Native Peoples of America,to 1500

CHAPTER1

Hiawatha was in the depths of despair. For years his people, a group of fiveNative American nations known as the Iroquois, had engaged in a seem-

ingly endless cycle of violence and revenge. Iroquois families, villages, andnations fought one another, and neighboring Indians attacked relentlessly.When Hiawatha tried to restore peace within his own Onondaga nation, an evil sorcerer caused the deaths of his seven beloved daughters. Grief-stricken, Hiawatha wandered alone into the forest. After several days, heexperienced a series of visions. First he saw a flock of wild ducks fly up fromthe lake, taking the water with them. Hiawatha walked onto the dry lakebed,gathering the beautiful purple-and-white shells that lay there. He saw theshells, called wampum, as symbolic “words” of condolence that, when prop-erly strung into belts and ceremonially presented, would soothe anyone’sgrief, no matter how deep. Then he met a holy man named Deganawidah(the Peacemaker), who presented him with several wampum belts and spokethe appropriate words—one to dry his weeping eyes, another to open hisears to words of peace and reason, and a third to clear his throat so that hehimself could once again speak peacefully and reasonably. Deganawidahand Hiawatha took the wampum to the five Iroquois nations. To each theyintroduced the ritual of condolence as a new message of peace. The Iroquoissubsequently submerged their differences and created a council of chiefs

CHAPTER OUTLINE

The First Americans,c. 13,000–2500 B.C.

Cultural Diversity,ca. 2500 B.C.–A.D. 1500

North American Peoples on the Eve of European Contact

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1

and a confederacy based on the condolence ritual. Thuswas born the powerful League of the Iroquois.

Although the story of Hiawatha and Deganawidahwas retold by speakers through the generations but notwritten down until the late nineteenth century, it depictsa concrete event in American history. Archaeologicalfindings corroborate the sequence of bloody warfare fol-lowed by peace, and date the league’s origins at aboutA.D. 1400. Visionary Indian prophets continued toemerge among the Iroquois and other Native Americanpeoples during the centuries after 1492. As with all ofAmerican history before Europeans brought their sys-tem of writing, archaeological evidence, oral traditions,and cultural patterns—examined critically—are ourprincipal sources of evidence.

The founding of the League of the Iroquois repre-sents one moment in a long history that began morethan ten thousand years before Christopher Columbusreached America in 1492. It is also an example of theremarkable cultural diversity that had come to charac-terize the Western Hemisphere’s indigenous peoples.Adapting to varied and changing environments, someNative Americans lived in small, mobile bands ofhunter-gatherers. Others resided in seasonal or perma-nent villages where they grew crops, fished for salmon,or processed acorns. Still others lived in larger towns oreven in cities. While the smallest bands were relativelyegalitarian, in most societies leaders came from promi-nent families. In the largest societies, hereditary chiefs,kings, and emperors ruled far-flung peoples.

Underlying their diversity, Native Americans hadmuch in common. First, they identified themselves pri-marily as members of multigenerational families ratherthan as individuals or (except in the very largest soci-eties) subjects of governments. Second, most empha-sized reciprocity and mutual obligation rather thencoercion as means of maintaining harmony within andbetween communities. Third, they perceived the entireuniverse, including nature, as sacred. These core valuesarrived with the earliest Americans and persistedbeyond the invasions of Europeans and their sharplycontrasting ideas. Throughout their long history, NativeAmericans reinforced their commonalties throughexchanges of material goods, new technologies, and reli-gious ideas.

This chapter will focus on three major questions:

■ What factors prompted the transition from Paleo-Indian to Archaic ways of life among the earliestAmericans?

■ How did the varied environments of the WesternHemisphere shape the emergence of a wide diver-sity of Native American cultures?

■ What common values and practices did NativeAmericans share, despite their vast diversity?

THE FIRST AMERICANS, C. 13,000–2500 B.C.

Precisely how and when the vast Western Hemispherewas first settled remains uncertain. Many Indiansbelieve that their ancestors originated in the Americas,but most scientific theories point to the arrival of peoples from northeastern Asia during the last Ice Age(c. 33,000–10,500 B.C.), when land linked Siberia andAlaska. Thereafter, as the Ice Age waned and Earth’s climate warmed, Native Americans (like their contem-poraries in the Eastern Hemisphere) adapted to envi-ronments ranging from frigid to tropical. Though divid-ed into small, widely scattered groups, they interactedthrough trade and travel. Over several thousand years,Indians learned from one another and developed waysof life that had much in common despite their diverselinguistic, ethnic, and historical backgrounds.

Peopling New Worlds

Among several theories of the peopling of America, twopredominate (see Map 1.1). One theory holds thatSiberian hunters, pursuing game animals, crossed theexpanse of land linking Asia with North America duringthe last Ice Age, arriving only around 10,500 B.C.According to this theory, the hunters made their waythrough a glacial corridor, dispersing themselves overmuch of the Western Hemisphere. There they discovereda hunter’s paradise in which megafauna—giant mam-moths, mastodons, horses, camels, bison, caribou, andmoose—roamed, innocent of the ways of human preda-tors. A second theory, based on recent archaeologicalfinds, suggests that the first humans arrived much earli-er by boat, following the then-continuous coast toAlaska and progressing southward. At various pointsalong the way, groups stopped and either settled nearbyor traveled inland to establish new homes. Coastal sitesas far south as Monte Verde, in Chile, reveal evidencefrom about 10,500 B.C. of peoples who fed on marine life,birds, small mammals, and wild plants, as well as on theoccasional mastodon. Most archaeologists and otherscientists now conclude that the earliest Americans

2 CHAPTER 1 Native Peoples of America, to 1500

arrived in multiple migrations by both these routes. Inlight of the most recent discoveries, it is probable thatAmericans had arrived by 13,000 B.C., if not earlier.

Most Native Americans are descended from the ear-liest migrants, but the ancestors of some came later, alsofrom northeastern Asia. Peoples speaking a language

known as Athapaskan settled in Alaska and northwest-ern Canada in about 7000 B.C. Some Athapaskan speak-ers later migrated to the Southwest to form the Apachesand Navajos. After 3000 B.C., non-Indian Eskimos, orInuits, and Aleuts began crossing the Bering Sea fromSiberia to Alaska.

The First Americans, c. 13,000–2500 B.C. 3

Monte Verde

Earliest discovered Indian sites

Probable migratory routes

Maximum extent of glaciers

Extent of land, c.33,000—10,500 B.C.

1000 Kilometers0

1000 Miles0

A T L A N T I C

O C E A N

A R C T I C

O C E A N

P A C I F I C

O C E A N

MAP 1.1The Peopling of the AmericasScientists postulate two probableroutes by which the earliestpeoples reached America. By 9500B.C., they had settled throughoutthe Western Hemisphere.

Native American oral traditions offer conflictingsupport for scientists’ theories, depending on how thetraditions are interpreted. Pueblos and Navajos in theSouthwest tell how their forebears experienced perilousjourneys through other worlds before emerging fromunderground in their present homelands, while theIroquois trace their ancestry to a pregnant woman whofell from the “sky world.” Among the Iroquois and otherpeoples, the original humans could not settle the water-covered planet until a diving bird or animal brought soilfrom the ocean bottom, creating an island on which theycould walk. The Haida of British Columbia attribute ris-ing seawaters to a “flood tide woman” whose work forcedthem to move inland to higher ground. Still other tradi-tions recall large mammals, monsters, or “hairy people”with whom the first people shared Earth. Many NativeAmericans today insist that such accounts confirm that

their ancestors originated in the Western Hemisphere.However, other Indians note that the stories do not spec-ify a place of origin and may well reflect the experiencesof their ancestors as they journeyed from Asia, acrosswater, ice, and unknown lands, and encountered largemammals before settling in their new homes. If not takenliterally, they maintain, the traditions reinforce ratherthan contradict scientists’ theories.

