Pre-Columbian Native American Society



Pre-Columbian or First Americans and Their Societies

Four Goals:

1. To consider different perspectives on how to study indigenous peoples.

2. To paint a portrait of North American pre-Columbian civilization on the eve of the European invasion.

3. To give a description of the diverse cultures of these peoples.

4. To describe the nature and function of these cultures in terms that view them as comparable to European civilizations.

I. Ethno-historical versus Eurocentric Perspectives on Native Americans.

A. In studying Native Americans students of history must be careful and sensitive to the value judgments and biases inherent in language. As Voltaire tells us, "Language is what we use to deceive each other." We must be aware that the terms we use can lead us into misinterpretation, apology, and rationalizations. The problem we confront is simple: we must be aware of the ways in which our language has been used as a mode of domination.

1. How can we become sensitive to the normative element and bias in language? We can begin by inviting students to come up with a list of words to describe the pre-Columbian or First Americans . Our purpose: to take what is familiar and make it strange. We can do this by thinking of the synonyms for the First Americans.

a. “Indians.“ It was a mistake, which stuck. For centuries afterwards Natives wondered why Anglos called them Indians. Yet, in the longer run, in the face of new terms such as Native-American, some contemporary descendents of the First Americans want to be called Indians. That is, they have appropriated it to their own uses. In another interesting iteration on the terms Indians, some anthropologists claim Indians came from an indigenous Spanish source, In-Dios. This presumably meant the indigenous were deeply religious because In-Dios is Spanish for In God, a native perspective. Yet it seems odd that this claim derives from a Spanish interpretation.

b. “Savage. “ Most common synonym for the First Americans. Where does it come from? In the 16th century it meant an uncivilized wild person at the lowest stage of culture. It comes from an ethnocentric ranking of societies compared to the European model. Usually, Europe is assumed to be on top of this ranking. It assumes there is a social-evolutionary pattern to societies. What intercultural sensitivity does it suggest?

c. “Primitive. “ Means simple, rough, rude. Is this term descriptive of the First Americans? It is descriptive of their technology. They were a stone-age people. But it is useless as an account of their polytheist religion, kinship systems, barter economies, suasive form of government, languages, or military and diplomatic conduct. Given this complexity, the assumption there is a social-evolutionary pattern to societies is absurd.

d. “Pagan. “ One who is a heathen, without faith, godless. By European practices the First Americans appeared pagan because there were no churches, crosses, clergy, or written scripture. But this is simply a Christian definition of a non-Christian. The First Americans worshipped their own gods in their own ways.

e. “Superstitious. “ An idea related to pagan. It refers to religious beliefs or practices founded on fear or ignorance. But there is a problem with the use of this term: it reflects the idea that one religion calls another's beliefs fake. Science views all religious beliefs as problematic.

f. “Red-man. “ Based on red skins, which could be contrasted with white skins. This is a form of racial stereotyping. Ironic: color was objectively wrong. The First Americans were not red. They were brown. Indicative of racial thinking in the construction of difference.

Conclusion: it is perhaps best to call these people what they called themselves. When we do that we learn that there were many nations and tribes of peoples, each with their own names. The map of the culture areas of North and Central America allow us to see this diversity. For purposes of this presentation, however, I will use the term Indian for my generalizations.

2. We must also be sensitized to the point of view used to study the First American experience. If language is problematic, so is perspective.

a. For example, until about thirty years ago the dominate perspective or point of view used by mainstream American historians to interpret the First American’s history was to view Indians as a savage, primitive, or barbarian people. These people were overcome and pushed aside by an advanced or civilized people. This may have been tragic but it was inevitable.

b. What we understand today is that the older dichotomy of civilized versus savage merely represented the original justification of the conquest of one people by another. This viewpoint, as should be apparent from our discussion of the synonyms for Indian, has become imbedded in our very language.

c. Additional terms further illustrate the point.

i. New World/Old World. North America was not new to the Indians.

ii. Discovery, as in discovery of a New World. Really Problematic. Columbus was lost! He did not discover a New World; he stumbled upon a very old world. To put it another way, he established the principle of a unified world by uniting two ancient worlds.

iii. Wilderness. Implies an area is not already occupied. Virgin land. Actually Indians had been fornicating in North America for centuries. And as we will see under the topic Indian Land Management, natives had been manipulating the nature world for centuries in ways that suited their way of life.

iv. Frontier. The demarcation between civilization and wilderness or civilization and savagery. This line separating civilization and savages moved west until the frontier was announced officially closed in 1890. When linked with other terms, this gives us an origins myth for Anglo-Americans.

d. The problem here is the perspective one adopts has real implications for the study of our historic cultures. We must avoid at all costs points of view that simply serve domination or make the First Americans invisible.

