Transcript for:
2.Pre-Contact Societies in North America

having spent time in our last lecture talking about the geography of north america we now want to start bringing people into the story and this is going to um take us into a discussion of pre-contact societies in north america now the first point i'll make is we're not going to have time to talk about all of the different groups but we are going to say some general things about the various groups of native americans who existed in north america prior to contact with europeans all right so i use the expression pre-contact to refer specifically to the period prior to 1492. now you'll also sometimes see this referred to as the pre-columbian era of western history and in truth either expression is acceptable i tend to prefer pre-contact because as we'll see later on pre-columbians suggest that columbus was the first and as we'll see later on there's plenty of evidence to suggest that there was contact between north america and other parts of the world specifically europe prior to columbus so in many ways i think pre-contact the expression pre-contact is is more accurate more reflective of of the the time period in any case the first question we want to ask then is when did people begin to migrate to the western hemisphere okay and the answer to that question is we really don't know for certain okay we really don't know for certain um we have ideas but there are very um different ideas and and very different opinions among scholars okay the most widely accepted theory uh today is that people especially began migrating um to the americas from asia during the pleistocene that is during the isis ice age remember we talked about um the pleistocene in our in our last lecture um it was from roughly 20 000 years ago to roughly 10 000 years ago that the temperatures on earth became colder and colder and as temperatures got colder the polar ice cap grew and as the polar ice cap grew sea level dropped okay and i showed you this uh or i showed you a similar uh map in in the last lecture and told you that um during the pleistocene um the shorelines basically coincided with um the very um light blue areas that is today's shoreline looked very different during during the pleistocene and given that sea level dropped roughly 200 feet that means that basically during the pleistocene this is what the shoreline looked like in other words alaska and asia were connected okay all of this land or all of this what is now water was was then land all right this this very narrow passage between alaska and russia today is what's called the bering strait okay well during the pleistocene when sea level dropped the bearing straight basically became part of the land mass and so during the pleistocene we saw the formation of a land bridge that connected north america to asia and during the formation of this land bridge then it made it possible for people to migrate literally on foot across this land bridge to north america now the question then becomes what would prompt people to do that because if you think about it if you remember it was very very cold at this time the world in general was much colder but at higher latitudes it was really frigid bitterly cold what would prompt people to migrate across this land bridge at this at this high latitude okay and the answer apparently is that the people who um were coming across the bering strait lane land bridge what prompted their migration well they were very likely big game hunters okay most students are somewhat familiar with um the the belief um that the earliest arrivals in the americas were uh were big game hunters okay what you may not know is where that idea came from okay where the um theory came from and again it is still in many ways very uh theoretical okay well we do know that um during the the um pleistocene um there were very large animals mammoths mastodons mega giant bison um we do know that they existed uh but what is it that um that tells us or suggests to us that that the people who came across um we're hunting these uh animals well that explanation dates back to the 1920s and it basically started with a young man he was only 19 years old who lived in eastern new mexico his name was james ridgely whiteman james ridgely whiteman growing up in eastern new mexico grew up in a ranching environment and was not particularly fond of of school he was much happier being out and about and he was fascinated by um artifacts and things like that he found you know he was very common to find things like arrowheads um out on the planes and um the story is told how in in the summer of of 1929 um james ridgeley whiteman was exploring um he may have been doing ranch work uh but uh there had been heavy rains and he came across um some very interesting artifacts that that he had never encountered before they were in a in a blowout area where wind had kind of exposed things and then the rain had greatly exposed them and basically what he found was um bones and he found a spearhead that that looked very different than anything he had ever seen before it was a a spearhead like the one you see in this in this slide with fluted edges it had been worked and the the spearhead was associated then um with these very large bones that surrounded and were scattered about and basically james ridgely wright whiteman believed that this was a very important hunting ground and he was able to it took time but he was able to convince um scholars to come in and and to look at this hunting site and ultimately uh they came to the conclusion that yes james ridgely whiteman uh had found an early hunting camp and um archaeological uh investigation started and and basically they were able to date this particular site to about 12 000 years ago making it late pleistocene during the later pleistocene there were these hunters that had been living at this site they had been using these points to hunt very large animals and since this was the oldest or earliest