Native Americans: Notable Groups, Civilizations, and Cultures

700 BCE - 1521 - Zapotecs (All Facts)

• Society which emerged in Mexico around 500 BCE

• Built a famous city at Monte Alban on the west coast of Mexico, the capital of their society for 500+ years which dominated the Pacific coast of Mexico from its heartland in the Oaxaca Valley

  • Monte Alban grew into a prosperous and cosmopolitan city

  • Its pottery came from Teotihuacan

  • Its calendar and glyphic script came from the Mayans

  • The city itself was originally a shrine to the gods, in particular their rain god named Cocijo

  • Over hundreds of years it grew into a major city, its swellings packed on the narrow terraced slopes of the Oaxaca Valley

  • In its center was a magnificent courtyard surrounded by platforms, pyramids, and triumphal staircases

  • Its buildings were austere, with few embellishments

  • Its tombs were decorated with frescoes of men and the gods

• Built Temple complexes in the valley of Oaxaca in southern Mexico

• The namesake mountaintop was flattened and levelled and the temples have been designed around a large plaza

• Its settlers

  • evolved distinctive styles of pottery, sculpture, and architecture

  • formalized astronomical observations and a calendar system

• By 900 CE, its city of Monte Alban was abandoned and sacked by the neighboring state of Mixtec in the Oaxaca Valley

• They revolted against Hernan Cortes and his Spanish forces but were defeated by them in the isthmus of Tehuantepec during the Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire

1500 BCE - 1500 CE - Mixtecs (All Facts)

• Characterized by carpeting their buildings with exquisite mosaics

• In the early 900s, they invaded the Zapotec stronghold of the Oaxaca Valley

500 - 1500 - Tolima Culture (All Facts)

610 - Cahokians / Cahokia (All Facts)

• City founded in southern Illinois around 610 CE

• City whose most distinctive feature was large number of flat-topped mounds of various sizes

  • Some of these mounds were associated with plazas, which provided the focus of civic and ceremonial life

  • Some served as platforms for major buildings including

    • Residences of the community leaders

      • Community leaders derive their power and authority from the belief that they embody sacred forces

    • Shrine houses or “temples” dedicated to the veneration of ancestors of the elite

      • The bones of rulers and their close relatives were placed in the temple shrines after death

  • The most famous mound, sometimes referred to as “Monks Mound” was completed around 1100 and extended over 18 acres (in southern Illinois)

• It was a religious, political, and economic center with prosperous quarry and salt industries

• City which became one of the most heavily populated of the communities that sprang up during that time in the central Mississippi valleys

• City which was attractive for settlement due to its climate, which was ideal for maize, which was best suited to hoe agriculture

• City in which societal organization was at a chieftainship level

• City which established outlying colonies and trading posts

700s - 1700 - Mississippians (All Facts)

• Group referred to sometimes as “The Southern Cult,” which developed in the namesake area of the modern-day southern US by starting on the namesake river valley

  • They flourished in the central and lower namesake river valleys by the namesake early date

  • They were the first large-scale civilization in North America

• They were known for their enormous earthen mounds, some of which were as tall as 100 feet and covered an area the size of 12 football fields

  • The largest of these mounds is Cahokia, located in modern-day southern Illinois

    • However, it was abandoned around 1450

• They had a unique fascination with death marked by their carved shell, pottery, and metalwork artifacts

• They were known for having a matrilineal society in which the Great Sun Chief was, upon his death, succeeded by his sister’s son, rather than this own son

• They had a rigid class structure in which, from highest to lowest, there was

  • A chief called the Great Sun who ruled each large town

  • An upper class of priests and nobles

  • A lower class of farmers, hunters, merchants, and artisans

  • Enslaved people, usually prisoners of war

• Their women farmed and their men hunted

• They were concentrated at sites such as

  • Grand Village

  • Emerald Mound

    • Extended over eight acres in modern-day Natchez (in the namesake state)

    • Built as a ceremonial center for the Natchez subculture of the namesake people group

  • Angel Mound

    • Well-fortified settlement on the Ohio River in modern-day Indiana

    • Consisted of a clay and mud wall which surrounded a village with 11 mounds

• Their cities were completely abandoned by 1600

• It is not known why they abandoned their societies

• They were also known for their site of Moundville in modern-day Alabama, which displayed skill in architecture, since it consisted of remarkably built mound enclaves and created a unique art form

• They also had a “Southern Death Cult” in which human sacrifice was depicted on artifacts from this civilization

700s - Pueblo (All Facts)

• Located in the North American Southwest

• They gave up their pit-houses and began building above-ground dwellings

• Their golden age ended around the 1300s and then what began was a regressive period marked by abandonment of the great cities and migration to the south and east

• In 1541, the Spanish suppressed an Indian rebellion after their siege at Tiguex

• By 1600, they had led an uprising against the Spanish and stole hundreds of Spanish horses

  • They kept some of these horses

  • They traded the majority of Spanish horses for guns

1000s / 1085 - Thule Eskimo (All Facts)

• Culture that spread across all of the North American Arctic area as far as modern-day Greenland and Siberia

• They achieved supremacy by developing basic skills and technologies to a more sophisticated level than that achieved by existing Arctic peoples

