V.

Traditional Way of Life

Long before the arrival of Europeans, Native Americans in North America developed rich and varied cultures, as diverse as the cultures of Europe or any other continent. Each group adopted a way of life suited to the resources and demands of its environment. For example, groups devised unique tools and weapons needed to hunt local game and to gather and process plant foods effectively. They built homes and shelters out of materials available in their area. Each culture had its own language, style of art, oral traditions, spiritual beliefs, and system of social organization.

With such rich diversity, it is problematic to generalize about traditional Native American ways of life and beliefs; there is no single Native American culture. Nevertheless, Native American cultures share certain traits that are common to many indigenous peoples around the world. These include spirituality as the foundation of tribal and personal life, strong ties to the land on which they live, a sense of kinship with the natural world, a conception of the natural and supernatural worlds as interrelated and whole, an intimate relationship between health and spirituality, creative expression as an integral part of daily life, and the oral transmission of traditions and histories. Yet each Indian culture has its own distinct tribal identity; many are related but no two are exactly alike.

The following sections explore the traditional ways of life of Native American peoples. The discussion covers food and subsistence, housing, clothing and adornment, social and political organization, marriage and family life, recreation and games, transportation, trade, warfare and weaponry, language and communication, spirituality and religious practices, music and dance, and arts and crafts. Because these sections primarily describe ways of life as they existed before European contact, the past tense is generally used; traditions that continue to the present are noted where appropriate. For a discussion of contemporary Native American cultures, see the Native Americans Today section of this article. For a discussion of traditional Native American cultures arranged by geography rather than thematically, see the Culture Areas section of this article.

A.

Food and Subsistence

The foods Native Americans ate, and the methods they used to acquire them, depended on where they lived. The land and its resources determined whether Indians foraged, fished, hunted, or farmed. But no group ever relied on only one type of food. Even those who practiced agriculture still relied on game and wild plants to supplement their harvests.

The ease or difficulty with which North American Indians could obtain food directly influenced how they lived. The more time that was required to hunt, gather, or fish, the less time there was for other cultural activities. In the barren environment of the Great Basin, for example, Indians adopted a nomadic lifestyle because they constantly needed to search for food. But on the Northwest Coast, where rivers and oceans teemed with life, there was enough food for people to live a settled village lifestyle.

This section provides a general discussion of Native American foods and subsistence methods. To learn more about the foods and subsistence methods of Native Americans in a specific geographical area, see the Culture Areas section of this article.

A.1.

Foraging

Native Americans gathered a wide range of plant foods, including many varieties of edible wild nuts, berries, seeds, and grasses. Almost all Native Americans relied on some wild plant foods. Wild rice—a type of seed-bearing grass that grows naturally along the muddy shores of marshes and streams—was such a staple for the Menominee people of present-day Wisconsin that they derived their tribal name from the Ojibwa word for wild rice: manomin. The people of the arid Southwest harvested agaves, cactus, acorns, piñon nuts, and juniper berries, which ripened at different times of year and at different elevations.

For most California Indians, the acorn was the most important single food source. Gathered in the autumn, acorns were stored for year-round use through a time-consuming process. Women had to dry, hull, and pulverize acorns into meal, then leach the meal in hot water to remove the tannin, a bitter-tasting substance that causes indigestion. After boiling the acorn meal into mush, they molded and baked it into cakes for their families. In the southern California desert, the Cahuilla made the seed pods of the mesquite tree into food. By pulverizing the ripened pods in an upright wooden mortar with a pestle, they were able to obtain the juice as a beverage. Once the pod meal dried, it was made into cakes, providing a nutritious food for traveling.

In some areas of the Northwest Coast, more than 40 kinds of berries and fruits were available. Women in this region also gathered ferns with edible roots, lilies with edible bulbs, such as riceroot and camas, and starchy tubers. Camas and edible roots such as bitterroot, yampa, and sego were key food sources for the Plateau Indians. Among peoples like the Iroquois, for whom farming was the main source of food, wild plant foods served as an important dietary supplement, especially if crops failed.

A.2.

Fishing

Native Americans who lived along rivers or in coastal areas depended on fishing for a major portion of their diets. They caught fish using spears, hooks and lines, lures, harpoons, barbed arrows, nets, traps, and even poisons.

Fishing provided the basis for the affluent way of life enjoyed by the Nootka and other Northwest Coast peoples. Although they ate many different kinds of fish, salmon was especially important because of its predictable and distinctive life cycle. The Nootka knew that salmon returned every spring and summer from the sea to their spawning grounds in freshwater streams. Fishermen erected latticework fences called weirs across the entire width of a river to prevent continued upstream swimming by the salmon. The current then swept many of the salmon back into traps while others were harpooned. Fishermen also used dip nets—bags of netting suspended from wooden frames—and boxlike or cylindrical traps. The salmon swam back in such densely packed schools that the Nootka could catch five months’ food supply in the course of several weeks. By supplementing smoked and dried salmon with berries, deer, and clams, as well as other types of fish, the Nootka had enough food to last them until late February, when the herring returned. The Nootka and some other Northwest Coast peoples also practiced whaling, which they considered the noblest of all occupations. Paddling dugout canoes, they ventured into open seas between March and August to hunt California gray whales with harpoons.

Fish and waterfowl were easy to catch in the Southeast, a region of meandering rivers and vast swamps of cypress and cane. In subtropical south Florida, the Calusa had such an abundant supply of fish and shellfish that they flourished without the need for agriculture. The Delaware (Lenni Lenape), Montauk, and Powhatan enjoyed the flat, fertile coastal plains of the East Coast, one of the world’s richest fishing areas. The clam beds of Long Island were an asset to those who lived there.

A.3.

Hunting

The earliest inhabitants of the North American continent, known as Paleo-Indians, survived by hunting big game and other wild animals. Until the end of the last ice age, around 10,000 years ago, many giant animals roamed the land. Paleo-Indians used spears to hunt mammoth, mastodon, a now-extinct form of bison, and smaller animals. They were skilled at making razor-sharp stone spearpoints—as well as knives, scrapers, and choppers—by chipping stone flakes away from a larger rock. They lashed these stone points to wooden shafts with strips of animal hide to create spears. There is also evidence that Paleo-Indians stampeded herds of bison to drive them over cliffs, killing or crippling large numbers with a minimum of effort. In addition to hunting, Paleo-Indians likely relied on wild plant foods to supplement their diet.

The development of a new tool, the atlatl (pronounced at-LAT-ul), revolutionized hunting. The atlatl was a spear launcher that greatly increased the force and speed with which a spear could be thrown, allowing a hunter to kill his prey from a safe distance away. The hunter lifted the device over his shoulder and sent the spear hurtling toward his target with a whiplike motion. By 8000 bc hunters in southwestern Europe and southwestern North America were using the atlatl, although no one knows where or when it was invented.

After the ice age ended, the mammoth, mastodon, American camel, saber-toothed cat, giant ground sloth, and many other large mammal species became extinct, possibly because of severe climate changes or disease. Some scholars believe overhunting by humans may have played a role in this extinction, but there is little archaeological evidence to support this theory. After the large mammals died out, the most important game animals in North America were grazing and foraging mammals such as caribou, moose, elk, bison, pronghorns, deer, and bighorn sheep; scavengers and carnivores such as bears, coyotes, wolves, foxes, and pumas (mountain lions); sea mammals such as seals, sea lions, and whales; and smaller game such as ducks, geese, turkeys, rabbits, beavers, raccoons, opossums, and squirrels.

Centuries before the arrival of Europeans, Plains hunters lived in nomadic bands that hunted the American bison, commonly called the buffalo, on foot. Living with the constant threat of starvation, these Plains Indians survived by driving bison herds over cliffs. Men dressed in bison skins positioned themselves at the head of the herd to lead the chief bull bison. Snorting and rolling in the dust, they lured the herd toward the edge of the cliff before disappearing into the brush. Other hunters then used fire to incite a stampede over the cliff. Another Plains hunting method used fire to encircle a herd of bison. Hunters stationed themselves at a single opening in the circle, where they killed the frightened animals with bows and lances. The arrival of the horse, widespread among Native Americans by the mid-1700s, completely changed the bison hunt. Instead of stampeding an entire bison herd over a cliff, hunters raced after bison on horseback and shot them with bows and arrows, and later, rifles.

A.4.

Farming

The exact origins of agriculture in the Americas are uncertain. By 4000 bc inhabitants of Mesoamerica were cultivating maize (corn); at roughly the same time, beans and squash were being cultivated in Peru. The cultivation of maize spread from Mesoamerica into the Southwest by about 3000 bc; beans and squash were planted there later. These three foods—maize, beans, and squash—would remain, for thousands of years, the primary crops for Native Americans north of Mexico. Other food crops included tomatoes, chili peppers, pumpkins, vanilla, and avocados. Of all crops in the Americas, maize was the most important. At the time of European contact, maize probably provided more food than all other cultivated plants combined.

The development of agriculture marked a turning point for Native Americans. By producing enough food to feed the population year-round, agriculture made it possible for groups to establish settled villages and sedentary lifestyles. They no longer had to live a nomadic foraging existence, although many continued to do so. In the Southwest, farming and a relatively dependable food supply made possible the Mogollon culture in the highland areas of Arizona and New Mexico and the Hohokam culture in the deserts of southern Arizona. The Hohokam developed irrigation ditches to sustain their crops because the desert climate provided scant rainfall. The ancestral Pueblo, or Anasazi, culture developed from groups of gatherers who supplemented their diet by growing maize and pumpkins.

North American Indians used hand tools for cultivation; they did not use draft animals or the plow. To break up the ground for planting and to make a hole for planting grains of corn, beans, or squash, they used a straight pointed stick. Some tribes also used a wooden-bladed implement that resembled a spade; rakes and hoes were also common. Irrigation was limited to the Southwest, and there men were the principal farmers. In other areas, where agriculture was of secondary importance to hunting and gathering, women did most of the farming, especially within and near their villages. Men usually helped with clearing new land and with the harvest. Men also farmed farther from the villages, where enemies could attack. The growing season varied with latitude and elevation. Northern farmers, such as the Iroquois tribes, were able to grow enough food in their 120-day growing season to see them through the winter.

For centuries, the Hopi Indians of the Southwest have practiced some of the most remarkable farming techniques in North America. They developed drought-resistant strains of corn that are particularly hardy, mature quickly, and are not harmed by extreme desert temperatures. By planting the corn some 30 to 40 cm (12 to 16 in) deep, the seeds receive the benefit of all the moisture in the soil, and shoots develop a strong root system that anchors the plant so that it will not be blown away by the wind or washed out by flash floods.

A.5.

Livestock

Livestock was not as important to Native Americans as it was to the people of other continents. After Spanish horses spread to the Great Plains and the Plateau regions, some groups, such as the Nez Perce, became respected horse breeders who carefully worked to improve the bloodlines of their herds. The Nez Perce also maintained herds of cattle. The Navajo (Diné) of the Southwest acquired Spanish sheep and goats as well as horses. The Navajo population began to increase in the late 1700s because sheep and goats provided such a dependable food source.

A.6.

Preparing and Storing Food

Techniques of food preparation varied according to the culture area and the types of foods that were available. Meat or fish could be cooked by roasting it over a wood fire or baking it in an earthen pit filled with hot stones. It could also be boiled in a stone pot over a seal-oil flame, as the Inuit did, or in a tightly woven basket filled with water and hot stones and treated with pine pitch to make it watertight. Other foods, such as corn, beans, and vegetables, were also boiled in baskets or baked in pit ovens.

Groups that lived in settled villages often used pottery for food preparation and storage. Nomadic groups, who had to transport all of their families’ goods frequently, used lighter materials. Plains Indians, for example, used a bison’s paunch as a cooking pot. Propping the paunch up with four poles, a Plains Indian woman filled it with water and dropped in red-hot stones to bring the water to a boil, allowing her to prepare a stew of bison meat. She had to replace such a pot after a few days’ use because it softened so quickly. After Europeans arrived and began trading their goods, Native Americans were quick to adopt metal cooking pots and other containers that made their lives easier.

Many foodstuffs demanded considerable investments of time and work to prepare and cook. To prepare maize, the Fox (Mesquakie) of eastern Wisconsin dried out the cobs over a fire, ground the maize into a coarse meal, and boiled the meal into gruel. In another method, they first soaked the maize in a caustic lye solution made from wood ash to dissolve the tough outer seed hulls. After washing away the lye solution, they boiled the inner kernels whole to make hominy. Iroquois women also used lye to remove the hulls. They would grind the kernels into cornmeal using a tree-trunk mortar and a wooden pestle, pass the meal through a sieve to remove larger pieces, mix the cornmeal with water, and shape the mixture into loaves that were boiled to make cornbread. The Iroquois also prepared succotash (a dish made of corn and beans), roasted corn, boiled corn, and hominy. A Hopi meal traditionally included piki, a paper-thin bread. Prepared by spreading a thin batter of cornmeal, water, and wood ash on a hot greased sandstone slab, piki was especially delicious when dipped into a stew made of deer meat, squash, beans, and wild greens such as milkweed, watercress, and dandelions.

