually significant objects in exchange for land on which to build, farm, or hunt, Indians perceived the offer as an effort to join an already existing relationship, not to transfer ownership. Europeans did not appear to be either superhuman or even particularly strange to the Indians. Their mode of arrival, manners, speech, and dress probably seemed odd, but no odder than the language, behavior, and appearance of traders from the Valley of Mexico or other groups active in the pre-Columbian trading world. The perceived similarity of the trade goods offered by the Europeans led indians to accept the new comers as simply another new group in the complex social cosmos uniting the spiritual and material worlds.

 

[2000a] (1-7) CHAPTER ONE. Serving Time in Virginia. As has become clear, the historian's simple act of selection irrevocably separates "history" from "the past." The reconstruction of an event is quite clearly different from the event itself. Yet selection is only one in a series of interpretive acts that historians perform as they proceed about their business. Even during the preliminary stages of research, when the historian is still gathering information, interpretation and analysis are necessary. That is because the significance of any piece of evidence is seldom apparent at first glance. The historian quickly learns that the words evidence and evident rarely amount to the same thing. For historians attempting to reconstruct an accurate picture of the first English settlements in Virginia, the difficulty of taking any document at face value becomes quickly apparent. The early Virginians were, by and large, an enterprising lot. They gave America its first representative assembly, gave England a new and fashionable vice (tobacco), and helped establish slavery as a labor system in North America. These actions raise perplexing and important questions far historians, and yet the answers to them cannot be found in the surviving source materials without a good deal of work. The difficulty does not arise entirely from lack of information. Indeed, some Virginians were enterprising enough to write history as well as make it, not the least of them being Captain John Smith. Captain Smith wrote an account of the young colony entitled A Generall Historie of Virginia, published in 1624. Much of his history is based on eyewitness, firsthand knowledge. At a vigorous age twenty-seven, he joined the expedition to Virginia in 1606 sent by the Virginia Company of London and played a crucial role in directing the affairs of the inexperienced Jamestown colony. Yet Smith's evidence cannot be accepted without making some basic interpretive judgments. Simplest and most obvious -- is he telling the truth? If we are to believe his own accounts, the young captain led a remarkably swashbuckling life. Before joining the Virginia expedition, he had plunged as a soldier of fortune into a string of complicated intrigues in central Europe. There he waged desperate and brave warfare on behalf of the Hungarian nobility before being taken prisoner by the Turks. Once a prisoner, he was made a slave to a young but "noble Gentlewoman" with the romantic name of Charatza Tragabigzanda. The smitten princess "tooke (as it seemed) much compassion" on Smith, but alas, he came under the control of her sadistic brother, who reviled and taunted the captain so much, Smith lost his temper one day in the granary and "beat out [his] braines with his threshing bat" and made a daring escape, reaching England in time to sign on with the Virginia Company's expedition.  In Virginia the adventures came nearly as thick and fast. While the colony's governing council quarreled at Jamestown, Captain Smith went off on an exploring and food-gathering mission. He established the first European contact with many of the Indian tribes around Chesapeake Bay, succeeded in buying needed corn from them, and was captured by a party of Indians loyal to Powhatan, the principal chief in the Cheaspeake region. With Smith facing execution, once again he managed to win the affections of a beautiful princess -- this one, Powhatan's young daughter Pocahontas. How much of this romantic adventure story do we believe? The tone of Captain Smith's narrative makes it reasonably apparent that he was not the sort of man to hide his light under a bushel. (In writing of his adventures, he compared himself implicitly with Julius Caesar, "who wrote his owne Commentaries, holding it no less honour to write, than fight.") Indeed, several nineteenth-century scholars, including Henry Adams, challenged Smith's account of his Indian rescue as mere embellishment. Adams pointed out that the Pocahontas story did not appear in Smith's earliest published descriptions of the Virginia colony. Only in 1624, when the Generall Historie was issued, did the public first read of the Indian maiden's timely devotion. Captain Smith, Adams argued, probably invented the story out of whole cloth in order to enhance his reputation. We can, of course, look for independent evidence that would corroborate Smith's claims, but in the case of the Pocahontas story, no independent records survive. Vet other historians have defended Smith, Philip Barbour prime