Ch. 1 - Precontact North America - Sept. 1

Precontact North America

  • Evidence for the peopling of North America

  • Environment and geological data

  • Ice Age - much of North America was covered in glaciers, so there were “bridges” that crossed oceans

  • Bering Strait

  • Cultural artifacts and features

  • Traditional knowledge

  • Oral history

  • May be contradictory to other sources, so we have to choose which we believe

  • Genetic and linguistic markers

  • DNA characteristics that have similar physical traits

  • Watching how things are similar and different

  • European explanations upon arrival:

  • How did the Bible explain people in the New World?

  • 1512 Papal declaration → went to determine if the people they found in the Americas were actually people (whether or not they had souls)

  • Missionary tradition in the Americas

  • Justification for colonization: to convert Native Americans to Christianity

  • Lost tribes of Israel

  • Some of the tribes of Israel “got lost”

  • Wandered from Palestine and ended up in North America

  • Atlantis or Mu → missing island with great civilization; emigrants from Atlantis or Mu ended up in North America

  • Said that the Native Americans’ own explanations couldn’t be possible (hypocritical?)

  • Traditional Origin Histories (Indigenous origin stories)

  • Many, many different stories

  • Similar tenants that follow through some of them

  • Ex. Spanish/Arikara

  • “How corn came to the Earth”

  • The Creator killed the giants of the world with the flood, but saved the ordinary people by hiding them and the animals in a large cave

  • “Mother Corn” created by Creator, and went to save the people from the cave, but the entrance closed behind them

  • Badger, mole, long-nosed mouse dug through the hole, all with physical changes that are still evident today

  • Mother Corn led the people west, but some (badger, mole, mouse) stayed

  • Along the way, kingfisher helped them, and some people stayed with him

  • Owl made pathway through forest, some people stayed with him

  • Loon made a way through the impassable lake, some people stayed

  • Eventually found a home, and ate corn (Mother Corn returned to sacred place)

  • People had no rules or laws, and they spent all their time playing

  • Mother Corn came down and chose a chief and medicine man

  • Creator went ahead to provide places for new villages, Mother Corn led them toward him

  • Dog was sent by the Sun god, who was upset that the dog was left behind, and was going to send a whirlwind to scatter the people

  • Mother Corn appealed to the Sun god, and reminded the people that they had to remember to offer smoke to the gods every day

  • Mother Corn turned into a cedar tree to remind people always about where they got their life from and who saved them

  • Explanations about Arikara society:

  • Selection of chiefs and medicine men

  • God system

  • When gods were angered, the people offered smoke (tobacco)

  • Animals and natural world lead the humans, not the other way around (often, it is the humans that need help)

  • Corn = central aspect, main agricultural crop, source of food and economy

  • These histories conflict with the scientific view of creation

  • It comes down to what source you want to believe is true (ex. Bible vs. Native American stories vs. evolutionary science, etc.)

  • Non-empirical science can’t be tested → requires a different mindset to believe

  • Traditional science: based on experimentation

  • Western Scientific View

  • Homo sapiens - 1.8 mya in Africa

  • Paleo-Indian: indigenous groups in North America before they separated into the cultural groups reflected in recent history and today

  • Bering Land Bridge

  • Link between NE Asia and North America

  • Possibly some seafaring groups → “island hopping theory”

  • Glaciers took much of the water from the oceans, so very likely that people just walked across the ocean on dry land

  • When? (BP = Before Present)

  • 75,000 - 60,000 BP (no evidence of migration in Americas)

  • 25,000 - 11,000 BP (lots of evidence for migration)

  • Relative dating → chronologies (looking at the layers of how things are deposited; oldest at the bottom)

  • Absolute dating → radiocarbon (C14) dating

  • Why?

  • Following game (megafauna)

  • Human curiosity/expansion

  • How?

  • Foot (likely would have stayed in western Alaska until ice receded enough for them to start moving into lower North America)

  • Boat (jumping from island to island along the coast until they reached lower North America)

  • Migration Hypotheses

  • Multiple migrations from Asia (Bering Strait, etc.) → Most Native Americans can trace their heritage back to Asia (Land Bridge Hypothesis)

  • Solutrean Migration → people came from Europe, crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and appeared in Eastern North America

  • People who ended up in lower South America (i.e. Chile) likely walked from Alaska and all the way down

  • Paleoindian Period - Pre-Clovis

  • “Clovis points” → first culture in North America that took over, expanded, and broke off into other cultures (long since been debunked)