Indian meals were often eaten with the fingers; many groups also used utensils and dishes made from horn or bone. Plains Indians made spoons, drinking vessels, ladles, and bowls from bison horn. The intricacy of carving depended on the utensil’s intended use. Utensils and serving dishes used for elaborate feasts on the Northwest Coast often were inset with abalone shell or had handles elaborately carved into animal shapes.

Animal fats and oils, rendered from animals such as bears, bison, and seals, added flavor and texture to soups and stews. In the Northeast and around the Great Lakes, Native Americans collected sap from sugar maple trees and used maple sugar as an all-purpose seasoning. Other sweeteners included fruits and wild honey, and, in tropical areas, vanilla. In the Southwest, chili peppers were a popular seasoning.

Salt was a highly prized but scarce substance in North America. In addition to its use as a seasoning, salt was needed as a dietary supplement by groups who ate mainly vegetable foods instead of meat (which supplies an adequate amount of mineral salts) and by those who lived in warm climates and lost salt through perspiration. Thus, Native Americans in California, the Great Basin, the Southwest, and parts of the Great Plains and Southeast had to intentionally eat salt. Salt was obtained by evaporating salt water, collecting it from the surface near dry lake beds, and by mining rock salt from shallow underground deposits. The Zuni of the Southwest collected and processed salt from their own salt lake (present-day Salt Lake in New Mexico). They considered salt a sacred item and undertook the gathering of salt with prayer and ritual.

Native Americans learned to preserve and store food for the winter or for a journey. They buried it in pits, dried it in the sun, or smoked it over fires or in smokehouses. Traveling Plains Indians filled rawhide envelopes with pemmican, a nourishing high-protein food made by pounding strips of dried bison meat into fine bits, mixing it with melted fat and berries, and then tightly pressing it into cakes. Pemmican remained edible for years.

B.

Housing and Shelter

The dwellings Native Americans built depended on the climate, the building materials available, and their lifestyle. A nomadic lifestyle required simple, temporary structures or movable dwellings, whereas a sedentary lifestyle allowed tribes to build more substantial homes. Many tribes used different dwellings at different times of year. For example, during the farming season, tribes along the Missouri River lived in large, multifamily earth-covered dwellings known as earth lodges. During bison-hunting season, they were nomadic and lived in smaller hide-covered shelters, called tipis, that could be easily moved.

This section describes only some of the many kinds of shelters used by North American Indians, including earth lodges, tipis, longhouses, wigwams, hogans, wickiups, pueblos, plank houses, igloos, and chickees. To learn more about housing types in a specific geographical area, see the Culture Areas section of this article. For a more detailed discussion, see Native American Architecture.

B.1.

Earth Lodge

Plains tribes that practiced agriculture, such as the Mandan and Pawnee, lived in earth-lodge villages. Earth lodges were large, dome-shaped houses covered with earth. They were made by constructing a wooden frame of logs and beams (usually cottonwood), covering the walls and roof rafters with small branches, brush, and grass, and then packing the exterior with a thick layer of earth or sod. The earth layer served as insulation that provided protection from the intense summer heat and the bitter winter cold. The interior was usually quite spacious, providing living quarters for several related families. Among the Pawnee, earth lodges reached 3 to 4 m in height (10 to 14 ft) and 9 to 15 m (30 to 50 ft) in diameter. Women cooked food around a central fire, and smoke vented through a hole in the roof. Sleeping compartments lined the inner walls. After the Pawnee acquired horses, they often stabled them in the earth lodge at night to prevent their theft by raiding parties.

B.2.

Tipi

The tipi (also spelled tepee or teepee), probably the best-known Native American dwelling, was a cone-shaped tent covered with animal hides. It was used primarily by nomadic tribes of the Plains. Women were responsible for making, setting up, and moving tipis. To erect a tipi, they first set up a cone-shaped frame of long wooden poles. Three or four main poles were staked in the ground first and fastened together near the top; then other poles were added to form a roughly circular base. A waterproof cover, made from 12 or more bison hides sewn together, was pulled over the frame. (Plains Indians began to use canvas for tipi covers after it became available in the late 1800s.) A hole at the top permitted smoke from the central fire to escape. This opening was adjustable with outer flaps of the cover and could be closed in rainy weather.

Each family had its own tipi that measured from 3.5 to 5 m (12 to 16 ft) in diameter at the base. Stones or stakes held the bottom edges of the tipi cover in place, but in the heat of summer, families often rolled up the cover to allow a cool breeze to circulate. In winter, families often added an inner lining of skin to help insulate the tipi against snow and cold winter winds.

B.3.

Longhouse

The longhouse, built by Iroquois tribes of the Northeast, was a large, long building that typically housed six to ten families of five or six people each. Most Iroquois longhouses were about 18 m (60 ft) long, 5.5 m (18 ft) high, and 5.5 m (18 ft) wide. The largest known longhouse was 102 m (334 ft) long and was home to perhaps 150 to 200 people. The framework, constructed of slender wooden poles or saplings (young trees), was covered with elm bark sewn on in overlapping layers like shingles.

The interior of a longhouse was dimly lit, with the only outside light coming from smoke holes in the roof and from doorways at both ends of the structure. During snow or rain, sliding panels covered the smoke holes, filling the longhouse with the smells of cooking food, tobacco, babies, soot, and sweat. The floor space was divided by a central corridor that ran the length of the building. Each family in the longhouse had its own living space about 7.5 m (25 ft) long and shared a fire with the family living on the opposite side of the corridor. Each family living space had a low, wide platform covered with reed mats or thick bearskin rugs for sitting or sleeping. The platform was built a short distance off the ground to avoid dampness and fleas. Shelves above the platform held robes, food, and cooking utensils, and other items were stored below the platform.

Iroquois villages typically consisted of about 30 or 40 longhouses surrounded by a high palisade, a fence made from pointed wooden posts set upright in the ground. Some types had saplings or bark woven between the posts. Palisades protected villagers from enemy attack and also helped to keep out wild animals. Sometimes two or three palisades encircled a village. Longhouse villages were often located between the fork of two streams, which provided drinkable water, fishing, and convenient canoe transport to nearby villages.

B.4.

Wigwam

The wigwam was a domed hut. To construct a wigwam, flexible saplings or poles were set into the ground and bent into an arched frame. Then the frame was covered by sheets of bark, woven mats, or animal hides. An opening was left in the frame for a low doorway, which could be covered with mats or a hide. A hole in the roof allowed smoke to escape from a central fire. Most wigwams housed one or two families, ranging in size from 2 to 6 m (7 to 20 ft) at the base.

Wigwams were used primarily by the Algonquian-speaking peoples of the Northeast woodlands. The Menominee, for example, lived most of the year in wigwams covered with mats of reeds and cattails. Summer heat and humidity, however, made these structures too hot, so they moved into spacious, rectangular bark-covered houses with peaked roofs and high ceilings that provided better air circulation. Some types of sweat lodges, used by the Menominee and many other Indians for rituals and purification, were similar to wigwams in construction but smaller and more temporary. Other sweat lodges were permanent, partially subterranean structures similar to earth lodges.

B.5.

Hogan and Wickiup

The hogan, the traditional Navajo (Diné) home, was a round or polygonal (six-sided or eight-sided) domed house made of logs or poles and plastered with mud or earth. The entrance traditionally faced east to greet the rising sun. It had one large room, up to 7.5 m (25 ft) in diameter, and was designed for a single family. The Navajo tended to live in isolated groups of several related families, each of which had its own hogan. Some hogans were built for ceremonies or storage. Although hogans are no longer the primary form of housing for Navajo people today, they are still used to some extent, especially by older people. Hogan is a Navajo word meaning “home place.”

The wickiup was a similar though less substantial dwelling used by the Apache peoples of the Southwest. The Mescalero Apache built these dome-shaped structures by erecting a frame of sturdy but flexible branches. Then they covered the frame with grass thatching, brush, or hides. Some Great Basin Indians, such as the Paiute, built structures similar to wickiups.

B.6.

Pueblo and Kiva

In contrast to the single-family, one-room dwellings of the Navajo and the Apache tribes, Pueblo Indians lived in distinctive, apartment-like building complexes made of stone or adobe bricks (made from sun-baked clay and straw) and supported by wooden beams. These dwellings, centuries old, are still in use today. The early Spanish explorers referred to these housing complexes as pueblos, Spanish for “villages” or “towns.” Building complexes were typically two or three stories high—the largest were five stories high—and had enough rooms to house many families. A Hopi dwelling, for example, was home to mothers, daughters, granddaughters, and all their husbands and children. Each family lived primarily in a single room, using other rooms in the building for storage, work, and sacred rites. Rooms were constantly being added to accommodate more people. The Anasazi, the ancestors of modern Pueblo peoples, lived in cliff dwellings, multichambered houses built beneath rocky overhangs on the sides of cliffs.

The Pueblos also constructed kivas, underground or partly underground chambers entered through roof hatchways with ladders. Seldom entered by women, the kiva was a men’s club, used for religious ceremonies and rituals, council meetings, and weaving cloth.

B.7.

Plank House

The wooden plank house was made by Northwest Coast Indians, who had access to bountiful forests of red and yellow cedar trees. They used large cedar logs or beams to make a rectangular frame and then attached hand-split cedar planks to the frame either vertically or horizontally. Plank houses typically housed several families and ranged in size from 4.5 by 6 m (15 by 20 ft) to 15 by 18 m (50 by 60 ft). Plank-house villages were often located on beaches.

B.8.

Igloo

One of the most distinctive house types was the igloo, a domed house built of snow blocks used by the Central Inuit in the Arctic. (The word igloo comes from the Inuit word iglu, which can refer to any type of house.) Igloos provided effective protection against the cold and the wind. Working from the inside, the builder piled up snow blocks in a continuous spiral that leaned slightly inward, then capped the dome with a snow block at the top. Entering the igloo required crawling on hands and knees through a short tunnel covered by an arch of snow blocks; the floor of the tunnel was sunken to trap heat inside the igloo. Igloos usually held a single family and ranged from 2 to 4.5 m (6 to 15 ft) in diameter at the base. In the summer, the Central Inuit lived in tents covered by seal or caribou hides. Other Inuit groups lived in stone houses covered with sod and supported by a frame of whale rib or driftwood.

B.9.

Chickee

The Seminole and Miccosukee tribes of Florida lived in distinctive structures known as chickees, open-sided homes measuring about 3 by 5 m (9 by 16 ft). The hot, humid climate of the Southeast made open-sided structures much more comfortable than closed dwellings, which did not permit as much air circulation. Chickees consisted of a wooden platform raised a short distance above the ground and covered with a roof. Family members sat and slept on the platform, protected from the marshy ground and torrential rains. The steeply pitched roof, made from the leaves of the palmetto tree, created a natural storage space where articles remained dry even in slanting rain. Palmetto logs provided the central frame.

C.

Clothing and Adornment

The traditional clothing of Native Americans varied according to climate, cultural traditions, and the clothing materials available. Tribes that subsisted primarily by farming made most of their clothing from plant materials. Among hunting tribes, animal skins and fur were common.

In hot climates Indians wore minimal clothing and body adornment was common. In the extreme heat of the Southwest, for example, Mojave women wore knee-length skirts of willow bark. Men dressed in breechcloths (loincloths) woven from strands from the inner bark of willow. During the winter, rabbit-skin robes provided warmth. The Mojave customarily tattooed their chins and painted their faces with a wide variety of elaborate designs.

The Timucua, who lived in hot, humid Florida, also wore little clothing. Timucua women wore dresses of Spanish moss and decorated their bodies with intricate tattoos. Timucua men wore a breechcloth and adorned their bodies with tattoos from head to ankles. The tattoos were created by pricking the skin with needles dipped in cinnabar or lampblack (powdered carbon), and their particular design indicated a person’s social status. In winter, the Timucua wore cloaks made of feathers or animal skin for warmth.

Peoples of the Arctic developed clothing adapted for the extreme cold. The Inuit had to wear multiple layers of clothing to protect themselves from blizzards and February temperatures that regularly dipped below -28°C (-20°F). Although clothing varied by region, the basic winter wardrobe was usually a hooded parka made of a double suit of caribou hides: an outer layer worn with the fur on the outside, and an inner layer worn with the fur on the inside. During the summer months, the inner suit was worn by itself. For footwear, men wore two sets of fur stockings beneath soft sealskin boots known as mukluks. Women wore a distinctive one-piece combination of leggings and boots. They carried their babies on their upper backs in the open hood of their parkas.

