all right everyone so today's lecture is going to be going over a pre contact Native Americans this also includes we're gonna be talking about a little bit about their origins how they got from the old world to North America and Central and South America and we're gonna be talking about these various different groups those in Central and South America groups that you probably have heard of like the Inca the Maya the Aztec and then we're going to talk about the North American groups more about their cultures and societies and various regions you know the Southwest Northwest Great Plains as well as the eastern Native American groups and of course we're going to spend a little bit more time on the North American groups because this is an American history course and so that's definitely gonna be what impact this course more is going to be North American groups but we aren't going to go over especially when we go over colonial history some of what happened in Central America not so much South America but definitely some Central American history and as you'll see that these powerpoints the way they're set up is that the first slide will contain kind of the big points that we're gonna go over today so if you want to go ahead and pause the video here so you can write down these big points these big ideas feel free to do that and you can do that on every presentation and this is just kind of the main ideas here on this this first slide so we're gonna go ahead and move on to our next slide actually before we do I want to go ahead and just state that we're going to go over a couple thousand years of history here so this is of course a very compacted history of Native Americans their arrival in the Americas and their history here so of course I would love to go over this morning depth but we just don't have the time in this course does focus more on American history overall which of course does include Native Americans up but not the the long-term Native American history care and of course these people these Native American people the reason why it's important to understand where they came from their various cultural backgrounds is because the had an established culture long before Europeans arrived and I think that's something that we kind of forget sometimes as we think that just because Europeans showed up that met Native Americans were there but of course they were there a long time before they had very established cultures rituals beliefs ideas and a lot of times these ideas conflicted with European ideas on you know various beliefs and traditions and such and so that culture clash is a conic feature of colonial history so that's kind of why I feel it's important to kind of go over the larger ideas of Native American history we're gonna go over is the origins of Native American people in what we consider the new world what is termed as you know like you see here to the left North America Central and South America so basically we know that all human beings came from what's been termed the old world that includes Europe Asia Africa that regions of the world so today we know that these two regions the old world and the new world are not connected in any way so the main question when Europeans out there and they found that there were people are living there was how did they get here how could two areas of land that were not connected be inhabited by people so there's two first off when determining of where you know humanity came from this goes really far back into you know anthropological theories and you know there's human history theory there's two main theories the first is the Out of Africa theory which is basically the theory that all human life you know homo erectus homo sapiens that all started in Africa and then people migrated Out of Africa to fill Europe Asia and spread throughout the world that is by far the most impossible but there is another theory it's out of the out of Europe and Asia Theory basically that humans kind of developed code developed at the same time into you know Homo sapiens in Europe and Asia at the same time and then kind of spread from there it's not as popular theory but it is one that people are tossing around there is a potential explanation as to where humans have come from but but either way regardless of you know whether it was Africa theory or the out of Europe and Asia Theory everyone agrees that human beings started in what is termed the old world so the question is very important of how these people got here how Native Americans got to the American continent so the most prominent theory and this is definitely the most long-standing theory as to how Native Americans got to the Americas is what you see here labeled the Bering Strait land bridge basically according to this theory during the most recent Ice Age which is about 20,000 years ago this the the ice and frozen over causing the sea levels to lower which created a land ice land / ice bridge connecting modern-day Alaska that you see to the far left here to the tip of Russia that you see on the other edge of the map so what was once connected through ocean became connected through land and ice and of course this was not you know one winter there was a bridge and everybody just ran across it what happened was this this land bridge was up for a couple of hundred maybe even a thousand years and people slowly migrated across the land bridge and they followed as they were nomadic hunters they followed the herd animals that were moving a process and bridge so this was of course a very long drawn-out process it wasn't something that happened in one year or or overnight or something and then of course once the ice age ended the ice remelted and that land bridge went away and then you had mostly people in you know modern-day Alaska making their way southward through Canada and eventually you know spreading over the course of you know centuries and centuries until they reached South America so this is definitely one of the most long-standing theories and it's generally the most accepted and it's definitely very logical but the problem is once people started looking at the archaeological record it actually doesn't quite fit up in fact there are signs through again Kian archeological working at establishments and cities and remnants that have been left behind by ancient peoples there are actually indications that South America was actually inhabited