Paleo-Indians, as archaeologists call the earliestAmericans, established the foundations of NativeAmerican life. Most Paleo-Indians appear to have trav-eled within well-defined hunting territories in bandsconsisting of several families and totaling about fifteento fifty people. Men hunted, while women prepared foodand cared for the children. Bands left their territorieswhen traveling to quarries to obtain favored materialsfor making tools and spear points. There they encoun-tered other bands, with whose members they exchangedideas and goods, intermarried, and participated in reli-gious ceremonies. These encounters enabled Paleo-Indians to develop a broad cultural life that transcendedtheir small bands.

Around 9000 B.C. many species of megafauna,including mammoths, mastodons, horses, and giantbison, suddenly became extinct. Although scholars for-merly believed that Paleo-Indian hunters killed off thelarge mammals, most now maintain that the mammalswere doomed by the warming climate, which disruptedthe food chain on which they depended. In other words,the extinction of big-game mammals was part of envi-ronmental changes associated with the end of the IceAge. Among the major beneficiaries of these changeswere human beings.

Archaic Societies

After about 8000 B.C., peoples throughout the Americasbegan modifying their Paleo-Indian ways of life. Thewarming of Earth’s atmosphere continued until about4000 B.C., with far-reaching global effects. Sea levelsrose, flooding low-lying coastal areas, while glacialrunoff filled interior waterways. As the glaciers recedednorthward, so did the arctic and subarctic environmentsthat had previously extended into what are now thelower forty-eight states of the United States. Treelessplains and evergreen forests gave way to deciduousforests in the East, grassland prairies on the Plains, anddesert in much of the West. Grasslands in SouthAmerica’s Amazon River basin were replaced by a tropi-cal rain forest. The immense range of flora and faunawith which we are familiar today emerged during thisperiod.

4 CHAPTER 1 Native Peoples of America, to 1500

Archaic peoples, as archeologists term NativeAmericans who flourished in these new environments,lived off the wider varieties of smaller mammals, fish,and wild plants that were now available. Using theresources of their environments more efficiently, com-munities required less land area and supported largerpopulations. Even peoples in the most extreme environ-ments, such as deserts and the Arctic, while still travel-ing in small bands, now hunted smaller game and gath-ered wild plants. Indians in more temperate regionsmade even more drastic changes, with some residing inyear-round villages. From about 3900 to 2800 B.C., forexample, the 100 to 150 residents of a community nearKampsville, Illinois, obtained ample supplies of fish,mussels, deer and other mammals, birds, nuts, andseeds without leaving home.

Over time, Archaic Americans sharpened some dis-tinctions between women’s and men’s roles. Men tookresponsibility for fishing as well as hunting, whilewomen procured wild plant products. Gender roles areapparent in burials at Indian Knoll, in Kentucky, wheretools relating to hunting, fishing, woodworking, andleatherworking were usually buried with men and thoserelating to cracking nuts and grinding seeds withwomen. Yet gender-specific distinctions did not applyto all activities, for objects used by religious healerswere distributed equally between male and femalegraves.

Archaic Indians—women in most North Americansocieties—honed their skills at harvesting wild plants.Through generations of close observation, they deter-mined how to weed, prune, irrigate, transplant, burn,and otherwise manipulate their environments to favorplants that provided food and medicine. They alsodeveloped specialized tools for digging and grinding aswell as more effective methods of drying and storingseeds. By 5000 B.C.—well before farming reachedEurope—some Native American farmers were plantingselected seeds for future harvesting.

The most sophisticated early plant cultivators livedin Mesoamerica (Mexico and Central America), par-ticularly in the highland valleys of Tehuacan andTamaulipas. Indians there cultivated squash, gourds,beans, chili peppers, and several species of fruits before3000 B.C. At around this time, Tehuacan farmers beganexperimenting with a lowlands plant called teosinte.Some teosinte seeds grew in the mountain valleys, whileothers failed to grow. The successful seeds eventuallyevolved into a distinct but related species, called maizeor corn. The earliest ears of maize were about the size ofan adult human finger—much smaller than the corn weknow today.

Maize agriculture quickly spread from Tehuacan. By2500 B.C., Indians were growing it elsewhere in Mexicoand Central America, in the Amazon River basin, and asfar north as what is now New Mexico. Although maizeitself was not yet grown elsewhere in North America,Indians cultivated squash and gourds in Missouri andKentucky. Similarly, maize did not reach South Americafor several more centuries, but Andean peoples alreadycultivated potatoes; Amazonians grew manioc, a starchyroot crop; and Pacific coastal dwellers harvested squash,beans, and peppers.

For a thousand years after plants were first domesti-cated, crops made up only a small part of NativeAmericans’ diets. Meat, fish, and wild plants still pre-dominated. Farming developed over many centuriesbefore becoming any society’s primary source of food.

CULTURAL DIVERSITY, C. 2500 B.C.–A.D. 1500

After about 2500 B.C., many Native Americans movedbeyond the ways of their Archaic forebears. The mostfar-reaching transformation occurred among peopleswhose cultivated crops were their primary sources offood. Farming in some of these societies was so inten-sive that it radically changed the environment. Somenonfarming as well as farming societies transformedtrade networks into extensive religious and political sys-tems linking several—sometimes dozens of—local com-munities. Some of these groupings evolved into formalconfederacies and even hierarchical states. In environ-ments where food sources were few and widely scat-tered, mobile bands survived by hunting, fishing, andgathering.

Mesoamerica and South America

As Mesoamerican farmers developed their methods, thequantity and quality of their crops increased. Annualproduction tripled at Tehuacan and Tamaulipas from2500 to 2000 B.C., and selective breeding of maize result-ed in larger ears. Farmers also planted beans alongsidemaize. The beans eaten released an amino acid, lysine,in the maize that further heightened its nutritionalvalue. Higher yields and improved nutrition led somesocieties to center their lives around farming. Over thenext eight centuries, maize-based farming societiesspread throughout Mesoamerica.

After 2000 B.C., some Mesoamerican farming soci-eties produced crop surpluses that they traded to less-populous, nonfarming neighbors. Expanding their tradecontacts, a few of these societies established formal

Cultural Diversity, c. 2500 B.C.–A.D. 1500 5

exchange networks that enabled them to enjoy morewealth and power than their partners. After 1200 B.C., afew communities, such as those of the Olmecs inMesoamerica (see Map 1.2) and Chavín de Huántar inthe Andes (see Map 1.3), developed into large urbancenters, subordinating smaller neighbors. Unlike earlieregalitarian societies, Indian cities were highly unequal,with thousands of residents dominated by a few wealthyelites and with hereditary rulers claiming kinship withreligious deities. Laborers built elaborate religious tem-ples and palaces, including the earliest pyramids in theAmericas, and artisans created statues of the rulers andthe gods.

Although the hereditary rulers exercised absolutepower, their realms were limited to a few closely clus-tered communities. Anthropologists term such politicalsocieties chiefdoms, as opposed to states in which cen-tralized, hierarchical power and institutions extendacross broad spans of territory. Chiefdoms eventuallyemerged over much of the Americas, from the Miss-

issippi valley to the Amazon valley and the AndesMountains. A few states arose in Mesoamerica after A.D.1 and in South America after A.D. 500. Although menruled most chiefdoms and states, women served aschiefs in some Andean societies until the Spanisharrived.