Farther west, the Aleut, who lived in the Aleutian Islands, used animal intestines to make waterproof clothing. Both women and men wore ankle-length parkas made of walrus intestine stitched together from horizontal strips; men also wore sealskin trousers and waterproof overdresses made of sea lion intestine. Aleut garments, except for rain parkas, differed from those of the Inuit in having standing collars instead of hoods. In contrast to Inuit women, Aleut women carried their babies in cradles instead of in parkas. One of the most distinctive articles of Aleut clothing, worn by hunters in their sea kayaks, was a wooden hat shaped like a deep inverted scoop and decorated with beads and sea lion whiskers. The Aleut were said to wear no foot coverings except on and near the Alaska Peninsula, where they wore boots.

Deer, elk, caribou, and bison hides were some of the most common materials for clothing and footwear in North America. Tanning the hide—that is, turning it into soft, durable leather—required considerable work. In most areas, women were responsible for tanning hides and making all the clothing for their families. Women began the tanning process by scraping fat, tissue, and hair from the hide until it was clean and smooth. For warmer clothes and blankets the hair was often left on the hide. Next the hide was softened using one of various techniques, which usually involved repeated rubbing, soaking, drying, stretching, and smoking. To soften a bison hide, for example, Plains Indians rubbed it with a mixture of bison brains, fat, and other ingredients. After the hides were tanned, women cut and sewed the leather into dresses, breechcloths, shirts, robes, and moccasins.

Among the Pueblo Indians of the Southwest, cotton was the most common clothing material. The Pueblo were the only Native Americans in what is now the United States who wore cotton garments before Europeans came. Men did nearly all the weaving. Among the Hopi, men used looms suspended from high beams to weave cotton blankets and larger sheets of cotton cloth for clothing. After the Hopi acquired sheep from the Spanish, men began to weave wool blankets and cloth.

All groups wore special clothing for ceremonial occasions. The Tlingit of the Northwest Coast had especially elaborate clothing for dances and feasts, much of it emphasizing the wearer’s social rank. Some of these items included brightly patterned blankets woven from mountain goat wool and cedar bark (known as Chilkat blankets), conical painted wooden hats, and painted leather dance capes. On the Plains, high-ranking warriors often wore trailing feather headdresses and scalp shirts (shirts decorated with portions of enemy scalps) to denote their status for ceremonial occasions.

Many Indians decorated their clothing with painted designs and with porcupine quills softened in water and dyed with plant pigments. The elaborately beaded designs that decorated dresses, shirts, leggings, and moccasins appeared only after contact with Europeans, who traded manufactured glass beads. These beads were desirable for their bright colors, and they were easier to apply to clothing than quills. In the Great Plains beadwork usually took the form of geometric designs, while in the Northeast the designs tended to use curved floral motifs.

Traditional jewelry, while similar in form, varied in style and materials. Claws, teeth, and shells were the most common materials. Inland groups obtained shells through extensive trade networks; shell objects were considered signs of prestige because of the difficulty and expense of acquiring them. In the Northwest Coast area, men and women used claws, teeth, and shells to make necklaces, belts, armbands, and leg bands. Both men and women wore earrings, but only men pierced the nasal septum and attached ornaments to it. In the Southeast, men and women wore ear ornaments of feathers, shiny stones, and pieces of shell. They also wore strings of pearls and necklaces made from beads of bone, stone, or shell. In the Southwest, jewelry usually took the form of necklaces and ear ornaments made of turquoise, other precious stones, or shells.

To learn more about the clothing and adornment of Native Americans in a specific geographical area, see the Culture Areas section of this article.

D.

Social and Political Organization

The size and organization of Native American communities was determined by a number of conditions, including climate, available resources, and the presence or absence of neighboring groups. People who inhabited desert regions with sparse natural resources, for example, had to live in small groups that moved frequently to find new supplies of food, firewood, and other materials. The small size of the group meant that its people did not need a highly structured government or strict laws of inheritance. Instead, flexibility was important because it enabled them to make decisions based on the changing conditions of their environment.

Native American groups that lived in areas of abundant natural resources, or on fertile lands suitable for agriculture, had enough food to establish permanent villages. The larger concentration of people in villages created the need to organize people in certain ways. For example, a village might need to organize a large work force to build and operate an irrigation system for its crops. Inheritance rules were important so that land and houses could be handed down to children in orderly ways. Government also had to be more structured, with agreed-upon social behaviors and ways of accomplishing tasks.

Scholars have developed various terms to classify Native American systems of social and political organization, including band, tribe, lineage, clan, association, phratry, moiety, chiefdoms, and confederacy. These systems ranged from simple to complex, depending on the group’s environment, its needs, and its traditions and customs.

D.1.

Bands

At the time of European contact, the family was the largest permanent social unit for most people in the Great Basin, Arctic, and Baja California because resources were scarce in these areas. During the spring and summer, when resources were most plentiful, several extended families organized into bands with leaders who exercised limited control over others in the band. The band was the social unit of nearly all hunters and gatherers because of its flexibility in membership. Families were free to join a different band if resources were more plentiful in that band’s territory.

The Eastern Shoshone of the Great Basin practiced this system of social organization, assembling into a large band in the summer and then dispersing into three to five smaller bands each winter. In the absence of a tribal council, the leader of the large band was a middle-aged or older man who had distinguished himself in war or as a shaman (religious leader). He ordered a hunt or a move to a new area and counseled other important decisions that affected the group as a whole, but he did not deal with internal disputes. To survive the winter, families left the large band to gather resources best exploited by just a few people, using what they could collect to supplement the dried food that they had prepared to see their families through the bitterly cold winter.

In addition to the band, the nuclear family—a father, a mother, and their unmarried children—was important to foragers such as the Shoshone. Where resources were most meager, groups of Shoshone spent most of the year in family groups, traveling alone through the countryside in search of food. In certain seasons, these families joined others to hunt cooperatively as a band, dispersing after a few months.

D.2.

Composite Bands and Tribes

A composite band consisted of a larger group of families than would belong to a simple band. Leadership in composite bands was informal and was based on influence rather than authority over band members. Many Native American groups that are thought of as tribes were actually composite bands. The Comanche of the Great Plains, while sharing a common language, customs, and ethnic identity, are a good example of composite bands that never organized at a tribal level. As a nomadic bison-hunting people, the Comanche, in the early and middle 1900s, had a population of about 6,000 to 7,000 people. When resources were plentiful, they were divided among 5 large bands; when resources were scarce, they spread out into as many as 13 smaller bands. Individuals and families could shift from one band to another, and families could form a new band. Each band was headed by an older male member, called a peace chief, who was known for his kindness, wisdom, and leadership abilities. Another more aggressive man, called a war chief, led warriors in raiding neighbors and conducting warfare. Although the Comanche shared a strong awareness of common identity, each band was autonomous, and seldom did several bands join to carry out common goals.

True tribes, while not necessarily larger than composite bands, usually organized their social and political activities at a much wider level and had much greater group cohesiveness. For example, the Yuman-speaking peoples who lived along the Colorado River were organized into agricultural tribes of 2,000 to 3,000 people. Each tribe, such as the Mojave, had multiple chiefs (usually including a peace chief and a war chief) and a strong sense of tribal nationalism. During times of war, all Mojave united together to fight other tribes. However, political organization at the tribal level was generally limited to warfare, and at other times the Mojave were loosely divided into bands.

Before European contact, tribes were a much less common form of political organization than bands and villages that governed their own affairs. After contact some Plains groups organized as tribes to survive European encroachment. The Cheyenne, who numbered about 4,000, were governed by a civil council of 44 chiefs. The council met once a year when the entire Cheyenne population gathered together for the annual bison hunt. For most of the year, however, the Cheyenne lived in bands.

D.3.

Lineages and Clans

Families in a tribe were often linked together through lineages or clans, which are groups whose members claim common ancestry. A lineage was only several generations deep, and lineage members traced their descent from a known ancestor. In contrast, clans persisted across so many generations that members, although they presumed a common ancestor, could not trace specific family links. Lineages and clans traced ancestry either through the female line alone (matrilineal descent) or through the male line alone (patrilineal descent). In some tribes, clans named themselves after animals and traced their ancestry to animal totems that represented the clan’s mythological history. For example, according to Hopi belief, the Bear Clan arose when a group of Hopi left the underworld and came upon the body of a dead bear. All groups with clans had lineages that made up each clan. Other groups had only lineages.

Clans and lineages served to organize many aspects of village life. Clan membership usually determined who was an appropriate marriage partner, who inherited property, which families lived together, and to whom political power was transferred when a leader died. For example, in most Native American societies, a person had to choose a marriage partner from outside his or her own clan. The clan also supervised the ceremonies that initiated the young into the status of adults. Individuals were deeply loyal to their clan and would readily help members of their clan who lived in another village.

The Iroquois tribes of the Northeast had matrilineal clans in which women wielded considerable political power. The senior (highest-ranking) woman in the clan, called the clan mother, consulted with other women to choose the man from their clan who would represent them at the annual Grand Council of the Iroquois League, a powerful confederacy of five tribes. The women of the clan could also impeach him if he failed to represent their interests properly.

D.4.

Associations

Although there were some tribes without clans, almost all tribes had associations (also called sodalities), which were clubs whose membership was not based on kinship. Each association had its own function, such as war, hunting, medicine, or religion. For example, nearly every Plains tribe had warrior societies that guarded the camps during periods of intertribal warfare and played a major role in warfare. Many tribes had different warrior societies for different age groups, with boys moving from one society to the next as they grew older and more experienced.

D.5.

Phratries

Phratries (pronounced FRAY-trees) were groups of related clans whose primary purpose was to govern marriage rules and to provide aid. For example, in the Southwest, a Navajo (Diné) woman or man was expected to marry an individual who not only was from a different clan but also was from a different phratry. Otherwise, he or she would be committing incest, a violation believed to bring terrible misfortune to the individual and his or her relatives.

D.6.

Moieties

Many Indian tribes were divided into two groups called moieties (pronounced MOY-uh-tees). Each moiety, in turn, was often composed of related clans. For example, among the Osage, farmers who lived in present-day Missouri, 9 clans formed the “household” moiety, which symbolized the sky and peace, and 15 clans formed the “sacred ones” moiety, which symbolized the Earth and war. People were not allowed to marry someone from their own moiety. Each Osage village had two chiefs, one from each moiety, and each chief had identical authority. The chiefs’ primary role was to keep peace among village families and to organize and lead the village bison hunts.

D.7.

Chiefdoms

Chiefdoms, even more complex than tribes, were governed by a single chief who was both the political and religious leader. His position was often hereditary within a single family or clan that had rights based on supernatural powers attributed to them in their origin story. Whereas bands and tribes were egalitarian societies, in which lineages and clans had equal status in principle, chiefdoms were ranked societies, in which certain families enjoyed greater authority and privileges. Access to resources was based on inherited status. The chief, viewed as a god on Earth, evoked reverence and fear from his subjects. His supernatural status conferred authority and power, and he governed through decree rather than consensus.

Powerful chiefdoms in North America arose with the Mississippian culture, which flourished in the eastern part of the continent from approximately ad 800 until the arrival of European explorers. Its people, who subsisted through intensive maize farming, built large towns with earth platforms, or mounds, supporting temples and rulers’ residences. Across the Mississippi River from present-day St. Louis, Missouri, the Mississippians built the city of Cahokia, which, at its apex between ad 1100 and 1200, may have had a population of 20,000. Its central temple mound rose in four terraces to an elevation of 30 m (100 ft), atop which lived the chief and his close relatives, who were considered nobles.

A similar chiefdom, the Natchez, survived into the 18th century in the Southeast. Like the earlier Mississippians, the Natchez had a central temple mound as well as other mounds for nobles’ residences and for burials. The supreme ruler, known as the Great Sun, was considered divine, as were his relatives. Most of the Natchez were commoners, but those who were nobility were divided into three ranks: Suns, Nobles, and Honored People. All ranks of nobility were allowed to marry only commoners.

D.8.

Confederacies

In areas where warfare among tribes, usually over resources and territory, occurred frequently, some tribes formed confederacies (also called federations), or alliances of several tribes. By becoming part of a confederacy, tribes could amass greater forces against their enemies. The best-known confederacy of Native American tribes is the Iroquois League, or League of Five Nations, formed in the 16th century as an alliance of the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk tribes; the Tuscarora later joined and it became the League of Six Nations. A Grand Council, composed of male delegates from each tribe, met annually to settle disputes between tribes and to plan military strategy. Many believe that the ideals of the Iroquois Confederacy—unity, democracy, vision, and fair representation—inspired American colonial leaders to seek the help of the Iroquois in their attempt to replace the British monarchy with a democratic alternative; in 1754 they formulated the Albany Plan of Union, which may have been based on Iroquois ideals (see Albany Congress). Today, the Haudenosaunee, as the Iroquois call themselves, continue to maintain the confederacy and to regularly convene the Grand Council.

