having spent time in our last lecture talking about the eastern woodlands culture groups we want to shift gears now and talk a little bit about the various native american groups that the spanish began to encounter as the spanish arrived in the new world remember that initial colonization among europeans took place by the spanish and the spanish encountered different people in the american southwest and in mexico and we want to spend a little bit of time talking about um those pre-contact societies then uh in this lecture now one of the things that i pointed out when we talked about the clovis people and remember genetic studies today demonstrate that almost all native americans today were descendants of of those clovis big game hunters and the important thing to remember is that they were big game hunters and um they hunted um using spears remember the clovis point that that spear point um was very instrumental in helping the clovis people in their pursuit of big gig well over time um a new technology uh began to emerge and it took time obviously but by the roughly the 7th century a.d we began to see the emergence of a new hunting technology that greatly assisted native americans as they um pursued game of all kinds certainly by the seventh century um mammoths and mastodons were no longer around um some of the giant bison um you know all of the giant bison were gone much smaller bison existed much smaller animals existed nevertheless hunting and gathering remained the primary means of survival in the western um regions of north north america and the emergence of the bow and arrow sometime around the 7th century really began to revolutionize hunting among native americans more generally and if you think about it hunting um was and is a very skillful pursuit you have to have knowledge you have to be very careful and you have to train to hunt effectively and when people hunted using spears they had to be able to get very close to the animals in order to take down big game and so of course they had to be able to stalk they had to be very careful about how they approached animals in order to bring them down the bow and the arrow began to change all that the bow and the arrow began to allow hunters to take down animals from a distance the net result was hunting became a much more efficient and much more successful pursuit and consequently then food sources became more reliable and so in part as a result of changes in hunting and in part as as a result of changes in agriculture people began to settle down they they in the american west or what would become the american west um they began to live in one place and they became sedentary societies they began to grow um maize or corn and beans and other kinds of of crops that supplemented their diet and allowed for a more stable food source and consequently populations began to grow okay and so by the 7th century with the advent of farming and more successful hunting techniques people began to settle down and as they did they began to build um dwellings places where they lived and perhaps the most important the most recognized of these is a cliff dwelling that exists in southwestern colorado called me severity if you've ever been to mesa verde or any of the dwellings that exist in the american southwest then you're visiting the ruins of a culture that we commonly refer to as the anasazi culture okay and between the 600 uh 600s and the 1300s these anasazi people um thrived in in the southwestern united states and we know that because they built um these these cliff dwellings um canyon de shea in in arizona mesa verde and and there's a variety of cliff dwellings throughout the region which suggests that the populations were fairly widespread fairly dispersed but also that people um survived very well all right and so um the anasazi people um thrived in this region and and just to kind of um clarify for you um sometimes the anasazi culture is also called the basket maker of culture um the word anasazi is actually a navajo word i mean they refer to the ancient ones the anasazi um but sometimes um archaeologists today will refer to this as also um the basket maker culture okay now what's really intriguing about these anasazi is that by the time the spanish came on the scenes and remember the spanish are are going to start coming on the scene in the 1500s remember columbus is 1492 and spanish arrival in this region is going to take place in the 1500s and the really intriguing thing that happens then is the spanish start finding mesa verde they find canyon duchet they find all of these um cliff dwellings all of these human habitations have been completely abandoned it raised the question then to the to the spanish and it's one that we continue um to ponder to this day what happened to these people what happened to the anasazi why did they abandon these dwellings why did they abandon all of their habitations by the time the spanish arrived okay well there's a variety of different um possible explanations that that people have used to try and understand what happened to the anasazi people one of them is that there was drought conditions that began to happen um in the 1300s these drought conditions obviously began to threaten um agriculture and and and places like mesa verde did rely not only on hunting but on agriculture as well and so what what very likely happened is that dwellings like mesa verde mesa verde was actually located and is located right above a river but it's a small river and during a drought those smaller rivers tended to dry up and so what very likely happened then is as a result of of drought the smaller rivers dried up and the people who lived on those rivers and depended upon those rivers were quite literally forced to relocate and so larger rivers that flow more regularly during dry years became the source of um congregation where or the site of congregation i should say the place where more and more people began to settle and and so the rio grande valley of new mexico uh became a concentrated area of settlement all right the anasazi people then who settled in new mexico came to be known as the pueblo people that's how the spanish um referred to them all right so the pueblo and people are pueblo people we will talk about them when we talk about the colonization of new mexico all right these are the descendants especially of those anasazi people all right they were more sedentary they were agricultural okay they