Native Americas
Before Columbus
Lecture 2
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1
Time on the Land
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Whether we take at face value the common NA position
that they were placed in their traditional lands at
Creation or we look at the oldest dates for NA
archaeology sites, they have been in the New World for
at least 15,000 years.
As humans do, they learned about nature, used it,
moved it, selected what they wanted from it, and
integrated it into their ways of life (See Berkes, Folke,
and Gadgil 1995).
We have developed a theory of how this occurs which is
illustrated in the following article and can be read in
Stoffle, Toupal, and Zedeno 2003.
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Folks 1st Generation
(25 years)
5th Generation 16th Generation 50th Generation
(125 years)
(400 years)
(1250 years)
200th
Generation (5000
years)
ADAPTATION
Nature
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Plants
Animals
Water
Land
forms
Trees
Running
Herbivore
Oak
Deer
Range
Stream
Mountain
Red oak
Headwater
Mule deer
Peak
Red oak
bark
Mule deer
tail
Holy water Vision quest
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Dyachronic Learning
Diagram
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The previous diagram was developed to
illustrate the basic idea that all humans learn.
No humans are smarter than others.
But some humans spend more time in place.
When people move to unique ecosystems they
become again first generation new comers.
Naturally some humans choose adaptive
strategies that eventually destroy their society
and perhaps themselves.
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Types of Knowledge
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Local Knowledge = recently learned by people
who have just arrived in a ecosystem. Highly
ideosyncratic
Traditional Ecological Knowledge = time-tested
observations that are shared by a group who
have remained in an ecosystem
Indigenous Knowledge = awesome observations
explained and supported by supernatural
constraints
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Local Knowledge
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What we can learn within a few
generations in the same ecosystem.
Accessible observations – just out there
for the viewing.
Simple cause and effect.
Begins as individual lessons, moves to the
family level, and may eventually (over
generations) pass to the community level.
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Local Knowledge Examples
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Dry washes run wet some times & some
springs dry up in dry periods.
Decade cycles of rain and drought
Obvious single uses of plants, few
combinations of plants and minerals
Migration and habitat shifts of animals
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Traditional Knowledge
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Technically this occurs when the people under
question become traditional.
Shared knowledge = cultural knowledge.
Time tested knowledge – it works to predict.
More than two cause and effect relationships in
a food web or trophic level.
Mixture of secular and sacred based knowledge.
TEK is used to describe traditional ecological
knowledge
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Traditional Knowledge
Examples
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Ojibwa wild rice harvesting
Paiute burning of Indian Rice grass (Waii)
Burning for male and female sages by the
Dakota at Pipestone National Monument
Shoshone gathering of pine forest ants
and eggs.
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Indigenous Knowledge
Awesome knowledge along with high quality
observations = can predict ecology cause and effect.
 Deals with three or more non-intuitive connections along
multiple food webs and different trophic levels.
 Tied to sacred in most cases.
 Example: Eating ants to stimulate visions among
American Indian people in southern California (Groark
1996).
 Example: Southern Paiutes indigenous knowledge is
illustrated by medicine persons performing cataract eye
surgery with the removed and living tail of a whiptail
lizard as part of a Puha ceremony.
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Positive Disturbance
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A World Wildlife Fund web site (www.panda.org
2004) says most of the remaining significant
areas of high natural value on earth are
inhabited by indigenous peoples and this
testifies to the efficacy of indigenous resource
management systems.
Missing from this discussion is a convincing
explanation of how positive impacts can occur.
Most authors simply assume that traditional
people know when they are hurting nature and
back off from such behaviors.
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Intermediate Disturbance
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Connell (1978) found that intermediate natural
disturbances in ecosystems can cause positive
impacts on biodiversity and biocomplexity.
Intermediate in term of scale and frequency of
occurrence.
So do traditional people use their knowledge of
ecosystems and consciously make intermediate
human changes that have positive benefits?
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Some Characteristics
of Positive Disturbance
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Traditional people can have a positive
influence on the biocomplexity and
biodiversity of their ecosystem. This is
how we will define “being good” for the
environment.
Critics of this position say that traditional
people often do hurt nature (Martin and
Wright 1967) and if they don’t it is
because they lack the technology and the
population size.
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From Conservation to
Sustainability and Biodiversity
What can people do that is good for their ecosystems? The
literature shows that traditional people can have positive
impacts by
 clearing spaces in forests (Turner, Davison-Hunt, O’Flaherty
2003),
 moving seeds to new habitats (Nabhan 1989),
 digging tubers (Wandsnider and Chung 2003: 221-222),
 changing behavior of herding animals (Anderson 1958),
 pruning wild nut trees (Fowler 2000: 112), and
 designing agricultural fields to stimulate animals and plant
populations as well as provide sustainable farming (Atran et
al. 2002).
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Caribbean Coast of Costa Rica
Source Garcia-Serrano and Del Monte 2004
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The Bribri and Cabecar Cultures of this area are a good
example of TEK and Conservation.
They have a tropical home garden, rotating slash-andburn agriculture, and plantain cultivation.