From capital cities with thousands of inhabitants,states centered at Monte Albán and Teotihuacán inMesoamerica (see Map 1.2) and at Wari in the Andes (seeMap 1.3) drafted soldiers and waged bloody wars of con-quest. Bureaucrats administered state territories, col-lected taxes, and managed huge public works projects.Priests conducted ceremonies in enormous temples andpresided over religious hierarchies extending through-out the states. The capital of the largest early state,Teotihuacán, was situated about fifty miles northeast ofmodern Mexico City and numbered about a hundredthousand people at the height of its power between thesecond and seventh centuries A.D. At its center was acomplex of pyramids, the largest of which, the Sun

6 CHAPTER 1 Native Peoples of America, to 1500

0 200 Kilometers100

0 200 Miles100

TABASCOTEOTITLAN

XOCONUSCO

CHIAPAS

Antigua

Kimpech

CAMPECHE

NORTHERNLOWLANDS

SOUTHERNLOWLANDS

Quiahuitztlan

Tehuantepec

Tenochtitlan(Mexico City)

Tiho (Mérida)

Tlaxcala

Tuxpan

Vera Cruz

Xicalango

Xoconocho

Zempoala

Cozumel I.

S IERRA MADRE DEL SUR

SIE

RR

AM

AD

RE

OR

IEN

TA

L

YUCATÁNPENINSULA

MAYA HIGHLANDS

VALLEY OF MEXICO

Atoyac

Balsas

Grÿalva

Pánuco

Papaloapan Usumacinta

PACIFIC

OCEAN

G u l f o f M e x i c o

Bay of Campeche

CaribbeanSea

Lake Texcoco

Monte Alban

TulaTeotihuacan

Cholula

Uxmal

Chichen Itzá

Tulum

Mayapan

Palenque Tikal

Yaxchilan

PiedrasNegras

Naranjo

Dos Pilas

CaracolBonampak

Copán

Seibal

Uaxactún

Texcoco

Approximate extent ofAztec Empire in 1519 A.D.

Approximate extent ofMaya civilization, 150 B.C.–900 A.D.

Aztec site

Maya site

Olmec site

Other ancient sites

MAP 1.2Major Mesoamerican Cultures, c. 1000 B.C..–A.D.1519The Aztecs consolidated earlier Mesoamerican cultural traditions. They were still expanding when invaded by Spain in 1519.

Pyramid, was about 1 million cubic meters in volume.Teotihuacán dominated the peoples of the valley ofMexico, and its trade networks extended over much ofmodern-day Mexico. Although Teotihuacán declined inthe eighth century, it exercised enormous influence onthe religion, government, and culture of its neighbors.

Teotihuacán’s greatest influence was on the Maya,whose kingdom-states flourished from southern Mexicoto Honduras between the seventh and fifteenth cen-turies. The Maya moved far beyond their predecessors indeveloping a calendar, a numerical system (whichincluded the concept of zero), and a system of phonetic,hieroglyphic writing. Mayan scribes produced thou-sands of codices (singular, codex) in the form of piecesof bark paper glued into long, folded strips. The codicesand other books recorded religious ceremonies, histori-cal traditions, and astronomical observations.

Other powerful states flourished in Mesoamericaand South America until the fifteenth century, when twomighty empires arose to challenge them. The first wasthe empire of the Aztecs (known at the time as theMexica), who had migrated from the north during thethirteenth century and settled on the shore of LakeTexcoco as subjects of the local inhabitants. Over-throwing their rulers in 1428, the Aztecs went on to con-quer other cities around the lake and extended theirdomain to the Gulf Coast (see Map 1.2). The Aztecexpansion took a bloody turn in the 1450s during a four-year drought, which the Aztecs interpreted as a sign thatthe gods, like themselves, were hungry. Aztec priestsmaintained that the only way to satisfy the gods was toserve them human blood and hearts. From then on, con-quering Aztec warriors sought captives for sacrifice inorder, as they believed, to nourish the gods.

A massive temple complex at the capital ofTenochtitlan formed the sacred center of the Aztecempire. The Great Temple consisted of two joined pyra-mids and was surrounded by several smaller pyramidsand other buildings. Aztec culture reflected bothMesoamerican tradition and the multicultural characterof the state. Most of the more than two hundred deitiesthey honored originated with earlier and contemporarysocieties, including those they had subjugated. Theybased their system of writing on the one developed cen-turies before at Teotihuacán and their calendar on thatof the Maya.

To support the nearly two hundred thousand peopleresiding in and around Tenochtitlan, the Aztecs maxi-mized their production of food. They drained swampyareas and added rich soil from the lake bottom to thechinampas (artificial islands) that formed. The highlyfertile chinampas enabled Aztec farmers to supply the

Cultural Diversity, c. 2500 B.C.–A.D. 1500 7

Tumbes

Quito

Cajamarca

Lima Cuzco

Caribbean Sea

ATLANTICOCEAN

PACIFIC

OCEAN

Orinoco

NegroAm azon

M

adei

ra

Toc

antin

s

Maule

SOUTHAMERICA

ISTHMUS OFPANAMA

HUAYLASVALLEY

CUZCO VALLEY BRAZILIAN

HIGHLANDS

AN

DE

S

AN

DE

S

0 600 1200 Miles

0 600 1200 Kilometers

Inca Empire in 1532

Network of Inca roads

Moche Chavín de Huantar

Wari

TiwanakuCahuachi

Amazon

LakeTiticaca

PRE-INCA CULTURES

AT

AC

AM

A

DE

SE

RT

0

0 600 Kilometers

600 Miles

Moche stateca. 200–700 A.D.

Chavin stateca. 850–250 B.C.

Nazca cultureca. 100–800 A.D.

MAP 1.3Major Andean Cultures, 900 B.C.–A.D.1432Despite the challenges posed by the rugged Andes Mountains,native peoples there developed several complex societies andcultures, culminating in the Inca Empire.

urban population with food. Aztec engineers devised anelaborate irrigation system to provide fresh water forboth people and crops.

The Aztecs collected taxes from subjects living with-in about a hundred miles of the capital. Conquered peo-ples farther away paid tribute, which replaced the freeexchanges of goods they had formerly carried on withthe Aztecs and other neighbors. Trade beyond the Aztecdomain was conducted by pochteca, professional mer-chants who traveled in armed caravans. The pochtecasought salt, cacao, jewelry, feathers, jaguar pelts, cotton,and precious stones and metals, including gold andturquoise, the latter obtained from Indians in theAmerican Southwest.

The Aztecs were still expanding in the early six-teenth century, but rebellions constantly flared within

their realm. They had surrounded and weakened, butnot subjugated, one neighboring rival, while anotherblocked their westward expansion. Might the Aztecshave expanded still farther? We will never know because,seemingly from out of nowhere, Spanish conquistadoresarrived in 1519 to alter forever the course of Meso-american history (see Chapter 2).

Meanwhile, another empire had arisen far to thesouth. From their sumptuous capital at Cuzco, the Incapeople conquered and subordinated societies overmuch of the Andes and adjacent regions after 1438. Onekey to the Incas’ expansion was their ability to produceand distribute a wide range of surplus crops, includingmaize, beans, potatoes, and meats. They constructedterraced irrigation systems for watering crops on uneventerrain, perfected freeze-drying and other preservationtechniques, built vast storehouses, and constructed avast network of roads and bridges. The Inca were stillexpanding when they were violently crushed in the six-teenth century by another, even more far-flung empire,the Spanish.

The Southwest

The Southwest (including the modern AmericanSouthwest and most of northern Mexico) is a uniformlyarid region with a variety of landscapes. Waters fromrugged mountains and forested plateaus follow ancientchannels through vast expanses of desert on their way tothe gulfs of Mexico and California. The amount of waterhas fluctuated over time, depending on climatic condi-tions, but securing water has always been a challenge forsouthwestern peoples. Nevertheless, some of them aug-mented their supplies of water and became farmers.

