History 201

1
History 201

• The Enduring Vision, Chapter 1

2
Native Peoples prior to 1492

• Migration occurred from Asia
• Over land bridge, or by sea, moving as far south
  as South America, following big game herds
• After Ice Age (10,500 B.C.), flint and stone
  tools were developed
• Global Warming caused changes in climate
  patterns, over-hunting caused extinction of big
  game herds
• By 400 B.C., Ice Age over, glaciers recede, and
  Great Lakes and Mississippi River basin remain

3
Map 1.1 Peopling of the Americas
4
Archaic Society

• 8000 B.C. to about 2500 B.C.
• Lived off smaller mammals, fish, and wild plants.
  
• In the East and Midwest, dwelled in year-round
  villages, made more complex weapons and utensils
  and engaged in trade.
• Over time Archiac Indians began to experiment
  with agriculture, tending wild plants and
  sometimes selecting seeds for future harvesting.

5
Agriculture

• After 2500 B.C., many societies went a step
  further
• Most far-reaching transformation occurred among
  peoples whose cultivated crops were their primary
  sources of food.
• Some non-farming as well as farming societies
  transformed trade networks into extensive
  religious and political systems.
• Some of these grouping evolved into formal
  confederacies and even hierarchical states.
• In environments where sources of food were few
  and widely scattered, mobile bands still survived
  by hunting, fishing, and gathering.

6
Cities and Societies

• Maize and other cultivated crops led to surpluses
• Olmecs/Mayans
• Enabled development of large urban centers
• Teotihuacan (300 B.C.)
• After beginning of 1st millennium A.D.,
  centralized states arose
• Around 15th century A.D., Aztecs and Incas
  challenged these older states

7
Map 1.2 Major Mesoamerican Cultures, c. 1000
B.C.A.D. 1519
8
Southwest U.S.

• Fulltime farming did not begin until after 400
  B.C
• More drought-resistant strain of maize made
  possible increased population.
• During the third century B.C. the Hohokam peoples
  began farming in the river valleys of southern
  Arizona.
• Anasazi (old ones)
• Beginning of 10th to middle of 12th century
• Established towns
• They controlled rainwater runoff through dams,
  terraces, and other devices.
• They developed a turquoise industry that
  manufactured beads for trade with Mexico.
• Drought ended their civilization, migration
  created Hopi and Zuni (Pueblo) tribes Apache
  and Navajo also arrive (migration from Canada).

9
Map 1.4 Locations of Selected Native American
Peoples, A.D. 1500
10
Other western tribes

• In western Alaska the Inuits and Aleuts perfected
  techniques of living in tundra regions
• made and used bows and arrows
• ceramic pottery
• pit houses as they spread eastward across upper
  Canada.
• Along the Pacific coast from Alaska to southern
  California
• improvements in production and storage of salmon
  and other spawning fish enabled Indians to settle
  into villages
• Farther south in California, Indians developed
  elaborate techniques for processing acorns for
  food.
• Competition for acorns resulted in defining
  territorial boundaries more rigidly than
  elsewhere in pre-Columbian North America
• led to more intricate political, economic, and
  religious organization.

11
Plains and Eastern U.S.

• Plains Indian hunters mainly pursued buffalo.
• In the Great Basin buffalo and other game
  dwindled as the climate grew even dryer.
• Native Americans there relied more heavily on
  Pinon nuts.
• Eastern Woodlands
• Indians established complex political
  organizations before developing a flourishing
  agriculture.
• As early as 1200 B.C. a mound-building culture
  existed on the Mississippi River in Louisiana.
• The Adena, emerged in the Ohio Valley in the
  fifth century B.C.
• They built hundreds of mounds, most containing
  graves.

12
Hopewell and Mississippians

• First century B.C. the Adena culture developed
  into an even more complex and widespread culture
  known as Hopewell.
• Covered wider area, including Illinois River
  valley
• Built more complex ceremonial centers with a
  greater variety and quantity of goods.
• Through trade networks the Hopewell influence
  spread over much of the Eastern Woodlands to
  Wisconsin, Missouri, Florida, and New York.
• For reasons that are unclear the great Hopewell
  centers were abandoned in the fifth century A.D.

13
Mississippians

• Agriculture became a dietary mainstay for
  woodlands people between the 7th and 12th
  centuries A.D.
• The first full-time farmers in the East lived on
  the floodplains of the Mississippi.
• Developed a new culture, the Mississippian
• combined elements of Hopewell culture with new
  ideas from Mexico.
• volume of Mississippian craft production and
  long-distance trade dwarfed those of the Adena
  and Hopewell cultures.
• By 10th century most Mississippian centers were
  linked in a single system with its center at the
  city of Cahokia (located near modern-day St.
  Louis. )
• Beginning in the thirteenth century the
  Mississippian centers underwent decline, and that
  decline ended a trend toward political
  centralization.
• Mississippians had affected native culture
  profoundly, spreading new strains of maize and
  beans along with techniques and tools to
  cultivate these crops.

14
Indian Life

• Trade facilitated the exchange not only of goods
  but of new ideas and techniques
• The bow and arrow, ceramic pottery, and certain
  beliefs and rituals surrounding the burial of the
  dead came to characterize Indians everywhere.
• Indians also shared a preference for the
  independent, kin-based communities.
• Small, mobile hunting bands populated the Arctic,
  Sub-arctic, Great Basin, and much of Plains.
• More stable societies, based on fishing or
  gathering, predominated along the Pacific coast,
  while village-based agriculture was typical in
  the Southwest, the Eastern Woodlands, and
  portions of the Plains. Mississippian urban
  centers still existed in parts of the Southeast.
• Native American religions held the conviction
  that all nature was alive, united in an unbroken
  web.

15
Indian Life

• Most Indian peoples sought to conciliate natures
  spiritual forces and to reach spiritual power
  themselves
• through physical ordeal
• and understanding of dreams.
• Native American communities demanded conformity
  and close cooperation. In early childhood Indians
  learned to be accommodating and reserved, slow to
  reveal their feelings. Because Indians valued
  consensus building in everyday life, their
  leaders authority depended primarily on gaining
  respect rather than on compulsion.
• All Indian cultures possessed a strong sense of
  order and custom that mingled with the spiritual
  world at every turn.
• Even as they grew larger and more complex, Native
  American societies maintained a strong sense of
  interdependence.