they say life is filled with ironies and history as it turns out is the same luck accidents the unexpected happenings of life they're the same with history these unexpected happenings often shape events more than intentions do and long before christopher columbus happened upon the caribbean sea in search of a westward passage to the indies the native peoples that he mislabeled as indians had occupied and had transformed the lands of the western hemisphere also called the americas north central and south and they had done so for thousands of years the new world was thus new only to europeans who began exploring conquering and exploiting the region at the end of the 15th century this is the story of the united states and to understand the story of the united states one must begin long before the united states was ever established to understand the history of this country one has to go all the way back in time to the arrival of the first humans in north america they say america was born in the crucible of the american revolution others say that america was born in the mind of thomas jefferson still others say that america truly wasn't born until the american civil war but as it turns out america was born in the melting ice and what i mean by this is that millions of years ago the world experienced its last ice age and this ice age lasted from roughly 2.6 million years ago to up to about 12 000 years ago and it was during this time that much of the western hemisphere or northern hemisphere i'm sorry was covered in immense glaciers many of them two miles thick which had inched southward from the arctic circle at the top of the globe and as these glaciers inched southward they crushed hills they rerouted rivers it gouged lake beds and waterways and they scraped bare all the land in its path and the glacial sheets that covered much of north america canada alaska the upper midwest new england montana washington but then as the climates come as the continent's climate began to to warm the ice sheets began to recede and as they recede the glaciers sliced through the mountains passes highways roadways if you will and they open these pathways for the first immigrants to come to the continent and to roam the continent and to spread across the continent you can still go to present day alaska and see these glaciers that have uh been receding now for thousands of years and have been slowly cutting gaps and wedges right through the mountain passes and it was through these passes that the first humans arrived in north america debate still rages among historians and archaeologists about when exactly when and exactly how the first humans arrived here in north america but the prevailing theory and the consensus among most historians as well as archaeologists is that the first humans who arrive here in north america were ancient peoples that actually came from northeast asia and that they had begun and they had arrived here because they were following herds of large game such as mastodons and wooly mammoths and giant beavers and and so on and so forth and that they had they were following these large game animals across the bering strait now the bering strait is today a waterway that connects the arctic ocean with the pacific ocean but the time period that we're looking at right during that last ice age 12 to 20 000 years ago when the first humans arrived here that area was frozen solid and it was a treeless wind-swept frigid tundra that actually connected eastern siberia with present-day alaska and it was an area that is referred to then as beringia and it was in beringia that the first humans simply walked from asia to north america now as they were following these herds of mammoths and mastodons and giant beavers they didn't know they were discovering a new continent they were simply following their food sources and so the first human then that arrived here we referred to then as ancient indians or paleo indians and they got here by simply walking they walked across that beringia land bridge now over thousands of years as the climate kept warming in north america and as the glaciers and ice sheets that had been established during that last ice age continued to melt and continue to recede it was from those initial paleo indians that small nomadic groups began to fan out from present-day alaska on foot some did it in boats and they eventually spread out all across north america inhabiting every region in every area of the continent they would eventually spread into central america as well and they would eventually reach all the way to the tip of south america meaning that when europeans arrived in the new world there was not a single place in the new world that had not already been discovered by these paleo indians now the paleo indians were skilled hunters and gethers and and like i mentioned they came here in search of their game animals um so they were nomadic they followed their their food sources they were highly skilled hunters highly skilled gatherers they subsisted on mastodons and mammoths and whales they they and seals and fish and wild plants berries nuts roots and seeds anything they get their hands on in addition to hunting mammoths and mastodons they hunted giants giant sloths lions and saber-toothed tigers cheetahs giant wolves right so this this meant that they were very skilled at hunting and so the paleo indians uh would arrive here 12 to 20 000 years ago and over that time uh would slowly fan out all across what europeans came to regard as the new world now in a second we're going to start exploring some of the more significant civilizations of mesoamerica which is central america as well as north america but before we do that i want to briefly discuss about americans concepts and understanding of native americans and what i'm referring to here is the way americans especially anglo-americans perceive native americans when you say the word native american or indian to your just average american they tend to have a certain image popping their head of who these native americans are and the image that pops in most americans heads is this image now the image you see on the screen is of a group