DCUSH UNIT 1 Geography and Native Americans

Northwest

• Isolated Tribes

• High Mountains of Alaska-North California

• Lumber: Carved totem poles, Permanent Longhouses/plank houses

• Diverse diet: hunted fish, gathered nuts/berries/roots

Great Basin/Plateau

• Summer/Fall food carried winter

• Tribes: Shoshone, Nez Perce

• Small families

• Tipis = 10-40 Buffalo skins and poles, portable and moved a lot

• Diet: Hunted, farmed, gathered→ jackrabbits, antelope, waterfowl, pine nuts, berries, fish, small farms

Southwest

• Dry Region: NM, AZ = extreme drought after Europeans

• Tribes: Hokokam, Apache, Pueblos

• Large society": caves, cliffs. multi-story buildings of stone and adobe

• Religion: Kachina dolls represented spirits

• Farming and irrigation, lumber

Southeast

Mississippian people

• Cherokee in Gulf of MX

  • Women: Farmed beans, squash, tobacco, sunflowers + gathered acorns, nuts, seeds, fruits + hunted deer, fish w/ bow and arrow

• Calusa in SW Florida: fish and trap systems, clams, mussels. saltwater fish

• Art: pottery, arrow points, elaborate utensils, weaponry

Eastern Woodlands

Iroquois Confederation in NY

• Seneca, Sayuga, Onodaga, Oneida, Mohawk

• Switched between farm exhausting soil ←→ move to fresh land: corn, squash, beans (farmed three sisters), hunted

• Multiple families related thru matriarch in longhouses

• Rivers: fish for food, wampum heads (shells), collars, belts, travel/trade

• Woodlands: Big Mounds (Biggest = Cahokia)

Great Plains

Nomadic hunters or sedentary famers/traders

• Lakota Sioux: Farm → hunt buffalo

• Apache: Canada→ Tx

• Plains: merged/split/moved due to conditions changing

• Hunt buffalo = crafts, tools, clothes

• farmed beans, maize, squash

• horses = 1600s