Why study Native American history?

Why study Native American history?

Modern relevance: The “reconquista”

Pre-Contact Native American Society

Native American Origins

• Native accounts

• Scientific explanations

Iroquois Origin myth

Scientific explanations of Native American origins

• Bering Strait land bridge– Original migration – Later migrations (Athapascans, Inuits,

Aleuts)

• Local coastal migration (north to south)• Transoceanic migration (from Europe,

Asia, or Polynesia)

The Bering Land Bridge

Kennewick Man

• Kennewick man discovered in 1996 in Washington.

• Picture shows an anthropologist’s reconstruction of Kennewick man’s appearance.

Controversy over Kennewick Man

• Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)

• Competing explanations for origin: Native American vs European

What is “Indian”?

• No single native culture

• Not static

• Cultural patterns influenced by environment

Five examples

• Mexico

• American midwest

• American southwest

• American east coast

• Canada

The problem of Source Bias

Mexico

• Sources:– Early explorers’ accounts– Archaeology– Early ethnographies (Sahagun history,

Florentine codex)

Tenochtitlan

Teotihuacan

Florentine Codex

Nahuatl (Aztec) picture writing

Mayan hieroglyphics

American Southwest

• Sources:– Early explorers’ accounts– Native American oral histories– Archaeology

American Midwest

• Sources: – Early western explorers’ diaries and letters– Archaeology

Cahokia, near present-day St. Louis, MO: estimated population 20,000

estimated time period: 900-1550 AD

Trade

• Long-distance trade networks– Examples of trade centers: Chaco, Casas

Grandes, Cahokia

American East Coast

• Sources:– Early ethnographies (John White, Thomas

Hariot)– Archaeology– Early contact accounts

John White watercolors

(Engraved and mass-produced by Theodore deBry)

Secotan, Indian villagein Virginia

Agriculture

Wampumpeage, or wampum, madefrom shells

Trade and ritual

Canada

• Sources:– The Jesuit Relations– Other early accounts– Native American oral histories

Iroquois longhouses

The French Approach to Colonization

• Trade predominated over settlement– Coureurs de bois

The Mourning Wars

• The Iroquois Confederation– Senecas, Mohawks, Onondagas, Cayugas,

Oneidas

• Purpose:– Status for warriors– Maintenance of population through captive

taking

Contact

The Clash of Cultures

European responses to Native Americans

• European traditions: The Wild man of Germany

Land Use Patterns

Gender Roles

Patterns of Government and Authority

Religion

The Columbian Exchange

Biological repercussions of

European colonization of

the New World

Biological exchange

• Europeans > New World:– Domesticated animals– European grains, plants and weeds– Old World diseases: smallpox, measles,

etc.

Biological Exchange

• Native Americans > Europe– New World plants: corn, potatoes,

tomatoes, tobacco, etc.– New World diseases: syphilis and tropical

diseases

• “One night with Venus--a lifetime with Mercury.”

Impact of Contact

Population

• Original estimates of precontact Native population of North America: 25,000 in New England; 1,000,000 in North America excluding Mexico (equivalent to population estimate in 1620)

(James Mooney, Aboriginal Population of America North of Mexico, 1928)

• Current precontact population estimate:– 125,000-145,000 in New England– 4 million to 10 million in North America– 8 million in Hispaniola (down to near zero

in 1535)– 25 million in Mexico (down to 1.3 million in

1600)

Why the difference?

Impact of European Contact with the New World

Demographic Disaster for Native Americans

Contemporary Explanations for Deaths

• Cruelty of the Spanish (The Black Legend)

• “What we have committed in the Indies stands out as one of the most unpardonable offenses committed against God and mankind.”– Bertolome de Las Casas

Bertolome de las Casas

Accounts from Primary Records: Mexico

• “When the city fell, ‘the streets, squares, houses, and courts were filled with bodies, so that it was almost impossible to pass. Even Cortes was sick from the stench in his nostrils.”

(Indian testimony of the epidemic during

Hernan Cortes’s seige of Tenochtitlan, 1520)

Accounts from Primary Records: American East

Coast

• “Within a few dayes after our departure from every such townes, that people began to die very fast, and many in a short space; in some townes about twentie, in some fourtie, in some sixtie, & in one six score, which in trueth was very much in respect to their numbers . . . The disease also was so strange that they neither knew what it was, nor how to cure it; the like by report of the oldest men in the countrey never happened before, time out of mind.”

(Thomas Hariot, account of settlement at Roanoke, 1587)

Accounts from Primary Records: Canada

• The Indians “are astonished and often complain that, since the French mingle with and carry on trade with them, they are dying fast and the population is thinning out. For they assert that, before this association and intercourse, all their countries were very populous and they tell how one by one the different coasts, according as they have begun to traffic with us, have been more reduced by disease.”

(The Jesuit Relations, on New France, 1616)

Cause: Epidemic Disease

Contributing Factors

• Virgin population

• Native Americans’ lack of domesticated animals

Impact of Depopulation

• Increased conflict between Indians and Europeans

• Power vacuum among Indian groups• Impression of Europeans as powerful,

“gods”• Justification for ideas of vacuum

domicilium

Consequences of Cultural Interaction

Trade

• Benefits:– Metal cooking pots could be placed directly

on fire– Metal tools allowed Indian arts and crafts

to become more complex– Firearms made hunting easier– Competition for Indian market gave natives

leverage with Europeans

Trade

• Consequences:– De-skilling– Competition for trade led to war– Spread of disease

Alliances

• Benefits:– Assistance against more powerful native

groups (aftermath of epidemics)– Favored status in trade

• Drawbacks:– Resentment of other tribes– Escalation of arms race