Maize reached the Southwest via Mesoamericantrade links by about 2500 B.C. Yet full-time farmingbegan only after 400 B.C., when the introduction of amore drought-resistant strain enabled some farmers tomove from the highlands to drier lowlands. In the cen-turies that followed, southwestern populations rose, andIndian cultures were transformed. The two most influ-ential new cultural traditions were the Hohokam and theAnasazi.

The Hohokam emerged during the third centuryB.C., when ancestors of the Pima and Tohono O’odhamIndians began farming in the Gila and Salt River valleysof southern Arizona. Hohokam peoples built irrigationcanals that enabled them to harvest two crops a year, anunprecedented feat in the arid environment. To con-struct and maintain their canals, the Hohokam organ-ized large, coordinated work forces. They built perma-

8 CHAPTER 1 Native Peoples of America, to 1500

nent towns, usually consisting of several hundred peo-ple. Although many towns remained independent, oth-ers joined confederations in which several towns werelinked by canals. The central village in each confedera-tion coordinated labor, trade, religion, and political lifefor all member communities.

Although a local creation, Hohokam culture drewextensively on Mesoamerican materials and ideas.From about the sixth century A.D., the large villageshad ball courts and platform mounds similar to thosein Mesoamerica at the time. Mesoamerican influencewas also apparent in the creations of Hohokam artists, who worked in clay, stone, turquoise, and shell. Archaeologists have uncovered rubber balls,macaw feathers, cottonseeds, and copper bells fromMesoamerica at Hohokam sites.

The culture of the Anasazi, a Navajo term meaningancient ones, originated during the first century B.C.. inthe Four Corners area where Arizona, New Mexico,Colorado, and Utah meet. By around A.D. 700, theAnasazi people were harvesting crops, living in perma-nent villages, and making pottery. Thereafter, theyexpanded over a wide area and became the most power-ful people in the Southwest.

One of the distinguishing characteristics of Anasaziculture was its architecture. Anasazi villages consisted ofextensive complexes of attached apartments and stor-age rooms, along with kivas, partly underground struc-

tures in which men conducted religious ceremonies. Tothis day, Anasazi-style apartments and kivas are centralfeatures of Pueblo Indian architecture in the Southwest.

The height of Anasazi culture occurred betweenabout 900 and 1150, during an unusually wet period inthe Southwest. In Chaco Canyon, a cluster of twelvelarge towns forged a powerful confederation numberingabout fifteen thousand people. A system of roads radiat-ed from the canyon to satellite towns as far as sixty-fivemiles away. The roads were perfectly straight; theirbuilders even carved out stairs or footholds on the sidesof steep cliffs rather than go around them. By controllingrainwater runoff through small dams and terraces, thetowns fed themselves as well as the satellites. The largestof the towns, Pueblo Bonito, had about twelve hundredinhabitants and was the home of two Great Kivas, eachabout fifty feet in diameter. People traveled over theroads from the satellites to Chaco Canyon’s large kivasfor religious ceremonies. The canyon was also a majortrade center, importing and exporting a wide range ofmaterials from and to Mesoamerica, the Great Plains,the Mississippi valley, and California.

The classic Anasazi culture, as manifested at ChacoCanyon, Mesa Verde in southwestern Colorado, andother sites, came to an end in the twelfth and thirteenthcenturies. Although other factors contributed, the over-riding cause of the Anasazi demise was drought. As hasoften happened in human history, an era of especially

Cultural Diversity, c. 2500 B.C.–A.D. 1500 9

abundant rainfall, which the Anasazi thought would lastforever, abruptly ended. Without enough water, thehighly concentrated inhabitants abandoned the greatAnasazi centers, dispersing to form new, smaller pueb-los. Their descendants would encounter Spanish colo-nizers three centuries later (see Chapter 2). Other con-centrated communities, including the Hohokam, alsodispersed when drought came. With farming peoplesnow clustered in the few areas with enough water, thedrier lands of the Southwest attracted the nonfarmingApaches and Navajos, whose arrival at the end of thefourteenth century ended their long migration from thefar north (mentioned above).

The Eastern Woodlands

In contrast to the Southwest, the Eastern Woodlands—the vast expanse stretching from the Mississippi valleyto the Atlantic Ocean—had abundant water. Water anddeciduous forests provided Woodlands Indians with arich variety of food sources, while the region’s extensiveriver systems facilitated long-distance communicationand travel. As a result, many eastern Indians establishedpopulous villages and complex confederations wellbefore adopting full-time, maize-based farming.

By 1200 B.C., about five thousand people lived atPoverty Point on the lower Mississippi River. The townfeatured earthworks consisting of two large mounds andsix concentric embankments, the outermost of whichspanned more than half a mile in diameter. During thespring and autumn equinoxes, a person standing on the

larger mound could watch the sun rise directly over thevillage center. As in some Mesoamerican societies at the time, solar observations were the basis for religiousbeliefs and a calendar.

Poverty Point was the center of a much larger politi-cal and economic unit. The settlement imported largequantities of quartz, copper, obsidian, crystal, and othersacred materials from long distances for redistributionto nearby communities. These communities almost cer-tainly supplied some of the labor for the earth-works. Poverty Point’s general design and organizationindicate Olmec influence from Mesoamerica (seeabove). Poverty Point flourished for about three cen-turies and then declined, for reasons unknown.Nevertheless, it foreshadowed later developments in theEastern Woodlands.

A different kind of mound-building culture, calledAdena, emerged in the Ohio valley around 400 B.C.Adena villages were smaller than Poverty Point, rarelyexceeding four hundred inhabitants. But Adena peoplespread over a wide area and built hundreds of mounds,most of them containing graves. The treatment of Adenadead varied according to social or political status. Somecorpses were cremated; others were placed in round claybasins; and still others were given elaborate tombs.

After 100 B.C. Adena culture evolved into a morecomplex and widespread culture known as Hopewell,which spread from the Ohio valley to the Illinois Rivervalley. Some Hopewell centers contained two or threedozen mounds within enclosures of several squaremiles. The variety and quantity of goods buried with

10 CHAPTER 1 Native Peoples of America, to 1500

members of the elite were also greater. Hopewell eliteswere buried with thousands of freshwater pearls or cop-per ornaments or with sheets of mica, quartz, or othersacred substances. Hopewell artisans fashioned fineornaments and jewelry, which their owners wore in lifeand took to their graves. The raw materials for theseobjects originated in locales throughout America east ofthe Rockies. Through far-flung trade networks, Hopewellreligious and technological influence spread to commu-nities as far away as Wisconsin, Missouri, Florida, andNew York. Although the great Hopewell centers wereabandoned by about 600 (for reasons that are unclear),they had an enormous influence on subsequent devel-opments in eastern North America.

The peoples of Poverty Point and the Adena andHopewell cultures did little farming. Indian women inKentucky and Missouri had cultivated small amounts ofsquash as early as 2500 B.C., and maize first appearedeast of the Mississippi by 300 B.C.. But agriculture didnot become a dietary mainstay for Woodlands peopleuntil between the seventh and twelfth centuries A.D., aswomen moved beyond gathering and minor cultivatingactivities to become the major producers of food.