around the same time that human beings were supposed to be crossing the land bridge if you're supposed to be crossing the land bridge up in Alaska yet you're also supposed to be occupying South America the very bottom of South America at the same time it doesn't quite fit so this human occupation isn't consistent with traveling southward slowly over all right one of the more recent theories is that you see here is the multiple migration theory basically that there have been many migrations over the course of time valera the the Bering Strait land bridge was one of them another one was perhaps Asian people ancient Asian people taking boats and sailing across the Pacific also there's some theories that some ancient European peoples crossed across kind of going from Iceland to Greenland to North America we do know that the Vikings in fact took this route and we also do know that Eskimo people into it is the more proper term to use here the Inuit actually traveled from Alaska to Russia so we do know that these instances happen in more recent history so people have theorized why could that have happened in pre recorded history so like I said the the multiple migration theory is definitely the one that is kind of gaining in popularity and it helps to explain the archaeological record but regardless as to how what they've been call this paleo-indians meaning you know very early Native American peoples regardless of how these paleo-indians came to the Americas they were able to thoroughly establish themselves throughout the continents throughout the regions and eventually established flourishing cultures societies even economies religions and they were able to really create the foundations of what would become future Native American groups and cultures which would eventually be impact by that first contact with European people and and just the sheer fact that once Europeans came to North America and the land was occupied completely and radically changed colonial history and and of course that's something that's very obvious but it's something that is important to acknowledge and discuss so for our next slide we are going to discuss the Central and South American groups of course before we get into these groups do you want to talk again this is kind of more of anthropology combined with archaeological discussion but it's important to kind of understand you know how settlement happens and the importance of settles and creation of civilized civilized societies and civilize not in the term that we tend to think of being upright and proper and manner but but in the true term of what is a civilization cultures groups people so if you think we using the term civilized it doesn't mean that they are you know proper and you know what we think of as civility but more of a true civilization it's very true form so we do know that people have been settling in South America since about 15,000 BC that's 1/5 and then 3 zeroes ancient civilizations some of the early groups were called for example the Olmecs and the tow trucks these are kind of the predecessors to the Mayans and the Aztecs they were the ones that started farming and they established agriculture and this is really a central aspect of creating a civilization so it kind of brings up the question of why why is farming so important to creating a civilization well first off you don't need to forage for food anymore you have to search and go looking for sustenance basically you put the food where you want it and it grows and you have it when you need it you also don't need to be as reliant on hunting of course hunting is so important so you can get your meats and your proteins but it's not as central for a lot of people that have become more settled and more stabilized you also don't need to rely on the seasons as much of course crops vary by season but you because you make the food and you have enough of it that you can even have surplus for those you know the winter months and such you have less dependence on just kind of what happens with nature you can kind of prepare to battle against nature if you will prepare for those negative seasons which could be affect your food sources also a society that takes on agriculture results usually in domestication of animals because having domesticated animals helps to you know manage your crops in some regard for example in Europe you see you know you get oxen and such also you have to have ways to water your crops so you get irrigation systems irrigation builds architecture and you're standing in the same place over time so you don't need to have tiny little houses that can be deconstructed quickly so you can move you're staying in the same place you can build larger things you can make you know monuments that will last over time instead of having smaller things so so you're more stable in where you live you're not nomadic anymore and so overall your your focus is much less on survival because you're less focused on survival you can focus on more cultural aspects things like art religion clothing societies you can build governments and such because you're not focusing on that basic need of survival also if you think that you know you're not moving around as much so you don't have as easy access to that are far away so you've established trade networks you build roads if their supplies that I want but don't have access to I create a network with another group of people that's much further away to give you what I want and of course trade increases economy it increases wealth in society and then you know increase wealth it creates stratifications in society so I know this is kind of been a long digression but agriculture is kind of the base of creating a society crazy creating a civilization it makes all the difference and we'll see this as we compare various Native American groups those that do have agriculture and those that don't so talking about groups specifically one of the first ones we're going to talk about is the Inca they were primarily in South America and so they occupied most of what was along the Andes Mountains Andes mountain range modern-day Chile as well as Peru but they established very long road networks within the mountains and it actually utilized domesticated llamas to help with travel if you're anything about llamas are actually very good at no navigating the the rocky and and sloped terrain of the mountains so they're a