Evolution of Native American Cultures (An Overview Taken as a Snippet from the Beginning of My Chapter on American History in >Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education<)

An Overview of the Evolution of Native American Cultures

 

About 17,000 years ago, with the world at the height of its last Ice Age, an icy bridge across today’s Bering Strait served as the conduit for people following their game herds from Siberia into Alaska.  From there, they trekked southward to the Rocky Mountains by about 10,000 years ago and from the Rockies moved eastward to the Atlantic coast.  These peoples fashioned bows and arrows, war clubs, and spears from wood and stone;  with the wooly mammoth extinct as they were in the midst of their migrations across the plains and prairies of the upper West and Midwest, they hunted small game, deer, moose,  and the American bison (buffalo).  By about 1500 B. C. (CE), some of these hunter-gatherers learned to cultivate crops on land along rivers, settling into small villages and developing distinct cultures.

 

The Aleut of southwestern Alaska lived in sod houses, going forth to fish and hunt wildlife, including sea mammals;  women used an original two-strand twining technique to weave clothes and blankets.  The Inuit people spread out from southeastern Alaska to Greenland, hunting whale, seal, and caribou;  in response to their Arctic climate, they built ice igloos, constructed the versatile kayak, and wore footwear highly adapted to ice and snow. 

 

The Ottawa people originally lived north of the Great Lakes before moving to an inlet (Georgia Bay) of Lake Huron in southeastern Ontario.  The Huron people also lived in Ontario, as did a portion of the Iroquois confederacy (comprised of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca);  the Iroquois  also settled in today’s Quebec Province and New York State.  The Narragansett people constructed their wigwams (domed houses with sapling frames covered with bark and deerskin) in Rhode Island.  

 

Arapaho, Blackfoot, Comanche, Cree, Crow, and Flathead tribes lived and hunted in various areas of the Great Plains;  the Cree also lived in the woodlands along and north of today’s Canadian border.  To the northwest (today’s Idaho, Oregon, and Washington) lived the Nez Perce, while across the expanses of today’s Midwest lived Cheyenne, Dakota, Kickapoo, Ojibwe, Osage, and Shawnee. 

 

The Cherokee were skillful farmers who lived in the southern Allegheny Mountains of Alabama, the Carolinas, Georgia, and Tennessee.  The Delaware built their rectangular, bark-covered houses in the woodlands areas extending from the Atlantic.  The Miami also were an Eastern Woodlands people who

burned forest land to clear fields and control brush to abet their agricultural economy;  they also, though, hunted buffalo (unusual for those living so far east).  The Shawnee lived in Kentucky and West Virginia after being pushed southeastward from Ohio. 

 

The eight clans of the Seminole lived in Florida.  The Chickasaw hunted panther, deer, bear, beaver, and otter in northern Mississippi;  males distinctively shaved both sides of the head, leaving a central crest.  In other areas stretching across the American South were Natchez, Choctaw, and Creek, the latter composed of 50 distinct bands.  The Kiowa were a highly mobile people, based in Oklahoma but roaming and raiding far enough to bring back parrots and monkeys from South America.  In the American Southwest lived Apache, Hopi, Navaho, and Utes.  The Yaqui were ardent warriors dominating northern and northwestern Mexico.

 

Native American societies responded to their natural environments and local circumstances of life in ways that produced a variety of cultural traits, economic activities, and artistic expressions. 

 

The Iroquois used wampum, belts or strings with knots and beaded designs serving as mnemonic aids for chroniclers of stories and legends;   wampum also served as currency and as a unit of measure.  Pueblo tribes crafted items associated with kachina dancers, including masks that the dancers wore and dolls representing the dancers themselves;  they also produced turquois and shell jewelry and exquisite pots.  In a fascinating practice comparable to those of Tibetan Buddhists, the Navajo created colorful sand paintings from sand, charcoal, cornmeal, and pollen to depict religious symbols and to create a sense of spiritual reverence---  then, as comment on the evanescence of physical existence and material objects, they scattered the coloring agents back into nature.  