3. The problem of sources.

a. Still another problem is the fact that pre-Columbian Natives were not a literate people, with a least one major exception. They did not leave written records of themselves. Thus our effort to understand them is based on the material culture we have found in artifacts and archeology and on the written record of Europeans.

b. There are a number of problems with the written record of Europeans.

i. The Europeans were not pure observers. They aren't objective scientists or anthropologists.

ii. Their observations are subjective. They were ethnocentric, and this meant their observations were contaminated by their sense of superiority, stereotyping, and a tendency to interpret their experience with Indians based on their own conventions.

iii. They had other purposes: to use the natives, to Christianize them.

iv. They were culturally insensitive in other ways: they didn't draw distinctions between different tribes, language groups.

v. They were historically innocent. They didn't often realize that the Indians they observed had been changed by contact. Europeans often made observations of natives who had been defeated or were suffering psychological demoralization. They were not the same as pre-Columbian natives.

vi. Hence, if the object is to know pre-Columbian natives, we may never really know them for certain. We can't reconstruct a "pristine" scene before the Europeans arrived. We do the best we can.

B. What language and interpretative framework should we adopt?

1. We can do things differently.

a. We can use the European's sources with a greater sensitivity for their biases. We can filter out the ethnocentric, the interpretive, and the insensitive if we are mindful that these elements are imbedded in European accounts. Throw away terms and perspectives that are misleading and biased. Instead of discovery, encounter. Instead of civilization versus savagery; culture: learned, shared,

symbolic, and integrated.

b. We can make more imaginative use of existing archeological sources.

c. We can draw upon native oral cultural traditions where useful.

2. This interpretive framework is called ethno history. It tells the story of the interchange or diffusion of cultural traits.

3. It is the story of the emergence of social and cultural domination by Europeans and the submergence of Indians into a lost sub-culture.

4. It emphasizes the interaction between two mature or very old cultures, one, the First Americans, the other or European, a mixture of traditional and modern elements.

5. When two cultures interact anthropologists refer to the process as acculturation. The concept of acculturation allows us to understand the historical process more clearly. It allows us to see several historical processes.

a. It allows us to appreciate our subjects as real people with successful, functioning ways of life and with cultures and identities worth preserving. Their cultures were rich and satisfying on their own terms. Viewing Indians from this perspective means not idealizing them or denigrating them. They were neither savages nor noble savages. They were real people who were the first migrants to

the Western Hemisphere and the first pioneers to transform the wilderness into diverse human habitats.

b. It allows us to better appreciate how peoples with different beliefs and life styles would become dependent upon each other and find important reasons to cooperate with each other. Or to undergo change only reluctantly; or to attempt only selective change. Remember, "real people do business as well as do battle."

c. But it also allows us to better appreciate how peoples with different beliefs and life styles would develop important reasons to fight with each other.

d. It allows us to assess the stages of sensitivity groups experience in the historical process as they engage in intercultural contact.

e. It allows us to see how cultural origination occurs. What is cultural origination? It is the new habits, beliefs, practices, and forms of conduct, ideas and perspectives created by two interacting parties. It represents a form of cultural adaptation or change. This is fundamental to understanding how peoples maintain their ethnic identities, even as they are being transformed.

6. The perspective of ethno-history sees the historical process more clearly. I want you to be the judge of that.

II. Origins: The First Americans.

A. The physical evidence shows no pre-human hominids in the Western Hemisphere. The oldest human remains date back to 15 to 17KYA. Hence the fossil record suggests migrants peopled the Western hemisphere. Beginning at some point, a great migration of nomadic peoples brought primarily hunters and seed gatherers to North America.