The first full-time farmers in the East lived on thefloodplains of the Mississippi River and its major tribu-taries. Beginning around A.D. 700, they developed a new culture, called Mississippian. The volume ofMississippian craft production and long-distance trade

dwarfed that of the Adena and Hopewell peoples. As inMesoamerica, Mississippian centers, numbering hun-dreds or even thousands of people, arose around openplazas. Large platform mounds adjoined the plazas,topped by sumptuous religious temples and the resi-dences of chiefs and other elites. Religious ceremoniesfocused on the worship of the sun as the source of agri-cultural fertility. The people considered chiefs to berelated to the sun. When a chief died, his wives and ser-vants were killed so that they could accompany him inthe afterlife. Largely in connection with their religiousand funeral rituals, Mississippian artists produced high-ly sophisticated work in clay, stone, shell, copper, wood,and other materials.

After A.D. 900, Mississippian centers formed exten-sive networks based on river-borne trade and sharedreligious beliefs, each dominated by a single metropolis.The most powerful such system centered aroundCahokia located near modern St. Louis (see A Place inTime: Cahokia in 1200).

For about two and a half centuries, Cahokia reignedsupreme in the Mississippi valley. After A.D. 1200, howev-er, Cahokia and other valley centers experienced short-ages of food and other resources. As in the Southwest,densely concentrated societies had taxed a fragile envi-ronment with a fluctuating climate. One result was com-petition for suddenly scarce resources, which led todebilitating warfare and the undermining of Cahokia and

Cultural Diversity, c. 2500 B.C.–A.D. 1500 11

A Place in Time

Cahokia in1200

Between the tenth andthirteenth centuries, acity of about twentythousand people flour-ished near the conflu-ence of the Mississippiand Missouri Rivers.Called Cahokia, it filledmore than 6 squaremiles and contained

more than 120 earthworks. At its center, a four-terracedstructure called Monk’s Mound covered 15 acres (morethan the Great Pyramids of Egypt) and rose a hundred feetat its highest point. Surrounding the city, a 125-square-milemetropolitan area encompassed ten large towns and morethan fifty farming villages. In addition, Cahokia dominateda vast network of commercial and political alliancesextending over much of the American heartland.

Cahokia’s beginnings lay in the seventh century A.D.,as Native Americans in the East were shifting to farmingas their primary means of procuring food. In search ofbetter soil, several small villages moved to the low flood-plain extending eastward from the Mississippi aroundwhat is now the Illinois side of greater St. Louis. AroundA.D. 900, these villages began their transformation into acity with the construction of several mounds. Two cen-turies later, a stockade enclosed Monk’s Mound andnumerous other public structures, and most of the city’sresidents lived outside the walled precincts.

Cahokia was ideally situated for preeminence inmid-America. Its fertile land yielded surplus agriculturalcrops, which the women harvested, and the river provid-ed rich supplies of fish and mussels. Game and wildplants abounded in nearby uplands. The city had readyaccess not only to the Mississippi and Missouri Riversbut also to the Ohio and Illinois Rivers, where Adena andHopewell peoples had previously developed extensivetrade networks based on shared religious beliefs.Cahokia and other Mississippian societies drew onHopewell beliefs and new ideas from Mexico as theyerected even more complex political, economic, and

religious institutions. By the twelfth century, somescholars believe, Cahokia was the capital of a potentialnation-state.

Archaeology provides evidence of what Cahokiansmade and left in the ground as well as clues to theirsocial structure, trade networks, and beliefs. Work gangscollected soil for the mounds with shovels made of woodand stone and carried the dirt in baskets to constructionsites, often more than half a mile away. Much of the workforce for this backbreaking labor undoubtedly wasdrawn from neighboring towns, which also contributedagricultural surpluses to feed specialized artisans andelites in the city. The artisans produced pottery, shellbeads, copper ornaments, clothing, stone tools, and arange of other goods. Indians brought the raw materialsfor these objects from locations throughout eastern andcentral North America as tribute—payment by societiessubordinated by Cahokia—or in return for the finished

12

products. The coordination of labor, trade, and otheractivities also required a sizable class of managers oroverseers. Atop all these were the political and religiousleaders, whose overpowering roles are confirmed byeighteenth-century French accounts of a similar societyamong the Natchez Indians near Louisiana.

Archaeologists also find evidence of social rankingat Cahokia in the treatment of the dead. Most peoplewere buried in mass graves outside the city, but moreprestigious commoners were placed in ridge-topmounds, and those of highest status in conical mounds.In the most remarkable mound, a man was laid out on aplatform of twenty thousand beads made from shellsoriginating in the Gulf of Mexico. He was surrounded bybushels of mica from the Appalachians, a sheet of rolledcopper from Lake Superior, and quivers of arrows fromcommunities throughout the Mississippi valley. Thisextraordinary man did not go to his grave alone. An adja-cent pit contained the bodies of fifty young females intheir late teens and early twenties; another held theremains of four men whose heads and hands were cutoff; and a third included three men and three women.French witnesses describe how, when a Natchez rulerdied, his wife, servants, guards, and others personallyattached to him were killed so that they could accompa-ny him in the afterlife. The people called this ruler theGreat Sun to denote his position as an earthly represen-tative of the sun, the central focus of Mississippian reli-

gion. This burial and others at Cahokia appear to bebased on similar beliefs.

By 1200 Cahokia had reached its peak. During thecentury that followed, it declined in size and power,while other centers in the Southeast and Midwest sur-passed it. Although the causes of this decline are notcertain, the archaeological evidence provides clues.First, neighboring communities were straining to pro-duce enough crops to feed themselves and the manyCahokians who did not grow their own food. Second, thecity’s demands for fuel and construction materials wereseriously reducing the supply of wood in and aroundCahokia. This depletion of the forests also deprived resi-dents of the animals and wild plants on which theydepended for food. Third, the strengthening of thestockade surrounding central Cahokia suggests that theelites were facing a military challenge from inside oroutside the city, or both. Finally, the trade networks thatformerly brought tribute to Cahokia and carried awaythe city’s finished products had collapsed. Taken togeth-er, these trends indicate that a combination of environ-mental factors and resistance to centralized authorityprobably led to Cahokia’s downfall. By the time theFrench explorer La Salle passed through in 1682 (seeChapter 3), Cahokia was a small village of IllinoisIndians who, like other native peoples of the region, hadabandoned Mississippian religious and political systemsfor the autonomous villages of their ancestors.

13

its allies . The survivors fled to the surrounding prairiesand, in some cases, westward to the lower valleys of thePlains. By the fifteenth century, their descendants wereliving in villages linked by reciprocity rather than coer-cion. Mississippian chiefdoms and temple mound cen-ters persisted in the Southeast, where Spanish explorerswould later encounter them (see Chapter 2).

Despite Cahokia’s decline, Mississippian cultureprofoundly affected Native Americans in the EasternWoodlands. Mississippians spread new strains of maizeand beans, along with techniques and tools for cultivat-ing these crops, enabling women to weave agricultureinto the fabric of village life. Only in some northerlyareas was the growing season usually too short for maize(which required 120 frost-free days) to be a reliable crop.

Woodland peoples’ slash-and-burn method of landmanagement was environmentally sound and econom-ically productive. Indian men systematically burnedhardwood forests, eliminating the underbrush andforming open, parklike expanses. Although they occa-sionally lost control of a fire, so that it burned beyondtheir hunting territory, the damage was not lasting.Burned-over tracts favored the growth of grass andberry bushes that attracted a profusion of deer andother game. They then cleared fields so that womencould plant corn, beans, and pumpkins in soil enrichedby ash. After several years of abundant harvests, yieldsdeclined, and the Indians moved to another site torepeat the process. Ground cover eventually reclaimedthe abandoned clearing, restoring fertility naturally,and the Indians could return.