These two cultures have different sets of traditional rules
for use of plants in “far” space where 24 species are
harvested and “near“ space where 60 species are
harvested.
Generation after generation of these people have had an
agreement with nature. Agriculture, and to varying
degrees wild plant harvesting and hunting and fishing,
continue being their main activities. They have a
balanced system of exploiting nature.
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Location of TEK Study
Costa Rica
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A Bribri Web Site
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The Bribri People
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For thousands of years the Bribri People have lived in harmony with nature. The Bribri are located in
the mountains and low-lying Caribbean coastal areas of southern Costa Rica and northern Panama on
the Talamanca reservation. Approximately 5200 Bribri people have maintained an indigenous culture
that's different from the rest of the country. Indigenous means that the Bribri were the original
inhabitants of Talamanca.
Agriculture is the main activity of the Bribri. They have roughly 120 wild and domestic crops used for
food, building materials, medicine, and commercial trading. The Bribri are extremely isolated, and
consequently, they have developed an extensive bartering system. Mostly the Bribri women participate
in the trading of goods with neighbors. In addition to a bartering system, the Bribri isolation has caused
them to have poor education and healthcare. They also have the lowest income per capita in the
country; however, this isolation has made the Bribri a relatively self-sufficient society where there are
enough crops grown and livestock raised to sustain them. One small tribe of the Bribri, the Kekoldi,
only has about 200 people. They partake in the very unique practice of iguana farming. Iguanas are
very important to the forest, so due to over-hunting, the Kekoldi tribe has devised a very efficient way
to replenish the iguana population. The farm has been operating for 11 years and has about 2,000
iguanas and 2,000,000 eggs. The iguanas stay on the farm until five years of age at which time they
are then released into the wild.
The Bribri have their own language. They have a rich culture that has been molded over thousands of
years and remained relatively untouched by western civilization.
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References:
Voices from a town meeting in indigenous Costa Rica http://www.gisp.ucsb.edu/lais/case12.htm Vandegrift, Darcie.
University of California, Santa Barbara. 1996.
Community Development with the Bribri of Costa Rica http://www.agroecology.org/cases/bribri.htm Agroecology
Research Group 1999.
Written by: Lyle Arnason
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17
Examples of Animals - Domestic
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Dog – everywhere
Turkey – North America
Guinea Pig – Andean
Llama – Andean
Alpaca – Andean
Muscovy Duck –Andean
Tropical Birds –
everywhere for feathers.
Aztecs made cloaks from
humming bird feathers
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Raptors – raising
eagles for feathers,
North America
Turtles – penned and
perhaps bred along
the Amazon River
near large
settlements.
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Managed Nature
Moving Towards Cultigens
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Agroforestry in
Amazon – variety of
tree species involved
including palms,
cashew, and brazil
nut.
Pacae [Inga ] – large
mesquite tree with a
foot long seed pod –
Pacific coast of Andes.
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Willow Trees – cut
back to produce
straight branches for
basketry.
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Examples of Cultigens
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Peppers - everywhere
Corn - everywhere
Beans - everywhere
Squash & Pumpkins everywhere
Potatoes – several species,
Andean
Sweet Potatoes – several
species – tropical coastal
Manioc - Amazonian
Amaranth – Mexico & Andean
Chenopodium – Mexico &
Andean
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Pineapple – tropical & arid
coastal
Lupin - Andean
Tree cotton – 4 color varieties
no dye needed – both sides of
Andes
Cacao (chocolate)- bean was a
standard of value, grown in
Central America by both Maya
and Aztecs.
Coca – middle altitude Amazon
side of Andes. Controlled
substance by the state.
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TEK of Agriculture Examples
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On island of Hispaniola Europeans noticed that NA did
not have rows [lacked the draft animals and plow], but
planted multiple crops in hills of earth heaped up. Corn,
pumpkins, and beans planted together symbiotically.
Bean roots fertilized the corn while the stock served the
runners of beans and pumpkins. Irrigated the hills.
Cotton had its own fields because of a longer growing
season.
Agroforestry trees and bushes like coca, and cacao were
planted along edges of fields. Most agroforestry plants
became more fertile the longer they were managed due
in part to pruning, weeding, and mulching.
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Terra Preta in Amazon
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Making dirt. Enduring self renewal soil.
Dated 2,000 years ago from Amazon.
Made an organic mixture ( much like sour dough
starter for bread) which makes a fertile soil.
Moved it in large pots to new areas. Once
established it is largely self sustaining.
Instead of destroying the soil with tropical
farming, they improved it.
See Mann 2002
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One Study Area
See: Mann 2002
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Images of a Human Soil
People have been
farming here for
thousands of years –
farming hard – and
we just have to learn
how to do it as well
as they did (Quote by
Susanna Hecht in
Mann 2002)
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See Mann 2002
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Inca Engineering
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Built roads – stone roads up and down
the Andes 2400 miles long north and
south with right angle feeder roads east
and west. Longest and best built roads
until modern times.
Planted trees along roads to shade
travelers.
