Native Americans of North America

A

6

Settlement and Housing

Most Southeast peoples located their villages along river valleys and planted their crops in nearby fields. Homes and public buildings were typically rectangular or, less frequently, circular. Most structures were constructed of wattle and daub, a type of architecture in which branches and vines are tied over pole frameworks and covered with a mixture of mud or clay. Sometimes structures were covered with plant materials, including thatch—made from straw, reeds, rushes, and grasses—as well as woven mats, bark, bamboo stalks, and palm fronds. Animal hides were also used as coverings. For swampy areas the Seminole people built chickees, distinctive open-sided houses on stilts with wooden platforms and thatched roofs.

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7

Transportation

In addition to travel by foot on established trails, Southeast peoples used dugout canoes for transportation along the waterways that crisscrossed much of the region and along coastal areas. To make these boats, they charred parts of logs with embers from a fire and then hollowed out the softened parts with stone and bone scrapers. Some dugouts, having hull walls just a few centimeters thick, were light enough for one person to carry. Native Americans propelled these boats with wooden paddles.

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8

Clothing and Ornamentation

In warm weather Southeast Indian men typically wore only breechcloths, usually of deerskin. Women typically wore wraparound plant-fiber skirts and shell necklaces. In cold weather men wore deerskin shirts, leggings, and moccasins; women wore deerskin capes and moccasins. For ceremonial purposes, tribal leaders and priests wore capes of feathers. Among some Southeast tribes, men plucked out their hair with shell tweezers and tattooed themselves with designs representing exploits in war and with totems (symbols that serve as an emblem of a family or clan). Elaborate tattoos also adorned some Southeast women.

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9

Religious Beliefs and Practices

Southeast peoples, like indigenous peoples throughout North America, regarded themselves as part of the natural and spiritual worlds. They considered religion a function of daily activity, with rituals capable of influencing the interconnected realms of physical and supernatural existence. Shamans, or medicine men, served as priests, and they led tribal members in rituals believed to ensure an adequate food supply. Since Southeast Indians practiced agriculture, many of their ceremonies surrounded the planting and harvesting season.

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The Green Corn Ceremony, or Busk, was an annual renewal and thanksgiving festival performed by the Cherokee, Creek, and other Southeast tribes. It was held in mid- to late summer, when the corn was ready for roasting. The ceremony lasted from four to eight days and included ritual fasting, dancing, and feasting. Old fires were extinguished, and a new sacred fire was lit from which every household obtained fire. New tools, weapons, and clothing were made. Wrongdoers were forgiven for most crimes except murder. A beverage known as the Black Drink—so named by English traders because of its dark color—was believed to purify spiritually all those who imbibed it. Different tribes had different recipes for this ritual tea, made from varying species of holly, tobacco, and other plants.

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10

Post-Contact History

Spanish explorers are the first known outsiders to have visited the Southeast. They sailed northward from the Caribbean region in the late 1400s and early 1500s, soon after Christopher Columbus reached the West Indies. The earliest cross-cultural contacts took place along coastal areas. Southeast coastal tribes received European goods as gifts or in trade; they also were exposed to European diseases and were kidnapped as slaves. These early contacts probably impacted inland groups as well through the spread of diseases, when exposed coastal peoples traded with interior tribes. Entire villages may have perished before the first European explorers even reached them.

From 1539 to 1543 an expedition under the Spaniard Hernando de Soto explored many of the Southeast's interior regions and came into contact with numerous peoples. In 1565 the Spanish founded the first permanent settlement in North America at Saint Augustine in modern-day Florida. By the 1600s the English and French had also taken a strong interest in the Southeast. The English established settlements on the Atlantic Coast, and the French built towns along the Mississippi River Valley. Epidemics among Southeast peoples and intermittent warfare with Euro-Americans took a heavy toll on the indigenous population, and many tribes were displaced from their lands. For many groups, displacement led to a loss of tribal identity.

By the time the United States achieved independence from Britain at the end of the American Revolution in 1783, many Southeast tribes had disappeared. Refugees of smaller tribes were often absorbed by the larger groups that remained. Some Southeast peoples, including the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole, came to adapt Euro-American customs. The Cherokee, for instance, created a representative form of government with a constitution and a written form of their Iroquoian language. Non-Indians eventually referred to these groups as the Five Civilized Tribes.

Euro-Americans soon displaced many of the remaining Southeast peoples from their lands. Pressure by non-Indian settlers led U.S. president Andrew Jackson to pass the Indian Removal Act of 1830, under which the Five Civilized Tribes were relocated to the Indian Territory (a region encompassing present-day Oklahoma). Many Indians died on the long journey in difficult weather with little food or water. This forced exodus came to be known among the Cherokee as the Trail of Tears. Today, many descendants of the Southeast tribes live on reservations in Oklahoma. Some Southeast Indians still live in their ancestral homelands, since pockets of their ancestors did manage to avoid relocation. In recent times, small groups throughout the Southeast have tried to reestablish tribal unity and identity.

B

Northeast