among them. Barbour has checked Smith's tales against available records in both Hungary and England and found them generally accurate as to names, places, and dates. Smith claimed, far example, that he used an ingenious system of torch signals to coordinate a nighttime attack by his Hungarian friends, "Lord Ebersbaught" and "Baron Kisell." No other records mention Smith's role, but we do know such an attack was launched -- and that it was led by two Hungarians named Sigismund Eibiswald and Jakob Khissl. Similarly, although the records show no princess named Charatza Tragabigzanda, that may have been Smith's fractured pronunciation of the Greek koritsi [girl] Trapedzoundos [from Trebizond]. Possibly, when he tried to discover the identity of his new mistress, someone merely replied that she was "koritsi Trapedzoundos" -- a "girl from Trebizond." Yet even if we grant Smith the virtue of honesty, significant problems remain when using his account; problems common to all historical evidence. To say that Smith is truthful is only to say that he reported events as he saw them. The qualification is not small. Like every observer, Smith viewed events from his own perspective. When he set out to describe the customs of the Chesapeake Indians, for instance, he did so as a seventeenth-century Englishman. Behind each observation he made stood a whole constellation of presuppositions, attitudes, and opinions that he took for granted without ever mentioning them. His descriptions were necessarily limited by the experience and education -- or lack of it -- that he brought with him. The seriousness of these limitations becomes clearer if we take a hypothetical example of what might happen if Captain Smith were to set down a history, not of Indian tribal customs, but of a baseball game between the Boston Red Sox: and the New York Yankees: Not long after, they tooke me to one of their greate Counsells, where many of the generalitie were gathered in greater number than ever I had seen before. And they being assembled about a great field of open grass, a score of their greatest men ran out upon the field, adorned each in brightly hued jackets and breeches, with letters cunningly woven upon their Chestes, and wearinge uppon their heades caps of a deep navy blue, with bi11es, of a sort I know not what. One of their chiefs stood in the midst and would at his pleasure hurl a white ball at another chief, whose attire was of a different colour, and whether by chance or artyfice I know not the ball flew exceeding close to the man yet never injured him, but sometimes he would strike att it with a wooden club and so giveing it a hard blow would throw down his club and run away. Such actions proceeded in like manner at length too tedious to mention, but the generalitie waxed wroth, with greate groaning and shoutinge, and seemed withall much pleased. Before concluding any more than that Smith would make a terrible writer for the New York Post (we don't even know if the Yankees won!), compare the description of the baseball game with the account by the real Smith of what happened to him after his capture. (Smith writes in the third person, referring to himself as "he" and "Captain Smith.") At last they brought him to Meronocomoco, where was Powhatan their Emperor. . . . Before a fire upon a seat like a bedsted, [Powhatan] sat covered with a great robe, made of Rarowcun skinnes, and all the tayles hanging by. On either hand did sit a young wench of 16 or 18 yeares, and along on each side the house, two rowes of men, and behind them as many women, with all their heads and shoulders painted red; many of their heads bedecked with the white down of Birds; but every one with something: and a great chayne of white beads about their necks. At his entrance before the King, all the people gave a great shout. The Queene of Appamatuck was appointed to bring him water to wash his hands, and another brought him a bunch of feathers, in stead of a Towell to dry them. Having feasted him after their best barbarous manner they could, a long consultation was held, but the conclusion was, two great stones were brought before Powhatan. Then as many as could layd hands on him, dragged him to them, and thereon laid his head, and being ready with their clubs, to beat out his braines, Pocahontas the Kings dearest daughter, when no intreaty could prevaile, got his head in her armes, and laid her owne upon his to save him from death: whereat the Emperour was contented he should live to make him hatchets, and her bells, beads, and copper. If we had not first read the account of the baseball game, it would not be nearly as obvious just how little Smith has told us about what is going on here. Indeed, anyone who reads the Generall Historie or any of the captain’s writings will be impressed by their freshness and the wealth of detail. But that is because we, like Smith, are unfamiliar with the rituals of the seventeenth-century Chesapeake Indians. Quite naturally – almost instinctively – we adopt Smith’s point of view as our own. And that point of view diverts us from asking questions to which Smith does not have the answer. What, after all, is the reason the Indians painted their heads and shoulders red