very interesting culture they had a lot of stone architecture they had irrigation systems the picture that you see to the bottom left there is one of their structures called Machu Picchu it's definitely one of their more famous remnants that has been left behind of their civilization in their culture the Inca religion was pantheistic meaning that they had multiple gods often that they had a natural connection so each God kind of had its domain that it was in charge of that it monitored basically they also were kind of believed for the longest time they were believed that they were kind of the peaceful group and the mine and the Aztecs were the more violent ones the the Inca were a United Empire so it was definitely you know one ruler one leader leading the entire area and so there wasn't a lot of warfare but we do know that they actually did practice its human sacrifice and this has been discovered through archaeal archaeological remains and specifically their sacrifices were often of children and in fact the the reason behind this has been theorized that children were viewed as being pure and therefore a more holy offering to the gods and these children would actually be selected months or potentially years in advance they would be treated lavishly given the finest clothes the best food beautiful jewelry and and they would be kind of prepared for the offering that would come later on so we do know that by about the 1400s the Incan Empire spanned about 2,500 miles with over 12 million people in this Empire so this is pretty huge and pretty vast and the Inca actually lasted as a culture as a civilization until the invasion of the Spanish conquistadors and this is something we'll talk about later on in our another of our lectures but the fall of the Inca Empire officially came actually through August or on August 29th in 1533 so they were actually doing quite well until the Spanish came in and now there are other groups in South America you know the Amazons that live along the Amazon River there of course people that are kind of nomadic and limited agriculture but the ink are definitely the largest and most prominent group within South America so sitting to Central America so this is like modern-day Mexico kind of getting you know all the way down until you get to Panama where it's that very narrow neck of land the first thing we're going to talk about are the Maya so the Mayans had actually established agriculture by about 1500 BC and again like I said they were kind of the Olmecs and the Toltecs were the predecessors of the Mayas now the Mayas were incredibly intellectually advanced just very you know advanced with mathematics in fact they were the first cultural group to come up with the concept of the No zero so for example in Roman numerals you kind of use the numerals to build the number that you want but doing math is so much easier if you have the number zero that you just tap on to the end so you know one at a zero that becomes ten at a second zero that becomes 100 that becomes much easier so they were incredibly advanced mathematicians they were also incredibly knowledgeable about astronomy in fact they build huge stone cities and these cities and you know vast complexes with various temples were actually reflected the Astronomy you know up in the sky and so they were very very knowledgeable about their connections to the Stars and knowledge of you know kind of more of the constellations and structures in the sky they also had a written language of pictograms so basically pictures represent various things and that's surprisingly accurate calendar which they did not invent this calendar but they did they took it from other cultures and societies and modified it to to make it better to improve it also again a sign of their their improvement and their modification and and great intellect now the Maya unlike the Inca where the Inka was just one giant Empire the Maya were actually a shared cultural group so you could have different kings different you know rulers and monarchs but they all share the same culture so it's dead we recognized with my we're not a United Empire that you know Maya fight against each other if you know a certain war got started that you know a conflict or something like they did Oh overall they had a similar pantheist religion again multiple gods each God has its own domain they had a shared language a shared culture and the Maya dominated Central America for around 600 years so they were totally established forever for quite a while the Maya were very fond of warfare and political leaders were expected not only to be intelligent to be you know smart and studied but also to be good warriors and strategists again because they were not unified they could fight against each other often similar to the Incas the Mayans also practiced human sacrifice in particular blood was a central component of the offering and in fact it's really interesting because the way that Mayans sacrifice actually changed over time in early Mayan history decapitation removal of the head is actually the most common method of sacrifice but as the Aztecs grew up as a group you know in similar location to the Mayans it actually shifted to heart removal as a more common form of offering high status prisoners of war would be sacrificed to the gods and lower-level captains of war were often put into to slavery and so it's definitely you know not everyone is being sacrificed here but the sacrifices occurred at the top of the temples in fact the image that you see to the right is a Mayan temple and I forgot to mention that the image that you see on the top left is buying calendar and then what would happen is various things could happen to the body after the sacrifice kind of the desecration of the corpse was a finalization of you know this enemy that we have captured so various things like you know tearing a part of the body this embattlement tearing out the bowels a very interesting one was kicking the body down the stairs and then peeling the skin off and the priests would wear the skin heads being placed on pikes chests being torn open so for it for the Maya the desecration of the corpus was a central part of this sacrifice kind of finalizing and completing everything now it's not exactly known why the Mayan civilization declined it's kind of a historical mystery something that historians have been really confused about but their