  • Migrations to the Americas

  • First prior to 14,000 BP (likely even earlier)

  • North American sites 20,000 - 13,000 BP

  • Paisley Cave, OR

  • Meadowcroft Rockshelter, PA → one of the earliest sites discovered; set the timeline back

  • South American sites prior to 12,000 BP

  • Monte Verde, Chile

  • Clovis

  • Blackwater Draw, New Mexico

  • Diagnostic artifact - fluting technology to create spears

  • Spear point

  • 13,500 - 12,900 BP

  • Based on large mammal hunting

  • Anzick Site, Montana → baby skeleton that gave first DNA evidence

  • Folsom - later culture

  • By 10,000 BP variety of paleoindian cultures in Americas

  • General traits that everyone has, but no cultural identities yet

  • Archaic (10,000 - 3,000 BP)

  • Holocene: 10,000 BP - Present

  • Climate changed

  • Mass extinctions

  • Human adaptations

  • Generalized hunting

  • Plant resources

  • Koster Site, IL

  • Archaeological regional cultural periods with onset of agriculture

  • Weapons and hunting technology (had to change as the larger animals of the Ice Age died off and smaller animals were more prevalent)

  • Spear → typically used for megafauna, such as wooly mammoths, very dangerous because you have to get crazy close

  • Harpoon → like a spear, but attached to a rope (usually for fishing)

  • Atlatl → “spear-thrower” (sort of like lacrosse)

  • Bow and arrow → easier for smaller game at further distance

  • Blow gun → better for smaller animals

  • Subsequent Migrations

  • Dene Linguistic group

  • 8,000 years ago

  • Dene-Yeniseian language family

  • Ongoing contact with Asia (through Alaska)

  • Moving east → followed the glaciers

  • Glaciers shrinking - interior

  • Greenland (Thule, 1000 BP → ancestors of Inuit people)

  • Moving north → moving as the glaciers receded

  • Algonquin people

  • Developed adaptations that allowed them to cross glaciers

  • Made their way all the way to Greenland

  • Agriculture (starting around 10,000 BP)

  • Agriculture: domestication of plants

  • East: sunflowers

  • Mesoamerica: corn

  • Three sisters → grown in combination: beans grow up corn stalks, squash provide ground cover

  • Corn

  • Beans

  • Squash

  • Population increase - change in political organization

  • Cahokia, IL (1100 CE) → potential gathering place  

  • The Formative (1000 BCE - 1450 CE) (time period after Archaic and before contact)

  • NW Coast: salmon was main resource → large-scale manipulation of the salmon population

  • Salmon runs - tribes would organize their entire lives around this time of year

  • Was America a wilderness? → NO

  • Rough population of Indigenous people before Europeans: about 7,000,000

  • As European population increased, Indigenous population decreased dramatically

  • Pre-contact trade:

  • Extensive  

  • Formalized

  • Sophisticated

  • How do anthropologists look at early trade?

  • 3 approaches:

  • System of economic interdependence

  • Mutualism = baseline for the start of trade

  • Not as simple as we might think (excess, conflicts with other tribes)

  • Incorporation of plains societies into macroeconomies

  • “A multiplicity of cultures, a single division of labor, reciprocal exchange and social differentiation, but not stratification” (Vehick 2002:39)

  • There was no class system; everyone was doing a little bit to contribute to the community

  • Different roles did not contribute to status

  • Increasing conflict and spatial rearrangement

  • Pre-contact trade routes

  • Primary trade centers: permanent settlements where people of all tribes came to trade

  • Secondary trade centers (permanent): not gathering places for all tribes; more geared toward what that particular group could offer

  • Secondary trade centers (impermanent): established locations where people would meet at certain times of the year to trade goods

  • Tertiary center: used only as necessary

  • Both economic and cultural exchange happening at trade centers

  • Social constructs of trade:

  • Individual trade → gender specific

  • According to gender, able to trade with other people of other tribes

  • Social contract with that person (could be mother to daughter or the like between tribes)

  • Ceremonial trade

  • Trade happened through extended ceremony

  • Calumet Ceremony (more important for Plains region)

  • Multiple-day festival of gift-giving

  • Mutual exchanging of goods under the concept of goodwill

  • Creating a pseudo-family bond with other tribes or groups

  • Method of forming alliances between different groups

  • Could also include intermarriage between groups

  • Ended with the mutual smoking of the peace pipe

  • How do we study trade through artifacts?

