Native Americans of North America

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10

Post-Contact History

Some Northeast coastal peoples may have had contacts with non-Native Americans as early as about ad 1000, when Vikings sailing from Iceland attempted to found colonies in North America, including at least one settlement in what is now Newfoundland and Labrador. The first known contacts with later European explorers occurred in the 1500s. However, it was not until the 1600s that European influences began to alter significantly indigenous ways of life. Trade goods, including iron tools and pots, brightly colored clothing, glass beads, and firearms, spread throughout the region at varying rates depending on the location of tribes.

Many groups maintained something close to their traditional ways of life for generations, even with the new tools and materials. European goods were incorporated into aboriginal technologies, art forms, and rituals. However, alcohol was one trade good that rapidly and consistently proved detrimental to tribal identity. The spread of European diseases also led to significant loss of life among Northeast peoples, as it did throughout North America.

Patterns of non-Indian expansion in present-day eastern Canada—much of which was once a part of New France (the French Empire in North America)—were less disruptive than they were further south. The economy of New France revolved around the fur trade, which began with the voyages of French explorer Jacques Cartier in the 1530s. The French were more likely to develop trade relations with Native Americans than to settle permanently on their lands, and European settlement of indigenous lands in Canada occurred more gradually.

English colonists, pushing inland from the Atlantic Coast in what is now the northeastern United States, were more land hungry than the French traders, since many of them hoped to establish new lives as farmers. In 1607, with the help of Chief Powhatan and his daughter, Pocahontas, the English founded their first successful American colony at Jamestown in what is now Virginia. However, conflict between Indians and colonists—who wanted land to grow tobacco as a cash crop—eventually destroyed the Powhatan Confederacy. Warfare between Native Americans and English colonists also occurred in the years after the Plymouth Colony was founded in 1620 in present-day Massachusetts. Although these colonists were subsistence farmers rather than cash-crop farmers, their desire for land sparked a series of conflicts that ultimately led to the destruction or displacement of many New England tribes.

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Colonial wars in the 1700s drew in many Northeast tribes on opposing sides. A long succession of attacks and skirmishes between the British and French culminated in the French and Indian War (1754-1763). The Iroquois Confederacy blocked French efforts to control the waterways from the St. Lawrence River to the Great Lakes. The Mohawk, a leading Iroquois tribe, became firm allies of the British and helped defeat the French in Québec in 1759. Many Northeast peoples, however, came to resent British restrictions on trade and British expansion west of the Appalachians. Beginning in 1763 a series of Indian attacks on British outposts swept through the Great Lakes country and along the Ohio River Valley. In an attempt to maintain peace the British issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which guaranteed indigenous peoples all the land west of the Appalachians. Nevertheless, non-Indian settlers continued to cross the mountains in the wake of such explorers as Daniel Boone.

During the American Revolution, pro-independence colonists tried to win the support of Northeast peoples by halting Euro-American settlement on Indian lands. However, Mohawk chief Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea) and Seneca chiefs Cornplanter and Red Jacket persuaded four of the six Iroquois nations to join the British side. At the end of the war in 1783, the Iroquois ceded large tracts of land to the United States, and many Iroquois moved with their British allies to Ontario in Canada. Most Seneca, as well as smaller numbers of the other Iroquois people, remained on ancestral lands.

Increasing non-Indian settlement in the Northeast pushed many of the remaining tribes westward across the Mississippi River and onto the Great Plains. By the mid-1800s, few indigenous peoples still lived in the Northeast. Those who stayed retained a small land base and became in many instances forgotten neighbors of the dominant Euro-American culture around them. Beginning in the 20th century, Northeast peoples in both the United States and Canada sought to revive their traditional cultures.

C

Southwest

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1

Land and Habitat

The Southwest culture area reaches across a great swath of arid country in what is now the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. It includes diverse terrain, from the high mesas and canyons of the Colorado Plateau in the north to the Mogollon Mountains of present-day southern New Mexico. Cactus-dotted deserts flank the Little Colorado River in present-day southern Arizona and the Gulf of Mexico in present-day southern Texas.

Few rains water the Southwest, and most rainfall occurs during a six-week period in the summer. Snowfall is infrequent except in mountain areas. Three types of vegetation are dominant, depending on altitude and rainfall: western evergreen in the mountains; piñon and juniper in mesa country; and desert shrub, cactus, and mesquite in lower, drier regions.

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2

Peoples and Languages

Three language families predominated among peoples in the Southwest: Uto-Aztecan, Yuman, and Athapaskan. Uto-Aztecan speakers included the Hopi of Arizona and the Tohono O’Odham (Papago) and Akimel O'Odham (Pima) of Arizona and northern Mexico. Some Pueblo peoples, including the Tewa, Tiwa, and Towa in modern-day New Mexico, spoke dialects of Kiowa-Tanoan, a language family related to Uto-Aztecan. The Cocopah, Havasupai, Hualapai, Maricopa, Mojave, Yavapai, Yuma (Quechan), and other neighboring peoples in Arizona spoke Yuman, and they are referred to collectively as Yumans. The Apache and Navajo (Diné) of New Mexico and Arizona and the southern fringe of Colorado and Utah spoke Athapaskan. Southwest languages considered distinct from the main language families included Coalhuitecan of the Coalhuitec in Texas and northern Mexico; Karankawan of the Karankawa in Texas; Keresan of the Keres, a Pueblo people in New Mexico; and Zunian of the Zuni, another Pueblo people of New Mexico.