The Algonquian tribes of the Northeast also formed confederacies, including the Abenaki Confederacy, Delaware Confederacy, Powhatan Confederacy, Wampanoag Confederacy, and Wappinger Confederacy. Another important Native American confederacy was the Creek Confederacy in the Southeast.

E.

Marriage and Family Life

In contrast to industrial societies, where marriage is usually a private relationship between two individuals, marriage in Native American tribal societies was more a public relationship between two families. Instead of simply taking a spouse, a person assumed obligations to a group of in-laws. For example, among certain Apache tribes of the Southwest, when a man married, he assumed the support of his wife’s parents for the rest of his life—even if his wife died. Kinship played an important role in organizing family and work life. Kin ties helped to determine potential marriage partners, where a person lived, whom a person farmed or hunted or gathered with, and whom a person called on for aid and advice.

E.1.

Selecting a Partner

In most Native American societies, children married at a relatively young age. Girls were considered eligible for marriage after first menstruation, around age 13. Boys usually married before the age of 20. However, many young men waited to marry until their early 20s, so they could prove their ability as a good provider. Most societies tolerated sexual activity before marriage, although some, like the Cheyenne and Crow, placed a high value on sexual abstinence before marriage.

Parents usually chose a mate for their children. A child’s older relatives might also participate in the choice of marriage partner. In some tribes, marriages were arranged far in advance, during a child’s infancy or early childhood. In other areas—particularly the Arctic, Subarctic, and Great Basin—young people had greater control over their choice of spouse. If a boy and a girl expressed interest in each other, their families would decide whether to permit them to marry. If the families approved, a date was set for a wedding ceremony or an exchange of gifts. Marriage to someone from another tribe was unusual but not prohibited unless the person was from a warring tribe.

The only rule that universally governed the choice of marriage partners was the incest taboo, a prohibition against marrying close relatives. Members of the same nuclear family—specifically, sister and brother, father and daughter, or mother and son—were never allowed to marry and produce children. In most societies, the incest taboo was extended to prohibit marriage between some cousins, uncles and nieces, aunts and nephews, and other close relatives. However, each group had its own definition of which relationships were considered to be too close for marriage. Among some groups, such as Northwest Coast peoples and the Chipewyan of the Subarctic, first cousins were preferred as marriage partners.

Most North American Indians allowed polygyny, the marriage of one man to two or more women. Often these wives were sisters. But usually only wealthy or powerful men were able to support several wives. In some societies, such as those of the Great Plains, women far outnumbered men, because a large number of men were killed each year through bison hunting or warfare with other tribes. Men were expected to have several wives not only to maintain the population but also to lighten the wives’ crushing workload of tanning, sewing, beading, cooking, and packing camp. The wives could also share childrearing responsibilities. Polygyny was most common in the Northwest Coast region; in some parts of this region more than 20 percent of marriages were polygynous. Other groups, such as the Iroquois and the western Pueblos, exclusively practiced monogamy, the marriage of one man to one woman.

E.2.

Marriage Customs

Once a young person’s mate was chosen, it was customary in many North American Indian societies for the families of the bride and groom to exchange gifts. This custom was a means of establishing the social rank and position of each of the families. The groom’s family gave the bride’s family goods that were among the most valuable symbols of wealth in their culture, and her family reciprocated with gifts of equal value. After the Europeans brought horses, a young man often gave his prospective father-in-law at least one horse for the right to marry his daughter. This custom was most common on the Great Plains and Northwest Coast. In other areas, rather than giving gifts, a male suitor lived with the bride and her family for a year to demonstrate his ability to hunt and earn a living. This custom, known as bride service, dominated in the Subarctic and Great Basin. Many Indian groups practiced both the exchange of wealth and bride service. Often, the groom helped his wife’s family to farm the land or build the house where the couple would reside.

Marriage ceremonies varied widely. In some societies, there was no formal ceremony, and the exchange of gifts served to sanction the union of bride and groom. Other peoples held formal ceremonies marked by feasts and celebrations. Among the most elaborate wedding ceremonies were those of the Hopi in the Southwest. Traditional Hopi weddings still occur today. These formal affairs last at least a week but take a year or more of preparation involving all the members of the two families. Among other rituals, members of the bride’s family give the groom’s family massive amounts of food—flour, cornmeal, baked goods, and two years’ worth of corn harvest—to show their prowess as homemakers. The groom and his family, in turn, bring meat, firewood, and clothing to the bride’s family to prove his ability to provide for the family.

Living arrangements for a newly married couple differed depending upon the rules of the society. Most commonly, the wife was expected to leave her band or family home and spend the rest of her life with her husband’s band. Such an arrangement, which anthropologists call patrilocal residence, enabled the husband to continue to hunt in a territory that he had grown up in and knew well. Groups in the Arctic, eastern Subarctic, northern Great Plains, California, southern Northwest Coast, Plateau, and the Southwest practiced patrilocal residence. Among other groups, such as the Hopi, the new husband moved to the household of his wife and spent the rest of his life with her relatives, an arrangement known as matrilocal residence. In this way, property remained in the woman’s family and was passed down to her daughters. The new husband farmed his wife’s fields and lived with his wife in the house where she had grown up.

Less common, but found in the Great Basin and western Subarctic, were societies with bilocal residence rules, in which the couple could reside with either the husband’s or wife’s families or shift back and forth between the families. Very seldom did people establish their own home in an area where neither set of parents lived (neolocal residence). However, sometimes the husband would decide to move with his wife to a new band that had greater access to food or other important resources.

Divorce was not uncommon in Native American societies, and sometimes a husband or wife remarried almost immediately. Laziness, continual bickering, infidelity, failure to have children, and lack of respect for in-laws were acceptable grounds for divorce.

E.3.

Childrearing and Education

Native American societies usually desired large families. Children often died during birth or in the first years of life, so having many children helped to maintain and replenish the population. In addition, children were desirable because they helped their parents with food gathering, farming, and care of younger children. They also cared for their parents as they aged. In general, family members depended greatly upon each other, with grandmothers and aunts taking care of the children when a mother had to work in the fields. Babies and children were often raised and cared for by members of the extended family—grandparents, uncles, and aunts all assumed part of the parental role.

Native American children were given little formal educational instruction; instead, they learned by example and by doing. Relatives usually educated boys and girls separately. Mothers and other female relatives taught girls to sew, weave, make pottery, and gather and prepare food, while fathers and male relatives taught boys to hunt, ride horses, and participate in warfare. Children were lavishly praised for their accomplishments. Each time a boy killed a kind of animal he had not killed before, his relatives praised him and recognized his achievement. But they also taught him generosity by making him give away all the meat. Similarly, a girl had to give away the first roots, berries, or seeds that she gathered.

Another means of instruction was the telling of stories. Grandparents played important roles as teachers. They recounted their own experiences to the children and told traditional stories that included valuable lessons related to proper behavior. They also passed on tribal history and creation stories. Such stories were generally told in the winter months, when there was less work to perform, the nights were longer, and cold weather forced families to stay inside.

Discipline of children was usually the responsibility of someone other than the parents, often the father’s sister or the mother’s brother. This arrangement helped keep hostility between parents and their children at a low level. Spirits, brought to life by masked or painted men whose identity was disguised, also served as disciplinarians. Physical punishment was rare or mild throughout native North America. The most common form of correction was ridicule. Ridiculing a person in song or through personal criticism in public was common. Among the Crow Indians of the Great Plains, a person even had a designated “joking relative,” such as a cousin, who ridiculed him or her for bad behavior. The threat that this relative could accuse one of misbehavior acted as a deterrent to such behavior.

E.4.

Puberty Rites

Puberty rites, also called initiation rites, mark the passage of boys and girls into adulthood. Among some Native American societies, such as the Sioux of the Great Plains, boys were initiated into manhood with a vision quest, in which they sought contact with the spirit world. For a Sioux boy at puberty, seeking a vision meant first purifying himself in a sweat bath in a willow-stick lodge covered with bison skins; water poured over hot rocks inside the lodge produced steam to cleanse the body and spirit. A shaman, a person with ties to the spirit world, prayed for him, invoking the spirits to come to the boy’s aid. Next the boy walked to a lonely hilltop wearing only a breechcloth (loincloth) and moccasins. Crouching in a pit, the boy stayed there for four days and nights without food until receiving a vision or message from his guardian spirit, who might take the form of an animal, human, or natural phenomenon. This guardian spirit would provide guidance and purpose to the person for the rest of his life. Although first undertaken in puberty, the vision quest could be repeated as often as a man felt the need for spiritual assistance. Vision quests are still performed today, although not nearly as widely as in past times, as Plains Indians seek to recover their spiritual roots.

Puberty rituals for girls varied. Girls could go on a vision quest, but it was considered less necessary than it was for boys. Some Native American cultures developed rituals around first menstruation. In the Yukon Subarctic and on the Plateau, a pubescent girl had to follow special behavior for one to four years. For example, she might be expected to abstain from certain kinds of meat so that she did not spoil the men’s success in hunting game. In nearly all cultures, a pubescent girl was supposed to avoid contact with hunters, fishermen, shamans, and priests. These individuals were believed to be susceptible to harm from her close contact with supernatural forces. Elaborate girls’ puberty ceremonies were held by northern California groups and by the Navajo and Apache tribes. Still held today, the Girls’ Puberty Ceremony of the Western Apache, also called the Sunrise Ceremony, lasts four days and four nights. Girls who have had their first menstrual period during the previous year are blessed by singers and by their relatives and friends. During the four days, the girls are believed to embody White Painted Woman, a spiritual being who gave many blessings to the people. The girls demonstrate the strength they will need in life by running in the four directions, dancing continuously for many hours, and undergoing other rites. In the Mescalero Apache version of this ceremony, singers recount the history of the Apache, reminding the girls of their responsibility to their people. Thus, the ceremony not only instructs and honors the girls as they make the social transition to womanhood, but it also affirms the closeness of the entire community and its enduring history over time.

E.5.

Division of Labor

In most Indian communities, men and women performed different tasks. Men and boys had many responsibilities, including hunting, trapping, trading, butchering animals, and making boats, tools, weapons, carvings, and other objects. They also did most of the fishing, clearing of land, preparation of the soil, building of houses, and the making of rope and cords. Women and girls were responsible for carrying water, gathering and processing wild plant foods, and cooking meals. They also gathered shellfish and fuel, wove cloth, made clothing and mats, and fashioned pottery. Either or both sexes farmed the land, prepared animal skins, and made leather products.

E.6.

Unmarried Individuals

The only unmarried individuals in Native American societies were those too young to be married, the widowed, the divorced, and berdaches, men who assumed many of the mannerisms, behavior patterns, and tasks of women. Yet sometimes berdaches married men. In such cases, the berdache fulfilled the traditional wifely role while the male partner provided game from hunting and performed other male tasks. Some Native American cultures also had “manly-hearted women” who hunted and assumed other male roles; often the manly-hearted woman married another woman who fulfilled female tasks.

F.

Recreation and Games

Sports and games were an important part of many Native American cultures. Many games held a central place in ceremonies, and many popular sports began as religious rites. Often games prepared participants for such activities as war and hunting. Nearly all Indian games required the participants to prepare spiritually and to demonstrate high standards of sportsmanship. Indians often lavishly decorated their game equipment and wore body paint or decorations during the game. Wagering on the outcome of games was very common. Gambling was not considered to be a moral issue, but rather was part of the social life of the community.

Competitive team sports, such as ball games and foot races, were the most widespread and popular games. The most prevalent ball game was lacrosse, one of a variety of stickball games in which players could not touch the ball with their hands. Played with a single netted racket or stick by the Iroquois and with two rackets by Southeastern tribes, lacrosse is considerably tamer today than its original form. The original form was such a violent game that it was considered to be a peacetime substitute for war, and nearly any strategy was acceptable, including stomping, butting, and biting. Players were often killed in the melee. As many as 700 players participated in the Choctaw version of lacrosse, running, leaping, and tripping each other in their efforts to catch the ball in their sticks and throw it to their goal. Played between the residents of neighboring Choctaw villages, the games were major social events that drew over 1,000 spectators, many of whom wagered skins or furs on the outcome.