built um adobe structures and lived uh in in a adobe structure okay and ultimately as we'll see they're going to clash with the spanish all right so the anasazi and pueblo people of the southwest very important okay now in addition to the anasazi there were other people that we need to mention briefly because they come into the story of of a settlement in this region as well right the anasazi people may have been um forced out of places like mesa verdi as well and they may have been forced to consolidate and congregate in part as a result of invasions that took place in other words any anasazi congregation may have been a defense mechanism as well right sometime around the 1200s we began to see the migration into the southwestern united states of groups of people who came from the far north okay these people spoke languages that belong to a family of language called the athapascan okay the athapascan is a language family and that language family includes languages like modern navajo and the modern apache language all right and so the origins of navajos and apaches um is probably up in canada okay we know that because of linguistic similarities between the navajos and the apaches and the people of the the the first nations of of canada okay we also know it because of cultural material cultural commonalities that existed okay uh between the two people all right so navajos and apaches were um nomadic people that is they migrated um and they they moved um southward and they were uh in in many ways uh people who survived by raiding okay these were raiding people who very likely um survived uh by attacking and raiding uh anasazi settlements okay and that's why we call this the southwestern or i refer to these as the southwest farmers and raiders okay athabascan people tended to raid as a means of survival and anasazi's the farmers were oftentimes um the victims of that rating okay that was a process that continued well into um the time when the the spanish came on the sea okay so having said this and i need to clarify something um very quickly here because um i went to school in arizona and i i um i know i know people who are navajo and if you uh go to arizona if you talk to navajo people um you have to be very careful because the navajo tradition um does not accept this this theory of athabascan origins okay the navajo believe that they are descendants of the anasazi okay that is the cliff dwelling people um of mesa verde canyon de shea these ruins the navajo claim those as the ruins of their ancestors okay archaeologists don't agree with that archaeologists see the anasazi uh and the athabascan-speaking navajos as as different cultures all right so the point is there is not um absolute agreement among um native americans themselves and and um scholars on the origins of different groups and the navajos are our one example of that okay but the navajos and apaches are um very important um contributing peoples in in the history of this region now it is important before i go on to to remember something that while we tend to associate the navajos and the apaches with horses okay and we tend to think of raiding as tasting taking place on horseback remember the horse did not arrive until the spanish introduced the horse in the 16th century all right so these athabascan people prior to contact um were they they traveled about on foot okay they didn't have the benefit of horses uh to get around and that ultimately meant that raiding was more dangerous and if and in the case of anasazi and athabascans hunting was much more difficult all right you didn't have the benefit of being able to run down animals and and shoot them all right now the third group that i want to talk about briefly when we talk about the southwest is a group um that actually came from the south okay they spoke languages that belong to a family of language called the uto aztecan languages okay udo as tekken as the name suggests came from mexico okay and very likely these judo aztecan people especially began to migrate northward out of mexico and into the present day united states especially as the spanish arrived and began colonizing um in central mexico so in the 1500s as the spanish begin to colonize in mexico these uto-aztecan people were kind of forced out of southern mexico and into northern mexico and even into mother modern um the modern-day united states okay they initially settled in the areas around um well in utah and nevada okay and that's why they're called the uto azteca and in fact that's how utah got its name okay these people settled in the area of the great basin okay but by the 1700s some of these judo aztec and people had kind of migrated to the north and east into wyoming and then they actually traveled southward through colorado and down into the texas panhandle area okay these people became known as the comanches and in many ways they were later arrivals right when we get to texas history later on in this class we will talk extensively about the comanches and comanche wars and when we do um it's important to understand where these people came from okay they came out of a different language tradition they came out of a different cultural tradition thus navajos and apaches and comanches though they were all raiding people they were highly nomadic people they didn't come out of the same cultures they didn't come out of the same cult backgrounds and thus navajo is and apaches and comanches also often fought with one another all right so warfare was very much part of life uh in pre-contact uh in the pre-contact southwest right so that's a little bit now about um the southwest these are the some of the people that the spanish will encounter as they begin to colonize into the southwestern united states these are some of the people that the united states will start to encounter as they start to expand um west of the mississippi in the 19th century all right so the southwest farmers and raiders the third culture area and i guess before i before i get to that culture area let me real quickly just kind of show you the map and just kind of remind you of the the movement of of native americans okay remember the the people of the region east of the united states east of the mississippi river here's the mississippi okay these are the people that collectively we generally refer to these as the eastern woodlands groups okay um the southwest um the farmers of the southwest um those of the basket maker