The Peoples of North America

The Lands of the Americas

• The Americas make up an enormous land area, stretching about nine thousand miles (more than fourteen thousand km) from the Arctic Ocean in the north to Cape Horn at the tip of South America.

• Along the western side of the Americas are two major mountain ranges: the Rocky Mountains in North America and the Andes in South America.

• Through the valleys run great rivers, such as the Mississippi in North America and the Amazon in South America.

The First Americans

• Between 100,000 and 8,000 years ago, the last Ice Age produced low sea levels that in turn created a land bridge in the Bering Strait between the Asian and North American continents.

• Scholars do not agree on exactly when human beings first began living in the Americas.

  • They do know, however, that these first Americans were hunters and food gatherers.

The Peoples of North America

• North America is a large continent with varying climates and geographical features

• About 3000 B.C., a group of people called the Inuit moved into North America from Asia.

  • With a variety of harpoons and spears made from antler or narwhal tusk, the Inuit became skilled at hunting seal, caribou, and fish, which provided them with both food and clothing.

• Around 1000 B.C., farming villages appeared in the Eastern Woodlands, the land in eastern North America from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.

  • People here grew crops but also continued to gather wild plants for food.

• Best known are the Hopewell peoples in the Ohio River valley, who extended their culture along the Mississippi River.

  • A shift to full-time farming around A.D. 700 led to a prosperous culture that was located in the Mississippi River valley from Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois down to the Gulf of Mexico.

• Cities began to appear, some of them containing ten thousand people or more.

• At the site of Cahokia, near the modern city of East St. Louis, Illinois, archaeologists found a burial mound over 98 feet (30 m) high with a base larger than that of the Great Pyramid in Egypt

• To the northeast of the Mississippian culture were peoples known as the Iroquois.

• The Iroquois lived in villages that consisted of longhouses surrounded by a wooden fence for protection.

  • Iroquois men hunted deer, bear, caribou, and small animals like rabbits and beaver.

  • Wars were common, especially among groups of Iroquois who lived in much of present-day Pennsylvania, New York, and parts of southern Canada.

• From the combined efforts of Deganawida and Hiawatha came the Great Peace, which created an alliance of five groups called the Iroquois League.

• A council of representatives (a group of 50 Iroquois leaders) known as the Grand Council met regularly to settle differences among league members.

  • Representatives were chosen in a special fashion.

• Each Iroquois group was made up of clans, groups of related families.

• The Grand Council, an experiment in democracy, brought the Iroquois a new way to deal with their problems.

• West of the Mississippi River basin, the Plains Indians cultivated beans, corn, and squash along the river valleys of the eastern Great Plains.

  • The buffalo served many uses for Plains peoples.

  • The people ate the meat, used the skins for clothing, and made tools from the bones.

  • By stretching buffalo skins over wooden poles, they made circular tents called tepees.

• The Southwest covers the territory of present-day New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado.

• The Anasazi peoples established an extensive farming society there.

• Between A.D. 500 and 1200, the Anasazi used canals and earthen dams to turn parts of the desert into fertile gardens.

  • They used stone and adobe (sun-dried brick) to build pueblos, multi- storied structures that could house many people.

• At Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico, they built an elaborate center for their civilization.

• The Anasazi culture itself did not die.

• To the north, in southern Colorado, a large community had formed at Mesa Verde (today a United States national park).

Early Civilizations in Mesoamerica

The Olmec and Teotihuacan

• Signs of civilization in Mesoamerica—a name we use for areas of Mexico and Central America that were civilized before the Spaniards arrived—appeared around 1200 B.C. with the Olmec.

  • The Olmec had large cities that were centers for their religious rituals.

• The first major city in Mesoamerica was Teotihuacán, or “Place of the Gods.”

• Located near Mexico City in a fertile valley, Teoti- huacán had as many as 200,000 inhabitants at its height.

The Maya and Toltec

• Far to the east of Teotihuacán, on the Yucatán Peninsula, another major civilization had arisen.

  • This was the civilization of the Maya, which flourished between A.D. 300 and 900.

  • The Mayan civilization in the central Yucatán Peninsula eventually began to decline.

  • Mayan cities were built around a central pyramid topped by a shrine to the gods.

  • Nearby were other temples, palaces, and a sacred ball court.

• Some scholars believe that urban centers such as Tikal (in present-day Guatemala) may have had a hundred thousand inhabitants.

• Mayan civilization was composed of city-states, each governed by a hereditary ruling class.

  • Rulers of the Mayan city-states claimed to be descended from the gods.

• Most of the Mayan people were peasant farmers.

• Crucial to Mayan civilization was its belief that all of life was in the hands of divine powers.

• The Maya created a sophisticated writing system based on hieroglyphs, or pictures.

  • Mayan hieroglyphs remained a mystery to scholars for centuries.

• The Maya used two different systems for measuring time.

• Many Mayan hieroglyphs record important events in Mayan history, especially those in the lives of Mayan rulers.

• The center of the Toltec Empire was at Tula, built on a high ridge northwest of present-day Mexico City.

  • The Toltec were a fierce and warlike people who extended their conquests into the Mayan lands of Guatemala and the northern Yucatán.

