Native Americans
Names
- in both Americas – American Indians
- Native Americans – used in US
- First Nations – used in Canada
- first native Americans arrived during the last ice-age 20-30 thousand years ago
- from NE Siberia across the Bearing Strait to Alaska
- oldest documented cultures are: Sandia (15 000 BC)
Clovis (12 000 BC)
Folsom (8 000 BC)
- early Native American settlers – moved south to warmer climate
- hunting, fishing
- art, crafts, dances, singing
- religion
- some groups planted corn, created permanent settlements
o weaving, pottery, baskets
o est. of laws, government
o some kept records
Culture groups
- Eastern Wodland Indians
- the Plain tribes
- the Southwest Indians – area in new mexico (now)¨
- the California intermountain
- the Northwest Coast Indians
Eastern Woodland Indians
- E part from Maine to Florida, to the Mississippi river
- villages (wigwams, long houses)
- SE: winter and summer houses
- planted corn, squash, beans
- traveled on birchbark canoes
- clothes out of deerskin
Made clearings by burning forest à villages (wigwams or wooden longhouses)
Eastern Woodland tribes
- Iroquois
- Mohicans
- Narraganset
- Delaware
- Powhatan
- Cherokee
- Creek
- Chickasaw
- Shawnee
The Plain Indians
- lived west of Mississippi, grassland
- depended on buffalo
- lived in tepees – framework of poles, buffalo hides stretched on it
- nomadic
Great Plains Tribes
- Blackfoot
- Sioux (Dakota, Nakota, Lakota)
- Arapaho
- Cheyenne
- Osage
- Comanche
The Southwest Tribes
- high, dry region of Ar, NM
- farmers: corn, beans, squash, melons, pumpkins, turkeys, etc
- grew cotton à cloth
- pottery
- large dwellings (pueblos)
- irrigation systems
- Hopi
- Zuni
- Navajo
- Anasazi
- cliff dwelling
- Hogan
The Californian-intermountain Indians
- E California, Nevada, Idaho
- seed gatherers (berries, roots, seeds, nuts)
- huts of grass
- baskets
The Northwest Coast
- rainy Pacific coast of Oregon, Washington
- fishing, hunting
- permanent homes – sturdy cabins from logs
- strong canoes, carved, decorated
- Chinook, Nootka, Yakima
- fish – symbol of Indians – they were fishermen
Myths
- vanishing
o actually – nowadays more and more visible
o depicted already in J.F.Cooper
o Tendency to depict their cultures before in vanishes (anthropologists)
- picture: Pocahontas – by John Smith, 1608
Now
- increase in population
o 1900 – about 300 000
o 2000 – about 2,5 million (self-identification)
- 2/3 live in cities à urban Indians
- declared war to New Age´s appropriation of their religion
Writers
- Mourning Dove
- N. Scott Momaday – House Made of Dawn (1968)
- Leslie M. Silko – Ceremony (1977)
- Louise Erdrich – Love Medicine (1984)
- Gerald Vizenor
- Sherman Alexie
Painters
- T.C. Cannon
- Fritz Scholder
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