Chapter 1: Native Peoples of America to 1500

1. Chapter 1: Native Peoples of America to 1500

2. Focus • Origin and migration of Native American people • Similarities and differences between Native Am. Cultures • Economic basis of various civilizations • Religious and cultural beliefs, esp. concepts of land • The state of things prior to European arrival

3. Peopling New Worlds • 33,000-10,500 BC: Last Ice Age • Small widely scattered groups (small bands) that interacted through trade/travel. Few large possessions or permanent villages. • Theory 1 • Siberian hunters following game • Theory 2 • Arrived before 10,500 BC by boat with patterned stops down the coast • Most agree it was multiple migrations

6. Three Migrations • Most Native Americans are descendents of the 1st earliest migrations • Athapaskan – 7000 BC and settled in Alaska and NW Canada. Later migrate and become the Apache and Navajos • After 3000 BC Inuits and Aleuts

8. Connection to Oral Traditions • Pueblos/Navajos • arrival by way of a perilous journey through other worlds • Iroquois • Pregnant woman who fell from the sky world

9. These earliest Indians are referred to as Paleo-Indians • Hunters and gatherers living in small bands of 15-50 individuals (several families)

10. Traveled well defined hunting territories • Basic tool was the spear with a flint point • Arch. sites near perennial springs, watering holes, and river crossings • Left hunting grounds for quarries and encountered other bands • Creating a Broad Cultural Life

11. This “Free Land” and skilled hunters creates an abundant diet and then a growth in population

14. Around 9000 BC Megafauna becomes extinct • 2/3 of the species over 100 lbs. at maturity • Probably due to a warming climate and overkill • This decline brings a change in humans

16. Archaic Societies • Warming climate until 4000 BC • Sea levels rise, flooding low lying coastal areas, glacial runoff fills waterways • Deciduous forests and grassy plains • A range of Flora and Fauna emerges

17. Archaic peoples live off of a wider/broader variety of smaller mammals, fish, plants (creation of the atlatl spear) • Communities require less land and can support larger populations (yr. round villages) • Up to 10X as many people • N. American pop. Increase to 1 million

20. By 5000 BC farmers were planting selected seeds for future farming • Modification of the environment: setting fires, weeding out inedible plants = the verge of horticulture • 3000 BC – Maize in C. America (2500 BC in N. Mexico and squash/gourds in MO and KY • However, for over 1000 yrs. after farming, the diet is still meat, fish, wild plants

21. Next Big Change • Diversity • Farming takes over the majority of diet around 2000 BC • Officially a Horticultural society by 1500 BC with three great crops: Maize, Squash, and Beans • What’s the Impact?

23. Altered environments • Increased population • More sedentary life • Yet trade networks • Specialization • Political systems • Hierarchical society • Negative: diet may not be as diverse, potential catastrophe, spread of disease

24. Mesoamerica and South America • 2500-2000: selective breeding of corn and beans (lysine) • After 2000 crop surpluses expand contacts through formal exchange networks • 1200: Olmecs had urban centers, hereditary rulers, unequal society

25. American Southwest • Full time farming not until 400 BC (water has always been an issue) • Hohokam in southern Arizona • Farmed the Gila and Salt rivers • Built irrigation • Permanent towns (pueblos) • Confederacies with central city coordination • Constant ritual exertion to maintain balance (existential anxiety)

26. Anasazi (Navajo for “ancient ones”) • Four Corners during the 1st century BC • Apartments with kivas • Height of culture: 900-1150 during an unusually wet period • Chaco Canyon • 12 towns with 15,000 people (satellite towns 65 miles away) • Connection to Central America • Used Mesas to capture rainfall

32. Downfall of these cultures • Drought, malnutrition, and feuds • Defensive pueblos • Skeletal remains depict violent deaths, even cannibalism

33. Eastern Woodlands • With rain and forest, populations predate farming • Mound Builders: Poverty Point in Mississippi and Adena in the Ohio Valley • Rarely exceeded 400 people • Most mounds contained graves • Hopewell Mounds from the Ohio Valley to the Illinois River

39. 1st full time farmers was the Mississippian Culture • Around 700 AD • Extensive craft production and trade • Plazas, sun worship, death of chief ceremony • Best example is Cahokia (St. Louis) after 900 AD

40. Cahokia • 20,000 people; 6 square miles; 120 earth mounds • 125 square metro area with 10 large towns and 50 farming villages

42. Northwest coastal villages

43. Plains Indians

44. By 1500 Western Hemisphere had 75 million people • 7-10 million north of Mesoamerica • Unevenly distributed • Hundreds of languages • Hundreds of nations

47. Broad common culture • Bound by kinship • Nuclear families never stood alone • Iroquois- extended families of the women took precedence over those of men; primary male figure was mother’s oldest brother • Animism • Supernatural was a complex and diverse web of power woven into every part of the world; spiritual and material • Restraint out of fear or concern

48. Social values • Consensus • Shaming children • Custom-regulated life • Reciprocity but not equality

49. The End • Europeans • The Tech • Organizational capacity • Imperial rivals • Conducive religious ideologies • Domesticated animals • System of long-distance communication • Shared microbes