Draft: 11/12/08AHA
An Introduction to the Native American Cultural Stages of New York State
From Prehistoric through Contact
by Andy Angstrom
Archaeologists believe humans first came to the North American continent sometime between 22,000 and
50,000 years ago. This was during the Wisconsin glacial advance, the most recent of the great “ice-ages” of the
Pleistocene. At this time so much of the Earth’s fresh water was frozen into continental ice sheets that the sea level
had dropped several hundred feet, exposing a thousand-mile wide landmass in the Bering Strait region which we
now call Beringia. Animals were able to wander over this land bridge in both directions. For instance, the horse and
camel, after having evolved in North America, migrated to Asia and then became extinct here. Moose, Wapiti (Elk)
and human beings migrated to this continent. It is thought that nomadic groups of humans followed and hunted
various mammalian species from Asia into what is now Alaska, but were halted there north of the ice mass.
Somehow, either by boats along the southwestern edge of the ice or through a corridor between the eastern and
western ice masses, early humans eventually broke through to what is now the lower United States. Within a few
thousand years humans had spread north following the retreating ice and south throughout the Americas. Only after
the glacial ice melted away did humans occupy what is now the northeast, New York State included.
Unrestricted at first, early humans hunted and foraged for subsistence, taking advantage of a variety of animals
in the arctic and sub-arctic habitats, which became established on the newly-deposited glacial soils of this region.
Evidence of their way of life is rare in comparison to later cultural phases due to the lapse of time and extremely low
population numbers. They may have eaten many things and had a well-equipped tool bag including wood, leather
and bone implements, but evidence of this has not survived. What has survived is a number of finely-made stone
points. Best known of these in New York is the Clovis projectile point. The Clovis and other Paleo-stage points
have a large and distinctive flute. West and south of New York these have been found in close context with the
butchered remains of mammoths, giant bison and mastodon(t)s. These large extinct mammals are often referred to as
Pleistocene megafauna.
The Ice-Age hunters are called, somewhat simplistically, Paleo big-game hunters. It is believed that these
people were the progenitors of people classically known as American Indians, or Amerinds by anthropologists. This
cultural phase has become known as the Paleo-Indian Stage and the Clovis point is its icon in New York State.
Eventually the climate warmed, glaciers melted back and Beringia once again became submerged. Gradually
the tundra and tiaga biomes retreated northward and the environment of the northeast began to look more like it
does today. Perhaps hastened by the presence of a new, technology-equipped predator, the Pleistocene megafauna
became extinct.
These first people were successful in adapting to this changing environment and, about 10,000 years before the
present (BP), these first Americans had evolved a technology and culture based on a hunter-gatherer system. We
refer to this as the Archaic stage. Base camps were established near the main sources of food, water and shelter, but
seasonal rounds of hunting and gathering of the various natural food crops were necessary to fully exploit the bounty
of the hardwood forests.
Little is known about shelter, clothing and other cultural traits of this stage, yet archaeologists have pieced
together some of the Archaic Amerind life-ways. Fortunately for archaeologists in the northeast, these toolmakers
showed a strong cultural compulsion to follow certain stylistic trends in handcrafting their stone tools, particularly
the projectile points (erroneously called arrowheads). Thus these projectile points serve as indexes of the various
cultural sub-stages and traditions. One critical tool throughout the Archaic and the Paleo stages was the spearthrower or atlatl. This represented a technology level that was sufficient enough to survive ten-thousand years and
was still in use by some technologically primitive cultures into the nineteenth century AD.
About 3,500 BP the native people of the northeast learned to make and use stone (steatite) bowls which were
superior in many ways to hide, bark and wooden cooking containers. At the same time they were using a distinctive
projectile point type called Orient Point Fishtail. These two changes heralded the beginning of a cultural change
known as the Transitional Stage.
By 3,000 BP the introduction of ceramic pottery caused the stone bowl to become obsolete. Other hugely
significant innovations were to follow. Agriculture had taken the place of seasonal gathering for subsistence. While
hunting and natural harvests still continued, crops like “the three sisters” (corn, beans and squash) became a more
dependable basis for life. This allowed larger and more permanent villages to be built, and populations grew. This
revolution in life ways was to culminate in the Woodland Cultural Stage. At some point the technology of the bow
and arrow rapidly made the atlatl obsolete.
Native copper had been discovered in the Great Lakes region and saw limited use in some areas. However, the
lack of available tin (which when alloyed with the copper makes bronze) precluded the Bronze Age from happening
in the Americas. Metalworking in silver and gold was known in Meso-America but none of these natural-occurring
metals had the strength and durability needed to make tools and weapons.
In Eurasia, metallurgy learned during the Bronze Age was adapted to the processing of iron and people of this
continent transitioned into the Iron Age. The use of iron greatly accelerated the evolution of technology so that in
1492 Europeans found the Native American cultures technologically locked in the Neolithic Age.
The brief advent of the Contact Period saw sustained subsistence replaced by the wanton over-harvest of the fur
trade, the introduction of new diseases and poisons, and the disintegration of whole peoples, their languages, belief
systems and cultures. There were on the order of 450 different languages and dialects spoken in Pre-Columbian
America. All save a few were lost. Great city-state societies with advanced governments and highly developed art
forms that rivaled those of the Old World had come and gone. In New Amsterdam the Dutch utilized native peoples
to harvest fur for felt hats and managed to wage at least two wars with them. The English used them further in their
exploitation of the Province of New York. They became partisans on both sides in the American chapter of the
Seven Years War. By the time of the American Revolution the Algonquin-speaking people of the Hudson Valley
had been extirpated and the great Iroquois Confederation had aligned itself with the losing side. After independence,
the Americans continued to facilitate the exodus of, or place on reservations, most of the remaining native peoples
of New York.
Author’s post script: The Post-Contact Period was wrought with distrust, misunderstanding maltreatment,
conflict and savagery. The reaction of people thrust from the Stone Age cultures into the Iron Age in but a few
generations was often that of savage fury. This savagery was second only to the savagery of the European
conquerors.