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3

Early Peoples

When prehistoric peoples first arrived in the Southwest more than 10,000 years ago, there was enough rainfall in the region to support mammoths, bison, and other large mammals. Stone spearpoints found with the remains of these animals provide evidence that ancient Southwest peoples hunted them. After the climate became drier and the large animals disappeared, subsequent generations of Southwest peoples hunted deer and small game and collected fruits, nuts, and seeds of wild plants. About 5,000 years ago the Cochise people in present-day Arizona and New Mexico began growing a primitive species of maize (corn), which was domesticated in earlier centuries in Mesoamerica. By 4,500 years ago they had become skilled farmers.

In later centuries, four distinct farming peoples occupied the Southwest: peoples of the Mogollon, Hohokam, Anasazi, and Patayan cultures, as well as a number of smaller offshoots. The people of these cultures raised maize, beans, and squash. For each of these peoples, the adoption of agriculture permitted the settlement of permanent villages and the continued refinement of farming technology, arts, and crafts, especially pottery.

The Mogollon people of southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico, who appeared about 2,300 years ago, are believed to be descendents of the Cochise people. Mogollon Indians built permanent villages in the region’s high valleys and learned to make pottery decorated with intricate geometric patterns. The Mimbres people, a Mogollan subgroup, is famous for painting pottery with dramatic black-on-white geometric designs of animals and ceremonial scenes. From about ad 1200 to 1400 the Mogollan culture was gradually absorbed by the then-dominant Anasazi culture.

The Hohokam people of southern Arizona may also have descended from the Cochise. First appearing about 2,100 years ago, Hohokam Indians dug extensive irrigation ditches for their crops. Some canals, which carried water diverted from rivers, extended many kilometers. Hohokam people also built sunken ball courts—like those of the Maya Civilization in Mesoamerica—on which they played a game resembling a combination of modern basketball and soccer. Hohokam people are thought to be ancestors of the Tohono O’Odham and Pima, who preserved much of the Hohokam way of life.

In the Four Corners region, where Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado now join, lived the Anasazi Indians, also known as ancestral Pueblo peoples. The Anasazi culture, which gradually emerged from older Southwestern cultures, had taken on its distinctive characteristics by about 2,100 years ago. Anthropologists refer to the Anasazi of this early era as Basket Makers because they wove fine baskets from rushes, straw, and other materials. Basket Makers hunted and gathered wild foods, tended fields, and lived in large pit houses, dwellings with sunken floors that were topped by sturdy timber frameworks covered with mud. By about ad 700 Basket Maker culture had evolved into the early Pueblo cultural period. Over the next 200 years these peoples made the transition from pit houses to surface dwellings called pueblos—rectangular, multistoried apartment buildings composed of terraced stone and adobe. They built large planned towns connected by an extensive network of public roads and irrigation systems. At its peak, after about 900, Pueblo culture dominated much of the Southwest. From about 1150 to 1300 Pueblo peoples evacuated most of their aboveground pueblos and built spectacular dwellings in the recesses of cliffs (see Cliff Dweller). The largest of these had several hundred rooms and could house a population of 600 to 800 in close quarters.

The Patayan people, who lived near the Colorado River in what is now western Arizona, learned to farm by about ad 875. They planted crops along the river floodplain and filled out their diets by hunting and gathering. Patayan Indians lived in brush huts and made brownish pottery, sometimes painted red, as well as baskets. They were known to use seashells from the Gulf of California in trade. The Patayan people are thought to be ancestors of the Yuman-speaking tribes.

During the late 1200s the Four Corners area suffered severe droughts, and many Pueblo sites were abandoned. However, Pueblo settlements along the Rio Grande in the south grew larger, and elaborate irrigation systems were built. Between 1200 and 1500 a people speaking Athapaskan appeared in the Southwest, having migrated southward along the western Great Plains. Based on linguistic connections, these people are believed to have branched off from indigenous peoples in western Canada. They are the ancestors of the nomadic Apache and Navajo. Their arrival may have played a role in the relocation of some Pueblo groups.

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4

Diet and Subsistence

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a

Desert Farmers

Two principal ways of life developed in the Southwest: sedentary and nomadic. The sedentary Pueblo peoples were mainly farmers who hunted and foraged to fill out their diets. They cultivated a variety of crops, including corn of many varieties, squash, beans, sunflowers, cotton, and tobacco. Pueblo Indians also raised tame turkeys. A number of desert peoples, including the upland and river Yuman tribes and the Tohono O’Odham and Pima, maintained a largely agrarian way of life as well.

Agriculture north of Mesoamerica—the cradle of farming in the Americas—reached its highest level of development in the Southwest. Growing food crops gave many Southwest peoples the ability to prosper in a harsh landscape with few game animals or edible wild plants. The agricultural peoples were such skilled farmers that, even in the dry country, they managed to maintain sizable populations in permanent villages.