Nonfarming Societies

Outside the Southwest and the Eastern Woodlands,farming north of Mesoamerica was either impossiblebecause of inhospitable environments or impracticalbecause native peoples could obtain enough food fromwild sources with less work. On the Northwest coast,from the Alaskan panhandle to northern California, andin the Columbia Plateau, Indians devoted brief periodsof each year to catching salmon and other spawningfish. After drying the fish, they stored it in quantities suf-ficient to last the year. As a result, their seasonal move-ments gave way to a settled lifestyle in permanent vil-lages. For example, the Makah Indians of Ozette, onWashington’s Olympic Peninsula, pursued fish and seamammals, including whales, while procuring shellfish,salmon and other river fish, land mammals, and wildplants.

By A.D. 1, most Northwest Coast villages numberedseveral hundred people who lived in multifamily housesbuilt of cedar planks. Trade and warfare with interiorgroups strengthened the wealth and power of chiefs andother elites. Leading families displayed their power inelaborate totem poles depicting their descent from spir-itual figures, and in potlatches—ceremonies in whichthey gave away or destroyed their material wealth. Fromthe time of the earliest contacts, Europeans wereamazed by the artistic and architectural achievements ofthe Northwest Coast Indians. “What must astonishmost,” wrote a French explorer in 1791, “is to see paint-ing everywhere, everywhere sculpture, among a nationof hunters.”

At about the same time, Native Americans on thecoast and in the valleys of what is now California wereclustering in villages of about a hundred people to coor-dinate the processing of acorns. After gathering millionsof acorns from California’s extensive oak groves each fall,the Indians ground them into meal, leached them oftheir bitter tannic acid, and then roasted, boiled, orbaked the nuts prior to eating or storing them. Facingintense competition for acorns, California Indians com-bined their villages into chiefdoms and defended theirterritories. Chiefs conducted trade, diplomacy, war, andreligious ceremonies. Along with other wild species,acorns enabled the Indians of California to prosper. As a Spanish friar arriving in California from Mexico in1770 wrote, “This land exceeds all the preceding terri-tory in fertility and abundance of things necessary forsustenance.”

Between the Eastern Woodlands and the Pacificcoast, the Plains and deserts remained too dry to sup-

14 CHAPTER 1 Native Peoples of America, to 1500

port large human settlements. Dividing the region arethe Rocky Mountains, to the east of which lie the grass-lands of the Great Plains, while to the west are severaldeserts of varying elevations that ecologists call theGreat Basin. Except in the Southwest, Native Americansin this region remained in mobile hunting-gatheringbands.

Plains Indian hunters pursued a variety of game ani-mals, including antelope, deer, elk, and bear, but theirfavorite prey was buffalo, or bison, a smaller relative ofthe giant bison that had flourished before the arrival ofhumans. Buffalo provided Plains Indians with meat andwith hides, from which they made clothing, bedding,portable houses (tipis), kettles, shields, and other items.They made tools from buffalo bones and containers andarrowheads from buffalo horns, and they used mostother buffalo parts as well. Limited to travel by foot,Plains hunters stampeded herds of bison into small boxcanyons, easily killing the trapped animals, or over cliffs.Dozens, or occasionally hundreds, of buffalo would bekilled. Since a single buffalo could provide two hundredto four hundred pounds of meat and a band had nomeans of preserving and storing most of it, the latterpractice was especially wasteful. On the other hand,humans were so few in number that they had no signifi-cant impact on the bison population before the arrival ofEuropeans. There are no reliable estimates of the num-ber of buffalo then roaming the Plains, but the earliestEuropean observers were flabbergasted. One Spanishcolonist, for example, witnessed a “multitude so greatthat it might be considered a falsehood by one who hadnot seen them.”

During and after the Mississippian era, groups ofEastern Woodlands Indians migrated to the lower rivervalleys of the Plains, where over time the rainfall hadincreased enough to support cultivated plants. In con-trast to Native Americans already living on the Plains,such as the Blackfeet and the Crow, farming newcomerslike the Mandans and Pawnees built year-round villagesand permanent earth lodges. But they also hunted buf-falo and other animals. (Many of the Plains Indiansfamiliar today, such as the Sioux and Comanche, movedto the region only after Europeans had begun colonizingNorth America [see Chapter 4].)

As Indians elsewhere increased their food produc-tion, the Great Basin grew warmer and dryer, furtherlimiting already scarce sources of foods. Ducks andother waterfowl on which Native Americans formerlyfeasted disappeared as marshlands dried up after 1200B.C., and the number of buffalo and other game animalsalso dwindled. Great Basin Indians countered these

Cultural Diversity, c. 2500 B.C.–A.D. 1500 15

trends by relying more heavily on piñon nuts, whichthey harvested, stored, and ate in winter camps.Hunting improved after about A.D. 500, when Indians inthe region adopted the bow and arrow.

In western Alaska, where the first Americans hadappeared thousands of years earlier, Eskimos andAleuts, carrying highly sophisticated tools and weaponsfrom their Siberian homeland, arrived after 3000 B.C.Combining ivory, bone, and other materials, they fash-ioned harpoons and spears for the pursuit of sea mammals and—in the case of the Eskimos—caribou.Through continued contacts with Siberia, the Eskimosintroduced the bow and arrow in North America. As theyperfected their ways of living in the cold tundra environ-ment, many Eskimos spread westward across upperCanada and to Greenland.

Long before the arrival of Columbus, some Eskimosand Indians made contact with Europeans and usedsome of their material goods. From about A.D. 1, Eskimosin western Alaska acquired European-made iron tools byway of Russia and Siberia. However, the tools were toofew in number to affect Eskimo culture in any substantialway. Contacts between Native Americans and Europeanswere more direct and sustained after about 980, whenNorse expansionists from Scandinavia colonized parts ofGreenland. The Greenland Norse hunted furs, obtainedtimber, and traded with Eskimo people on the easternCanadian mainland. They also made several attempts,

beginning in about 1000, to colonize Vinland, as theycalled Newfoundland. The Vinland Norse initiallyexchanged metal goods for ivory with the localBeothuk Indians, but peaceful trade gave way to hos-tile encounters. Within a century, Beothuk resistanceled the Norse to withdraw from Vinland. As a Norseleader, dying after losing a battle with some natives,put it, “There is fat around my belly! We have won afine and fruitful country, but will hardly be allowed toenjoy it.” Although some Norse remained in Greenlandas late as the 1480s, it was other Europeans who wouldenjoy, at the expense of native peoples, the fruits of a“New World.”

Although the peoples of the Western and EasternHemispheres developed entirely apart from one anoth-er, their histories are in many ways comparable. Yetenvironmental and other limitations prevented somefeatures of Eurasian and African cultures from arising inthe Americas. Most fundamental was the unavailabilityof animals that could have been domesticated (otherthan llamas in the Andes and dogs). Lacking cattle,sheep, and hogs, Native Americans relied on wild meatinstead of producing their own. Without horses, theyhad no incentive to develop the wheel (although theMaya made children’s toys with wheels). There is notelling how American history might have unfolded inthe absence of the European invasions that began in1492.

NORTH AMERICAN PEOPLESON THE EVE OF

EUROPEAN CONTACTBy A.D. 1500, native peoples had transformed theAmericas into a dazzling array of cultures and societies(see Map 1.4). The Western Hemisphere numbered about75 million people, most thickly clustered in urbanizedareas of Mesoamerica and South America. But NorthAmerica was no empty wasteland. Between 7 million and10 million Indians lived north of Mesoamerica. Theywere unevenly distributed. As they had for thousands ofyears, small, mobile hunting bands peopled the Arctic,Subarctic, Great Basin, and much of the Plains. Moresedentary societies based on fishing or gathering pre-dominated along the Pacific coast, while village-basedagriculture was typical in the Eastern Woodlands and theriver valleys of the Southwest and Plains. Mississippianurban centers still prevailed in areas of the Southeast. Allthese peoples grouped themselves in several hundred

nations and tribes, and spoke hundreds of languages anddialects.