of indians known as the plains indians they lived on the great plains of north america uh they didn't initially have horses but when the spanish introduced horses horses were quickly adopted into the plains indians culture but they lived in wide open spaces huge wide open grasslands they hunted buffalo they lived in tepes and this is the traditional image that most americans think of when they hear the word native american or indian and the reason most americans think of this is that they've been conditioned to think of native americans this way and the reason they've been conditioned is because of popular media and i'm referring of course to hollywood most americans have seen the famous westerns right involving john wayne and clint eastwood and others and and all of those famous westerns were set in a period of american history in the 1870s 1880s 1890s which was a period of american history where americans were pushing into the west and beginning to interact for the first time with the plains indians tribes like the lakota and the cheyenne and the crow and the black feet and so when you see these movies the native americans being depicted in there are the plains indians because that's the time period and that's the um the area of the country in which the movie is taking place and so it's it's not something americans did on purpose it's just something that happened because of popular media so i want you to keep this image in mind because this is not the correct image of how to think of native americans the plains indians are simply one small segment of the widely diverse society of native americans that existed in the americas so keep that in mind as we work our way through the rest of this lecture now after the arrival of the first humans of the western hemisphere and over thousands of years right this takes a this is a process i'm about to describe takes a very long time the indigenous peoples are going to spread out through all three areas of the new world of north america central america and south america and these indigenous peoples are going to develop hundreds of strikingly different societies and some of these societies would be rooted in agriculture right they would uh some of them would be rooted in hunting and gathering some of these societies would be focused on trade another in other societies would be focused on conquest and over time the ancient indians uh adapted to their diverse environments you know some lived in coastal forests some lived in grassy plains others lived in the southwestern deserts of north america some lived in the eastern woodlands and some continued to hunt with spears and later on with bows and arrows others fished or they trapped small game some of them gathered wild plants and herbs acorns seeds while some of them also farmed using stone tools and most did a little bit of all that but it was around 7000 bce which stands for before the common era that where we begin to see native american societies start to transform into larger farming cultures which would be supplemented of course by seasonal hunting and gathering and the agriculture provided reliable nutritious food for most of these cultures which accelerated the population growth and enabled a lot of these nomadic people that once existed to begin to settle into villages and these indigenous peoples became experts at growing things raising livestock and the chief commodity that they grew was corn but they also grew things like beans squash chili peppers avocados and even pumpkins now these corn-based societies were viewed uh or they viewed corn as the gift from the gods because it provided so many essential needs and so it's from these corn societies that we really do begin to see the rise of some major civilizations especially in mesoamerica so the way we're going to approach this here is we're going to first look at some significant mesoamerican civilizations we're going to look briefly at the mayans the incas and the aztecs and then we're going to turn our attention to the north american civilizations we're going to look at the southwest the pacific northwest great plains the mississippi river delta or river valley uh the algonquins the iroquois and the eastern woodland indians and what we're going for here is two things i want you to firmly understand that native americans are not a monolithic people they never have been they have varying levels of society varying levels of religion and language they span a very wide spectrum of societies and i hope you take that away from this lecture the other thing i want you to take away from this lecture is that on the eve of european exploration this continent or these continents of central north and south america were already settled and there were millions of people here so let's turn our attention first to the mesoamerican civilizations now of all the mesoamerican civilizations i just want to briefly discuss three of them because it gives us a good sense of just how advanced some of these societies and some of these civilizations in the americas were on the eve of european exploration so we're going to first talk about the mayans and then the incas and then the aztecs the mayan civilization which popped up roughly around 1800 bce and lasted until about 600 a.d began largely as a conglomerate of farming towns that popped up in what is now today mexico the agriculture supported the development of these sophisticated communities which uh the mayans boasted of course these gigantic temple-topped pyramids they had palaces they even built bridges in middle america and the mayans who dominated central america for almost 600 years developed they developed a written language they developed elaborate works of art and mayan civilization even featured sprawling cities a hierarchical government just like ours terrorist farms and like i said these amazingly are amazing architectural feats like these pyramids on the screen so the mayans were a civilization of great significance to maze of america so to a little further south was the incan civilization now this civilization uh came to dominate the west coast of south america and it was a sprawling empire for the