and wore white down on their heads? We know no more than we did when baseball players were described as wearing bright outfits with letters woven upon their chests. Even more to the point, consider the form of Smith's narrative as it has been passed down to us over the years. The good captain is about to die until he is suddenly rescued at the last moment by "the Kings dearest daughter." Does the story have a familiar ring? Indeed -- there is at least half an echo of Smith's being pitied by Princess Tragabigzanda. And -- equally important -- the story has become prominent in our folklore because the romantic traditions of the nineteenth century delighted in such stories: a pure and noble-born woman saves the life of a brave commoner. Smith tells a story that fits a narrative pattern we love to hear. But what if we lay aside the narrative perspective of Smith's story and consider the same facts from the point of view of Powhatan? Powhatan was the leader of a confederacy of Algonquian Indians living around Chesapeake Bay. He was, in short, the most powerful person in the region. But his control over the lesser chiefs in the area varied. Some tribal groups resisted paying tribute to him; others at a greater distance showed no allegiance and were indeed rivals. Into this situation stepped Smith, along with the strange new tribe of white people who had just arrived from across the salt water. In hindsight, we see the arrival of Europeans as a momentous event that changed North America radically. But from Powhatan's point of view, here was simply another new group of people -- strange indeed, but human beings nonetheless -- whom he would have to set into the balance of his own political equation. Should he treat the newcomers as allies or enemies? Some historians and anthropologists have suggested that Powhatan's behavior toward Smith was in fact a kind of ritualized adoption ceremony and that Smith's supposed execution was a kind of initiation rite in which the captain was being ritually humiliated and subordinated. Once Smith passed the test of bravery in the face of apparent death, Powhatan was willing to adopt him as a vassal. As Smith himself puts it, Powhatan decides his prisoner can make hatchets for him and bells and beads for Pocahontas. Powhatan's subsequent actions also suggest that he now considered Smith a chief, or werowance, over this new tribe of English allies. At the end of another ceremony two days later, the chief told Smith "now they were friends" and that Smith should go to Jamestown and send back "two great gunnes, and a gryndstone" -- just as other Indian allies supplied Powhatan with tribute. In return, Powhatan would give Smith land and treat him "as his sonne." This interpretation of Smith's capture and adoption must remain speculative, but it is responsible speculation, informed by study of the ways of Algonquian Indians by historians and anthropologists. And we would have been blind to the interpretation without having separated Smith's information from the narrative perspective in which it came to us. It is easy enough to see how a point of view is embedded in the facts of an eloquent narration. But consider for a moment evidence recorded by one of the pedestrian clerks whose jottings constitute the great bulk of history's raw material. The following excerpts are taken from the records of Virginia's general assembly and the proclamations of the Governor: We will and require you, Mr. Abraham Persey, Cape Marchant, from this dare forwarde to take notice, that. . . you are bounde to accepte of the Tobacco of the Colony, either for commodities or upon billes, at three shillings the beste and the second sorte at 18d the punde, and this shalbe your sufficient dischardge. Every man to sett two acres corn (Except Tradesmen following their trades) penalty forfeiture of corn a Tobacco & be a Slave a year to the Colony. No man to take hay to sweat Tobacco because it robs the poor beasts of their fodder and sweating Tobacco does it little good as found by Experience. With these excerpts we face the opposite of Smith's description: small bits of information dependent on a great deal of assumed knowledge. Whereas Smith attempted to describe the Indian ceremony in some detail because it was new to him, Virginia's general assembly knows all too much about tobacco prices and the planting of corn. Policy is stated without any explanation, just as the box score in the paper lists the single line, "Yankees 10, Red Sox 3." In each case the notations are so terse, the "narratives" SO brief, that the novice historian is likely to assume they contain no point of view at all, only the bare facts. But the truth is, each statement has a definite point of view that can be summed up as simple questions: (1) Did the Yankees win and if so by how much? (2) Should the price of tobacco be three shillings or eighteen pence or how much? (3) What should colonists use hay for? And so on. These viewpoints are so obvious, they would not bear mentioning -- except that, unconsciously, we are led to accept them as the only way to think about the facts. Because the obvious perspective often appears irrelevant, we tend to reject the information as not worth our