PROF

Out ofMany

Native Americans build thatch houses beside a massive

pyramid in "Community Life at Cahokia" by Michael

Hampshire.

WHAT EVENTS led to the migration of Asian peoples into North

America?

IN WHAT ways did native communities adapt to the distinct

regions of North America?

WHAT WERE the consequences of the development of farming for native

communities?

WHAT IMPORTANT

differences were there between Indian

societies in the Southwest, South, and

Northeast on the eve of colonization?

1 A CONTINENT OF VILLAGES

TO 1500

ill2 CHAPTER 1 A CONTINENT OF VILLAGES, TO 1500

AMERICAN COMMUN-T ES Cahokia: Thirteenth-Century Life

on the Mississippi As THE SUN ROSE OVER THE RICH FLOODPLAIN, THE PEOPLE OF THE riverbank city set about their daily tasks. Some went to shops where they manufactured tools, crafted pottery, worked metal, or fashioned ornamental jewelry—goods destined to be exchanged in the far corners of the continent. Others left their densely populated neighborhoods for the outlying countryside, where in the summer heat they worked the seemingly endless fields that fed the city. From almost any point people could see the great temple that rose from the city center—the place where priests in splendid costumes acted out public rituals.

The Indian residents of this thirteenth-century city lived and worked on the east banks of the Mississippi River, across from present-day St. Louis, a place known today as Cahokia. In the thirteenth century, Cahokia was an urban cluster of twenty or thirty thousand people. Its farm fields were abundant with corn, beans, and squash. The temple, a huge earthwork pyramid, cov- ered fifteen acres at its base and rose as high as a ten-story build- ing. On top were the sacred quarters of priests and chiefs.

By the fourteenth century Cahokia had been abandoned, but its great central temple mound and dozens of smaller ones in the surrounding area, as well as hundreds of other large mounds throughout the Mississippi Valley, remained to puzzle the colonists and settlers who came in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The Europeans and Americans who explored and excavated those mounds were convinced they were the ruins of a vanished civilization, not the work of Indians. They were wrong. The ancestors of contemporary Native Americans constructed massive earthworks in the Mis- sissippi Valley. The vast urban complex of Cahokia, which at its height stretched six miles along the Mississippi River, flourished from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries. Its residents were not nomadic hunters but farmers, participants in a complex agricul- tural culture archaeologists term "Mississippian." Hundreds of acres of crops fed the people of Cahokia, the largest urban com- munity north of the Aztec civilization of central Mexico. Missis- sippian farmers constructed ingenious raised plots of land on which they heaped compost in wide ridges for improved

Cahokia One of the largest urban centers created by Mississippian peoples, containing 30,000 residents in 1250.

drainage and protection against unseasonable frosts. To their square houses of wood and mud they attached pens in which they kept flocks of domesticated turkeys and small herds of young deer, slaughtered for meat, feathers, and hide. Cahokia stood at the center of a long-distance trading system that linked it to other Indian communities over a vast area. Copper came from Lake Superior, mica from, the southern Appalachians, conch shells from the Atlantic coast. Cahokia's specialized arti- sans were renowned for the manufacture of high-quality flint hoes, which were exported throughout the Mississippi Valley.

Archaeological evidence suggests that Cahokia was a city- state supported by tribute and taxation. Like the awe-inspiring public works of other early urban societies in other parts of the world, most notably the pyramids of ancient Egypt and the acrop- olis of Athens, the great temple mound of Cahokia was intended to showcase the city's wealth and power. The mounds and other colossal public works at Cahokia were the monuments of a society ruled by a class of elite leaders. From their residences atop the mound, priests and chiefs looked down on their subjects both lit- erally and figuratively.

The 1848 Smithsonian report on Cahokia reflected the stereotypical American view that all Indian peo-

ple were hunters. It is a view that persists. But the long history of North America before European colonization reveals that the native inhabitants developed a great variety of societies. Beginning as migrant hunting

and gathering bands, they found ways to fine- tune their subsistence strategies to fit environ-

mental possibilities and limitations. Communities in the highlands of Mexico invented systems of farming

that spread to all the regions where cultivation was possible. Not only the Aztecs of Mexico and the Mayans of Central America but also communities in the Southwest and the Mississippi Valley constructed densely settled urban civilizations. North America before colonization was, as historian Howard R. Lamar phrases it, "a continent of villages," a land spread with thousands of com- munities. The wonders and mystery of the lost city of Cahokia are but one aspect of the little-understood history of the Indians of the Americas.

WHAT EVENTS led to the

migration of Asian peoples into

North America?

myhiste0ylab Review Summary

1-11

Jose6

Jose de Acosta, A Spanish Priest Speculates on the Origins of the Indians

IMAGE KEY for pages xlviii-1

a. Native Americans build thatch houses

beside a massive pyramid in

"Community Life at Cahokia" by

Michael Hampshire. b. A but from the coastal Algonquian

village of Secoton.

c. In July 1585 John White visited the

coastal Algonquian village of Secoton

where he painted this composite scene.

d. Projectile point embedded in the rib

bones of a long-extinct North American

species of bison.

e. The ruins of the Anasazis' Pueblo Bonito

in Chaco Canyon, northern New Mexico.

f. "The New Queen Being Taken to the

King," engraved from a drawing by an

early French colonist of a hierarchical

community of Florida.

g. Clovis points used to make spears.

1- 1 Marco Polo Recounts His Travels Through Asia

Indios Name first used by Christopher Columbus for the Taino people of the Caribbean.

Beringia A subcontinent bridging Asia and North America, named after the Bering Straits.

A CONTINENT OF VILLAGES, TO 1500 CHAPTER 1 fi 3 THE FIRST AMERICAN SETTLERS

6 6 by do you call us Indians?" a Massachusetts native complained to Puritan missionary John Eliot in 1646. Christopher Colum- bus, who mistook the Taino people of the Caribbean for the

people of the East Indies, called them "Indios." Within a short time this Spanish word had passed into English as "Indians" and was commonly used to refer to all the native peoples of the Americas. Today anthropologists sometimes employ the term "Amerindians," and others use "Native Americans." But in the United States most of the descendants of the original inhabitants refer to themselves as "Indian people."

WHO ARE THE INDIAN PEOPLE?

At the time of their first contacts with Europeans at the beginning of the sixteenth cen- tury, the inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere represented over 2,000 separate cul- tures, spoke several hundred different languages, and made their livings in scores of different environments. No single physical type characterized all the peoples of the Americas. Indeed, it was only when Europeans had compared Indian peoples with natives of other continents, such as Africans, that they seemed similar enough to be classified as a group.

Once Europeans realised that the Americas were in fact a "New World," rather than part of the Asian continent, a debate began over how people might have moved there from Europe and Asia, where (according to the Judeo-Christian Bible) God had created the first man and woman. In 1590, the Spanish Jesuit missionary Joseph de Acosta reasoned that because Old World animals were present in the Americas, they must have crossed by a land bridge that could have been used by humans as well.