incas by the 15th century the incas had a vast realm stretching over 2 500 square mile miles long along the western part of south america they had irrigated farms they had stone buildings and they had interconnected networks of roads that were made of stone but when people think of meso-american cultures they oftentimes think of a what i would regard a flash in the pan civilization but a significant one none one nonetheless and that's the aztec civilization it was during the 12th century that the aztecs rose the power in central america now the aztec empire uh ruled through a powerful emperor and the entire society was divided into two social classes of noble warriors and priests you also had in this empire free commoners which were merchants craftsmen and farmers now when the spanish invaded mexico in 1519 what they found was an incredibly vast empire that was connected by networks of roads serving over 371 city-states that were organized into 38 provinces they had towering stone temples they had huge paved avenues that thriving marketplaces and they had some seventy thousand huts in a single city known as tenocheland which is today uh mexico city the aztecs were an incredibly dominant power in mesoamerica and when the europeans arrived it was perhaps the strongest and most powerful of all the civilizations that had emerged throughout the early americas now the essex civilization didn't last long it didn't come rise to power until 1420 or so and it was quickly uh uh squashed out with by the spanish conquest in 1521 but hopefully you're getting a sense so far that there were some cultures and there were some societies here in the pre-columbian uh era pre-columbian meaning before columbus's arrival in the pre-columbian era here in indigenous america that in many ways rivals the civilizations we've learned from world history the egyptians maybe even the romans we just don't know much about we're going to turn now to our attention to north american civilizations this is what we really care about because this is where uh this country will be born it will be born in north america so it's it's worthwhile to get a good sense of who the indigenous peoples were of north america during the pre-columbian era now we're going to start with the american south west now the american southwest today is comprised of the states of you know places like arizona new mexico nevada and utah and the southwest if you've ever been there it's very arid meaning dry very dry area it's uh geography is you know really high mesas as well as very deep canyons and very vast and deep deserts long rivers and of course the occasional snow-covered mountains but it was within the american southwest that we saw the emergence of some corn growing societies and we saw the emergence of what is referred to as ancestral pueblos now these were native american groups like the hopies and the zunis they were called pueblos by the spanish because a lot of these ancestral pueblos lived in cliffside dwellings which the spanish called pueblos and so we refer to these tribes and this culture as the pueblo culture we also in this area had a group uh known as the the hokahokam which is uh loosely translates to those who had vanished now these were people that had migrated from mexico northward they crafted decorative pottery they made turquoise jewelry they constructed temple mounds and we also had a culture here in the american southwest uh known as the anasari the ancient ones or the basket makers and unlike the aztecs and incas this society didn't actually have a rigid class structure they engaged in warfare as the as only as a means of self-defense and they had religious leaders and warriors who worked side by side with the rest of the people so he is getting a sense right that native americans in the southwest were different than native americans in mesoamerica and the trend continues in the pacific northwest right we have a society now these are tribes and and indians that are living all around the narrow coastal strip running from uh forested northwest of the pacific coast all the way down uh into portions of present-day united states now these were people that uh subsisted mostly on fishing right they ate shellfish and salmon they ate seals they wailed right they wailed they hunted deer they ate edible plants which were in abundance there and not only were plants in abundance but just fauna was in widespread abundance here so killing a whale would feed a lot of people for a long time and so because of the natural abundance here there really wasn't a lot of farming that took place here there was no need for it uh you could go out and easily uh hunt and gather everything you needed to subside subsist for a long time you said this was not a farming culture like we see like we saw with the indians at the southwest and in most cases they only had to work a couple days right to provide enough food for an entire week what a great gig now this of course gave rise to a large population and because of this population density has enabled the pacific coast cultures to develop intricate religious rituals and sophisticated woodworking skills and this is where the totem pole comes from a lot of people associate totem poles and native americans but it was it's from the native americans of the pacific northwest that we see uh these totem poles uh uh taking place as part of their religious rituals and their uh development of woodworking skills uh um for shelter they would build large earth earthen floored uh houses that were sometimes up to 500 feet long um entire families you know and whole groups of families would be living together and they created very large uh and very sturdy ocean-going canoes that they hollowed out from the local trees enough to carry as much as 50 people and socially they were divided into slaves commoners and chiefs and warfare was usually a means only to acquire slaves so the pacific northwest indians again different than the southwest next we have the great plains of north america now there were numerous tribal nations that lived on the great plains which are very vast flat land that has cold winters hot summers and this