Native Americans of North America - Native Americans of North America [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Native Americans of North America

I INTRODUCTION

Native Americans of North America, indigenous peoples of North America. Native Americans had lived throughout the continent for thousands of years before Europeans began exploring the “New World” in the 15th century.

Most scientists agree that the human history of North America began when the ancient ancestors of modern Native Americans made their way across a land bridge that once spanned the Bering Sea and connected northeastern Asia to North America. Scientists believe these people first migrated to the Americas more than 10,000 years ago, before the end of the last ice age (see Migration to the Americas). However, some Native Americans believe their ancestors originated in the Americas, citing gaps in the archaeological record and oral accounts of their origins that have been passed down through generations.

Native Americans excelled at using natural resources and adapting to the climates and terrains in which they lived. Over thousands of years distinct culture areas developed across North America. In the Northeast, for example, Native Americans used wood from the forests to build houses, canoes, and tools. Dense populations in the Pacific Northwest exploited the abundance of sea mammals and fish along the Pacific Coast. In the deserts of the Southwest, Native Americans grew corn and built multilevel, apartment-style dwellings from adobe, a sun-dried brick. In the Arctic, inhabitants adapted remarkably well to the harsh environment, becoming accomplished fishers and hunters.

Among the several hundred Native American groups that settled across North America, there existed, and still exists, many different ways of life and world views. Each group had distinctive social and political systems, clothing styles, shelters, foods, art forms, musical styles, languages, educational practices, and spiritual and philosophical beliefs. Nevertheless, Native American cultures share certain traits that are common to many indigenous peoples around the world, including strong ties to the land on which they live.

When European explorers and settlers began to arrive in the Americas in the 15th century, Native Americans found themselves faced with a new set of challenges. Some Native Americans learned to coexist with Europeans, setting up trade networks and adopting European technologies. Many more faced generations of upheaval and disruption as Europeans, and later Americans and Canadians, took Native American lands and tried to destroy their ways of life. During the 20th century, however, Native American populations and cultures experienced a resurgence. Today, Native Americans are working to reassert more control over their governments, economies, and cultures.

The indigenous peoples of North America are known by many terms. Most tribal peoples prefer to be identified by their tribal affiliation, such as Hopi, Onondaga, Mohawk, or Cherokee. The most common collective terms are Native American or American Indian. For many years, Indian was the most prevalent term. When Christopher Columbus and other European explorers arrived in the Americas, they thought they were in Asia, which the Spanish referred to as “the Indies.” They called the native peoples indios, as in the people of the Indies, later translated to Indian. However, some scholars believe the Europeans were not calling native peoples indios, but rather In Dios, meaning “Of God.”

The term Native American became popular in the United States in the 1960s, although some people believe it is too broad because it can refer to anyone born in the Americas, including Hawaiians and descendants of immigrants. In Canada, aboriginal people is a commonly used collective term. It refers to Indians, Métis (people of mixed indigenous and European ancestry), and Inuit. In the 1970s many Indians in Canada began calling their bands First Nations. When referring to the original inhabitants of the United States, this article uses Native Americans, American Indians, Indians, and native peoples interchangeably. When referring to the original inhabitants of Canada, the article generally uses aboriginal peoples, indigenous peoples, and native peoples.

This article divides its discussion of Native Americans into four main parts. The Culture Areas section examines Native American ways of life in ten different geographic regions. Traditional Way of Life looks at specific aspects of Native American life, such as food, clothing, and music. The History section describes the history of Native Americans in North America from the earliest times to the present day. Native Americans Today discusses contemporary life for indigenous peoples in the United States and Canada.

For a discussion of the indigenous peoples of Middle and South America, see Native Americans of Middle and South America. Other major articles on Native Americans in North America include Indian Treaties in Canada, Migration to the Americas, Native American Architecture, Native American Art, Native American Languages, Native American Literature, Native American Policy, and Native American Religions.

II POPULATION: PAST AND PRESENT

A Early Population

Scholars vary greatly in their estimates of how many people were living in the Americas when Columbus arrived in 1492. Estimates range from 40 million to 90 million for all of the Americas, and from 2 million to 18 million for the aboriginal population north of present-day Mexico. These figures are hypothetical; exact population figures are impossible to ascertain. Furthermore, the date of Columbus's arrival was not necessarily the peak of the Native American population. Civilizations had risen and fallen before that time—the Hopewell culture, for example, flourished from 200 bc to ad 400 in eastern North America. Some anthropologists believe the peak occurred around ad 1200.

The number of distinct Native American groups or cultures that existed at the time of European contact is more difficult to estimate. Scholars do not estimate the number of tribes that existed at the time because few Native American peoples had the level of political organization associated with true tribes. For many native peoples, especially those who lived in areas with sparse resources, the family was the largest unit, while others were organized into bands. Some tribes did exist, but it is impossible to estimate their number, for smaller groups were constantly merging into new, larger groups, or in some cases, disappearing. Europeans applied the term nation to people with a common language and customs and a name for themselves, and by 1700, they were aware of some 50 or 60 distinct Indian “nations” east of the Mississippi River. The Spaniards found some 50 Indian nations in the West, including the Pueblo, Athapaskan-speaking peoples, Comanche, and Piman- and Yuman-speaking peoples. In the Southeast and East, many Indians tried to meet the European invasion by creating confederacies or by increasing their reliance on existing confederacies of smaller groups.

B Decline

European settlement of the Americas drastically reduced the Native American population. The European conquest was primarily a biological one. Explorers and colonists brought a wide range of deadly communicable diseases directly from crowded European cities. These diseases spread quickly among Native Americans, who had no immunity to them. Transmitted through trade goods or a single infected person, measles, smallpox, and other diseases annihilated entire communities even before they had seen a single European. From the 16th century to the early 20th century, 93 epidemics and pandemics (very widespread epidemics) of European diseases decimated the native population. To cite only one example, in the American Southwest, the Pueblo population fell by 90 to 95 percent between 1775 and 1850. In addition to smallpox and measles, explorers and colonists brought a host of other diseases: bubonic plague, cholera, typhoid fever, scarlet fever, pleurisy, mumps, diphtheria, pneumonia, whooping cough, malaria, yellow fever, and various sexually transmitted infections.

Despite the undisputed devastation wreaked on Indian populations after European contact, native populations showed enormous regional variability in their response to disease exposure. Some peoples survived and, in some cases, even returned to their pre-contact population level. Others disappeared swiftly and completely. Today, as scholars explore the magnitude of the Native American population decline, they are finding that the issues are much more complex than was previously assumed. Archaeological evidence indicates that illness was increasing in the Native American population in many regions before the arrival of Columbus, probably in response to problems of population density, diet, and sanitation.

Although the introduction of new diseases was the main cause of the rapid decline of indigenous populations, other reasons were genocidal warfare, massive relocations and removals of Native Americans from their homelands, and the destruction of traditional ways of life. With white encroachment on their land, Native Americans no longer had access to their traditional hunting, gathering, and farming areas. Their subsistence patterns broke down, leading to malnutrition and greater susceptibility to disease. Relocation to new areas, often among hostile Indian tribes that were already living there, meant that people demoralized by their circumstances had to establish new subsistence patterns as well as come to terms with their forced dependency. By 1900, these factors, along with increased mortality and decreased fertility, had reduced the Native American population to its low point of only about 250,000 people in the United States and about 100,000 in Canada.

C Recovery

During the 20th century, Native Americans experienced a remarkable population recovery because of decreased mortality rates, including declining disease rates. Intermarriage with nonnative peoples and changing fertility patterns have kept Native American birthrates higher than birthrates for the total North American population. Another factor in the increase is that more people in the United States are identifying themselves as Native American on their census forms. By one estimate, as much as 60 percent of the population increase of American Indians from 1970 to 1980 was due to these changing identifications.

In the United States, 2.48 million people identified themselves as American Indian in the 2000 census, up from 1.8 million in 1990. More than 300 American Indian tribes are recognized by the U.S. federal government. In Canada, there are about 600 bands of Indians. At the 1996 census, about 805,000 people—including Indians, Métis, and Inuit—identified themselves as aboriginals. For more information on current population trends in the United States and Canada, see the Native Americans Today section of this article.

Trudy Griffin-Pierce contributed the Population: Past and Present section of this article.

III EARLIEST PEOPLES

Most anthropologists believe the ancestors of Native Americans were hunter-gatherers who migrated from northeastern Asia during the last part of the Pleistocene Epoch (1.6 million to 10,000 years before present). From about 25,000 to 10,000 years ago a now-submerged land bridge, called Beringia, linked northeastern Asia and northwestern North America. At that time, sea levels were lower than they are today because more of the world's water was frozen in glaciers. The early colonizers who crossed this natural land bridge were surely unaware they had arrived on a new continent. Scholars may never know why ancient peoples ventured to the Americas. Perhaps they were in pursuit of wide-ranging game; perhaps they were driven by the enduring human urge to explore unknown territory. Whatever their motivation, these peoples, or their descendants, pushed south toward what is now the continental United States. Eventually, they made it all the way to the southern tip of South America.

Traveling south during the late Pleistocene would have been no easy task. Massive glaciers buried much of present-day Canada and parts of the United States. By about 14,000 years ago, however, the glaciers had retreated far enough to open a passable southern route down the Pacific Coast. Then, about 2,500 years later, a habitable ice-free corridor opened in the continental interior, along the eastern flank of the Rocky Mountains. Many scholars suspect that both routes were used by ancient peoples migrating to the Americas.

A The First Americans

For much of the 20th century, the earliest archaeological evidence of a human presence in the Americas was of the Clovis people, who first appeared about 11,500 years ago. For decades archaeologists believed these early Americans were fast-moving hunters who singularly pursued mammoth, mastodon, and other large, now-extinct Pleistocene-age animals. There is little doubt Clovis groups were highly mobile and spread rapidly, for their distinctive fluted stone spearpoints occur throughout North America in the centuries after 11,500 years ago. However, there is now evidence that Clovis people relied on a variety of food resources and were less dependent on big game than once supposed. It also appears they were not the first Americans.

Excavations in the late 20th century at the site of Monte Verde, in southern Chile, testify to an earlier human presence in the Americas, one dating to at least 12,500 years ago. Archaeologists had long suspected a pre-Clovis occupation of the Americas, but no site achieved wide acceptance until Monte Verde. The artifacts unearthed at Monte Verde include well-preserved remains of leaves and seeds, meat and bone, and ivory, as well as stone tools that are quite different from those produced by Clovis peoples. For some archaeologists, these findings suggest that Monte Verde's ancient inhabitants were descendants of a separate, pre-Clovis migration to the Americas—possibly one that traveled down the Pacific Coast.

B Paleo-Indians

The early colonizers of the Americas, known as Paleo-Indians, faced the challenge of adapting to vast new lands with a great diversity of local environments. These lands were themselves undergoing dramatic changes as the great ice sheets melted off and global climates rapidly warmed. Living in small bands of perhaps 25 to 75 people, Paleo-Indians had to learn how to survive in the new lands and to maintain contacts with distant kin. For this reason, they were highly nomadic, moving regularly and camping in easily transported animal-skin tents or other lightweight shelters. Equipped with an assortment of tools made from stone, bone, and wood, they hunted a variety of animals, from small prey such as turtles and birds, to large game, including deer and the occasional mammoth. They probably also relied on wild plant foods as well, although evidence of this is rarely preserved.

By about 10,000 years ago the descendants of the first Americans had left traces of their presence in virtually every corner of the Americas, from high in the Rocky Mountains down to lush tropical lowlands near the equator. After that time, regionally distinctive ways of life began to appear throughout the Americas as Paleo-Indian groups adapted to local environments. In North America these environments included deciduous woodlands and evergreen forests, vast deserts, grassy prairies, fertile river drainages, and coastal lowlands. Paleo-Indians living in desert country became adept at collecting wild plant foods because game animals were scarce. Buffalo- (or bison-) hunting cultures appeared on the Great Plains, where large herds of the animals lived. People living in forests hunted woodland game animals, while those near rivers and lakes fished and hunted waterfowl. Along the coasts, Paleo-Indians fished and gathered shellfish. In time, agriculture spread to North America from Mesoamerica, where cultivation of food crops began as early as 7,000 years ago, and sophisticated farming cultures appeared in the southwestern and eastern regions of what is now the United States.

For more information about the peopling of the Americas, see Migration to the Americas.

David Meltzer contributed the Early Peoples section of this article.

IV CULTURE AREAS

When European explorers first arrived in North America, they encountered a great diversity of Native American peoples with widely varying customs. Over time, these indigenous peoples had developed different cultural practices that were suited to their local environments. Scholars find it convenient to group Native Americans who shared similar cultural patterns before European or Euro-American contact into regions known as culture areas.

Culture areas are applied to distinct geographic regions. Each region has a characteristic habitat made up of the prevailing climate, landforms, and natural resources, including plant and animal life. Prior to European or Euro-American contact, habitat profoundly influenced how Native Americans lived. Indigenous peoples adapted to the available resources in each habitat to obtain foods and materials for shelter, clothing, tools, and arts. The environment shaped how they organized their communities and how they viewed the world around them. Peoples living where land was suitable for farming but rainfall was limited, for example, were likely to develop similar types of agricultural practices and to share mythological themes surrounding their farming. Similarly, peoples living in areas with large herds of migrating game were likely to have nomadic or seminomadic lifestyles and to celebrate the animals they hunted in their mythologies.

Culture areas may also help provide a framework for understanding Native Americans after European or Euro-American contact, as non-Indians made inroads onto indigenous lands and influenced indigenous culture. One culture area in particular—that of the Great Plains—came to be defined long after the first Europeans had arrived in North America. Horses brought to the Americas by Spanish colonizers transformed aboriginal ways of living on the vast North American Plains.

Scholars have devised a number of different systems for defining culture areas. The most common system divides North America north of Mexico into ten culture areas. These include the Southeast culture area, Northeast culture area, Southwest culture area, California culture area, Great Basin culture area, Northwest Coast culture area, Plateau culture area, Great Plains culture area, Subarctic culture area, and Arctic culture area.

Whichever culture area system is used, it should be kept in mind that each tribe or group had its own distinctive customs, making cultural generalizations difficult. It is also important to remember that many Native American customs and behaviors that originated in pre-contact times are still practiced today. The Native American saga is ongoing.

A Southeast

A1 Land and Habitat

The Southeast culture area is a semitropical region north of the Gulf of Mexico and south of the Middle Atlantic-Midwest region. Humid and well-watered, the area extends from the Atlantic coast westward approximately to what is now central Texas.

The terrain and vegetation of the Southeast culture area consists of a coastal plain along the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, with saltwater marshes, grasses, and stands of cypress. Especially rich soils are found in present-day Alabama and Mississippi in a narrow belt, called the Black Belt, and along the Mississippi River floodplain. The region also includes the vast swamplands, hummocks (rounded hills), and high grass of the Everglades in present-day Florida, and the rolling mountains of the southern Appalachian chain.

At the time of early contacts between Native Americans and Europeans, much of the region was woodland, with southern pine generally thicker near the coasts and more broadleaf trees further inland. Because of these extensive forests, some scholars refer to this region as the Southeast Woodlands culture area. Others combine the Southeast culture area with the Northeast culture area—another heavily wooded region—and refer to it as the Eastern Woodlands culture area.

A2 Peoples and Languages

The larger Native American groups of the Southeast culture area included the Alabama, Caddo, Catawba, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Coushatta, Creek, Natchez, Timucua, Yamasee, and Yuchi. Also important were the Seminole—a post-contact offshoot of mostly Creek. There were many other tribes as well, a great number of them now extinct. Many Southeast peoples spoke languages in the Muskogean family. Scholars have identified at least 48 distinct Muskogean-speaking tribes at the time of European contact. In addition to Muskogean, language families of the Southeast included Siouan, Iroquoian, Caddoan, Timucuan, and Tunican. Other tribes spoke languages not associated with the main language families, including Atakapan by the Atakapa, Chitimachan by the Chitimacha, and Natchesan by the Natchez.

A3 Early Peoples

Humans have occupied the Southeast for many thousands of years. For millennia, prehistoric hunter-gatherer bands were on the move, preying on large and small game, fishing, and collecting wild plant foods. Cultivation of some native plants—including sunflower, marsh elder, and goosefoot—began in the region about 5,000 years ago. A dramatic shift in agriculture occurred in the Southeast about ad 400 as indigenous peoples looked beyond native species and began to cultivate maize, or corn, a crop domesticated thousands of years earlier in Mesoamerica. This development, which spread to the Southeast from the Southwest culture area, revolutionized subsistence and permitted the development of large, complex societies.

By ad 800 a great agricultural culture of mound builders, called the Mississippian or Temple Mound culture, arose in the Southeast. Like the earlier Adena and Hopewell mound-building peoples living along the Ohio River Valley to the north, Mississippian peoples constructed great earthen burial mounds. They also built massive earthworks that supported temples and rulers' residences. Across the Mississippi River from present-day St. Louis, Missouri, the Mississippians built the city of Cahokia, which may have been home to 20,000 or more people.

Master farmers, Mississippians typically settled along riverbeds, where soils were rich and productive. Mississippian peoples are thought to be ancestors of some Native American peoples of the region. Spanish explorers reported seeing earthen mounds among the tribes of the Creek Confederacy—an alliance of some Muskogean-speaking peoples—and Cherokee in the 1500s. As late as the early 1700s, at the time of contact with French explorers, the Natchez people were still using earthen mounds, growing maize, and exhibiting other cultural traits consistent with Mississippian culture.

A4 Diet and Subsistence

A4a Three Kinds of Maize

Southeast Indians were expert farmers, growing maize, beans, squash, and sunflowers as staple crops. The Cherokee, among other peoples, cultivated three different kinds of maize. They roasted one, boiled another, and ground a third into flour for cornbread. Because sandy soil conditions were common in many areas, Southeast peoples frequently changed agricultural fields to keep crops healthy, moving their villages when necessary to develop new farmlands.

A4b Hunting and Gathering

Southeast peoples also hunted and foraged to supplement their diets. They used bows and arrows to kill deer and blowguns equipped with poison-tipped darts to hunt turkeys and other small game. For fishing they used spears, traps, weirs (enclosures set in waterways), and poisons. They also foraged for nuts and fruits, as well as edible roots, stalks, and leaves. These were collected and sometimes stored in baskets or ceramic pots.

A5 Social and Political Organization

Villages served as the primary form of sociopolitical organization among Southeast Indians. Among many Southeast tribes, villagers governed their own affairs and claimed control over a specific geographic area, such as a river valley. Village councils of tribal leaders, often led by a head chief, met to discuss matters important to the community, such as cultivating fields owned by the community, building or repairing public buildings, or providing for village defense.

Some Southeast tribes were organized into chiefdoms—societies with a supreme ruler and with social rank determined by birth—and some chiefdoms encompassed many villages. Chiefdoms typically had powerful priesthoods. The Natchez, a Sun-worshipping people, were ruled by a leader known as the Great Sun, a supposed living deity who held autocratic power. His relatives, called Suns, formed a class of high priests. Beneath them were nobles of varying rank, and under nobles were commoners, who did most of the farming, hunting, and mound building. The tribes of the Creek Confederacy also had well-developed hierarchies, as did the Chickasaw, although less so. Other tribes of the region, including the Cherokee and Choctaw, were more democratic and less formal in their social structure, with leadership roles usually determined by a person's achievements.

A6 Settlement and Housing

Most Southeast peoples located their villages along river valleys and planted their crops in nearby fields. Homes and public buildings were typically rectangular or, less frequently, circular. Most structures were constructed of wattle and daub, a type of architecture in which branches and vines are tied over pole frameworks and covered with a mixture of mud or clay. Sometimes structures were covered with plant materials, including thatch—made from straw, reeds, rushes, and grasses—as well as woven mats, bark, bamboo stalks, and palm fronds. Animal hides were also used as coverings. For swampy areas the Seminole people built chickees, distinctive open-sided houses on stilts with wooden platforms and thatched roofs.

A7 Transportation

In addition to travel by foot on established trails, Southeast peoples used dugout canoes for transportation along the waterways that crisscrossed much of the region and along coastal areas. To make these boats, they charred parts of logs with embers from a fire and then hollowed out the softened parts with stone and bone scrapers. Some dugouts, having hull walls just a few centimeters thick, were light enough for one person to carry. Native Americans propelled these boats with wooden paddles.

A8 Clothing and Ornamentation

In warm weather Southeast Indian men typically wore only breechcloths, usually of deerskin. Women typically wore wraparound plant-fiber skirts and shell necklaces. In cold weather men wore deerskin shirts, leggings, and moccasins; women wore deerskin capes and moccasins. For ceremonial purposes, tribal leaders and priests wore capes of feathers. Among some Southeast tribes, men plucked out their hair with shell tweezers and tattooed themselves with designs representing exploits in war and with totems (symbols that serve as an emblem of a family or clan). Elaborate tattoos also adorned some Southeast women.

A9 Religious Beliefs and Practices

Southeast peoples, like indigenous peoples throughout North America, regarded themselves as part of the natural and spiritual worlds. They considered religion a function of daily activity, with rituals capable of influencing the interconnected realms of physical and supernatural existence. Shamans, or medicine men, served as priests, and they led tribal members in rituals believed to ensure an adequate food supply. Since Southeast Indians practiced agriculture, many of their ceremonies surrounded the planting and harvesting season.

The Green Corn Ceremony, or Busk, was an annual renewal and thanksgiving festival performed by the Cherokee, Creek, and other Southeast tribes. It was held in mid- to late summer, when the corn was ready for roasting. The ceremony lasted from four to eight days and included ritual fasting, dancing, and feasting. Old fires were extinguished, and a new sacred fire was lit from which every household obtained fire. New tools, weapons, and clothing were made. Wrongdoers were forgiven for most crimes except murder. A beverage known as the Black Drink—so named by English traders because of its dark color—was believed to purify spiritually all those who imbibed it. Different tribes had different recipes for this ritual tea, made from varying species of holly, tobacco, and other plants.

A10 Post-Contact History

Spanish explorers are the first known outsiders to have visited the Southeast. They sailed northward from the Caribbean region in the late 1400s and early 1500s, soon after Christopher Columbus reached the West Indies. The earliest cross-cultural contacts took place along coastal areas. Southeast coastal tribes received European goods as gifts or in trade; they also were exposed to European diseases and were kidnapped as slaves. These early contacts probably impacted inland groups as well through the spread of diseases, when exposed coastal peoples traded with interior tribes. Entire villages may have perished before the first European explorers even reached them.

From 1539 to 1543 an expedition under the Spaniard Hernando de Soto explored many of the Southeast's interior regions and came into contact with numerous peoples. In 1565 the Spanish founded the first permanent settlement in North America at Saint Augustine in modern-day Florida. By the 1600s the English and French had also taken a strong interest in the Southeast. The English established settlements on the Atlantic Coast, and the French built towns along the Mississippi River Valley. Epidemics among Southeast peoples and intermittent warfare with Euro-Americans took a heavy toll on the indigenous population, and many tribes were displaced from their lands. For many groups, displacement led to a loss of tribal identity.

By the time the United States achieved independence from Britain at the end of the American Revolution in 1783, many Southeast tribes had disappeared. Refugees of smaller tribes were often absorbed by the larger groups that remained. Some Southeast peoples, including the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole, came to adapt Euro-American customs. The Cherokee, for instance, created a representative form of government with a constitution and a written form of their Iroquoian language. Non-Indians eventually referred to these groups as the Five Civilized Tribes.

Euro-Americans soon displaced many of the remaining Southeast peoples from their lands. Pressure by non-Indian settlers led U.S. president Andrew Jackson to pass the Indian Removal Act of 1830, under which the Five Civilized Tribes were relocated to the Indian Territory (a region encompassing present-day Oklahoma). Many Indians died on the long journey in difficult weather with little food or water. This forced exodus came to be known among the Cherokee as the Trail of Tears. Today, many descendants of the Southeast tribes live on reservations in Oklahoma. Some Southeast Indians still live in their ancestral homelands, since pockets of their ancestors did manage to avoid relocation. In recent times, small groups throughout the Southeast have tried to reestablish tribal unity and identity.

B Northeast

B1 Land and Habitat

The Northeast culture area consists of the temperate-climate regions of what is now the eastern United States and southeastern Canada. The region stretches east from the Mississippi River Valley across the Appalachian Mountains to the Atlantic seaboard. In the east the region encompasses the portion of the Atlantic Coast that extends from southeastern Canada to the Chesapeake Bay region in Maryland and Virginia. Inland it includes the northern Appalachian chain, which runs in a north-south direction and creates a natural barrier. In the north central part of the culture area are the large inland bodies of water known as the Great Lakes.

Hundreds of rivers flow throughout the Northeast, and much of the soil, especially in the valleys, is suitable for agriculture. Although generally humid, the climate is varied, like the terrain, with the lengths of the four seasons determined by latitude and altitude. The Northeast culture area is sometimes referred to as Northeast Woodlands because of the widespread forests, including broadleaf hardwoods and coniferous evergreens. Sometimes the area is grouped with the Southeast culture area and referred to as the Eastern Woodlands.

B2 Peoples and Languages

At the time of European contact, two great lines of people of two major language families lived in the Northeast: Algonquian-speaking peoples and Iroquoian-speaking peoples. These peoples can be organized into five major groups. In addition, there were many other smaller tribes and bands that maintained distinct political identities.

The first of the five groups was the Algonquian peoples of Nova Scotia, New England, Long Island, Hudson Valley, and the Delaware Valley. The largest tribes of this group were the Abenaki, Delaware (Lenni Lenape), Mahican, Maliseet, Massachuset, Mi'kmaq (Micmac), Mohegan, Montauk, Narragansett, Nipmuc, Pennacook, Pequot, Wampanoag, and Wappinger. Second were the Chesapeake Bay and Cape Hatteras tribes, including the Algonquian Nanticoke, Powhaten, and Secotan. Also in this group were the Iroquoian Susquehannock and Tuscarora (the latter tribe eventually migrating northward and settling among other Iroquoians). Third were the Great Lakes Algonquian tribes. These included the Algonquin, Menominee, Ottawa, Potawatomi, and some bands of Ojibwa (Chippewa), along with the Siouan-speaking Winnebago (Ho-Chunk). Fourth were the Prairie Algonquian tribes, including the Fox (Mesquakie), Illinois, Kickapoo, Miami, Sac (Sauk), and Shawnee. Fifth were the New York and Ontario Iroquoian tribes. These included the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, and Seneca—referred to collectively as Iroquois (Haudenosaunee)—and the Erie, Huron, Neutral, and Tobacco.

B3 Early Peoples

Ancient hunter-gatherers entered the Northeast more than 10,000 years ago, possibly following game animals into the region from the west. By about 9,000 years ago, as the climate warmed, the peoples of the area became increasingly dependent on deer, nuts, and wild grains.

The early history of the Northeast is similar to that of the Southeast culture area. About 5,000 years ago Northeast peoples began cultivating plants they found growing wild. All of these wild plants—including amaranth, marsh elder, and goosefoot—were grown for their seeds, which were ground into flour. Maize agriculture had reached the region from the Southeast after about ad 400, permitting many peoples to rely more heavily on farming for subsistence.

Exact connections between prehistoric peoples and the later Native American inhabitants of the region are not known. It is generally thought that the Algonquian-speaking tribes, who spread out over a huge area from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean, occupied the Northeast first. Algonquian groups may be descendants of some of the earliest hunter-gatherer peoples in the region. Alternatively they may be descendants of the ancient mound builders, the peoples of the Adena and Hopewell cultures, centered along the Ohio River Valley. The Iroquoian-speaking peoples, who settled to the east of the Great Lakes and in the southern reaches of the culture area on the coastal plain, appear to have entered the area later and from the south. A Siouan-speaking group called the Winnebago lived west of the Great Lakes. Other Siouans had made their homes nearby, but eventually migrated westward and adopted a different way of life on the Great Plains.

B4 Diet and Subsistence

B4a Hunting and Gathering

Northeast peoples hunted a variety of game, large and small: deer, rabbit, squirrel, beaver, and various birds, such as turkey, partridge, duck, and goose. Peoples of the northern woods also hunted moose, elk, and bear. Some peoples living near the prairies of the Mississippi River Valley hunted the North American bison, or buffalo. In addition to hunting with spears, bows and arrows, and clubs, Northeast Indians used traps, snares, and deadfalls (traps designed to cause heavy objects, such as logs, to fall, disabling or killing prey). They used disguises to get close to animals, lured prey with animal calls, and set fires to drive animals toward hunters or traps.

Northeast Indians also fished rivers, streams, lakes, and ponds. They caught fish with harpoons, hooks, nets, and traps. Peoples living along the Atlantic Coast depended on shellfish for part of their diet. Wild plant foods were also an important food source, including berries, nuts, roots, stalks, and leaves. Some tribes along the western Great Lakes collected a tall grass with an edible grain, referred to as a wild rice. Peoples living in maple country collected sap from the trees in early spring and boiled it down into maple syrup and sugar.

B4b Farming

Most Northeast peoples supplemented a hunting-gathering diet with farming. The Iroquois thought of their three most important crops—maize (corn), beans, and squash—as the Three Sisters and planted them together on small earthen hills. Corn stalks supported the vines of bean plants while the large-leafed squash plants served to block weed growth. Algonquian peoples introduced the Pilgrims and other early settlers in their homelands to these cultivated crops in addition to many wild foods, including maple sugar, cranberries, blueberries, lobsters, clams, and oysters.

B5 Social and Political Organization

B5a Families and Clans

The family played an important role in Northeast Indian society. Most tribes were further organized into clans—clusters of related families who claimed a common ancestor. Clans often took animal names, such as the Deer Clan or Bear Clan. The Iroquois were a matrilineal society, with descent and property passing through the female line. Each clan was headed by an elder woman, known as a clan mother. Clan mothers owned the crops and the communal dwellings and held great political power. They elected tribal chiefs, who were generally male, retained the right to veto actions they opposed, and had to approve declarations of war. Unlike the Iroquois, the Algonquian were a patrilineal society, with descent and property traced through the male line.

B5b Confederacies

To reduce conflict and maintain unity against enemies, Northeast tribes organized into a number of confederacies. The Iroquois Confederacy, also called the League of Five Nations, helped its member tribes achieve great power and long-term political stability. The confederacy was founded by the late 1500s, possibly earlier, and was composed of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. It became known as the League of Six Nations after the Tuscarora migrated to the area from present-day North Carolina and formally joined the confederacy in 1722. Central to the alliance was a deliberative council composed of delegates from all the member tribes. Clan mothers selected a proportion of the delegates to the council, and many procedures were established in a constitution that was passed down orally from generation to generation.