Even more popular than lacrosse was the hoop-and-pole game, which required players to stop a rolling hoop by hitting it with a wooden pole or spear. Two players or teams could play, and the highest score was awarded for stopping the hoop with the pointed end of the pole. Played on a smooth, level course roughly 45 m (150 ft) long, the hoop-and-pole game tested fleetness, eyesight, and skill in spear throwing, all essential skills for warfare and hunting. A similar game called chunkey (also spelled chungke or tchung-kee) was played with a stone disk or ring as the target; further variations used netted hoops as targets or darts or arrows instead of poles. Other athletic games included archery, wrestling, foot racing, and after the acquisition of horses, horse racing. Snow snake, a game played in colder northern climates, involved hurling a long, smooth stick on a course of ice or packed snow; the player whose stick slid farthest was the winner.

Men and women devoted a great deal of leisure time to playing games of chance, such as dice games or guessing games. The hand game was a guessing game played throughout much of North America. Teams would take turns guessing which of an opponent’s hands held a marked object. A correct answer won a counting stick (used to tally the score), and the team that won all of the counting sticks claimed a prize. Guesses were often accompanied by singing and drumming. Another guessing game, the moccasin game, required the winner to identify which moccasin hid a stone. The moccasin game was integral to the Navajo (Diné) creation story. In this story, night animals and day animals played the moccasin game to determine whether the Earth should be in total darkness or total light. Neither side won, so each day was divided into periods of darkness and daylight.

Children played games among themselves that prepared them for adult activities. Girls played with dolls and other miniatures (such as miniature tipis on the Plains), while boys pretended to hunt and make war. Grandparents, who often had more leisure time than parents, prepared children for their adult roles through play.

Storytelling was a popular form of entertainment and an important way that older tribal members handed down cultural knowledge and moral teachings. The traditional time for storytelling was winter, when inclement weather kept families inside in most parts of North America. According to Native American belief, winter was the only time that bears and other hibernating animals could be talked about without disturbing them.

G.

Transportation

The most common form of Native American transportation was foot travel. The backpack was the primary means of carrying loads, whether a single woman was carrying home the food that she had gathered for her family or an entire group of people was shifting camp. Women consistently carried heavier loads than men because men had to be prepared to pursue game at any moment and to defend their families. The wheel, used in the Middle East as early as 3500 bc, was absent in the Americas before Europeans arrived.

Canoes were used for transportation nearly everywhere in North America, except for arid regions such as the Great Basin and Southwest. In the Arctic, Subarctic, Northeast, and on the Plateau, most canoes were built of wooden frames covered by bark or animal hides. The Iroquois of the Northeast used elm bark to cover their canoes. Canoes were an essential means of long-distance travel for Iroquois warriors, who might leave their villages for as long as three months at a time on military expeditions, and, soon after their return, go on hunting or trading expeditions that took them far from home. The lightest and most maneuverable canoes, however, were made by the Algonquian Indians, who lived north of the Iroquois in lands where white birch trees were so plentiful that the light of the noonday sun barely reached the forest floor. Bark from the birch trees was sewn into sheets large enough to make a canoe. These exceptionally light, waterproof vessels so impressed French fur trader Samuel de Champlain that he encouraged his men to replace their clumsy French skiffs with birchbark canoes.

Dugout canoes made from large hollowed-out logs were common in much of North America. The peoples of the Northwest Coast were the masters of this method, and some tribes made as many as seven different types of canoes. The largest and most impressive of these types was the Haida war or ceremonial canoe, a seagoing vessel that was as long as 21 m (70 ft) and could hold up to 60 people. The canoe was made by splitting a giant red cedar log lengthwise, shaping it, and hollowing it out with controlled burning and hand tools. A tall prow, elaborately carved and painted, improved the canoe’s stability and repelled wave action in stormy seas. Other Northwest tribes, such as the Nootka and the Makah, also built large seagoing dugout canoes for whaling, seal hunting, and trading. Northwest Indian canoes were highly prized and often used for trade.

Bullboats were round, basin-shaped boats made and used primarily by Mandan women of the Great Plains to transport goods across shallow rivers or streams. To construct a bullboat, several women worked together to stretch bison hide over a willow frame. A single paddler could successfully steer a bullboat. The vessel was kept on a straight course using a drag of driftwood attached to the bison tail that had been left on the hide.

The Ojibwa and other Subarctic peoples used toboggans and snowshoes for winter travel. An Ojibwa family had to move at least once or twice during the winter to new hunting grounds because fresh game was so hard to find. They loaded their goods onto toboggans that were as much as 2.5 m (8 ft) long and were often pulled by dogs. Even with toboggans hauling supplies, women shouldered loads of up to 64 kg (140 lb) on their backs, while men ranged through the woods in search of game. Snow remained on the ground until early spring, so snowshoes were necessary. Their usage determined their shape. Most northern groups preferred long, narrow snowshoes for use on already traveled trails, while more southern groups were partial to rounded snowshoes for traveling over fresh snow. Spruce, birch, or willow provided the frames, and snowshoe webbing came from partly tanned strips of hide. With the proper type of snowshoes to keep him on top of the snow, a hunter could easily keep pace with caribou or moose as the animals moved with difficulty through high drifts.

Until horses became available in the mid-1700s, moving camp on the Great Plains was a lengthy and exhausting experience, and groups were only able to cover 8 to 10 km (5 to 6 mi) per day. Each family used a dog to pull a travois (pronounced truh-VOY), an apparatus that consisted of two poles on either side of the animal that were harnessed to its chest, shoulders, and back. Crossbars covered with hides joined the poles behind the dog and served as the cargo platform; the rear end of the poles dragged on the ground. The family tipi and other belongings were lashed securely to the travois; the travois poles also served as the main poles for the tipi. Because dogs could only carry about 34 kg (75 lb), tipis had to be relatively small. Dogs were also unreliable because they often disappeared while chasing rabbits or were injured during fights with each other.

Horses could travel twice the distance and carry four times the load of a dog. Before the introduction of the horse, old and sick people had to be left behind, but with horses, they could be carried on a horse-drawn travois. Horses could haul heavier, longer poles, so tipis became taller as well as wider. Originally, tipi covers were made to suit the dog’s carrying capacity of 6 to 8 hides, but with horses carrying the weight, tipi covers expanded to 12 or more bison hides. The amount of food, clothing, and household objects Plains Indians could keep also increased because larger loads were easily transportable on horseback.

To learn more about the transportation methods of Native Americans in a specific geographical area, see the Culture Areas section of this article.

H.

Trade

H.1.

Before European Contact

Trade was extremely important among Native American tribes long before European contact. Some of the earliest evidence of trade within North America comes from copper tools, ornaments, and utensils found at archaeological sites from the Great Plains to the Ohio Valley and New York. Evidence shows that these artifacts were produced by Native Americans in the northern Great Lakes region some 6,000 to 7,000 years ago. At the Indian Knoll site in Kentucky, which is between 3,000 and 7,000 years old, archaeologists have found shell ornaments and copper items. The site is far from the coast and far from any copper source, which means that the people of the Indian Knoll region must have participated in an extensive trade system.

Trade networks were far-reaching and linked nearly all parts of North America. Marine shells from the coast of southern California were traded as far north as southwestern Colorado and as far east as the Texas Panhandle. The Mojave, who lived along the Colorado River in the Southwest, obtained shells and manufactured shell objects from the Angelino Indians in California and traded them to the Hopi in Arizona for textiles and pottery. The macaw, a brightly colored parrot, was highly valued for its feathers. Macaws were transported alive from their Mexican habitat 1,900 km (1,200 mi) to northern New Mexico and Arizona. Nomadic tribes of the Great Plains traded dried meat, fat, tanned hides, tipis, bison robes, and buckskin clothing for the corn, beans, pumpkins, and tobacco cultivated by sedentary village tribes.

H.2.

After European Contact

Once European goods became available, they were quickly integrated into previously existing trade networks. In the Southwest in the 1850s and 1860s, the Hualapai traded their buckskins for Hopi and Zuni textiles, which they exchanged for horses from the Mojave. The Hualapai then traded the horses for guns and ammunition from the Southern Paiute, who had obtained these firearms from Utah Mormons. The Havasupai, who raised crops in a side branch of the Grand Canyon during the summer, traded their crops for Hualapai deer and mountain sheepskins. The Mojave also farmed corn, pumpkins, and beans that, during times of peace, they traded for Hualapai game. Other highly valued Hualapai commodities included basketry, mescal (a product of the agave plant prepared as food or used to make an alcoholic beverage), and, especially, the rich red ochre pigment that they collected from a cave in their territory. Navajo blankets were especially prized as trade items and were seen as far away as the Great Plains.

Many Native American groups had indirect contact with European culture through trade goods long before they actually encountered European explorers, missionaries, or traders. Metal tools and firearms probably had the greatest impact of the earliest trade items because they made it easier for Native Americans to obtain food and to make clothes and equipment. The acquisition of guns and ammunition became necessary for the survival of most Native American groups. A tribe’s survival could depend on whether it acquired firearms before neighboring rival tribes had them.

Trade with Europeans dramatically changed Native American ways of life. In the Northeast, for example, European demand for furs was so strong that Indian men spent more time trapping fur-bearing animals, especially beavers, than hunting game for their own families, and women spent time tanning them. With furs to trade, they could obtain guns, knives, horses, tools, glass beads, sugar, flour, whiskey, and other desirable trade items. But as tribes became increasingly dependent on European goods, their self-sufficient ways of hunting, gathering, and farming began to vanish. In addition, trade with Europeans exposed Indian groups to devastating diseases and introduced alcohol addiction. See Fur Trade in North America.

H.3.

Money

Although no true money existed in Native American societies before Europeans came, some articles were used as media of exchange: dentalia (tooth shells) on the Northwest Coast, clamshell disk beads in California, and beaver furs in the Subarctic. In the Northeast, beginning in the 16th and 17th centuries, many tribes used wampum, cylindrical beads fashioned from the central column of seashells. Whelk shells were used for the white variety and quahog shells for the dark purple or “black” variety. The beads were woven into strings, belts, sashes, headbands, and other items. Pictographs—designs that represented figures or other forms—were sometimes woven into wampum belts. For example, the George Washington Covenant Belt, which commemorated a peace treaty between the United States and the Iroquois League, included 13 large human figures that represented the 13 founding states of the United States. The value of wampum increased as it moved farther from its place of manufacture.

Among Native Americans, the use of wampum as a medium of exchange was originally less important than its ceremonial functions. For example, among the Iroquois it was traditional to accompany important statements with a gift to demonstrate the sincerity and significance of the statement. In time, wampum became the most appropriate and customary gift because it was such a rare and prized item that took intensive labor and time to produce. In addition, wampum came to serve as a letter of introduction and a certificate of authority. Treaties between the Iroquois and other Indian nations, as well as those between the Iroquois and European nations, were accompanied by an exchange of wampum to signify the sincerity of the parties involved. Wampum beads were also sometimes used in religious ceremonies.

Beginning in the 17th century, however, wampum drew the attention of Europeans who were trying to encourage Native Americans to provide them with furs. It soon became an important medium of exchange. Indians increased their wampum production to obtain goods from Dutch and English traders, who then traded the wampum to other groups for furs. In the late 1700s and throughout the 1800s, Europeans established wampum factories on Long Island and in New Jersey to mass-produce wampum for trade.

I.

Warfare and Weaponry

Native American warfare was a highly ritualized activity that included particular behavior, dress, and preparation. Rituals varied according to tribal traditions, history, technology, environment, and values. Some tribes placed greater emphasis than others on warfare. For example, most peoples of the Great Basin and Arctic lacked the political and military organization associated with true warfare. In the Great Plains, Northeast, and Southeast, on the other hand, warfare was a more integral part of the culture. However, even in these areas, conflicts between whole tribes were rare before the European demand for furs created economic competition.

I.1.

Warfare Between Tribes

Warfare between tribes was fairly common practice before European contact, although some tribes were more warlike than others. There were various causes of warfare. Most commonly, tribes fought over territory. Tribes that did not have enough farmland or hunting territory to feed their people might attack a neighboring tribe to gain more territory and avert food shortages. Revenge was another reason for warfare. Tribes might attack another tribe to avenge tribal members who died in a previous conflict. Among tribes with a strong sense of ethnic superiority and invincibility, hostilities could be easily ignited by ethnic insults from members of another tribe. To avenge those insults, the tribe went to war.

Once Europeans arrived in North America, power relations changed among tribes. Some tribes allied themselves with Europeans to fight old tribal enemies and to improve their own chances of survival. The acquisition of superior European weaponry or horses gave some tribes an immediate advantage over others. After the five nations of the Iroquois Confederacy and several Algonquian tribes in Canada acquired European guns, they were able to seize great stretches of the Northeast from tribes that did not possess firearms. The desire for European goods or horses could also lead to warfare; some Indians captured members of rival tribes and sold them as slaves to Spanish settlements in exchange for horses.