attention. But suppose a fact is stripped of its point of view -- suppose we ask, in effect, a completely different question of it? Historians looking back on twentieth-century America would undoubtedly learn little from baseball box scores, but at least by comparing the standings of the 1950s with those of the 1970s, they would soon discover that the Giants of New York had become the Giants of San Francisco and that the Brooklyn Dodgers had moved to Los Angeles. If they knew a bit more about the economic implications of major league baseball franchises, they could infer a relative improvement in the economic and cultural status of the West Coast. Similarly, by refusing to accept the evidence of tobacco prices or corn planting at its face value, historians might make inferences about economic and cultural conditions in seventeenth-century Virginia. In adopting a perspective different from any held by the historical participants, we are employing one of the most basic tactics of sociology. Sociologists have long recognized that every society functions, in part, through structures and devices that remain unperceived by its members. "To live in society means to exist under the domination of society's logic," notes sociologist Peter Berger. "Very often men act by this logic without knowing it. To discover this inner dynamic of society, therefore, the sociologist must frequently disregard the answers that the social actors themselves would give to his questions and look for explanations that are hidden from their own awareness.” Using that approach, historians have taken documents from colonial Virginia, striped them of their original perspectives, and reconstructed a striking picture of Virginia society. Their research reveals that life in the young colony was more volatile, acquisitive, rowdy, raw – and deadly – than most traditional accounts have assumed. Between the high ideals of the colony’s London investors and the disembarkation points along the Chesapeake, something went wrong. The society that was designed to be a productive and diversified settlement in the wilderness soon developed into a world in which the singleminded pursuit of one crop, tobacco, made life nasty, brutish, and short. And the colony that had hoped to pattern itself on the free and enlightened customs of England instead found itself establishing something that the government of England had never thought to introduce at home: the institution of human slavery. (4) “Then as many as could layd hands on him, dragged him to them, and thereon laid his head, and being ready with their clubs, to beat out his braines, Pocahontas the Kings dearest daughter, when no intreaty could prevaile, got his head in her armes, and laid her owne upon his to save him from death. . . .” The tale has been passed down as a romantic rescue, but from Powhatan’s point of view, was this event an adoption ceremony designed to cement a political alliance? (Library of Congress)

 

[2000b] (1-7) CHAPTER ONE. Serving Time in Virginia. As has become clear, the historian's simple act of selection irrevocably separates "history" from "the past." The reconstruction of an event is quite clearly different from the event itself. Yet selection is only one in a series of interpretive acts that historians perform as they proceed about their business. Even during the preliminary stages of research, when the historian is still gathering information, interpretation and analysis are necessary. That is because the significance of any piece of evidence is seldom apparent at first glance. The historian quickly learns that the words evidence and evident rarely amount to the same thing. For historians attempting to reconstruct an accurate picture of the first English settlements in Virginia, the difficulty of taking any document at face value becomes quickly apparent. The early Virginians were, by and large, an enterprising lot. They gave America its first representative assembly, gave England a new and fashionable vice (tobacco), and helped establish slavery as a labor system in North America. These actions raise perplexing and important questions far historians, and yet the answers to them cannot be found in the surviving source materials without a good deal of work. The difficulty does not arise entirely from lack of information. Indeed, some Virginians were enterprising enough to write history as well as make it, not the least of them being Captain John Smith. Captain Smith wrote an account of the young colony entitled A Generall Historie of Virginia, published in 1624. Much of his history is based on eyewitness, firsthand knowledge. At a vigorous age twenty-seven, he joined the expedition to Virginia in 1606 sent by the Virginia Company of London and played a crucial role in directing the affairs of the inexperienced Jamestown colony. Yet Smith's evidence cannot be accepted without making some basic interpretive judgments. Simplest and most obvious -- is he telling the truth? If we are to believe his own accounts, the young captain led a remarkably swashbuckling life. Before joining the Virginia expedition, he had plunged as a soldier of fortune into a string of complicated intrigues in central Europe. There he waged desperate and brave warfare on behalf of the Hungarian nobility before being taken prisoner by the Turks. Once a prisoner, he was made a slave to a young but "noble Gentlewoman" with the romantic name of Charatza Tragabigzanda. The smitten princess "tooke (as it seemed) much compassion" on Smith, but alas, he came under the control of her sadistic brother, who reviled and taunted the captain so much, Smith lost his temper one day in the granary and "beat out [his] braines with his threshing bat" and made a daring escape, reaching England in time to sign on with the Virginia Company's expedition.  