Confederacies were also common among the Algonquian tribes, although they were less tightly organized than the Iroquois Confederacy. Some Algonquian alliances resulted from the abilities of a single strong leader, such as Chief Powhatan of the Powhatan Confederacy. Other Algonquian confederacies included the Abenaki Confederacy, Delaware Confederacy, Wampanoag Confederacy, and the Wappinger Confederacy.

B6 Settlement and Housing

Some Northeast Indians maintained permanent villages. Other peoples were seminomadic, changing village sites depending on food availability. They made clearings in the woods, usually near streams or rivers, and sometimes surrounded them with palisades (tall walls made from sharpened logs stuck upright in the earth) for defensive purposes. Two types of houses were common in the Northeast: the Iroquoian longhouse and the Algonquian wigwam. The region's vast forests provided the main building materials for these shelters.

B6a Longhouses

The Iroquoians built longhouses, communal dwellings capable of housing a dozen or more families. Longhouses had pointed or rounded roofs and doors at both ends. The buildings were constructed with post-and-beam and bent sapling frames and usually covered with sheets of elm bark. Raised platforms were used for sleeping. Smoke holes in the roofs allowed smoke from open fires to escape.

B6b Wigwams

Algonquian peoples generally lived in smaller structures known as wigwams. Wigwams were domed or cone-shaped dwellings consisting of pole frames overlaid with birchbark or elm bark, reed mats, or animal hides, depending on what materials were available. They were typically built over a shallow pit, with earth piled around the base. Fires in the center provided a source of heat and light. Longhouses were sometimes used as council or ceremonial buildings.

B7 Transportation

Northeast peoples frequently relied on birchbark canoes for transporting people and provisions in waterways. Algonquian peoples crafted them using a framework of cedar or spruce wood and a covering of birchbark. They sewed pieces of bark together with spruce root, then sealed the seams with melted spruce gum. These elegant boats drew little water, making them well suited for navigating shallow lakes, rivers, and streams. Light and strong, birchbark canoes could be carried easily overland, making them advantageous for hunting or raiding expeditions. Iroquoians used heavier elm bark instead of birchbark to cover their canoe frameworks.

B8 Clothing and Ornamentation

B8a Hide Garments

Deerskin was the material of choice for clothing before Europeans brought cotton and other trade goods into the Northeast. Treated and softened hide was used for shirts, leggings, dresses, skirts, breechcloths, and moccasins. Northeast Indians also made robes and mittens from beaver and bear fur. To decorate clothing they used feathers, shells, stones, paint, and porcupine-quill embroidery. Sometimes they used paint for body decoration or adorned their faces with tattoos, although tattooing was not as prevalent as in the Southeast culture area.

B8b Wampum

The Algonquians and Iroquoians placed a high value on wampum, an Algonquian-derived term that refers to small beads made from shells, or the strings, belts, or sashes made from these beads. Wampum was used for a variety of tribal and intertribal purposes. Especially valued were beads made from the dark purple, black, and white quahog clamshells. Algonquian and Iroquoian peoples used beads to decorate tools and weapons, and as jewelry. They also used belts of wampum with beads arranged in pictographs for keeping tribal records and to communicate messages of peace or war to other tribes. Some tribes used wampum belts in religious and kinship ceremonies.

Prior to European contact, wampum sometimes served as a medium of exchange, although its other cultural functions were more significant. The Europeans began making wampum out of glass beads for trade purposes—especially for the fur trade—and it eventually became used as a form of money. Native Americans also began making wampum from European glass beads.

B9 Religious Beliefs and Practices

B9a The Great Spirit

Northeast Indians believed in a spirit world that interacted with the physical, or natural, world. This included belief in a primary spirit, a great animating force that pervaded all existence. Algonquians called this animating force Kitche Manitou (“Great Spirit”), or simply Manitou, and by other names depending on language dialects. The Iroquoian version of Manitou is known as Orenda, among other names, and Siouans referred to it by variations on Wakan, or Wakanda. According to indigenous beliefs, the Great Spirit had many manifestations. It was believed to be present in all things—animals, plants, water, rocks, and other natural phenomena, such as the Sun, Moon, weather, or sickness. Lesser manifestations of the Great Spirit were sometimes referred to as manitous or by other names, such as Thunderbird, Bringer of Rain. Shamans were believed to be capable of controlling these spirits.

Apart from a general belief in the Great Spirit, Algonquian tribes had different legends and believed in different supernatural beings. Some of these beings were considered heroes or guardian spirits, such as Manebozho, the Great Hare, who, according to the legends of the Ojibwa and other Algonquian tribes, remade the world after bad spirits had destroyed it in a flood.

B9b Medicine Societies

Medicine societies, composed of practitioners skilled in the arts of healing, were important among many Northeast peoples. These societies sought the help of the spirit world and dispensed herbal cures to ward off disease and heal the sick. One of the most famous Northeast medicine societies was the Medewiwin (Grand Medicine Society), which originated among the Ojibwa and spread to other Great Lakes Algonquians. Members, known as Mides, served a long apprenticeship before gaining admittance to the society. Separate apprenticeships were necessary to attain the four ranks of Mides, each of which was associated with ever-greater supernatural powers.

Members of the False Face Society of the Iroquois wore wooden masks known as false faces. The masks, which represented spirits known as Faces of the Forest, were carved on a living tree. Then a ceremony of prayer and tobacco offering was held while the masks were cut from the trunk. The masks were believed to frighten away malevolent spirits that caused illness, and False Face dances were performed to heal the sick.

B10 Post-Contact History

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

C Southwest

C1 Land and Habitat

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

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

C2 Peoples and Languages

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

C3 Early Peoples

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

C4 Diet and Subsistence

C4a Desert Farmers

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

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

C4b Nomadic Subsistence

In addition to the Apache and Navajo, the Karankawa and Coahuiltec tribes of southwestern Texas practiced a nomadic hunting and gathering way of life. Game was scarce throughout the Southwest, with larger mammals, such as deer and elk, found only in high, forested country. Smaller game included rabbits, birds, and rattlesnakes. Southwest peoples also gathered wild plant foods, especially mesquite seeds and cactus. Some tribes, such as the Karankawa living along the Gulf of Mexico, supplemented their diet through fishing. When nomadic peoples could not find enough food to eat in their rugged homelands, they raided the village peoples for their crops.

C5 Social and Political Organization

Sociopolitical structure varied throughout the Southwest. Pueblo Indians had a closely knit village life. Descent was matrilineal—traced through the female line. Women owned the houses, and married men lived in the homes of their wives. Tribes were organized into clans, groups of families who claimed a common ancestor. Pueblo priests served as both civil and religious leaders, and they were organized into secret societies. The civil responsibilities of priests included advising on matters affecting the entire pueblo, such as defensive measures against raiding peoples; settling disputes between individuals; or helping individuals make personal decisions. Various clans helped the priests direct a full calendar of religious events, with elaborate rituals of dance, song, and prayer. Women prepared food for these unifying events.

Apache and Navajo bands had less formal types of social and political organization. Each band, which was made up of extended clans, had a headman who was chosen informally for his leadership abilities and military prowess. However, other warriors could launch raids on their own without a headman's permission.

C6 Settlement and Housing

C6a Pueblos and Kivas

One of the most distinctive types of housing in the Southwest was the pueblo (Spanish for “village”). Pueblo-style dwellings are unique among Native American homes because of their apartment-like design, as high as five different levels. The flat roof of one level served as the floor and front yard of another, and the different stories were interconnected by ladders. Inhabitants entered their rooms by ladder through holes in the roofs. The largest pueblos, known as Great Houses, could shelter perhaps 1,000 people.

Southwest peoples used different types of building material to construct pueblo walls. The Hopi and Zuni typically used stones, which were cemented with adobe mortar and sometimes covered with adobe plaster. Pueblo Indians along the Rio Grande typically used adobe bricks made from sun-dried earth and straw.

Pueblo Indians also built a type of pit house, known by the Hopi term kiva. Anthropologists believe kivas evolved from the earlier Basket Maker pit houses. Kivas were circular or rectangular in shape and served as ceremonial chambers or clubhouses for men. They were usually located at a central place in the pueblo, often on the plaza. The largest pueblo towns had Great Kivas that could hold hundreds of people. These kivas are thought to have been used for councils and for the most important religious ceremonies.

C6b Wickiups and Hogans

The most common type of dwelling for Apache bands was the wickiup, a dome- or cone-shaped hut with a pole framework. The Apache covered this framework with brush, grass, or reed mats. Wickiups frequently had a central fire pit and a smoke hole.

The Navajo lived in shelters called hogans. These structures were either cone-shaped or dome-shaped with six or eight sides. Logs and poles were used for the frameworks, which were covered with mud, sod, and bark. In later years the frameworks were covered with stone or adobe. The doorways of hogans always faced east, with the floor symbolizing Mother Earth and the roof Father Sky.

Tohono O'Odham and Pima houses were small, round, flat-topped, pole-framed structures, covered with grass and mud—a type of wattle-and-daub architecture. Their villages also contained ramadas, rectangular structures with no walls, or sometimes just one wall as a windbreak. Ramadas served as clubhouses. Some Yumans lived in dwellings similar to those of the Apache and some built homes resembling those of the Tohono O'Odham and Pima.

C7 Clothing and Ornamentation

The main clothing material used by Pueblo Indians was cotton, which they spun into fabric for garments. They also used animal skins, furs, and feathers for clothes. Men typically wore a cotton loincloth, a short kilt, and skin moccasins. For cold weather or ceremonies, they added a poncho (a rectangular cut of cloth with a hole for the head). Women wrapped a cotton rectangle around themselves, tying it over the shoulder, and they wore calf-length skin boots. The Tohono O'Odham and Pima also wore cotton and animal-skin clothing, but they favored hide sandals over moccasins. The Yumans, who wore minimal clothing, preferred garments made from animal skins and woven bark, as well as hide sandals. Some Southwest peoples also crafted sandals from woven plant fibers. The Apache and Navajo originally wore deerskin clothing. In later centuries they adopted some of the dress customs of Pueblo Indians.

C8 Religious Beliefs and Practices

C8a Gods and Legendary Beings

Southwest religions centered on an unseen world of gods and legendary beings. For the agricultural peoples, the ritual calendar revolved around the growing cycle of corn; the function of most rituals was to enlist the help of spiritual beings to bring good crops upon which life depended. Central to the religions of nomadic peoples were mythologies relating to natural forces and spirits thought to intervene in human affairs. Southwest nomads sought the protection of the supernatural to cope with illness, shortage of game, drought, and other matters of daily survival.

Among the Pueblo Indians, kivas provided an important space for their ceremonies and rituals. An underground chamber, the kiva represented a primordial homeland, the place from which the Corn Mothers—legendary ancestors of Pueblo peoples—entered this world. A shallow hole set in the floor of the kiva, called a sipapu, symbolized the connection to the spiritual world below. Ceremonies in kivas lasted as long as a week or more and included singing and prayer.

Spiritual beings known as kachinas to the Hopi and by other names to other Pueblo Indians were revered as bringers of rain and social good. Pueblo men carved wooden masks to represent these spiritual beings in ceremonies. They also carved figures, called kachina dolls, to teach their children about their religion.

The most powerful gods among the Tohono O'Odham and Pima were Earthmaker, who created the Earth, and Elder Brother, who made the people out of clay and passed their arts and crafts to them. Directed by their shamans, both peoples practiced a ceremony called the Viikita, or harvest ceremony, every fourth year. In the Viikita, costumed and masked dancers and clowns were believed to bring about tribal prosperity and good fortune. Shamans also directed the religious practices of the Yumans, whose rituals were less elaborate than other Southwest Indians.

To attain the aid of supernatural forces, nomadic peoples made offerings to their gods and spirits, which were often represented in ceremonies by painted and masked men. The ga'ns, or mountain spirits, were important in Apache ceremonies. Men dressed up in elaborate costumes to impersonate the ga'ns in dances in order to gain their protection. The men wore kilts, black masks, tall wooden-slat headdresses, and body paint, and they carried wooden swords. The Navajo believed in ghosts, thought to be the spirits of dead ancestors, and witches, people who practiced magic.

C8b Sand Painting

The Navajo practiced sand painting, a ceremonial art in which colored powders made from ground minerals and organic materials are trickled onto neutral sand, often for the purpose of healing. Sand painters, under the guidance of shamans, typically created their mosaics on the floor of a lodge at dawn. Using five sacred colors—white, black, blue, red, and yellow—they depicted legendary beings and natural phenomena. At the end of the ceremony the sand paintings were destroyed; no works were kept after sunset.

C9 Arts and Crafts

Southwest Indian women, especially of the Pueblo peoples, crafted elegant pottery from coiled strips of clay. The pottery was polished and frequently painted with intricate geometric patterns. Southwest peoples also made baskets in many shapes and sizes, often with elaborate designs. The Apache, Navajo, Tohono O'Odham, and Pima were known more for basket making than pottery making; Yumans crafted both.

C10 Post-Contact History

After the Spanish conquistador Hern?n Cortés invaded present-day Mexico and conquered the Aztec Empire in 1521, the Spanish began exploring northward. Reports of gold and other riches in the Southwest convinced the Spanish viceroy in Mexico, then called New Spain, to send an expedition to the region. From 1540 to 1542 a group of explorers led by Francisco V?squez de Coronado searched in vain for the legendary gold-studded Seven Cities of C?bola. Coronado never found these mythical cities, but his expedition came into contact with many Southwest peoples. Spain soon established a military, economic, and religious presence in the Southwest.

In 1598 the Spaniard Juan de O?ate founded a settlement at San Juan Pueblo along the upper Rio Grande, and he claimed New Mexico as a colony for Spain. After sacking the villages that resisted, O?ate added much of the Rio Grande region to Spain's dominions. At about the same time, Jesuit missionaries began moving into present-day Arizona. In 1610 Santa Fe was founded near San Juan Pueblo to serve as the capital of New Mexico. Southwest Indians, especially Pueblo peoples, were forced to accept Spanish rule and Roman Catholic religious customs. Throughout the region the Spanish imposed the encomienda system, which bound the Indians to work on Spanish ranches in virtual slavery. Southwest peoples were also forced to work in textile and dye factories, and in silver mines.

In 1680 Pueblo Indians staged the Pueblo Revolt under Popé, a Tewa shaman of the San Juan Pueblo, and the Spanish were driven out of the region. For a time Pueblo Indians lived free from the Spanish yoke and followed their traditional ways. However, the Spanish recaptured Santa Fe in 1692, and by 1696 they once again controlled most of the pueblos. The Spaniards permitted more freedom of religion following reoccupation, however, and many Pueblo Indians continued to practice their traditional kiva-centered religion as well as Catholicism. Spanish missionaries soon were present among the Tohono O'Odham, Pima, and Yumans, in addition to the Pueblo Indians. Bands of Apache and Navajo, as well as Comanche from the southern plains, remained unconquered, however, and continued raids on the Spanish as well as on Pueblo Indians.

Spanish rule in the Southwest lasted until Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821. Mexico controlled the Southwest until it was forced to cede much of the region to the United States in 1848 following the Mexican War; additional Southwest lands were acquired by the United States after the Gadsden Purchase in 1853. Throughout this period the Apache maintained their nomadic way of life. Many Navajo, however, became sheepherders and master weavers after the introduction of domesticated sheep by the Spanish.

During and after the American Civil War (1861-1865), U.S. authorities attempted to pacify militant bands of Navajo and Apache, who frequently raided the ranches of non-Indians for livestock. In the mid-1860s the U.S. army destroyed Navajo orchards, seized Navajo flocks, and rounded up militants, and the Navajo were relocated to eastern New Mexico. The Navajo refer to this forced migration as the Long Walk. They were later allowed to return to reservations in their ancestral homelands. Apache resistance ended with the surrender of Apache chief Geronimo in 1886, and the last free Apache bands were moved onto reservations. Other Southwest peoples were also resettled onto reservations in the late 1800s.

In modern times the Navajo still hold many reservation lands in both New Mexico and Arizona. The Apache retain smaller parcels, as do the Tohono O'Odham, Pima, and Yumans. Many Pueblo Indians still live in their ancestral villages, a continuum from ancient times. The Acoma Pueblo, located atop a mesa in west central New Mexico and founded in ad 1075, is believed to be the oldest continuously occupied settlement in the United States. Today, many Southwest peoples raise livestock, farm, and practice their traditional religious ceremonies. The sale of traditional handicrafts frequently supplements income from agriculture. The discovery of oil, natural gas, and rich mineral deposits on tribal reservation lands has helped raise the standard of living for some, as have tourism and casino gaming.

D California

D1 Land and Habitat

The California culture area includes roughly the present-day state of California as well as the Lower California Peninsula, or Baja California. Two mountain ranges run north-south along the California culture area: the Coast Ranges to the west and the Sierra Nevada to the east. The Coast Ranges drop off to coastal lowlands along the Pacific Ocean in most areas. Between the Coast Ranges and the Sierra Nevada, the San Joaquin River and Sacramento River form a natural basin, the Central Valley. The climate is generally mild, with many days of warm weather, especially in the south. Rainfall varies significantly from north to south, with the forests in the north receiving the most and the deserts in the south the least. Bountiful plant and animal life is found throughout much of the region.

The Sierra Nevada long provided a natural barrier to the movement of peoples. As a result, Native Americans east of the Sierra Nevada practiced different ways of life and are often included in the Great Basin or Southwest culture areas. Some Native American peoples just south of California's present-day northern border shared ways of life with peoples of the Northwest Coast culture area and the Plateau culture area.

D2 Peoples and Languages

California was one of the most populous North American culture areas before European contact, with numerous tribes and bands speaking more than 100 distinct languages. Many California peoples spoke languages based on the Penutian and Hokan language stocks—older language groups from which a variety of language families evolved. Penutian-based languages were spoken by tribes in the north and north central regions, including the Costanoan, Maidu, Miwok, Wintun, and Yokuts. Hokan-based languages were spoken by tribes in the central and northern coastal areas, including the Achomawi, Atsugewi, Chimariko, Chumash, Pomo, Esselen, Karok, Salinas, Shasta, and Yana. Hokan-based languages were also spoken by the Diegue?o and Kamia to the south.

Other major language families found in the north and north central regions included Athapaskan, spoken by the Hupa and Tolowa, among others; Yukian, spoken by the Wappo and Yuki; and possibly an offshoot of Algonquian, spoken by the Wiyot and Yurok. In the south languages of the Uto-Aztecan family were spoken by the Tubatulabal, Kitanemuk, and Serrano, as well as by the Mission Indians—tribes whose European names were taken from the Spanish missions where they were relocated. The Mission Indians included the Cahuilla, Cupe?o, Fernande?o, Gabrieli?o, Juane?o, and Luise?o, among others.

D3 Early Peoples

Little is known about the most ancient Californians, who were drawn in great numbers to the region's warm climate and plentiful food supply. The California culture area is thought to have been a melting pot of tribes from other regions, based on the number of different languages spoken there. For thousands of years California peoples practiced a hunting-gathering way of life that persisted virtually unchanged until recent centuries. They hunted large and small animals, fished, and collected nuts and wild grains.

D4 Diet and Subsistence

D4a Acorns

California had abundant resources to support a large Native American population without agriculture. The dietary staple of California Indians was the fruit of the oak tree, the acorn, collected in the fall. Acorn kernels were removed from their shells and placed in the sun to dry out. They were then pounded into flour, which was rinsed repeatedly with hot water to remove the bitter-tasting tannic acid. Acorn meal could be boiled into a soup or mush, or baked into bread.

D4b Other Wild Foods

California peoples ate many other wild plant foods, including various nuts, seeds, berries, greens, roots, bulbs, and tubers. Insects were also a food source. Grubs and caterpillars were plucked from plants and boiled with salt. Grasshoppers, driven from fields into pits, were collected and roasted.

California Indians hunted deer and small animals, especially rabbits, using bows and arrows, clubs, and snares. They also hunted ducks, geese, swans, and other birds from boats with nets or from blinds (camouflaged areas) with bows and arrows. On the Pacific Coast people hunted sea lions, seals, and sea otters, and they fished a variety of species. Their fishing methods included hooks and lines, spears, nets, and weirs. They also gathered clams, oysters, mussels, scallops, and other shellfish.

D5 Social and Political Organization

D5a Tribelets

Most Native Americans in the California culture area lived in villages of related families with descent and property ownership traced patrilineally, or through the male line. A permanent village often had temporary satellite villages nearby, presided over by one principal chief. Anthropologists sometimes refer to these types of small, tightly integrated villages as tribelets. Tribelets typically occupied a distinct territorial area, such as a river drainage, and they were often relatively isolated from each other. Chiefs, as members of leading families, usually inherited their positions. Most decisions made by chiefs involved economic matters, such as how food would be collected and distributed. Some northern groups, including the Yurok, lacked chiefs or other formal political structures.

D5b Peaceful Relations

Unlike peoples from other culture areas, California Indians did not have war chiefs, nor did they bestow war honors. Raids were generally carried out for the purpose of revenge rather than for acquiring food, possessions, or slaves. The great wealth of natural resources in California stimulated extensive trading relationships among indigenous peoples. Strings of disk-shaped dentalia (tooth-shaped mollusk shells) were used as a medium of exchange.

D6 Settlement and Housing

California peoples constructed many different kinds of dwellings, the majority to house a single family. The most common design was cone-shaped, usually about 2.5 m (8 ft) in diameter at the base. A pole framework was covered with brush, grass, reeds, or mats of tule, a kind of bulrush. Other common dwellings included dome-shaped pit houses covered with earth and lean-tos (shelters with a single slanted roof) covered with bark slabs. Some northern California peoples built wood plank houses that resembled those found in the Northwest Coast culture area.

D7 Transportation

The most common type of watercraft used by California peoples was the raft, made from logs or from tule reeds. To make tule rafts, known as balsas, Indians wove reeds together into watertight bundles. The bundles became waterlogged after repeated use, but they could be reused after drying out in the sun. Some peoples, such as the Yurok, made simple dugout canoes, carved from redwood logs. Another tribe, the Chumash, made the only plank boats known among Native Americans. To do so, they lashed pine planks together with fiber cordage and caulked the seams with asphalt.

D8 Clothing and Ornamentation

Because of the generally warm climate, most California Indians needed minimal clothing. Men often went naked or wore animal-skin or bark breechcloths. Women wore fringed animal-skin or shredded bark aprons in front and back. Headwear included basket hats, hairnets of iris fiber, feather headbands, and feather crowns. Footwear included ankle-high leather moccasins or sandals made from the yucca plant, although most California Indians went barefoot year around. In cold weather, robes and blankets of rabbit skin, sea-otter fur, or feathers were worn. Shell jewelry was widespread for ornamentation, as was the practice of tattooing.

D9 Religious Beliefs and Practices

For California peoples, spirits and spiritual forces infused all existence. Some spirits were worshipped as god figures. Shamans were highly regarded for their ability to cure diseases, often through the practice of sucking illness out of patients, and they were frequently seen as aided by spirit helpers. Some groups had specialized weather shamans who attempted to control weather, and animal or mythical shamans who impersonated particular animals and legendary beings.

The peoples of central California practiced the Kuksu religion, or Kuksu Cult. The principal deity of this religion was Kuksu, who was surrounded by an array of lesser beings. Members of the secret Kuksu Society wore elaborate feather or grass headdresses, both to conceal their identities from women and children of the tribe and to impersonate spiritual beings in order to acquire power. The Kuksu Society held its ceremonies in the winter months in hopes of securing plentiful game and wild plant foods the following spring and summer. One of the ceremonies, known as Hesi, was a four-day dance. Some participants drummed a beat for the dancers, usually by stomping on a foot drum, while others chanted sacred songs.

D10 Arts and Crafts

California Indians crafted objects from stone, antlers, shells, wood, and ceramic, but they are most famous for fine basketry. They wove many useful items from readily available grasses, reeds, barks, and roots. These included containers, mats, traps, baby carriers, ceremonial objects, games, hats, and footwear. They fashioned baskets of all sizes and shapes, from large containers 1 m (3 ft) in diameter to tiny baskets no wider than a few centimeters. Among some tribes as many as eight different kinds of baskets were made for holding and processing acorns. Some peoples of the region, such as the Pomo, added intricate designs and decorations with dyes, shells, and feathers.

D11 Post-Contact History

In the mid-1500s the Spanish explored the California coast by boat. English navigators soon followed. Yet indigenous traditions endured until the colonizing expeditions carried out by the Spanish in the late 1700s. In 1769 the Spaniard Jun?pero Serra, a missionary of the Franciscan order of the Roman Catholic Church, founded a mission at San Diego in present-day southern California. Before long, Serra and other Franciscans constructed a string of missions northward along the Pacific Coast to San Francisco.

Peoples of many different tribes were rounded up and forced to work at the missions and to accept Catholic teachings. The missions continued to operate until 1834, a decade after Spain withdrew from California, which had become a formal territory of Mexico in 1825. Some indigenous peoples fled to the interior and others revolted, although challenges to Spanish, and then Mexican, authority were short-lived. European diseases brought by the Spanish also had a devastating impact on California peoples.

The United States won control of California in 1848 after the Mexican War (1846-1848). The discovery of gold in California that same year and the ensuing gold rush of 1849 further disrupted the lives of indigenous peoples. Native Americans who did survive lost most of their tribal lands. Modern-day California tribes now hold only small parcels, which are sometimes referred to as rancherias.

Today, the state of California has a large Native American population. Especially since the 1950s and 1960s, many rural Native Americans have moved from reservations in other states to urban areas in California, encouraged by U.S. government policies that supported migration from reservations to towns and cities. A renaissance of traditional culture is currently underway among many groups.

E Great Basin

E1 Land and Habitat

The Great Basin culture area is an arid inland region encompassing much of the western United States. The Great Basin consists of a vast natural basin, with occasional rocky uplands breaking up long stretches of mostly barren desert. The region is surrounded by mountains and plateaus: the Sierra Nevada on the west; the Rocky Mountains on the east; the Columbia Plateau on the north; and the Colorado Plateau on the south. The open expanse of the Mojave Desert in the southwest portion of the region is the one exception.

The rivers and streams of the Great Basin drain from the flanking high country into the central depression and disappear into sinks; the waterways thus have no outlet to the oceans. The mountains to the east and west block the rain clouds, leading to low rainfall and high evaporation. The Great Basin once contained dozens of enormous lakes, the remnants of which include Great Salt Lake, Utah Lake, and Pyramid Lake, among others. These modern lakes have a high salt content. In the western part of the Great Basin is found Death Valley, where summer temperatures exceed 52C (125F). The sparse vegetation throughout the Great Basin is called desert shrub, in which sagebrush is dominant with some pi?on and juniper trees in the higher elevations.

E2 Peoples and Languages

The nomadic tribes ranging throughout much of the sparsely populated Great Basin spoke languages of the Uto-Aztecan family. The lone exception was the Washoe to the west who—like some peoples of the California culture area—spoke a Hokan dialect. The major Great Basin peoples were the Paiute, Shoshone, and Ute, with various subdivisions and offshoots, including the Bannock, who branched off from the Northern Paiute. Although dialects varied throughout the region, their similarity made it possible for different groups to find common words to communicate.

E3 Early Peoples

Human settlers may have arrived in the Great Basin around 11,000 years ago, when the prevailing climate was cooler and wetter. Lacking plentiful food resources, the indigenous population remained sparse for thousands of years. Early peoples settled around lakes or along rivers, where game animals were more abundant. As the warming climate dried up marshes and lakes and larger game animals grew scarce, ancient settlers turned to hunting smaller animals and collecting and processing a variety of wild plant foods. For millennia, small bands of Native Americans managed to eke out an existence in the Great Basin.

E4 Diet and Subsistence

Life in the Great Basin was an unrelenting quest for food, water, firewood, and materials for basic tools and utensils. The vast deserts supported few large game animals, so indigenous hunters preyed upon available small game, including rabbits, rodents, snakes, lizards, and birds. They were adept foragers and collected insects, grubs, seeds, nuts, berries, and roots. They had to dig for much of their food—small mammals, reptiles, roots, and insects. As a result, non-Indians who encountered these peoples often referred to them as Diggers.

The availability of food dictated whereabouts and activities in the course of a year. Some food gathering was communal. Families would occasionally gather to drive rabbits and other mammals into brush corrals where they were slaughtered. Grasshoppers were driven into trenches with fire, roasted alive, and ground into flour. Peoples venturing into highland areas hunted pronghorn antelope and mountain goats, fished rivers and lakes, and harvested pine nuts from pi?on trees.

E5 Social and Political Organization

Great Basin Indians adopted a nomadic lifestyle to exploit wild food resources as they became available, and they had no permanent social group larger than the family. They typically traveled in small bands of extended families without the formal organization and shared rituals evident among other Native Americans. Band leaders of related families acted more as advisers than as decision makers. When various bands gathered for hunting drives in warmer weather, temporary leaders would be appointed. Some bands congregated for the winter months as well.

E6 Settlement and Housing

Most Great Basin peoples lived in small, simple cone-shaped structures that were made of willow pole frames and covered with brush, reeds, and grasses. Such dwellings were similar to wickiups made by the Apache in the Southwest culture area. Some Great Basin Indians also built larger huts and windbreaks using similar materials.

E7 Clothing and Ornamentation

Clothing was scanty among Great Basin Indians. Men sometimes went naked or wore nothing more than a deerskin apron or loincloth; women wore overlapping front and rear aprons of shredded bark. Most people went barefoot or wore sandals made from yucca, deerskin, or rabbit skin.

E8 Religious Beliefs and Practices

Great Basin peoples believed in a spirit world and spirit beings, who communicated with them through dreams and visions. Their shamans conducted rituals to locate food and heal the sick, and they passed on mythological traditions through storytelling. The folklore of many peoples included Wolf as the good brother who makes things and Coyote as the trickster bad brother who disrupts things.

E9 Arts and Crafts

Many Great Basin Indians, like peoples in the California culture area, used baskets as both carrying and cooking containers, although their baskets were typically less sophisticated. To traverse large streams, they built bulrush floats to carry their belongings. They wove nets for hunting small game from plant materials, and they made bows and arrows and clubs. Long, hooked sticks were fashioned for pulling small animals from burrows. Some groups made duck decoys using tule reeds covered with duck skins. In Ute society, arrow and spearhead makers held a special place of honor.