site that anybody had documented it became the most popular and widely accepted theory that these hunters were the first americans the first people to to come to the americas and over time then as we learn more about the pleistocene the the theory of the land bridge began to to kind of pan out uh and this this idea that the first americans were these clovis hunters um gave rise to this to what's called the clovis first theory that is that the first americans were clovis big game hunters and it is still a very um very widely accepted theory the problem is that what we've now discovered is that there are other sites um in the americas that have also been worked by archaeologists and have demonstrated that there may have been people before the clovis hunters there's a place called i think it's the monteverde site in in south america which basically uh dates to perhaps as as much as 30 000 years ago but it could be much older than the clovis site in new mexico the clovis uh clovis new mexico is is where james ridgely whiteman's um excavation um was done or that the excavation was done on his site um in in any case there was the meadowcroft uh site in in pennsylvania which was also about 13 years old thousand years old but it was a very different culture there they weren't big game hunters like that so the point is that to this day we don't know for certain whether the clovis people were the first people to arrive in the americas there are some who believe that the first people to come to the americas came by boat and they came long before um you know 12 or 13 000 years ago so the fact of the matter is the clovis first theory is still widely debated but what we do feel confident about is that while while the clovis p people may not have been the first people um to to have arrived here um we do increasingly recognize and understand that they certainly did have the most impact the most enduring impact they lasted they survived whereas other culture groups didn't survive the clovis culture did and we know this because dna testing has actually been done among many different native american groups and those dna tests do link to or are able to link to what we know about the dna of the clovis people all right so while the clovis culture may not have been the first we do know that it was unquestionably the most enduring of the culture groups uh in the western hemisphere okay and so those that that almost certainly came via this land bridge the bering strait land bridge um they arrived during the pleistocene and what we also know is that as they arrived in the americas they began spreading out okay they didn't just stay in the north they spread into um you know not just the southern united states but into latin america that is into central america and even south america right so the impact of the clovis people and the clovis culture was not only enduring over time but it also spread out widely across space that is throughout the western hemisphere and as people as these clovis people spread out of course they began encountering all kinds of different environments and not surprisingly then they adapted to these different environments quite differently and the net result of course was that their cultures began to take on very different appearances okay that's one of the reasons or the ways in which cultures evolve culture evolves to a very large degree as a response to the natural environment all right so the diverse array of cultures that began to appear in the americas suggests that that native american people were very very different from one another and if you take nothing away nothing else away from this lecture please understand that native american people were much much uh more different than they were alike okay much much more different than they were alike okay in this class we're going to identify and talk about in some degree of detail three different culture groups uh in the americas okay we're going to focus initially on the the region east of the mississippi river and talk collectively about groups of people that are known as the eastern woodlands culture groups then we're going to move into the southwestern united states we're going to talk a little bit about groups of people called the southwestern farmers and raiders or that i collectively group together as the southwestern farmers and raiders okay these are the groups of people that the spanish as they colonized in the americas began to encounter and we're going to talk a little bit about spanish colonization in the united states and later on we're going to talk about western expansion and these southwestern groups are going to be very important part of that story okay finally we're going to spend some time talking about the mesoamerican civilizations and we're going to focus in that part of our discussion specifically on and especially on the aztec people okay now we're not going to have time to talk about all three of these culture groups in this lecture we are going to talk about the eastern woodlands culture groups and then in our next next lecture we'll talk a little bit about the southwestern farmers and raiders and then the mesoamerican civilizations but let's focus initially and specifically on the eastern woodlands um culture groups okay now i need to make something very clear before i go any further okay and it concerns this notion or this concept that we call the indian okay the indian okay first of all the application of the name indian to native american peoples was first made by christopher columbus in 1492 and 1493. we'll talk about columbus a little bit later okay but when columbus identified all of these people collectively as um indians okay it touched off a response in europe in which the people of europe began to think collectively of all native americans as one race of people okay the indian was born okay the indian is a social construct okay indian is a socially constructed race okay i can assure you that the people of