tradition collectively known as the anasazi and again the pueblo were part of that anasazi tradition okay um the raiders that came in from the north from canada these are the athabascan people okay their descendants became the navajos and the apaches they were a raiding people highly nomadic in the southwestern united states as well all right and then out of mexico the uto-aztecan people moved especially as the spanish colonized in mexico moved into the desert southwest initially in nevada and utah and again groups of utah aztec and kind of moved up and around through wyoming down through colorado and ultimately down in back down here into texas these were the comanches and the comanches will figure very prominently uh in the history of the of the state of texas okay finally we want to spend some time now talking a little bit about the um peoples of mesoamerica okay um these are the people that were part of or that lived in modern-day mexico when the spanish came on the scene okay now before i talk about these people and their history i think it's very important that students understand the difference between mythology and history because the fact of the matter is much of the history of mesoamerica is tied up and steeped in the mythology of the region okay and sometimes mythology and history overlap sometimes mythology um is very difficult to distinguish from history and history is different difficulties distinguished from mythology okay but the important distinction be to be made between mythology and history is that history certainly as we study it in this class is a study it is a discipline and it is based on evidence and it incorporates modern scientific methods okay it's based on science and reason and logic okay what we look at is history and the material that i will be presenting in this class is based on evidence okay evidence is critical in understanding the past if you don't have evidence then ultimately you rely on mythology okay mythology is stories about the past stories about the past that aren't rooted in science and ultimately are not confirmed by science okay they're ultimately confirmed in a person's faith that's why mythology and religion are often very closely related with one another in fact religion and mythology are um in in many ways the same okay so mythology and religion closely related you know as an example this is an example i frequently use okay the mythology of the united states one of the most powerful myths in american history is that the founding fathers were all christians okay that is mythology all right the founding fathers were not all christians okay certainly not in a modern christian sense we'll talk about that later in this class but nevertheless there is this powerful mythology that endures um in the united states today among many americans that the founding fathers were christians okay some of them were but many of them weren't and we'll talk about that later and the impact of christianity on the founding of this country okay the same sense then we can look at mesoamerica and we can see that um religion played a very important part in the history of this of this region all right between the second and eighth centuries a.d the valley of mexico and by the valley of mexico i'm talking about the region around mexico city okay it was dominated by a very powerful um city-state okay that city was called teotihuacan okay and if you go to mexico today um you can see the ruins of teotihuacan the um the pyramid of the sun the paramedic the do the the moon um the avenida de las muertas okay um the picture in the right hand upper right hand side here this is a picture of the ruins of teotihuacan it's a city that was built and dominated by very powerful merchants and they had um very prominent religious beliefs and their religion um is evident throughout um the modern day ruins of teotihuacan okay well one of the most powerful um images and and prominent images associated with teotihuacan um is the image of the feathered serpent the feathered serpent of of quetzalcoatl okay kessel cowada was widely conceived among the teotihuacanos and subsequent um culture groups in mesoamerica as a god of peace okay quetzalcoatl is in the um teotihuacano pantheon of gods the god of peace and that god of peace survived okay sometime around um the eighth century teotihuacan was abandoned okay exactly what happened to teotihuacan has always been um debated among scholars it was probably a result especially of internal um divisions civil unrest within teotihuacan which ultimately brought about the demise of teotihuacan but what we do know is that in the aftermath of teotihuacan then we see the emergence of a new city-state okay that city-state um actually was the city of tula and it was in the city of tula that we saw the emergence of a new group of people called the toltecs okay now the tall texts we know very little about okay they were a warrior culture and because they were a warrior culture they tended to focus more on warfare they tended to focus more on conquest they didn't focus as much on architecture you know city building and the net result is tula the city of tula was nothing like um teotihuacan for example okay didn't have the great pyramids didn't have the great enduring architecture tula was simply the city the principal city of the toltecs okay and the toltecs survived by um conquering their neighbors taking from their neighbors and ultimately the net result is that the toltecs were in an almost constant state of warfare okay now in the 10th century the late 10th century a prince was born and he was known as tophilt zinn okay tophild zinn was the son of a very powerful toltec warrior okay and toltak or tophel sin excuse me tended to disagree with his father okay his father believed in continued conquest to build zinn argued that if his father continued to expand his his belligerent activities his warfare and his empire eventually he would overextend himself and like teotihuacan the toltec empire would collapse from internal problems okay and so to build sin became an advocate for ending the warfare and stabilizing toltec society and for that reason among many toltecs toppil zin was very popular and his popularity literally began to transform him into a god okay tophill zinn became the god quetzalcoatl okay and and so again this is where mythology now started to um become prominent all right we know there there was a man a prince named tophilt