E10 Post-Contact History

Much of the Great Basin is landlocked desert country, and Native Americans living there avoided contact with non-Indians until later than tribes to their west and south. A Spanish expedition ventured into what is now central Utah in 1776 and 1777. By then, some Ute bands had traded with Pueblo Indians to the south for horses. They adopted a lifestyle similar to tribes east of the Rocky Mountains, traveling onto the Great Plains as horse-mounted hunters. Some Shoshone bands also took to the plains on horseback.

For most Great Basin peoples, the first contacts with outsiders that significantly altered traditional ways of life occurred in the 1840s. At that time, many Euro-American migrants began traveling through the Great Basin on their way to California. Other newcomers sought land in the western interior for homes, including the Mormons who settled near the Great Salt Lake in Utah. The Colorado gold rush that began in 1858 brought more settlers to the region. A number of wars ensued in the 1860s and 1870s, in which indigenous peoples unsuccessfully fought non-Indians in an effort to retain traditional lands and ways of life. In the following decades, most Great Basin peoples were settled on reservations.

Today, the Ute retain the largest share of Native American lands in the Great Basin. They are followed by the Paiute, who hold scattered parcels, then the Shoshone, Bannock, and Washoe. Oil, gas, and mineral leases provide some income for present-day Great Basin peoples. Other economically important activities include farming and raising livestock, casino gaming, and the sale of traditional arts and crafts.

F Northwest Coast

F1 Land and Habitat

The Northwest Coast culture area encompasses more than 3,200 km (2,000 mi) of the Pacific coast, from the panhandle of present-day southern Alaska to northern California. The width of this narrow coastal region varies from about 16 km (10 mi) to 240 km (150 mi). It is cool, damp, thickly forested, and cut by many rivers. Vancouver Island, the Queen Charlotte Islands, the Alexander Archipelago, and other smaller islands off the Northwest Pacific coast are part of the culture area.

Mountains run north-south along the eastern limits of the Northwest Coast. These include the Coast Ranges in Canada and the Cascade Range in the United States. In some areas the mountains extend to the ocean, forming rocky cliffs. In other regions the uplands drop dramatically to inlets and rocky beaches. The region is characterized by mild wet winters and cool summers. Evergreen forests thrive where there is soil enough to support them, and huge trees form a dense canopy that blocks out much sunlight. The floor of the great Northwest Coast forests is dark, damp, and covered with ferns and mosses. Springs and streams from mountain glaciers feed numerous rivers, which run to the ocean. The forests are home to abundant flora and fauna, and the rivers and sea teem with aquatic life.

F2 Peoples and Languages

Northwest Coast peoples spoke a variety of languages. The Haida and Tlingit spoke distinct dialects thought to be related to the Athapaskan language family. Athapaskan peoples who settled in the region included the Chastacosta, Chetco, Clatskanie, and a number of other tribes. Languages based on the Penutian language stock were spoken by such tribes as the Alsea, Chinook, Coos, Kalapuya, Siuslaw, Takelma, and Tsimshian. Other languages in the region included those of the Salishan family, spoken by the Coast Salish and other tribes; the Wakashan family, spoken by the Haisla, Heiltsuk, Kwakiutl, Makah, and Nootka; and the Chimakuan family, spoken by the Chimakum and Quileute.

These various peoples settled throughout the Northwest Coast region. For the most part, they did not cluster geographically according to language. Culturally, Northwest Coast peoples can be divided into three groups: those of the colder northern area, including the Queen Charlotte Islands of western British Columbia; those of the central region, in the vicinity of Vancouver Island and the mouth of the Columbia River; and those of the warmer southern region, who shared some cultural traits with peoples of the California culture area.

F3 Early Peoples

Evidence for the first settlement of the Northwest Coast is scarce, with the earliest documented sites dating to about 10,000 years ago. Salmon has been an important staple for Northwest peoples for at least 7,000 years, and by about 5,000 years ago indigenous peoples began to exploit shellfish resources. After that time, Northwest Coast Indians gradually learned to use marine and land resources more efficiently, and complex societies arose. Indigenous peoples built numerous settlements, typically right at the ocean's edge on narrow rocky beaches. The Northwest Coast became one of the most densely populated areas in all of North America. Trading along the coast and inland up rivers was widespread, and woodcarving and other crafts attained great sophistication and artistry.

F4 Diet and Subsistence

Northwest Coast Indians had more than enough food to support a dense population, even without agriculture and extensive gathering of wild plants. The sea provided the primary foods: seals, sea lions, and fish, including many species of salmon, halibut, herring, cod, and flounder. Some tribes, such as the Makah, hunted whales. Northwest Coast peoples also fished streams and rivers, especially when salmon left the ocean waters to lay their eggs. Sometimes they ventured inland to hunt deer, elk, bear, and mountain goat. They learned to dry their meat and fish with smoke to preserve them for the long winter months.

F5 Social and Political Organization

F5a Village Life

Villages and kin groups were central to the social fabric of Northwest Coast peoples. Indians lived in clans, or groups of families claiming a common ancestor. Kin groups built villages, and sometimes groups of villages were united by kin relations. There were no large, integrated tribes, however, because kin groups typically remained politically and economically distinct from other groups. Each clan was headed by a chief who determined the timing of key ceremonies and rituals, and decided such things as when, where, and how communal food resources would be harvested. Chiefs were village nobles, born to families of high social status. Heredity also played a role in the passing of specialized crafts, such as boat building, from generation to generation.

F5b Wealth and Status

Northwest Coast Indians, especially northern groups, had rigid class systems defined by social status and property. Social rank was determined in part by birth, with those highest in status closest to the direct line of descent from a common ancestor. Property included ownership of food, blankets, canoes, slaves, and sheets of hammered copper, as well as the right to a particular title, crest, or song. At the top of the social hierarchy were wealthy nobles. Below the nobles were common people, and below them were slaves. Slaves were war captives, people who had fallen in debt, and the children of slaves. The wealthiest nobles were typically chiefs, or headmen, of the villages.

F5c The Potlatch

Among Northwest Coast peoples, great wealth was important mainly as a measure of what a person could afford to give away in the potlatch ceremony. The term potlatch, as the gifting custom is known, is taken from the Nootka word patshatl, which means “sharing.” Traditionally held in the winter to dedicate a new house, raise a totem pole, or honor a wedding, the potlatch included feasting, speechmaking, storytelling, singing, drumming, and dancing. Some individuals saved for years in preparation and gave away many items, such as animal furs and woven blankets. Generosity in the potlatch increased a giver's rank within the social group, and the gifting often meant a return in goods from others in reciprocal potlatches.

F6 Settlement and Housing

Northwest Coast Indians typically situated their villages on the narrow beaches of the mainland and islands, their homes facing the sea. They lived in rectangular plank houses large enough to fit an entire extended family. Each family had a separate cubicle in the house.

Cedar was the building material of choice for plank houses. Huge cedar logs were used for framing. Broad, hand-split planks, running either vertically or horizontally, were lashed to the framework to make walls and gabled or shed (single-slope) roofs to keep out the frequent rains. Cedar planks also served as flooring. Plank houses usually had central fire pits, and platforms for sleeping and storage along the walls. Some houses had two levels. For additional insulation from the cold, mats were hung on the inside walls. The fronts of the houses were carved and painted with designs, sometimes with attached totem poles.

F7 Transportation

Northwest Coast peoples traveled up and down the coast in large dugout canoes for purposes of trade, fishing, hunting, and slave-raiding. The seaworthy dugouts were made from giant cedar logs, some as long as 21 m (70 ft) and able to hold 60 paddlers and passengers. They made these large boats by alternately burning the interior of a log and chipping out the charcoal with a stone adz. Dugouts were painted with totemic designs. High bows and sterns were attached to the hull with cedar pegs and ropes. Equipped with hand-held bailers carved from wood, the dugouts could weather even the roughest seas.

F8 Clothing and Ornamentation

Men often went unclothed or wore full-length tunics of woven plant fibers. They found bare feet more comfortable in the damp coastal climate, but added deerskin leggings and moccasins for overland travel. Round brimless hats or conical broad-brimmed ones made from plant fibers kept off the rain. Blankets and fur robes, preferably made from light and warm sea otter fur, gave protection from the cold. A woman's basic garments included a woven plant fiber skirt and sometimes a cloak. Headdresses were also worn, often made from woven plant materials or bird heads and feathers. Tattooing was common among some groups.

Some Northwest Coast peoples practiced head-flattening, considered a sign of beauty and status. Infants would have their heads compressed on a board to produce a strong slope leading to a distinctive peak at the top of the skull. They achieved this form by flattening either the back of the skull or the forehead above the eyebrows.

F9 Religious Beliefs and Practices

The peoples of the Northwest Coast continually sought the protection of animal spirits, chiefly the raven, bear, eagle, and beaver. Individuals sought visions of guardian spirits and appealed to them if misfortunes occurred.

Religious life was dominated by shamans—who were believed to have great power over spiritual forces—and their secret societies. Members of societies met in large sweat lodges where they bathed in steam made from cold water thrown on heated rocks. There they talked, sang, and conducted elaborate ceremonies, including masked dancing. Shamans conducted special rites to cure the ill.

F10 Arts and Crafts

F10a Woodworkers and Weavers

Northwest Coast peoples were master woodworkers. They shaped giant wood plank houses, totem poles, and dugout canoes. Haida and Kwakiutl carvers made wood chests, boxes, masks, and utensils with stylized bird and animal designs. Similar designs in green, yellow, black, and white were woven by Tlingit and Tsimshian women into blankets of mixed goat hair and cedar bark. The famous blankets of the Chilkat, a subgroup of the Tlingit, were traded throughout the area. Northwest Coast peoples also made exquisite baskets and spoons of horn and shell.

F10b Totem Poles

Totem poles were common among Northwest Coast peoples. These were wooden posts carved and painted with a series of symbols, including representations of the owner's guardian animal. Totem poles were typically erected to commemorate dead ancestors, with the symbols confirming the lineage and social rank of the owner. Sometimes totem poles were structurally part of a plank house; others stood alone. Most were made from cedar.

F11 Post-Contact History

Spanish and English ships first reached the Northwest Coast from the south in the late 1500s. However, Europeans did not stake territorial claims in the area until the 1770s. In the Nootka Convention of 1790, Spain surrendered its land claims to Britain. Most early contacts between non-Indians and Indians were peaceful and fostered trade relations.

The arrival of fur traders to the Northwest Coast in the late 1700s—first Russian, then British and American—initiated a period of extensive trade with indigenous peoples. The Russians, who explored the region from the north, established trading posts along the Gulf of Alaska. Contacts between Indians and non-Indians further increased with the U.S.-sponsored Lewis and Clark Expedition, which reached the mouth of the Columbia River by land from the east in 1805, and subsequent American and Canadian trade expeditions. In exchange for valuable animal pelts, Northwest Coast peoples received steel axes, firearms, wool blankets, molasses, and whiskey. However, the Tlingit resented Russia's expansion in the region and attacked Russian outposts, including the settlement of Sitka in 1802. Tlingit resistance, along with increasing competition from British and American fur traders, contributed to Russia's eventual abandonment of the North American enterprise; they sold Alaska to the United States in 1867.

Increasing contacts with foreign traders exposed indigenous peoples to many contagious diseases and led to rapid population declines. In the mid-19th century, Northwest Coast peoples were subjected to many new pressures as growing numbers of non-Indians from the United States and Canada settled in the region. Non-Indians prospected for gold, sought out new land for timber, farms, and homes, and attempted to spread Christianity among the Native Americans. The completion of transcontinental railroads in the northern United States and southern Canada in the late 1880s further increased non-Indian settlement in the Northwest. Many indigenous peoples were forced onto small reservations. In modern times Northwest Coast peoples have had to struggle for traditional land and fishing rights. They have also rediscovered traditional practices, including arts and rituals.

G Plateau

G1 Land and Habitat

The Plateau culture area in western North America is an upland region that encompasses the Columbia Plateau and the basins of the great Fraser and Columbia rivers. The Columbia Plateau is flanked by the Cascade Mountains to the west, the Rocky Mountains to the east, the desert country of the Great Basin to the south, and the forest and hill country of the upper Fraser River to the north.

The mountains bordering the Columbia Plateau catch large amounts of rain and snowfall. This precipitation drains into a great number of rivers and streams, many of which feed the Columbia River that flows to the Pacific Ocean. The mountains and river valleys have enough water to support forests of pine, hemlock, spruce, fir, and cedar. The plateau land between the mountain ranges consists of flatlands and rolling hills covered with grasses and sagebrush. The climate varies greatly depending on proximity to the ocean and altitude. Game animals were generally small, except in the mountains. Nutritious tubers and roots could be found in meadows and river valleys. Bountiful seasonal runs of salmon in the Columbia, Fraser, and tributary rivers significantly enhanced the region's available food supply.

G2 Peoples and Languages

The Plateau was not as densely populated as the Northwest Coast culture area to the west, yet many different tribes inhabited the region. Two language groups were dominant. In the southern regions, stretching from the Columbia River to the Great Basin, lived peoples who spoke languages based on Penutian, a language stock that includes many language families. Penutian-based languages were spoken by the Cayuse, Klamath, Klickitat, Modoc, Nez Perce, Palouse, Umatilla, Walla Walla, and Yakama. North of the Columbia, extending into Canada, the most common language family was Salishan (of uncertain stock). Dialects of Salishan were spoken by many tribes, including the Columbia, Coeur d'Alene, Flathead, Kalispel, Shuswap, and Spokane. Exceptions to this pattern were the Athapaskan-speaking Stuwihamuk in the north; the Chinookian-speaking Wishram in the southwest; and the Kutenai-speaking Kootenai in the northeast. Some linguists believe Kutenai is related to the Algonquian language family.

G3 Early Peoples

Archaeologists have found ancient traces of human settlement in the Plateau region dated at more than 10,700 years old. Early settlers lived along rivers and lakes, hunted a variety of game, including deer and elk, collected wild plant foods, and possibly traded shells obtained from the Pacific Coast. Fishing has a long history on the Plateau. Some groups may have relied on salmon runs as long as 7,000 or 8,000 years ago, and fishing in the region appears to have increased after about 5,000 years ago.

More than two dozen distinct tribal groups inhabited the Columbia Plateau at the time of European contact. Collective ancestors of peoples speaking languages of the Penutian stock probably settled the area before 8,000 years ago. Another group, ancestors of people of the Salishan language family, may have arrived in the region about 3,500 years ago. Other groups entered the region in later years. Chinookians probably migrated from the west, Athapaskans from the north, and Algonquian-speaking peoples from the east. Indigenous peoples who settled on the Plateau used the many rivers as avenues of trade, and contacts among different tribes were frequent.

G4 Diet and Subsistence

G4a Master Fishers

The limited ground vegetation in the dry, rugged country of the Columbia Plateau supported too few large game animals for them to be a staple food source. However, Plateau Indians managed to survive without farming by fishing the rivers and by gathering wild plant foods in the river valleys and on the grasslands. The most important of the many different kinds of fish found in the rivers were the abundant salmon that swam upriver from the ocean in the spring and summer months to lay their eggs.

Plateau Indians used many fishing techniques: They stood on riverbanks or on platforms and thrust at fish with long-handled spears; they used nets, both handheld nets on long poles and large weighted nets attached to floats; and they used small traps made from poles and brush, as well as large enclosures called weirs. Much of the catch was dried in the sun or over a fire for consumption during the winter months.

G4b Hunting and Gathering

Plateau peoples hunted a variety of game on the forested mountain slopes of the region, including elk, deer, mountain sheep, and bear. On the lower dry flatlands of the Plateau they hunted jackrabbits and occasionally pronghorn antelope. In the river valleys they harvested wild berries, including blackberries and huckleberries. Plateau Indians collected edible roots and bulbs from grasslands, including the camas plant, a kind of lily, as well as bitterroot, wild carrots, and wild onions.

G5 Social and Political Organization

Villages, usually located along rivers, were the main social units for Plateau tribes. A village typically consisted of five or six dwellings, each housing four to six families. Sociopolitical organization was much looser than among Northwest Coast Indians, their neighbors west of the Cascade Mountains, with Plateau peoples having fewer status distinctions and their village chiefs having less power. Plateau chiefs, who frequently inherited their positions, typically ruled through social consensus; outright coercion was rare. Among some Plateau peoples, chiefs from different groups occasionally gathered to make decisions in council.

G6 Settlement and Housing

G6a Pit Houses

In cold weather, most Plateau peoples lived in pit houses. To construct a pit house, a large post was placed in the center of a round excavated area, and numerous other poles were extended from its top to the edge of the pit to form a conical framework. Then the roof poles were covered with mats of cedar bark, sagebrush, grass, and other plants, as well as packed earth. A hole at the top allowed smoke from open fires to exit.

G6b Temporary Shelters

In warm weather, Plateau peoples usually lived in temporary lodges. These structures typically had basswood frames in the shape of a ridged tent or lean-to, and bulrush-mat coverings. These warm-weather houses were easy to assemble and disassemble for moving from one place to another, such as along rivers at salmon-spawning time or across the flatlands at camas-digging time.

G7 Clothing and Ornamentation

Plateau men usually wore deerskin loincloths. Women wore front and back aprons or skirts of shredded bark fiber similar to those of Northwest Coast Indians. In the west, both men and women went barefoot. In the east, bison-skin or deerskin moccasins typical of Indians of the Great Plains were worn. Fur robes were added for warmth in winter months.

G8 Religious Beliefs and Practices

For Plateau peoples, spirits and spiritual power infused all living things, as well as natural phenomena such as thunder, mountains, rivers, and rocks. Individuals were believed to have personal guardian spirits that offered protection from disease or misfortune. Each person was considered responsible for carrying out rituals, ordeals, and offerings necessary to secure the goodwill of these spirit helpers. Plateau shamans cured illness with the help of spirits or by purging a patient of the bad spirit that was causing sickness.

Most Plateau communal ceremonies centered on rituals to ensure an abundant supply of food. Salmon ceremonies, for example, celebrated their first arrival in the spring. After the first fish was captured and eaten, its bones were returned to the water to guarantee abundant salmon runs the following year. Many Plateau legends also involved food, and how animals were punished for stinginess.

G9 Arts and Crafts

Plateau Indians wove exquisite baskets. For cooking, heated stones were placed in tightly woven containers filled with water. Other baskets were made for collecting wild plant foods. They also wove soft bags of marsh plants and adorned them with intricate designs. The women were famous for their handsome basket hats, which they wove out of dried leaves and other materials. Plateau Indians did not make pottery.

G10 Post-Contact History

The Plateau, like the Great Basin, was not explored by non-Indians until long after Europeans reached North America. The Rocky Mountains blocked the route from the east, and mariners missed the outlet of the Columbia River for centuries. In 1792 Robert Gray, exploring for the United States, managed to travel a short distance up the great river. Then, in 1805, the Lewis and Clark Expedition reached the mouth of the river along an overland route. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, with the Shoshone woman Sacagawea as a guide and translator, had friendly contacts with more than 50 tribes of the Great Plains, Plateau, and Northwest Coast culture areas. The good relations led to successful trade contacts in the following years, and by the 1830s fur trappers known as mountain men had thoroughly worked the region. Their efforts led to the establishment of the Oregon Trail, which brought growing numbers of settlers to the region over the next decades.

Long before settlers arrived in the area, however, the traditional way of life of the Plateau Indians had evolved to include horses, originally brought to North America by the Spanish. In the early 1700s the Nez Perce—the largest tribe in the Plateau region—had acquired horses through trade with tribes to the south. They rapidly became skilled horse-breeders and trainers, as did other tribes of the Plateau, including the Cayuse and Palouse. Some groups ventured east of the Rocky Mountains to hunt bison. On these forays they learned to make large animal-hide tipis, like those of the Great Plains peoples, instead of the small mat tents and lean-tos they had traditionally used when on the trail.

By the 1840s and 1850s, increasing non-Indian settlement in the Plateau area caused friction as indigenous land rights were ignored. This led to outbreaks of violence between non-Indians and indigenous peoples, including the Cayuse War (1847-1850). Conflict continued until the late 1870s. One of the last battles waged was the unsuccessful fight of the Nez Perce against the U.S. Army in 1877. During the late 19th century most Plateau peoples were relocated to reservations.

Persistent warfare with non-Indians, the spread of European diseases, and the loss of fishing sites and hunting lands brought about sharp declines in indigenous populations. Reservation life, too, inflicted hardships on Plateau peoples. Modern tribes of the region continue to fish the Columbia and its tributaries, and they have maintained some traditional ways of life. Facing competition for fish resources, intertribal groups have organized to defend ancestral fishing rights.

H Great Plains

H1 Land and Habitat

The vast inland region of the Great Plains culture area stretches west from the Mississippi River Valley to the Rocky Mountains and south from present-day central Canada to southern Texas. It includes rolling, fertile tall-grass prairies in the east, where there is adequate rainfall for agriculture, and the short grasses of the drier high western plains. Windy conditions are common and changes in temperature can be dramatic. Summers are typically hot and dry, and winters are long and harsh.

Some wooded areas interrupt the fields of grass, mostly stands of willows and cottonwoods along the river valleys. In some places highlands rise up from the plains and prairies, such as the Ozark Mountains in Missouri, the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming, and the Dakota Badlands. The region is remarkable, however, for the extent and dominance of its grasslands. For thousands of years tens of millions of American bison, more commonly known as buffalo, found nourishment from the grasses of the Great Plains.

H2 Peoples and Languages

Prior to the arrival of Europeans, most occupants of the Great Plains lived along rivers in the eastern regions. They were predominantly farmers who hunted bison and other game seasonally to fill out their diets. Agricultural peoples at the time of European contact included the Siouan-speaking Hidatsa and Mandan; the Caddoan-speaking Caddo, Pawnee, Tawakoni, and Wichita; and a group that split off from the Pawnee, the Arikara. Scattered groups of nomadic hunting peoples are thought to have made their homes on the Great Plains before non-Indians explored them. These groups included, on the Northern Plains, the Algonquian-speaking Blackfeet, who separated from other Algonquians and migrated to the area from the east. On the Southern Plains were the Uto-Aztecan speaking Comanche, who had separated from the Shoshone and migrated there from the northwest.

Other nomadic hunting peoples came to live on the Great Plains, most migrating to the region in the centuries after European contact and the acquisition of horses by Native Americans. They came for many reasons: to escape droughts in their homelands; because of increasing non-Indian settlement in eastern North America; and most of all, to pursue the great bison herds. Peoples who migrated onto the Great Plains from the east included the Siouan-speaking Assiniboine, Crow, Iowa, Kaw, Ponca, Missouria, Omaha, Osage, Otoe, Quapaw, and Sioux. From the northeast came the Algonquian-speaking Arapaho, Cheyenne, Gros Ventre, Plains Cree, and Plains Ojibwa. From the northwest came the Kiowa-Tanoan-speaking Kiowa and the Athapaskan-speaking Kiowa-Apache (a subgroup of Apache) and Sarcee. The Tonkawa, who spoke a language that some scholars believe evolved from Algonquian, are thought to have migrated onto the Plains from the east or south.

H3 Early Peoples

For thousands of years prehistoric peoples hunted the large herbivores that inhabited the Great Plains, especially bison. Over time these peoples refined their hunting practices and technology, and they exploited a broader range of available plant foods.

More than 2,000 years ago some central and eastern prairie peoples learned to raise crops and make pottery, possibly from the groups of mound builders to the east. In contrast, the nomadic peoples who lived year-round in the high western plains remained hunters and gatherers because the dry, cold climate was unsuited for agriculture. By the time Europeans arrived in the Americas in the late 15th century, the majority of Great Plains peoples were villagers and farmers, or at least seminomadic farmers who lived in villages part of the time. The densest settlements were along or near the Missouri River. As soil became depleted in one area, they probably migrated up or down the river in search of new village sites.

The indigenous way of life now considered typical of the Great Plains culture area evolved after contacts with Europeans and the spread of horses. These animals—brought to North America by the Spanish in the early 16th century—made possible a new way of life on the Plains. With increased mobility, village-dwelling farmers could become nomadic hunters year-round. With time, many different tribal customs blended into common ones. By the 19th century, dozens of tribes and bands of horse-mounted hunters dominated the Great Plains.

H4 Diet and Subsistence

After European contact, some Great Plains peoples continued to farm, and many groups hunted a variety of game, fished rivers, and gathered wild plant foods. However, with the spread of horses as a means of transportation to follow the seasonal migrations of bison herds over great distances, bison meat became the staple food. It was eaten raw, roasted over fire, or preserved. Indians made jerky by drying meat in the sun, and pemmican by pounding dried meat with fat and berries. Great Plains peoples also ate the tongue, liver, kidneys, bone marrow, and intestines of their kill. Buffalo chips (dried manure) provided a common source of cooking fuel.

H5 Social and Political Organization

Most Great Plains tribes consisted of bands of related families, with several hundred members. Tribal leadership was typically divided between a peace chief and a war chief or war chiefs; both peace and war chiefs acted with the advice and consent of a council of other tribal leaders. Peace chiefs tended to internal tribal affairs. War chiefs, usually younger men, conducted warfare and led raids on enemies. The bands lived apart most of the year in their own territories. In the summer months they gathered for communal bison hunts, ceremonies, or councils. A tribe might share its hunting lands with friendly tribes, but protect them from enemies.

H6 Settlement and Housing

H6a Tipis

Plains Indians lived in a variety of shelters. The portable tipi (also spelled teepee or tepee) became the most common dwelling for Plains nomads. To construct a tipi, either three or four poles were used as the basic framework. They were tied together near the top and spread out at the bottom to form a cone shape. Up to 20 additional poles were then propped against this framework. A covering of bison skins sewn together with sinew was stretched around the framework and held in place around the bottom edge with wooden pegs or stones.

An unfastened seam provided an entrance, with a hide or fur door stretched on a pole or on a hoop. An opening at the top served as a smoke hole for the central fire. Three or four beds were typically situated along the walls. The various openings of the tipi could be adjusted for ventilation, and the bottom edge could be rolled up for increased airflow. A tipi could also be sealed from the elements, with extra pelts added to the walls for insulation. The outer coverings and inner linings were commonly painted with designs that represented spirit beings, ancestors, family histories, and battle honors.

H6b Earth Lodges

Large communal earth lodges and grass lodges up to 15 m (50 ft) in diameter were common among the tribes of the eastern prairies. Earth lodges were usually dome-shaped with a log framework. This framework was covered with smaller branches or brush mats and then packed with mud or sod. These dwellings were typical of the Arikara, Hidatsa, Mandan, Pawnee, Ponca, and Osage. Grass lodges, with pole frameworks covered with grass or thatch, were typical of the Caddo and Wichita.

H7 Transportation

H7a The Spread of Horse Culture

In 1659 the Spanish governor of the colony of New Mexico reported an attack by Navajo (Diné) on horseback—the first documented use of horses by Indians in North America. During the 1680 Pueblo Revolt in the Southwest culture area, Indians captured hundreds of horses owned by Spanish colonists. By the mid-18th century, horse culture had spread to indigenous peoples throughout western North America and had become the catalyst for a new culture, that of the Great Plains. This relatively recent culture has often been portrayed as the typical Native American way of life by many non-Indians.

H7b Adaptations to the Horse

Use of the horse among Native Americans revolutionized transportation, hunting, and warfare. With horses, Great Plains tribes could readily travel great distances, pursue fleeing bison, and attack their enemies at great speeds. Many groups originally used dogs to carry possessions, attaching them to a type of sled known as a travois. These sleds had two poles tied together in the shape of a V, the closed end resting on a dog's shoulders and the open end on the ground, with hide stretched between the poles for holding cargo. Horses enabled Indians to use much larger travois and carry more possessions, as well as carry the sick or the elderly or children if need be.

Most Great Plains Indians rode bareback, using a rawhide thong around the horse's lower jaw as a bridle. Others rode on blankets or on small hide saddles stuffed with bison hair or grass. Still others rode on more elaborate wooden saddles covered with deerskin and decorated with beadwork, along with decorated stirrups and bridles. Leather and beadwork ornaments were sometimes attached to bridles or draped over the horse's shoulders. Leather bags, known as parfleches, were hung from saddles to carry food and possessions. Some Indians painted their war horses with symbols, or trimmed and dyed their horses' manes and tails, or placed eagle feathers or ribbons in their manes.

Great Plains Indians eventually became some of the best horse riders in the world. They could wield clubs, lances, and shields, or throw spears or shoot bows and arrows while in motion. Horses became a sign of wealth, and some individuals were known to own as many as 1,000 each. Native Americans also became skilled breeders, especially in the neighboring Plateau culture area. They chose the fastest and most responsive animals for breeding.

H8 Clothing and Ornamentation

H8a Decorated Clothing

Peoples of the Great Plains had warm and cold weather clothing, made from bison, deer, and other mammals. Designs on clothing, such as insignia on robes, often honored exploits in war or had other specific meanings. In other cases, designs simply provided decoration. Dyed quillwork, later replaced by beadwork, decorated bison-skin or deerskin shirts, vests, leggings, dresses, boots, and moccasins. Fringes added another decorative element. Other articles of clothing commonly seen on the Great Plains included leather breechcloths in warm weather, and fur robes, caps, and headbands in cold weather.

H8b War Bonnets

A prevalent symbol of Native Americans through modern times is the eagle-feather headdress, more commonly known as the war bonnet. Great Plains war chiefs had the longest war bonnets, with black-tipped tail feathers of the male golden eagle representing exploits in battle. The feathers were attached to a skullcap of bison skin or deerskin, with a browband that was decorated with quillwork, beadwork, and dangling strips of fur or ribbons. Additional downy feathers were tied to the base of the eagle feathers and tufts of dyed horsehair to their tips.

H9 Warfare

After Great Plains peoples acquired horses, war became a central part of the Plains Indian way of life. Plains Indians typically attacked an enemy to steal horses, seize hunting land, or avenge the death of a fellow warrior in a previous skirmish. Fighting usually occurred among small groups of warriors and rarely involved sizable tribal forces.

H9a Military Societies

Great Plains warriors often belonged to particular military societies. Each society—some of them intertribal—had its own insignia, costumes, medicine bundles (wrapped parcels containing objects of personal and spiritual significance), songs, dances, and code of behavior. Some societies were open, with only an age requirement for membership. Others were exclusive, and a warrior was invited to join based on his deeds in battle. Some of the military societies, such as the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers or the Kiowa Ten Bravest, were known and feared throughout the Great Plains.