MIGRATION FROM ASIA

Acosta was the first to propose the Asian migration hypothesis that is widely accepted today. Analysis of the genetic drift of Siberian

and American Indian populations suggests that migrants to North America began

leaving Asia approximately 30,000 years ago (see Map 1.1).

The migration was possible because during the last Ice Age, from 70,000 to 10,000 years ago, huge glaciers locked up massive volumes of water, and sea levels were as much as 300 feet lower than they are today. Asia and

' North America, now separated by the Bering Straits, were joined by a

huge subcontinent of ice-free, tree- less grassland, which geologists have

named Beringia.

A forensic artist reconstructed this bust from the

skull of "Kennewick Man," whose skeletal

remains were discovered along the Columbia

River in 1996. Scientific testing suggested that the

remains were more than nine thousand years old.

/144.11 j

4 111 CHAPTER 1 A CONTINENT OF VILLAGES, TO 5500

PACIFIC

OCEAN

-4— Possible migration routes

Beringia

I I Glaciated areas I I Land areas

Present-day coastline

MAP 1.1

Migration Routes from Asia to America During the Ice Age, Asia and North America were joined where the Bering Straits are today, forming a migra-

don route for hunting peoples. These migrants began making their way to the heartland of the continent as much as 30,000 years ago.

WHAT GEOGRAPHICAL features shaped the dispersal of Asian migrants throughout the Americas?

Access to lands to the south, however, was blocked by huge ice sheets cover- ing much of what is today Canada. How did the migrants get through those 2,000 miles of deep ice? The standard hypothesis is that with the warming of the climate and the end of the Ice Age, about 13,000 BCE (Before the Common Era), glacial melting created an ice-free corridor—an original "Pan-American Highway"—along the eastern front range of the Rocky Mountains. Using this thoroughfare, the hunters of big game reached the Great Plains as early as 11,000 BCE.

Recently, however, new archaeological finds along the Pacific coast of North and South America have complicated this hypothesis. Radiocarbon analysis of remains discovered at several newly excavated human sites suggested dates of 12,000 BCE or earlier. A number of archaeologists believe that the people who founded these settlements moved south in boats along a coastal route—an ancient "Pacific Coast Highway."

There were two later migrations into North America. About 5000 BCE the Athapascan people moved across Beringia and began to settle the forests in the northwestern area of the continent. Eventually groups of Athapascan speakers,

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The Earliest Americans

• Paleo-Indians were resourceful hunters.

• During the Archaic period Indians adapted to regional environments.

• Farming began near the end of the Archaic Period.

Athapascan A people that began to settle the forests in the

northwestern area of North

America around 5000 BCE.

These Clovis points are typical of thousands that archaeologists have found at sites all over the continent, dating from a period about 12,000 years ago.

When inserted in a spear shaft, these three- to six-inch fluted points made

effective weapons for hunting mammoth and other big game. The ancient

craftsmen who made these points often took advantage of the unique quali- ties of the stone they were working to enhance their aesthetic beauty.

A CONTINENT OF VILLAGES, TO 1500 CHAPTER 1 III 5 the ancestors of the Navajos and Apaches, migrated across the Great Plains to the Southwest. A third and final migration began about 3000 BCE, long after Beringia had disappeared under rising seas, when a mar- itime hunting people crossed the Bering Straits in small boats.

THE CLOVIS CULTURE: THE FIRST ENVIRONMENTAL ADAPTATION

The tools found at the earliest North American archae- ological sites, crude stone or bone choppers and scrap- ers, are similar to artifacts from the same period found in Europe or Asia. About 11,000 years ago, however, ancient Americans developed a much more sophisti- cated style of making fluted blades and lance points, a tradition named "Clovis," after the location of the ini- tial discovery near Clovis, New Mexico, in 1926. In the years since, archaeologists have unearthed Clovis stone tools at sites throughout the continent all dating within 1,000 or 2,000 years of one another, suggesting that the Clovis technology spread quickly throughout the continent.

The global warming trend that ended the Ice Age dramatically altered the North American climate. About 15,000 years ago the giant continental glaciers began to melt and the northern latitudes were colonized by plants, animals, and humans. Meltwater created the lake and river systems of today and raised the level of the surrounding seas.

NEW WAYS OF LIVING ON THE LAND

These huge transformations produced new patterns of wind, rainfall, and tem- perature, reshaping the ecology of the entire continent and gradually producing the distinct North American regions of today (see Map 1.2). The great integrat- ing force of a single continental climate faded, and with its passing the continen- tal Clovis culture fragmented into a number of different regional patterns.

The retreat of the glaciers led to new ways of finding food: hunting in the Arctic, foraging in the and deserts, fishing along the coasts, hunting and gather- ing in the forests. These developments took place roughly 10,000 to 2,500 years ago, during what archaeologists call the Archaic period (corresponding to the Mesolithic period in the archaeological chronology of Eurasia).

Hunting Traditions One of the most important effects of this massive climat- ic shift was the stress it placed on the big-game animals best suited to an Ice Age environment. The archaeological record documents the extinction of thirty-two classes of large New World mammals. Changing climatic conditions lowered the reproduction and survival rates of these large mammals, forcing hunting bands

to intensify their hunting. As the other large-mammal populations declined, hunters on the Great

Plains concentrated on the herds of American bison (known more familiarly as buf- falo). To hunt these animals, people needed a new weapon. In archaeological sites dating from about 10,000 years ago, a new style of tool is found mingled with animal remains. This technology, named "Folsom" (for the site of the first major find near Folsom, New Mexico) was a refinement of Clovis that featured more delicate but deadlier spear points. Hunters probably hurled the lances to which

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The Clovis Tradition

• Emerged around 10,000 BCE.

• A new and powerful style of tool making.

• Clovis artifacts found throughout North and Central America.

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Hunting the Bison

• Climate shift resulted in the extinction of many large New World animals.

• As other large-mammal popula- tions declined, hunters concen- trated on bison herds.

• The growing complexity of Indian communities was reflected in bison hunting strategies.

ARCTIC OCEAN

ATLANTIC

OCEAN

Gulf of Mexico

6 CHAPTER 1 A CONTINENT OF VILLAGES, TO 1500

these points were attached with wooden spear-throwers, attaining far greater

momentum than possible using their arms alone.

These archaeological finds suggest the growing complexity of early Indian

communities. Hunters frequently stampeded herds of bison into canyon traps

or over cliffs. Such tasks required a sophisticated division of labor among dozens

of men and women and the cooperation of a number of communities. Taking

food in such great quantities also suggests a knowledge of basic preservation

techniques.