I.2.

Tactics and Customs

Native Americans distinguished between raiding and warfare. The purpose of raiding was to find and bring home enemy property, such as horses, cattle, and sheep (all acquired after European arrival) or other food sources. Usually 5 to 15 men made the foray into enemy territory. Their goal was to retrieve as much as possible without any loss or injury to those in the raiding party. Stealth was essential to avoid capture. Raiders usually worked under cover of darkness, and they moved as quickly and quietly as possible while in enemy territory. Warfare, in contrast, involved all the available men in the tribe or band; the men might even send out messages to members of other bands to join them. As in raiding, scouts were sent out in advance to locate the enemy. Based on this information, the men tried to fully surround their target without the enemy’s knowledge, then attack with surprise. Another tactic was to lure enemies into pursuit so that a larger group could surround them and attack. While raiding and warfare tactics were similar, their goals were quite different. Raiding was done without disturbing enemies to acquire goods, whereas warfare involved the full engagement of enemies and, generally, the slaying of as many of them as possible.

On the Great Plains, war was considered a sport through which individuals performed personal exploits that brought them prestige. Plains warriors obtained honor through the custom of counting coup, which involved performing a feat of courage during battle. A warrior counted minor coups when he killed a foe or was wounded himself. But the greatest honor came from touching an armed foe with a coup stick (or anything else held in the hand) during battle without necessarily harming him, because the Plains Indians valued bravery much more than killing. After the battle, warriors who had counted coup received the right to wear eagle feathers that were notched or marked to identify their courageous deed to others. Plains women performed special dances when parties returned victorious and derived honor from their husband’s deeds. Sometimes they even participated in battle.

The rewards of successful warfare were compelling. Warriors obtained prestige and fame in their tribes, and they reaped material goods such as the enemy’s weapons and horses. The Mojave of the Southwest enjoyed warfare as an activity because it required energy, skill, and courage to fight warriors from other tribes, and they gained satisfaction from doing so. On a larger scale, successful warfare could result in increased tribal territory and better access to natural resources, especially fertile farmland. However, battle carried many risks for warriors. These included death, permanent injury, and, if one did not perform with valor, loss of respect. If a warrior died or was severely injured, his family members had to find other means of supporting themselves. If a warrior showed cowardice during battle, such behavior reflected poorly on his family and could cause permanent shame in the village or band where they lived. The death of warriors also reflected negatively on the war leader, who lost prestige and followers.

The torture of prisoners was the most distinctive feature of warfare in eastern North America. The torture of enemy tribal members and later, of Europeans, appears to have originated in the East; after European contact the practice spread to the Great Plains. Tied to a stake or platform, prisoners were tortured with mutilation, stabbing, shooting with arrows, fire, or dismemberment while still alive. Prisoners might also be made to run between two parallel rows of warriors who beat them with clubs and sticks as they ran; if they survived, they might be given freedom. Usually only men were tortured in large public spectacles. Captured women and children were treated as slaves until they married or were adopted into the tribe. Young male captives might be taken as husbands by one of the many widows of slain warriors and eventually adopted into the tribe as free and equal members.

Every tribe had ritual preparations for warfare, and nearly all conducted purification rituals after warfare. Preparations might involve fasting or eating only certain foods before going to war, as well as abstaining from sexual relations. Often, warriors’ wives had to follow specific rules of behavior while their husbands were away at war. Among the Tohono O’Odham (Papago) of southern Arizona, for example, wives and daughters of warriors laid firewood down gently and avoided laughing or talking in a loud voice, believing that such behavior would put the husbands and fathers in jeopardy. The Tohono O’Odham believed that a menstruating wife so weakened her husband that he would be killed, so such husbands stayed home. Men who returned from battle were considered to be full of power that could harm their families if they were not purified. Tohono O’Odham warriors who had killed or scalped enemies lived in isolation for 16 days, where they ate from bowls that had to be thrown away because the bowls were believed to have absorbed too much of the power; warriors also had to be bathed to wash off the power. The Navajo (Diné) performed a ceremony called the Enemyway for returning warriors to exorcise the ghosts of non-Navajo they had slain, while the Blessingway ceremony invoked positive blessings to protect both departing and returning warriors. Both the Enemyway and Blessingway are still performed today. The Enemyway is performed for Navajos involved in conflicts as part of their service in the United States military, while the Blessingway ceremony is used to bless Navajo members of the armed services as well as for marriages, new houses, and many other purposes.

I.3.

Warfare with Europeans

The main cause of war between Europeans and Native Americans was the European colonists’ hunger for land and, in some cases, slaves. Although the European groups varied in their expressed goal—whether it was religious conversion, trade, or settlement—ultimately, the Spanish, French, and English all sought to gain control of North America. All three European groups bartered manufactured items for furs and skins. Europeans also sold their Indian prisoners as slaves to other Europeans.

Periodically, tribes rose up in rebellion against the loss of their people and land, slaughtering whites and destroying their property. The government then sent military expeditions to punish the tribe. Sometimes the two sides would sign a treaty guaranteeing Indians a portion of their homelands. Inevitably, however, white settlers would encroach on Indian land, and the cycle of Indian-white warfare began again.

Many Native American tribes formed alliances with other tribes to fight Europeans and Euro-Americans with their superior weaponry. In the beginning, Indians used the same battle methods and tactics against non-Indians as they had used in warfare against other tribes. However, the Native American perception of war as a stage for acquiring personal glory, instead of killing the enemy, put them at a distinct disadvantage in fighting white soldiers who sought to destroy them above all else.

The treatment of captives varied from tribe to tribe. Some tribes tortured their European prisoners, and whites wrote lurid accounts of Indian torture. But such stories were easily exaggerated and often served to justify white hostility and the taking of Indian lands. In fact, there were some white captives who wanted to remain with their Indian families even when they had the opportunity to return to the Euro-American way of life. Mary Jemison was a teenager in 1758 when her family was brutally murdered by a French and Indian raiding party. Given to two Seneca sisters to replace their slain brother, Mary was treated as a long-lost child and lost all desire to return to her previous life. She married and had children in the Seneca tribe.

Although Indians had been taking scalps as war trophies and visible proof of valor before the arrival of Europeans, the worth placed on scalps varied from tribe to tribe and not all groups took scalps. Once Europeans began offering bounties for scalps (of both Native American and European enemies), the practice spread to Indians who had not previously taken scalps, and those who had intensified their efforts. The practice of scalping spread further with the expansion of the American frontier.

For a discussion of specific wars between Native Americans and Europeans during the period of European settlement in North America, see Indian Wars.

I.4.

Weapons

The standard Indian weapons were the bow and arrow and the spear, with each tribe having its own variants. Plains warriors were so skilled that they could shoot arrows more rapidly than a white marksman could fire his revolver. For close combat, Plains warriors used many types of clubs, including tomahawks, stone-headed clubs, wooden clubs with knife blades, ball-and-spike clubs, pointed clubs with rawhide wristbands, and rawhide slingshots that hurled heavy stones. The Mojave, who considered warfare an important part of their culture, relied on short, very heavy clubs made of mesquite or ironwood, with a handle whose shaft was sharpened to a point for use as a weapon. The introduction of European firearms made it possible to kill people from a greater distance, revolutionizing Indian warfare.

J.

Language and Communication

There is no way of knowing exactly how many Native American languages once existed in North America. It is known, however, that in 1900, more than 300 distinct languages were spoken. In some areas, such as the Arctic rim, the same language was spoken over a large area. In other areas, such as California, greater linguistic diversity existed than is found in all of modern Europe. Today, about 150 Indian languages are still spoken in North America, but less than 50 of these are widely spoken.

Usually members of a tribe learned a neighboring tribe’s language to communicate with them, facilitating trade and intertribal agreements. However, in areas where many different languages existed, sign language (a language of hand gestures) was necessary. Originating either on the Texas Gulf Coast or in the extreme southern Plains, American Indian sign language probably arose to meet the communication needs of the deaf, or in other contexts, such as hunting and warfare, where silence was crucial. It was ideal for face-to-face communication between people who spoke different languages. Sign language spread onto the Great Plains, where it gained wide use because so many languages were spoken there that lacked similar vocabulary or grammar.

Smoke signals were another nonverbal form of communication. They were used throughout the continent mainly to announce the presence of game or to warn of enemies. In smoke signaling, Native Americans fed a fire with damp grass or green leaves to create smoke. By varying the type of fuel and manipulating the smoke with a blanket, Indians could create a smoke column in a wide range of different shapes and colors. On the Plains such signals could be seen as far away as 80 km (50 mi). Mirror signals were also used to communicate in areas of wide visibility, such as the Plains and Southwest.

Many Native American groups used pictography, or picture writing, to aid in remembering information and to convey new information. Tribes recorded historical and religious events in pictorial form on various materials. For example, Plains Indians painted pictographs on hides, while Northeast tribes used birchbark scrolls. Sometimes pictographic texts were sent as messages. The most famous Native American writing system was created by Sequoyah, a member of the Cherokee tribe, in the early 19th century. He devised a syllabary, a set of written characters representing syllables that enabled hundreds of Cherokee to learn to read and write their language by the 1820s. Today, the Oklahoma Cherokee continue to use his syllabary for their tribal newspaper.

All Native American tribes had and continue to have a strong tradition of storytelling, also called oral literature. Older members of the tribe taught their traditions, morals, legends, myths, and history to younger people through stories and performances that were often as entertaining and humorous as they were educational. On the Northwest Coast, performers riveted their audience’s attention by wearing fantastic masks and costumes as they danced by a central fire.

When Europeans landed in America, they encountered many things for which they had no names and had to adopt Native American terms for identification. Thus, many Native American terms entered the English language. Animals names based on Indian words include moose, cougar, skunk, and caribou, while plant names that come from Indian words include mesquite, pecan, saguaro, hickory, and persimmon. Europeans also borrowed Native American names for cities such as Chicago, Seattle, Tallahassee, and Tucson. Many states in the United States are named for Indian nations, including Delaware, Dakota, Kansas, Massachusetts, Utah, and Illinois.

See also Native American Languages.

K.

Spirituality and Religious Practices

Spirituality was central to the lives of all Native Americans. Most Native American groups shared the following spiritual concepts, although their expression differed: the existence of unseen powers or spirits, the interdependence of all forms of life in the universe, a form of worship that reinforces personal commitment to the sources of life, sacred traditions that teach morals and ethics, trained practitioners who pass on sacred practices, and a belief that humor is a necessary part of the sacred to remind us of our human weaknesses.

Each group’s origin story told how a holy being or beings meant for them to live in their particular territory. Many groups believed in a single Creator or Great Spirit; others believed there were multiple holy beings who joined together to create and guide human beings into existence. Spiritual forces were believed to be present in every natural object, from insects to mountains. Thus, Native Americans maintained a sacred relationship to animals and plants, which provided physical and spiritual sustenance and were often part of a tribe’s mythological history.

All Native American belief systems shared the idea that the natural world was not created for human exploitation and domination. Instead, Native Americans believed that if they cared for the resources of the Earth, then the Earth would take care of them. Although considered to be a sacred, living being, the Earth was not worshiped. Rather, the land was seen as an expression of the Creator or Great Spirit that must be treated with respect. As a way of giving thanks for the great gifts of the Earth, all indigenous peoples left offerings of a precious substance, such as corn pollen, to plants and animals that gave their lives for human benefit. Some tribes practiced elaborate thanksgiving ceremonies.

A person strived to live well, with respect for others, in order to attain a full life and reach old age. Living a good life also meant that one prepared for death. Death was greatly respected in all Native American traditions because of its inevitability. It was not feared or seen as the end of life; rather, it was regarded as a natural part of life, a time of transition into another world. Most Native American groups believed that at death the soul continued into an afterlife, which varied according to the beliefs of different groups.

K.1.

Shamans and Priests

Health and spirituality were intimately intertwined in Native American beliefs, and spiritual practices played an important part in maintaining and restoring health. Most communities had individuals called shamans, who were believed to have direct contact with the supernatural. A shaman’s primary roles were to diagnose and treat illness and to divine the location of an enemy, food source, or missing object. The shaman generally went into a trance to contact his or her personal spiritual guide for assistance in healing or divination. The Havasupai of the Southwest believed that the spirit helper, after being summoned, lodged in the shaman’s chest. When the shaman sang, it was really the spirit helper that sang. When the shaman applied his mouth to a patient’s body to suck out the illness, the spirit helper entered the patient and drew out the trouble. Shamans were sometimes called medicine men or medicine women because they tended the sick.