H9b War Honors

Warfare offered an important way for Plains warriors to achieve social prestige and positions of leadership. All the tribes accorded varying degrees of honor to warriors who performed a graded series of war deeds. These included stealing the horse or weapons of an enemy, killing and scalping him, or merely touching him without harming him. This last action, a custom known by the French word coup, meaning “blow,” was considered among some groups to be the most honorable because it was more dangerous to escape from a live victim than to kill him. A weapon, such as a club, spear, bow or arrow, a specially crafted coup stick, or even the hand might be used to make contact. Each returning warrior recited his deeds to the rest of the camp while his comrades stood by to challenge him if he lied. The practice of reciting war deeds was known as counting coup. Eagle feathers were awarded to warriors for each brave deed. To be a council member or a chief, a warrior had to perform many brave deeds, which were represented by the number of feathers in his war bonnet.

H10 Religious Beliefs and Practices

Great Plains peoples believed a mystical spiritual world existed below the surface of life. Most peoples considered the Sun the most powerful of all the spirits, and they conducted rituals to receive its blessings and protection. The Sioux also believed in a more generalized force present in all things, animate and inanimate, similar to the Algonquian concept of Kitche Manitou (“Great Spirit”), that they called Wakan or Wakanda. The seminomadic farming tribes of the Eastern Plains had ceremonies surrounding agriculture in addition to those emphasizing individual rites of passage and warfare rituals typical of the nomadic hunting peoples.

H10a The Vision Quest

The vision quest, a religious practice widespread among peoples throughout North America, spread to tribes of the Great Plains and took on new forms. The term refers to the effort to seek visions through sweat baths, isolation, exposure to the elements, fasting, and even self-mutilation. Visions were understood as signs from the spirit world that could give personal power, such as success in hunting and war, and convey purpose in life.

The quest for visions was usually undertaken in connection with an important event, such as preparation for war or a boy's passage into manhood. The resulting vision, often in a dream, might be of an animal, ancestor, object, or natural phenomenon, such as a storm. After the experience, a shaman helped the individual interpret the vision, which could reveal the future or provide a guardian spirit. For a boy passing into manhood, the vision would give clues about the name he should receive as an adult—in contrast to the name he was given at birth. Afterward, a person might then carry a totemic object representing the vision, such as a part of an animal, in a medicine bundle.

H10b Communal Ceremonies

The quest for visions played a part in a renewal ceremony common to many Great Plains tribes. This ceremony was called the Sun Dance by the Sioux, the Offerings Dance by the Arapaho, the New Life Lodge by the Cheyenne, and the Mystery Dance by the Ponca. The varying rituals practiced by these tribes served similar purposes: to make contact with the spirit world; to ensure good hunting; to bring victory in battle; to make marriages successful; to heal the sick; to settle old quarrels; and to make new alliances.

This ceremony was typically held for a period of 8 to 12 days in the summer. Bands of Indians, sometimes from different tribes, would set their tipis in a great circle. Many of the series of rituals involved drumming, singing, and dancing. Tobacco was smoked from a sacred pipe while participants met in council. Tribal members erected a pole—the focal point of the ceremony—and placed a figure, usually of rawhide, at the top. In one vision-inducing ritual men had skewers implanted in their chests that were tied to the pole with ropes. Blowing whistles made from eagle bone and dancing to the drumbeat, participants danced backwards until the skewers ripped their flesh. Other men carried out similar acts of self-mutilation, such as dragging bison skulls attached to their flesh with skewers and rope, in an effort to communicate with the spirits.

H11 Arts and Crafts

Great Plains Indians used a variety of materials for their arts and crafts. They shaped bows and arrows from wood and carved elegant pipes from stone. Yet perhaps their most valuable resource for creating tools and other objects was the bison. From bison skin they crafted tipi coverings, shields, travois platforms, parfleches, blankets, and clothing—either in rawhide form or softened into leather. They made thread and rope from bison hair and sinews, and fashioned various tools from the bones. They made rattles and other ceremonial objects from the hooves, horns, and skulls.

Great Plains women mastered the art of preparing hides. They stretched the skins on frames or on pegs in the ground and scraped away the flesh. They then worked the rawhide to an even thickness. To soften the hide into leather, they applied to it a mixture of ashes, bison fat and brains, and various plants, and then soaked it in water. Sometimes hair was left on the hides for warmth.

H12 Post-Contact History

The development of the Great Plains culture area is unique among all the culture areas because the indigenous way of life evolved after Europeans reached the Americas. Some indigenous peoples had contacts with non-Indians before migrating onto the Great Plains from other regions. Other peoples avoided all interaction with the newcomers. Yet they too were affected indirectly through barter with other peoples who traded with or raided non-Indians. The first horses on the Plains, for example, were obtained from Southwest peoples in the 1600s—before non-Indians reached the area. European diseases also probably first reached Great Plains Indians through other indigenous peoples who came into contact with European explorers.

During the colonial period, eastern prairie Indians acquired guns from French and English trading posts in the Mississippi and Ohio river valleys. Horse-mounted Indians with firearms could kill far more bison than those traveling on foot with spears and bows and arrows; surplus food and hides were traded with non-Indians. By the mid-18th century, the prospect of good bison hunting had drawn many tribes from other areas to the Great Plains. At the same time, following the route pioneered by the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804-1806) up the Missouri River, fur traders began to have extensive contacts with Great Plains peoples.

Before and during the American Civil War (1861-1865), much of the non-Indian activity on the Great Plains was transient, with traders or migrants to California and Oregon passing through. However, the number of migrants sharply increased after the discovery of gold in California in 1848. The horses and cattle of the pioneers ate the grass needed by the bison and frightened them away, and many bison were shot by non-Indians for food and sport. In retaliation, Indians stole animals from the pioneers and sometimes wiped out entire wagon trains. The U.S. government responded by building a chain of forts across the Great Plains and by assigning the U.S. Army to patrol the main wagon routes. In addition, beginning in the 1830s many indigenous peoples from the eastern United States were forced to relocate westward to the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). This resettlement also affected the migratory hunting patterns of some Great Plains Indians.

After the Civil War ended, the U.S. government began a highly organized campaign to pacify nomadic and warlike Great Plains peoples and to force them onto reservations. Meanwhile, large numbers of settlers continued to move west, and a great many settled permanently on the Great Plains. Beginning in the 1870s, professional hide hunters equipped with large caliber guns contributed to the rapid destruction of the last major bison herds. Hostilities intensified among Indians and settlers. The Great Plains wars reached a climax in the 1870s, with such famous clashes as the 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn—the last major Indian victory in U.S. territory. However, the U.S. Army soon rounded up most of the remaining nomadic Indians and put them on reservations. The annihilation of the great bison herds upon which Plains nomads lived—a process completed by the early 1880s—gave Plains peoples little choice but to remain on the reservations. The so-called Ghost Dance Uprising, a religious movement in which Indians of various tribes sought to gather and dance to bring back the bison and their earlier way of life, led to a massacre of one band by U.S. soldiers at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1890. This event marked the end of organized Native American military resistance in the United States.

Some Native American unrest occurred on the Canadian Plains as well, but to a lesser degree. Attempts to eradicate Plains Indian culture in the United States and Canada through the early 1900s failed, and indigenous peoples endured. Today, many Great Plains peoples still live on reservations, where they keep cattle and tend fields; some receive income from leases to non-Indian cattle ranchers and mining interests and, more recently, casino gaming. Although many contemporary Indians living in the Great Plains suffer from poverty, they still proudly maintain their traditions.

I Subarctic

I1 Land and Habitat

The Subarctic culture area is an immense region that stretches from present-day inland Alaska to the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland and Labrador. Most lands in the Subarctic are within the continental interior; the only coastal areas are found along the Atlantic coast and on Hudson Bay. Most of the Subarctic has thick pine forests with some broadleaf trees, called taiga; it opens up on flat, treeless arctic plains, called tundra, on its northern edge. Because of minimal topsoil, most trees in the Subarctic are scraggy and short. In addition to woodlands, the Subarctic contains thousands of lakes, ponds, swamps, rivers, and streams. Mosquitoes and black flies breed in the swamplands. Winters in the Subarctic are long, with deep snow covering the woodlands and thick ice on the lakes. Short summers and poor soil conditions make agriculture impractical.

I2 Peoples and Languages

At the time of European contact, Subarctic peoples were linguistically separated into two groups. Peoples native to the western Subarctic spoke Athapaskan languages. They included the Chipewyan, Beaver, Kutchin, Ingalik, Kaska, and Tanana, among others. In the eastern Subarctic lived Algonquian-speaking groups, including the Cree, Algonquin, Montagnais, Naskapi, and some bands of Ojibwa (Chippewa). The Churchill River extending northeast to Hudson Bay from western Saskatchewan formed the approximate dividing line between these language groups. The Beothuk of Newfoundland and Labrador were the only exception to this linguistic pattern. They spoke a language known as Beothukan, which some experts believe was distantly related to the Algonquian language. The geographic distribution of the two language families has led some scholars to divide the Subarctic culture area into the Western Subarctic and Eastern Subarctic.

I3 Early Peoples

Nomadic bands of hunters first roamed the Subarctic region at least 8,000 years ago following game animals, including herds of caribou. There were few peoples in this vast, rugged, and often cold landscape. The peoples of the eastern Subarctic, those of the Algonquian language family, probably arrived in the region first, possibly before 5,000 years ago. They migrated from the west or from the south in ancient times. The majority of their ancestral relatives came to live in the more forgiving environment of the Northeast culture area to the south. The peoples of the western Subarctic, those of the Athapaskan language family, were probably among the last peoples to arrive in the Americas, reaching the Subarctic perhaps about 3,000 years ago. Some Athapaskan peoples eventually migrated southward to warmer climates, including the Apache and Navajo (Diné) of the Southwest culture area sometime before ad 1500. Yet most Athapaskan groups remained in the rugged western Subarctic.

I4 Diet and Subsistence

I4a Caribou

Lacking agriculture, Subarctic peoples lived mainly by hunting. A staple for many bands was the caribou (a North American reindeer), and life revolved around the seasonal migrations of caribou herds. In the spring Subarctic hunters gathered at the edge of the taiga to intercept the animals as they migrated onto the treeless tundra to the north. In the fall some groups, such as the Chipewyan, returned to hunt the caribou on the animals' southern migration. They used bows and arrows and spears; they drove caribou into corrals made of brush; they snared animals with ropes strung between two trees; and they attacked them from canoes as the animals swam across a river or lake.

Subarctic peoples boiled the fresh caribou meat in water-filled caribou-skin or birchbark containers by adding heated stones. Little from the animal was wasted. They ate the head and the stomach with all its contents. Some of the meat was made into pemmican (dried and pounded meat mixed with fat and berries), which was packed into caribou intestines—much like modern-day sausage—and carried on the trail. The hide of the caribou was cured to make tents, clothing, and thongs. The bones and antlers were shaped into tools.

I4b Other Wild Foods

Subarctic Indians hunted many other animals, large and small, besides caribou. Large game included moose, deer, musk oxen, mountain sheep, and, in more southern latitudes, bison. Small game included beaver, mink, otter, porcupine, rabbit, squirrel, and waterfowl. Many hunters used dogs to stalk game animals and keep them at bay.

Subarctic peoples also fished from land and from canoes using lines and hooks, barbed arrows, spears, nets, and enclosures called weirs. They preserved some of the catch with smoke or by drying it in the sun to provide convenient food for the trail. Peoples west of the Rocky Mountains, in the area drained by the Yukon River, ate more salmon than meat from large game animals, a practice shared with peoples of the Northwest Coast culture area.

Wild plant foods, including seeds, berries, and bark, supplemented the Subarctic diet. Some tribes, such as the Chipewyan, made moss into a soup and ate fermented lichens found in caribou stomachs.

I5 Social and Political Organization

Because of limited food resources, Subarctic groups generally remained small. They traveled in hunting bands united by kinship and dialect, sometimes as families and sometimes as loosely knit groups of extended families. Chiefs were chosen for hunting skill and bravery. They had little power beyond their own families, apart from the authority to settle disputes and lead war parties.

Women did most of the hard work around camp. They made fires, prepared food, and cured animal hides to make leather. When it was time to move camp, women hauled most of the provisions, putting supplies on their backs or pulling sleds called toboggans. When food ran out, women were the first to go hungry. A man without any relatives might attach himself to a family as a servant. The old and sick might ask to be strangled to spare their families the task of providing for them.

I6 Settlement and Housing

The most common dwelling used by Subarctic peoples was a small cone-shaped tent with a pole framework covered with animal skins or birchbark. These dwellings resembled a cross between the tipi of the Great Plains and the wigwam of Northeast Indians. Smoke holes were left at the top. Easily assembled and transported lean-tos of poles, brush, and leaves were also common, especially in the western Subarctic region.

I7 Transportation

I7a Snowshoes and Toboggans

In the winter Subarctic peoples relied on snowshoes for transportation. The snowshoes of the Subarctic were generally long and narrow, but had variations depending on the type of snow most encountered. The frames and crossbars of snowshoes were made from spruce, birch, or willow, with the snowshoe tips bent up to prevent them from snagging on brush buried under the snow; webbing was made from animal hide, sinew, or gut. Subarctic peoples invented the toboggan, a type of flat-bottomed sled without runners pulled by hand or by dogs. A toboggan's wooden platform was curved up in front to facilitate pulling heavy loads in deep snow.

I7b Birchbark Canoes

In warmer weather, groups in both the western and eastern Subarctic crafted birchbark canoes similar to those found among indigenous peoples of the Northeast culture area, but with varying designs. Canoes made by Kutchin peoples had flat bottoms and nearly straight sides. Beothuk canoes had sides that curved up and met at a point in the middle as well as at the ends, giving them the shape of a shallow W when viewed from the side. Some tribes used the more plentiful spruce bark for their canoes. To propel their boats, Subarctic peoples used wooden paddles.

I8 Clothing and Ornamentation

Subarctic peoples made trousers, leggings, shirts, dresses, capes, robes, headbands, mittens, and moccasins from the skin and fur of mammals, especially caribou and moose. Feathers, seeds, shells, and quills were used to decorate clothes and for jewelry. Some peoples colored their faces with red ochre and black lead or with tattoos.

I9 Religious Beliefs and Practices

Subarctic peoples—like Native Americans throughout North America—believed that spirits lived in all things: in plants, in animals, and in natural phenomena such as landforms or weather. To navigate within this spirit world, Subarctic Indians enlisted the help of good spirits to find game or avoid evil spirits and unseen dangers. Sometimes friendly spirits might appear to a person in a dream. Spiritual assistance was also obtained through divination techniques such as scapulimancy, in which the cracks in scorched animal bones were studied to learn the location of prey. Shamans carried out rituals centered on summoning friendly animal spirits to provide good fortune or heal the sick. Among some groups, shamans attempted to remove disease-causing agents by sucking them out of a patient's body.

Subarctic peoples also believed in supernatural beings that terrorized the forests. One character in Algonquian folklore was Windigo, an Ojibwa name, known by other names in other tribes. According to legend, Windigos were giant cannibals with long jagged teeth protruding from lipless mouths and hands in the shape of claws. They sought out human flesh and caused the disappearances of hunters. Windigos were also believed capable of possessing people and making them crave human flesh. Windigo legend is thought to have evolved as a taboo against cannibalism, which might be a temptation to peoples in lands where food was scarce.

I10 Arts and Crafts

Subarctic peoples crafted useful items from leather, wood, stone, and bone. Some peoples, such as the Chipewyan, also worked in copper. They used annealing techniques (alternate heating and hammering) to work copper nuggets from the soil into a desired shape. They fashioned a variety of copper tools, including knives, axes, scrapers, arrowheads, spearheads, awls, drills, and chisels. They also traded raw copper to other tribes for food, shells, and other goods.

I11 Post-Contact History

In the Subarctic, non-indigenous settlement generally proceeded from east to west. In the colonial period, the southeastern Subarctic tribes, such as the Algonquin, Ojibwa, and Cree, felt the greatest impact from European exploration and settlement, as did the Canadian tribes of the Northeast culture area. The growth of the fur trade, marked by the founding of the Hudson's Bay Company in 1670 and the North West Company in the 1780s, led to non-indigenous exploration of much of Canada. Non-Indian traders rarely settled in Subarctic wilderness areas. As a result, few Indian wars erupted in the region compared to in the United States, where settlers claimed Indian lands for homes and farms. However, Subarctic peoples did not escape the cultural disruptions caused by the spread of European diseases and the trade in alcohol.

From 1850 to 1923 the Canadian government and Subarctic peoples enacted a series of treaties that gradually reduced tribal landholdings. The Klondike gold rush in Canada's Yukon Territory in the 1890s brought growing numbers of non-Indians onto Indian lands. The gold rush affected Native Americans in Alaska as well, although peoples in remote regions saw few settlers until the 20th century.

Canadian Indian policy evolved over the years from an effort to acculturate and assimilate indigenous peoples to one supporting indigenous self-determination and cultural expression. Unlike in the United States, where some Native Americans control large reservations, Canadian Indians hold few large parcels of land. First Nations—as Indian groups are now referred to in Canada—are more likely to hold many small, scattered parcels. Following the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in 1971, indigenous communities in Alaska organized into several hundred village corporations and 12 regional profit-making corporations. The corporations manage lands granted to the Indians by land claims, with individuals enrolled as shareholders of the corporations. Many Subarctic Indians continue to hunt in the tradition of their ancestors, but they generally do so using modern technology.

J Arctic

J1 Land and Habitat

The Arctic culture area reaches across present-day northern Alaska and Canada, and includes portions of northeastern Siberia and coastal Greenland. Much of the vast, treeless arctic plains, called tundra, are frozen and snow-covered, with temperatures below -18C (0F) for seven or eight months of the year. Winters are long and severe, with few hours of daylight. The Arctic region's craggy coastline touches upon three oceans: the Pacific, the Arctic, and the Atlantic. The Arctic Ocean freezes over in winter and then breaks up into drift ice during the brief summer thaw. Thousands of islands are found offshore.

The Arctic is actually a frozen desert with little precipitation. Gale-force winds stir up what surface snow exists, creating intense blizzards and enormous drifts. The Arctic's extreme environment has little vegetation other than mosses, lichens, and scrub brush, and it is unsuited for agriculture. Few peaks, other than the northernmost Rocky Mountains in the west, rise above the rolling plains. The subsoil stays frozen all year in a condition known as permafrost, and the water on the surface does not drain, resulting in numerous lakes and ponds along with mud and fog.

J2 Peoples and Languages

The indigenous peoples of the Arctic culture area spoke dialects from only one language family, known variously as Inuit-Aleut, Eskimaleut, Eskimo-Aleut, and Eskaleut. This language family is considered part of the American Arctic-Paleo-Siberian language stock, with related dialects spoken by indigenous peoples in Siberia. Aleut and Inuit peoples can be organized into four groupings at the time of European contact. Moving west to east these groups included, first, the peoples of the Aleutian Islands off Alaska, with the Atka Aleut occupying the western Aleutians and the Unalaska Aleut the eastern islands. Second were Alaskan Inuit peoples, including the North Alaska Inuit, West Alaska Inuit, South Alaska Inuit, and Saint Lawrence Island Inuit, with the Mackenzie Inuit of the Yukon and Yuit of Siberia sharing similar ways of life. Third were the Central Inuit, including the Netsilik Inuit, Iglulik Inuit, Copper Inuit, Caribou Inuit, Southampton Inuit, Baffinland Inuit, and Labrador Inuit. A fourth group beyond North America was the Greenland Inuit, including the Polar Inuit, West Greenland Inuit, and East Greenland Inuit. All these groups consisted of numerous bands with distinct identities.

Although Arctic peoples shared many ways of life, there were significant variations across the four main groups. In cultural terms, the Central Inuit practiced ways of life often considered typical for Arctic peoples. They lived in snow houses called igloos, traveled in lightweight skin boats called kayaks, and used sleds and dog teams. However, one Central Inuit group, the Caribou Inuit, were an inland people who hunted the animals for which they are named and fished freshwater lakes. Their way of life was similar to that of peoples of the Subarctic culture area. The Copper Inuit, another Central Inuit group, were unusual in that they used copper surface nuggets found in their territory to craft tools. The Inuit of southern Alaska had regular trade contacts with Athapaskan Subarctic peoples, among other Indians, and adopted some of their customs. The Aleut, because of their location on the Pacific Coast and frequent contact with coastal peoples to the south, exhibited some cultural traits similar to those found in the Northwest Coast culture area.

J3 Early Peoples

People settled the upper regions of North America relatively recently. Many of these settlers probably arrived from eastern Siberia sometime after about 4,500 years ago, although some inhabitants of the Aleutian Islands were there as early as 8,000 years ago. Anthropologists believe that prehistoric ancestors of Arctic peoples did not cross the ancient Bering Strait land bridge that once connected Asia and North America—as many of the ancestors of other Native Americans are thought to have done (see Migration to the Americas). Instead, they most likely traveled in skin and wooden boats, or perhaps on ice floes. They appeared in North America in a series of migrations and gradually moved eastward. The earliest Arctic peoples belonged to the Old Dorset culture, which was absorbed by a later group, the Thule Inuit, between about ad 1000 and 1300.

The peoples of the far north were of a different stock than other Native Americans. They were generally shorter and broader in stature with a rounder face, lighter skin, and a small fold of skin covering the inner corner of the eye typical of Asian peoples. They came to be known historically as Eskimo and Aleut. However, the modern descendents of the Eskimo prefer the term Inuit, which means “the real people.” The term Eskimo was given by Algonquian peoples and means “raw meat eaters.” Variations for Inuit (singular, Inuk) in Alaska are Inupiat (singular, Inupiaq) in the north and northwest and Yupik in the southwest and on Saint Lawrence Island. The Aleut are also known as Alutiiq.

J4 Diet and Subsistence

Arctic peoples adapted remarkably well to the harsh environment and meager resources of the far north. Hunting provided the primary means of subsistence. Dogs, used for hunting and hauling, helped Arctic peoples survive. Along the coasts sea mammals—seals, sea lions, sea otters, walruses, and whales—provided the main staple foods. Inland groups hunted caribou. Other game included polar bears, musk oxen, mountain sheep, wolves, wolverines, foxes, rabbits, marmots, squirrels, and waterfowl. Fishing supplemented the diet.

Hunting methods were varied and ingenious. Arctic hunters harpooned seals or other sea mammals from boats or snuck up on them on ice floes and used harpoons or nets. They also used dogs to locate seals by sniffing out their breathing holes in the ice. They attached inflated buoys to harpoons used for hunting whales to tire the animals and make them easier to kill. Caribou hunters, equipped with bows and arrows, hid in snow pits to surprise the animals, or they drove caribou herds into corrals. For small game Arctic peoples used bolas, weighted ropes thrown at animals to entangle them. They also learned to conceal dried and folded whalebones in pieces of fat, which would unfold and kill animals when the fat was eaten and digested.

Fishing methods in the Arctic included the use of hooks and lines, lures, harpoons, and leisters (spears with three prongs, one for penetrating and two for grasping the catch). Arctic peoples fished from skin boats and through holes in the ice, and they used weirs made from stones to trap fish. Some bands were able to forage roots and berries, but there was generally little edible vegetation in the Arctic other than mosses and lichens. Meat was often eaten raw because fuel for adequate heating was scarce.

J5 Social and Political Organization

J5a Inuit Extended Families

For the Inuit the extended family was the most important unit of sociopolitical organization. Villages were loosely knit and democratic. If the food supply in a region ran out, people abandoned their villages and formed new ones elsewhere, sometimes with other families.

The Inuit had special kinds of partnerships with nonfamily members, and these helped maintain a cohesive community. Men had sharing partners, with whom they shared food. They also had song partners, with whom they performed ceremonies. Song partners sometimes even shared wives. And both men and women had name partners, people of the same name with whom they exchanged gifts.

J5b Aleut Chiefdoms

The Aleut maintained more permanent villages than the Inuit, and they had village chiefs with significant political power. Chiefs were typically recruited from the noble class. Under the nobles were commoners and slaves. Like peoples of the Northwest Coast culture area, the Aleut were concerned with rank and wealth, and they demonstrated their personal importance through their possessions, including furs, amber, and shells. Unlike Northwest Coast peoples, however, they did not practice the gifting custom known as the potlatch.

J6 Settlement and Housing

J6a Igloos

Inuit lived in igloos, hide tents, and sod huts. The igloo—the most widely recognized Inuit dwelling—was actually used only by the Central Inuit and only in the wintertime. Also called a snow house, it was constructed from blocks of ice laid in an upward spiral from a base and leaning slightly inward to form a domed shape. Soft snow was used to cover the blocks of ice for additional insulation. A hole at the top provided ventilation, and a block of clear ice served as a window. A platform of ice, covered with fur, was used as a bed. Igloos normally had a covered passageway as an entrance, as well as a smaller domed storage room. Sometimes a third dome, with its own attached passageway, was added as a separate bedroom.

J6b Other Dwellings

In summertime the Central Inuit used tents made from driftwood poles and caribou-hide coverings. Alaskan Inuit built year-round houses from either stones and sod or logs and sod, either circular or rectangular and often partially buried. Sometimes driftwood and whale ribs were used in framing, and intestines of whales and other sea mammals were used as windows. Some groups built aboveground wooden homes. Stone lamps that burned oil from sea mammal fat provided heat and light. The Aleut lived in barabaras, large communal pit houses with roof beams made from driftwood or whale bones and walls made from chunks of sod. The smoke hole or a separate passageway served as an entrance.

J7 Transportation

Arctic peoples had to adapt to unique travel conditions over stretches of ice. Some Inuit used crampons (spikes attached to their boots) for traveling on the ice. They walked with test staffs, shafts resembling ski poles, to judge the thickness and strength of the ice. Other groups traveled on snowshoes similar to those used by Subarctic peoples to the south.

J7a Watercraft

The Inuit invented the kayak, a light, narrow, and maneuverable boat with an enclosed cockpit and propelled by a double paddle. Kayaks were crafted by stretching oiled hides from sea mammals over wooden or whale rib frameworks. Most were designed for a single person, but some had a front seat for a passenger, such as a harpooner. Aleut baidarkas, similarly made, typically had two cockpits. They were short, with the bow curved upward and the stern squared off. Some bows were shaped like a bird's open beak. Inuit umiaks were large, open flat-bottomed boats made from similar materials as kayaks and designed to hold eight to ten people at a time.

J7b Sleds

To make their sleds, known in some dialects as komatik, Inuit lashed together wooden frames with strips of rawhide and attached either slats of wood or large pieces of rawhide as raised platforms. They shaped the runners from wood or bone and applied a coating of ice or frozen mud and moss to them. Teams of huskies were frequently used to pull the sleds, although hunters traveling on ice floes sometimes pulled them. Hunters frequently attached kayaks to sleds with the runners facing up. On reaching water the sleds could then be turned upside down and the kayaks used without being detached.

J8 Clothing and Ornamentation

Inuit clothing offered protection from the cold and was comfortable to wear. Parkas, pants, mittens, stockings, and boots were crafted in a variety of styles and materials. Water-resistant sealskin was ideal for summer rains and hunting at sea. Caribou skin was warmer and lighter weight and offered better protection against the dry cold. Dog, squirrel, marmot, fox, wolf, wolverine, and polar bear hides and furs were also used, along with bird skins and feathers. Sea mammal intestines were sometimes sewn together in place of hides.

Hooded parkas—another invention of the Inuit—were worn with the fur facing inward and were tailored to the contours of the body to keep out cold air at the waist, neck, and wrists. Some parkas had double layers. Boots, known as mukluks, and mittens were insulated with fur, down, and moss. Fur, leather fringes, embroidery, and ivory buttons served as decorations. Some Inuit, mostly women, wore jewelry, such as ear pendants, nose rings, and labrets (lip-plugs or chin-plugs, placed in slits cut in the flesh) made of ivory, shell, wood, or sandstone. Tattoos were also common.

Aleut clothing, made from hides and intestines, also offered efficient protection from the rain and cold. Their parkas, like those of the Inuit, had hoods. Intricate decorations made from hair bristles and animal skin dyed different colors were added to clothing. Aleut hunters wore wooden helmets with long visors that were decorated with ivory and sea lion whiskers.

J9 Religious Beliefs and Practices

Innumerable spirits and powerful gods populated the religious universe of Arctic peoples. Many of these supernatural figures were connected to survival in a harsh land. Since the sea sustained many Arctic peoples, Sedna, the sea goddess, was the supreme deity for most Central Inuit groups. Among the Caribou Inuit, the principal deity was Mother of Caribou.

Many Arctic peoples believed that all living things were endowed with a spirit or soul. Respect was paid to the soul of an animal killed by a hunter to ensure the soul would one day reappear in another animal willing to forfeit its life to humans. If proper respect was not given, the animal's soul might turn into a destructive demon. Human souls, too, were believed to live on after a person's death. Death taboos, including a strictly enforced period of mourning in which no work could be done, were respected to prevent souls of the deceased from turning into wicked spirits. It was also believed that the souls of living persons could become lost or stolen by evil forces, causing sickness or madness. To cure illness, Inuit shamans, or angakok, might be called upon to help retrieve a patient's soul.

The Inuit built large ceremonial houses called kashim, a Russian word for an Inuit term. Within kashim, the angakok conducted rituals and used a system of magic based on sleight-of-hand to treat sickness or advise on hunting problems. Kashim were usually partially buried and contained secret passageways known only to the angakok, which increased the structures' mystery for the rest of the band. Ropes enabled the angakok to create illusions with acrobatics. The angakok directed the carving of masks representing the forces of nature and the spirits of animals, as well as the ceremonies in which the masks were worn. One such ceremony, performed by the Alaskan Inuit, was the Bladder Dance. According to Inuit tradition, the bladder was the location of an animal's soul. This event lasted for days inside the kashim. Participants danced to music and performed rituals with inflated sea-mammal bladders, which were later returned to the sea.

J10 Arts and Crafts

The Inuit used parts of sea mammals for tools, weapons, bags, ornaments, and ceremonial objects. The tusks of the walrus provided ivory, a choice material for the handles of weapons and tools. Carvers often adorned ivory tools with geometric figures and other designs. Driftwood was also highly valued in Inuit arts, especially for carving the elaborate wooden masks that were important in Inuit ceremonies and festivals. When wood was in short supply, the Inuit carved masks from whalebone. The Aleut crafted elegant baskets from rye grass found on the beaches. The stems of the grass were split with the fingernails to make threads, and some of the threads were dyed before being woven into intricate designs.