is all land west of the mississippi river uh tribal nations like the arapaho the blackfeet cheyenne crow apache comanche and the lakota or the sioux now the plains indians uh were mostly nomadic hunter-gatherers they tracked herds of buffalo which are technically called bison of course they tracked these things across a sea of grassland they collected seeds nuts roots and berries and at the center of most hunter-gatherer religions is the idea that the hunted animal which was the buffalo for the great plains indians uh uh that that the hunted animal is a willing sacrifice provided by the gods and this was a fundamental and core belief of the plains indians these nomadic peoples performed sacred rites of gratitude before any buffalo hunt and once a buffalo herd was spotted the hunters would set fires right to divert the herds into certain areas and end up getting them to stampede these animals over cliffs often killing far more than they could harvest or consume now why well the buffalo was for the plains indians a galloping department store and they relied on it exclusively now this practice of driving the herds over cliffs came to an end once the spanish introduced horses and this was these were the tribes that readily uh adopted horses because it made them highly mobile but these were the tribes that lived in tepees right they lived on the grasslands of north america and these are the the the groups that most americans think of but again the great plains indians lived very differently than the southwest or the pacific northwest or even some of the mesoamerican cultures we've discussed next up are the mississippians these were tribes and native americans that lived east of the great plains and the vast woodlands that stretched up and down the mississippi river as well as all the way down or all the way east to the atlantic ocean and a lot of these cultures were what we call mound building cultures and it was in this area that these cultures prospered and thrived between 700 bce and 200 a.d the adena and later the hopewell societies developed communities along the rivers of the ohio valley the adena hopewell cultures grew corn and squash and beans and sunflowers as well as tobacco which they smoked they left behind they left behind enormous earthworks and elaborate burial mounds that were shaped like birds and like this one here in ohio like a snake and several of which of these burial mounds are over a quarter mile long now this particular one that's pictured here is known as the great serpent mound it's over thirteen hundred feet in length over three feet high uh it's in adams county ohio and it is the largest of its kind in the world uh so the adena and the hopewell societies they developed also this extensive trading network with other indian societies from the coal from the gulf of mexico as far north as canada where they exchanged carvings metalwork pearls seashells ornaments bear claws and even jewelry now both of them were corn growing societies who had built a substantial agricultural towns around central plazas as well as central temples and they developed a far-flung trading network that extended uh to the rocky mountains now it was their ability to grow a lot of corn right in the fertile regions of the uh north american southwest and all of this food they were able to grow especially in corn and corn spurred a huge rapid uh growing population uh which grew around these regional centers and speaking of these regional centers one of the biggest if not the biggest in north america was known uh as uh cahokia uh which is situated um in southwestern illinois today near the confluence of the mississippi and missouri rivers very close very close to uh st louis now the caucaians constructed an enormous farming settlement with huge public buildings spacious ceremonial plazas and more than 80 earthen mounds that had temples on top and the largest of these mounds which is centered in the middle of this artist rendering here was over 10 stories high and encompassed 14 acres and it required over 22 million cubic feet of soil to build and so at its height right the cahokia hosted over 15 000 people on some 3 000 square acres and it made it then one of the largest cities in north america we're going to turn our attention now to the algonquin speaking peoples now the algonquin were a uh loosely confederated group of native americans that were flung across a huge portion of north america what bound them together was their common language of algonquin they stretched from the new england seaboard as far to the great lakes into the upper midwest and even as far south as new jersey virginia and the carolinas you can see on this map just how big the algonquin civilization or algonquin speaking peoples were now they lived in uh very differently than some of the the native americans we've talked about already they lived in small round wigwams right which were multi-family long houses which are depicted here they would have surrounded these long houses with a very tall palisade which is depicted here which were large timber fences to defend against attackers and these villages could be fairly big going from 500 to as high as 2 000 people now the algonquins along the atlantic coast uh specialized in fishing gathering sailfish the inland algonquins were known to be excellent hunters they often traveled up and down the region's waterways they used canoes which were made out of holland tree trunks or birch bark and all the algonquins whether they were coastal or inland foraged for wild food and practice agriculture to some extent and they regularly burned actually dense forest to improve the soil fertility which provided them grazing room for deer that they would then hunt next up are the iroquois now the map here shows you the location of the more significant clusters of iroquois which were comprised of tribes like the seneca the mohawk and uh even the cherokee now the iroquoians um uh lived west and south of the algonquins and they lived on lands that were spread from upstate new york southward through pennsylvania uh and then down into the carolinas a little bit in georgia as well now the iroquois were