1. A Continent of Villages to 1500

2. A Continent of Villages to 1500
The First American Settlers
The Development of Farming
Farming in Early North America
Cultural Regions of North America on the Eve of Colonization
Conclusion

3. Painting of Cahokia Mounds, Collinsville, Illinois by Michael Hampshire.
Painting of Cahokia Mounds, Collinsville, Illinois by Michael Hampshire. Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site.

4. A Continent of Villages
What does the chapter title suggest about North American Indian societies before 1500?

5. Bust from the skull of “Kennewick Man”
A forensic artist reconstructed this bust from the skull of “Kennewick Man,” whose skeletal remains were discovered along the Columbia River in Scientific testing suggested that the remains were more than 9,000 years old.

6. Chapter Focus Questions
How were the Americas first settled?
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?

7. Chapter Focus Questions (cont'd)
What was the nature of the Indian cultures in the three regions where Europeans first invaded and settled?

8. North America and Cahokia

9. American Communities: Cahokia
Tenth through fourteenth-century urban complex on Mississippi
20,000-30,000 people by mid-1200
Highly productive cultivation techniques
Goods for continent-wide trade

10. American Communities: Cahokia
Center of long-distance trading
City-state—tribute and taxation
Monument mounds
Priests and governors
Huge temple — wealth and power
Mystery well into the 19th century

11. The First American Settlers

12. Clovis points
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 qualities of the stone they were working to enhance their aesthetic beauty.

13. Who Are the Indian People?
“Indian”—Columbus’ believed he reached the Indies.
Diverse group of people
2,000 separate cultures
Several hundred languages
Many varying physical characteristics

14. Who Are the Indian People? (cont'd)
Theories of origin
Degenerate offspring from a superior Old World culture.
Land bridge

15. MAP 1.1 Migration Routes from Asia to America
During the Ice Age, Asia and North America were joined where the Bering Strait is today, forming a migration route for hunting peoples. Either by boat along the coast, or through a narrow corridor between the huge northern glaciers, these migrants began making their way to the heartland of the continent as much as 30,000 years ago.

16. Migration from Asia New genetic research links. Beringia land bridge.
Glaciers lower sea levels, creating grasslands 750 miles wide from north to south.
Three migrations from Asia beginning about 30,000 years ago
Traveled by land (ice-free corridor) and along coast

17. Clovis: The First American Environmental Adaptation
New and powerful technology.
More sophisticated style of making fluted blades and lance points.
Named for site of first discovery: Clovis, New Mexico
Mobile, foraging communities of interrelated families.
Clovis bands migrated seasonally to the same hunting camps.

18. New Ways of Living on the Land
As the last Ice Age ended 15,000 years ago, new climate patterns developed in North America.
Between 10,000 and 2,500 years ago, the modern regions of the continent took shape and, with it, the distinct cultural regions of the Archaic Native American period.

19. Hunting Traditions Massive climate shift stressed big game animals
Hunted bison (buffalo) with fast accurate weapons
Folsom tradition
Spear-throwers

20. Hunting Traditions (cont'd)
Hunting technique of stampeding bison over cliffs.
Sophisticated division of labor and knowledge of food preservation techniques

21. Example of a projectile point embedded in the ribs of a long extinct species of bison
When, in 1927, archaeologists at Folsom, New Mexico, uncovered this dramatic example of a projectile 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.
SOURCE: Courtesy of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

22. MAP 1. 2 Native North American Culture Areas and Trade Networks, ca
MAP 1.2 Native North American Culture Areas and Trade Networks, ca CE
MAP 1.2 Native North American Culture Areas and Trade Networks, ca CE
All peoples must adjust their diet, shelter, and other material aspects of their lives to the physical conditions of the world around them. By considering the ways in which Indian peoples developed distinct cultures and adapted to their environments, anthropologists developed the concept of “culture areas.” They divide the continent into nine fundamental regions that have greatly influenced the history of North America over the past 10,000 years. Just as regions shaped the lifeways and history of Indian peoples, after the coming of the Europeans they nurtured the development of regional American cultures. 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.

23. Desert Culture Small-game hunting and intensified foraging
seasonal routes of foraging
Skills
fiber baskets for collecting;
pitch-lined baskets for cooking;
nets and traps;
and stone tools.