In Virginia the adventures came nearly as thick and fast. While the colony's governing council quarreled at Jamestown, Captain Smith went off on an exploring and food-gathering mission. He established the first European contact with many of the Indian tribes around Chesapeake Bay, succeeded in buying needed corn from them, and was captured by a party of Indians loyal to Powhatan, the principal chief in the Cheaspeake region. With Smith facing execution, once again he managed to win the affections of a beautiful princess -- this one, Powhatan's young daughter Pocahontas. How much of this romantic adventure story do we believe? The tone of Captain Smith's narrative makes it reasonably apparent that he was not the sort of man to hide his light under a bushel. (In writing of his adventures, he compared himself implicitly with Julius Caesar, "who wrote his owne Commentaries, holding it no less honour to write, than fight.") Indeed, several nineteenth-century scholars, including Henry Adams, challenged Smith's account of his Indian rescue as mere embellishment. Adams pointed out that the Pocahontas story did not appear in Smith's earliest published descriptions of the Virginia colony. Only in 1624, when the Generall Historie was issued, did the public first read of the Indian maiden's timely devotion. Captain Smith, Adams argued, probably invented the story out of whole cloth in order to enhance his reputation. We can, of course, look for independent evidence that would corroborate Smith's claims, but in the case of the Pocahontas story, no independent records survive. Vet other historians have defended Smith, Philip Barbour prime among them. Barbour has checked Smith's tales against available records in both Hungary and England and found them generally accurate as to names, places, and dates. Smith claimed, far example, that he used an ingenious system of torch signals to coordinate a nighttime attack by his Hungarian friends, "Lord Ebersbaught" and "Baron Kisell." No other records mention Smith's role, but we do know such an attack was launched -- and that it was led by two Hungarians named Sigismund Eibiswald and Jakob Khissl. Similarly, although the records show no princess named Charatza Tragabigzanda, that may have been Smith's fractured pronunciation of the Greek koritsi [girl] Trapedzoundos [from Trebizond]. Possibly, when he tried to discover the identity of his new mistress, someone merely replied that she was "koritsi Trapedzoundos" -- a "girl from Trebizond." Yet even if we grant Smith the virtue of honesty, significant problems remain when using his account; problems common to all historical evidence. To say that Smith is truthful is only to say that he reported events as he saw them. The qualification is not small. Like every observer, Smith viewed events from his own perspective. When he set out to describe the customs of the Chesapeake Indians, for instance, he did so as a seventeenth-century Englishman. Behind each observation he made stood a whole constellation of presuppositions, attitudes, and opinions that he took for granted without ever mentioning them. His descriptions were necessarily limited by the experience and education -- or lack of it -- that he brought with him. The seriousness of these limitations becomes clearer if we take a hypothetical example of what might happen if Captain Smith were to set down a history, not of Indian tribal customs, but of a baseball game between the Boston Red Sox: and the New York Yankees: Not long after, they tooke me to one of their greate Counsells, where many of the generalitie were gathered in greater number than ever I had seen before. And they being assembled about a great field of open grass, a score of their greatest men ran out upon the field, adorned each in brightly hued jackets and breeches, with letters cunningly woven upon their Chestes, and wearinge uppon their heades caps of a deep navy blue, with bi11es, of a sort I know not what. One of their chiefs stood in the midst and would at his pleasure hurl a white ball at another chief, whose attire was of a different colour, and whether by chance or artyfice I know not the ball flew exceeding close to the man yet never injured him, but sometimes he would strike att it with a wooden club and so giveing it a hard blow would throw down his club and run away. Such actions proceeded in like manner at length too tedious to mention, but the generalitie waxed wroth, with greate groaning and shoutinge, and seemed withall much pleased. Before concluding any more than that Smith would make a terrible writer for the New York Post (we don't even