J11 Post-Contact History

The first Europeans to visit the Arctic regions of North America were probably the ancient Vikings. Viking navigators, who landed in northeastern North America around ad 1000, came into contact with a people they referred to as Skraelings, possibly the Inuit. In the late 16th century Sir Martin Frobisher, exploring for England in search of the Northwest Passage, a water route through North America, made three voyages to the Canadian Arctic. Frobisher kidnapped several Inuit and took them to England. Other coastal explorers soon followed. Russian expeditions approached the North American Arctic from the west in the mid-1700s, starting with the voyages of Vitus Jonassen Bering. In later decades, the Russians developed the fur trade. This had a devastating impact on Aleut peoples, since traders forced them to participate in hunting by capturing villages and taking hostages.

The search for the Northwest Passage continued through the centuries. Yet maritime and overland expeditions to the Arctic were costly and dangerous and, as a result, sporadic. In 1848 commercial whaling ships began working Alaskan and Arctic waters. At the same time, growing numbers of Christian missionaries began to reach Inuit and Aleut villages, teaching new belief systems. Increasing contacts with foreigners spread diseases among indigenous peoples, and populations declined.

During the early to mid-1800s, many Inuit began using trade goods that altered their traditional culture, including guns, knives, kettles, cloth, and alcohol. Other developments in the late 1800s impacted many Inuit. In 1867 the United States purchased Alaska from Russia and began to develop it economically. Meanwhile, the Hudson's Bay Company established many Arctic posts to develop the fur business. Despite these initiatives, some Central Inuit bands had no contact with non-Indians until the early 1900s.

Contemporary Inuit peoples use many modern technologies. Frame houses have replaced igloos, hide tents, and wood, stone, and sod huts. Motorized canoes have taken the place of kayaks, and snowmobiles are used instead of dogsleds. In addition, most Inuit use electricity, kerosene, or oil as fuel instead of animal fat; factory-made wool, cotton, and synthetic clothes instead of handmade sealskin and caribou garments; and rifles and shotguns instead of harpoons, spears, and bows and arrows.

A renaissance in Inuit art, which began in the 1950s, combines traditional and modern techniques, materials, and themes. Two other recent developments are helping to improve the quality of modern-day Inuit life. In Alaska indigenous peoples have benefited from the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, which helped protect Alaskan indigenous lands and granted funds for economic growth. In Canada a new Canadian territory, known as Nunavut, was carved out of the eastern parts of the Northwest Territories in 1999. Inuit peoples comprise most of population of Nunavut, and they have worked to promote their economic, social, and cultural interests.

Carl Waldman contributed the Culture Areas section of this article.

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.

A1 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, pi?on 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.

A2 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.

A3 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.

A4 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.

A5 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.

A6 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.

B1 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.

B2 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.

B3 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.

B4 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.

B5 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.

B6 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.

B7 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.

B8 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.

B9 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 -28C (-20F). 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.

D1 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.

D2 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.

D3 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.

D4 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.

D5 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.

D6 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.

D7 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.

D8 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.

E1 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.

E2 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.

E3 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.

E4 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.

E5 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.

E6 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

H1 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.

H2 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.

H3 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.

I1 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.

I2 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.

I3 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.

I4 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.

K1 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.

K2 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.

K3 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.

K4 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.

L1 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.

L2 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.

L3 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.

L4 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.

L5 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.

L6 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.

L7 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.

L8 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.

L9 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.

L10 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.

M1 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.

M2 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.

M3 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.

M4 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.

M5 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.

M6 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.

M7 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.

M8 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.

VI HISTORY

The history of native North America begins with native peoples and their stories of origin, often called creation stories. These stories are part of a Native American oral tradition that predates European contact and extends back for countless generations. Creation and origin stories tell of how the world was made and how particular groups of people came into being. They tell of how animals, humans, and the natural world were created, and they offer important instructions and lessons for living. Passed down from generation to generation, these stories express the collective wisdom of particular Native American peoples. They are also often very funny and provide wonderful forms of entertainment, particularly during summer evenings and winter months when families exchange stories and help educate young people in the ways of their ancestors.

All Native American traditions are specific to particular peoples and places. In the Southwest, the creation story of the Navajo (Diné), tells of how people emerged into this world from several lower worlds where different beings existed with First Man and First Woman. Gradually moving through these different worlds, First Man and First Woman emerged into the beautiful lands of the Navajo, known as Dinétah.

Among the Iroquois of the Northeast, stories record when a league of peace between various Iroquois nations formed. The Iroquois peoples once lived in a time of terrible war. Nations fought and killed each other, and relatives constantly attempted to avenge the death of their family members. After the death of his family, one Onondaga chief, Hiawatha, became so stricken with grief that he wandered lost in the forests until he met a foreign and powerful man. This man, often simply known as the Peacemaker, helped Hiawatha mourn his lost family and eased his pain through rituals and words of condolence. Together, Hiawatha and the Peacemaker visited all the Iroquois nations and united them based on these new principles of peace, not war. These seeds of peace grew over time and helped build the Iroquois Confederacy. Today, the confederacy is one of the oldest political bodies in North America, centuries older than the governments of Canada or the United States.

Other native groups have less specific origin stories. Among many groups in the West, powerful trickster characters, such as Coyote and Raven, have mystical powers that helped create and order the universe. These tricksters teach lessons through their own mistakes. Shoshone peoples in California and Nevada, for example, have creation stories in which Coyote and Raven possess human characteristics, particularly human limitations such as greed and lust. The mishaps of Coyote and Raven often lead to unforeseen and hilarious outcomes, including the creation of the natural world. One Shoshone tale tells of how Raven stole and then populated the world with pine nuts, one of the Shoshone's most important and sacred foods.

Such creation stories are central to native communities. They help give meaning to the world and explain the place of native peoples within it. In addition to creation stories, Native Americans rely on other oral traditions to pass down their histories and worldviews. Understanding oral traditions is central to understanding Native American history, but it also presents unique challenges. Because oral traditions often went undocumented or were hidden from nonnative peoples, historians have often assumed that Indians did not have history, that they were timeless peoples who did not keep documents or records of their pasts.

Historians have made many mistakes about Native American history, and only recently have many of those errors been corrected. Historians, for example, once believed that Indians were minor or unimportant actors in American and Canadian history. They generally saw Indians as either obstacles in the making of North American history or as quaint, romantic relics of a bygone era. Both views are racist and limiting. Native Americans remain central actors in North American history, and their histories, like all histories, reveal the widest array of human attributes. By studying Native American history, we can more clearly see the making of Canadian and American history as well as the many complicated ways that diverse Native Americans have skillfully negotiated centuries of often terrible changes.

A Early Cultures in North America

Scholars hotly debate when and how the first peoples—the ancestors of today's Native Americans—arrived in the Americas. What is clear, however, is that Native Americans have lived in North America for countless generations and thousands and thousands of years. Such extended, deep connections to the land strongly link Native Americans to the American landscape. Most Native Americans insist that their ties to the land extend beyond the reach of memory and that nonnative peoples should recognize and respect such ties.

Native Americans are part of the larger history of human evolution, but scholars are not entirely sure how they fit into the chronology. According to archaeologists, the first peoples migrated to the Americas via a land bridge that connected North America and Asia during the last ice age, which ended 10,000 years ago. Estimates vary widely for precisely when these peoples arrived. Some claim that they arrived before 15,000 years ago while others believe that they arrived tens of thousands of years earlier. Although such claims are inconclusive, archaeologists have found evidence of habitation throughout the Americas that dates back many thousands of years. Some Native Americans dispute the theory that the first Americans migrated from Asia. They argue that Native Americans originated in the Americas, pointing to their creation stories as evidence. For more information about the populating of the Americas, see Migration to the Americas.

Most archaeologists believe that the first Native Americans—often known as Paleo-Indians to non-Indian scholars—were hunter-gatherers who developed technologies and practices suited to hunting and fishing. These peoples used flint-chipped spear and arrow points to catch big and small game, and fishing nets and weirs (fences or enclosures set in waterways) to harvest fish. In using these and other devices, these early societies left behind material traces of their cultures. Their tools, food waste, and even at times buried ancestors provide clues about the nature of their lives.

At Folsom, New Mexico, archaeologists in 1926 and 1927 excavated one of the most important archaeological sites in North America, containing bison bones and stone spearpoints dating from about 11,000 years ago. Similar spearpoints, often known as Folsom points, were found in other places in North America, revealing that early Native Americans traded technologies across great distances. In 1933 at Clovis, New Mexico, archaeologists found further and older evidence of the prevalence of Indian hunting and trading. The stone spearpoints found at this site, known as Clovis points, were made by people who appeared in North America about 11,500 years ago. Clovis points have been found throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico, suggesting that early Native American populations were linked in trade thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans.

Archaeologists believe that these early peoples refined their methods for hunting North America's big game animals. Hunting mammoths, mastodons, and bison on foot, these early Americans developed stronger and more reliable spearpoints for killing large animals. In fact, archaeologists have experimented with these early weapons and have concluded that when used properly these projectiles could bring down today's African elephants—the largest land mammals in the world.

Following large herds, Native American groups on the Great Plains also increasingly used other hunting techniques. At Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump in Alberta, Canada, archaeologists believe they have unearthed the largest and oldest buffalo drive site in North America, dating back more than 5,500 years. Indian hunters killed buffalo by confining them on top of the surrounding cliffs and then frightening them and driving them over the edge. Such skillful hunting methods conserved human energy and allowed for large group interactions, particularly during the processing of such large animals. These buffalo kills also increased trade links in the Great Plains through the exchange of buffalo meat.

Additional archaeological sites have revealed examples of other social and economic practices from these distant eras. In the Great Basin, in caves around the Lahontan Basin in Nevada, archaeologists have uncovered one of the oldest mummified skeleton burials in the world. Estimated at more than 9,000 years old, the site reveals that Native Americans honored and respected their dead and were deeply concerned about the condition and treatment of their bodies after death. As with Clovis points, however, such remains provide only faint glimpses into the material conditions of these earlier eras. Scholars can only speculate as to the social or cultural meanings of such practices.

Along the Pacific Coast, archaeologists have found evidence that Native Americans from Alaska to California developed economies centered on fishing more than 7,000 years ago. Using nets, fishing ladders, weirs, boats, hooks, and spears, Native Americans annually harvested massive quantities of salmon, their staple food. After waiting for the salmon to return from the ocean to spawn, Native American fishermen and their families gathered annually and collected millions of pounds of this prized resource. At The Dalles, Oregon, and its surrounding areas along the Columbia River Gorge, archaeologists have uncovered an enormous number of fish bones. As Indian traditions still recount, this prime fishing location remained central to Northwest peoples for thousands of years. Native American fishing declined at The Dalles only in the late 1930s, when the U.S. government built dams that flooded critical areas along the river.

Besides hunting, gathering, and fishing, early Native Americans also constructed towns, built irrigation systems, and harvested crops. Throughout the eastern United States, Native Americans built communities that were home to thousands of people. The Adena culture of the Ohio River Valley maintained large villages as well as earthen burial mounds that honored their ancestors. Declining around ad 200, Adena communities were later replaced by the Hopewell culture, which flourished from 200 bc to ad 400 in the same area.

Along the Mississippi River, people of the Mississippian culture designed what is believed to have been the largest pre-Columbian city north of Mexico. At Cahokia, outside modern-day St. Louis, Missouri, Mississippian peoples built large earthen burial and temple mounds and harvested thousands of acres of crops, particularly the “three sisters,” as maize (corn), beans, and squash came to be known. Nestled near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, Cahokia may have been inhabited by as many as 20,000 people at its peak between 1100 and 1200, although some estimates are nearly twice that number. It is believed that the Mississippian culture declined after the early 16th century.

North America before European contact was a diverse and interconnected world. Native peoples inhabited almost every corner of the continent. They lived in intimate familiarity with their environments, with different economies, beliefs, and practices. Far from being a “virgin land” or “wilderness,” as Europeans often believed, native North America was a vibrant, dynamic world of diverse peoples, languages, and cultures. Scholars estimate that between 2 million and 18 million people inhabited North America north of present-day Mexico at the time of European contact. An estimated 40 million to 90 million Native Americans lived throughout the Americas. These numbers, however, quickly declined as a result of European diseases and warfare against Native Americans.

B First Contact with Europeans, 1500s

Although isolated Scandinavian explorers and traders established short-lived settlements in Greenland and eastern Canada around ad 1000, European advances into the Western Hemisphere did not fully begin until the late 1400s when Christopher Columbus set off from Spain in search of a westward route to Asia. Before that time, North America remained almost entirely isolated from the rest of the world's population. Such isolation proved to be the primary factor in Europe's successful advance into the Americas. Lacking immunities to common European diseases, Native Americans were susceptible to influenza, chicken pox, smallpox, measles, and other diseases. The results were devasting for Native American communities throughout the Americas.

B1 European Diseases

Beginning in 1492, Columbus's voyages to the New World, as Europeans soon called the Americas, initiated the first waves of epidemics for Native Americans. The Ta?no (also known as the Island Arawak) and the Island Carib of the Caribbean were the first Native Americans to be nearly exterminated by European contact.

As Spanish conquistadores (conquerors) explored the Americas, Native American communities suffered. In the American Southeast, many large, densely populated Indian villages soon disintegrated following Spanish contact. Their concentrated communities and the humid, temperate climates created ripe and deadly conditions for disease. Scholars estimate that nearly 90 percent of some pre-contact Southeastern populations were gone by 1600. Similar population declines occurred throughout the Northeast, along the St. Lawrence River, and in the mid-Atlantic and coastal regions. In the arid Southwest, Spanish diseases were not as traumatic as elsewhere. But, generally, as Europeans encountered native populations, death and disease ensued.

B2 European Colonization

Once begun, Spanish expansion accelerated with each passing year. Initially believing he had found Asia (what the Spanish referred to as “the Indies”), Columbus labeled all Native Americans as “Indians.” After his first 1492 expedition, Columbus returned the next year with five times as many ships, more than 1,000 Spanish settlers, and many more animals, particularly domesticated European horses, cattle, and pigs, none of which existed in the Western Hemisphere. Such animals and settlers were intended to transform Native American lands and turn Indian villages into Spanish-speaking, Christian communities. With these efforts, Spain began to colonize its newly claimed territory. Throughout the Americas, Spain and, later, other European powers violently took possession of Native American lands and turned them into outposts for their empires.

With first contact, Native Americans and Europeans formed opinions about one another. Europeans first viewed Indians as either barbaric or noble savages—people who lived either according to no rules or to the noble rules of nature. Some Indians initially viewed Spanish colonizers as liberators from existing oppressive Native American regimes, such as the Aztec and Inca. These divisions between Indian tribes were crucial to Spain's many conquests. Other Native Americans did not passively accept Spanish rule. Many violently resisted. Others turned to each other as well as to the newly transplanted European religions for solace.

In the American Southwest and Southeast, Native Americans developed creative ways of resisting and adapting to Spanish intrusion. Some groups that encountered Spanish explorers and colonizers directed the Spanish away from their communities, telling Spanish explorers such as Francisco V?squez de Coronado that the gold and wealth they sought was further away in their enemies' lands. In the Southwest, Pueblo peoples fought Spanish colonization until the late 1500s, when Spanish soldiers laid siege to Pueblo villages. The Pueblo continued to resist throughout the 1600s, which led to an uprising, known as the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, which drove the Spanish from the region for more than a decade.

In Spanish Florida, Timucua Indians became incorporated into the Spanish colony there. In return for accepting limited forms of Christianity, the Timucua received protections from the Spanish that surrounding Indians did not receive. Living within Spanish colonies protected some Indians from the most horrific forms of Spanish colonization, particularly slavery. The profitable mines of northern Mexico continuously hungered for Indian labor, and the Spanish enslaved many Southwestern Native Americans to work in Mexican mines.

Spanish colonization quickly compelled other European powers to join in the scramble for Native American lands. Followed by the French, Dutch, and then English, Spain's American conquests transformed Europe in countless ways. Spain not only imported European crops and animals to the Americas, it also began exporting Native American crops, resources, and products to Europe. Such exchanges quickly revolutionized both Europe and the Americas. Throughout Spain's American empire, millions of Native Americans labored for distant and unknown monarchs, digging enormous amounts of rock and precious metals. They also cultivated agricultural crops and manufactured goods for colonial rulers while tending Spanish herds. Native American crops such as tomatoes, beans, potatoes, and chocolate became staples in all European countries, while gold and silver mined by Native Americans transformed European economies. Native Americans, in sum, helped initiate the rise of Europe's great empires.

C Early Relations and Trade, 1500s to 1700s

Following the Spanish, the French, Dutch, and English began to colonize North America. These colonization efforts, however, varied between as well as within each European empire. It is best, then, to think of colonial North America as linked but separate regions with varied economies and different relationships between Europeans and Native Americans.

C1 Relations with French and Dutch

France's earliest explorations in North America followed two main rivers in the East, the Mississippi and St. Lawrence. Along the St. Lawrence, French explorers such as Jacques Cartier established trading and political relations with different Iroquois and Algonquian peoples. Cartier ventured inland as far as the Iroquois town of Hochelaga (the present site of Montréal) in 1535. Seeking food, furs, and hides from Native Americans, the French traded manufactured goods such as firearms, blankets, metal, and cloth. As the French and Iroquois each vied for supremacy over the emerging fur trade in the 1600s, relations between the two sides quickly deteriorated and the French aligned themselves with the Algonquian.

Trading became the primary form of economic exchange throughout New France, as France's North American empire was known by 1608. It stretched from the mouth of the St. Lawrence River on the Atlantic Ocean, past the French settlements of Québec City and Montréal, into the Great Lakes, and down the Mississippi River, eventually reaching present-day New Orleans. Throughout this large area, diverse Native Americans and French peoples intermixed and laid the foundation for a new, hybrid society.

Below the St. Lawrence and along the Hudson River, Iroquois and southern Algonquian groups encountered traders and settlers from The Netherlands. Beginning in 1624, the Dutch established prominent trading centers such as New Amsterdam (later New York City) and Fort Orange (later Albany, New York) in a colony they called New Netherland. At these trading centers, the Mohawk and the four other nations of the Iroquois Confederacy (Onondaga, Cayuga, Oneida, and Seneca) quickly consolidated control over the fur trade with the Dutch. These five nations expanded their territories at the expense of other groups, driving away rivals such as the Mahicans.

The Iroquois enlarged their territories not only to gain access to their rivals' fur supplies, particularly beaver pelts, but also to ensure their own political survival. Native Americans who successfully integrated themselves into European trading spheres gained indispensable access to European trade goods, including guns, metals, and cloth. Those who did not suffered.

Throughout northeastern North America, Native Americans competed with each other as well as with Europeans for access to natural resources, while permitting the establishment of small European trading settlements. A tenuous but ultimately enduring coexistence developed between the Iroquois and Dutch settlers in New Netherland and between the Algonquian and French settlers in New France that revolved around trade, particularly the fur trade.

C2 Relations with English

Many English newcomers to North America, like their French, Dutch, and Spanish predecessors, had similar motivations to trade and profit. However, many other English newcomers did not; they wanted to find new lands to settle and to build new lives for themselves. This difference separated the English from the other European colonial powers in North America.

Following the Protestant Reformation in the early 1500s, England was home to competing religious sects and groups. One group of people who followed the tenets of Puritanism and were known as Puritans decided to leave England and Europe altogether to establish a new society in North America. They had limited intentions of coexisting with Native Americans and adapting themselves to Native American ways because they intended to live according to their strict interpretations of Christian theology. In 1620 a group of Puritans, also known as Pilgrims, established the Plymouth colony. They soon came into bitter conflict with Native Americans in New England.

Although their initial survival depended upon Native American hospitality, particularly gifts and food, Puritan leaders soon demanded too much of local Native Americans, including the Pequot. The Pequot resisted Puritan land invasions and in the 1630s fought a bitter war for survival. In one battle at Mystic River in 1637 Puritan soldiers and their Native American allies surrounded and exterminated an entire Pequot town of several hundred people. Interpreting Pequot misfortune as a sign of divine favor, Puritan leaders expanded their influence, conquering much of New England throughout the 1600s. From 1675 to 1676 they fought King Philip's War against the Wampanoag and other Native American groups. After winning that war, Puritan control over the Massachusetts colony was secured, and additional Puritan villages sprouted up throughout the region.

Other English colonies were established throughout eastern North America, including Jamestown in Virginia in 1607 and colonies in the Carolinas in the 1640s. These mid- and southern Atlantic colonies soon resembled the Spanish and French colonies in the West Indies where servile, or indentured, labor (and increasingly African American slave labor) provided the basis for plantation economies. In Virginia and the Carolinas, English landlords secured land from local Native Americans through treaties or just took the land through royal charters or land grants. They then began planting crops for export to Europe. Such crops included tobacco in Virginia and rice, indigo, and tobacco in the Carolinas. In both regions, Native Americans initially entered into trading relations with the English and enjoyed the economic opportunities provided by the fur and deerskin trade.

Increasingly, however, as in New England, English settlers wanted more Native American land, and they often forced treaties upon starving Native American groups in exchange for European goods. As native lands became English ranches, farms, and plantations, Native Americans were often plunged into a state of dependency and despair because they no longer could support themselves by growing their own food. Losing lands along the coastal Atlantic, landless Indians often migrated into the interior of North America or violently resisted further English encroachment. The English won a series of brutal wars against the Powhatan Confederacy in Virginia in the mid-1600s and later in 1715 against the Yamasee in the Carolinas. These wars initiated the demise of these once powerful Native American groups.

Throughout North America, Native Americans witnessed the introduction of radically new technologies and ways of life. Foreigners from distant lands arrived in their homelands. They came in strange vessels, carried strange items, spoke strange languages, and often acted violently towards native communities. Native American worlds quickly became turned upside down, as North America became “new worlds for all,” as one historian has argued. Such new and revolutionary developments brought unprecedented changes to Native American societies and created fundamentally different ways of living for all peoples within as well as outside of European colonies.

D Middle Ground, 1600s to 1700s

Following the arrival of Europeans in North America, Native Americans suffered from diseases, increased intertribal warfare, and the effects of European settlement. Such challenging developments did not, however, cause the demise of native power and autonomy. On the contrary, European exploration and colonization of North America, while devastating for many, increased the power and influence of other Indian groups. Often aligned through trade, diplomacy, and alliances, Native Americans throughout the 17th and 18th centuries controlled the vast majority of territory throughout what is now the United States and Canada. Native Americans remained, then, central to the history of these periods.

Some scholars characterize some areas of North America in the period after European contact and before complete Euro-American domination as a “middle ground,” a time when neither Native Americans nor Europeans were the supreme rulers of a given territory and when the ties between Indians and whites were stronger than their differences. While more of a general concept than an actual historic region or period, such middle grounds existed throughout portions of North America in the 1600s and 1700s.

D1 New France

New France best embodies the concept of a middle ground. As the French expanded throughout the interior of North America, French traders and, later, Catholic missionaries relied upon native guides and hospitality for survival. Algonquian-speaking peoples, including the Ojibwa (Chippewa), Ottawa, Fox, and Cree, understood the lands and customs of eastern North America far better than any French person. In addition to trade, the French and Native Americans developed ties that included intermarriage, shared forms of entertainment, and religious worship. French traders and Indian women had children, and their mixed-blood offspring became known as the Métis. The French and Native Americans also formed military and political alliances. Throughout the Great Lakes region, French and Algonquian communities all feared the Iroquois, and together they helped drive the Iroquois out of the western Great Lakes in the late 1600s. Such shared forms of living characterized French colonization in North America and reveal how Indians adapted to and used European colonialism for their own purposes. In many parts of New France, distinctions between Native Americans and Europeans did not even exist.

D2 Changing Lifeways

The effects of such alliances and intermixture soon spread outside of New France. To the north and west of New France, French as well as Indian fur traders traded with numerous Native American groups from the Northern Plains. This trade not only spread new technologies, but also forever transformed these interior portions of North America.

In the far western Great Lakes in the 1600s and early 1700s, French-aligned Ojibwa communities increasingly traded with different Siouan-speaking peoples, including the Lakota (Teton) and Dakota (Santee). The Ojibwa passed along French guns, ammunition, metals, and other technologies. Armed with new and superior forms of weaponry, the Lakota and Dakota Sioux quickly consolidated control over the headwaters of the Mississippi River and began dominating the lands of their enemies, particularly the sedentary villages of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara along the Missouri River. As European diseases devastated concentrated village peoples, more nomadic groups in the center of the continent began gaining supremacy. Their power and mobility was aided greatly by the spread of new tools and technologies from the Southern Plains and Southwest, including the horse.

The horse revolutionized the lives of Native Americans in much of the West during the 1600s. Domesticated horses first arrived in North America with the Spanish in the 1500s. Widespread horse trading between Native Americans began in the Southwest in the early 1600s, when sedentary Pueblo groups began stealing horses from Spanish herds and trading them to surrounding nomadic peoples such as the Navajo and Apache. As northern peoples incorporated horses into their societies, they increasingly raided Spanish colonies.

Navajo, Apache, Ute, Comanche, and other northern peoples all reoriented their economies and their territorial movements around the horse. The Apache, for example, became among the most adept horse traders and raiders in human history. Arriving in New Mexico to both trade and raid, these northern peoples limited the expansion of Spanish settlement throughout New Mexico and Texas while plunging the region into centuries of constant upheaval. Trading, raiding, and stealing horses not only from the Spanish but also each other, Plains and mountain peoples throughout the West increased the spread of the horse in all directions. They exchanged horses to more distant Native Americans for other trade goods, including French and English guns, ammunition, alcohol, metals, cloth, and jewelry.

By 1700 most of North America remained outside the sphere of European control, but increasingly within the sphere of European influence. East of the Mississippi, European colonial regimes controlled settlements along the Atlantic and throughout major river sheds. Within these colonies, Native Americans and Europeans encountered one another, initially regarded each as alien, but often over time constructed shared forms of living that minimized their differences. In New France, New Netherland, and even portions of New England and Virginia, survival necessitated coexistence and cooperation.

Throughout much of Canada and west of the Mississippi, however, European colonization had yet to unfold. Few Europeans knew of the diversity and sophisticated cultures of the peoples who inhabited these lands. Most Native American languages, beliefs, and practices remained outside the realm of European knowledge. The areas of present-day California and the Pacific Northwest, for example, still retained the most concentrated Native American populations and included thousands of distinct, though interconnected, communities. Within the next century and a half, however, European influences and conflicts would forever reshape most of North America.

E Conflicts and Wars, 1700s to 1815

From 1700 to 1815 most of eastern North America became incorporated into European spheres of control and, eventually, into the newly formed United States. As European empires competed for land, resources, and allies, Native Americans found themselves in a tightening circle. Thousands of British settlers and African slaves arrived each year during the 1700s, accelerating the demand for Native American land. Native Americans, often in alliance with rival European powers, resisted such expansion, and throughout the 18th century they participated in a series of wars between the European empires. By the end of these contests, all but one of Europe's empires—Britain—had given up its claims to eastern North America. Ultimately, Britain and the United States vied with each other and with their Native American allies for control of North America.

Native American warriors provided the majority of combatants during this century of war. These conflicts were not only between rival Europeans but also between competing Native American powers. Native Americans fought each other not only for specific resources, such as furs, but also to achieve supremacy over territories, trade networks, and even European allies.

E1 Conflicts in the Northeast

After 1701 a balance of power emerged in northeastern North America in which some powers competed for supremacy, while others sought to maintain the status quo. The balance of power included three principal groups: New France and its Algonquian allies; the British colonies, including New York, New England, and Virginia; and the Iroquois Confederacy and its Native American allies.

The Iroquois in particular tried to maintain balance between the French and British. Receiving gifts and favors from both, the Iroquois followed a path of neutrality during a series of wars between the French and British, refusing to side with either but threatening to fight whenever their interests became compromised. After siding with the English in King William's War (1689-1697) and suffering devastating losses, the Iroquois pursued a policy of neutrality through Queen Anne's War (1702-1713), King George's War (1744-1748), and the French and Indian War (1754-1763). Fearing that Iroquois power might tip the scales in favor of their rivals, both British and French leaders heeded the threats of the powerful Iroquois.

E2 Conflicts in the Southeast

Native Americans in the Southeast also attempted to play European rivals off one another. With Spanish Florida to the south, French Louisiana to the west, and the British Carolinas to the east, the Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, and Cherokee—who later became known with the Seminole as the Five Civilized Tribes—leveraged favors from Spanish, French, and British officials. Dominating the interior portions of the Southeast, these groups competed with each other for resources, particularly deerskins, captives, and food, which they traded for European goods. Such competition increasingly brought bloodshed. Just as the Spanish, French, and British attempted to enlist Native Americans to fight in their wars, Native Americans tried to recruit European support, especially in the form of guns and ammunition, for their intertribal conflicts.

However, such dependency on European powers ultimately proved disastrous for many Native American groups. As Britain drove France, and later Spain, from the region, southeastern Native Americans soon lacked rival European nations to play off one another. They quickly became isolated with only limited resources to offer land-hungry British settlers.

E3 Three Pivotal Wars

Three pivotal conflicts in the second half of the 1700s and in the first decades of the 1800s eroded the balance of power in North America. These conflicts were the French and Indian War, the American Revolution (1775-1783), and the War of 1812 (1812-1815). At the end of these conflicts, the survival of Native Americans became squarely linked to the British in the territory of Canada and to the Americans in the United States.

The first critical stage came during the French and Indian War between France and Britain. Unlike any of the previous conflicts between the French and British, this contest consumed far more resources and was fought literally around the world—in Europe, North America, Asia, and on the high seas. (It was known as the Seven Years' War in Europe.) The conflict began in the Ohio River Valley backcountry with clashes between British settlers and French and Indian forces, and it left few regions of New France and British North America untouched.

From eastern Canada, down the St. Lawrence and Hudson rivers, into the Great Lakes and along the Ohio River, Native Americans and French forces clashed with British forces and their Indian allies. Framing the conflict as a struggle for the future control of North America, Britain and France deployed thousands of men, hundreds of ships, and many other resources. With mastery of the seas and a much larger fighting force on the ground, Britain and its Native American allies outlasted the more experienced French and Native American forces. At the Treaty of Paris in 1763, France ceded its North American empire to Britain, and New France was no more. At the end of the war, France effectively abandoned hundreds of thousands of Native American allies as well as thousands of Métis and French settlers.