B. How did the migrants get here? At least three theories have been offered of their origins.

1. The Peoples of Northeastern Siberia.

a. The oldest theory suggests peoples originally crossed the Bering Straits into North America from Asia by land during the Ice Age.

b. The initial land crossings were made possible by the ice ages. At least two. Some believe as early as 40 to 50,000 years before Christ, others as late as 16 to 18,000 years before Christ.

c. What is ice made from? What impact did massive ice formations have on world's water levels? Revealed an Alaskan-Siberian land bridge. During the Ice Age, sea level dropped from 200 to 300 feet. Scholars in the field of glaciology know this because they have correlated marine terraces (geomorphic features and topography features) with geochemical data to look at glacial and interglacial episodes.

d. These peoples were believed to have come from northeastern Siberia. That region of the world, however, was only peopled itself 20KYA.

2. The Peoples of Berengia.

a. Some believe perhaps a whole subcontinent, which has been called Berengia, was exposed by the lower water levels.

b. The subcontinent was perhaps 1000 miles wide and peopled by humans for many generations.

c. They made the trek to North America during the emergence of the Ice Free corridor about 18KYA.

3. Peoples of Kamchatka Island.

a. Some believe the first migrants came from the Islands off the Asian mainland by boat.

b. These migrants took the Aleutian Island route.

c. Since the archeological record shows human presence in this region over 70KYA, this interpretation enables the pushing back of the first migrant to anywhere from 20 to 70KYA.

d. Eskimos believed to have come by sea between 5000 and 4000 BC.

C. Occupation.

1. The Ice Free corridor. Once here, their spread all over the Americas became possible by the opening of an ice-free corridor down into the heart of the North American continent.

a. Via corridor they walked on foot.

b. Others took a coastal route south.

2. Global warming.

a. Geologists and archaeologists believe the corridor appeared as part of the process of global warming that gave rise to the various climates and ecologies within North America: Eastern woodlands, great plains and prairies, and arid deserts.

b. This created a relationship between the changing physical environments and the adaptations by the new inhabitants.

c. For example, as the warming trend preceded in the future eastern half of the U.S., tundra was replaced by spruce-lichen forests, then pine and hardwood forests, then oak-hemlock forests. As a result, deer, elk, and moose superseded Pleistocene mammals, like mastodons, mammoths, and caribou.

d. These changes affected the subsistence strategies of the original peoples.

i. Eskimos, for example, adapted to arctic conditions with incredible ingenuity by building houses from ice, making due without food for fires by using furs to preserve body heat, finding food in a snow covered world (seals, whales, walruses), and devising ingenious fish traps.

ii. In the arid conditions of Mexico's Sonora desert, Indians learned to dig wells and use succulent plants and cacti.

D. Paleo-Indians

1. The original Americans are called Paleo-Indians. They practiced subsistence by both hunting and gathering or by fishing. They found the continent a hunter's paradise. It was filled with large mammals: mammoths, mastodons, camels, horses, bison, moose, and caribou. These they hunted with fluted (grooved) pointed spears.

2. These were small groups or bands--15 to 50 people.

3. They established central camps and hunting camps, a practice which shows territoriality and residential stability.

4. Evidence of their existence has been found by archeologists at places like Poverty Point.

E. Archaic Peoples (8000 to 1500 BC).

1. As the peoples in North America settled in, two distinct patterns of living emerged.

a. Some continued to live off smaller mammals, fish, and wild plants as hunter/gatherers in nomadic movement.

b. Others found such abundant resources that they were able to generate a village or urban pattern of living even without domesticating agriculture. They lived by shores, rivers, and lakes.

b. Whether hunter/gatherer or villager, both engaged in trade on a vast scale: exchanging obsidian, copper, marine shells.

c. They practiced a simple gender division of labor.

d. They produced millstones and grinding stones and even fish weir (a form of trap for fish covering several acres of shore with thousands of stakes and brush).

e. In places like the future New England, they left evidence of ceremonial burials (with the buried set in a fetus-like position and smeared with ochre, and facing southwest), and huge (65 ft diameter) circular lodges.