farmers they were hunters they lived in extended family groups which they called clans um they lived in they shared large long houses i got a picture one here here's an example of one of the iroquois longhouses these are bark covered longhouses uh and they lived in these massive towns right of over 3 000 people or more and unlike the algonquin culture right where in the algonquin culture the men were dominant but in the iroquois it was the women that held key leadership positions and key roles in the culture and as an iroquois elder explained i'm going to use a quote here that a great quote i found and iroquois elder explained quote in our society women are the center of all things nature we believe has given women the ability to create therefore it is only natural that women be in positions of power to protect this function now a french priest who actually lived among the iroquois for far five years marveled at uh i'll give you another quote marveled that nothing was more real than women's superiority and it is they who really maintain the tribe so the iroquois are unique in terms of uh a lot of native american cultures and especially unique when it comes to european culture from this time period now the iroquois men and women they operated in separate social domains no women could be chief but no man could be head of a clan so who was head of the clans women right women selected the chiefs they controlled the distribution of property they supervised the slaves for the tribes and they planted and harvested all the crops they arranged marriages and after the wedding ceremony it was the man that moved in with the wife's family right so in part the iroquois matriarchy uh reflected the the frequent absence right of iroquois men who as skilled hunters and traders were usually gone for long periods of time so this required women to step up to the plate take charge of domestic life which they did so we're going to finish now by talking about the eastern woodland indians who lived in the southwest or southeast portion of north america and you can kind of group them all together into what are referred to as the muskogens and the reason they refer to this is that they all spoke uh the common tongue or the common language of muskogen now these were tribes like the creek the choctaw the chickataw or chickasaw the seminole the natchez uh and others these are tribes that today are have been forced forcely relocated from their native homelands they're depicted on the map uh to uh reservations set aside in eastern oklahoma how did that happen we'll learn in this course but that happens in the 1830s and we'll get there later so let's talk a little bit about the muskogens and get a get out of who these people are now like the iroquois the moscovians had a society that was built around um uh the mother uh and and women and and especially it had a uh a lineal society that flowed from the mother's line right not from the families line it had a very rigid class structure they lived in towns similar to other tribes and other groups that we've seen here they lived in in uh towns arranged around the central plaza uh those that live along the gulf coast lived in thatch-roofed houses that had no walls because you know the the the mild winters and it was so hot and humid uh so these were the muskogens um all right let's finish by uh just just let me give you some parting uh words of wisdom about the indigenous peoples of the americas so let me just kind of wrap all this up before we launch into our second lecture over european exploration and colonization uh it's clear that you can't think of native americans as a monolithic people they they uh they just simply cannot be regarded in that way uh in the same way you wouldn't re uh you wouldn't you know regard all europeans as the same or all americans as the same an american from texas is very different than an american from new york just like an englishman is very different from a frenchman even though they both live in europe they're just different okay and that's how native americans are it's how they always have been in fact the only thing that binds native americans together is a common ancestry of uh the first humans those paleo-indians that cross the bearings uh straight 12 to 20 000 years ago right so let's let's just keep all that in mind uh throughout as we go through life that uh this is often times to keep in mind uh with regard to the indigenous peoples of the americas now i'll leave you with this now when europeans first came here to the americas it truly was a just a collision of cultures uh a collision of societies and native americans were often exploited they were infected with diseases they were enslaved displaced and in some cases they were exterminated yet the conventional story and i want you to understand this that the conventional story of invasion right and occupation oversimplifies the process by which indians europeans and even later africans interacted in the course of american history native americans were not were way more than just passive victims of european power they were trading partners with europeans they were military allies uh of the transatlantic uh uh exchange they they became neighbors with these europeans they became advisors they religious converts and they even became loving spouses and so it's important to also then keep in mind that as such native americans actively participated in the creation of this new society that we know today as america now the last thing i'll mention about native americans before we talk about european exploration is this is that over thousands of years and they the natives of the americas displayed and continue to display remarkable resilience they have adapted to the uncertainties of life to the uncertainties of frequent warfare throughout human history to changing climate and varying environments they are incredibly resilient people and while many thousands of them are gone many thousands of them remain and is it a testament to that resiliency they would display similar resiliency and they would need to exhibit all of that resiliency against the challenges created when the europeans arrived