2.1. Indigenous cultures

→ America did not begin with Columbus

There had been a large variety and diversity of cultures in America long before.

Example: Pueblo (village) cultures of the southwest

  • were flourishing around 100 BC

  • Different tribes like: Mogollan, Hohokam, Ancestral Puebloans (also have to be careful because they have problematically been characterised by Europeans)

Ancestral Puebloans:

  • settled in four-corner areas (now Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico) (Areas that have now become tourist attractions because of their archeological sights)

  • → Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado

  • were villages, farming cultures → permanent settlements

  • Impressive architecture: cliff-dwellings

Mesa verde:

  • was multicultural with many indigenous cultures

  • did trade of e.g. technology but also cultural aspects

  • build a community together by sharing over a large area

Around year 1500:

  • there was a network of diverse, highly developed cultures and civilizations

  • approximately 300 different languages (of which 2/3 have been preserved)

Native American oral traditions

→ Were incorporated into American studies very late

Oral traditions:

  • were religious, spiritual, often containing myths

  • have been handed down generation to generation → Have been adapted, changed over time

  • were collective: have an origin and function that serve community

  • transcription (turning oral into written lit.)is problematic

  • storyteller had special important, powerful role

  • different forms and formats e.g. stories, songs, …

  • Content: e.g. origin/creation stories (including continuity and progress), trickster stories

  • oral culture linked to performance

  • Still issue of mediation/transcriptions → chnages form and content and is then influenced by Europeans

Oral tradition remails alive until today in

  • Native American oratory

  • Late 19th/20th-century anthropological projects (e.g. Black elk speaks by Neidhart)

  • contemporary (written) literature (which contain oral tradition) produced by Native Americans today

  • also in Architecture e.g. national museum of the american Indian Washington DC → organic architecture, contained spiritual meaning/background