know if the Yankees won!), compare the description of the baseball game with the account by the real Smith of what happened to him after his capture. (Smith writes in the third person, referring to himself as "he" and "Captain Smith.") At last they brought him to Meronocomoco, where was Powhatan their Emperor. . . . Before a fire upon a seat like a bedsted, [Powhatan] sat covered with a great robe, made of Rarowcun skinnes, and all the tayles hanging by. On either hand did sit a young wench of 16 or 18 yeares, and along on each side the house, two rowes of men, and behind them as many women, with all their heads and shoulders painted red; many of their heads bedecked with the white down of Birds; but every one with something: and a great chayne of white beads about their necks. At his entrance before the King, all the people gave a great shout. The Queene of Appamatuck was appointed to bring him water to wash his hands, and another brought him a bunch of feathers, in stead of a Towell to dry them. Having feasted him after their best barbarous manner they could, a long consultation was held, but the conclusion was, two great stones were brought before Powhatan. Then as many as could layd hands on him, dragged him to them, and thereon laid his head, and being ready with their clubs, to beat out his braines, Pocahontas the Kings dearest daughter, when no intreaty could prevaile, got his head in her armes, and laid her owne upon his to save him from death: whereat the Emperour was contented he should live to make him hatchets, and her bells, beads, and copper. If we had not first read the account of the baseball game, it would not be nearly as obvious just how little Smith has told us about what is going on here. Indeed, anyone who reads the Generall Historie or any of the captain’s writings will be impressed by their freshness and the wealth of detail. But that is because we, like Smith, are unfamiliar with the rituals of the seventeenth-century Chesapeake Indians. Quite naturally – almost instinctively – we adopt Smith’s point of view as our own. And that point of view diverts us from asking questions to which Smith does not have the answer. What, after all, is the reason the Indians painted their heads and shoulders red and wore white down on their heads? We know no more than we did when baseball players were described as wearing bright outfits with letters woven upon their chests. Even more to the point, consider the form of Smith's narrative as it has been passed down to us over the years. The good captain is about to die until he is suddenly rescued at the last moment by "the Kings dearest daughter." Does the story have a familiar ring? Indeed -- there is at least half an echo of Smith's being pitied by Princess Tragabigzanda. And -- equally important -- the story has become prominent in our folklore because the romantic traditions of the nineteenth century delighted in such stories: a pure and noble-born woman saves the life of a brave commoner. Smith tells a story that fits a narrative pattern we love to hear. But what if we lay aside the narrative perspective of Smith's story and consider the same facts from the point of view of Powhatan? Powhatan was the leader of a confederacy of Algonquian Indians living around Chesapeake Bay. He was, in short, the most powerful person in the region. But his control over the lesser chiefs in the area varied. Some tribal groups resisted paying tribute to him; others at a greater distance showed no allegiance and were indeed rivals. Into this situation stepped Smith, along with the strange new tribe of white people who had just arrived from across the salt water. In hindsight, we see the arrival of Europeans as a momentous event that changed North America radically. But from Powhatan's point of view, here was simply another new group of people -- strange indeed, but human beings nonetheless -- whom he would have to set into the balance of his own political equation. Should he treat the newcomers as allies or enemies? Some historians and anthropologists have suggested that Powhatan's behavior toward Smith was in fact a kind of ritualized adoption ceremony and that Smith's supposed execution was a kind of initiation rite in which the captain was being ritually humiliated and subordinated. Once Smith passed the test of bravery in the face of apparent death, Powhatan was willing to adopt him as a vassal. As Smith himself puts it, Powhatan decides his prisoner can make hatchets for him and bells and beads for Pocahontas. Powhatan's subsequent actions also suggest that he now considered Smith a chief, or werowance, over this new tribe of English allies. At the end of another ceremony two days later, the chief told Smith "now they were friends" and that Smith should go to Jamestown and send back "two great gunnes, and a gryndstone" -- just as other Indian allies supplied Powhatan with tribute. In return, Powhatan would give Smith land and treat him "as his sonne." This interpretation of Smith's capture and adoption must remain speculative, but it is responsible speculation, informed by study of the ways of Algonquian Indians by historians and anthropologists. And we would have been blind to the interpretation