I/

MAP EXPLORATION To explore an interactive version of this map, go to http://www.prenhall.com/faraghertIc/map1.2

PACIFIC

OCEAN

— Culture area

-4— Trade route

o Regional center

• Local center

MAP 1.2 Native North American Culture Areas and Trade Networks, ca. 1400 CE By considering the ways in which Indian peoples developed distinct cultures and adapted to their environments, anthropologists developed the concept

of "culture areas." Just as regions shaped the lifeways and history of Indian peoples, after the coming of the Eu- ropeans they nurtured the development of regional American cultures. And by determining the origin of artifacts found at ancient sites, historians have devised a conjectural map of Indian trade networks. Among large regional centers and smaller local ones, trade connected Indian peoples of many different communities and regions.

HOW MD the environment influence the relationship between trade and culture?

A CONTINENT OF VILLAGES, TO 1500 CHAPTER 1

Desert Culture In the Great Basin, the warming trend created a desert where once there had been enormous inland seas. Here Indian people developed what anthropologists call "Desert culture," a way of life based on the pursuit of small game and the intensified foraging of plant foods. Small communities of desert foragers migrated seasonally within a small range.

Archaeologists today find the artifacts of desert foragers in the caves and rock shelters in which they lived. In addition to stone tools, there are objects of wood, hide, and fiber, wonderfully preserved for thousands of years in the dry climate. Desert culture persisted into the nineteenth century among modern Shoshone and Ute communities.

The innovative practices of Desert culture gradually spread from the Great Basin to the Great Plains and the Southwest, where foraging for plant foods began to supplement hunting. About 6,000 years ago, these techniques were carried to California, where, in the natural abundance of the valleys and coasts, communi- ties developed economies capable of supporting some of the densest populations and the first permanently settled villages in North America. Another dynamic center developed along the coast of the Pacific Northwest, where Indian communities developed a way of life based on the abundance of fish and sea mam- mals. Densely populated and permanently settled communities developed there

as well.

Forest Efficiency There were similar trends east of the Mississippi. In the cen- turies prior to colonization and settlement by Europeans, the whole of eastern North America was a vast forest. Communities of native people achieved a com- fortable and secure life by developing a sophisticated knowledge of the rich and diverse available resources, a principle anthropologists term "forest efficiency."

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Forest Living

• Eastern North America a vast- forest.

♦ Indian communities took advan- tage of rich forest resources.

♦ Indians developed settled forest communities.

When, in 1927, archaeolo- gists at Folsom, New Mexico, uncovered this

dramatic example of a pro-

jectile point embedded in

the ribs of a long-extinct species of bison, it was the

first proof that Indians had been in North America for

many thousands of years.

Courtesy of the Denver Museum of

Nature and Science.

Desert culture A way of life based on hunting small game and the foraging of plant foods.

Forest Efficiency Creation of a comfortable life through the development of a sophisticated knowledge of available resources.

8 111 CHAPTER 1 A CONTINENT OF VILLAGES, TO 1500 Archaeological sites in the East suggest that during the late Archaic period, com- munity populations grew and settlements became increasingly permanent, provid- ing convincing evidence of the practicality of forest efficiency.

=111.11 = IN WHAT ways did native

communities adapt to the distinct

regions of North America?

myhistd lab Review Summary

Mesoamerican maize cultivation, as illus-

trated by an Aztec artist for the

Florentine Codex, a book prepared a few years after the Spanish conquest. The

peoples of Mesoamerica developed a

greater variety of cultivated crops than

those found in any other region in the

world, and their agricultural productivity

helped sustain one of the world's great

civilizations.

Image #1739-3, courtesy the Library, American Muse-

um of Natural History.

Archaic period The period roughly 10,000 to 2,500 years ago marked by the retreat of glaciers.

Mesoamerica The region stretching from central Mexico to Central America.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF FARMING

A t the end of the Stone Age, communities in different regions of the world independently created systems of farming, each based on a unique staple crop: rice in Southeast Asia, wheat in the Middle East, potatoes in the Andean highlands of South America, and maize (what Americans call "corn") in Mexico. The dynamic center of this development in North America was in the highlands of Mexico, from which the new technology spread north and east.

ORIGINS IN MEXICO

Archaeological evidence suggests that plant cultivation in the highlands of central Mexico began about 5,000 years ago. Ancient Mexicans developed crops that responded well to human care and produced larger quantities of food in a lim- ited space than did plants growing in the wild. Maize was par- ticularly productive.

As farming became increasingly important, it radically reshaped social life. Where a foraging society might require 100 square miles to support 100 people, a farming society required only a single square mile. Farming provided not only the incen- tive for larger families (more workers for the fields) but also the means to feed them. People became less mobile, built more substantial residences near their crops, and developed more effective means of storage. Villages grew into towns and eventually into large, densely settled communities like Cahokia. Autumn harvests had to be stored during winter months, and the storage and distribution of food had to be managed. The division of labor increased with the appearance of specialists like toolmakers, craft workers, administrators, priests, and rulers.

By 1000 BCE urban communities governed by permanent bureaucracies had begun to form in Mesoamerica, the region stretching from central Mexico to Cen- tral America. By the beginning of the first millennium CE (Common Era), highly productive farming was supporting complex urban civilizations in the Valley of Mexico (the location of present-day Mexico City), the Yucatan Peninsula, and other parts of Mesoamerica. Like many of the ancient civilizations of Asia and the Mediter- ranean, these Mesoamerican civilizations were characterized by the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of an elite class of priests and rulers, the construc- tion of impressive temples and other public structures, and the development of systems of mathematics and astronomy and several forms of hieroglyphic writing. These civilizations also engaged in warfare between states and practiced ritual human sacrifice.

The great city of Teotihuacan in the Valley of Mexico, which emerged about 100 BCE, had a population of as many as 200,000 at the height of its power around 500 CE. Teotihuacan's elite class of religious and political lead- ers controlled an elaborate state-sponsored trading system that stretched from

A CONTINENT OF VILLAGES, TO 1500 CHAPTER 1

present-day Arizona to Central America and may have included coastal ship- ping connections with the civilizations of Peru.

Teotihuacan began to decline in the sixth century, and by the eighth century it was mostly abandoned. A new empire, that of the Toltecs, dominated central Mexico from the tenth to the twelfth centuries. By the fourteenth century a peo- ple known as the Aztecs, migrants from the north, had settled in the Valley of Mexico and begun a dramatic expansion into a formidable imperial power (see Chapter 2).

The Mayan peoples of the Yucatan Peninsula developed a group of competing city-states that flourished from about 300 BCE until 900 CE. Their achievements included advanced writing and calendar systems and a sophisticated knowledge of mathematics.