zia okay whether he actually was god of course remains on what depends on what one believes okay and before you start thinking well how could this man become god okay men don't become god if you're among the christians i'm listening to this video give a little more thought because remember christians believed that jesus of nazareth a man became or was god all right so it's a very simple a similar kind of situation okay topil sin became the god of peace zinn became um question cuad right that was something that was very uh prominent and according to um the tradition told by toltec descendants then quetzalcoatl basically went to war with his father um it was a a showdown that took place uh and and ultimately and again this took place between 968 and 987 a.d and ultimately tophill zinn was defeated quetzalcoatl was defeated okay and the toltec emperor um sent uh his son packing um out um in the um well out of tula and out of of mesoamerica okay what happened to tophill zen well one of the legends is that he was placed on a boat and sent out to sea uh and that the people of mesoamerica were constantly on the lookout and waiting for the return of of quetzalcoatl okay that's one of the stories tied up in mythology okay but that is more mythology there is no real science there's no evidence to confirm that that's what happened to toe builds in or quetzalcoatl okay so it's very unclear what happened to quetzalcoatl but i will say there is this one strand this one part of the story which holds that um he was he had been ejected and and he was somewhere out in the east and he was waiting to come back um to to to um tula or to the valley of mexico okay as for the techs more generally what happened to the toll techs more generally well history shows um that this culture especially the area around tula their capital uh began to collapse uh basically in the 12th century okay in 1168 or by 1168 we see the emergence of a very new and prominent group of people um they were called the chichi mekas okay the chi chi mekas challenged the toltecs for domination in the valley of mexico and ultimately the chichi mekas defeated the toltecs okay and drove them out of the valley of mexico the chichi mecca's like the toltecs they were warriors and they continued to fight they continued um to try and dominate um in in the valley of mexico more generally okay so the toltecs were ultimately defeated and we saw them replaced by this group of of chi chi meccas okay now one of the stories that comes out of the fall of the toltec empire is the story of a group of toltecs who fled during the chi chi mecca occupation okay this group of toltecs according to legend and again this is part of the mythology of of mesoamerica it's not something we can confirm uh in history it's it's stories that were told among um the aztecs uh ex among the aztecs of themselves okay in any case there were a group there was a group of toltecs who fled um mesoamerica and traveled northward okay where they went nobody knows nobody even knows if they existed but according to legend they traveled to a land that came to be known as aslan okay aslan and there for about 85 years these toltecs reinvigorated their society okay they held on to toltec traditions and they now began to um think of themselves as going back into the valley of mexico and reclaiming the valley of mexico okay so what happened well after 85 years or thereabouts um a group this group of toltecs began to return to the valley of mexico okay they no longer called themselves the toltecs but because they came from aslan they now call themselves the aztecs and according to aztec tradition now according to aztec stories they were guided by a very powerful god of war okay his name was whitsilo pope lee okay we till the poke the aztec god of war led the um aztecs back into the valley of mexico and again ultimately the story is told of how um this these aztecs um you know saw uh or encountered a an eagle with a serpent in its in its talons perched upon a saguaro cactus and that was taken as a sign that this is where the aztecs now should settle and establish their their new city their new capital and of course that then the eagle became a very powerful symbol um within the um the history of mexico modern-day mexico all right wheat celo pokeley was that eagle okay the god of war okay and they feared wheat zillow pokemon they believed that they had to appease wheat celebrally because in order to bring down the chichi meccas in order to reestablish themselves in the valley of mexico they they needed they must have their war god if their war god ever abandoned them they would be left at the mercy of the chichi mekas they would not be able to defeat the chichi mekkas all right and so the aztecs relied very heavily um on this god okay so we dilopocly critical to the story of the aztec um return um to the valley of mexico okay by the um by the 14th century okay by the 1300s the aztecs had reestablished themselves okay they had driven the the chichi mekas out and they had now built um a new capital city okay one that in you know didn't completely rival teotihuacan of course and the ruins of teotihuacan continue to exist but one that ultimately demonstrated a very sophisticated culture among the aztec people okay when we think of the aztecs oftentimes the first image that comes to mind among students is that these were people who practiced human sacrifice and because they practiced human sacrifice there's a tendency to equate the aztecs with barbarism all right that is they were so um focused on on on warfare there were warring people and therefore didn't take time to develop higher forms of culture like architecture mathematics language and so forth all right the reality is the aztecs did develop higher forms of culture much more sophisticated kind of culture they weren't simply a warring people yes they did survive um through warfare and tenochtitlan the city itself began to reflect the degree to which the aztecs did continue to engage in warfare okay they were a a culture that survived through military conquest okay and so what you're looking at in this slide is actually a spanish interpretation of the city of tenochtitlan like the capital city of the aztecs by the time the spanish came on the scene it was a city that may have um of accommodated or housed uh up to a quarter of a million people okay it could have been it might have been a huge city okay and what makes it