24. Desert Culture (cont'd)
Spread to Great Plains and Southwest
West coast developed first permanently settled communities in North America

25. Forest Efficiency Eastern North America a vast forest
Archaic developments:
small-game hunting;
gathering seeds, nuts, roots, and other plants;
burning woodlands, prairies to stimulate growth of berries, fruits, and roots;
burning created meadows to provide food that attracted grazing animals for hunting; and fishing.

26. Forest Efficiency (cont'd)
Populations grew, permanent settlements
Men and women in different roles

27. The Development of Farming

28. Mesoamerican maize cultivation, as illustrated by an Aztec artist for the Florentine Codex
Mesoamerican maize cultivation, as illustrated by an Aztec artist for the Florentine Codex, a book prepared several decades after the Spanish conquest. The peoples of Mesoamerica developed a greater variety of cultivated crops than those found in any othe region in the world, and their agricultural productivity helped sustain one of the world’s great civilizations.
SOURCE: Image #1739-3, courtesy the Library, American Museum of Natural History.

29. Mexico First cultivated maize about 5,000 years ago
Crops: potatoes, beans, squash, tomatoes, peppers, avocados, chocolate, and vanilla.
Sedentary lifestyle and rise of large, urban complexes
Teotihuacán—200,000 inhabitants.

30. Mexico (cont'd)
Elite class of rulers and priests, monumental public works, and systems of mathematics and hieroglyphic writing
Toltecs and Aztecs succeeded Teotihuacán culture

31. Mexico (continued)
Early 1500s, Tenochtitlán — a city of 200,000, larger than any in Europe
Yucatan
Maya flourished from 300 BCE to 900 CE, developing advanced writing and calendar systems and sophisticated mathematics.

32. Increasing Social Complexity
Farming stimulated complexity
Clans bound people into tribe
Led by clan leaders of chiefs and advised by councils of elders
Chiefs were responsible for collection, storage, and distribution of food.
Gender-divided labor
Marriage ties generally weak

33. Increasing Social Complexity (cont'd)
Growing populations required larger food surpluses, leading to war

34. The creation of man and woman depicted on a pot (dated about 1000 CE)
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 pottery is renowned for its spirited artistry. Such artifacts were usually intended as grave goods to honor the dead.
SOURCE: Mimbres black on white bowl, with painted representations of man and woman under a blanket. Grant County, New Mexico. Diam cm. Courtesy National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, 24/3198.

35. The Resisted Revolution
Change a gradual process
Costs and benefits—farmers worked harder than foragers, less flexible, and more vulnerable
Rejection of farming: climate, abundant food sources, cultural values

36. The Resisted Revolution (cont'd)
Foraging: provided varied diet, less influenced by climate, required less work
Farmers: more disease and famine than foragers
Favorable climate needed for farming.

37. Farming in Early North America

38. Cliff Palace, at Mesa Verde National Park in southwest Colorado
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.

39. Farmers of the Southwest
Farming emerged in southwest in first millennium B.C.E
The Mogollon
First in settled farming life: maize, beans, squash
Pit houses in permanent villages near streams

40. Farmers of the Southwest (cont'd)
The Hohokam
Maize, beans, squash, tobacco, cotton
Villages: floodplain of the Salt and Gila rivers (C.E. 300 to 1500)
First irrigation system
Shared traits with Mesoamerican civilization

41. The Anasazis Farming culture
Plateau of Colorado River—Four Corners (Arizona, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico)
Densely populated, multistoried apartment complexes (pueblos)
High-yield maize in irrigated terraced fields
Hunting with bow and arrow
25,000+ known communities

42. The Anasazis (cont'd) Farming culture
Declined due to extended drought and arrival of Athapascan migrants

43. Farmers of the Eastern Woodlands
Farming culture in eastern North America was dated from the first appearance of pottery about 3,000 years ago.
Woodland culture combined hunting and gathering with farming
Sunflowers, small grains, tobacco
Developed a complex social structure

44. Farmers of the Eastern Woodlands (cont'd)
Adena culture occupied Ohio Valley
Established custom of large burial mounds for leaders

45. Mississippian Society
Introduction of bow and arrow, development of Northern Flint maize, and switch from digging sticks to hoes were basis of Mississippian culture.
Developed sophisticated maize farming
Centered around permanent villages on Mississippi River floodplain, with Cahokia as urban center
Sites from Oklahoma to Arkansas to Alabama to Georgia have been excavated.

