Southeastern Indians

Chapter 7

Five TribesFour C’s and an S

• Cherokee• Choctaw• Chickasaw• Creek• Seminole

Green Corn Ceremony• Ceremony was both a thanksgiving

celebration and a quest for purity.• Black Drink was consumed to cause the

men to vomit or purge their bodies of bad spirits.

Green Corn Ceremony• Lighting of the sacred fire that females

used to kindle a new fire in their homes• Paint faces and dance

Chiefdoms• Political Units made up of several villages

that could span over several square miles.

• Met in one village to discuss matters of common interest.

• Several chiefdoms form the bigger TRIBE

• Did not use currency (money) but traded goods with one another called BARTER.

European Invasion• Spanish Explorers ran onto the SE Indians

first. Treated them badly.• Brought disease such as smallpox, bubonic

plague, measles, mumps, typhus, typhoid fever, diphtheria, scarlet fever, influenza, malaria, and yellow fever. Deaths contributed to a 93% decrease in the Indian population.

• British and French bartered with the Indians.

European Invasion• Indian Chiefdoms made deals with the

British to trade only with them and provide military support after they were given medals and gifts in elaborate ceremonies.

• Fought with the British in the American War of Independence.

• Europeans married Indian women and their families adopted European ways by dress, owning plantations and owning slaves.

European Invasion• The Treaty of Paris (1783) ended the

American Revolutionary War and established U.S. independence

• Tribes signed Peace Treaties with the new US Government

• Treaties gave some land to the United States and established tribal boundaries.

Indians View of Land Ownership

Doctrine of Occupancy• The Indian conceived of

the earth as mother, and as mother she provided food for her children. In the primitive and religious sense land was not regarded as property; it was like the air, it was something necessary to the life of the race, and therefore not to be appropriated by any individual or group of individuals to the permanent exclusion of all others.

Doctrine of Discovery• European countries

that “discovered” America had to buy the land from the Indians

• When America won independence and the land from Britain, France and Spain, it felt like they inherited the land from these countries.

Indian Tribes were made Sovereign• Sovereign means the tribes conducted its

internal affairs by traditional methods.

• The US Government established the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to supervise the tribes with the goal of transforming the tribespeople so that they behaved like white Americans.

• This is called assimilation (make the same)

The Civilization Program• Government wanted to “civilize” the tribes

by • education • teaching agriculture • introducing Christianity

• Some tribes wanted noting to do with it• The Five “Civilized “Tribes did.• Tribal leaders proposed rapid

acculturation (adoption of customs and habits) of the Anglo-Americans

The Civilization Program• tribal economies had changed from

hunting and subsistence farming (farming that supports the farm family with little or no profit) to herding and plantation agriculture.

• Indians started dressing more Anglo and living in houses

• Established schools and churches• Cherokees established a government,

police force and a capitol at New Echota in NW Georgia

Conclusion• The Five Civilized Tribes had things in

common like the Green Corn Ceremony, tracing the family through the mother (matrilineal) and lived in Chiefdoms.

• After being exposed to disease by Europeans, the Indians fought with British in the Revolutionary War

• The Tribes signed treaties with the new Government of the US and started the Civilization Program.

• Tribes adapted to white ways through acculturation