INCREASING SOCIAL COMPLEXITY

In a few areas, farming truly did result in a revolutionary change in Indian com- munities, producing urban civilizations like those in Mesoamerica or on the banks of the Mississippi at Cahokia. It is likely that among the first social transformations was the development of significantly more elaborate systems of kinship. Greater pop- ulation density prompted families to group themselves into clans, and separate clans gradually became responsible for different social, political, or ritual func- tions. Clans may have been an important mechanism for binding together the peo- ple of several communities into larger social units based on ethnic, linguistic, and territorial unity. These "tribes" were headed by leaders or chiefs from honored clans, often advised by councils of elders.

Chiefs' primary functions were the supervision of the economy, the collection and storage of the harvest, and the distribution of food to the clans. Differences in wealth, though small by the standards of modern societies, might develop between the families of a farming tribe. These inequalities were kept in check by redistrib- ution according to principles of sharing similar to those operating in foraging com- munities. Nowhere in North America did Indian cultures develop a concept of the private ownership of land or other resources, which were usually considered the com- mon resource of the people and were worked collectively.

Indian communities practiced a rather strict division of labor according to gender. In foraging communities, hunting was generally men's work, while the gathering of food and the maintenance of home-base camps were the responsi- bility of women. The development of farming may have challenged that pattern. Where hunting remained an important activity, women took responsibility for the growing of crops. But in areas like Mexico, where communities were almost totally dependent on cultivated crops for their survival, both men and women

worked the fields. In most North American Indian farming communities, women and men

belonged to separate social groupings, each with its own rituals and lore. Member- ship in these gender societies was one of the most important elements of a per- son's identity. Marriage ties, on the other hand, were relatively weak, and in most Indian communities divorce was a simple matter: the couple separated without a great deal of ceremony, and the children almost always remained with the mother.

Farming communities were far more complex than foraging communities, but they were also less stable. Growing populations demanded increasingly large surpluses of food, and this need often led to social conflict and warfare. Moreover, farming systems were especially vulnerable to changes in climate, such as drought, as well as to crises of their own making, such as soil depletion or erosion.

The creation of man and woman depicted

on a pot (dated about 1000 CE) from

the ancient villages of the Mimbres

River of southwestern New Mexico, the

area of Mogollon culture. Mimbres pot-

tery is renowned for its spirited artistry.

Such artifacts were usually intended as

grave goods to honor the dead.

Mimbres black on white bowl, with painted representa-

tions of man and woman under a blanket. Grant Coun-

ty, New Mexico. Diam. 26.7 cm. Courtesy National

Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institu-

tion, 24/3198.

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Indian Agrarian Society

• Families grouped themselves in clans which, in turn, were grouped in tribes.

• Chiefs supervised economic activities.

• No concept of private ownership of land.

• Strict division of labor according to gender.

Aztecs A warrior people who dominated the Valley of Mexico

from 1100-1521.

10 • CHAPTER 1 A CONTINENT OF VILLAGES, TO 1500

myhistylab Review Summary

THE RESISTED REVOLUTION

Some scholars describe the transition to farming as a revolution. Their argument is that farming offered such obvious advantages that communities rushed to adopt it. But there is very little evidence to support the notion that farming was a clearly superior way of life. Anthropologists have demonstrated that farmers work considerably longer and harder than do foragers. Moreover, farmers depend on a relatively narrow selection of plants and animals for food and are vulnerable to famine. Foragers experience periods of want, but they have a much higher probability of securing food under stressful conditions. Finally, compared to for- agers, farmers experienced degenerative conditions of the spine (probably the result of hard labor), a threefold increase in iron-deficiency anemia, and twice the amount of tooth decay and loss.

Moreover, ignorance of cultivation was never the reason communities failed to take up farming. All foraging cultures understand a great deal about plant repro- duction. When gathering wild rice, the Menominee Indians of the northern forests of Wisconsin purposely allowed some of it to fall back into the water to ensure a crop for the next season. Paiutes of the Great Basin systematically irrigated stands of their favorite wild food sources. Cultures in different regions assessed the relative advantages and disadvantages of adopting farming. In California and the Pacific Northwest, acorn gathering or salmon fishing made the cultivation of food crops seem a waste of time. In the Great Basin, there were attempts to farm but without much success. Before the invention of modern irrigation systems, which require sophisticated engineering, only the Archaic Desert culture could prevail in this harsh environment.

FARMING IN EARLY NORTH AMERICA

M aize farming spread north from Mexico into the area now part of the United States in the first millenuim BCE. Over time maize was adapted to a range of climates and its cultivation spread to all the temperate regions.

FARMERS OF THE SOUTHWEST

Farming communities began to emerge in the and Southwest during the first mil- lennium BCE. Among the first to develop a settled farming way of life was a culture known to archaeologists as Mogollon. These people farmed maize, beans, squash, and constructed ingenious food storage pits in permanent village sites along what is today the southern Arizona—New Mexico border.

During the same centuries, a culture known as Hohokam ("those who are gone," in the language of the modern tribes of the region) flourished in the region along the floodplain of the Salt and Gila Rivers in southern Arizona. The Hohokam, who lived in farming villages, built and maintained the first irrigation system in America north of Mexico, channeling river water through five hundred miles of canals to water desert fields of maize, beans, squash, tobacco, and cotton.

THE ANASAZIS

The best-known ancient farming culture of the Southwest is the Anasazi, which developed around the first century CE in the Four Corners area, where the states of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado meet on the great plateau of the Col- orado River. Around 750 CE, possibly in response to population pressure and an

WHAT WERE the consequences

of the development of farming for

native communities?

A CONTINENT OF VILLAGES, TO 1500 CHAPTER 1 11

Cliff Palace, at Mesa Verde National Park in southwest Colorado, was created 900 years ago when the Anasazis left the mesa tops and moved into more secure and inaccessible cliff dwellings. Facing

southwest, the building gained heat

from the rays of the low afternoon sun in

winter, and overhanging rock protected the structure from rain, snow, and the

hot midday summer sun. The numerous round kivas, each covered with a flat

roof originally, suggest that Cliff Palace

may have had a ceremonial importance.

increasingly dry climate, the residents of communities there began shifting from pit-house villages to densely populated, multistoried apartment complexes that the Spanish invaders called "pueblos." These farmers grew high-yield varieties of maize in terraced fields irrigated by canals flowing from mountain catchment basins. To supplement this vegetable diet, they hunted animals for their meat, using the bow and arrow that first appeared in the region in the sixth century.

The Anasazis faced a major challenge in the thirteenth and fourteenth cen- turies. The arid climate became even drier, and growing populations had to redou- ble their efforts to improve food production, building increasingly complex irrigation canals, dams, and terraced fields. A devastating drought resulted in repeated crop failures and eventual famine. The ecological crisis was heightened by the arrival in the fourteenth century of Athapascan migrants, ancestors of the Navajos and the Apaches. Athapascans raided Anasazi farming communities, taking food, goods, and possibly slaves. Gradually Ana.sa7i communities abandoned the Four Corners area altogether, most resettling along the Rio Grande, joining with local residents to form the Pueblo communities that were living there when the Spanish arrived.