46. The Great Serpent Mound in southern Ohio
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 organization of the Mississippian people.

47. The Politics of Warfare and Violence
River systems—trading partners and rivals
Warfare predated the colonial era
Hunters led small raids on farming communities.
Farming communities fought to gain land for cultivation.
Highly organized tribal armies
Bow and arrow—deadly weapon
Scalping—warring tribes.

48. The Politics of Warfare and Violence (cont'd)
Warfare predated the colonial era
Eventually, many cities collapsed and people scattered, forming small decentralized communities.

49. Bottle in the shape of a nursing mother (dated about 1300 BCE)
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.
SOURCE: “Nursing Mother Effigy Bottle.” From the Whelpley Collection at the St. Louis Science Center. Photograph © 1985 the Detroit Institute of Arts/The Bridgeman Art Library, NY.

50. Cultural Regions of North America on the Eve of Colonization

51. An Early European Image of Native Americans

52. 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—historical demographers have mapped the hypothetical population density of Indian societies in the fifteenth 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.

53. The Population of Indian America
1600s—Western Hemisphere population 50 million or more
Cultural regions
Largest populations were centered in Southwest, South, and Northeast—culture areas where first encounters with Europeans occurred.

54. ”The New Queen Being Taken to the King,” an engraving copied from a drawing by Jacques LeMoyne
”The New Queen Being Taken to the King,” an engraving copied from a drawing by Jacques LeMoyne, an early French colonist of Florida, and published by the German Theodor de Bry in The communities of Florida were hierarchical, with classes and hereditary chiefs, some of whom were women. Here, LeMoyne depicted a “queen” being carried on an ornamental litter by men of rank.
SOURCE: Neg. No , Photographed by Rota, Engraving by DeBry. American Museum of Natural History Library.

55. 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. In the fifteenth century, five Iroquois groups—the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas—joined together to form the Iroquois Five Nation Confederacy.

56. The Southwest
Aridity—though a number of rivers flow out of mountain plateaus
Dry farming or irrigated agriculture, living in villages.
Separate dispersed settlements
Pueblos and communal village life
Yuman, Pimas, Pueblos, and, Athapascans who developed into Navajo and Apaches.

57. The Southwest (cont'd)
Pueblos inhabit the oldest continuously occupied sites in the United States, persisting through Spanish occupation in the seventeenth century.

58. The South
Mild climate with short winters and long summers proved ideal for farming.
Large populations lived in villages and towns, often ruled by chiefs.
Region home to Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creeks, and Cherokees.
Many groups decimated by disease following the arrival of Europeans resulted in poor documentation of history.

59. The South (cont'd) Mild moist climate for farming
Natchez in floodplains of the lower Mississippi Delta
Ranked society—powerful elites
Unstable chiefdoms—smaller decentralized communities

60. The South (cont'd)
Post-Mississippians (Choctaws, Chickasaws and Creeks): centralized and stratified societies
Shared traditions (agricultural festivals, stick and ball game)

61. Hiawatha wampum belt of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois Five Nation Confederacy
This Hiawatha wampum belt of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois Five Nation Confederacy is exquisitely constructed of nearly 7,000 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 Iroquoi nations. With the central 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 stand 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.

62. The Northeast
Colder with coastal plains, mountains, rivers, lakes, valleys
The Iroquois:
Present-day Ontario, upstate New York
Corn, beans, squash, sunflowers
Matrilineal (longhouses)
Formed confederacy to eliminate warfare

63. The Northeast (cont'd) The Algonquians:
50 distinct, patrilineal cultures
Bands with loose ethnic affiliation in north
Farmed and lived in villages in south

64. Conclusion

65. Worlds Old and New
Columbus did not discover a New World; he brought together two old worlds.
Europeans too often misunderstood or ignored the complexities of Native American cultures they encountered.

66. Chronology
Chronology