native american native native americans themselves did not refer to themselves as indians in the first place that was completely a european construct okay but they didn't think of themselves as a race of people either okay they were very socially distinct from one another okay sometimes they got along with one another sometimes they didn't but the point is this whole notion of an indian okay a a monolithic homogeneous group of people called the indian okay that is a completely european construct and it is also very distorting of the historical realities of the past all right if you are inclined to think of native americans as the indian and i encounter this in students writings all the time okay if you if you refer to indians well that's your preference but at least you're recognizing diversity okay but if you refer to them as the indian that's kind of lumping them all together and saying they're all the same and that simply was not and is not the case okay it's no more instructive and no more meaningful than to refer to all of the europeans as the white man okay if we know anything hopefully we understand that the people who came from europe came from the netherlands they came from england they came from germany they came from france they spoke german they spoke french they spoke english they spoke dutch they practiced practiced lutheranism they practiced episcopalianism they protect they um practiced um catholicism they were as different as can be imagined okay to call them just the white man is to so grossly um try to simplify or to overly simplif simplify who these people were that it completely obliterates any uh understanding of the historical realities okay the same is true of the indian if you refer to the indian that's basically lumping all native americans into one category that grossly oversimplifies and distorts the past all right so it is a racial concept okay and it becomes the basis then for racism right so i would discourage you from using the expression the indian okay i'm not saying indians is completely unacceptable because i refer to indians sometime but again when used in the plural at least and you can make the claim that it's racist okay but at least if you use the expression indians there's a recognition of diversity differences that existed among the people okay and in truth um probably native americans is a better uh more acceptable expression or term when referring to pre-contact peoples all right so these people were and are very diverse okay diverse cultures in general within the eastern eastern woodlands groups or among the eastern woodlands groups we can say that these people engaged in hunting and gathering activities and they engaged in a kind of a primitive form of agriculture that we call horticulture okay i mean you may remember and we'll talk about this the people who came from europe when they first encountered native americans they basically encountered people um who are already engaged in in farming on some level okay so hunting and gathering it was their survival strategy they hunted game like their ancestors had gunded gabe and they gathered nuts berries whatever they could they could find to help sustain their populations okay and over time they developed horticultural practices now horticulture is a little bit different than agriculture in that it is less labor intensive okay in agriculture basically people plant seeds and then they tend those seeds they tend to those seeds um they um water the seeds if necessary they um you know they drive away um pests that would destroy the crops they cultivate and then they harvest okay in horticulture horticulture is a little bit more simple and less labor intensive okay in early agriculture basically groups of people would would farm okay uh or excuse me they would plant seeds they didn't really farm they they would just plant seeds and then they'd let the the the seeds grow uh and whatever grew whatever um birds didn't take and and um insects didn't take they would then come back later and and they would harvest okay it wasn't very labor intensive and because it wasn't labor intensive it wasn't as reliable um as farming for example okay nevertheless it was a source of food all right and so the net result then is that that um you plant you move away and then you come back later and harvest what has survived what what can can be taken okay so um what that meant then is that native americans didn't want that coming up yet native americans in this eastern woodlands tradition were nomadic okay that is they moved about that's what nomadism is it's a movement of people from place to place okay now later on um the people that that were encountered out on the high plains okay i talked about them especially in my history 1302 class okay these were people who were nomadic um and who followed especially the bison okay it was the movement of game that determined their movements okay but in the eastern woodlands the areas east of the mississippi river the people were more seasonally nomadic okay that is their movements took them from place to place to place based on the availability of resources and especially food resources right so where the hunting or fishing was good they would they would locate during hunting and fishing season on the other hand if acorns were ripening um they would locate in um orchards or places where there were lots of of oak trees growing okay the point being um that they would move from place to place in in you know following a seasonal rhythm depending on the availability of of um of resources okay so they were seasonally nomadic because they were seasonably nobe nomadic they also became somewhat territorial right that is there were regions that they identified as their territories right if there were certain resources that they relied on heavily they would claim those resources and groups of people would defend those territories okay and and that then introduces a very important um stereotype