FARMERS OF THE EASTERN WOODLANDS

Archaeologists date the beginning of the farming culture of eastern North Amer- ica, known as Woodland culture, from the first appearances of pottery in the region about 3,000 years ago. Woodland culture was based on a sophisticated way of life that combined gathering and hunting with the cultivation of a few local crops. Woodland people began cultivating maize during the first millennium CE, but even before that they had begun to adopt an increasingly settled existence and a more complex social organization, evidenced by complex earthen constructions.

Mound building was also a characteristic activity of the peoples living in the Ohio Valley during this period. The people of a culture known as Adena lived in semipermanent villages and constructed large burial mounds during the first mil- lennium BCE. They were succeeded by a culture called Hopewell, which honored

the dead with even larger and more elaborate burial mounds.

This bottle in the shape of a nursing mother (dated about 1300 BCE) was found at a Mississippian site. Historians can only speculate about the thoughts and feelings of the Mississippians, but such works of art

are testimonials to the universal human emotion of

maternal affection.

"Nursing Mother Effigy Bottle." From the Whelpley Collection at the

St. Louis Science Center. Photograph 0 1985 the Detroit Institute

of Arts.

12 III CHAPTER 1 A CONTINENT OF VILLAGES, TO 1500 The Great Serpent Mound in southern

Ohio, the shape of an uncoiling snake more than 1,300 feet long, is the largest effigy earthwork in the world.

Monumental public works like these

suggest the high degree of social organi-

zation of the Mississippian people.

MISSISSIPPIAN SOCIETY

The Hopewell culture collapsed in the fifth century CE, perhaps as a result of an ecological crisis brought on by shifting climate patterns. Over the next several centuries, however, a number of important technological innova- tions were introduced in the East. The bow and arrow, developed first on the Great Plains, appeared east of the Mississippi in about the seventh century, greatly increasing the efficiency of hunting. At about the same time maize farming spread widely through the East. Indian farmers developed a new variety (known today as Northern Flint) that matured in a short enough time to make it suitable for cultivation in temperate northern latitudes. A shift from digging sticks to flint hoes also took place about this time, further increasing the productive potential of maize farming.

On the basis of these innovations, a powerful new culture known as Mississippian arose in the seventh or eighth century CE. The peoples of Mis- sissippian culture were master maize farmers living in permanent commu- nity sites along the floodplains of the Mississippi Valley. Cahokia was the largest and most spectacular, with its monumental temple mounds, its resi- dential neighborhoods, and its surrounding farmlands. But there were dozens of other urban communities, each with thousands of residents. Archaeolo- gists have excavated sites on the Arkansas River near Spiro, Oklahoma; on the Black Warrior River at Moundville, Alabama; at Hiawassee Island on the Tennessee River; and along the Etowah and Okmulgee Rivers in Georgia. The Great Serpent Mound, the largest effigy earthwork in the world, was con- structed by Mississippian peoples in southern Ohio.

THE POLITICS OF WARFARE AND VIOLENCE

These centers, linked by the vast river transportation system of the Missis- sippi River and its many tributaries, became the earliest city-states north of Mexico, hierarchical chiefdoms that extended political control over the farmers of the surrounding countryside (see Map 1.3 for an illustration of

People per square mile

4 or more

1-4

0-1

0 C Z-

--k

Z

PACIFIC

OCEAN

A CONTINENT OF VILLAGES, TO 1500 CHAPTER 1

MAP EXPLORATION To explore an interactive version of this map, go to http://www.prenhall.com/faraghertIc/map1.3

Hudson

Bay

13

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is7

J 0 0 '` G REAT 4.-

0 PLAINS '7

2 C., 'Z'

0 'r Q' -.;i ATLANTIC sr

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MAP 1.3 Population Density of Indian Societies in the Fifteenth Century Based on what is called the "carrying capacity" of different subsistence strategies—the population density they could support—histori-

cal demographers have mapped the hypothetical population density of Indian societies in the fif-

teenth century, before the era of European colonization. Populations were densest in farming

societies or in coastal areas with marine resources and sparsest in extreme environments like the Great Basin.

WHY WERE some regions more populated than others?

trade networks). With continued population growth, these cities engaged in vig- orous and probably violent competition for the limited space along the rivers. It may have been the need for more orderly ways of allocating territories that stim- ulated the evolution of political hierarchies. The tasks of preventing local con- flict, storing large food surpluses, and redistributing foodstuffs from farmers to artisans and elites required a leadership class with the power to command. Mound building and the use of tribute labor in the construction of other pub- lic works testified to the power of chiefs, who lived in sumptuous quarters atop

the mounds. Mississippian culture reached its height between the eleventh and thirteenth

centuries CE, the same period in which the Anasazi culture constructed its desert cities. Both groups adapted to their own environment the technology that was spreading northward from Mexico. Both developed impressive artistic traditions, and their feats of engineering reflect the beginnings of science and technology. They were complex societies characterized by urbanism, social stratification, craft specialization, and regional trade—except for the absence of a writing system, all the traits of European civilization.

14 ip CHAPTER 1 A CONTINENT OF VILLAGES, TO 1500 Warfare among Indian peoples certainly predated the colonial era. Orga-

nized violence was probably rare among hunting bands, which could seldom man- age more than a small raid against an enemy. Certain hunting peoples, though, such as the southward-moving Athapascans, must have engaged in systematic raiding of settled farming communities. Warfare was also common among farming confed- eracies fighting to gain additional lands for cultivation. The first Europeans to arrive in the southeastern part of the continent described highly organized com- bat among large tribal armies. The bow and arrow was a deadly weapon of war, and the practice of scalping seems to have originated among warring tribes, who believed one could capture a warrior's spirit by taking his scalp lock.

CULTURAL REGIONS OF NORTH AMERICA

ON THE EVE OF COLONIZATION

A n appreciation of the ways human cultures adapted to geography and climate is fundamental to an understanding of American history, for just as regions shaped the development of Indian cultures in the centuries before the arrival of Europeans, so they continued to influence the character of American life in the centuries thereafter.

In order to understand the impact of regions on Indian cultures, anthropol- ogists divide North America into several distinct "culture areas" within which groups shared a significant number of cultural traits: Arctic, Subarctic, Great Basin, Great Plains, California, Northwest, Plateau, Southwest, South, and Northeast.