2. Agricultural revolution.

a. Further south, peoples developed a settled and sedentary system of agriculture based on the domestication of plant seeds.

i. Approximately, 9KYA natives in the Tehucan Valley in South-central Mexico planted teosinte, a grass like ancestor of maize.

ii. In northeastern Meso-America, Indians cultivated pumpkins and gourds.

b. Natives of the region also experimented with planting wild seed of squash, chili peppers, avocadoes, bottle gourds, cotton, and beans. These activities supplemented their hunting and gathering activities for thousands of years, but eventually, as game declined and as population increased, humans came to produce more food. The result was the first food producing villages appeared in the Tehucan Valley about 5KYA.

b. In those regions were the agricultural revolution was highly developed, societies achieved significant levels of a division of labor, some evolving coercive systems of labor such as the Aztecs. Here food surpluses allowed up to 15% of the population to live in urban centers on the food production of the remaining 85%.

c. Not surprisingly, then, these societies achieved a highly urbanized style of life we associate with traditional society.

3. Diffusion of the agricultural revolution to the north.

a. By a slow transition, the domestication of food production spread north, either by “trade “ between Meso-America and the north or by direct “colonization “ from Meso-America into

North America.

i. The impact of trade in extending the agricultural revolution can be seen best in the development of the Southwest, where corn cultivation became the practice of the “Hohokam “ and “Anasazi “ culture groups of the region. Here corn and squash cultivation reached the American Southwest by 400 BC.

ii. By 200 BC corn growing reached the American Southeast (Mississippi Valley). It was first adopted by “Adena-Hopewell “ culture. The “Adena “ had first adopted village life and horticulture, their domestication of foods not including maize about 1000 BC. Evidence of their presence has been found in Louisiana at “Poverty Point “ and extends north all the way to Wisconsin and the Great Lakes. These were northeastern woodland natives who, in their origins as “Adena “ culture, were the first to adopt the practice of burying their dead on ridges, knolls, and elevated sites. These practices evolved into burial on dome shaped mounds and circular earthworks. Their mounds were not high (only 10 ft.), but wide (75 ft.).

iii. “Adena-Hopewell “ culture was more complex than Adena. They constructed large ceremonial centers, elaborate earthen walls, and conical or dome-shaped burial mounds (30ft high and 200 ft long). They also built effigy mounds (like the famous coiling snake). They also built mounds of different shapes: circles, octagons, and cloverleaves. And they traded copper, bone, antler, stone, and shells on a continent wide trade network. But then they disappeared after 500 AD.

iv. Maize reappeared with the arrival of “Mississippian “culture after 700 AD, which probably combined with remnants of Adena-Hopewell culture. Mississippians reintroduced maize and constructed earthen mounds, but not as burial sites. Rather their mounds were like the pyramids of central and southern Mexico and used for public rituals and as sites for their elite homes. This use has lead some to believe the Mississippians were migrants from Meso-America.

b. The Mississippian culture achieved spectacular urban civilizations. Their urban centers included Moundsville, Spero, Etowak, Ocmulgee, and Cahokia. Their city of “Cahokia “ had a population of estimated to have been between 10 to 75K people. The city contained an elite walled city of five square miles. Within it was contained more than 100 pyramids and earthen mounds. Their hereditary ruler was known as "Great Sun" and lived on Monks Mound, 10 stories high.

i. We know they practiced a sophisticated astronomy and built a "woodhedge"--48 posts set in a large circle that may have been a kind of calendar.

ii. They also produced artwork, which they buried with their dead. These were objects of copper, marine shells, and carvable stone, which are called “grave goods” by contemporary archeologists.

ii. Cahokia was the center of a commercial empire and their influence spread eastward to the Atlantic coast. In the Northeast, they influenced the proto-Siouan tribalists such as the Hurons, Mandans, Hidatsas, and Delaware. To the Southeast, they influenced the Tumucas, Cherokee, Coosas, Muskokees, Mobiles, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Quapaws. As late as the 18th century, the Natchez natives worshipped a leader called the Great Sun.

4. Beyond the Mississippians lived the hunter-gatherer tribalists the Great Basin and Northeastern woodlands who remained unaffected by the Meso-American agricultural revolution, or who only partially adapted to the agricultural revolution.

a. The Mesoamericans considered them barbarians because they used bow and arrow as opposed to Atlate (spear). They treated their children differently.

i. Mesoamericans were disciplinarians to their children.

ii. Tribalists gave their children great freedom, did not beat them or discipline them by coercion.

b. Tribalists included Algonquian peoples in the St. Lawrence River Valley, Iroquoians and Delawares, Hurons, and the peoples who occupied the regions North of the Great Lakes. They also included the native peoples in future New England, the Abenaki and Micmacs, who remained hunter/gatherer, fishermen.

c. The implication of the uneven agricultural revolution was that native populations in North America had not achieved substantial dependence on agriculture everywhere, nor had they domesticated the animals necessary to farm extensively. The short-lived nature of their civilizations and they fact they hunted rather than reared animals precluded the development of diseases or immunity to them.