After Britain defeated France, Algonquian leaders throughout the former region of New France demanded that British officials recognize and honor the rights and customs that they had forged in more than a century of relations with the French. If the British failed, for example, to supply Native Americans with gifts, particularly ammunition, it was more than insulting; it threatened their survival. Essentially trying to force their new British rulers to adopt the roles of their former French allies and to reassert Native American autonomy, Native American leaders, under such commanders as the Ottawa chief Pontiac, went to war against the British in the early 1760s.

However, Britain did not want another war, and its leaders knew that they could not continue to fight Native Americans in the forests of former New France. British officials consequently began respecting Native American demands and even began protecting Native American lands from settlers. In the Royal Proclamation of 1763, Britain set aside land west of the Appalachian Mountains for Native Americans and prohibited the expansion of settlements there.

With this move, British rulers angered the 13 British colonies along the Atlantic Ocean, which coveted Native American lands in the interior. Long accustomed to subjugating Native Americans through trade and warfare, the colonists wanted to turn more Native American homelands into farms and slave plantations. Colonists protested British land policies and the taxes that Britain levied to repay its debts from the wars. The colonists soon began imagining a future without British rulers. Such imaginings became the spark for the American Revolution.

When the American Revolution began, many Native Americans initially tried to stay outside of what appeared to them to be an internal dispute between family members. However, many quickly realized the stakes of the struggle and aligned themselves with the British. Having struggled to get the British to recognize their rights, the Algonquians, for example, bitterly resisted the colonists' efforts to become independent. So, too, did the Iroquois, who similarly understood that the colonists coveted Native American lands for development. Iroquois and Algonquian homelands became critical battlegrounds during the war, as many revolutionary generals invaded Native American territories. George Washington, George Rogers Clark, and John Sullivan all became renowned fighters of Indians. Sullivan and Clark inflicted terrible damage on Native American communities, burning crops, destroying towns, and displacing women, children, and the elderly.

After the colonists defeated the British in 1783, most Native Americans had little energy or resources left to fight the United States alone because much of the fighting had taken place on their homelands. The Iroquois, whose mighty confederacy had controlled so many lands, now became increasingly disunited. They granted enormous land cessions to the new republic, which became their primary form of appeasement.

The Algonquians still fought the Americans in continuous wars throughout the 1790s and into the 1800s, culminating in the War of 1812 between the United States and Britain. As tens of thousands of settlers rushed west after the American Revolution, the Shawnee, Fox, and other Algonquian groups united into powerful confederacies. With British support, the vastly outnumbered Native Americans repelled several U.S. invasions. When Britain negotiated peace with the United States in 1815 and Spain later transferred Florida to the United States, Native Americans east of the Mississippi no longer had any European powers to whom to turn. The young American nation now claimed, by right of conquest and cession, much of the former lands of Spain, France, and Britain. How to deal with the hundreds of thousands of Native Americans throughout these regions now preoccupied the highest levels of U.S. government.

F Removal Trends, 1815 to 1870

For Native Americans, the century following the independence of the United States brought even greater changes than the previous century of war. No Native American, European, or U.S. leader could have predicted that in the century following independence, the United States would control its own empire from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. The United States was founded as a land of liberty, where individuals had inherent rights and could participate in a democracy. Such rights, however, did not extend to all of the nation's peoples, including Native Americans, who were not viewed by the U.S. government as citizens, and often not even as human beings.

Early leaders, such as Thomas Jefferson, generally saw Native Americans in two contrasting ways. Native Americans could either assimilate and choose to live within the United States like “civilized” Americans or the government would remove them to the recently established Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River. There was essentially no option for Native Americans to continue to live in their homelands as distinct peoples. As the United States expanded, the opportunities for Native Americans to live autonomous and independent lives declined ever further.

F1 United States

In the Northeast, after military resistance was no longer feasible, many Native Americans found alternative ways of surviving. Many incorporated Christian teachings into their own cultures and began adapting to the new economic realities of American life by becoming farmers, hunters, or traders. Among the Seneca of the Iroquois Confederacy, religious leaders such as Handsome Lake fused Iroquois and Christian spiritual values and called upon their followers to adopt aspects of American economic practices and gender roles. Handsome Lake, for example, instructed Seneca men to farm, which was traditionally a women's activity, and to allow missionaries among them. Such adaptation enabled the Seneca and other Iroquois groups to survive in New York and eastern Canada, although they continued, often clandestinely, many traditional political, religious, and social practices.

Although some Native Americans made efforts to assimilate to various degrees, other Native Americans resisted those attempts, and American settlers increasingly pressured the U.S. government to drive Native Americans from their lands. Following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, when the United States purchased a vast region west of the Mississippi from France, President Thomas Jefferson suddenly had a huge area of land on which to push Native Americans. Moving Native Americans west became the primary goal of the U.S. government for the next two generations. In 1824 the Bureau of Indian Affairs was established within the Department of War to oversee relations with Native Americans, and federal Indian agents were appointed to deal with tribes. In 1830 President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, which authorized the removal of eastern tribes to lands west of the Mississippi.

Indian removal became a death knell for both native and nonnative peoples committed to peaceful coexistence. In regions such as the Ohio River Valley and Great Lakes where Native Americans and Europeans had lived together for generations, U.S. policies now called for Indian families to leave their homelands. When nations such as the Sac (Sauk) under Black Hawk resisted in the 1830s, the U.S. Army fought them to defeat.

When the state of Georgia tried to take Cherokee lands, the Cherokee insisted that the state had no jurisdiction over its lands because the Cherokee, like the United States, was a nation and thus not subject to state authority. In the 1830s the Supreme Court of the United States clarified the legal status of Native Americans in a series of cases. In one ruling, Worcester v. Georgia (1832), Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that Native Americans were members of distinct, sovereign nations within the United States who did not fall under state authority but solely under the jurisdiction of the federal government. The Constitution of the United States, Marshall reasoned, always considered Native Americans as nations, and the Congress of the United States had related with them accordingly through treaties—the “supreme law of the land.” Such landmark rulings institutionalized relations between Native Americans and the U.S. government and created the “government-to-government” framework that remains the backbone of federal Indian law. (Under that framework, the U.S. government recognizes Native American tribes as sovereign nations and negotiates with them as one government to another.) Unfortunately for the Cherokee and other Native Americans supposedly protected by treaties, the federal government did not enforce the treaties and increasingly deprived them of their legal and constitutional rights.

President Jackson even went so far as to ignore Marshall's rulings, in direct violation of the Constitution, which states that the Supreme Court can override presidential and congressional power. He refused to use federal power to prevent states from removing Native Americans from their lands. The federal government then used the army to remove thousands of Cherokee, who were marched at gunpoint about 1,285 km (about 800 mi) from Georgia to the Indian Territory during 1838 and 1839 along what became known as the Trail of Tears. Thousands died along the way due to malnutrition, disease, and violence.

The lands west of the Mississippi were not, however, the empty lands that U.S. policymakers believed them to be. Powerful Native American nations, such as the Comanche, Pawnee, Kiowa, and Lakota Sioux, controlled much of the Northern and Southern Plains. Recently removed Native Americans from the East often had little in common with these Plains peoples, and conflicts sometimes ensued. Some eastern groups, such as the Delaware (Lenni Lenape), became intermediaries in the West, serving as guides, traders, and translators for white trappers and explorers. By the mid-19th century, after the United States had won the Mexican War (1846-1848) and acquired the northern half of Mexico, few Native Americans in North America outside of British Canada could remain independent of U.S. control. The United States now claimed much of the continent and was no longer content with driving Native Americans west to Indian Territory.

F2 British Canada

In British Canada, indigenous peoples faced different challenges. After the War of 1812, Britain still claimed Canada, and Indians continued to interact with British officials, settlers, and traders, as well as the French who remained. During the 1800s Indians such as the Cree continued to exchange furs with British traders and trading companies, including the Hudson's Bay Company in western and northern regions. In eastern Canada, Indians such as the Mi'kmaq (Micmac) and Iroquois faced increasing pressures for their land from British settlers. This pressure came especially from Loyalists, colonists who had supported Britain in the American Revolution and then flocked by the tens of thousands north to British Canada.

However, British land policies mandated that Indians could only cede their lands to the British government. So settlers pressured British officials to remove Indians from the fertile farmlands in southern Ontario and Québec and to create land reserves for Indians away from European settlements. Pressures for removal in Canada paled in comparison to those in the United States, but important treaties, including an 1850 agreement with the Ojibwa, instituted important land cessions and provisions. These treaties generally stated that the government would provide annual payments to Indians in return for Indian land. The government then moved the Indians onto land reserves. These treaties formalized legal relations between Indians and the British government. After Canada achieved self-government in 1867, however, relations between the new government and Indians would become, as in the United States, severely tested.

G Wars and Treaties, 1850s to 1900s

The process of removal effectively emptied much of eastern North America of Native Americans, especially in the Deep South and Midwest. The American Civil War (1861-1865) fundamentally transformed U.S. society and accelerated its expansion into Native American homelands. American industry and technologies, for example, dramatically increased after the war, and much of the continent became linked through commerce and railroads. As in the first half of the century, Native Americans bitterly resisted such expansion, often fighting against overwhelming odds. By the end of the century, however, no region of the West remained outside of the U.S. government and economy, and Native Americans were confined to newly created reservations.

G1 Influx of White Settlers

As the United States acquired millions of acres of fertile farmland along the Pacific Coast and in the Great Plains and the Southwest, Native Americans became increasingly displaced and dispossessed. Mining, forestry, and other extractive industries depleted resources on which Native Americans depended. In California, white settlers dispossessed Native Americans from both valley and mountain territories. The Gold Rush of 1849 devastated the Miwok, Maidu, Pomo, and other Native Americans in northern California, who witnessed the invasion of hundreds of thousands of non-Indians. In order to survive, many Native Americans participated in mining enterprises as domestics, laborers, and miners. White violence against Native Americans in California quickly created bitter relations. White men routinely raped Indian women, and when Native Americans retaliated, whites escalated the violence. California went from being one of the most populous regions of Native America to being one of the least populous, as violence, disease, and impoverishment reduced California's Indian population from nearly 250,000 in 1700 to less than 5,000 by 1900.

White migrants who rushed to California and the Oregon Territory also came into conflict with Native Americans as they traveled across the country. Westward pioneer routes such as the Oregon and Overland trails followed Native American trails and bisected many Native American hunting, grazing, and gathering territories. Whites often killed food supplies such as buffalo and elk and moved thousands of cattle, sheep, and horses along grasslands and waterways on which Native Americans depended. The Pawnee in Nebraska, for example, began taxing white migrants for passage through Pawnee lands and for consuming Pawnee resources. Pawnee taxes became a form of compensation for lost property.

Confident that their occupation of Native American lands was divinely ordained—a 19th-century ideology known as Manifest Destiny—white settlers increasingly fought the Pawnee and other Native Americans for their land and resources. The fighting compelled the federal government to use the U.S. Army to ensure white security. In the mid-19th century the army became one of the primary instruments of federal Indian policy.

Since Native Americans were unwilling to leave their homelands, the government developed new policies for resolving conflicts between white settlers and Native Americans. Whereas early 19th-century treaties aimed primarily at removing Native Americans from their lands in the East, in the West Army officials negotiated so-called peace treaties that attempted to ensure peaceful relations between Native Americans and whites by creating bounded Native American territories called reservations from which white settlers were prohibited. As in the first part of the century, however, the government repeatedly dishonored and violated these agreements. From Minnesota to Arizona, Native Americans committed to treaties they believed would ensure their survival and protection. When whites violated these agreements, Native Americans retaliated.

G2 Indian Wars

The western conflicts in the United States between Native Americans and whites from 1850 to 1880 are known as the Indian Wars, and, like all wars, originated from a series of betrayals, attacks, and broken promises. The most extensive conflicts generally included the most powerful and populous Native American nations: the Comanche and Kiowa, among others, in the Southern Plains; the Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne, Shoshone, and Blackfeet, among others, in the Northern Plains; the Apache and Navajo, among others, in the Southwest; the Ute, Shoshone, Bannock, and Paiute in the Great Basin; and the Nez Perce, Spokane, and Yakama in the Northwest. These and other Native American nations resisted white expansion and fought brutal campaigns for their survival. Mescalero and Chiricahua Apache, for example, waged guerrilla wars throughout New Mexico, Arizona, and northern Mexico for more than a generation. Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho leaders united to drive non-Indians out of their grazing and hunting lands. Many Native American leaders, such as Sitting Bull and Chief Joseph, migrated or tried to migrate to Canada to escape U.S. settlers and soldiers.

In all these conflicts, Native American men and women defended not only lands and resources but also their ways of life. Most Native Americans remained deeply and spiritually attached to their homelands, and seeing them converted to white ranches or farms threatened their deepest convictions. Warfare was also culturally sanctioned and respected among most Native Americans. Men honored their families and communities by defending them, and women helped men prepare for battle. The military defeat of so many Native American nations and their subsequent confinement to reservations became, then, more than military, political, or economic defeats; they represented fundamental threats to the fabric of Native American life. And, as they had for countless generations, Native Americans struggled to adapt to their changing and often hostile new environments.

Initially, the U.S. government meant reservations to be protected enclaves, territories where Native Americans could live away from the destructive influences of white settlers. At the treaties of Medicine Lodge (1867) and Fort Laramie (1868), for example, the U.S. government negotiated enormous land cessions with Northern and Southern Plains peoples, respectively. In an attempt to clear a large central corridor through the continent, the government recognized extensive Comanche and Sioux land claims and created large reservations for these powerful Plains peoples. Like early Navajo and Ute treaty lands, these reservations were vast and included millions of acres, and Native American leaders such as Red Cloud believed that their fights with the U.S. Army were now over.

To Native Americans' misfortune, however, white settlers and prospectors continued to demand Indian lands, even in federally protected reservations. After the discovery of gold in the Black Hills in the 1870s, miners rushed into the Great Sioux Reservation while the federal government stood idly by. Enraged Sioux leaders such as Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull decided to leave the reservation altogether and moved onto the Plains. There they defeated U.S. Cavalry forces under George Armstrong Custer in the summer of 1876 at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Stunned at their defeat, U.S. Army leaders began a relentless campaign to subjugate the Sioux and to confine them on smaller reservations in South Dakota. Stationing military forces within reservation lands, the army continued to harass Sioux families. In 1890 U.S. Cavalry forces exacted revenge for Custer's defeat at Wounded Knee, killing more than 300 Sioux men, women, and children, the great majority of whom were unarmed bystanders.

G3 New Canadian Government

In the last decades of the 19th century, the new Canadian government began establishing its dominance over native peoples. From its creation in 1867, Canada faced regional and ethnic divisions, and indigenous peoples often found themselves in the middle of such divides. One group of indigenous people, the French-speaking Métis, struggled with the Canadian government to protect the land on which they lived, known as the Red River settlement. It was part of Rupert's Land, a territory that had been chartered to the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) in 1670. When the HBC prepared to sell Rupert's Land to the Canadian government in 1869, the Métis bitterly resisted for fear of losing their land rights. Under the astute leadership of Louis Riel, Métis groups along the Red River in 1870 forced the Canadian government to recognize their rights to the Red River settlement and to allow for the admission of a new western province, Manitoba, that included it. Other indigenous peoples, however, were less successful in getting their rights and territories recognized, and the new Canadian government devised new, undemocratic methods for dealing with its so-called Indian problem.

In the 1870s the Canadian government began negotiating a series of treaties with Indians, known as the numbered treaties. With these treaties, the Canadian government gained title to many Indian lands west of Ontario. In return the Indians received land reserves, compensation, and federal assistance such as schools, farming tools, livestock, and seed. The Canadian government had witnessed the Indian Wars in the United States and wanted to avoid similar fighting in Canada. The government thus negotiated these treaties before large numbers of settlers moved west. The treaties, however, still allowed the Canadian government to exert control over many aspects of Indian life.

This control was increased in 1876 when the Canadian Parliament passed the Indian Act. As in the United States, the Canadian government declared that Indians were under the jurisdiction of the federal government and that the federal government alone had the authority to determine the rights, conditions, and so-called status of Indians. The act defined who was an Indian, using a person's lifestyle and heritage as the primary criteria. The government had complete discretion over who was designated an Indian. For example, the act targeted Indian men and women differently. Indian men and their wives (irrespective of their race) were considered Indian, while Indian women who married non-Indian men were no longer considered Indian. The Indian Act gave the Canadian government the legal structures for determining Indian affairs and for regulating Indian individuals and communities. The Indian Act and the numbered treaties established an elaborate structure of federal control over Indians.

H Coercive Assimilation, 1900s to 1960s

Throughout both their histories, the U.S. and Canadian governments have used their dealings with Native Americans to increase federal power. During removal and the Indian Wars, the U.S. government, especially the federal army, grew not only in manpower but also in bureaucracy. Provisioning federal troops, supplying them, and establishing the governing agencies for Native Americans increased the size and power of the national government. Similarly in Canada, the Indian Act and the numbered treaties created large governing agencies. Such bureaucracies—known eventually in the United States as the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and as the Department of Indian Affairs (later the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, or DIAND) in Canada—exerted powerful influences over the everyday lives of Native Americans, particularly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Beginning mainly in the 1880s in the United States and shortly thereafter in Canada, these government agencies instituted programs that aimed to reconfigure the fabric of Native American life. Known as the assimilation campaigns, these policies attempted to transform Native Americans into “citizens” by stripping them of their lands, cultures, languages, religions, and other markers of their ethnic identity. Assimilation brought continued challenges to Native Americans, many of whom had only recently been confined to reservations and reserves.

For many Native Americans, such cultural attacks were as painful and difficult as the previous generations of war. Native American communities lost their children, who were sent to U.S. boarding schools and Canadian residential schools where families were prohibited from visiting and children were punished for speaking their languages. Some Native American religious rituals, such as the Ghost Dance and Sun Dance, were outlawed. Native American men were forced to abandon previous forms of economic subsistence, such as buffalo hunting, for the distant hope of becoming farmers. Many communities were resettled onto reservation lands in the least desirable and fertile parts of their former territories. Everywhere, government control and surveillance of Native American life increased.

The bitter irony of so many of these coercive policies was that those who developed them believed they were acting in the best interests of Native Americans. Many of America's leading religious leaders and progressive reformers helped lead this assault to “kill the Indian, but save the man.” Senator Henry Dawes, for example, sincerely believed that he was helping Native Americans when he sponsored the Dawes Severalty Act, or the General Allotment Act of 1887. That act divided Native American reservations, which were owned communally, into separate plots of land owned by individual tribal members. Supporters thought the act would “civilize” Native Americans by making them ranchers and farmers and instill individualism.

But the results were disastrous. Allotting land to individuals who could sell it, the Dawes Act effectively continued the process of taking away Native American land by making remaining reservation lands available to white settlement and corporate development. Tens of millions of acres of reservation lands passed into the hands of non-Native Americans. Large reservations, such as the Ute and Blackfeet reservations that in 1880 were sizable portions of Colorado and Montana, became by 1900 shadows of their former selves.

Surviving the cultural, economic, and religious assaults of assimilation taxed many Native American communities. Many groups successfully navigated these challenges by reshaping government policies to meet tribal needs. The Northern Arapaho in Wyoming, for example, molded their existing age-based political structures to include new reservation leadership positions. The Crow in Montana similarly fought to have Crow leaders in charge of key reservation political positions; Robert Yellowtail, for example, became in 1934 the first Crow superintendent, the leading political officer on the reservation.

Such instances of successful political adaptation, however, by no means typified these early decades of reservation life. Reservations in the United States and reserves in Canada became notoriously corrupt. Government officials sometimes sold food intended for starving Native American families to outsiders or withheld it to punish recalcitrant individuals. Reservation superintendents often rewarded their friends and punished their enemies. Such routine abuses of power permeated all levels of federal Indian policy in both countries, and Native Americans developed a deep distrust and resentment towards these authoritarian regimes and policies.

By the 1920s most U.S. reservations remained impoverished and ruled by non-Native Americans. While many Native American students had learned English and some had become lawyers, doctors, and teachers, the campaign of assimilation had failed to erode the fabric of Native American life. On the contrary, Native American communities continued to live according to traditional values and practiced the customs they deemed most important. They resisted assimilation by keeping their languages and cultures alive and used the educational systems intended to destroy their culture to better their circumstances. They instilled in their children the seeds of self-determination and sovereignty. They also created pan-Indian political networks and religions, such as the Native American Church.

Recognizing its failure, the U.S. government slowly abandoned its assimilation policies and granted universal citizenship to Native Americans in 1924. It also instituted dramatic political reforms in the 1930s under BIA Commissioner John Collier. Known as the Indian New Deal, these reforms included several landmark policies, particularly the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934. This act attempted to reverse the destructive effects of assimilation by providing greater control to Native Americans over the political, economic, and social policies that affected their lives. Not all Native Americans accepted Collier's reforms, particularly the Navajo nation, but many benefited from the federal government's attempts to undo generations of neglect and discrimination.

Canadian Indian affairs followed similar assimilation designs. Indian dances and ceremonies, such as the potlatch of the Northwest Coast peoples, were outlawed. Indian movements were heavily policed through a notorious pass system in which individuals had to have a pass to leave their reserves. As in the United States, Canadian officials used the idea that Indians needed to be helped and protected to justify their discrimination, as land and economic and political control remained firmly in the hands of nonnative peoples. Canada did not extend voting rights to northern Inuit peoples until the 1950s and to Status Indians (Indians who are officially registered by the federal government) until 1960. However, native peoples in Canada resisted assimilation in similar ways to Indians in the United States. They created national political leagues and new forms of cultural expression in art, literature, and education.

I Self-Determination, 1960s to Present

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Native Americans resisted assimilation in many ways. Many groups molded their economies and cultures to their changing environments, while others adopted new ways for new situations. As Native Americans both resisted and adapted to the changes in their lives, they began to forge modern nations within the borders of the United States and Canada. They established unique forms of self-government unlike any other North American peoples.

After World War II (1939-1945), subsequent government administrations halted Collier's reforms and returned to assimilation goals. From 1950 to the 1970s, during what is known as the Termination Period, federal Indian policy attempted to terminate the federal recognition of Indian tribes in order to end federal responsibility for them. The government also encouraged Native Americans to relocate from reservations to cities in order to facilitate their assimilation. Known as the Employment Assistance Program or the Voluntary Relocation Program, it offered one-way bus tickets and temporary low-cost housing for Native Americans who agreed to move to urban areas.

More than 100,000 Native Americans relocated to U.S cities, but they did not disappear. They developed and maintained their Native American identities within cities. Large urban Indian communities developed in many U.S. cities, particularly in Los Angeles and Oakland, California; Chicago, Illinois; Denver, Colorado; and Minneapolis, Minnesota. In Canada a similar migration took place as indigenous peoples moved to urban areas mostly beginning in the 1970s. Indigenous populations grew in Winnipeg, Manitoba; Edmonton, Alberta; Vancouver, British Columbia; Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; and Toronto, Ontario.

In these cities, Native Americans intermixed and formed new political associations. The American Indian Movement (AIM) developed amidst such conditions. Founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1968, AIM became a pan-Indian political action network that resisted and challenged federal Indian policy while calling attention to the conditions and plight of Native Americans both on and off reservations. AIM became part of the larger Red Power movement, which emphasized developing pride in one's Native American heritage, sustaining traditional Native American cultures and lands, and supporting Native American rights. Native Americans increasingly called attention to instances where the U.S. government violated Indian constitutional and treaty rights. Native Americans began insisting that their communities receive the guarantees outlined in treaties and by the Supreme Court.

Countless Native Americans, including activists, lawyers, and leaders, worked hard and organized themselves to bring attention to their causes. To protest federal Indian policy and the conditions of Native Americans, AIM and other activists staged a series of high-profile demonstrations during the late 1960s and 1970s. These included the occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay from 1969 to 1971, the occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building in Washington, D.C., in 1972, and the takeover of the town of Wounded Knee in South Dakota in 1973. The latter resulted in a 71-day standoff with the U.S. government. With these and other demonstrations, activists brought the plight and concerns of Native Americans to the highest levels of national government.

Such attention and concerted effort brought dramatic results. Beginning in the 1970s, the U.S. government rescinded termination and passed a series of reforms, including the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (1975). This act embraced the notion of Native American self-government and created mechanisms for returning political autonomy to tribal governments. The government also passed similar reforms allowing more Native American control in Indian education and health services, among other areas.

Since these reforms, tribal communities have gained increased economic power. Tribal governments have insisted that because their status as sovereign nations places them outside of state jurisdiction, they can maintain and develop industries such as gambling and selling tobacco products free of state interference. Winning a series of legal and political battles, many tribal communities have used their treaty rights to form lucrative gaming and tourist businesses. The Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, for example, operates a successful casino, convention center, and hotel facility and is one of the largest employers in Green Bay.

Economic development has brought many tribes the revenue to develop museums, schools, and health programs for their tribal members. These opportunities do not, however, exist for most reservations, several of which remain among the nation's most impoverished counties. Many Native Americans hope that the forms of sovereignty now secured will enable tribal governments and communities to work together to address the health, educational, and social problems that still plague many communities.

Culturally, Native Americans withstood the assaults of assimilation and rose to meet the challenges of the 20th century. Taking pride in their unique cultures and histories, Native Americans began exploring new forms of cultural expression and awareness. Native American artists revisited sophisticated artistic traditions. Native Americans also became authors and gained larger and larger audiences; thousands became educators, doctors, scholars, and lawyers. Throughout Indian country, a renaissance bloomed, as Native Americans increased their forms of cultural pride.

Canadian indigenous groups also achieved greater political awareness and constitutional rights. The Canadian Parliament amended the Indian Act a number of times beginning in 1951 to reduce government involvement in Indian activities. The federal government also commissioned reports on the state of Canada's indigenous population in the 1950s and 1960s. With this increased attention, indigenous leaders astutely navigated provincial and national levels of government and brought increased public awareness to indigenous affairs.

As Canadians have attempted to address the cultural and legal rights of French Canadians, for example, indigenous groups have insisted that their land claims and treaty rights receive equal consideration. In 1990 Elijah Harper, an Ojibwa-Cree member of the Manitoba legislature, gained international attention when he stalled the passage of the Meech Lake Accord, a national accord to recognize French Canada as a distinct society. Harper, along with many other indigenous peoples, objected to the accord because it had no mention of indigenous peoples.

That same year, Mohawk activists seized control of the roads and bridges into their two reserves outside of Montréal during the dramatic Oka Crisis. The Mohawk were protesting the construction of a golf course on land that they claimed. Thousands of Canadian soldiers were deployed against the Mohawk for nearly three months. Such actions generated increased national resolve for settling indigenous land claims disputes. Throughout the 1990s indigenous groups won important land settlements, including the establishment of new reserves and even a northern Inuit territory, Nunavut, which was created in 1999.

When the 20th century began, Native American populations of North America were at an all-time low. Only about 250,000 Indians in the United States and 100,000 in Canada had survived the generations of war, disease, violence, and oppression that followed European contact and American and Canadian colonialism. A century later, more than 2 million Native Americans live in the United States and more than 1 million live in Canada. Inheriting legacies of survival and adaptation, modern Native Americans stand poised to ensure that their communities and cultures will flourish in the 21st century.

Ned Blackhawk contributed the History section of this article.

VII NATIVE AMERICANS TODAY

At the turn of the 20th century, many people believed that Native Americans would assimilate into mainstream society and disappear as unique peoples. But native communities in both the United States and Canada survived disastrous assimilation efforts. Instead of disappearing, they revitalized tribal governments, created modern economies, attained legal rights, and revived cultural traditions and ceremonies that had nearly died out. They combined aspects of their traditional cultures with contemporary life without sacrificing the core of their identity.

Despite their resiliency, however, Native Americans faced serious economic, health, and educational problems at the beginning of the 21st century. Many U.S. and Canadian indigenous peoples lived in poverty. Unemployment and school dropout rates were high, and rates of alcoholism and suicide for Native Americans were far above those for the general population in both countries. But as a testament to the cultural and economic renewal taking place, many indigenous peoples were leaving cities and returning to their homelands. They went back for jobs, to attend tribal colleges, or to participate in long-dormant ceremonies.

A Population

A1 Introduction

A1a United States

Getting an accurate count of the number of Native Americans in the United States can be difficult. In both the United States and Canada, many Native Americans mistrust federal government representatives and withhold information or refuse to fill out census forms. With the 2000 census, the U.S. Census Bureau made efforts to do a better job of counting Native Americans than it did in the 1990 census. In that census, Native Americans were undercounted by as much as 12.5 percent, the highest of any ethnic group. Besides working with tribal governments, the Census Bureau developed culturally specific television and newspaper advertisements and posters to encourage Native Americans to take part in the 2000 census.

The 2000 census was the first in which Americans could select more than one race and ethnic identity. This was an important change for Native Americans because they have mixed intertribally for thousands of years and interracially for the last 500 years. On the 2000 census form, Native Americans could select “American Indian and Alaska Native only” or “American Indian and Alaska Native” and at least one other race. They were also given a space for tribal affiliation.

According to the 2000 census, about 2.5 million people in the United States reported they were Native Americans. Some 1.5 million others reported they were Native American plus another race, typically white. The two figures together represented a 26 percent increase over the 1990 census figures. Overall, Native American people accounted for about 1 percent of the total U.S. population.

At the time of the census, California had the largest concentration of Native Americans (314,000), followed by Oklahoma (263,000), Arizona (261,000), New Mexico (166,000), Washington State (105,000), and Alaska (101,352). Nearly 50 percent of Native Americans lived in the West, 29 percent in the South, 17 percent in the Midwest, and 6 percent in the Northeast. The Native American population was a young and growing population: Thirty-nine percent of its population was under 20 years of age, compared with 29 percent of the nation's total population.

A1b Canada

Since 1982 the Canadian census has categorized aboriginal people as North American Indian, Métis (people of mixed European and aboriginal ancestry), and Inuit. The census also asks every Canadian, including aboriginal people, to which ethnic or cultural group a person's ancestors belonged. In 1996 Statistics Canada, the national agency that takes the census, included an additional question for aboriginal people: “Is this person an aboriginal person, that is, North American Indian, Métis, or Inuit?”That is, does this individual identify as an aboriginal person?