without having separated Smith's information from the narrative perspective in which it came to us. It is easy enough to see how a point of view is embedded in the facts of an eloquent narration. But consider for a moment evidence recorded by one of the pedestrian clerks whose jottings constitute the great bulk of history's raw material. The following excerpts are taken from the records of Virginia's general assembly and the proclamations of the Governor: We will and require you, Mr. Abraham Persey, Cape Marchant, from this dare forwarde to take notice, that. . . you are bounde to accepte of the Tobacco of the Colony, either for commodities or upon billes, at three shillings the beste and the second sorte at 18d the punde, and this shalbe your sufficient dischardge. Every man to sett two acres corn (Except Tradesmen following their trades) penalty forfeiture of corn a Tobacco & be a Slave a year to the Colony. No man to take hay to sweat Tobacco because it robs the poor beasts of their fodder and sweating Tobacco does it little good as found by Experience. With these excerpts we face the opposite of Smith's description: small bits of information dependent on a great deal of assumed knowledge. Whereas Smith attempted to describe the Indian ceremony in some detail because it was new to him, Virginia's general assembly knows all too much about tobacco prices and the planting of corn. Policy is stated without any explanation, just as the box score in the paper lists the single line, "Yankees 10, Red Sox 3." In each case the notations are so terse, the "narratives" SO brief, that the novice historian is likely to assume they contain no point of view at all, only the bare facts. But the truth is, each statement has a definite point of view that can be summed up as simple questions: (1) Did the Yankees win and if so by how much? (2) Should the price of tobacco be three shillings or eighteen pence or how much? (3) What should colonists use hay for? And so on. These viewpoints are so obvious, they would not bear mentioning -- except that, unconsciously, we are led to accept them as the only way to think about the facts. Because the obvious perspective often appears irrelevant, we tend to reject the information as not worth our attention. But suppose a fact is stripped of its point of view -- suppose we ask, in effect, a completely different question of it? Historians looking back on twentieth-century America would undoubtedly learn little from baseball box scores, but at least by comparing the standings of the 1950s with those of the 1970s, they would soon discover that the Giants of New York had become the Giants of San Francisco and that the Brooklyn Dodgers had moved to Los Angeles. If they knew a bit more about the economic implications of major league baseball franchises, they could infer a relative improvement in the economic and cultural status of the West Coast. Similarly, by refusing to accept the evidence of tobacco prices or corn planting at its face value, historians might make inferences about economic and cultural conditions in seventeenth-century Virginia. In adopting a perspective different from any held by the historical participants, we are employing one of the most basic tactics of sociology. Sociologists have long recognized that every society functions, in part, through structures and devices that remain unperceived by its members. "To live in society means to exist under the domination of society's logic," notes sociologist Peter Berger. "Very often men act by this logic without knowing it. To discover this inner dynamic of society, therefore, the sociologist must frequently disregard the answers that the social actors themselves would give to his questions and look for explanations that are hidden from their own awareness.” Using that approach, historians have taken documents from colonial Virginia, striped them of their original perspectives, and reconstructed a striking picture of Virginia society. Their research reveals that life in the young colony was more volatile, acquisitive, rowdy, raw – and deadly – than most traditional accounts have assumed. Between the high ideals of the colony’s London investors and the disembarkation points along the Chesapeake, something went wrong. The society that was designed to be a productive and diversified settlement in the wilderness soon developed into a world in which the singleminded pursuit of one crop, tobacco, made life nasty, brutish, and short. And the colony that had hoped to pattern itself on the free and enlightened customs of England instead found itself establishing something that the government of England had never thought to introduce at home: the institution of human slavery. (4) [Picture] “Then as many as could layd hands on him, dragged him to them, and thereon laid his head, and being ready with their clubs, to beat out his braines, Pocahontas the Kings dearest daughter, when no intreaty could prevaile, got his head in her armes, and laid her owne upon his to save him from death. . . .” The tale has been passed down as a romantic rescue, but from Powhatan’s point of view, was this event an adoption ceremony designed to cement a political alliance? (Library of Congress)