THE POPULATION OF INDIAN AMERICA

Determining the size of early human population is a tricky business, and estimates vary greatly, but there seems to be general agreement among historical demogra- phers that the population of the North American continent (excluding Mesoamer- ica) numbered between 5 and 10 million at the time of the first European voyages of discovery. Millions more lived in the complex societies of Mexico and Central America (estimates run from 5 to 25 million). The population of the Western Hemisphere as a whole may have numbered 50 million or more, the same order

of magnitude as Europe's population at the time. Demographers may disagree about numbers but agree that population var-

ied tremendously by cultural region. The largest populations of the continent were concentrated in the farming regions of the Southwest, South, and North- east. These were the areas in which European explorers, conquerors, and colonists concentrated their first efforts, and they deserve more detailed examination (see

Map 1.4) .

THE SOUTHWEST

The single overwhelming fact of life in the Southwest is aridity. Summer rains average only ten to twenty inches annually, and on much of the dry desert culti- vation is impossible. A number of rivers, however, flow out of the pine-covered mountain plateaus, making possible irrigation farming along their courses.

On the eve of European colonization, Indian farmers in the Southwest had been cultivating their fields for nearly 3,000 years. In the floodplain of the Gila and Salt Rivers lived the Pimas and Tohono O'Odhams, descendants of the ancient Hohokam culture, and along the Colorado River, even on the floor of the Grand

=}1111.1.1111111111.1011 WHAT IMPORTANT differences

were there between Indian

societies in the Southwest, South,

and Northeast on the eve of

colonization?

myhistdrylab Review Summary

1-3 Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, Indians of the Rio Grande

An Early European Image of Native Americans

rom the very beginning of Europeans' contact with native American peoples, they

depicted Indians as savages rather than as peoples with complex cultures. This wood-

cut by German artist Johann Froschauer was included in a 1505 German edition of

Amerigo Vespucci's account of his voyage to the New World in 1499 and is among the very

first images of Native Americans published. The image is a complete fantasy, lacking any

ethnographic authenticity. Indians gather for a feast on the beach. The caption in the orig-

inal publication read, in part: "The people are

naked, handsome, brown, well-shaped in

body. ... No one has anything, but all things are

in common. And the men have as wives those

who please them, be they mothers, sisters, or

friends; therein they make no distinction. They also fight with each other; and they eat

each other, even those who are slain, and hang the flesh of them in the smoke." A can-

nibalized body is being devoured. A couple is kissing. Women display their breasts. The

image sent a powerful message: that some of the strongest taboos of Europeans—naked-

ness, sexual promiscuity, and cannibalism—were practiced by the people of the New

World. It is an unrelentingly negative picture. The

arrival of Euro-

pean vessels in

the background

of the image sug-

gests that all this

was about to

change. Images

like these contin-

ued to dominate

the depiction of

Indians for the

next four hundred

years, and were

used as justifications

for conquest. ■

HOW ARE European stereotypes of savage people conveyed visually in this image?

15

16 11 CHAPTER 1 A CONTINENT OF VILLAGES, TO 1500

CREES

MIKMAQ

OTTAWAS HAUDENOSAUNEE ABANAKIS

(IROQUOIS)

MASSACHUSETTS

FIVE NATION NARRAGANSETTS CONFEDERACY

Northeast

Grand Canyon

DELAWARES

POWAHATANS

NAVAJOS

YUMANS PUEBLOS

Southwest

CHEROKEES

CATAWBAS

CHICKASAWS

APACHES

CREEKS

South

PIMAS

PAPAGOS

ATLANTIC

CHOCTAWS

NATCHEZ

OCEAN PACIFIC

TIMUCUAS

OCEAN

Gulf of Mexico

CALUSAS

MAP 1.4

Indian Groups in the Areas of First Contact The Southwest was populated by desert farmers like the Pimas, Tohono O'Odhams, Yumans, and Pueblos, as well as by nomadic hunters and raiders like the Apaches and Navajos. On the eve of colonization, the Indian societies

of the South shared many traits of the complex Mississippian farming culture. The Indians of the Northeast were mostly village peoples.

HOW DID the lack of rain shape the lives of the Indians of the Southwest?

Rancherias Dispersed settlements of Indian farmers in the Southwest.

Canyon, the Yuman peoples worked small irrigated fields. In their oasis commu- nities, desert farmers cultivated corn, beans, squash, sunflowers, and cotton, which they traded throughout the Southwest. Often described as individualists, desert farmers lived in dispersed settlements that the Spanish called rancherias, their dwellings separated by as much as a mile. That way, say the Pimas, people avoid getting on each other's nerves. Rancherias were governed by councils of adult men whose decisions required unanimous consent, although a headman was cho- sen to manage the irrigation works.

East of the Grand Canyon lived the Pueblo peoples. Although speaking sev- eral languages, the Pueblos had a great deal in common, most notably their com- mitment to communal village life. A strict communal code of behavior that regulated personal conduct was enforced by a maze of matrilineal clans and secret religious societies; unique combinations of these clans and societies formed the governing systems of different Pueblo villages. Seasonal public ceremonies in the

A CONTINENT OF VILLAGES, TO 15o° CHAPTER 1 III 17

"The New Queen Being Taken to the King," engraved by Theodor de Bry in the sixteenth century from a drawing by Jacques le Moyne, an early French colonist of Florida. The communities of Florida were hierarchical, with classes and hereditary chiefs, some of whom were women. Here, le Moyne depicted a "queen" being carried on an ornamental litter by men of rank.

Neg. No. 324281, Photographed by Rota, Engraving by de Bry. American Museum of Natural History Library.

village squares included singing and chanting, dancing, colorful impersonations of the ancestral spirits called kachinas, and the comic antics of clowns who mocked in slapstick style those who did not conform to the communal ideal.

The Pueblos inhabit the oldest continuously occupied towns in the United States. The village of Oraibi, Arizona, dates from the twelfth century, when the Hopis ("peaceful ones") founded it in the isolated central mesas of the Colorado

Plateau. Using dry-farming methods and drought-resistant plants, the Hopis pro- duced rich harvests of corn and squash amid shifting sand dunes. On a mesa top about fifty miles southwest of present-clay Albuquerque, New Mexico, Anasazi immigrants from Mesa Verde built Acoma, the "sky city," in the late thirteenth century. The Pueblo peoples established approximately seventy other villages over the next two centuries; fifty of these were still in existence in the seventeenth cen- tury when the Spanish founded Santa Fe, and two dozen survive today, including the large Indian towns of Laguna, Isleta, Santo Domingo, Jemez, San Felipe, and

Taos. The Athapascans, more recent immigrants to the Southwest, also lived in

the arid deserts and mountains. They hunted and foraged, traded meat and med- icinal herbs with farmers, and often raided and plundered these same villages and rancherias. One group of Athapascans, the Apaches, continued to maintain

QUICK REVIEW

The South

♦ Mild, moist climate ideal for farming.

♦ Indian peoples of the South farmed, fished, and hunted.

♦ Peoples of the South shared agricultural festivals.