The 1996 census reported there were 1,170,190 people with aboriginal ancestry in Canada, making up about 3 percent of Canada's inhabitants. Some 867,225 reported North American Indian ancestry; 220,740 reported Métis; and 49,845 Inuit. Counts based on identity went down from the overall number: 554,000 identified as North American Indian, 210,000 as Métis, and 41,000 as Inuit. About 6,400 people were counted more than once because they claimed to be members of more than one aboriginal group. But Statistics Canada admitted its census did not catch everyone; forms were not completed on more than 75 Indian reserves.

In 1996 aboriginal people lived across Canada in every province and territory. More than four out of every five aboriginal people lived west of Québec. About 63 percent of all aboriginal people lived in the four western provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia. Ontario had 18 percent of Canada's aboriginal people and more North American Indians than any other province. Almost two-thirds of Canada's total Métis population lived in the three Prairie provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, with Alberta having the largest Métis population. In 1996 Northwest Territories had the largest Inuit population.

In Canada the federal government officially determines who is an Indian for its purposes through the Indian Act, a law first passed in 1876 and amended several times since. The act defines who is an Indian and determines who can be registered in the Indian Register maintained by Canada's Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND), also called Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC). For the federal government to grant Indian status, a person generally has to be a member of an aboriginal band that was granted a reserve or government funds or negotiated a treaty with the government. These people are referred to as Status Indians, and the Indian Act applies only to them. Status Indians are eligible for federal benefits. The Indian Act does not cover Inuit, Métis, and non-Status Indians, people with Indian ancestry who are not on the official register.

A2 Tribes and Bands

A2a United States

Tribes in the United States set up their own membership criteria. A person is permitted membership in only one tribe, and becoming a member of a particular tribe requires complying with its membership rules. Most tribes rely in part on blood quantum, or how much Native American blood a person has, for membership. The amount of blood quantum required varies. At one end of the spectrum is the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, which accepts anyone who can trace his or her ancestry back to the Dawes Commission of Final Rolls, a government document that compiled the names of tribal members between 1899 and 1906. At the other end is the Ute of Utah, who require five-eighths minimum blood quantum for membership. Generally, tribes require one-fourth minimum blood quantum for enrollment.

The whole notion of blood quantum is controversial within the Native American community. Many children and grandchildren of tribal citizens do not have the required amount of blood quantum to qualify for enrollment because their parents or earlier ancestors married outside their tribe. There are also Indians whose families have been part of Indian communities for generations but do not have the official records required for tribal membership.

Tribes fall into one of two categories: federally or state recognized. Federally recognized tribes are nations that have a special, legal relationship with the U.S. government. This relationship recognizes that tribes have certain rights of self-government and are entitled to participate in specific federal Indian programs. The federal government has the right to determine tribal membership for federal purposes, such as who can receive federal funds.

Most Native Americans in the United States belong to federally recognized tribes. There are more than 550 such tribes, including more than 220 village groups in Alaska. The tribes vary enormously in size. At the time of the 2000 census, the only tribes with more than 100,000 people were the Cherokee, Navajo (Diné), Sioux, and Chippewa. Most tribes had populations of less than 10,000, and several California tribal bands had only two to three members.

Tribes that want to be recognized by the federal government go through an administrative process prescribed by the Branch of Acknowledgment and Research (BAR) of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), an agency of the U.S. government that is part of the Department of the Interior. The BAR requires petitioners, or entities, to meet seven mandatory criteria for federal recognition. Entities must (1) prove they have been identified by reliable external sources on a continuous basis since 1900; (2) prove continuous community; (3) prove continuous political authority from historical times to the present day; (4) submit membership criteria; (5) prove that current members descend from historic tribes; (6) prove members are not members of another federally recognized tribe; and (7) prove Congress did not terminate its relationship with the tribe. Once an Indian tribe receives federal acknowledgment, it is eligible to receive BIA services.

Approximately 30 U.S. Indian tribes and groups without federal recognition are state recognized. This means the states administer programs for tribes such as the Paucatuck Eastern Pequot of Connecticut and the Shinnecock of New York. State-recognized tribes do not have relations with the BIA or participate in the programs it operates.

A2b Canada

According to the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND), there are about 600 bands in Canada. (In Canada, the term band generally corresponds to the term tribe in the United States.) A band is made up of Indian people who are registered as members of that group. Many bands prefer to be known as First Nations.

Before the Canadian Parliament amended the Indian Act in 1985, the federal government controlled the membership lists of bands. When it granted Indian status to a person, it would also add that person to a First Nation's membership list. The 1985 amendment gave First Nations the option of defining their own membership. About 250 First Nations have opted to control their own memberships; Indian people seeking to join those First Nations must apply directly to them for membership. First Nations that control their membership can grant it to both Status and non-Status Indians. About 40 percent of the aboriginal population in Canada belongs to First Nations.

According to DIAND, the largest First Nations bands in 2001 were the Mohawk of Akwesasne in Ontario (9,500), the Blood of Alberta (9,051), the Mohawk of Kahnawake in Québec (8,888), and the Saddle Lake in Alberta (7,648). Only 10 percent of the bands had a population of 2,000 people or more, and 6 percent had populations of less than 100.

Because First Nations are legal-administrative bodies recognized by the Canadian government, they are eligible for funding from DIAND. DIAND distributes monies to First Nations for social services such as housing, postsecondary education, community economic development, business enterprises, health care, and youth programs. Inuit living in recognized Inuit communities may also be eligible for some federal benefits.

A3 Native Americans on Reservations and Reserves

A3a United States

In the United States, an Indian reservation generally refers to land that the U.S. government set aside for a tribe after the tribe relinquished its other land areas to the United States through treaties. Congressional acts, executive orders, and administrative acts have also created reservations. The federal government holds the reservation lands in trust, and the lands are reserved for Native American use. As trustee, the government is supposed to ensure that the land is properly managed and is not lost to its Native American owners. In California and Nevada, Indian reservations are often referred to as rancherias or colonies. Indian lands also take other forms, including pueblos, Indian trust land outside of a reservation, and Alaska Native villages.

In the United States, approximately 275 Indian land areas are administered as federal Indian reservations. The largest is the Navajo Reservation, which has about 6.5 million hectares (16 million acres) of land in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Many of the smaller reservations have less than 400 hectares (1,000 acres), and some California rancherias have less than one acre. In 1990 less than half of the Native American population lived on Indian lands, most of which are west of the Mississippi River. But many people who do not live on reservations return to them often to participate in family and tribal life; some Native Americans go back to reservations to retire. Indeed, in the 1990s, many Native Americans went back to reservations to stay. The overall Indian population has been growing on or near reservations in North and South Dakota, Montana, Nebraska, and Kansas.

Native Americans who live on reservations benefit from federal programs that provide housing, health care, education, and funds for economic development. But these programs are inadequate. In 1990 half of all Native Americans on reservations were living below the poverty level. Faced with substandard education, joblessness, poor health care, and houses without plumbing, electricity, or telephones, many Native Americans have been forced to leave reservations in search of jobs in the surrounding areas or in cities.

A3b Canada

In Canada, reserves are lands set aside by the Canadian government for First Nations. Beginning in the 1870s the Canadian government negotiated treaties and agreements with First Nations that took away most of the Indians' lands in exchange for reserves, compensation, and promises of future assistance. Today, these reserves are where First Nations communities try to keep alive kinship ties, Indian languages, and shared values, beliefs, and rituals.

According to DIAND, Canada has approximately 2,670 reserves. Usually bands are identified with a specific reserve, but many bands have rights to more than one reserve within a province or territory. There are reserves in every province and territory; more than half are located in British Columbia.

Some reserves cover several thousand acres, but numerous reserves are small, both in land area and population. Many are located in rural or remote areas, and some are accessible only by air. Several reserves, however, are located in or adjacent to Canadian cities. Some examples are the Musqueam Reserve in Vancouver, British Columbia; the Membertou Reserve in Sydney, Nova Scotia; and Kahnawake Reserve near Montréal, Québec. The three largest reserves are the Blood and Siksika Indian Reserves in Alberta and the Moosomin Reserve in Saskatchewan.

According to DIAND, 58 percent of Status Indians lived on a reserve in 2000. Any Status Indian who is also a band member may live on a reserve. Some bands also allow band members who are non-Status Indians to live on their reserves. First Nations may enact residency bylaws that regulate who can live on reserves. Under certain conditions, they may allow other people to live on the reserves. These include people who lease land from a band, common-law spouses of Indians who have homes on reserves, and clergy serving reserve residents.

The residents of reserves have specific privileges, including the right to vote in most band elections. Indians registered with the band do not pay federal or provincial sales taxes on personal and real property on a reserve. If a First Nation receives money from a land claims settlement or from royalties for natural resources, reserve residents may have a right to a share of that money. About 100 First Nations have rich natural resources such as timber, oil, and gas.

Canadian reserve conditions resemble those of the United States. Poverty, unemployment, substandard housing, poor health care, and family breakdown have driven people from reserves to urban centers where they have better opportunities to find jobs.

A4 Native Americans in Urban Areas

A4a United States

During World War II (1939-1945), some Indians left reservations and headed to cities, where they worked in defense-related factories. After the war, however, many Indians returned to reservations and surrounding rural areas, where they faced hard times because there were few jobs. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) took notice of the lack of opportunities on reservations, and it sought to break up reservation life. In the early 1950s it launched a massive program to relocate reservation Indians to urban centers. The BIA's Employment Assistance Program (also known as the Voluntary Relocation Program) promoted the idea that reservations had too many people. The program offered one-way bus tickets, temporary low-cost housing, and new clothes to Indians who agreed to leave the reservations and resettle in urban areas.

Many Indians went to cities and stayed, and more continued to migrate despite the end of the relocation policy in 1960. Soon, Indian populations in cities exceeded those of some reservations. According to the 1990 census, more than half of all Native Americans lived in cities. Large urban areas such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, California; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Chicago, Illinois; and Seattle, Washington, have become home to great numbers of Indians from many different tribes.

Once in urban areas, Native Americans more commonly married people from other tribes, and the children from these unions sometimes did not qualify for enrollment in either tribe. For some people, this led to the decline of their tribal cultures and identities. However, urban Indian groups soon developed communities with their own history, culture, and concerns, and these communities replaced individual tribal identities for some people.

Urban Indian communities organized Indian centers in dozens of cities. These organizations helped all Indian people, whether or not they were enrolled in a tribe or federally recognized. They focused on their Indian, rather than tribal, identities. Today, Indian centers sponsor powwows and other events that provide opportunities to perpetuate traditional Native American music, dance, and other cultural activities for their multitribal populations. Centers also find jobs for people and run health clinics, daycare programs, soup kitchens, gift shops, and art galleries.

During the 1990s Indian people in cities began to reconnect with their tribes, and as a result urban Indian communities have experienced a renewed focus on tribes. Because the majority of Indian people now live in cities, tribal governments have been forced to become more sensitive to their urban membership. Wisconsin's Ho-Chunk Nation (formerly known as the Winnebago) opened offices in Chicago, Illinois, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Wisconsin's Oneida Indian Nation opened an office in Milwaukee as well.

In most cases, tribal members must return to the reservation to register their votes in reservation elections. But recently, a number of tribes developed absentee ballots so city dwellers can vote. Some tribal members running for office have begun to campaign in cities as well as on the reservations. Some tribes have also given support to urban Indian communities. The Oneida Indian Nation gave grants to Chicago Indian organizations. Several rural southern California tribes helped sponsor an intertribal music festival organized by an Indian center in Los Angeles County.

A4b Canada

Since the 1970s Canada's aboriginal population has become increasingly urbanized. People have moved away from reserves because of substandard housing or lack of housing, as well as the need for more jobs and better educational opportunities and health care. About half of Canadians with aboriginal ancestry now live in cities. Urbanization of the Indian population is especially apparent in Canada's major Western cities.

The 1996 census showed that one out of five aboriginals lived in seven of the country's 25 census metropolitan areas, six of which are in western Canada. Winnipeg, Manitoba, had the most aboriginal people followed by Edmonton, Alberta; Vancouver, British Columbia; Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; Toronto, Ontario; Calgary, Alberta; and Regina, Saskatchewan.

Once in cities, aboriginal people face many challenges. They must adjust to an environment dominated by nonaboriginal cultures and unfamiliar practices. Maintaining their specific identities is difficult. People lose touch with their relatives, languages, and homelands. City school curriculums largely ignore aboriginal cultures and languages. Some indigenous peoples assimilate and blend into cities, getting decent educations and higher-paying jobs and living longer. But others who do not become part of the urban middle class suffer from poverty, routine violence, and substance abuse.

Canadian government policy has paid little attention to urban aboriginal peoples. Up until 1982, when the Constitution of Canada was amended to define “Aboriginal Peoples of Canada” as Indian, Inuit, and Métis people, the Métis, who are largely urban, were not even included in federal policy. However, the federal government does provide some support for the Office of the Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-Status Indians, a division of the federal government, and for Friendship Centers, which provide a variety of programs for urban Indians. Provincial and municipal governments treat aboriginal people in urban areas as part of the general population.

Aboriginal people have tried to remedy their problems in cities across Canada. With inadequate or no funding, they are managing and staffing housing projects, childcare agencies, educational institutions, and street patrols. Friendship Centers located in cities across Canada aim to improve the quality of life for aboriginal people living in or passing through urban areas. They provide a range of services and programs including housing, education, employment, recreation, training, and cultural programs. The Ontario-based National Association of Friendship Centers, which does advocacy and lobbying work, focuses on urban youth issues such as suicide, homelessness, education, and jobs.

B Government and Political Activism

B1 Native American Governments

B1a United States

Long before Europeans came to North America, Native Americans were independent and self-governing. They had their own political and legal systems, which varied greatly from group to group. After tribes became subject to U.S. authority, they lost much of their political power. Many tribes entered into treaties with the federal government that acknowledged the right of the tribe to retain self-government while placing it under the “protection” of the United States. Today, Native American tribes are considered “domestic dependent” nations with limited sovereignty under the jurisdiction of the U.S. government. The government has a “trust responsibility” to Native Americans—that is, a legal obligation to protect Indian land, resources, and rights of self-government. Native Americans born in the United States are full citizens of the United States.

Two federal agencies, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the Indian Health Service (IHS), administer programs primarily for members of federally recognized tribes who live on or near reservations. Members of federally recognized tribes who do not live on reservations have limited relations with the BIA and the IHS.

On reservations, the tribal government serves as the local governing authority. Tribes are free to choose and operate their own forms of government. They decide what kind of government best fits their needs depending on their cultural, historical, and religious traditions. Most tribal governments are elected. Some tribes opt for written tribal constitutions patterned after the U.S. Constitution as the foundation for their governments; others have rejected written constitutions.

Governing bodies are generally referred to as tribal councils. The presiding officer is often called the chairman or chairwoman, although some tribes use other titles, such as principal chief, president, or governor. Tribal councils have the power to represent the tribe in negotiations with the federal, state, and local governments. Tribal governments determine tribal membership for activities such as voting, and they make laws to regulate aspects of everyday life such as marriage, divorce, and child adoptions. They also levy taxes, pass tribal ordinances, regulate property under tribal jurisdiction, maintain law and order among their members, and punish and jail lawbreakers.

Tribally operated courts vary from highly formalized ones modeled after U.S. courts to less formal bodies designed for the informal resolution of disputes. In some New Mexico pueblos, the tribal council serves as the tribal court, and in other tribes the tribal council serves as the tribal court of appeals. Court proceedings may occasionally take place in a Native American language. Tribal courts largely deal with divorce, child custody problems, civil disputes between Native American citizens, and minor crimes such as violations of fishing regulations.

Although states have the right to regulate all persons and activities within their borders, Indian reservations are a major exception. As a result, relations between states and tribes are often strained. Indian lands are immune from town and county taxes and state property taxes. States resent the fact that reservation Indians are not subject to state taxes and regulation. Tribes resent state attempts to tax and regulate them and actively guard their sovereignty against state encroachments. Nevertheless, some state governments and tribes have taken positive steps to deal with issues of joint concern.

B1b Canada

At the time of the Confederation of Canada, the Constitution Act of 1867 gave the federal government legislative authority over “Indians and lands reserved for Indians.” The federal government carried out its broad mandate over Indians and their lands through the Indian Act of 1876 and its amendments, the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development Act of 1967, and numerous other statutes and legal obligations arising from the Constitution Act. Native people born in Canada are full citizens of Canada.

The Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND), also called Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC), has primary responsibility for meeting the federal government's constitutional, treaty, political, and legal responsibilities to First Nations and Inuit. Many of DIAND's programs and services—including housing, education, and economic and social development—are targeted at Status Indians who live on reserves. The vast majority of programs and services are delivered in partnership with First Nations, who directly administer roughly 85 percent of the funds. For the most part, DIAND programs do not cover Métis and non-Status Indians who do not live on reserves. These peoples receive minimal monies for their political organizations and few programs to address their special needs.

First Nations in Canada have their own governing band councils, usually consisting of one or more chiefs and several councilors. With few exceptions, band members elect the chief and councilors. However, some band councils have rejected the elective system because it conflicts with the traditional Indian hereditary system of governing.

While the federal government allowed for the creation of First Nation governments to manage federal funds and the bands' land, First Nations have pressured the government for more self-government. Under a federal policy developed in 1995, aboriginal groups began to have the right to negotiate for self-government in areas such as government structure, land management, health care, child welfare, education, housing, and economic development. Negotiations take place between the aboriginal groups, the federal government, and, in areas affecting its jurisdiction and interests, the relevant provincial or territorial government.

The federal government considers aboriginal peoples who do not live on reserves the responsibility of the provincial and territorial governments. While provinces and territories have, for the most part, accepted this responsibility, it took time for them to contribute funding to meet the immense needs of aboriginal peoples.

In 1993 Inuit leaders reached a land claim agreement with the Canadian government to provide a separate territory for the Inuit people. This agreement split off the eastern part of the Northwest Territories into the Territory of Nunavut in 1999. This territory, which is equal to about a fifth of Canada, became the first large political unit in North America with an indigenous majority. Nunavut's nonpartisan government is open to every resident. However, because the Inuit make up 85 percent of the population, they essentially govern the territory.

The Métis struggle for the right of self-government. Two-thirds of self-identified Métis live in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. The Métis generally remain under provincial jurisdiction except for eight Métis communities in Alberta that are somewhat like Indian reserves and are governed by elected councils. Pursuing their goals in part through the courts and federal negotiations, the Métis seek to increase their land base, establish local government on this land base, and have the right to self-government off the land base.

B2 Political Activism and Organizations

B2a United States

During the 20th and 21st centuries Native Americans in the United States have promoted their interests and resisted oppressive federal polices by becoming politically active. In the 1960s and 1970s the Red Power movement swept through reservations and cities where Native Americans lived. This movement emphasized fighting for Native American rights, developing pride in one's Indian heritage, and sustaining traditional Native American cultures and lands. Indian activists used direct-action techniques, such as protests, occupations, mass demonstrations, and marches, to fight discrimination and political oppression and to demand their lawful rights. Native Americans also worked to increase their sovereignty. They wanted the right to use and preserve sacred lands and sites, to control the education of their children, to develop their own natural resources, and to establish an economic base.

Since the 1970s Indian tribes and hundreds of lawyers have also fought legal battles in courts and legislatures. They have worked to protect what is left of their lands, or to reclaim land previously lost, and to practice their religions without intrusive regulation by government agencies.

Since the late 1980s some tribes have profited from gaming operations, which have allowed them to make big financial contributions to political campaigns at state and national levels. Congress and state legislatures now hear Native American concerns. Tribes have hired high-priced lobbyists and public relations firms to win influence and to try to defeat political candidates who do not support Native American issues. Tribes are also becoming players in national and state politics. American Indians represent significant swing votes in states with concentrated Indian populations, such as Arizona, California, Nevada, Oklahoma, and North Carolina.

Today, there are many Native American organizations that work to influence policymakers at all levels of government. Some organizations are national and broad, while others focus on particular issues, such as health care, education, or the arts. Founded in 1944, the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) is the oldest and largest tribal government organization in the United States. More than 250 tribal governments from every region in the country belong to NCAI. The organization educates tribes, lawmakers, and the public about legislative threats to Indian sovereignty and keeps its members informed about congressional actions that could prove potentially damaging to tribes.

In 1970 the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) was founded. This nonprofit Indian law firm provides legal representation and technical assistance to Indian tribes, organizations, and individuals nationwide. NARF aims to preserve tribal existence and protect tribal natural resources such as land, water, minerals, and wild game. It also promotes human rights and educates the public about Indian rights, laws, and issues.

Founded in 1977, the Seventh Generation Fund (SGF) supports native community-based projects with small grants, advocacy, leadership training, technical assistance, and financial management. SGF work focuses on traditional economies, alternative energy, and the preservation of sacred sites and traditional spiritual practices. United South and Eastern Tribes, Inc. (USET), a regional organization with more than 20 member tribes, is dedicated to improving the capabilities of tribal governments and assisting member tribes in dealing with public-policy issues.

Native Americans have increasingly become a presence in national politics and events. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a Republican from Colorado and a chief of the Northern Cheyenne tribe, was a United States senator from 1993 to 2005. He was the main champion for the Omnibus Indian Advancement Act (2000), a compilation of various pieces of legislation relating to Native Americans, including laws to grant recognition to several tribes and to compensate tribes for land loss.

Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet tribe from Montana, has dedicated herself to encouraging Native Americans to achieve economic self-sufficiency. She helped the Blackfeet National Bank gets its charter in the late 1980s after the only local bank in Browning, Montana, the reservation capital, failed. She also helped start the Native American Bancorporation Co., the first nationwide American Indian bank. In 1996 she filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of hundreds of Native Americans accusing the U.S. government of longtime mismanagement of individual Indian trust funds. A U.S. district court ruled that the government breached its trust duties, and a federal appeals court upheld the ruling.

John Eagleshield, a member of the Pawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, became director of the Native American Rights Fund in 1977. A leading force in Indian law and policy, Eagleshield has been called upon to serve on special commissions and committees that are assigned to develop state, regional, and national Indian policy. Winona LaDuke, a member of the White Earth Chippewa of Minnesota, is a nationally and internationally acclaimed activist and environmentalist who twice ran as vice president of the United States with Green Party candidate Ralph Nader. She also began the White Earth Land Recovery Project, a reservation-based nonprofit organization that works to recover Indian land.

Wilma Mankiller, principal chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma from 1985 until 1995, is renowned for serving her tribe and fighting to protect the rights of all Native Americans. She revitalized her tribe by reducing Cherokee infant mortality, improving health and education, and promoting Cherokee business interests. For her achievements as chief, in 1998 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian honor.

B2b Canada

Canadian aboriginal political activism changed dramatically during the 20th century. Until 1953 it was illegal for Status Indians to raise funds to form political organizations. In 1969 the Canadian government proposed abolishing special rights for Indians in a document known as the White Paper on Indian Policy. The paper also called for phasing out treaties and eliminating DIAND. Indians across Canada protested and formed organizations at the provincial, territorial, and national levels to oppose the White Paper policy. These new organizations then began the struggle for Indian land rights.

Aboriginal people in Canada are represented by four political organizations of general scope, each of which represents a distinct community. In addition to these national organizations, there are dozens of provincial and territorial associations.

The main organization representing almost all Status Indians in Canada is the Assembly of First Nations. It was formed in 1982 as a national lobbying organization for more than 600 First Nations. The Congress of Aboriginal Peoples (CAP), formed in 1971, represents the interests nationally of off-reserve Indian and Métis people, regardless of status under the Indian Act. The Métis National Council (MNC), established in 1983, is the national representative of the Métis peoples. The MNC seeks the right to establish self-government on a Métis land base as well as the right to self-governing institutions off a land base. The Inuit Tapirisat of Canada, established in 1971, represents the Inuit throughout Canada. As the national voice for Inuit people, it aims to enable Inuit to fully exercise their rights within Canadian society, including their right for greater self-government.

For decades, numerous aboriginal people have influenced Canadian policies and politics. One of the most influential is John Amagoalik, a major champion and leading voice for Inuit political rights. He spent 25 years negotiating the formation of Nunavut. In the 1980s he was president of Inuit Tapirisat Canada, which honored him in 1994 for his notable contribution to Inuit political rights.

In the 1990s Matthew Coon Come, grand chief of the Council of Cree of Northern Québec, was the principal leader of the successful effort by the Cree to stop development of a hydroelectric project in northern Québec. Coon Come put together a strong coalition of environmental, human rights, and indigenous organizations to oppose the project, and Hydro-Québec was forced to scale back the project in 1994. In 2000 Coon Come was elected national chief of the Assembly of First Nations.

George Erasmus has been a central figure in aboriginal politics since the 1970s. He was elected national chief of the Assembly of First Nations in 1985 and cochaired the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples from 1991 to 1996. That commission issued a report detailing the conditions of aboriginal peoples. The report prompted an apology by the government of Canada and led to a new federal action plan to change how the government deals with Canada's aboriginal peoples.

Ojibwa-Cree Elijah Harper, Manitoba's lone Indian legislator, made history in 1990 when he blocked passage in the Manitoba legislature of the long-debated Meech Lake Accord, a constitutional agreement that would have given the largely French province of Québec special status as a “distinct society.” To Harper, the accord was “the ultimate racist act” because it recognized only two founding nations in Canada, English and French, and two official languages, and ignored aboriginal people. Harper successfully stalled the accord, which required passage by all ten provincial legislatures.

B3 Land Claims

B3a United States

In 1946 the U.S. Congress passed the Indian Claims Commission Act (ICC). The act created a judicial body expressly to resolve the more than 600 Indian land claims that had accumulated over the previous 150 years. Prior to the ICC, Congress prohibited Indians from making land or monetary claims against the federal government, unless it passed special acts to allow them. Early on, the ICC commissioners determined that they would only make monetary awards to Indian claimants and would not return the title to the land. They made awards worth the market value of the land on the date the United States acquired it. Once Indian tribes accepted money for the land, they had to forgo forever any further claims to land. While most Indians accepted their monetary awards, a small number did not. The Sioux tribes in South Dakota, who won a claims suit over the Black Hills, refused to accept the $105 million awarded them in 1974 and continued to demand the return of federal lands. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the suit in 1980, and the award, in a government account, has continued to earn interest since that time.

The ICC took years to resolve claims; appeals to the Supreme Court tacked on more time. Because investigating and ruling on claims was a slow and tedious process, Congress repeatedly extended the ICC's tenure. It finally expired in 1978. The ICC did not decide in favor of all land claims. It ruled 342 as valid and dismissed at least 200.

Despite the ICC's insistence on awarding monetary claims only, a few tribes have been successful in having land restored to them through congressional legislation. These claims hinged on the use of land for traditional religious activities. In 1970 Congress restored the Blue Lake (19,425 hectares/48,000 acres) in New Mexico to Taos Pueblo. In 1972 it returned a 8,000-hectare (21,000-acre) parcel of Mount Adams in Washington to the Yakama, and in 1984 it restored the sacred area of Kolhu/wala:wa (4,000 hectares/10,000 acres) in Arizona to Zuni Pueblo. In 2000 Congress returned to the Santo Domingo Pueblo of New Mexico an area of 1,900 hectares (4,600 acres) that included shrines and other religious sites considered sacred by the Pueblo.

In the late 20th century Native Americans turned to courts to reclaim lost land. Tribes also tried to regain homelands through other means, including working with the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to return federal lands to tribal trust (land held in trust by the federal government that is reserved for Indian use), and buying land with revenue from tribal enterprises, including gaming. They have also tried to negotiate with landowners on reservation borders to will or deed land back to the tribe and to find sponsors to purchase land and give it back to the tribe.

Tribes stand to gain a great deal if they can reclaim their lands. Lands are immune from town and county taxes as well as state property taxes. When lands fall under tribal governments' civil and criminal jurisdiction, tribes can levy their own taxes on nontribal businesses and enforce land-use regulations, building codes, and criminal statutes. Tribes can also gain approval to establish casinos on the land.

B3b Canada

In Canada, aboriginal people pursue land claims that the government recognizes in two broad classes: comprehensive and specific. A comprehensive land claim is based on the recognition that there are continuing aboriginal rights to lands and natural resources. This kind of claim comes up in parts of Canada where Indians have not previously signed a treaty with the government. Comprehensive land claims can include land title, fishing and trapping rights, and financial compensation. Provinces and territories participate in these land claim negotiations because the land and most resources are under provincial and territorial control. Specific land claims deal with specific grievances that First Nations may have regarding the fulfillment of existing treaties. Specific claims also cover grievances relating to administration of First Nations lands and assets under the Indian Act.

In settling land claims, Indians can receive the right to self-government, large cash payments, and control over their natural resources. They also can win the right to preserve traditional activities such as hunting and fishing and to gain compensation from agreements in which the government grants mining or timber rights to companies. At the same time, the government may ask them to obey national laws, including strict environmental regulations. They also forfeit any rights to future land claims and may no longer be exempt from paying Canadian taxes.

In British Columbia, there are more outstanding comprehensive claims by First Nations than in the rest of Canada combined. More than 40 Indian bands in British Columbia have made land claims that, if granted in their entirety, would cover most of the province, including the city of Vancouver. One First Nation, the Nisga'a of British Columbia, successfully negotiated a comprehensive treaty with the federal and provincial governments. In 2000 the Nisga'a gained title to an area more than half the size of Rhode Island as well as the right to govern themselves.

Until the late 1960s the use of courts was a comparatively new thing for aboriginal people in Canada. Unlike the United States, which had built up a huge body of Native American case law, Canadian aboriginals did not use the courts very much. But since the late 1960s, they have forced the Canadian courts to recognize a wide range of aboriginal rights pertaining to land they have occupied since long before Europeans ever set foot on the continent.

In the early 1970s the Québec government decided to build a huge hydroelectric project, known as the James Bay Project, on traditional Cree hunting grounds. The Cree went to Québec Superior Court in 1972 seeking an injunction to halt construction. In a landmark decision, the Court found in favor of the Cree, ordering work on the project to be stopped and Québec to cease trespassing on Cree lands. Although a higher court overturned the judgment, all sides determined that negotiation was better than more litigation. The result, the James Bay and Northern Québec Agreement of 1975, was an elaborate agreement. In return for large financial compensation and the right of self-government, the Cree and Inuit surrendered their claims to the territory. They received lands for their exclusive use and other lands with exclusive hunting, fishing, and trapping rights.