especially um interesting intriguing is that it was located on an island in a lake okay the lake was called lake texcoco okay and the island was reached up by various drawbridges um that that reached from the shore um out to the city itself right and so the point is that if at any time um the aztec capital was under siege um the the um aztecs could simply raise up the the drawbridge and the lake effectively acted like a moat around the city and made it very difficult to attack right so the the city itself was very sophisticated engineering was very precise it was built in many ways as a fortification interestingly enough surrounding the city um were rafts these rafts um basically um allowed um well they filled them with soil uh and the soils um could be used to grow um um to grow crops okay especially maize okay these rafts were actually called chinampas you don't have to remember that term but the chinampas are even to this present day are the floating gardens that you find in mexico city well the origin of the chinampas was that they were actually agricultural rafts that that floated on lakes texas cocoa allowing um the residents to grow corn and that way if they were under siege for long periods of time they could provide for their own food needs even as they were under siege all right so um the aztecs were a very uh developed a very a sophisticated uh culture okay this is the um these were the people who occupied mesoamerica who dominated dominated mesoamerica then in the 16th century um when the spanish came on the scene okay their emperor at that time was the very powerful emperor montezuma ii okay zuma ii had probably done more than any uh emperor before him to expand the power of the aztec empire to expand the territory of the aztec empire and to ultimately um you know create this and aggrandize this city of tenochtitlan okay he would be the man on the throne when the spanish arrive he will come back on the back into the story then when we start talking about spanish colonization all right so that's going to wrap up quickly my discussion of pre-contact culture groups the last thing i want to say just before i want to run out of time is i want to say a few things about the population of the americas and in fact the world um in 1492 okay remember 1492 christopher columbus brings about an enduring contact between europe uh and the americans and and and um things are going to change dramatically but one of the important things that that's going to happen is populations in the western world are going to decline dramatically all right so i do want to do just a brief comparison of populations i can tell you i'm not going to quiz you over these numbers okay but i do want you to understand kind of the general trends of of these populations that i'm giving you okay now the reality is historical demography study of historical populations is a whole lot of guesswork okay it's difficult to pin down and the reason is quite simple there weren't many people taking censuses at this time and so we have to use uh evidence in the form of how much land was under cultivation how much food was being produced we can have we have estimates of population okay we can we can you know string together bits and pieces of information to try and and make estimates of population but even in so doing we're going to get wide ranges of guesses okay so if we're looking at latin america in 1492 okay it's estimated that there were between 25 and 45 million people living in latin america okay and again by latin america i'm talking about all of of the americas south of the united states okay everything south of the united states um is considered latin america that includes central america the caribbean islands and south america okay now anglo-america would include the region that was colonie colonized by the english okay and that includes what would become the united states and canada okay prior to 1492 it's estimated that there was between five and 18 million people living in anglo-america okay so the first thing that ought to occur to you now is that there were a whole lot more people living in latin america than there were in anglo-america okay there were large civilizations that had existed in latin america including the aztecs the mayas the incas and others okay you didn't see those large civilizations in anglo-america right populations in anglo-america were much more dispersed right so the encounters that the english okay the french would have with native americans were going to be very different than the encounters that the spanish and the portuguese had all right so if we look at europe at this time estimates are between 70 and 150 million people in europe at this time okay europe in terms of geographic area much much smaller than the americas collectively and yet there were many more people okay many more people even if you include russia as part of europe the americas collectively were a much larger area you had more people packed into a much smaller area europe was becoming crowded europe was becoming congested okay it's important to understand that because that's going to serve as one of the influences in convincing people to start leaving europe they're going to try and get away from the crowded conditions that existed in europe okay finally on a worldwide basis okay it's estimated that there were four to 500 million people around the world almost a half billion people lived in the world at the time of columbus okay and that means there were a lot of people living elsewhere in the world okay not just in europe not just in the americas but there were huge populations growing in asia south asia and east asia there were also large populations in africa that were growing all right and those populations now were going to be trade partners as the um countries of europe started engaging in commerce international trade they're going to start coming into contact with people in africa they're going to start coming into contact with people in south asia they're going to start coming into contact with people in east asia and the world is going to begin opening up after 1492 okay the colonization of north america is going to be a considerable part of that opening up that's what we're going to start talking about when we start talking about colonization so i'll wrap up this lecture when we come back next time we're going to start talking about some of the conditions that existed in pre-contact europe