18 III CHAPTER 1 A CONTINENT OF VILLAGES, TO 1500

OVERVIEW Origins of Some Indian Tribal Names

A corruption of the Choctaw chiluk-ki, meaning "cave people," an allusion to the many caves in the Cherokee homeland in the highlands of present-day Georgia. The Cherokees called themselves Ani-Yun-Wiya, or "real people."

From the Sioux Sha-hiyena, "people of strange speech." The Cheyennes of the Northern Plains called themselves Dzi-tsistas, meaning "our people."

A shortening of the name the Hopis of northern Arizona use for themselves, Hopitu, which means "peaceful ones."

From the Algonquian Mohawaauck, meaning "man-eaters." The Mohawks of the upper Hudson Valley in New York called themselves Kaniengehaga, "people of the place of the flint."

From the Pawnee term partici, which describes a distinctive style of dressing the hair with paint and fat to make it stand erect like a horn. The Pawnees, whose homeland was the Platte River valley in present-day Nebraska, called themselves Chahiksichahiks, "men of men."

Cherokee

Cheyenne

Hopi

Mohawk

Pawnee

their nomadic ways. But another group, known as the Navajos, gradually adopted

the farming and handicraft skills of their Pueblo neighbors.

THE SOUTH The South enjoys a mild, moist climate with short winters and long summers, ideal

for farming. From the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, a broad fertile plain extends

inland to the Piedmont, a plateau separating the coastal plains from the

Appalachian Mountains. The upper courses of the waterways originating in the

Appalachian highlands offered ample rich bottom land for farming. The exten-

sive forests, mostly of yellow pine, offered abundant animal resources. In the six-

teenth century, large populations of Indian peoples farmed this rich land, fishing

or hunting local fauna to supplement their diets. They lived in communities

ranging from villages of twenty or so dwellings to large towns of a thousand or

more inhabitants (see Map 1.4). Mississippian cultural patterns continued among many of the peoples of

the South. Along the waterways, many farming towns were organized into chief-

doms. Because most of these groups were decimated by disease in the first years

of colonization, they are poorly documented. Archaeologists have excavated sites

on the east bank of the Mississippi, in what is now Arkansas, inhabited by the

Caddo people. The evidence suggests that in the fifteenth century they lived in

complex ranked communities, built monumental temple mounds, and counted

a population of more than 200,000. There is historical evidence about the Natchez,

who survived into the eighteenth century before being defeated and dispersed

in a war with the French. They too lived on the Mississippi, on the opposite bank

from the Caddos, where they farmed the rich floodplains. The Natchez were also

a ranked society, with a small group of nobility ruling over the majority. Persis-

tent territorial conflict with other confederacies elevated warriors to an honored status. Public torture and human sacrifice of enemies were common.

These chiefdoms were rather unstable. Under the pressure of climate change,

population growth, and warfare, many were weakened and others collapsed. As a

result, thousands of people left behind the grand mounds and earthworks and

myhistdylab Overview: Origins of Some Indian Tribal Names

QUICK REVIEW

The Northeast

♦ Varied geography of plains, mountains, rivers, lakes, and valleys.

♦ The Iroquois have lived in the region for 4,500 years.

♦ Population growth and intensifi- cation of farming led to the devel- opment of chiefdoms.

1-10 Thomas Harriot, The Algonquian Peoples of the Atlantic Coast

This deerskin cape, embroidered with shells by an Indian craftsman, is

thought to be the chief's mantle that Powhatan, leader of a confedera- cy of Algonquian villages in the Chesapeake region, gave to an English captain as part of an exchange of presents in 1608. The animal effi- gies are suggestive of the complex of religious beliefs centering on the relationship of hunters to their prey.

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England, U.K.

A CONTINENT OF VILLAGES, TO 1500 CHAPTER 1 19

migrated to the woodlands and hill country, where they took up hunting and foraging, returning to the tried and true meth- ods of "forest efficiency" They formed communities and banded together in confederacies, which were less centralized and more egalitarian than the Mississippian chiefdoms and would prove considerably more resilient to conquest.

Among the most prominent of these new ethnic groups were a people in present-day Mississippi and Alabama who came to be known as the Choctaws. Another group in western Ten- nessee became known as the Chickasaws, and another people in Georgia later became known as the Creeks. On the mountain plateaus lived the Cherokees, the single largest confederacy, which included more than sixty towns. For these groups, farm- ing was somewhat less important, hunting somewhat more so. There were no ruling classes or kings, and leaders included

women as well as men. Women controlled household and village life and were influential in the matrilineal clans that linked com- munities together. Councils of elderly men governed the con- federacies but were joined by clan matrons for annual meetings at the central council house.

THE NORTHEAST

The Northeast, the colder sector of the eastern woodlands, has a varied geography of coastal plains and mountain highlands, great rivers, lakes, and valleys. In the first millennium CE, farming became the main support of the Indian economy in those places where the growing season was long enough to bring a crop of corn to maturity. In such areas of the Northeast, along the coasts and in the river valleys, Indian populations were large and dense (see Map 1.4).

The Iroquois of present-day Ontario and upstate New York have lived in the Northeast for at least 4,500 years and were among the first northeastern peoples to adopt cultivation.

Population growth and the resulting intensification of farming in Iroquoia stimulated the development of chiefdoms there as it did elsewhere. By the eleventh century, several centers of population, each in a separate watershed, had coa- lesced from east to west across upstate New York. These were the five Iroquois chiefdoms or nations: the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. Oral histories collected from Iroquois speakers during the nineteenth century remember this as an era of persistent violence, possibly the consequence of con- flicts over territory.

To control this violence, the five nations established a confederacy. The Iroquois called their confederacy Haudenosaunee, meaning "people of the longhouse." Each nation, they said, occupied a separate hearth but acknowledged a common mother. As in the longhouse, women played important roles in the confederacy, choosing male leaders who would represent their lineages and chief- dom on the Iroquois council. The confederacy suppressed violence among its members but did not hesitate to encourage war against neighboring Iroquoian speakers, such as the Hurons or the Eries, who constructed defensive confedera-

cies of their own at about the same time. The other major language group of the Northeast was Algonquian, whose

speakers divided among at least fifty distinct cultures. The Algonquian peoples

20 ill CHAPTER 1 A CONTINENT OF VILLAGES, TO 1500

CHRONOLOGY

30,000 BCE First humans populate Beringia 1000 BCE First urban communities in Mexico

13,000 BCE Global warming trend begins 200 BCE-400 CE Hopewell culture flourishes

12,500 BCE Monte Verde site in southern Chile flourishes

650 Bow and arrow, flint hoes, and Northern Flint corn in the Northeast

10,000 BCE Clovis technology 775-1150 Hohokam culture flourishes

9000 BCE Extinction of big-game animals 1000 Tobacco in use throughout North

8000 BCE Beginning of the Archaic period America

1142 Founding of Haudenosaunee 7000 BCE First cultivation of plants in the Mexican

highlands Confederacy

1150 Founding of Hopi village of Oraibi, oldest 5000 BCE Athapascan migration to America begins continuously occupied town in the

4000 BCE First settled communities along the United States

Pacific coast 1200 High point of Mississippian and Anasazi

3000 BCE Inuit, Yupik, and Aleut migrations begin cultures

1500-1000 BCE Maize and other Mexican crops 1276 Severe drought begins in the Southwest

introduced into the Southwest 1300 Arrival of Athapascans in the Southwest

north of the Great Lakes and in northern New England were hunters and foragers,

organized into bands with loose ethnic affiliations. Several of these peoples, includ-

ing the Mikmaq, Crees, Montagnais, and Ojibwas (also known as the Chippewas),

were the first to become involved in the fur trade with European newcomers.