civilization did slowly decline over time and die in vast cities this gradually were abandoned they fell into ruin and eventually the jungle kind of reclaimed the land that's why it's so hard to find Mayan ruins is because the jungle is so pervasive it this has taken everything over you know various theories such as drought perhaps war maybe diseases crop failures so the Mayans had had fallen away by you know by the time Europeans come the Maya no longer exists as a large you know ruling body but many of people that lived in Central America were descendants of the Mayas the Maya had just kind of dispersed and become a more diasporic people so so voice aspects of their culture were still in existence even though the large-scale Maya were not at the time of European contact and many actually many Mexican individuals often will link their history to the history of the Maya as well as the Aztecs and of course we'll talk about in our lectures of later on we talk about Spanish conquistadors there are many parts of both Maya and Aztec culture that survived through a conquering of the Spanish or by the Spanish so switching gears choose the Aztec they are also located in Central America in your textbook it wilfer to them as the Mexica we do know that the Aztecs did not call themselves Aztecs that's a name that's been put on them by European individuals but they didn't speak a language called Nahuatl and mexico is a term that is more popularly used by historians because it's kind of a more politically correct term that could have possibly been used by the Aztecs to call themselves that but basically if you hear me saying Aztec or Mexico it's the same individual same group of people the terms can be used interchangeably so the control of much of what would be considered modern-day Mexico by 1300 ad they built huge pools large palaces public buildings large plazas they had intense irrigation systems and just massive architecture there's even records of floating gardens bridges canals suddenly some very advanced in fact the the image that you see to the bottom right is an Aztec temple and in fact the capital city of the Aztecs was a place called Tenochtitlan and it was built in or started in 1325 and it was a police had basically all of these things specifically the floating gardens they had bridges for defense that could be raised lowered they had intense architecture I mean ten Tenochtitlan was actually larger and more structurally advanced than London at the same time in fact it was the largest one of the largest cities in the world at the time and definitely the largest and most advanced city in North Central or South America and in fact Tenochtitlan is actually located where modern-day Mexico City is Mexico City was actually built on the ruins of Tenochtitlan and it was a bit more about that but like their counterparts you know that we've talked about the Aztec the established agriculture architecture irrigation farming technology they were very advanced in their politics and systems and laws they had a very well-written language so again very advanced much more than we typically tend to think of you know Native American groups their culture was predominantly a warrior and conquer mentality think think like the Spartans of ancient Greece very so much of the Mayans the captives of war were often offered up as sacrifices and heart removal was the most common form of sacrifice in fact they had rituals and sacrifices quite often on a weekly basis and during the seasons of you know holidays or various holy you know references and such it could even be almost daily in fact the skulls of the sacrifice were displayed in the central plaza of Tenochtitlan by the thousands the Sun God was associated with many of aspects of Aztec religion many sack Isis in fact a lot of Aztec people truly believed that if sacrifices were not made the Sun would stop rising in the morning that is how central that sacrifice was to their culture well but you have to remember the sacrifices also a means of fear and control over conquered individuals and other groups in the area it definitely makes a statement when you walk into the central plaza of Tenochtitlan to see thousands of skulls of the conquered it definitely is a show of power and of course so again the question of did everyone in the Aztec society actually believe that the Sun would rise probably not but it definitely we do know from you know the record and such that it was a central belief as well as being practical for fear and power demonstrations now the Aztecs were actually one of the main groups to clash with the Spanish conquistadors and the that will be discussed later on but the fall of the Aztecs came specifically with the conquistador by the name of Cortes and it was very vicious very brutal the siege of Tenochtitlan was very intense and basically the city was in the conquering city was basically burned to the ground destroyed you know the stone architecture torn apart and Mexico City was built by Cortes on the ruins so that's why to you know steal on and Mexico City are in these are moving on to our next slide we're going to discuss North American groups so we see a lot of similarities amongst South and Central American cultures you know for example a lot of them have sacrificed they're also very intense large-scale warfare a lot of conquering vast empires monumental architecture the gods are a pantheon where each God is kind of in charge of a certain domain these aspects are not seen in North American groups of course there can be some minor similarities in their worldview but they're in in general North American groups are very different from group to group geographically there's a lot of differences that result they spoke many different languages but actually had no written language I'm like the you know the people we talked about that 50 grams of the liens on the language of the Aztecs they do not have a written language the religion also did not focus on a pantheon of gods instead it focused more on the sacredness of the land as well as a topic called animism as basically it's an intense reverence for animals specifically recognizing that they have a spirit as valued as humans are they have an intelligence that's similar to that of humans you know it's kind of a stretch here but you know if you're familiar with the movie Pocahontas and colors of the wind she mentions that you know