1. Chapter 1: Native Peoples of America to 1500

2. Focus Origin and migration of Native American people
Similarities and differences between Native Am. Cultures
Economic basis of various civilizations
Religious and cultural beliefs, esp. concepts of land
The state of things prior to European arrival

3. Peopling New Worlds 33,000-10,500 BC: Last Ice Age
Small widely scattered groups (small bands) that interacted through trade/travel. Few large possessions or permanent villages.
Theory 1
Siberian hunters following game
Theory 2
Arrived before 10,500 BC by boat with patterned stops down the coast
Most agree it was multiple migrations

6. Three Migrations
Most Native Americans are descendents of the 1st earliest migrations
Athapaskan – 7000 BC and settled in Alaska and NW Canada. Later migrate and become the Apache and Navajos
After 3000 BC Inuits and Aleuts

8. Connection to Oral Traditions
Pueblos/Navajos
arrival by way of a perilous journey through other worlds
Iroquois
Pregnant woman who fell from the sky world

9. These earliest Indians are referred to as Paleo-Indians
Hunters and gatherers living in small bands of individuals (several families)

10. Traveled well defined hunting territories
Basic tool was the spear with a flint point
Arch. sites near perennial springs, watering holes, and river crossings
Left hunting grounds for quarries and encountered other bands
Creating a Broad Cultural Life

11. This “Free Land” and skilled hunters creates an abundant diet and then a growth in population

14. Around 9000 BC Megafauna becomes extinct
2/3 of the species over 100 lbs. at maturity
Probably due to a warming climate and overkill
This decline brings a change in humans

16. Archaic Societies Warming climate until 4000 BC
Sea levels rise, flooding low lying coastal areas, glacial runoff fills waterways
Deciduous forests and grassy plains
A range of Flora and Fauna emerges

17. Archaic peoples live off of a wider/broader variety of smaller mammals, fish, plants (creation of the atlatl spear)
Communities require less land and can support larger populations (yr. round villages)
Up to 10X as many people
N. American pop. Increase to 1 million

20. By 5000 BC farmers were planting selected seeds for future farming
Modification of the environment: setting fires, weeding out inedible plants = the verge of horticulture
3000 BC – Maize in C. America (2500 BC in N. Mexico and squash/gourds in MO and KY
However, for over 1000 yrs. after farming, the diet is still meat, fish, wild plants

21. Next Big Change Diversity
Farming takes over the majority of diet around 2000 BC
Officially a Horticultural society by BC with three great crops: Maize, Squash, and Beans
What’s the Impact?

23. Altered environments
Increased population
More sedentary life
Yet trade networks
Specialization
Political systems
Hierarchical society
Negative: diet may not be as diverse, potential catastrophe, spread of disease

24. Mesoamerica and South America
: selective breeding of corn and beans (lysine)
After 2000 crop surpluses expand contacts through formal exchange networks
1200: Olmecs had urban centers, hereditary rulers, unequal society

25. American Southwest
Full time farming not until 400 BC (water has always been an issue)
Hohokam in southern Arizona
Farmed the Gila and Salt rivers
Built irrigation
Permanent towns (pueblos)
Confederacies with central city coordination
Constant ritual exertion to maintain balance (existential anxiety)

26. Anasazi (Navajo for “ancient ones”)
Four Corners during the 1st century BC
Apartments with kivas
Height of culture: during an unusually wet period
Chaco Canyon
12 towns with 15,000 people (satellite towns 65 miles away)
Connection to Central America
Used Mesas to capture rainfall

32. Downfall of these cultures
Drought, malnutrition, and feuds
Defensive pueblos
Skeletal remains depict violent deaths, even cannibalism

33. Eastern Woodlands With rain and forest, populations predate farming
Mound Builders: Poverty Point in Mississippi and Adena in the Ohio Valley
Rarely exceeded 400 people
Most mounds contained graves
Hopewell Mounds from the Ohio Valley to the Illinois River

39. 1st full time farmers was the Mississippian Culture
Around 700 AD
Extensive craft production and trade
Plazas, sun worship, death of chief ceremony
Best example is Cahokia (St. Louis) after 900 AD

40. Cahokia 20,000 people; 6 square miles; 120 earth mounds
125 square metro area with 10 large towns and 50 farming villages

42. Northwest coastal villages

43. Plains Indians

44. By 1500 Western Hemisphere had 75 million people
7-10 million north of Mesoamerica
Unevenly distributed
Hundreds of languages
Hundreds of nations

47. Broad common culture Bound by kinship Animism
Nuclear families never stood alone
Iroquois- extended families of the women took precedence over those of men; primary male figure was mother’s oldest brother
Animism
Supernatural was a complex and diverse web of power woven into every part of the world; spiritual and material
Restraint out of fear or concern

48. Social values
Consensus
Shaming children
Custom-regulated life
Reciprocity but not equality

49. The End Europeans The Tech Organizational capacity Imperial rivals
Conducive religious ideologies
Domesticated animals
System of long-distance communication
Shared microbes