Among the Algonquians of the Atlantic coast from present-day Massachusetts south to Virginia, as well as among those in the Ohio Valley, farming led to the develop-

ment of settlements as densely populated as those of the Iroquois.

In contrast to the Iroquois, most Algonquian peoples were patrilineal. In

general, they lived in less extensive dwellings and in smaller villages, often with-

out palisade fortifications. Although Algonquian communities were relatively

autonomous, they began to form confederacies during the fifteenth and sixteenth

The Hiawatha wampum belt of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois Five Nation

Confederacy is exquisitely constructed of

nearly seven thousand purple and white

drilled shell beads, woven together with

buckskin thongs and hemp thread. It is a

ceremonial artifact, a symbol of the unity

of the five Iroquois nations. With the cen-

tral tree or heart pointed up, the first two

squares on the right represent the

Mohawk and Oneida, the tree stands for

the Onondaga, where the council met,

and the third and fourth squares for the

Cayuga and Seneca nations. The belt

itself dates from the early eighteenth

century, but the design is thought to have

originated with the Confederacy itself,

perhaps in the twelfth century CE.

A CONTINENT OF VILLAGES, TO 1500 CHAPTER 1 21

centuries. Among these groupings were those of the Massachusetts, Narragansetts, and Pequots of New England; the peoples of the Delaware Valley and Chesapeake Bay on the mid-Atlantic coast; and the Shawnees, Miamis, Kickapoos, and Potawatomis of the Ohio Valley.

CONCLUSION

0 ver the thousands of years that elapsed between the initial settlement of North America and the arrival of Europeans at the end of the fifteenth century, Indian peoples developed dozens of distinctive cultures, each

fine-tuned to the geographic and climatic possibilities and limitations of their en- vironments. In the northern forests, they hunted game and perfected the art of processing furs and hides. Along the coasts and rivers they harvested the abundant runs of fish and learned to navigate the waters with sleek and graceful boats. In the arid Southwest, they mastered irrigation farming and made the deserts bloom, while in the humid Southeast, they mastered the large-scale production of crops that sustained large cities with sophisticated political systems. The ruins of the an- cient city of Cahokia provide dramatic evidence that North America was not the "virgin" continent Europeans proclaimed it to be. Indians had transformed the nat- ural world, making it into a human landscape.

REVIEW QUESTIONS

1. List the evidence for the hypothesis that the Americas were settled by

migrants from Asia.

2. Discuss the impact of environmental change and human hunting on the big-game populations of North America.

3. Review the principal regions of the North American continent and the human adaptations that made social life possible in each of them.

4. Define the concept of "forest efficiency." How does it help to illuminate the major development of the Archaic period?

5. Why did the development of farming lead to increasing social complexity? Discuss the reasons why organized political activity began in farming soci-

eties.

6. What were the hunting and agrarian traditions? In what ways did the reli- gious beliefs of Indian peoples reflect their environmental adaptations?

7. What factors led to the organization of the Iroquois Five Nation

Confederacy?

22 NI CHAPTER 1 A CONTINENT OF VILLAGES, TO 1500

myhist4kylab Flashcard Review

KEY TERMS Archaic period (p. 8) Athapascan (p. 4) Aztecs (p. 9) Beringia (p. 3) Cahokia (p. 2)

Desert culture (p. 7) Forest Efficiency (p. 7) Indios (p. 3) Mesoamerica (p. 8) Rancherias (p. 16)

RECOMMENDED READING Colin G. Calloway, One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West Before Lewis

and Clark (2003). A masterful synthesis that emphasizes the continuities between the precolonial and colonial history of North America.

Sally Kitt Chappell, Cahokia: Mirror of the Cosmos (2002). An engaging, compre- hensive, and thoughtful account of America's most impressive ancient monument.

Tom D. Dillehay, The Settling of the Americas: A New Prehistory (2000). A summary of the most recent archaeological findings, suggesting a much earlier mi- gration to the Americas. For the newest discoveries, see recent issues and websites of National Geographic and Scientific American.

Patricia Galloway, Choctaw Genesis, 1500-1700 (1995). A path-breaking work that uses both archaeological and written evidence to tie together the precolo- nial and colonial periods of a tribal people of the South.

Alvin M. Josephy Jr., ed., America in 1492 (1992). Important essays by leading scholars of the North American Indian experience. Includes beautiful il- lustrations and maps as well as an excellent bibliography.

Alice Beck Kehoe, America Before the European Invasions (2002). A major new syn- thesis of the history of North America in the centuries before 1492.

Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (2005). A popular and engaging journalistic account of the increasing recognition among historians "that the Western Hemisphere played a role in the human story just as interesting and important as that of the Eastern Hemisphere."

Stephen Plog, Ancient Peoples of the American Southwest (1998). Covers the shift to agriculture with a focus on both the costs and the benefits. An accessible text with wonderful photographs.

Robert Silverberg, Mound Builders of Ancient America: The Archaeology of a Myth (1968). A history of opinion and theory about the mound builders.

William C. Sturtevant, general editor, Handbook of North American Indians, 20

vols. proposed (1978— ). The most comprehensive collection of the best current scholarship. When completed the series will include a volume for each of the culture regions of North America, plus volumes on origins, Indian-white relations, languages, and art; a biographical dictionary; and a

general index.

A CONTINENT OF VILLAGES, TO 1500 CHAPTER I

David Hurst Thomas, Skull Wars: Kennewick Man, Archaeology, and the Battle for Native American Identity (2000). A page-turner that details the controversy over the discovery of "Kennewick Man" and changing ideas about ancient North American history.

Russell Thornton, American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History since 1492 (1987). The best introduction to the historical demography of North America. Provides a judicious review of all the evidence in a field of

considerable controversy.

myhi§Ola b hilt lab For study resources for this chapter, go to www.mybistorylab.com and choose Out of Many, Teaching and Learning Classroom Edition. You will find a wealth of study and review material for this chapter, including pretests and posttests, customized study plan, key-term review

flash cards, interactive map and document activities, and documents for analysis.

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