everything has a life has a spirit has a name well that's true for Native American people everything has you know this spiritual importance there's also Esther's through ghosts and spirits of the deceased in general most Native North or excuse me most northern Native American groups believed in a great spirit that controlled the other spirits of nature so it's definitely more spiritual more of a connection to land connection to animals connection to the Great Spirit and much less gods that control the world there's also this idea of communal land use in general nobody owns the land the land is to be used by everyone within the clan or tribe of course they're gonna be disputes as to which tribe belongs on the land which tribes should be here but the individual one person did not own land and this idea alone is actually going to be a major source of conflict between Native Americans and Europeans because Europeans do believe in independent and ownership and that's going to be a problem as we'll see so the first room that we're going to talk about here are people that lived in the southwest so this is you know Arizona New Mexico Nevada Utah kind of you know what we think of as the Old West if you will there's quite a diverse group of people that are living here before European contact you know groups such as you've heard of probably the Hopi the Navajo the Zuni snoots Shoshone Anasazi all of these vests you know very different groups of people it's actually believed that they migrated northward from Mexico and we're able to establish surprisingly thriving cultures despite actually living in the desert they would build cliffside villages which are actually called by blows by the Spanish and that's actually why the Native American group webelo are called that is because it was the name of the Spanish gave them and if you look at the image to the top right you'll see one of these red low villages that has been built into the side of the cliff and they actually again they're living in the in the middle of the desert they actually managed to build irrigation channels and to actually maintain crops quite well but unfortunately there were some changes in the environment some changes in climate along with increased warfare many of these cliffside dwellings had to be abandoned but despite that many Native American people who live in the Four Corners region again that area of Arizona New Mexico Nevada and such they are descendants of these original peoples again you know Navajo Shoshone and various Native American groups and in fact there are many people that still live there today the Navajo is probably one of the most popular groups that people know about and even though they didn't have a written language their language is actually Hughes four codes during world war two and it's actually because it wasn't written that it was used so again Navajo history is part of American history I'm talking about Northwest Native American peoples this includes regions of the Pacific coast some places like Alaska Canada Washington Oregon and even parts of Northern California not really southern whistling Northern California where the redwoods are and such and they establish more hunter-gatherer lifestyle they do not develop farming so because they don't develop farming they don't stay in one place they don't develop irrigation they don't have texture so that explains a lot of differences in their culture they do have a little bit of infrastructure you know a little bit of irrigation here and there but they're definitely a more mobile people of course this is a very vastly wooded land so they use trees to build homes creating long houses and they have really large canoes that they use for fishing and travel in fact according to one record fifty men could fit in one of these canoes because the trees were so big they did have small-scale warfare mostly between clans and with use as it means to gain slave slaves excuse me their class structure was very simple because their lifestyle was simple so basically you have at the bottom is your slaves next up is your commoners and then the nice level at the top are your Chiefs so it's a very simple structure they did create very distinctive art distinctive cultures in fact one of the most famous and well-known pieces of Pacific Native American groups is the totem pole and you can see the depiction that's a modern creation that is not an older or an artifact or anything but again its various animals tribal representation of the importance of animism again is being brought up here the next group is the Great Plains Indians they're probably the group that most Americans think of when we talk about Native American people the individual that you see picked it here is a Plains Indian and of course they've been made very popular through film and media you know cowboys and Indians kind of thoughts here but of course they were around much longer than the Cowboys were so this includes groups like the Sioux the Cheyenne the crow the Apache the Comanche definitely again very vast tribes and societies within the larger group of Great Plains Indians also the Great Plains is going to be a very fertile landscape so this means that they don't really mean to farm much because the the land pretty much offers everything that they need they were nomadic hunter gatherers with bison being the most plentiful animal in the region because there's a lot of cereal grains there's going to be a lot of grazing animals bison antelope deer and such it's so because they don't establish agriculture they definitely move a lot from place to place in fact the the teepee that a lot of people are familiar with is specific to the Great Plains Indians but what makes the teepee so great is because it's not only can it be taken up and put down very easily but it's made out of ice and leather bison height so it is weatherproof so if you're traveling from one place to another and the weather gets really bad it gets really rainy are really snowy you know that your home is still going to be weatherproof so it's a great building material and it's very good to latarian and of course for these people hunting is going to be the most important way to obtain food and of course Buffalo specifically because it is so plentiful it's so large that one good hunt could feed you for a very long time and you can see the Buffalo throughout their culture of course like I