III. What did Native American material culture look like on the eve of the European invasion of North America?

A. Eastern Woodland Indians.

1. Indian societies in Eastern North America had not yet achieved these levels of urbanization on the eve of contact. The Northeastern Woodland tribes for example relied upon a sexual division of labor. There societies were far less sedentary, specialized, and urbanized. Among these peoples was a great linguistic variety. There were hundreds of distinct tongues and sub-dialects.

a. In their societies, the sexual division of labor assigned women the work as farmers. They did the planting, weeding, harvesting, and food preparation. Men were the hunters, warriors, and fishermen. Men did clear fields for cultivation, however.

b. Indian horticulture

i. By European standards Natives used a primitive technology. There were no plows. They used clamshell hoes. Their technology made for intensive as opposed to extensive farming.

ii. Yet their diligent seed gathering and intensive farming allowed them to develop a rich agriculture. Indians produced sweet potatoes, tomatoes, squash, watermelons, kidney beans, sunflowers, and of course corn. They also grew tobacco, which was particularly soil exhausting. This suggests a complex agricultural economy, which we believe provided Native populations with one half of their diets. Now, if you’re providing yourself with one-half your food through horticulture are you a farmer? Important implication: when Europeans arrived they claimed land from Indians with argument Indians didn't use land for farming. This was disingenuous. Really a battle of two different farming peoples. Key European warfare-destroy crop.

iii. Hunting and fishing are believed to have supplied the other half of the Native's diet. Their meat staples centered on deer and rabbits. These Natives were not animal-rearers. They had no herds. Their only domestic animals were dogs and turkeys. But they didn’t need to be animal-rearers because they managed wild animal food crops.

iv. Because the Native Americans relied on hunting and fishing, as well as farmed intensively, it helps us to understand why they were not as sedentary as Central American tribes. They had to be nomadic in order to follow their food supply and to avoid soil exhaustion. When they moved, however, it was within clearly defined territories.

c. Surpluses. It would be a mistake to believe these were purely subsistence economies. They could and did produce surpluses and tribes were known to engage in specializations—corn production, fur production, flint production, mining, and mercenaries.

i. With these surpluses they engaged in an extensive trade network from the interior to the coast and upland down the Atlantic coastline. This was a vast commercial and trade network taking place on an inter-tribal basis. We have already noted the existence of trade networks 8000 years before Christ.

ii. In addition to corn, Indians exchanged furs. Hunting was therefore also important for the furs and hides that could be exchanged. Furs and hides were used for clothing and a variety of other essentials. Mining was another activity that generated exchangeable goods: cooper (stoneware), flint stones (fire), mica (jewelry), and stones (for axe and arrowheads), Obsidian and marine shells for jewelry.

iii. Because these Indians were united into one large trading network, it gave rise to similar cultural practices, similar farming, hunting, and mining techniques, and similar forms of religious worship.

d. The fact that Indians produced surpluses and engaged in trade helps us to understand the economic basis of acculturation. Indian food production made it possible to support the Europeans in the earliest years of contact.

i. The Thanksgiving story, where the Indians fed the starving Pilgrims, illustrates the process.

ii. In the area of food production, however, one came see an immediate problem: Europeans quickly exhausted Indian food surpluses. This experience gave rise to one European stereotype: the lazy Indian. In fact, it took only 28 days to grow enough corn to feed one person for the entire year. Indians did not have to work hard. But they did not have the European attitude toward labor or the technology to farm extensively.

iii. Fur production was another matter. Indians invested more labor in fur trapping and trading than in corn raising after the Europeans arrived. Europeans brought an enormous demand for furs into the Native Americans world. Indians responded by transforming the fur trade, in the North especially beaver fur, in the South, especially deerskins, into a highly commercialized activity.