• They invented / used kayaks and umiaks (dog sleds) in order to traverse the continent to hunt whales

Iroquois (All Facts)

• Group of peoples in northeastern North America that formed village communities and cultivated corn and beans at the time

• By the 1570s, they formed a league of tribes (or their namesake “confederation”) whose aim was to meet and settle their differences peacefully

Chibcha (All Facts)

• Culture in modern-day Colombia that had a highly organized political organization that involved five states, each with a chief

• The most significant of these five states was Bogota

900 - 1470 - Chimu Empire (All Facts)

• Located in Peru on the northwestern coast of South America

• Its capital was located at Chan-Chan

• One of its rulers, Nancen Pinco, began his conquests along the Peruvian Coast in the 1370s

• Was eventually overtaken by the Inca Empire

1000 - 1750 - Fort Ancient (All Facts)

• Culture that settled near a saltwater spring in modern-day Kentucky that had been visited by animals and hunters for centuries

Itza Tribe (All Facts)

• Founded the league and city of Mayapan in the northern Yucatan Peninsula in 1283

1100s - 1428 - Tepanec Empire / Tepanecs (All Facts)

• Located in the Valley of Mexico

• They were overthrown by a triple alliance of the Aztecs of Tenochtitlan, the exiled army of Netzahualcoyotl (the leader of Texcoco), and the disaffected / subjected namesake city of Tlacopan

• Their leader, Maxtla, was cruel and short-sighted, which ignited a revolt against him

  • He had an unfailing gift for turning friends into enemies

  • He continued his father’s / predecessor’s policy of trying to subject Texcoco, his daily atrocities leading to the people turning against him

1200 - 1521 - Texcoco (All Facts)

• Their leader Tlacopan, overburdened by the taxation he and his people were subjected to by the Tepanecs / Tepanec Empire, revolted against the Tepanecs

Mesa Verde (All Facts)

• Society which emerged in the modern-day southwestern United States

  • Living in a dry region, its people developed ways to collect, transport, and store water efficiently

• Society which built multi-story homes into the sides of cliffs using bricks made of sandstone

• Here, along with the Canyon de Chelley, the towns and villages hewn out of rock were deserted by the 1300s

• The great semi-circular dwellings in the Chaco Canyon also disappeared around this time

• They experienced climactic change in which rivers disappeared, crops failed, and towns declined with the weakened Pueblo people being driven into the desert by Navajo and Apache Indians

• By the 1270s, this culture / society was in its classic stage, however, by 1276, a severe drought in the Southwest began and persisted for 23 years

Apache (All Facts)

• Southern Athabaskan language-speaking peoples of the Southwest, the Southern Plains and Northern Mexico; linguistically related to the Navajo

• Their raiders stole Spanish settlers’ horses during attacks on Spanish settlements in their southwestern territories

• Since this occurred, the namesake natives were quick to appreciate the advantage of horsepower in riding and hunting and have started to breed their own horses from captured Spanish stock

• Stealing horses was one of the namesake tribesmen’s main reasons for raids on Spanish settlements in their territories

• In one uprising, hundreds of horses were stolen

  • Many were kept, but many others were traded for guns, another commodity the namesake handled well and the Spanish settlers regretted introducing

• By 1600, their raiders stole horses from Spanish settlers in the North American Plains region as the Spanish settlers let security slip during their attacks on settlements in the southwestern territories of the North American Plains

  • Since then, they were quick to appreciate the advantages of horsepower in riding and hunting

  • They started to breed their own horses from captured Spanish stock

  • Their stealing of horses was the main reason for their raids on Spanish settlements (by 1600)

Zuni (All Facts)

• They murdered Estevanico

• They lived in extreme poverty

• They were the inhabitants of the supposed “Seven Golden Cities of Cibola”

Choctaw (All Facts)

• They killed 18 and injured 170 men of the party of Hernando de Soto in modern-day Mobile, Alabama

• 2,800 of them were claimed to be killed by de Soto and his men

• In 1550, Spanish explorers described great wooden temple mounds built by Native Americans in south-eastern North America

• In 1550, Spanish explorers brought the first beef cattle to North America

• In 1593, Native Americans in Kansas massacred a Spanish expedition under Francisco de Levya Bonilla and Antonio Gutierrez de Humana to find the “gold mines of Tindan”

• By 1596, 1,500 Native Americans were converted to Christianity by Spanish Franciscan Priests in (Spanish) Florida

Utina (All Facts)

• One of their villages was attacked by Rene de Goulaine de Laudonnière and his forces after he was (they were) beset by food shortages and mutinies since he set up Fort Caroline (in Florida)

• Their chief was held ransom by de Laudonnière, Laudonnière having hoped that the namesake Native American tribe would pay him with a supply of corn in exchange for their chief

Cusabo (All Facts)

• Tribe of Native Americans who kill Alonso de Solis and 26 of his men in their raid of the village of Oristan in (Spanish) Florida, which was conducted on the orders of Hernando de Miranda (the new governor of (Spanish) Florida at the time)

• They were attacked by Pedro Menendez Marques (the Spanish governor of St. Augustine in (Spanish) Florida) and his men as scattered among them were 40 Frenchmen from Nicolas Strozzi’s party during the fighting in 1579