Native Americans of Middle and South America

Article Outline

Introduction; Culture Areas; History; Native Americans Today

Warfare

The Caribbean and Northern Andean peoples were renowned as fierce warriors. As with the Aztec, male warriors captured in battle were taken back to the victors’ settlements, where they were killed and their bodies were eaten. The heads of such captives often were kept as trophies that enhanced the prestige of the men who had captured them. Captured women were not usually killed, instead serving their captors as wives and servants in the household. Children captured in battle, on the other hand, met the same fate as the men. They were sacrificed to the gods and their bodies were eaten. The Taíno people were peaceful compared to others in the Caribbean, but their peace was disrupted by invasions of the more warlike Carib from Venezuela.

Settlement and Housing

Similar to the two-level system of social ranking, the settlement systems of the Caribbean and Northern Andes culture area consisted usually of two types of settlements—larger towns, ruled by local chiefs, whose population numbered at most in the several thousands, and smaller rural sites where several hundred or fewer people lived. In the cool mountains of the northern Andes, people generally lived in small, dispersed villages and in scattered homes made of stone or of a wickerwork frame plastered with mud. In lower, tropical areas, people lived in larger towns that were sometimes surrounded by palisades (fences) to provide protection from enemies. Lowland houses were generally made of poles and thatch (plant material used as roofing) and were open-sided to allow air to pass through the structure. Houses were usually arranged around a central plaza containing a temple and the home of the chief and nobles. Many towns had roads paved with stone.

Transportation

The dugout canoe was the primary means of transportation for Caribbean island peoples and for those on the mainland who lived near rivers or the sea. Coastal peoples around the Caribbean were expert navigators and traveled in large, elaborately ornamented, seagoing canoes that were equipped with sails. There was a regular sea trade among the islands of the Caribbean and between the Caribbean and South America, as well as along the eastern coast of Central America. Elsewhere, people transported goods on their backs, making use of trails, roads, and bridges that threaded through the mountains. To the south, in the Central and Southern Andes culture area, llamas were used for transportation, but these animals could not be adapted to the warmer rainy climates of the Caribbean and Northern Andes culture area.

Clothing and Ornamentation

Clothing differed according to region. Most of the people wove cotton on backstrap looms, a type of loom in which the warps (vertical strands) are strung between two sticks. One stick was attached to a fixed object, such as a post or roof beam, while the other end was attached to the weaver’s back with a leather or cloth strap. By leaning against the strap, the weaver could maintain tension on the warps as she or he wove in the wefts (horizontal strands). In the hot tropical lowlands, women wore apronlike garments around the waist, while the men wore breechcloths. In the cool highlands and middle altitudes of Colombia and Ecuador, people supplemented wraparounds and breechcloths with sleeveless tunics, capes, and blankets.

Religious Beliefs and Practices

Religion centered on temple cults that were led by priests of the chiefly class. The priests made offerings to deities represented by idols, acting as mediators between the gods and the people to ensure that the society’s needs (such as agricultural fertility and success in trade and war) were met. Among the principal deities of the mainland societies was the jaguar, the most feared and awe-inspiring animal of tropical rainforests given its tendency to prey on humans. Religious practices involved a sophisticated understanding of the cycles of the Moon and the Sun, including knowledge of the solstices and equinoxes as well as the length of the solar year. Human sacrifices to the gods were common. When a chief died, he was either buried with sacrificial victims—who included his wives and servants—or his body was desiccated (dried out) and placed on display in temples.