This created another important cooperative relationship with the Europeans.

e. Property Relationships.

i. What was the status of land? It was not owned individually, it was occupied and worked in small plots. How much land was needed to feed a tribe depended upon the size of the village population. Large spaces, of course, were reserved for hunting. Natives claimed ownership of land based on ancient occupation. Indian attitudes toward property differed from European cultural practices, which emphasized formal exclusive use ownership rights. To Natives, ownership didn't mean exclusive use. When the Europeans began the occupation, they would grant the Natives the right to the property they worked, and seize the un-worked land. Natives would often sell their land and continue to expect to use it to. "Indian Givers."

ii. How were their food surpluses stored? In the South and in the Ohio Valley they were stored communally. In New England, they were stored in individual storage bins.

iii. Meat was smoke dried. Fruits and vegetables were placed in well-greased animal skin bags and wrapped in tree bark before burying.

f. The fact natives produced surpluses and engaged in exchange raises a question: why didn't they develop a more hierarchical social structure with significant division of wealth holding: a rich and poor typical of both traditional and modern economic practices? Why did not they move toward private property and capitalistic economic relations?

i. One answer is environmental. The surpluses they produced were not predictable. Therefore, they could not adopt individualistic economic behavior norms because such norms would be threatening to the group’s survival in lean times.

ii. Another answer is cultural and has to do with the practice of potlatch. Potlatch is a form of gift giving. Natives were not parsimonious because their cultural practices and norms told them that those who would have the most respect and power in their societies gave the most away. Trade didn't destroy traditional values, because it depended on what was done with the wealth.

iii. Potlatch suggests that the dominant value of the Indians was reciprocity. Potlatch was a way social balance and equilibrium could be maintained in a society of unequals.

B. Indian Management of Land

1. In addition to producing surpluses and engaging in an extensive trading network, Eastern Woodland Indians practiced a form of land management.

a. Understanding Indian land management means jettisoning some of our dearest cultural stereotypes of Indians as uncivilized inhabitants of an untouched environment.

b. How did the Indians impact their forested land? The land area of the United States is 1903 million acres. In 1492, about 850 million of those acres were covered with forest. 4/5ths of those forests were east of the Great Plains. (North America's forests have been reduced by nearly half since 1492).

c. Population density was the greatest in the Chesapeake and Carolinas. Typically, Indians lived in villages surrounded by fields, which had been burned and hacked from the forest by stone axes, and turned and cultivated with their clamshell hoes.

d. If a village had 1000 inhabitants, its housing and field needs were significant: 150 to 600 acres of land, depending on the level of agriculture practiced.

e. Natives needed forest wood for wood poles for their houses. Some Indians (Hurons and Iroquois) built wood frame houses, others used poles for tepees. Wood frame users: Iroquois, Huron, and Shawnee. Shawnee meeting lodge 120/40 ft. was called an M-Si-Kah-Mi-Qua made of wood, bark, sod, and rabbit skin windows.

i. Indians also needed wood for fuel. Dead wood would be collected in a broad radius around villages. In older villages, Indians would cut fuel.

ii. Hunting also related to the Indian impact on the forest. Indians burned off under brush so that in fall and spring so-called fire grass would grow. This attracted animals for their hunting. Indians were also known to burn forests to drive animals into enclosures for slaughter. Very wasteful! The Indian use of fire was widespread. Fire was the principal means Indians used to shape the environment. How do we know? From the testimony of Europeans and from the analysis of trees. Fire allowed the Indians to replace dense forest with thinner forests, and to replace thinner forests with grasslands. These open spaces acquired various names from the Europeans: plains, barrens, openings, deserts, prairies, and in the south, savannas. By burning underbrush twice a year, Indians transformed the forest into parkland, open and commodious. One could later freely drive a horse cart through the forest or gallop a horse under the trees. When the Europeans arrived they associated the appearance of these open areas with their parks.

iii. When Indians would move settled villages, the abandoned village sites appear as openings, meadows, and fields to the Europeans.

2. The Indians use of fire relates to their animal management. Grasslands led to the proliferation of grass-eating mammals. It is hard to believe yet the bison roamed as far east as Ohio and Georgia prior to the Europeans appearance.

3. Conclusion I draw from Indian land management is it is erroneous to view forest of North America as a virgin land. The forest was not dense tangle of trees, impenetrable. This is a romantic view, not history.