Despite the vast differences among Native Americans,much bound them together. Rooted in common practices,Indian societies were based on kinship, the norms of reci-procity, and communal use and control of resources.Trade facilitated the exchange not only of goods but also oftechnologies and ideas. Thus, the bow and arrow, ceramicpottery, and certain religious values and practices charac-terized Indians everywhere.

Kinship and Gender

Like their Archaic forebears, Indian peoples north of theMesoamerican states were bound together primarily bykinship. Ties among biological relatives created complexpatterns of social obligation and interdependence, evenin societies that did not expect spouses to be marriedforever. Customs regulating marriage varied consider-ably, but strict rules always prevailed. In most cultures,young people married in their teens, after winning socialacceptance as adults and, generally, after a period of sex-ual experimentation. Sometimes male leaders tookmore than one wife, but nuclear families (a husband, awife, and their biological children) never stood alone.Instead, they lived with one of the parents’ relatives inwhat social scientists call extended families.

In some Native American societies, such as theIroquois, the extended families of women took prece-dence over those of men. Upon marriage, a new hus-band moved in with his wife’s extended family. The primary male authority figure in a child’s life was themother’s oldest brother, not the father. In many respects,a husband and father was simply a guest of his wife’sfamily. Other Indian societies recognized men’s extend-ed families as primary, and still others did not distin-guish sharply between the status of female and malefamily lines.

Kinship was also the basis for armed conflict. Indiansocieties typically considered homicide a matter to beresolved by the extended families of the victim and theperpetrator. If the perpetrator’s family offered a gift thatthe victim’s family considered appropriate, the questionwas settled; if not, political leaders attempted to resolvethe dispute. Otherwise, the victim’s family members andtheir supporters might seek to avenge the killing byarmed retaliation. Such feuds could escalate into warsbetween communities. The potential for war rose whendensely populated societies competed for scarceresources, as on the Northwest and California coasts,

16 CHAPTER 1 Native Peoples of America, to 1500

and when centralized Mississippian societies used coer-cion to dominate trade networks. Yet Native Americanwarfare generally remained minimal, with rivals seekingto humiliate one another and seize captives rather thaninflict massive casualties or conquer land. A New

England officer, writing in the seventeenth century,described a battle between two Indian groups as “morefor pastime than to conquer and subdue enemies.” Heconcluded that “they might fight seven years and not killseven men.”

North American Peoples on the Eve of European Contact 17

GREAT PLAINS

PLATEAU

SUBARCTIC

ARCTIC

ARCTIC

ARCTIC

CALIFORNIA

NORTHWESTCOAST

SOUTHWEST

EASTERNWOODLANDS

GREAT BASIN

P A C I F I C

O C E A N

A T L A N T I C

O C E A N

GULF OF MEXICO0 500 Miles

0 500 Kilometers

Huron

Timucua

Taino

Ojibwa

Chumash

Miwok

Yurok

Nez Percé

Assiniboin

Okanagan

Tsmishian

Tlingit

Eskimo

Inuit

Inuit

Eskimo

Zuni

NavajoHopi

Yuma

Pima

MohaveWalapais

Paiute

WashoPomo

Shoshone

Flathead

YakimaChinook

Crow

Cheyenne

SiouxMandan

Arikara

Pawnee

ArapahoUte

OsageWichita

Kiowa

Caddo ChoctawNatchez

Chickasaw

IllinoisMiami

FoxSac

Menominis

Potawatomi

Ottawa

Shawnee

Erie

Guale

CatawbaTuscarora

Powhatan

Delaware

PequotNarragansettS

enec

aO

nei

da

On

on

dag

aC

ayu

ga

Mo

haw

k

Iroquois

Susquehannock

Beothuk

Innu

Naskapi

Cree

Chippewyan

Beaver

Sarsi

Blackfeet

GrosVentre

SanpoilSalish

NootkaKwakiutl

Shuswap

Haida

SlaveyKaska

Dogrib

Creek

Aleut

Pueblo

Wampanoag

Massachusett

(Yamasee)

Cree

Che

roke

eAben

aki

Win

neb

ago

MAP 1.4Locations of Selected Native American Peoples, A.D. 1500Today’s Indian nations were well established in homelands across the continent when Europeans first arrived.Many would combine with others or move in later centuries, either voluntarily or because they were forced.

Women did most of the cultivating in farmingsocieties except in the Southwest (where women andmen shared the responsibility). With women produc-ing the greater share of the food supply, some soci-eties accorded them more power than did Europeans.Among the Iroquois, for example, women collectivelyowned the fields, distributed food, and played a deci-sive role in selecting chiefs. In New England, womenoften served as sachems, or political leaders.

Spiritual and Social Values

Native American religions revolved around the convic-tion that all nature was alive, pulsating with spiritualpower—manitou in the Algonquian languages, orendain the Iroquoian, and wakan in the Siouan. A mysteri-ous, awe-inspiring force that could affect human life forboth good and evil, such power united all nature in anunbroken web. Manitou encompassed “every thingwhich they cannot comprehend,” reported RhodeIsland’s Roger Williams. Native Americans endeavoredto conciliate the spiritual forces in their world—living

things, rocks and water, sun and moon, even ghosts andwitches. For example, Indian hunters prayed to the spir-its of the animals they killed, thanking them for the giftof food.

Indians had several ways of gaining access to spiri-tual power. One was through dreams. Most NativeAmericans took very seriously the visions that came tothem in sleep. Some also sought power through difficultphysical ordeals. Young men in many societies gainedrecognition as adults through a vision quest—a solitaryventure that entailed fasting and awaiting the appear-ance of a spirit who would endow them with specialpowers and sometimes, as in Hiawatha’s case, entrustthem with a message of import for their people. Girlsunderwent rituals at the onset of menstruation to initi-ate them into the spiritual world from which femalereproductive power flowed. Entire communities oftenpracticed collective power-seeking rituals such as theSun Dance, performed by Indians of the Plains andGreat Basin.

Native Americans who had gained special religiouspowers assisted others in communicating with unseen

18 CHAPTER 1 Native Peoples of America, to 1500

spirits. These medicine men and women were healerswho used both medicinal plants and magical chants tocure illnesses. They also served as spiritual advisers andleaders, interpreting dreams, guiding vision quests, andconducting ceremonies. Chiefs claiming kinship withspiritual forces had to maintain respectful relations withthese religious leaders to support their claims.

Native American societies demanded a strongdegree of cooperation. From early childhood, Indians inmost cultures learned to be accommodating andreserved—slow to reveal their own feelings until theycould sense the feelings of others. Using physical pun-ishment sparingly, if at all, Indians punished childrenpsychologically, by public shaming. Communitiessought unity through consensus rather than toleratinglasting divisions. Political leaders articulated slowlyemerging agreements in dramatic oratory. The Englishcolonizer John Smith noted that the most effectiveNative American leaders spoke “with vehemency and sogreat passions that they sweat till they drop and are soout of breath they scarce can speak.”

Native Americans reinforced cooperation with astrong sense of order. Custom, the demands of socialconformity, and the rigors of nature strictly regulated lifeand people’s everyday affairs. Exacting familial or com-munity revenge was a ritualized way of restoring orderthat had broken down. On the other hand, the failure ofmeasures to restore order could bring the fearful conse-quences experienced by Hiawatha’s Iroquois—blindhatred, unending violence, and the most dreaded ofevils, witchcraft. In fearing witchcraft, Native Americansresembled the Europeans and Africans they wouldencounter after 1492.