mentioned the leather for the teepees we know that they made shields from specifically the hump of the Buffalo of course jerky as well as beef meals being an important part of their food of course drawings and you know painting and such on on structures or teepees and other things including the Buffalo rituals are central to ensuring that you have a good hunt so having you know some sort of cultural religious ritual before you go hunting to ensure that you get your animal because if you don't get your Buffalo you're going to starve also we do know that they also developed what was called Plains sign language and this is actually recorded in first encounters by Spaniards and this was a means to communicate with other Plains Indian groups it was also used to pass down stories through oral tradition because if you have certain hand signals that go with your stories it's a little easier to remember how this story goes also you know we have various accents as we go from place to place and the you know sometimes it's very hard you know someone from up north my our time understanding a southern accent so if you're meeting with the Plains Indian individual and they're having a hard time understanding your language you have this agreed-upon sign language that everyone knows to help with your communication that's why you see a lot of times in especially in older movies I think a really terrible example of this terrible in the fact that it's racist depiction is actually in the movie Peter Pan by Disney the cartoon one if you notice that the Native American chief he basically talks with his hands the whole time that's because they had a sign language that they use very often so again it's a racist picture but it's actually shows how you know very clever these people weren't establishing a language which everyone could understand even if you with your hands instead of with your mouth Plains Indians also had a very strong and unique horse culture and most narratives basically explain and tell that the Spaniards and the Spanish introduced horses to America and specifically introduced horses to the Great Plains Indians but what's really interesting is in recent years first of all Native American oral tradition as well as some archaeological and even DNA research birds fossils as well as Native American art and artifacts I've actually started to kind of contradict that theory some historians are skeptical others actually think one of them is a woman by the name of dr. Yvette running horse Collins she is a Native American woman and she actually argues that horses were around long before the Spanish arrived she thinks that the Spanish kind of developed this myth that they introduced horses to Native Americans because in Spanish culture horses are a symbol of power status and civility so if you have these group of people that you're supposed to be depicting as you know savage subhuman they shouldn't have horses because that means that they're the exact opposite means they're civilized it means that they have you know status and power so she argues dr. Collins argues that they wrote history to say that we introduced them to horses again you know we're giving them culture we're giving them society most historians do assert that horses were brought over by the Spanish and that this horse culture developed after first contact with Europeans so this is a topic that's not highly debated but definitely one that you know causes some people questions it's an interesting one in my opinion so the next group that we're gonna talk about here of course continuing along with North Americans is the Mississippians so this is includes the east bank and the river basin of the Mississippi River as well as the Ohio Valley so not a huge vast region but definitely still a larger area here the Mississippi and culture flourished very quickly and then it died out just before here of Gihon arrival so a lasted from about 800 BC to 1500 AD we don't actually know the name for this cultural group we don't know what they called themselves we're just the lack of records the lack of written language made this very difficult so that's why they're just named after the river the Mississippi River we do know that of course the Mississippi region is very fertile lands actually allowed them to develop agriculture they mainly grew corn beans and squash along with tobacco but what was distinctive about this group was specifically the structures they built not necessarily you know these large massive buildings but in fact Lee designed large mounds in fact another nickname for the Mississippians is the mountain builders but what's so impressive about these mounds is they actually created images and pictures which could only be seen from the sky things like snakes Birds wolves imperious other animals and in general they built large mounds in their cities and their villages which they would put temples or homes of you know the elites the high-class citizens would be built on top of these mounds and it's actually by digging into the mounds themselves that are key archaeologists have been able to learn more their society and be able to discover that complicated we still don't even know why they built the mounds they could be seen from the sky but possibly basically an offering for the Great Spirit or you know someone that lives up in the sky but they're definitely very interesting and very beautiful now we do know that their Science Society was actually quite complicated in fact they had specific divisions of labors so people could be professional hunters or professional farmers cooks artisans fishermen things like that they also had large vast trading networks in fact in goods all the way from the Atlantic Post have been found in the mounds in the Mississippi and that the Mississippians had built and vice versa things artifacts that could only have come from the Mississippi area and found with Atlantic coasts Native American people's so this represents of course a large complicated society vast trade networks definitely intricate systems here one of the biggest discoveries to date is specifically a center of village or I guess more of a city center called Cahokia there was a large you know large buildings quite large structures in architecture in fact the entire city was in case with a huge timber wall that was two miles long to protect the entire village from it supported at least 15,000 