that is often associated with uh native americans okay and it is this stereotype that native americans were very violent okay it's it's one of the most um destructive of the racial stereotypes that is associated with native americans and certain tribes especially are associated with with violence and and and they're often depicted as violent people and in the most notorious of these um depictions is the comanche people of texas okay it is important to understand that yes pre-contact people in the eastern woodlands traditions and and elsewhere they clashed there was violence okay but part of this perception of indians native americans as being violent is is the way that europeans constructed this race okay indians were constructed or the indian was constructed by europeans as a violent person okay that's why i include this um image in this slide this is a very well it's a very common image that was constructed in in europe of of native americans theodore de bruy was an artist uh and like so many others he became fixated on native americans and one of the things that that he and other europeans tended to focus on was warfare and violence okay a lot of that was simply their own european fascination with warfare and violence which they projected on um native americans as well on the other hand yes there were violent violent societies we'll talk about the aztecs and the aztecs did have a history of violence okay but the point is that that violence became very much um part of and built into the this racial stereotype of of native americans okay well in many cases the violence that existed among and between different groups of native americans was an outgrowth of territorial territoriality among different groups okay different groups claimed resources those resources were critical to survival of of populations and if necessary and when necessary they fought for control of those resources okay but that doesn't mean that they were just naturally and inherently given to violence okay when um you know when there were disputes violence and warfare did happen but try to get away from this idea that even comanches were somehow a naturally violent people okay nothing could be further from the truth okay nothing could be further from the truth these were not inherently racially predisposed violent people all right that is a construction of european racism okay european racism and the way the indian was constructed okay so the eastern woodlands hunting and gathering societies horticulture the planting of seeds and harvesting of seas seeds seasonally nomadic people and territorial okay let's talk a little bit about their their culture uh and and their society right first of all social organization well um among most native american groups kinship was the key bond that tied societies together okay kinship or family ties okay and so it is very common if we look at native americans of the in the eastern woodlands tradition and throughout most of north america um kinship and family ties is this the social bond um that that brings people together okay now it is important to understand then that native american people though pulled together by kinship and partly because they were pulled together by tin kinship did not tend to organize in large um congregations of people okay they tended to organize more at the klan level okay my clan we're talking about small groups of extended families okay perhaps not more than 30 or or 40 people okay 30 to 40 people bound together by kinship bound together um by their long-standing cultural traditions okay now sometimes groups of families clans would come together okay it was um usually the case for example that when hardship existed especially times of of either drought or very cold temperatures when resources and especially food became scarce well clans of people would organize into larger groups called tribes okay a tribe of people would would be a a group of clans a group of families okay kinship was still very important but on the other hand tribes of people maybe different clans different families but still groups of families that have a similar culture okay so think of a tribe as a collection of families a collection of families that share um a long-standing culture a long-standing tradition if you will all right and so now you know a tribe of people can um can start adding up to i don't know um 100 200 300 people or more okay um so a tribe is a collection of of families and sometimes um tribes can can identify um even with larger groups of of people at the level of a nation okay what is a nation well a nation would be a collection of tribes and when we talk about nation now um the concept of family largely is obscured okay nations of people are people who share a common culture all right it's not just families it's now groups large groups of families and people who share a common culture okay and so we can talk and we'll talk in this class later on about the cherokee nation we'll talk about the iroquois nation okay these are nations of people who are you know they're not just families they're just very large culture groups and and again now we're talking about thousands and thousands of people all right so very seldom do did people in the eastern woodlands tradition um identify themselves as a nation okay nations came together typically um and during times of especially duress if if a group of people felt um threatened um as in the iroquois nation or the the um the cherokee nation then then they might become um active at the national level but generally um people um operated they function their lives focused more on kinship and maybe tribal activity now one other level of organization i need to mention is um the confederation okay we'll talk in this class later on about confederations like the shawnee confederation like the iroquois confederation okay sometimes nations of people would come together and organize um for political and military purposes all right that's what