C Economic Issues

C1 United States

By any statistical standard, Native Americans living on reservations in the United States occupy the lowest rung on the economic ladder. According to the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), at least half of the reservation population lives below the poverty line, surviving on welfare checks, food stamps, and Medicaid. On reservations across the United States, Native Americans live in rundown and overcrowded trailers and shacks. For many, central heating, piped water, and indoor toilets are luxuries. In 1990 the Indian Health Service (IHS) reported that 43 percent of Indian children younger than five years old lived in poverty. In 1995 more than 20 percent of Native American reservation households had annual incomes below $5,000, compared with 6 percent for the overall U.S. population. Only 8 percent of reservation households had annual incomes greater than $35,000, compared with 18 percent for the overall U.S. population.

People living on reservations have the highest rates of unemployment in the United States—up to 70 percent or more on some reservations. On South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, home to the Lakota peoples, unemployment rates hovered around 80 percent in 1999. Some of the most commonly cited reasons for high unemployment among Native Americans are lack of education, discrimination, and the scarcity of jobs and industry on and near reservations. Non-Indian businesses are reluctant to locate on reservations because of misperceptions about tribal governments, cultural factors, and a lack of infrastructure such as roads, sewage systems, and industrial parks. Tribal councils may also lack the business experience necessary to oversee business operations.

Many Indians move to cities in search of better schooling, improved housing, and higher-paying jobs. For Indians with job skills or a good education, urban areas offer more opportunities. Native Americans in cities have lower unemployment rates than those who live on reservations. While urban areas provide better opportunities for some, moving to these locations often entails other costs. Native Americans in cities do not always improve their standard of living because housing, food, clothing, and health care are more expensive in urban areas.

Native Americans on reservations depend heavily on federal and tribal governments for jobs. The BIA and IHS employ workers in law enforcement, road construction, logging, and health care. Tribal governments create jobs in tourist enterprises and manufacturing plants. But many tribal leaders say more jobs are needed to solve the severe problems of unemployment and poverty.

Many Indians see self-employment as a viable way to increase employment opportunities, and the number of Indian-owned, reservation-based businesses increased during the late 20th century. Native Americans own everything from construction companies, food stores, and manufacturing plants to printing presses, restaurants, and trucking companies.

Native Americans have also tried to reach out to other businesses in the United States. The Native American Business Alliance, founded by Native Americans, has fostered relationships leading to contracts between companies owned by Indians and corporations such as Toyota Motor Corporation, Honda Motor Co., Ltd., and The Walt Disney Company. There are also numerous regional and state American Indian chambers of commerce that cultivate economic opportunities among industry, corporations, tribes, and Indian-owned businesses.

Since the mid-1960s the U.S. government has tried to revitalize reservation economies. Although the government helped fund or build roads, sewage systems, and industrial parks to attract new businesses to reservations, relatively few industries have located permanently on them. Since 1965 the U.S. Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administration (EDA) has provided close to $1 billion in financial assistance to Indian tribes and organizations for economic and community development. Other federal programs that assist Native American economic development include the Small Business Administration's Office of Native American Affairs, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Development Program, and the Rural Empowerment Zone/Enterprise Community Program.

Across the country reservations with few other economic opportunities have turned to gaming operations such as casinos as a means to economic independence. In 1988 Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which allowed Native American tribes to negotiate with states for gaming compacts. Since then tribal nations with gaming compacts have established a $7.4-billion-a-year industry that has created an estimated 200,000 jobs. The jobs are in reservation-based Indian casinos, hotels, and restaurants and other positions indirectly tied to gaming. Tribal gaming operations are regulated at four levels: by the tribal government, by the state government, by the National Indian Gaming Commission, and by federal government agencies such as the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).

In 2001 about one-third of federally recognized tribes owned a total of about 300 casinos in 29 states. Of these, only a few Native American communities have reaped large profits. Highly publicized tribal casinos such as the Mashantucket Pequots Tribal Nation's Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut and the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community's Mystic Lake Casino in Minnesota have created the impression that all Indian casinos are wildly successful. But they are not. Many casinos are marginal operations. In truth, the majority of American Indians have benefited little from the explosion of Indian gaming. Only an estimated 25 percent of the jobs from the gaming industry are held by Native Americans.

Native Americans who have benefited from gaming operations have the capital to provide childcare programs, housing, roads, scholarships, health clinics, and water systems for their people. Revenues also fund tribal law enforcement and fire fighting and other services. New jobs have lured Native Americans back to their reservations, but many people work for low wages as cashiers, waitresses, and hotel workers. In actuality, casinos have just scratched the surface of the economic problems confronting reservations.

Some tribes have turned to cultural tourism to generate revenues and diversify their economies. According to the Western American Indian Chamber of Commerce in Denver, Colorado, as many as 75 percent of federally recognized tribes are involved in tourism or are making plans to be. Many tribes have built tourist attractions such as shops on their reservations. They have also started touring companies and marketed their attractions at tourist trade shows internationally. The intertribal Arizona American Indian Tourism Association, created in 1994 to promote tourism among the state's tribes, is one of several state organizations working to increase tourism. Powwows and festivals, most of which are west of the Mississippi, have drawn increasing numbers of visitors in recent years.

Many tribes and individual Native Americans possess land with natural resources such as water, timber, oil, gas, coal, and other minerals. If these resources were developed, they would provide a significant source of wealth. The Department of the Interior holds these natural resources in trust, and the BIA and other federal agencies collect fees from those who use them on behalf of tribes and individual Native Americans. In the 1990s there were disclosures that the federal government had mismanaged some of these natural resources, such as agreeing to substandard leasing deals for Native American timber, oil, natural gas, and minerals. Often, Native Americans were never informed who had leased their land, for what purpose, how much the lease was for, or how long the lease was to run. In addition, individual Indians did not receive what was owed them.

In recent years tribes have recognized the need to manage their own resources. Unshackling themselves from layers of federal bureaucracy, they are developing, or choosing not to develop, their lands. Great debates take place among Native Americans over whether and how to develop natural resources. Those tribes planning to develop natural resource have endorsed intensive use that can net millions of dollars for tribes and individuals. They have renegotiated coal leases, made oil and gas agreements joint ventures, and included provisions for tribal employment, training, and scholarships. Other tribes who have resisted developing the land argue that commercial exploitation of resources clashes with their environmental concerns.

C2 Canada

Aboriginal people in Canada, on and off reserves, also occupy the lowest rung on the economic ladder. Their income, unemployment rates, education levels, and skills remain below that of the general population. Problems are especially acute on reserves, most of which are far from population or industrial centers. Opportunities for commercial or industrial employment are rare. On many reserves, chronic unemployment rates can run to 75 percent or higher.

Double-digit jobless rates—combined with hunger, poverty, and inadequate housing—force people to move to cities where more jobs are available. But the low education levels of aboriginal peoples and discrimination against them combine to limit job opportunities. Unemployment rates for urban aboriginal people are double that of nonaboriginals.

Aboriginal businesses have been emerging across Canada. In a 1996 government survey, 20,000 aboriginal people said they owned a business, 70 percent of which were full-time operations. Almost 60 percent of them are located on or near reserves. Businesses tend to be small with one employee besides the owner. Operations range from video stores and gas stations to commercial fishing ventures, publishing companies, and radio stations. Some indigenous peoples have also formed cooperatives where they sell artwork, carvings, and other crafts.

A growing interest in aboriginal peoples has encouraged First Nations, like U.S. tribes, to develop business and job opportunities in tourism. Indeed, tourism has become one of the major tools in economic development. It brings money into communities and is generally environmentally friendly. Cree and Inuit community-based tours have brought tourists from all over the world to see their landscapes and experience their ways of life. However, small entrepreneurs still face many challenges setting up tourist businesses. Getting a business started is expensive, and it takes time to develop a clientele. Also they often do not have enough money to advertise. In fact, First Nations are now turning to the Internet to promote their businesses.

The federal and provincial governments have tried to address some aboriginal economic problems. They grant subsidies, which provide something of a cushion, preventing total economic collapse among Indians on reserves and in cities. Subsidies include welfare, pensions, unemployment insurance, and family allowances. A Canadian government agency, Aboriginal Business Canada, has provided financial and other support to more than 5,000 aboriginal-owned firms. Provinces such as Saskatchewan and Alberta have also developed plans to assist urban aboriginal people to find jobs and childcare, and individual bands help members start businesses. National organizations such as the Assembly of First Nations, Inuit Tapirisat of Canada, and the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples all try to help develop economic opportunities as well.

Settling land claims is a necessary step toward economic independence for First Nations because it gives them a secure and stable land base and greater control over natural resources. If bands can manage their natural resources, they will have a more equitable share in the wealth of their lands. They can also help their communities become more economically self-sufficient. Without control over natural resources, aboriginal people are locked out of economic activities taking place in their own backyard.

D Social Issues

D1 Education

D1a United States

For generations, federal and state governments have controlled the formal education of Native American children nationwide. Of the 600,000 Native American elementary and secondary schoolchildren in the United States, about 75 percent attend public schools, even on Indian reservations. Less than 10 percent of the student population attends BIA-operated elementary and secondary schools. Private, parochial, and tribally run schools serve the remaining Native American students.

In general, federal and state control of education has been disastrous for American Indian students in the United States. For the most part, public schools have been unable to address the needs of Indian communities because Indian educational programs are chronically underfunded. There are few Native American teachers, little parental involvement, and the curriculum lacks a Native American viewpoint. In the public schools, Native American students have the highest dropout rate of any racial or ethnic group—36 percent in 1990.

College graduation rates for Native Americans are also low. In 1995 Native American students accounted for less than 1 percent of all students in higher education. The majority of these students attended two-year institutions rather than four-year schools. Also that year, the graduation rate for Native Americans at a group of more than 300 colleges and universities was only 37 percent, the lowest among major ethnic minority groups. In addition to educational and economic hurdles, many social barriers have prevented Native American students from attending college. Cultural and language differences as well as the geographic isolation of most reservations have often inhibited student access to or persistence in mainstream colleges.

After a history of compulsory Western methods of learning, attempts to eradicate tribal cultures, and high dropout rates for Native Americans, Indian educational leaders wanted to rethink Native American education. They built on the success of the self-determination movement of the 1960s to explore other ways of educating Native Americans. Since that time Indian communities have had a growing voice in and control over the education of their children. In 1966 the Navajo Nation created Rough Rock Demonstration School, a highly successful Indian-controlled elementary school located on the reservation. It has an all-Indian school board, classes in Navajo and English, and a community-developed curriculum. By the 2000 school year, 65 percent of BIA-funded schools were controlled by tribes or tribal organizations in the United States.

Native American educators have also recognized the importance of postsecondary education and its ability to strengthen reservations and tribal cultures. Federal legislation in the 1970s provided funds to help develop postsecondary educational institutions for Native Americans. In 1968 the Navajo Nation created the first tribally controlled college, now called Diné College. Other tribal colleges quickly developed. Most are located on remote reservations and have a relatively small, predominantly Native American student population. All began as two-year institutions and have open admissions policies. In 2001 most tribal colleges were fully accredited.

D1b Canada

For more than 300 years, the dominant Euro-Canadian society educated aboriginal peoples in Canada. However, a new era in education began in 1972, when the National Indian Brotherhood published a policy paper entitled “Indian Control of Indian Education.” This paper led aboriginal people to take greater control of their children's schooling. Since then, Indian-controlled education has played a major role in revitalizing Indian cultures. It ensures that Indian values, identity, languages, and traditions are passed to younger generations.

Education is a provincial and territorial responsibility. The federal government also provides funds for schools in the territories and on Indian reserves. Status Indians on reserves may attend elementary and secondary schools operated by First Nations or federal schools operated by the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND). Status Indians off reserves can attend provincially administered schools. Territorial governments provide educational services for Status Indians and Inuit in the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut. DIAND also provides financial assistance, through First Nations councils and other authorities, to eligible Status Indian students enrolled in, or accepted to, eligible postsecondary educational programs.

During the 1999-2000 school year, there were more than 480 reserve-controlled schools, up from 53 in 1975. That same school year, 60 percent of Indians who lived on reserves attended elementary and secondary schools run by bands, 37 percent attended provincial schools, 2 percent attended private schools, and 1 percent attended schools run by the federal government. The Nisga'a Indians of British Columbia were one of the first bands, in 1974, to take charge of a separate Indian school district that emphasized a bicultural, bilingual curriculum. In 1975 the James Bay Cree assumed control of schools on their reserve. A Cree school board controls a substantial budget and provides services to the students. It has implemented a Cree-oriented curriculum and in-service training for Cree teachers.

The new era in Indian education has also led to an increase in Indian curricular materials in the public schools. Federal and provincial governments have financed curriculum development, special education programs for indigenous peoples, and teacher training in Indian languages. Increasingly, many of the country's public schools have added learning materials written from an Indian perspective to the curriculum. In some provinces, teachers can take courses in aboriginal studies at the university level; these courses count as credit for subjects they can later teach.

The new emphasis on Indian education at elementary and high school levels has been matched at the postsecondary level. Enrollment by Status Indians and Inuit at universities and colleges has dramatically increased from 60 students in 1960 to an estimated 27,000 in 2000-2001. According to DIAND, the rate of graduation is 13 percent. In 1976 a First Nations-controlled university-college, the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College, opened. Its mission has been to “preserve, protect, and interpret the history, language, culture, and artistic heritage of First Nations.” Nicola Valley Institute of Technology in British Columbia and the Six Nations Polytechnic in Ontario also provide culturally relevant educations for Canada's aboriginal population.

Despite these successes, much remains to be done. In a 2001 report on the education of Indian children on reserves, a federal auditor gave DIAND a failing grade. Only 37 percent of aboriginal students graduated from high school in 1996. More aboriginal teachers are also needed in the classrooms. In provincial public schools, only about 1 percent of the educators are aboriginal. Almost three-quarters of these teachers are in special education programs where aboriginal students are overrepresented.

D2 Physical and Mental Health

D2a United States

Over the past century the general health condition of Native Americans in the United States has undergone great changes. In the early and mid-1900s they were struck by repeated and severe epidemics of measles, influenza, whooping cough, and diphtheria. Tuberculosis became the greatest killer of all. Otitis media, an infection of the inner ear often causing hearing loss, was especially prevalent in the 1950s and 1960s.

By the late 20th century these infectious diseases were brought under control by a combination of immunizations, new medications, and a better standard of living. However, Native Americans developed other problems that evolved in response to the effects of rapid cultural change. Mental disorders, alcoholism, and domestic violence became widespread in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1988, according to the Indian Health Service (IHS), Native American deaths due to alcoholism were more than four times greater than those reported for the general population. Suicide rates among American Indians were 77 percent higher than the national average in 1998, and suicides are generally clustered among youth ages 15 to 34. Diabetes, a growing epidemic, occurs at significantly higher rates in the Indian community than in the non-Indian community. In 1996 Native Americans were 2.8 times as likely to be diagnosed with diabetes as whites of similar age. The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) have become a growing threat to Native Americans, who comprise 6 percent of all new HIV infections in the United States, although they only represent about 1 percent of the U.S. population. The five-year survival rate for Native Americans with all cancers is the poorest for all ethnic groups.

The delivery of health services to Native Americans is unique. The Indian Health Service (IHS), an agency of the Public Health Service within the Department of Health and Human Services, has administered the principal federal health programs to Native Americans since 1955. The IHS has 12 area offices throughout the United States. These offices serve either regional areas or states with large Indian populations such as California and Oklahoma. The IHS provides direct health-care services through IHS facilities such as hospitals and clinics. For services that an IHS facility cannot provide, such as organ transplants or open-heart surgery, the IHS contracts with a non-IHS facility.

Any member of a federally recognized tribe may obtain care at an IHS hospital or clinic. For contract care, a member of a federally recognized tribe can receive services within certain geographical boundaries, which map to the IHS area offices. For example, Indians who live in California can receive contract care from facilities in California that have a contract with the IHS but not from contract facilities in Arizona. Due to a limited budget, IHS facilities do not meet all the health-care needs of Native Americans. Not all reservations or communities have medical clinics or hospitals, and those that do often have small and outdated facilities.

In urban areas, Native Americans have limited access to the IHS system because there are few IHS facilities there. Although more than half of all Native Americans live in cities, only a small portion of the IHS budget is used to fund urban health-care centers. Since Congress passed the Indian Health Care Improvement Act in 1976, urban health-care services have been expanded to include direct medical, alcohol, mental health, and HIV/AIDS services as well as disease prevention services. However, urban health centers still do not have sufficient funding to address all the health-care needs of urban Native Americans.

Today, some tribes have begun to operate their own health-care facilities with funding from the IHS. When tribes handle their own health programs, they can limit the use of their facilities to only their tribal members if they choose. Tribes usually welcome members who live in cities but transportation to reservations can be an obstacle. As tribes gain more federal funding, urban areas have received even less funding.

Because of a lack of money to pay good salaries, doctors, nurses, and pharmacists are leaving clinics on Indian reservations in droves. Job vacancies, low pay, and a high rate of worker turnover in Indian health-care facilities have eroded the quality of health care. In 1998 there were 74 doctors for every 100,000 Native Americans in the United States, compared to 242 per 100,000 in the general population.

Long-term continuity in health care is rare in the Indian community. Doctors who come to reservations usually do not stay for more than two or three years, and Native Americans rarely see Indian doctors. Many elderly Indian people delay or avoid seeking IHS medical help because of language and cultural barriers. Few health-care professionals speak Native American languages.

There is a vital need for Native Americans in the health and medical fields. Recently, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has partnered with some tribal colleges to recruit, train, and retain Native Americans in the public health and medical professions.

D2b Canada

By any measure, health issues are one of the most pressing concerns in aboriginal communities in Canada. The prevalence of diabetes among First Nations is at epidemic levels, at least three times greater than the national average, with high rates occurring in all age groups. The rates of diabetes are higher on-reserve than off-reserve. An aboriginal peoples survey showed that Métis also have diabetes at rates above nonaboriginal people. They also have less access to health services compared to the general population. Diabetes rates are also increasing among Inuit, who have the lowest access to health-care services. This increase is due to the rise of risk factors such as obesity and physical inactivity in some Inuit communities.

Statistics show that AIDS cases among aboriginal people in Canada rose steadily from 1984 to 1996, when aboriginal people constituted 5.6 percent of all AIDS cases for which the ethnicity of the patient was known. A higher proportion of aboriginal people are diagnosed with AIDS at less than 30 years of age than nonaboriginal people. Aboriginal people who travel between cities and rural reserve communities are a factor in the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Tuberculosis (TB) still strikes aboriginal people in Canada. A combination of malnutrition, confinement on crowded reservations with poor sanitation, and lack of immunity to the TB bacterium create conditions for the epidemic. Incidences of TB leveled off in the 1980s, but aboriginal Canadians living on reserves were still ten times more likely to have TB than nonaboriginal Canadians in 1990.

No national studies provide information about the prevalence or incidence of family domestic violence in aboriginal communities. However, several provincial and regional studies have grim findings. One 1997 Health Canada study of some northern aboriginal communities reported that between 75 percent and 90 percent of women were battered. The study found that 40 percent of children in these communities had been physically abused by a family member. A 1991 study by Aboriginal Nurses Association of Canada found alcohol and substance abuse and economic problems are factors in much of the family violence.

Other physical health issues that affect aboriginal peoples in Canada are poverty and suicide. According to a report by First Nations leader Matthew Coon Come, six out of every ten aboriginal preschoolers live in dire poverty. Aboriginal babies are more than twice as likely to die at birth than nonaboriginal babies. Grinding poverty, hopelessness, and despair have led some Indian youths to commit suicide at higher rates than the overall Canadian population.

Health services for First Nations are the responsibility of provincial, territorial, and federal governments. The provinces and territories provide or pay for physician and hospital services that are covered under their health insurance plans. The federal government provides treatment and public health services to First Nations that are not included under provincial and territorial plans, such as prescription drugs, dental services, eyeglasses, and medical transportation in remote areas.

In 1979 Canada's new Indian Health Policy recognized the need for increased involvement of aboriginal people in the health-care system. Indeed, the federal government supports the transfer of control of health programs to First Nations and Inuit organizations. It funds services through contract arrangements. Community-centered health-care systems such as the Cree Regional Board of Health, Labrador Inuit Health Commission, and Blood Tribe Department of Health service the special needs of their communities. Aboriginal organizations such as the Assembly of First Nations have worked with Health Canada on strategies for eliminating TB on reserves. Inuit Tapirisat Canada has initiatives concerning HIV/AIDS and mental health as well as a cancer information project.

Despite aboriginal involvement, major challenges still exist to solving the aboriginal health crisis in Canada. Federal funding does not come close to addressing aboriginal physical and mental health needs. Thousands of aboriginal health-care workers need to be trained, and doctors who set up practices in remote regions need to be retained.

E Arts and Culture

In the United States and Canada, Native American cultures are reaffirming their identities by combining aspects of their ancient traditional ways with 21st-century mainstream culture. Native Americans, like any other peoples, live in apartment buildings, shop at malls, and surf the Internet. They also dress in traditional clothes, speak their own languages, and practice their own religions. Native ceremonial practices such as Haida potlatches, Lakota Sun Dances, and Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) thanksgiving rites coexist with satellite dishes and cell phones.

E1 Religion

Despite a long history of persecution and suppression by the U.S. and Canadian governments, hundreds of indigenous religious traditions have endured in North America. Ancient traditional religions of the Pueblo and Iroquois (Haudenosaunee), for example, survive and remain strong, while other Native Americans practice Christianity exclusively. Some Native Americans pray in church and attend Indian healing ceremonies, finding that both traditions offer comfort. Still others follow the Peyote religion, which attracts followers from many U.S. tribes.

Native Americans in both the United States and Canada have a long tradition of transmitting religious ceremonies and ideas through traditional stories. There is no written sacred book like the Bible, although some North American Indians keep records with sacred symbols written on wooden sticks or woven into wampum belts. Native North American storytellers have kept alive spiritual and cultural traditions by telling stories that pass on a wide range of teachings about a people's creation, moral behavior, laws, and survival skills.

Tribes have also worked to protect important religious items. In the United States, tribes have been outraged by the desecration and looting of Indian graves. They have demanded the return of skeletal remains, burial goods, and other sacred objects taken from them. For many years, Native Americans fought to reclaim ancestral remains and sacred objects despite tremendous opposition by some museum directors and curators, state historical societies, physical anthropologists, archaeologists, and National Park Service officials who wanted to study them. Native American protest efforts paid off in 1990 when the U.S. government enacted the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). NAGPRA protects Indian gravesites from looting and sets up legal procedures for Indians to reclaim artifacts of religious or ceremonial importance. Reclaiming skeletal bones, totem poles, masks, wampum belts, medicine bundles (collections of objects believed to heal disease and ward off ghosts), and other objects from museums has inspired tribes to revive old ceremonies and tribal traditions. In Canada, the Cultural Property Export and Import Act, a federal law passed in 1977, protects aboriginal cultural property, including sacred objects and human remains.

E2 Language

In the past, a community's elders passed on Native American languages to the young. As Native American communities have become more dispersed, however, this natural process has been disrupted, and hundreds of spoken languages have died out. Of the more than 300 original languages in North America, only 150 are still spoken, and less than 50 are widely spoken. Some of the most widely spoken languages include Yupik and Inuit-Inupiaq (Eskimo), Navajo, Ojibwa (Chippewa), O'Odham (Papago and Pima), Cherokee, and Choctaw. A 1990 Canadian House of Commons report stated that 43 of Canada's 53 indigenous languages were on the verge of extinction. Only three languages—Cree, Ojibway, and Inuktitut—were believed to be strong enough to survive.

Many Native American communities in the United States and Canada have sought to revitalize their languages before elderly speakers die. Without languages, ceremonies cannot continue, children cannot communicate with their grandparents, and adults cannot voice prayers. On many reservations and reserves, Native Americans are preserving and revitalizing languages through classroom and online instruction and radio shows broadcasting in languages such as Inuktitut, Lakota, Mi'kmaq (Micmac), and Navajo.

E3 Arts

Native North Americans have long defined and shaped their own art forms. Today, Native American artists create with clay, animal hides, and grasses as well as with computers, camcorders, and welding equipment. They produce quillwork, ceramics, baskets, jewelry, and other traditional art forms as well as contemporary beaded baseball hats and steel sculptures. Many Native American artists produce work that has a clear connection to their forebears but incorporates Western techniques and styles. Other artists create works that reflect upheavals that have decimated Native American societies.

In the United States, there are countless Native American artists. A few prominent artists during the second half of the 20th century included Arthur D. Amiotte (Oglala Lakota), who was influenced by the traditional artistic legacy of the Lakota, and Harry Fonseca (Maidu), who created a series of works placing coyote figures in contemporary settings. Peter Jemison (Cattaraugus Seneca) used mixed media in his work, and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Salish/Cree/Shoshone) created abstract landscapes using ancient pictographs as inspiration. Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee/Winnebago) often painted two sections—a landscape and an abstract image—in one work, while Emmi Whitehorse (Navajo) used large canvases to explore nature. Important sculptors included Allan Houser (Apache), who produced sculpture in stone, wood, and bronze, and Truman Lowe (Winnebago) who sculpted out of natural materials such as wood and leather.

Canada also had many noteworthy aboriginal artists in the second half of the 20th century. Carl Beam (Ojibwa) juxtaposed images from Western and Native American history in his art. Robert Davidson and Dorothy Grant, both Haida, worked together; he created designs for her clothing. Faye Heavyshield (Blood), a sculptor, combined elements from her Blood and boarding school upbringing. Alex Janvier (Dene) blended stylized abstract renderings of natural forms with traditional Plains arts, and Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun (Cowichan-Okanagan) used his work to address his Indian heritage along with a broader range of concerns such as controversial political issues.

Beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s there was a steady increase in contemporary Native American music. Native American musicians combined their ancient chants and instruments with folk, rock, reggae, country, New Age, or rap to convey their messages. Saxophonist Jim Pepper (Creek/Kaw) developed a unique mix of jazz and tribal music, while members of the Canadian band Kashtin (“tornado” in the Innu language) blended folk-rock and Cajun. Singers such as Buffy Sainte-Marie (Cree) protested against government mistreatment of indigenous peoples. Harold Littlebird (Pueblo), Joanne Shenandoah (Oneida), and John Trudell (Santee Dakota) became important U.S. recording artists in the 1980s and 1990s.

Native North Americans have a rich history of expressing cultural heritage through performance. In traditional societies, most celebrations, whether sacred or social, involved music and dance. Native Americans have continued to express themselves through traditional music and dance performances. They also have adopted Western forms of performance including ballet and modern dance. Renowned troupes such as the Native American Dance Theater in the United States and the Chinook Winds Aboriginal Dance Program in Canada stage dramatic dance performances.

When Kiowa writer N. Scott Momaday won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1969 for his novel House Made of Dawn (1968), the acclaim he received helped draw attention to Native American literature. Since that time, scores of Native North American people have published works. Drawing much of their power from the oral tradition, many Native American writers use their own tribal worldviews as the vehicle to present modern themes about Native American cultural experiences and struggles. Writers in the United States such as Linda Hogan (Chickasaw), Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo), and James Welch (Blackfeet/Gros Ventre) explored the power of traditional beliefs and the despair of living in two worlds. They and others wrote about Native Americans struggling with alcoholism, dams that flood traditional fishing grounds, and tourists who invade sacred sites. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), one of the works by world-renowned poet and novelist Sherman Alexie (Spokane/Coeur d'Alene), formed the basis of his screenplay for Smoke Signals (1998), a movie he also produced. Native Americans such as Hanay Geiogamah (Kiowa/Delaware) also used plays to delve into indigenous issues.

In Canada, Jeannette Armstrong (Okanagan) explored the social obstacles and racial stigmas that indigenous peoples in Canada face in Slash (1985). Thomas King (Cherokee) wrote works that combined humor with commentary about the stereotypes indigenous peoples fight against. Alootook Ipellie was the first Inuit writer to have his collection of short stories, Arctic Dreams and Nightmares (1993), published. Lee Maracle (Métis) presented strong perspectives on cultural autonomy. Playwrights such as Tomson Highway (Cree) produced works that also explored indigenous issues.

Although a handful of Indian filmmakers were already making documentaries in the United States and Canada, in the 1970s hundreds of Native Americans began producing, directing, and acting in independent film and video. Since 1991, festivals organized by Native Americans have resulted in wider opportunities for Native American film and video artists. These artists include Victor Masayesva, Jr. (Hopi), Sandra Osawa (Makah), and Beverly Singer (Tewa-Navajo) in the United States, and Alanis Obomsawin (Abenaki) and David Poisey (Inuit) in Canada.

F Outlook

Hundreds of Native North American peoples have survived an onslaught of government policies and wars dedicated to destroying them. What sustained them were traditional family and clan relationships, kinship with homelands, religious ceremonies, ancient stories connecting older and younger generations, and shared traditions that maintained each tribe's uniqueness.

Native Americans have also revived some cultural practices that were at risk of disappearing. In a revival of a Northwest Coast Indian tradition, totem poles are again being raised in Haida villages on Canada's Queen Charlotte Islands as well as at Alaska's Metlakatla reservation, home to the Tsimshian. The Intertribal Bison Cooperative, an association of more than 40 tribes, has restored bison to Indian lands. The Wampanoag of Aquinnah, Massachusetts, are working with linguists to restore their Algonquian language. Across North America, giveaways and potlatches, once forbidden, are again taking place. Modern powwows exemplify active Native American resistance to cultural annihilation. They are not so much a performance for an audience as they are a way of sharing, reinforcing, and expressing heritage.

Despite efforts to stamp out Native American cultures, many have survived and even been revived. Although they still face many economic and social challenges, Native Americans continue to survive and flourish by maintaining their distinct cultures.

Arlene Hirschfelder contributed the Introduction and Native Americans Today section of this article.

Contributed By:

Arlene Hirschfelder

Ned Blackhawk

Trudy Griffin-Pierce

David J. Meltzer

Carl Waldman

Chief Joseph

Chief Joseph, leader of the Wallowa Valley band of the Nez Perce in northeastern Oregon, was respected for his leadership, wisdom, and eloquence. In 1877, after the United States government opened the Wallowa Valley to mining and white settlement, hostilities erupted between Nez Perce warriors and white settlers. Joseph and other chiefs led hundreds of Nez Perce men, women, and children on a remarkable four-month fighting retreat over mountainous terrain toward sanctuary in Canada. Along the way, they outmaneuvered or defeated U.S. Army troops led by General Oliver O. Howard and others. Finally captured just 50 km (30 mi) from the Canadian border, Joseph surrendered with these words (read here by an actor), now one of the most famous surrender speeches in history.

Flury and Co./Edward S. Curtis/Chief Joseph Speech read by William Michael Paul. Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.