 

Native American groups made logically adaptive decisions in matters of diet, physical security, and economy.  The Inuit cured and stored meat and fish for the winter.  Tribes of the Pacific Northwest fished from 50-foot long dugout canoes that were perfect for seafaring.  The Eastern Woodlands people used hoes and digging sticks to work fields productive of maize and tobacco.  The Dakota and other Plains people adroitly whipped up a stampede among buffalo and drove these over cliffs.  Many peoples of the American Southwest ground acorns into flour that they made into dough, which they flattened and placed on heated stones for producing wafer-thin bread.

 

Certain concepts and practices undergirded most Native American belief systems, while others were highly distinctive to particular groups.  Most Native American groups gave high status to a shaman who was perceived to mediate between human beings and the gods, spirits, and souls of the dead.  The special powers of the shamans were often associated with a striking physical appearance, including

features that we today think of as being those of the handicapped or disfigured.  The shaman would typically acquire dramatic insight while suffering a physical ordeal and drifting into a trance.  Realization of her or his powers would come with the sensation of leaving the body to soar through the realms of the gods and the dead.  The shaman was many things to her or his people:  spirit medium, mystic seer, wise sage, eloquent poet.  The shaman was also a physician who could both apply curative herbs and oust an offending spirit. Curing disease by expelling a malevolent spirit would involve an emotional array of activities:  swaying, drumming, chanting, sighing, groaning, and laughing hysterically---  with the emotional state deepening and the sound rising as the healing rite moved through successive stages.

 

Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest told tales of land and sea, bear and salmon, military victories and dramatic historical events.  Clan-based totemic societies formed to express the mystic  

relationship between one’s group and an emblematic  figure.  The clan’s legends and history would be told by masked dancers or master storytellers among the elders.  Totemic societies performed rites  venerating the Sun, Moon, Sky Being, and Creator (in the form of a Trickster Raven). 

               

The Cree people venerated spirits associated with the hunt, and they revered an Earth Goddess who gave life and maternal attention to all animals.  Generations past, present, and future existed in close association:  The souls of the ancestors lingered in close proximity to their living descendants.  Legends featuring talking animals and the Four Directions gave testimony to Cree belief in the unity of Nature.

 

The Inuit conveyed myths of the whale, the walrus, mysterious ghosts, and fantastic creatures.  During long winter months, the Inuit would often sit waiting for caribou, or they would situate themselves by blowholes for hunting fish or seal;  such scenarios could animate imaginations productive of wondrous spirits and startling occurrences.  Sitting and peering into the winter sky, the Inuit would see family and friends in the aurora borealis (Northern Lights) dancing in a realm beyond Earth, the life to come.

 

Native Americans on the Great Plains revered the Spirit of the Buffalo and the Earth Mother.  Men organized themselves into ritual societies that prepared them and sustained them in the activities of governance, war, and hunting.  Frequently under the counsel of a spirit guide, young people would come of age with a Vision Quest in which they would dwell under conditions of fasting and physical seclusion, productive of dream-states giving insights into their future life missions and roles in family and society.

 

The Iroquois believed in an impressive but remote “All Father” who dwelled in every aspect of  Nature.  Spirits in the natural world were thought to be more active in daily life and in annual events, controlling the seasons and animating major festivals associated with the agricultural calendar.

 

Pueblo people sat atop mesas, the rocky tableland of the American Southwest, peering into a world in which visionary beings brought the blessings of life and received love and veneration in return.  Native Americans living in Pueblo communities told tales from a vast assortment of myths conveying the relationship between humankind and the plants and animals of the Natural World.

 

Among those Native Americans dwelling and farming in the American South, the Natchez were notable for belief in a Sacred King.  Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws told tales of a Trickster Spirit, a personified Rabbit, and the origins of tobacco and maize.

 

In the American Southwest, shamans communicated intensely with gods, ancestors, and the spirits of Maize, Rainbow, Sun, and Thunder.  Around communal fires, storytellers told of dramatic events associated with the hunt and the experiences of the ancestors.  Boys at eleven or twelve years of age typically went on the Vision Quest.

 

The Native American peoples were the first inhabitants of what we now call the United States.  Their logical rhythms of life, intimate connections to nature and ancestors, and rational economic responses to environmental circumstances were severely disrupted by the arrival of Spaniards, British and French in the course of the 16^th and 17^th centuries.