Remedy residents and covered over 3,000 acres of land so surprisingly Cahokia is actually the in in the Americas was the largest city north of Tenochtitlan and again surprisingly it was completely abandoned and forgotten by 1250 ad it was basically just left and we again we still don't know for sure what happened it's believed that the main factor again has been environmental change specifically the deforestation of the region by Native American peoples we do know that there was an earthquake occurring around 1250 which theoretically would have caused widespread flooding and again there's no trees to help stop with the removal of nutrient rich topsoil which made farming very difficult and if you can't farm you don't have food so even though the Society of the Mississippians didn't exist anymore it wasn't you know a central location very similar to the Mayans once they were gone the people dispersed and the culture still lived on and impacted other Native American people in the area so the next group is eastern Indians and this is a phrase that refers to people pretty much from the east coast of Maine all the way to Florida even including areas such as the Gulf Coast and Louisiana from we know the greatest deal about these people because they were the ones who were first encountered by Europeans Europeans then wrote about them and adding them to the historical record so because of this we're gonna go a little bit more in depth into eastern Native American groups kind of the subgroups that exist and really explore a lot more of their culture for the first half of this class until basically until Europeans expand you know in Americans expand past the Mississippi River it's how we talk about a Native American group it's gonna be an eastern Indians group of people of course like I said there's subcategories within them and we're gonna talk about these various subcategories so the first here is Algonquian this group of people is located mainly in New England as well as a little bit around the Great Lakes region they actually go all the way down to Virginia and even parts of northern Carolina's places like Roanoke the pouches at Jamestown as well as the Wampanoag that encountered the pilgrims they were all Algonquian people and of course that's gonna come up again when we get into that history in fact the very beginning of the presentation is actually a depiction of an algonquian man and that was painted around 1584 now similar to the Maya Gong Koreans were a shared cultural group not a United Empire or a canoe see or anything like that so Algonquin people could would often quite you know quite often fight amongst themselves or between other Algonquin groups just because someone was Algonquian did not mean that they would always get along they lived in small round in shelters called wigwams in fact the image that you see to the top there is a modern recreation of a wigwam but again based on the historical records and the drawings and the paintings uh by Europeans they were primarily hunter-gatherer but they practiced small-scale subsistence farming so for example if you have a small little vegetable farm outside of your house that small-scale subsistence farming their main crops they had were what has been termed the three sisters that's corn beans and squash specifically these three crops were actually grown in the same plot of land in a very symbiotic style the corn stalks which grew you know of course very tall allowed a structure for the beatings to grow on and this also helped to protect and strengthen the corn stalks in the south the squash grew in the shade of the corn and the bean plants but also helped to cover the ground to prevent the growth of weeds so each plant is kind of helping each other out these three crops were central to Algonquian diet and actually a lot of eastern indians participated in this practice as well but it was central these three crops were of course very very important they also among Queen people also practice regular controlled burns of the forest not only to create fertile soil so they could grow these crops but also to create grazing lands for Fears so it's very interesting that when European people come they look at the the woods as you know an untouched landscape that hasn't been altered at all but not surprisingly Native American people have been altering the land for their own you know uses and benefits way before Europeans had even gotten there so it's very interesting that you know they looked it as a native untouched landscape when it really wasn't that way next group of people here are the Iroquois now the Iroquois were located much more west and a little bit south of Algonquians they were however a united nation so it was a United group of people with agreed-upon laws and and you're actually going to read their laws that they have later on in this semester they were composed originally of just a couple of groups the Seneca their own and Daaga the Mohawk Oneida and the Cayuga in fact the creation story that you're going to read this week is from the Oneida and then they were later joined actually during the colonial era by the Cherokee and the Tuscarora and we're going to talk about how that joining happened and now the Iroquois occupied much of modern-day New York and Sylvania regions of the Great Lakes area a little bit so they definitely come in conflict excuse me in conflict with Algonquians quite a bit but even go as far as you know some of the Carolinas Georgia region a little bit so definitely a little bit more vast because they are a united body of people a lot of Native Americans fight against the Iroquois and so they're kind of viewed by Native American people they're kind of viewed as the big bad guy that that definitely has a lot of power a lot of status and you know in the regions and in the area the Iroquois lived you know in these clan these tribal groups largely based on a family structure in fact the matriarch was the head of the clan so women were actually at the head but it's acknowledged that women and men were not considered equals in Native American culture but they have separate spheres of operation which they both could have high size to Frank so for example men could not be a high-ranking chieftain but women could not be a shaman that was a rule just for men so so each person kind of could reach a high level of status but it was not interchangeable between