Shamanism dominated religion and medicine in the Arctic, Subarctic, Plateau, and Great Basin. On the Great Plains, in most of the East, and in much of the Southwest, religious leaders included both priests and shamans. Priests had more formal religious training than did shamans, and often led the ceremonies that marked major events in community life. They derived their power from a codified body of rituals learned from an older priest. Such rituals had to be carefully memorized and replicated precisely to be effective. The Southeast may have been the only area in North America with full-time priests. Linked to the Sun, the political and religious ruler of the Natchez inherited his position and had the power of life and death over his subjects.

K.2.

Ceremonies

Native Americans celebrated many public ceremonies as well as private rituals. While tribal practices varied considerably, many ceremonies focused on stages of the human life cycle. These ceremonies, known as rites of passage, were often held to recognize the birth of a child, the coming of age for a young woman, the warrior status of a young man, or the death of a loved one. (For a discussion of puberty rites, see the Marriage and Family Life section earlier in this article.)

Other ceremonies, rather than focusing on individuals, centered on communal well-being and were held annually to give thanks and keep the universe in balance. The Green Corn Ceremony, celebrated in the Southeast and Northeast near the end of summer when the late corn crop ripened, marked the beginning of the new year. In this renewal ceremony, tribes gave thanks for a successful harvest and formally forgave tribal members of all crimes except murder. In the Southwest, the Hopi held the Snake Dance to bring the last summer rains. Part of the dance involved the use of live snakes, which were believed to carry the request for rain to the underworld, where the snakes lived. The Hopi also held religious ceremonies in which dancers impersonated kachinas, or spirit beings, by wearing sacred costumes. Hopi girls received wooden kachina dolls—elaborately carved, painted, and costumed—to teach them about the kachinas. The Snake Dance, kachina dances, and other ceremonies continue among the Hopi today.

Most Plains Indians performed the Sun Dance, a ceremony of spiritual renewal held to benefit the welfare of the entire tribe. Lasting up to 12 days, the ceremony marked the beginning of the summer encampment when the various bands of a tribe gathered after being separated during the winter. The final four days of the ceremony, the most sacred period, included the preparation of the Sun Dance Tree, or central pole, from which dancers suspended themselves through skewers inserted through their flesh. Other dancers fasted or dragged bison skulls attached to their skin with skewers. The extraordinary pain suffered by each individual was believed to bring personal contact with the spirit world and to enhance tribal well-being.

Indians often prepared for ceremonies inside a sweat lodge, a low dome often made of willow saplings covered with animal skins or blankets. Inside the sweat lodge, cold water was poured over a pile of red-hot rocks to create steam. Usually a medicine man sang prayer chants to help everyone release moral and physical impurities. In this way, sweat baths helped to clear the mind and body.

The Pueblo peoples of the Southwest were among the few groups that had permanent ceremonial structures. Pueblo peoples built round or rectangular chambers called kivas underground, or partially underground, to house religious items and to serve as the site of some ceremonies. Other Pueblo ceremonies were held outside on a central plaza. Only a few tribes, such as the Natchez, had temples, but nearly all tribes established small temporary or permanent shrines where they left sacred offerings.

K.3.

Tobacco, Alcohol, and Peyote

Indians in almost every region of North America used tobacco for religious rites and ceremonies, for medicinal uses, and for relaxation. It was considered a sacred plant to most Native American tribes, for its smoke enhanced their prayers as it rose to the sky and to the Great Spirit. European explorers found tobacco in use by Native Americans of all regions except the Arctic, Subarctic, and part of the Northwest Coast. For Plains Indians, tobacco pipes were among the most sacred of objects. In addition to individually owned pipes, tribal pipes were used to ensure a successful bison hunt, for healing purposes, and to mark the initiation of peace or war. In California and Nevada, Native Americans ground tobacco leaves with lime and water and ate the mixture. Sometimes Datura (jimsonweed) was mixed with tobacco and drunk in an attempt to produce visions, acquire a spirit helper, bring success on a hunt, or alleviate illness.

Alcoholic beverages were used in some parts of North America before European contact. The Tohono O’Odham of the Southwest fermented syrup of the saguaro (a type of cactus) into wine for their four-day saguaro wine feast, a ritual intended to bring the summer monsoons. By saturating themselves with saguaro wine, they prayed that life-giving rain would likewise saturate the parched earth of the Sonoran Desert.

Many tribes used hallucinogenic plants—plants or plant derivatives that produce hallucinations when ingested—to enhance their religious rites and bring them into closer contact with the Great Spirit. The most common hallucinogen was peyote, a spineless cactus whose mushroom-shaped caps, or buttons, were dried and chewed or brewed into tea. First used in Mexico and along the Rio Grande, peyote use later spread onto the Great Plains and into Canada. In the late 1800s the Kiowa and Comanche were among the first tribes to adopt the Peyote religion, or Peyotism. In 1918 the Peyote religion was formally incorporated as the Native American Church, which regards peyote as sacred and uses it in religious ceremonies and rituals. Church doctrine stresses brotherly love, family responsibility, self-reliance, and abstinence from alcohol.

K.4.

European Influences

Beginning in the 16th century European missionaries tried to convert Native Americans to various forms of Christianity. Often these missionaries created a major division within a tribe, between those who had converted to Christianity and those who held to their traditional beliefs. As tribes across North America became decimated by disease, alcoholism, warfare, and as they lost more and more of their land to Europeans, they began to lose hope. Native Americans called prophets by Europeans began to emerge, promising a return to previous conditions, before whites had destroyed their way of life, if followers performed specific rituals. For example, in the 1890s the Ghost Dance spread across the Plains, based on the vision of a Paiute prophet and shaman named Wovoka. He preached that performance of the dance would lead to the resurrection of dead relatives, the restoration of Indian lands, and the disappearance of whites. Sidestepping around a large circle for hours at a time, dancers went into a trance that was believed to transport them to an afterworld free of European influence, and where their departed relatives lived. Euro-Americans regarded the ritual with suspicion and alarm, and the government’s attempt to suppress it led to the massacre of Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in December 1890.

See also Native American Religions.

L.

Music and Dance

Music played an important role in Native American life before and after European contact, from spontaneous songs created by individuals as they went about their daily tasks to ritualized music performed as part of a large ceremony. Social and ceremonial dances were always performed to musical accompaniment, which usually featured drumming. Music was a part of Indian life from birth until death; tribal creation stories were often told to musical accompaniment, and songs memorialized the lives of individuals who had recently died. Indispensable to religion, music also had a place in social life, warfare, subsistence activities, and recreation.

Today, traditional music and dance are still integral to Native American life and rituals. One of the best-known rituals is the powwow, an intertribal social gathering that features Native American music, dancing, and arts and crafts. In addition to public performances, music and dance are a common part of everyday rituals. Work songs ease daily tasks, and women sing lullabies to their babies. There are also songs for lovemaking, boasting, and ridicule. Special songs exist for gambling and other games. Dancing, with instrumental and vocal accompaniment, is an important part of many cultural and social activities. Headdresses, masks, and costumes, as well as face and body painting, are essential parts of ceremonial dances.

L.1.

Traditional Instruments

In North America before European contact, singing was the dominant form of musical expression, with instrumental music serving primarily as rhythmic accompaniment. Some exceptions occurred. For example, young men on the Great Plains courted their sweethearts by playing songs on the flute. While wind and percussion instruments were used, stringed instruments were unknown, with the possible exception of hunting bows used as rhythm instruments; the Apache fiddle was developed after European contact. Musical instruments included a variety of drums, rattles, flutes, and whistles. Handheld rattles, filled with pebbles or fruit seeds, were made of wood, baskets, gourds, rawhide, bark, clay, turtle shells, and other materials. Other rattles were worn on the body or clothing of dancers and were made of cocoons, deer hooves, turtle shells, seashells, and other materials. Other, less commonly used instruments included rasps (a notched stick played by rubbing another stick against its notches), bullroarers (a flat, oblong stick suspended by a string, producing a whirring sound when spun around), and clapping sticks.

L.2.

Musical Forms

North American Indian music has a wide variety of forms, ranging from simple short songs repeated many times to lengthy song cycles that take days to perform with little, if any, repetition. Nearly all songs consist of only a single melody, and harmony is absent. The most common melodic patterns conform to a pentatonic (five-tone) scale or consist of chains of major and minor thirds. Rhythms are relatively complex, and song texts frequently consist entirely or partly of meaningless syllables known as vocables.

L.3.

Dance Styles

Three major regional styles of Native American group dancing exist. The first region includes most of the Southwest and eastern North America north to Labrador. Native American dancers in this region form an open-ended circle and proceed counterclockwise, facing forward or sometimes toward a person in the center, and usually stomp with the right foot, followed by the left foot pulling up beside it. Dancers in the second region—the Plains and much of the Great Basin and Plateau—tend to move clockwise in a closed circle, facing the center, dancing with a light-footed step and dynamic body movements, characterized by arm waving and leaping. The third region comprises the western parts of the Plains, Great Basin, and Plateau, as well as the Navajo (Diné) and Apache in the Southwest. In these areas, dancing is usually in single lines or in parallel lines that face each other, with the two lines alternately meeting and receding. All three styles of dancing are found in California.

L.4.

Arctic

In the Arctic, the Inuit sing with considerable vocal tension and rhythmic pulsations on longer notes. Their songs tend to be slow in tempo, with asymmetrical, complex rhythms. Music serves primarily religious purposes, with shamans delivering incantations for health, success in hunting, and good weather. Canadian Inuit women engage in rhythmic throat singing, made up of both breathing sounds and voiced sounds, as part of a game in which two women trade off sounds until one of them becomes exhausted or begins to laugh. Inuit dances often feature men using the forceful movements of harpooning while women sing accompaniment.

L.5.

Northwest Coast

The vocal style of the Northwest Coast shows a more complex rhythmical pattern than that of the Arctic and a wider range of intonation and richness. In the elaborate winter ceremonies of many Northwest Coast peoples, an individual dances alone, singing a personal song around a central fire, where he or she is soon accompanied by a group of musicians. The individual then enters a trancelike state and imitates the actions of the spirit who possesses him or her. Northwest Coast dance dramas are lengthy, elaborate productions with magnificent costumes and complicated props; songs for these dramas are carefully taught and rehearsed.

L.6.

Great Basin

Some of the simplest indigenous musical styles in North America come from groups of the Great Basin and California-Oregon border. The singing technique is smooth, without vocal pulsation or tension. Many songs are performed without percussive accompaniment. The Great Basin style features narrow melodic ranges, frequent returns to the tonic (first note of the scale), paired phrases (a line repeated twice in a song), and a limited set of rhythmic patterns. Music is used for religious and nonreligious purposes, including animal tales, gambling songs, and lullabies.

L.7.

California

As in the Great Basin, singing in the California region features a smooth, relaxed vocal technique. California music is often characterized by a rise in pitch in the middle section of a song. Song lyrics refer to myths, events, or emotions rather than telling a story, and often alternate with vocables, or meaningless syllables. Singing is an important part of the Mourning Ceremony of River Yuman tribes along the California-Arizona border. Held at the time of death, the ceremony features the singing of song cycles with 50 to 200 songs in each cycle; the ceremony lasts several days and nights.

L.8.

Great Plains

The music of the Great Plains is the best-known style of Native American music. The Plains style infuses much of the music of present-day powwows. Singing is in a tense, pulsating, forceful style. The leader usually starts the song as high as he can, often using falsetto, and the chorus answers him. Together, they sing the melody, letting their voices descend throughout the middle and last sections of the song, coming to rest on the lowest or next to lowest note. Plains music is usually produced by a group of men who sit around a large double-headed drum, singing in unison and drumming with drumsticks. At powwows, this group of men is known as “the drum.” Most Plains music is functional and is used for religious purposes, warfare, healing ceremonies, gambling, the vision quest, and serenading. In Plains dancing, men commonly dance solo with bent body (several may dance at once, independently), but there are also ritual group dances and social dances known as round dances for couples.

L.9.

Southwest

The Southwest has three principal musical styles: Pueblo, O’Odham (Pima-Papago), and Navajo styles. The Pueblo musical style is the most complex in North America and features rhythmic accompaniments that range from steady beats to definite rhythmic designs coordinated with those of the melody. Although much more complex and of greater range, Pueblo melodies and vocal technique are similar to those of the Plains. Many Pueblo ritual dances feature elaborately costumed dancers, who perform on the plaza in the center of each Pueblo village. Clowns often perform as social commentary between dances, and some clowns, seated at a drum, provide musical accompaniment for dancers. O’Odham musical style, a combination of Pueblo and California-Yuman traits, features a smooth, relaxed singing technique and comparatively simple rhythms and melodic patterns.