happened during the american revolution that's what happened during the war of 1812 okay the shawnee confederation was actually a collection of different nations of people the iroquois confederation was actually a confederation of different nations of people all right so when we're talking about a confederation of native americans um historically we're talking about different culture groups different nations of people who have come together and bound together through political and military alliances with one another okay when we talk about the powhatan confederation in jamestown that's the kind of alliance that we're talking about nations and tribes of people that have come together who are very different from one another culturally very different but they have a strong political and military interest and alliance with one another all right so social organization among native americans in the eastern woodlands tradition was very complex very complicated right spiritually in terms of their religion it's important to understand that native americans adopted and embraced a animistic worldview okay animism is basically a belief and recognition that um within the physical world there are all kinds of of um you know apparently inanimate objects okay that is um trees rocks uh mountains okay all of these things to the eye are rather inanimate but in an animistic world view they have spiritual essences if you will um that are more than simply their physical appearance okay so that is a mountain a mountain is just not a mountain a mountain has spiritual relevance it has spiritual significance that impacts um life it impacts the universe and because it impacts the universe it impacts humans okay rivers um trees um animals all of these things um that are very much part of the native american universe and the native american world are not simply the physical uh entities that that we see with our eyes and we can hear um these are um spirits okay and as such they have to be respected okay they are part of a spiritual world that includes humans and humans have to exist within that spiritual world uh in a way um that is um that appreciates that that spiritual world okay if if humans start to alter or change that that that world too much well humans will pay the price and the fact of the matter is you know any kind of of um devastating event okay could be attributed to an imbalance um in the spiritual world all right so an animistic worldview very much part of um the native american world view more generally okay finally i want to mention just a little bit about um the economies of native americans okay native americans generally embraced um a subsistence worldview in terms of their economies okay they lived um and it was part partly because of their animistic world view they lived off the land but they didn't seek to um exploit the land so to speak okay they took what they needed to survive okay they generally did not produce um at the surplus level right and that's an important distinction to make a subsistence economy is an economy in which the individual basically produces enough to survive okay that's the production level you don't worry about producing surpluses you don't worry about producing uh enough to trade okay or to engage in sale sales right subsistence is all about how much i need to survive today okay and so within the eastern woodlands groups there were times when when surpluses existed okay if they were planting something and there was a bumper crop well there would be a surplus and they would then engage in a localized trade okay localized commerce and in some ways they had even um a currency that that could circulate okay what you're looking at in this picture is shells that are called wampum you may have heard the expression wampum wampan were shells that were greatly valued especially in the northeast okay they were carved and they were very pretty very decorative and for the most part um in um in native american societies they were they were given away as gifts okay on the other hand though they were given away as gifts they could also be given away in trade okay if um somebody had corn and we needed corn um they might be um wampum might be exchanged for corn okay and in that sense wampum could kind of exist as as currency as a form of money okay but it they weren't thought of as money okay wampum was never thought of as money until europeans came on the scene okay the europeans quickly realized the value that was attached to shells to whomp them and they basically recognize that they could use wampum use shells to to effectively acquire or purchase things okay and so for that reason then after the europeans arrived wampum began to circulate um like money okay as as a form of currency okay so that's one of the ways in which the commercial economy began to change um the subsistence economies of native americans okay we'll talk about that later on as we go along okay when europeans arrive it's all of the production is going to be geared not towards subsistence but towards surplus to having surplus production that allows for the um allows for selling of goods all right last point i want to make real quickly i just want to make note of some of the groups associated with the eastern woodlands um that we're going to be encountering during this during this semester okay we'll talk about the powhatan confederation we'll talk about the iroquois confederation we'll talk about the shawnee confederation we will talk about the cherokee okay there are many others okay we don't have time to talk about all of the different groups because there were so many okay but these are some of the groups that we will be encountering okay these are um well three of these are our confederations the cherokee are a nation okay i'll wrap it up here when we come back in our next lecture then we're going to spend some time talking about um the southwestern hunters and hunters and raiders and then the mesoamerican civilizations