IV. First Americans Religion Values

A. Origins myths.

1. How did Native Americans account for the ways in which their world and societies came into being? The great migration was lost in their distant past.

2. Instead, most natives explained the origin and destiny of the human race in myths told by storytellers during religious ceremonies. These stories represented recollections handed down through the oral tradition. Story telling plays an important role in all non-literate societies, essentially to preserve tribal history, identity, and culture.

a. Iroquois of the New York region. These peoples told the story of a sky world of unchanging perfection--parallel to Greeks unchanging forms. From this sphere fell a pregnant woman whom the birds saved before impact. At the time the world was covered with water. The woman was carried on the back by a tortoise that rose from the sea. Birds then created the earth's soil. In this the woman planted seeds and from these sprang all nature. From her womb came the human race.

b. The Powhatans of the Chesapeake region. These peoples told of a pregnant woman who brought to earth corn in one hand, humans in the other, and tobacco from her butt.

c. Natives who shared an origins myth based on a fall from the sky spoke of their land as "Turtle Island." Cf. with Natives of Southwest, humanity came from underground--kivas.

B. Animistic religion.

1. Did the peoples of North America have their own religion?

a. Religion in general means belief in a supreme being or beings that one is committed to and serves according to commands found in sacred writings or declared by authoritative teachers.

b. Animism is a specific form of faith.

i. Everything has a material and an immaterial existence.

ii. Everything has a conscious life and a discrete indwelling spirit.

iii. Animate things have a disembodied spirit after-death. And this spirit is capable of benign or malignant influence.

c. Animism is a form of religious naturalism.

i. It told Natives they were involved in a process shaped by spiritual forces both friendly and unfriendly, which the natives could not discern the purpose, direction, or outcome.

2. Hence, Indians exhibited the typical worldview of animistic religious societies in believing that all nature was alive, beating with a spiritual power they called Manitou (Algonquian) or orenda (Iroquois), of wakan (Sioux), or meneto (Shawnee), depending on the tribe.

a. Manitou was a mysterious, awe-inspiring force that could affect human life for good or evil. Such power united all nature in an unbroken web, including plants, animals, rocks, streams, water, sun, and moon. All was held to be sacred. Initially worked to Europeans advantage since natives assumed they were gods.

b. Such a presence oriented Indians to continually try to appease the spiritual world. This meant praying to the spirits within all these entities. For example, prayers were given to the animals to be hunted, asking their spirits to forgive the Indians for the killing needed to sustain the clan. When illness or sickness occurred, the gods would have to be conciliated by fasts. Puritan minister Roger Williams, who studied native religion closely wrote, Manitou represented a mysterious, awe-inspiring force encompassing "everything which Natives cannot comprehend."

3. Importance of a sacred nature.

a. Viewing nature as sacred meant minimizing the impact of man on nature. Not viewing nature as something man must dominate. Rather they viewed nature as something humanity lived in as part of a great chain of living things.

b. Material culture, however, demonstrates that Indians still had an impact on nature.

c. In addition to land management, research suggests Indians may have been responsible for the extinction of large mammals in North America.

C. Understanding how the Indians accessed the spiritual world gives insight into the worldview of the natives.

1. There were many ways in which access could be attained: through dreaming, artificially alternating their consciousness through difficult physical ordeals. You have only your self to give to god.

2. Questing, for example, involved young men in a rite of running up mountains to the point of exhaustion, then hallucinating.

a. Typical Shawnee trial. A boy coming of age meant performing daunting physical activities like swimming naked in the river in the dead of winter for 100 straight days to show your worth to Manitou.

b. On the plains, the sun dance.

3. Similar experiences were attained through fasting.

4. Collective power seeking rituals included group dancing.

5. Most importantly, Indians relied upon a priest class. Called shamans--those who were both healers and spiritual guides. They functioned as interpreters of dreams, dealt in medicine, and invoked peace and war spirits. In some areas of the southeast, priests achieved high levels of organization.

V. Indian social values.

A. Those aspects of culture addressing relations between members of the community.

1. Clan was the basic social unit--a form of extended family. Prior to the arrival of the Europeans, it is estimated there were up to 500,000 Woodland clans. Cf with Europeans, especially in Canada, Mexico, and American south, unmarried males.

a. Clan and kinship basis of society fostered conformity and close cooperation. Cooperative, not competitive was a central social value.

b. All Indian cultures possessed a strong sense of order. Custom, social conformity, and the demands of living close to nature, produced a very strict code of conduct. The big fear for an Indian was becoming a social outcast.