While a great part of Navajo ritual music has been influenced by the Pueblo Indians, the basic Navajo musical style, as well as that of the various Apache tribes, comes from their ancestral roots, the Athapaskan-speaking peoples of northwestern Canada and Alaska. The Athapaskan musical style is characterized by melodies that have a wide range and an arc-shaped contour, and by frequent changes in meter. The ability to sing in a falsetto voice is highly respected. The Navajo distinguish between personal songs used for pleasure and deeply sacred chants that may be sung only in the appropriate ceremonial context. Navajo chants, often conducted in response to an illness, may last from three to nine nights and combine music and ritual designed to restore mental and physical balance.

L.10.

Northeast and Southeast

Native American music in the Northeast and Southeast resembles Plains music, but its melodic ranges tend to be narrower. Singing in these areas often uses polyphony (several, independent melodies) and antiphony (call-and-response singing). Dance forms include men’s solos, as well as ritual dances and social dances in the form of round dances. One of the most popular dances in the Southeast is the Stomp Dance, which features a snakelike line of dancers that follow a leader who calls out in song and is answered by his followers.

M.

Arts and Crafts

Native Americans did not create art for its own sake, for the purpose of contemplation. No Native American language has a word for “art” because objects were created to be both beautiful and useful. If the object was intended for use at a special occasion, the crafter would lavish special attention and care on it, decorating it more elaborately to make it appropriate to the spirit of the celebration. Yet even everyday utilitarian objects reflected artistry. Some of the best-known and most highly prized Native American art forms include Navajo blankets, California basketry, Pueblo pottery, and wooden painted and carved masks from the Northwest Coast.

For a more detailed discussion of Native American art in North America, including contemporary art, see Native American Art.

M.1.

Stonework

Stonework provides some of the earliest evidence for occupation of North America. As early as 11,500 years ago, people of the Clovis culture (named for an archaeological site near Clovis, New Mexico) made finely crafted spearpoints, knives, and skin scrapers from rock. Clovis hunters used bones to chip off flakes from a larger rock, which were then reworked and sharpened into blades. People of another ancient American culture, the Folsom culture (named for a site near Folsom, New Mexico) were masters of making small, finely flaked spearpoints from flint, with fluting (channels) along the entire length of each face.

The Adena culture of the Ohio Valley, which took form around 3,000 years ago and lasted for more than a millennium, made finely carved stone pipes that were placed with the dead in gigantic burial mounds. The Hopewell, a slightly later group, also sculpted soft stones, such as catlinite, into figurines of toads, falcons, and other animals. They carved ceremonial blades from obsidian and shaped delicate figures, such as birds’ claws, from mica.

M.2.

Pottery

When archaeologists find pottery, they know that the peoples who created it probably lived in permanent villages because it is so difficult to transport without breakage; most nomadic peoples relied on basketry and animal-hide receptacles. Pottery making probably spread north and northeast from Mesoamerica. By 1500 bc, Indians in eastern North America were making pottery, and by 1000 bc pottery making was widespread in this area. Pottery making reached the Southwest by 300 bc. The earliest Southwestern pottery consisted of plain brown vessels or vessels covered by a red slip (a mixture of clay, mineral pigments, and water used as a decorative layer). Painted pottery appeared in this region as early as 100 bc.

In addition to being used for cooking, pottery was also used for water jars, food storage, dishes, incense burners, and burial urns. North American potters used three major techniques: coiling, molding, and modeling. To make a coiled pot, the potter, usually a woman, shaped the base of the pot with her hands and built up the sides by adding ropelike pieces of clay, made by rolling lumps of clay between her palms. She fused the contact point between new coils and old ones. To mold and flatten the clay, she might also slap a paddle on the outside of the pot against an anvil held inside the inner surface of the pot. In the molding technique, the potter shaped the clay around a previously constructed mold, such as a fired pot. In modeling, the sides of the pot were constructed from slablike sections of clay that were patted into place with the hands rather than built up through coiling. To fire the pots, they were turned upside down and set on a low platform over a fire. Because pots could shatter or become discolored if exposed directly to the fire, they were covered with large potsherds (pieces of broken pottery) for protection. The potsherds were then covered with animal dung, a slow-burning fuel that helped to distribute the heat evenly.

Some of the most outstanding pottery in North America was made in the Southwest by various Pueblo tribes. The Hopi made elegantly proportioned bowls sometimes covered inside and outside with bold curving patterns that alternate with finely painted parallel lines. The distinctive style of Acoma potters featured heart-shaped pots with unusually thin but strong walls. Their work was highly decorated with geometric or representational designs executed with great artistry. Today, Pueblo tribes continue to make exquisite pottery with traditional designs.

See also Pottery.

M.3.

Basketry

Basketry in North America originated as early as 7500 bc. The Anasazi of the Southwest were among the early cultures that practiced this craft. By ad 400, they were weaving extraordinarily long nets for trapping small animals and making yucca fibers into large sacks and bags. The Anasazi were so skilled at basketry that the earliest Anasazi period is known as the Basket Maker phase. This phase began between 500 bc and 100 bc and lasted until about ad 500.

By the time of European contact, nearly all Native American peoples wove baskets. Created in a wide range of forms, baskets were used primarily to gather, prepare, and store food. Some baskets were covered with resin or pitch so they could hold water. Basketry techniques were also used to make floor and house coverings, mattresses, clothing, and fishing traps. Materials included strips of wood or bark, roots, reeds, canes, vines, and grasses. Finished baskets were often decorated with embroidery and bright feathers, shells, or beads.

Native Americans used three basic methods of weaving baskets: twining, coiling, and plaiting. In twining, two or more horizontal strands (called wefts) are twined around each other as they are woven in and out of a set of vertical strands (called warps). In plaiting, three or more flexible fibers, usually taken from flat-leaved plants, are braided. In coiling, thin strips of plant matter are wrapped tightly in a bundle and coiled into a continuous spiral.

Some of the most prized baskets in the world were made by California Indians, who regarded finely made baskets as objects of wealth. The Pomo decorated their coiled gift baskets with strings of shells and yellow, black, and red feathers from several kinds of birds. The Aleut of the Arctic, the Tlingit and Haida of the Northwest Coast, and Virginia Algonquians wove twined baskets upside down, with the basket suspended from a stake. The Siouan peoples of the Plains and the central Algonquians used a similar technique to make twined bison-hair bags. Both examples are considered to be a transition between basketry and true weaving. Even more advanced was the suspension of warps in a linear arrangement from a cord or bar, a technique used by the Algonquian tribes of the Northeast.

M.4.

Weaving

Archaeological evidence indicates that weaving was highly developed centuries before the first Europeans arrived. Woven textiles included clothing, bags, belts, footgear, hats, blankets, and mats. The earliest textiles were made of native cotton, yucca, and other plant fibers as well as human and animal hair. After the Spanish introduced sheep and goats, wool became a popular weaving material. Most groups wove textiles using simple finger-weaving techniques, such as knitting, crocheting, plaiting, looping, and twining. Indians of the Northwest Coast, Plateau, and Southwest used spindle whorls to help them spin thread.

The true loom was known only in the Southwest. It consisted of a fixed rectangular frame, two horizontal crossbars to which both ends of the warp threads were attached, and heddles, or mechanisms for raising and lowering the warp thread in the pattern required. Pueblo kivas (sacred ceremonial chambers) and homes have holes for the insertion of the weaving bars used in the vertical or upright version of the loom. Among Pueblo peoples, men were usually the weavers, but among the Navajo (Diné), who probably learned weaving from the Pueblo peoples, the women did the weaving. Navajo weaving soon surpassed that of the Pueblo, and Navajo blankets (and later, rugs) became valued trade items.

For more information on Native American clothing, see the Clothing and Adornment section earlier in this article.

M.5.

Metalworking

True metallurgy, which involves smelting metal from ore, was unknown north of present-day Mexico. But as early as 7,000 years ago, people of the Old Copper Culture in the Great Lakes area hammered deposits of pure copper into a variety of tools and ornaments, including knives, axes, awls (sharp, pointed tools used for punching holes in leather or wood), bracelets, rings, and pendants. Some scholars believe that the copper may have been heated to the point where some of the brittleness produced by pounding it was eliminated, a process known as annealing. The peoples of the Hopewell culture, which flourished from about 200 bc to ad 400 in much of eastern North America, also mined copper from the Great Lakes region. The finest metalworkers of their time, they traded copper and copper tools over great distances. In the Southwest, archaeologists have found prehistoric copper bells produced through an advanced casting process known as the lost-wax technique. Dating from as early as ad 900, these bells are believed to have been obtained in trade from Mexico rather than made locally.

On the Northwest Coast, Indians made large copper plates with stylized designs, which became highly valued objects and symbols of chiefly prestige. The Polar Inuit, the northernmost people in the world, hammered meteoric iron into spearpoints and knives. After European contact, Native Americans living in coastal areas occasionally scavenged timbers from European shipwrecks for their iron bolts and nails, which they worked by cold hammering.

In the mid-1800s the Navajo adopted Spanish metalworking techniques and began producing silver jewelry and bridle ornaments. Other Southwestern peoples learned from the Navajo and today, the Navajo, Zuni, and Hopi produce three-fourths of the Indian jewelry in North America. Historically, the three styles are quite different. Navajo silver workers use cast or handworked silver that supports moderately large turquoise settings. Zuni jewelry features more intricate patterns of many small turquoise, coral, and jet settings, with silver primarily used as a framing. Hopi silverwork is known for its overlay technique with little, if any, turquoise.

M.6.

Painting

In traditional Native American cultures, paintings were not created purely for aesthetic appreciation. In the Southwest, Pueblo peoples painted sacred imagery on the interior walls of kivas, their permanent ceremonial structures. The Blackfeet and other Plains Indians painted sacred imagery on their tipis and rawhide shields for protection from their enemies. The Pueblo, Navajo, Apache, and O’Odham (Papago and Pima) peoples made sand paintings for use in healing rites. These paintings, which portrayed sacred beings and events, were created by spreading pollen, pulverized charcoal and sandstone, and other colored materials over a ground of sand. The images were then destroyed as part of the ceremony. Some Native American ceremonies included body painting.

Images used for ceremonial purposes usually had to conform to a certain form for the ritual to be effective; there was little, if any, room for creativity. In contrast, secular art forms, such as painted pottery, provided an outlet for the creative use of pattern. Paints and dyes were made from plant and mineral pigments; after European contact, commercial dyes and paints were often used. In the 20th century many Native American artists in Canada and the United States adopted tempera, watercolor, and oil painting, using both traditional imagery and modern Western styles. The Inuit and the peoples of the Northwest Coast have adapted their traditional pictorial styles to printmaking.

M.7.

Woodcarving

Woodcarving was a widespread craft among Native Americans in nearly every region. The peoples of the Northwest Coast developed a distinctive style that took three-dimensional form in their painted and carved ceremonial canoes and in the magnificent totem poles that towered over their immense cedar houses. Totem poles, which were actually family crests, depicted the spiritual ancestors of a clan and figures from mythology. Northwest Indians also carved human, animal, and mythical masks and figures for use as props in their complex winter dramas, as well as elaborate serving vessels for potlatch feasts.

M.8.

Work in Other Materials

Leather was used extensively for clothing, tipis, shields, containers, quivers, cradleboard covers, food vessels, sheaths, and ritual paraphernalia. In many areas, leather clothing was often decorated with porcupine quills dyed with mineral or vegetable-derived colors and used in combination with undyed quills to create dazzling patterns. After Europeans introduced manufactured glass beads, beadwork replaced quillwork. (However, the number of quill workers increased dramatically in the 20th century.) Native Americans in eastern North America were inspired by embroidery designs of the French, and they substituted silk threads for their previous designs of quills and moose hair.

The bark of the white birch tree provided a versatile material for the Algonquians of the western Great Lakes area. They used birchbark to construct maneuverable canoes, durable wigwams, cooking pots, dishes, needle cases, winnowing trays, and leak-proof containers for maple syrup and water. Ojibwa women also created birchbark cutouts as patterns for beadwork designs on moccasins. Men used birchbark to make pictographic scrolls that recorded the imagery, songs, and teachings of the sacred Medewiwin, or Grand Medicine Society.

Other materials, such as bone, horn, antlers, tusks, seashells, and feathers, were also used to make tools, weapons, and ornaments. The Yurok and Hupa of California carved and decorated distinctive spoons made of elk antlers, while the Tlingit of the Northwest Coast carved bowls of mountain sheep horn that they shaped like animals or birds. The Iroquois and Algonquians of the Northeast were known for their wampum, white and purple beads made from whelk and quahog shells. The Hohokam, a prehistoric people in southern Arizona, used acid to etch designs into shells. Most groups used feathers for ceremonial dress and objects. The Pomo of California also used feathers from quails and woodpeckers to adorn their spectacular ceremonial baskets.

Trudy Griffin-Pierce contributed the Traditional Way of Life section of this article.