men and women in general exactly interesting to note that Native American women across you know a lot of the groups that we've talked about today are like have more rights freedom's then European women at the same time and so you know it's really interesting that Europeans come and they call them savages yet it's they treat their women more respect more freedoms or rights so it's just again interesting perspectives that Europeans have about Native American cultures and like I mentioned warfare between Algonquians and Iroquois are going to be quite common because these are the two largest groups in the region and in fact they would often join with Europeans to help take out rival groups for example the Iroquois are gonna join with various groups to help fight Algonquians and Algonquians will join with Europeans when there's attacks on Iroquois and that's going to be a big part of French and Indian War even the American Revolution a little bit we're going to talk about kind of some of these alliances that happen but warfare is a prominent part of Iroquois culture because conflict is just so often and it really develops into kind of a retribution style of warfare basically if you lose a member of your tribe to another you know another party another group attacking you you're gonna go to war against that group to avenge the Lost member of your tribe and so you kind of see that this creates a cyclical behavior of oh you killed this person we're gonna attack you and kill your people well then that TRO that tribe goes hey you killed our people we're gonna go back in attack and kill you so it kind of creates a cyclical attitude of warfare and retribution there was also very interesting practice and this is practiced by both Algonquin and Iroquois of actually captivity in warfare men women and children of what we be considered enemy groups or tribes would very often be captured specifically men would be killed again as payment for those that had been lost in battle but the women and the children would actually be adopted into the tribe and accepted as natural-born members in fact they were treated as if they were Iroquois as if they had been born and raised that tribe there was no differentiation no mistreatment no viewing as being a lesser person because you were born from another pride what's interesting is this practice of adoption is completely unheard of in European warfare and it will be a source of conflict and it absolutely terrifies Europeans the idea that their women and children could be captured and in their minds forced to live with Native American people it terrifies them and that's gonna be again a point of conflict which we will discuss in future lectures so the last group we're gonna talk about here are the Eastern woodland this primarily they go south along the Gulf Coast and they speak the language what's called miss Keegan and this include P includes groups such as the creeks the Chickasaws and the Choctaws they have a very rigid class structure which follows through again the matrilineal line through the mothers line through the women they live in very small towns and villages and they live in very interesting styled homes that had batched roofs with no walls you have to remember that this is they're living in pretty hot regions you know this is the coast the Gold Coast of Texas stay out in Florida it is hot and it is humid so they're having these open walls it allows for air to pass through the image that you see to the bottom right is an image it's a modern image or more recent image of one of these styled homes that is a recreation of the descendants of these initial Eastern woodland and they were very adaptive people very often involved with warfare with other tribes once your pians come they have a lot of wars with Europeans and it seemingly enough they also accept many runaway slaves during the colonial era in fact in a lot of slaves that live kind of close to the region of Florida it was better for them to actually run away just go straight south and join with the Native Americans instead of trying to make their way through the south to get to the north and the tribes in a very similar fashion adopted them and accepted them into the tribe and of course the the intense was billions of these Native American peoples combined with the perseverance of African Americans actually created the only Native American group that was able to resist forced removal during the 1800s in that group of people was called the Seminoles so if you've ever heard of the Seminoles they were definitely an impressive group because of their ability to withstand force removal so that is the end I know that again it was thousands of years of history that we went over in a very relatively short time and of course this is a very general overview of the numerous people that lived in the Americas various cultural groups there are many you know religious ideas cultural practices many things that we just didn't get a chance to talk about and and the main thing to take away from this lecture is that Native American culture was widespread throughout the region people were everywhere it wasn't just small little regions or small little sessions it was a very occupied landscape and their culture was widespread and just as married it's not more so than European culture it was very complicated with hierarchical systems as who is at the top who is at the bottom different social structures different forms of art infrastructure architecture you know it's so vastly complicated and and their culture was not better or worse than Europeans it was just so different that difference comes from the intensive isolation because these people did not come into contact with anyone for thousands of thousands of years it created just such a different culture and and it's those differences and that cultural foundation that created so much clash with Europeans when they came because everything was just so different that the Europeans had a really hard time understanding it and and of course Native American history does not end in the colonial era it continues on even into the modern era but it's definitely definitely a central part of what we're getting into with colonial history revolutionary history and even of course you know expansion Western Native American people are always there and a very important aspect of early American history all the way up to this award