The principle of reciprocity, perfected in Archaictimes, remained strong among Native Americans.Reciprocity involved mutual give-and-take, but its aimwas not to ensure equality. Instead, societies based onreciprocity tried to maintain equilibrium and interde-pendence between individuals of unequal power andprestige. Even in the most complex societies, chiefscoordinated families’ uses of land and other resources,but never awarded these outright.

Most Indian leaders’ authority depended on theobligations they bestowed rather than on coercion. Bydistributing gifts, they obligated members of the com-munity to support them and to accept their authority,however limited. The same principle applied to relationsbetween societies. Powerful communities distributedgifts to weaker neighbors who reciprocated with tributein the form of material goods and submission. A French

observer in early-seventeenth-century Canada clearlyunderstood: “For the savages have that noble quality,that they give liberally, casting at the feet of him whomthey will honor the present that they give him. But it iswith hope to receive some reciprocal kindness, which isa kind of contract, which we call . . . ’I give thee, to theend thou shouldst give me.’ ”

CONCLUSIONWhen Europeans “discovered” America in 1492, they didnot, as they thought, enter a static world of simple sav-ages. For thousands of years, Native Americans hadtapped the secrets of the land, sustaining themselvesand flourishing in almost every environment. NativeAmericans transformed the landscape, as evidenced bytheir hunting camps, communities, and cornfields. ButIndians never viewed these accomplishments as evi-dence of their ability to conquer nature. Rather, they sawthemselves as participants in a natural and spiritualorder that pervaded the universe, and their attitudes, asexpressed in their religious practices, were gratitude andconcern lest they violate that order.

These beliefs did not necessarily make all NativeAmericans careful conservationists. Plains huntersoften killed more animals than they could eat; andeastern Indians sometimes burned more land thanintended. But the effect of such acts were limited;Indians did not repeat them often enough to eliminateentire species. However, some Indians’ actions weremore consequential. The decline of the great Anasaziand Mississippian centers resulted from excessivedemands placed on their environments by large con-centrations of people.

After 1500, a new attitude toward the land madeitself felt in North America. “A people come from underthe world, to take their world from them”—thus aMannahoac Indian characterized the English whoinvaded his homeland to found Virginia. Certain thatGod had given Christians dominion over nature,European newcomers claimed vast expanses of territo-ry for their crowned heads. They divided much of theland into plots, each to be owned by an individual orfamily and to be valued according to the wealth it pro-duced. Over the ensuing centuries, they ignored andeven belittled Native American strategies that allowednatural resources to renew themselves. The modernsociety that has arisen on the Indians’ ancient conti-nent bears little resemblance to the world that NativeAmericans once knew.

Conclusion 19

FOR FURTHER REFERENCE

READINGS

The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of theAmericas (3 vols., 1996–2000).Volumes on NorthAmerica, Mesoamerica, and South America, each con-taining authoritative essays by archaeologists and histo-rians covering the entire expanse of Native Americanhistory.

Cheryl Claassen and Rosemary A. Joyce, eds., Women inPrehistory: North America and Mesoamerica (1997).Fourteen essays draw on and examine archaeologicalevidence of women’s roles and gender identity in a rangeof Native American societies.

Thomas D. Dillehay, The Settlement of the Americas: A NewPrehistory (2000). An excellent critical review of currentscholarly debates on the earliest Americans.

Brian Fagan, Ancient North America: The Archaeology of aContinent (2000). A comprehensive introduction to thecontinent’s history before Europeans’ arrival.

William W. Fitzhugh and Elisabeth I. Ward, eds., Vikings:The North Atlantic Saga (2000). Thirty-one essays, alongwith hundreds of illustrations, cover virtually everythingscholars now know about Norse colonization in theNorth Atlantic.

Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., America in 1492: The World of theIndian Peoples Before the Arrival of Columbus (1992).Highly readable regional and thematic essays on life inthe Western Hemisphere on the eve of European contact.

Shepard Krech III, The Ecological Indian: Myth and History(1999). A controversial, well-informed critique of theidea that Native Americans invariably lived in harmonywith nature before Europeans arrived.

Lynda Norene Shaffer, Native Americans Before 1492: TheMoundbuilding Centers of the Eastern Woodlands (1992).A thoughtful, readable interpretation of eastern mound-builders from Poverty Point to the Mississippians.

William C. Sturtevant, gen. ed., Handbook of NorthAmerican Indians (20 vols. projected, 1978– ). A referencework, still in progress, providing basic information onthe history and culture of Native American societies, aswell as surveys of regional archaeology and essays ontopics of special interest.

Lawrence E. Sullivan, ed., Native American Religions: NorthAmerica (1989). Essays focusing on religious life andexpression throughout the continent.

20 CHAPTER 1 Native Peoples of America, to 1500

CHRONOLOGY 13,000 B.C.–A.D. 1500

c. 13,000 B.C. People present in America.c. 10,500–9000 B.C. Paleo-Indians established

throughout Western Hemisphere.c. 9000 B.C. Extinction of big-game mammals.c. 8000 B.C. Earliest Archaic societies.c. 7000 B.C. Athapaskan-speaking peoples enter

North America.c. 5000 B.C. First domesticated plants grown.c. 3000 B.C. First maize grown in Mesoamerica.c. 3000–2000 B.C. Eskimo and Aleut peoples enter

North America from Siberia.c. 2500 B.C. Archaic societies begin giving way to a

more diverse range of cultures. Firstmaize grown in North America.

c. 1200 B.C. First chiefdoms emerge.c. 1200–900 B.C. Poverty Point flourishes in

Louisiana.c. 400–100 B.C. Adena culture flourishes in Ohio valley.c. 250 B.C. Hohokam culture begins in Southwest.c. 100 B.C. Anasazi culture begins in Southwest.c. 100 B.C.–A.D. 600 Hopewell culture thrives in

Midwest.c. A.D. 1 Rise of chiefdoms on Northwest Coast

and in California.c. 100–700 Teotihuacán flourishes in Mesoamerica.c. 600–1400 Mayan kingdoms flourish.c. 700 Mississippian culture begins. Anasazi

expansion begins.c. 900 Urban center arises at Cahokia.c. 980 Norse arrive in Greenland.c. 1000–1100 Norse attempt to colonize Vinland

(Newfoundland).c. 1200 Anasazi and Hohokam peoples disperse

in Southwest.c. 1200–1400 Cahokia declines and inhabitants disperse.c. 1400 League of the Iroquois formed.1428 Rise of Aztec Empire.1438 Rise of Inca Empire.1492 Christopher Columbus reaches Western

Hemisphere.

WEBSITES

American Indian History and Related Issueshttp://www.csulb.edu/projects/ais/index.html#north(American Indian Studies Program, California StateUniversity, Long Beach) Provides links to hundreds ofsites relating to Native Americans before and after 1492.

Cahokia Mounds State Historic Sitehttp://medinfo.wustl.edu/�mckinney/cahokia/cahokia.html(Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, Collinsville, IL) An introduction to archaeology at Cahokia, with visitorinformation about the site of North America’s earliestmetropolis.

Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Centerhttp://www.mashantucket.com/index1.html(Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center,Mashantucket, CT) Includes discussion of the museum’songoing archaeological research, an introduction to itscollection of more than two thousand objects, and anonline information resources catalog. Emphasis onnortheastern Native Americans, especially in NewEngland.

Sipapu: The Anasazi Emergence into the Cyber Worldhttp://sipapu.gsu.edu/(John Kantner, Department of Anthropology andGeography, Georgia State University, Atlanta) An excel-lent site that enables visitors to explore Anasazi struc-tures as well as learn about the history of a major south-western culture.

For Further Reference 21