2. Child rearing. (Shawnee example).

a. Natives emphasized learning to be accommodative and reserved. Native children were taught early to not give vocal vent to anger, frustration, or pain.

i. Noisy outbursts by a child were aggravating and a disgrace to the parents.

ii. Such outbursts could have grave consequences: could ruin a hunt, frighten off game, or in hostilities a wailing baby could direct an enemy to the location of the group.

b. Therefore, self-control was critical to be learned early. How was it taught?

i. Not by violence. Native children were not subject to corporeal punishment. Shaming techniques were typical and preferred over physical abuse. Europeans often accused the Indians of coddling their young.

ii. Taught joys and rewards of being quiet and mannerly through love and affection.

iii. Both parents and siblings paid close attention to crying babies. Children would be immediately scooped up and held. Well-fed, before hunger.

c. Child killing.

i. Sanctioned by 10-day rule before naming.

ii. During this period child could be killed w/o being a crime. Not yet an actual person.

iii. Reasons: deformity, prophecy: if shaman sees birth as a bad omen, as in triplets, kill one or all.

3. Decisions were made by consensus based on persuasion.

a. The natives were an oral culture. They privileged the voice and ear. Spoken words had power. The key to the shaman's power was his ability to cast charms, hexes, and spells. Sounds had force in this world and this created a high obligation to listen. Native Americans proved to be extraordinary orators.

b. Indian speakers were never interrupted.

4. How was consensus and cooperation achieved.

a. Social leadership among the Indians depended upon speaking and persuasion, not compulsion. Potlatch was also central. Distributing gifts was central to the establishment and maintenance of leadership because it created dependencies and required reciprocal relations.

b. Such an approach embedded things like exchange or trade into a social context different from European life. Trade was done not just to acquire useful things, but also to ensure goodwill and build prestige. Accumulation was directed toward re-distribution, not capital formation.

c. Potlatch was crucial in the transfer of power as well. As was game playing and warfare.

5. If consensus broke down it could bring fearful consequences such as accusations of witchcraft, personal revenge, and war. Such actions were the way in which order could be restored.

VI. Eastern Woodland Indian Political Order.

A. Each clan had its own sachem or leader.

B. Clans existed in well-defined territories. Within each region, numerous clans were bound together into larger tribes and relations.

C. Native American government was constructed on the basis of kinship. With all these clans, numerous independent local governments peppered the area. Powhatan, the leader of the Chesapeake Powhatan Empire, had organized about 30 tribes into a confederation sometime late in the 16th century. This empire included about 14,000 subjects among who were 3,200 warriors.

D. Within each clan, and between clans there was a working system of government. But these higher forms of government were highly decentralized. The potential for conflict was great. Powhatan didn't have control of all the local tribes. He had enemies.

E. The chiefs or sachems of each clan allied together under one paramount chief. This paramount chief, like Powhatan, ruled with the consent of the lesser chiefs. In other words, he was dependent on them. This means no centralized authority existed. There were no standing armies, no taxes to pay for them. Only local militia. Not surprisingly, much splintering of tribes occurred. Even the famous League of the Iroquois, the five northeastern tribes united into a confederation, were subject to significant internal stresses and strains that undermined consistent unified action. The potential for

conflict was great, although the scale of conflict was small.

F. Potlatch had a political dimension. It was a form of alliance and obligation building.

G. These internal tensions could be and were exploited by Europeans who offered protection to dissenters from the rest.

VII. Conclusion.

A. How sophisticated were the Eastern Woodland Indians on the eve of contact?

1. They had evolved a settled form of land occupation.

2. They were busy trading on a regional basis.

3. They had working systems of government administering clearly defined territories.

4. Hence we can say they had a society--a culture, a settled civilization.

B. This pre-existing, ancient world means we need a perspective of

Ethno-history and acculturation.

1. We need to see how Europeans and Indians were interdependent on first contact.

2. We need to emphasize how the two cultures interacted.

3. We need to trace the effects or consequences of this interaction.

4. Ultimately, by doing so we will see why the Europeans became dominate.

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