Lesson 1.1
1.1 American Indian people or peoples? Consider cultural unity and diversity evidence. Note the Ancestral Pueblan civilization of the South West.
Introduction
1. Columbus Los Indios (‘Indians’) is misleading because (a) he was not in India, an Asian subcontinent; (b) by using a singular noun he infers the native people he encountered were all the same, when in fact they were not!
2. Problem of pre-Columbian evidence? The native peoples living in what is now the USA did not use writing – there is no written evidence of anything that occurred from before 1492. We are dependent on archaeology and anthropology.
3. Think of it as a series of beginnings not beginning! Since an exciting new discovery in 2011 evidence of human activity can now be traced back to 13,500 BC in Texas, some 15,000 years ago!
4. No-one knows exactly what the population was on the eve of European conquest and settlement but it was likely only in the range of 10 million or so, a tiny number compared to the 300 million of today!
American Indian: singular or pluralistic concept?
1. Unity arguments, things all ‘Indians’ had in common -
Polytheistic beliefs – they had many gods to which they attributed all phenomena. The gods lived among humans, in nature, they visualized a pantheistic universe in which the gods made their presence felt.
In their environmental attitudes they had a sense of territory but did not have a sense of private property, of individual ownership, in the way we do. They valued the whole community over the individual.
2. Diversity arguments, ways in which ‘Indians’ were very different to each other -
They were multi-lingual? Hundreds of languages were spoken. Different languages = different peoples!
They did not organize as nations. They divided into many tribes, defined by some sort of extended family.
A variety of habitats created economic differences. North America divided into hunter gatherers and farmers. While hunter gatherers banded in small groups of nomads, needing 10 sq. miles to survive, farming was an economic revolution. A farmer needs only one-tenth of a square mile to survive. Farmers were sedentary, putting down roots in one place, living first in villages and then towns/cities. The three farming regions were the Eastern Woodland (from the Mississippi river valley to the Atlantic seaboard), the Pacific North-West, and the ‘Four-Corners’ Region of the South West.
A great farming civilization grew from the 900s AD in the Four Corners Region centered on sites such as Chaco Canyon (NM) & Mesa Verde (Colo.). They are termed Ancestral Pueblans (a.k.a. Anasazi) because they are the ancestors of the pueblo peoples (‘towns people’) who live there today. Corn, squash and beans grew in surrounding fields with tens of thousands of people living in ‘condo’ like buildings with dry stone walls and several floor levels, transacting trade over long distances. In the 1200s it all mysteriously declined! Two probable causes presented – 1. Dendrochronology (tree ring science) evidence points to a prolonged drought which would have impacted harvests and forced migration. 2. They practiced slash-and-burn farming – since repeated plantings deplete the soil’s nutrition and crop output, they cut and burnt woodland to fertilize the soil with ash. In Mesa Verde they moved their dwellings from the mesa top down on to cliff ledges, a spectacular sight for the modern visitor, to free up more farmland. The resulting deforestation must have forced their exit – the drought only making matters worse. Maybe there was internal conflict, but there is no evidence they were attacked by outsiders. Bottom line is the sites were vacated by 1300, and not discovered until the 19th Century!
One more ‘diversity’ argument!
It is not difficult to visualize farming societies/civilizations living completely different lives in a very different society, such as that of the Ancestral Pueblans of the South West, to bands of nomadic hunter-gatherers roaming the Great Plains of the Midwest. However farming societies themselves could be markedly different from each other too.
Pueblo Indians of the Southwest
When Spaniards encountered descendants of the Ancestral Pueblans of Four Corners region in the 16th Century they commented on how these farmers lived in small towns (same as ‘pueblos’ today: where Hopis, Zunis, Taos, Acoma etc. now live) with men farmers and women hand-crafting baskets, ceramics, and textiles. They organized in small tribal groups under chiefs and shamen, those with the intellect and wisdom to convince others of their special powers. Shamen were part priests, part doctors, part counselors, part historians – in short multi-taskers! Since it was they who organized the religion and at the same time held power, we can refer to Pueblo Indian political culture as a theocracy.
Iroquois Indians of the Northeast
In the thickly wooded well-watered lands of the North East (today’s New York state, Pennsylvania etc.) rich in vegetation, wildlife, rivers, lakes, and waterfalls there were many tribal groups, it was the most populated pre-Columbian region, as it is now. The Iroquois speaking peoples (Iroquois is a language, not a tribe) were farmers, among many, who cleared forests and created fields to live in log cabin type dwellings clustered in villages. The French encountered (and named) them in the 16th Century and commented on how women were the farmers (opposite to the Pueblo Indians) while men were the hunters and the warriors. The Iroquois were more militaristic than the Pueblos, warfare was probably more rife in the more populated North East, and warriors were a more prestigious part of their society. In their political organization they were quite the opposite to the Pueblos too. Shamen did not have the same elevated status, that went to the Council of 49 (a council of warriors) who headed the Iroquois Confederacy. The Iroquois tribes joined together in a confederacy, probably for reasons of security and defense, with day-to-day domestic issues handled at the tribal level and issues relating to all the member tribes (warfare, natural disasters etc.) up to the Council of 49. The council was composed of men (warriors) but they were chosen by the elder women, and could be recalled by them. It was a representative form of government but not a democracy: American Indian societies did not develop democracy as we might understand the concept. The Iroquois Confederacy was a confederation of governments with both tribal rule and the ‘big government’ of the Council of 49 – it was in effect a federal system of government! Since the USA chose a federal system much later in the late 18th Century, and did not get the idea from Europe (did not have federalism then), it is tempting to wonder if the ‘founding fathers’ were inspired by the Iroquois model right on their doorstep! If they were, they do not say so – Madison, Jefferson and co. never ever credited the Iroquois in their writings.