  • Stylistic analysis: seeing the iconography or designs on artifacts and matching them with other artifacts (ex. Navajo/Dine people have very particular design on clothing; if that design shows up in other places, there has been some sort of exchange or trade between the two groups)

  • Chemical analysis: studying the chemical makeup of objects (ex. obsidian) to study exactly which source it came from because it will come from a particular geological location, even though it’s the same type of rock

  • Iconographic analysis

  • Microscopic analysis: look at the makeup of certain rocks (minerals) and trace that back to geological origin

  • Etc.

  • Obsidian

  • Specific source can be determined through trace elements

  • Obsidian Cliff (YNP) - 11,000 BP (found from Ohio to Canada!)

  • Trade is not just about transporting goods

  • Relationship

  • Information

  • Marriage

  • Disease

  • Culture

Canadian Policies

  • Slavery abolished in 1834

  • Independence from Britain - 1867

  • Office of Indian Affairs

  • “Manage” Indians

  • Typically done through violence

  • 1880 Department of Indian Affairs

  • Eventually Ministry of Indian and Northern Affairs

  • Inuit weren’t considered North Americans for a very long time (hence, “Northern”)

  • Canadian Residential School System

  • Attempt to wipe out culture (boarding school)

  • Essentially more violent than American boarding schools

  • “Kill the Indian in the child.”

  • 2015 - Declared cultural genocide

  • 1971-1921 → 11 treaties made between Canadian government and Natives

  • Recognized Natives as sovereign (not always recognized)

  • Dependent reserves (not necessarily sovereign)

  • Indian Act 1876

  • Banned Natives from exercising religion, basic aspects of their culture, language, etc.

  • Land Act 1888

  • Similar to Dawes Act in U.S. (shaved off Native land)

  • 1927 - Native political action forbidden

  • 1951 - Indian Act

  • Citizenship and voting rights

  • Freedom to practice religion

  • Can pursue claims against government

  • Establishment of councils (basically forced tribes to have councils that would govern internal affairs, Canadian gov’t had to sign off, didn’t respect traditional ways of governing)

  • 1966 - Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development created

  • 1969 - Indian Act of 1876 repealed

  • 1974 - Native land claims

  • 1999 - Creation of Nunavut Territory (essentially the same powers as a province, but created by acts of legislature rather than legal constitution) → governed by the Inuit

  • 2010 - Endorsed 2007 UN declaration (regarding harms done to Native peoples)

  • Truth and Reconciliation Commission

  • How to repay for what was done to Indigenous people

  • Public apology in the Canadian House of Commons

  • 94 calls to action

  • Recognizing what happened and taking action

Mexican Policies

  • 20% Indios (legally defined as Indians)

  • Everyone in Mexico is technically of Indian heritage

  • Erased ethnic identities of the Natives that are still there

  • Repartimientos continue after independence in 1821

  • Land system established by Spain

  • Basically a feudal system (rich people over poor people)

  • 1850s - Reform laws

  • Communal ownership prohibited

  • “Indian” status abolished (everyone is Mexican)

  • “Unoccupied lands” = any land that wasn’t developed according to European standards

  • Yaqui Revolution

  • Yaqui were a group that were long-opposed to occupation

  • Led a revolution, were destroyed, and survivors mostly moved to the United States

  • 1910 - 2 main policies

  • Assimilation → trying to get Natives to adopt Western culture

  • Preservation of culture and art heritage

  • Continuing conflict…

  • Most over land and use of natural resources on that land

  • Zapotecs - 1980 (pushed back against gov’t)

  • Maya - 1990 (pushed back against gov’t)

  • 2012 - Gov’t agreed to protect Mayan sacred lands from mining (technically only 1%)

  • Gov’t politicizes giving back to the Natives, but typically very superficial

Greenland Policies

  • Norse colonies - 982-1400

  • Typically very small

  • Likely traded with the Inuit

  • Gone by 1400 (unknown reasons)

  • 1721 - Colonies re-established

  • 1841 - Denmark separates from Norway

  • Greenland used as a trade station

  • 1953 - Becomes a country within Denmark

  • Established a lot more control and influence within Greenland

  • 2009 - autonomous country within Denmark (still not totally independent, but does have a little more self-governance)

  • Move for independence (Denmark still has a lot of control)

  • Gov’t typically made up of Inuit people

Impacts of European Intrusion

  • Extreme population reduction

  • Loss of culture and language

  • Missions

  • Boarding schools

  • Disruption of economic systems

  • Poor living conditions

  • Psychological stress

  • Changes in territoriality and technology

  • Increased competition and violence among Native Nations

  • Resource depletion

  • Climate change (indirect change)