  • They controlled the upper Yucatán Peninsula from another capital at Chichén Itzá for several centuries, beginning around A.D. 900.

  • In about 1200 their civilization, too, declined.

The Aztec

• The origins of the Aztec are uncertain.

• Sometime during the twelfth century A.D., however, they began a long migration that brought them to the Valley of Mexico.

  • They eventually established their capital at Tenochtitlán on an island in the middle of Lake Texcoco, now the location of Mexico City.

  • There, they would rule until conquered by the Spaniards in the 1500s.

• According to their legends, when the Aztec arrived in the Valley of Mexico, other peoples drove them into a snake-infested region.

• In 1325, under attack by another people, they were driven into the swamps and islands of Lake Texcoco.

  • For the next hundred years, the Aztec built their city.

  • While they were building their capital city, the Aztec, who were outstanding warriors, consolidated their rule over much of what is modern Mexico.

• The Aztec ruler supported these rulers in their authority in return for tribute, goods or money paid by conquered peoples to their conquerors.

• By 1500, as many as four million Aztec lived in the Valley of Mexico and the surrounding valleys of central Mexico.

• Power in the Aztec state was vested in the hands of the monarch, who claimed that he was descended from the gods.

  • The rest of the population consisted of commoners, indentured workers, and slaves.

• From the beginnings of their lives, boys and girls in Aztec society were given very different roles.

• Women in Aztec society were not equal to men but they were allowed to own and inherit property and to enter into contracts, something not often allowed in other world cultures at the time.

• The Aztec believed in many gods.

  • Huitzilopochtli, the god of the sun and of war, was particularly important.

• Aztec religion was based on a belief in an unending struggle between the forces of good and evil throughout the universe.

• In an effort to postpone the day of reckoning, the Aztec practiced human sacrifice.

• A chief feature of Aztec culture was its monumental architecture.

• For a century, the Aztec kingdom ruled much of central Mexico from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific coasts.

• In 1519, a Spanish force under the command of Hernán Cortés landed at Veracruz, on the Gulf of Mexico.

  • When Cortés arrived at Tenochtitlán, he received a friendly welcome from the Aztec monarch Montezuma (also spelled Moctezuma).

  • Eventually, tensions arose between the Spaniards and the Aztec.

• The Aztec soon experienced new disasters, however.

• As we will see, throughout the Americas, Europeans, using gunpowder first developed in Asia, were able to destroy powerful civilizations weakened by European diseases.

• The Aztec city of Tenochtitlán was no more.

Early Civilizations in South America

Early Civilizations

• Caral has been identified as the oldest major city in the Americas. Caral is believed to be one thousand years older than the ancient cities previously known in the Western Hemisphere.

• Sometime about 200 B.C., another advanced civi- lization appeared near the Pacific coast not far south of the border of Ecuador.

• Moche was the capital of a powerful state.

  • Among other things, the pottery shows that the Moche, like peoples in Central America, led lives centered around warfare. Paintings and pottery frequently portray warriors, prisoners, and sacrificial victims.

The Inca

• After the collapse of the Moche civilization around A.D. 700, a period of decline set in until the rise of a new power about three hundred years later.

• This power, the kingdom of Chimor, dominated the area for nearly four centuries.

• It was finally destroyed by people who created an even more spectacular empire—the Inca.

  • In the late 1300s, the Inca were only a small community in the area of Cuzco, a city located high, 11,000 feet (3,352.8 m), in the mountains of southern Peru.

  • In the 1440s, however, under the leadership of the powerful ruler Pachacuti, the Inca launched a campaign of conquest that eventually brought the entire region under their control.

  • The Incan state was built on war, so all young men were required to serve in the Incan army.

• Once an area was placed under Incan control, the local inhabitants were instructed in the Quechua language.

• To create a well-organized empire, Pachacuti divided it into four quarters, with each ruled by a governor

• Forced labor was another important feature of the state.

• The Inca also built roads.

• Rest houses, located a day’s walk apart, and storage depots were placed along the roads.

• Incan society was highly regimented.

• In rural areas, the people lived chiefly by farming.

• Nothing shows the architectural genius of the Inca more than the ruins of the abandoned city of Machu Picchu.

  • Machu Picchu, elevation 8,000 feet (2,400 m), was built on a lofty hilltop surrounded by mountain peaks far above the Urubamba River.

  • It was a small city, containing only about two hundred buildings.

• The Inca had no writing system but instead kept records using a system of knotted strings called the quipu.

• The Inca had a well-developed tradition of court theater, consisting of both tragic and comic works.

• The Incan Empire was still flourishing when the first Spanish expeditions arrived in the central Andes.

• In 1531, Francisco Pizarro and a small band of about 180 men landed on the Pacific coast of South America.

• The Incan Empire experienced an epidemic of smallpox.

• When the emperor died, each of his two sons claimed the throne for himself.

• After executing Atahuallpa, Pizarro and his soldiers, aided by Incan allies, marched on Cuzco and captured the Incan capital.

• By 1535, Pizarro had established a new capital at Lima for a new colony of the Spanish Empire.