Suspension bridges in Inca Empire with
tall stone masonry towers on both sides
with plant fiber cords as cables and
wooden slats. Wide enough for two
horses to pass. They had suspension
bridges before Europeans.
Extremely long (up to 30 miles in
length) irrigation cannels.
Chasquis – curriers who ran along the
Inca roads. Could bring fresh fish from
the Pacific coast to Cuzco (Tawatinsuyu)
[Peru] in less than 24 hours.
Quipus – communication device.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/inca/inc
a_culture_3.html
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Mining
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Mineral pigment was mined everywhere in New World for
decoration and ceremony.
Andean groups mined gold ore and smelted it and worked it into
jewelry and ceremonial objects.
Made charcoal which was used in smelting – went to about 1400
degree F, an effective smelting temperature. Smelting device of Inca
was eventually adopted by the Spanish at high elevations in Andes.
Tin and copper mined in Andes, and could combine these minerals
to make bronze metal.
Turquoise and jade mined and most valued of all minerals.
Emeralds mined in Columbia – green ones highest value.
Copper mined in Great Lakes of North America.
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Cities
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Tenochtitlan (now Mexico) – larger than any
Spanish city of the time. London may have
been larger.
Chaco (now New Mexico) – a massive
ceremonial center with roads and connected
service towns.
Casas Grandes (now Chihuahua, Mexico) was
a ceremonial center and a city with an
irrigation sewage system.
Cuzco (now Peru) massive high elevation city.
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What NA Did Not Have
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Maya had invented the wheel, but used it
only on toys. Wheel was not used in New
World.
Strong draft animals.
European-Asian diseases.
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Made and Managed Landscapes
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Whole Amazon Basin was a human landscape.
Moving species, selecting species, clearing with
slash and mulch.
Andes were intensively managed with systems
of terraces and modifications of hydrological
systems. Domestic animals grazed grasslands.
The peoples of the Antilles were largely farmers
who cut down trees for fields and made salt
ponds in the former coastal mangroves.
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Caribbean Basin Societies
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Arrival time unclear,
but they were around
the edges for 10K
years and in the
Greater and Lesser
Antilles for at least
3,000 years.
Various arrival routes
currently being
considered
, but
some definitely came
from northeast coast
of South America.
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Caribbean Indigenous Peoples
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Common Names (linguistic and cultural referents)
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Temporal Reference Terms
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Ciboney
Arawak (subgroups =Tanoans, Lucayans, and Igneri)
Caribs
Palaeo
Meso
Neo
Peoples connected to all mainland basin societies.
Cultivated manioc as well as corn, beans, and squash.
Agroforestry – a kind of tree & bush horticulture
Fishing
Canoe travelers – up to 80 people in a sea-going canoe with
canopies for cargo. Traded textiles – cotton and specialty feather
cloaks; both used as a standard of value (like money). Gold dust
and goose quills were used as money to settle debts in Mexico City
markets.
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The Ciboney People
In western
Cuba, cays
north and
south of
Cuba,
Guaicayarima
Peninsula of
Haiti.
Rouse 1948: 497-503
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The Ciboney People
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Ciboney are not well known because the Spanish
did not interact with them on a regular basis, so
be careful about the following descriptions.
Thought to be the oldest people of the Antilles.
Simple social organization and technology. Low
population density. No agriculture. Simple religion.
Assumed to have once occupied most of the
Antilles but later replaced by Arawaks and Caribs.
Survived in Cuba until early 17th Century when
Spanish settlers offered rewards for their
extermination because they shot cattle with bows
and arrows.
Rouse 1948: 497-503
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The Arawak People
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Farming & fishing peoples whose ancestors probably
arose more than 4,000 years ago along Orinoco River in
Venezuela.
Found mostly in Greater Antilles in 1492.
Dense populations & large cities
Complex social organization – Chiefdoms
Distance Trading by Canoe – made from dugout
cottonwood or cedar trees. Chief’s canoe could hold 7080 men and was painted. Propulsion by long blade
paddles. Traveled all around big islands but also between
islands. Individuals would go on long voyages alone in
small canoes.
Oldest canoe found in region is from Florida and is dated
many thousand of years old, and other Florida finds are
10s of thousands of years old .
Rouse1948:507-546
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Arawak – Interesting Facts
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Washing body was common. Used an aromatic fruit to form a lather
in the water.
Cooked from a pot that was over the fire all the time – called a
pepper pot – each day people would add food to it.
Painted and tattooed the body – both men and women did this.
Used red, white, black, and yellow paints from vegetables and
resinous gum. Often painted Zemis – symbols of spirits. Pierced ears
and nasal septum and added plugs.
Gold was washed from streams and made into jewelry.
Chiefs could punish subjects by death for theft and adultery.
Matrilineal – personal property and chieftainship was inherited
through women.
Rouse1948:507-546
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Who Are The Carib People?
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In some respects this is one of the more
important questions of this section, because
whatever the Carib people were at contact they
became the image of all Native Americans to
Europeans.
Think of them as newcomers to the Caribbean.
They even remembered arriving.
Think of them as basically like the Arawaks –
farmers with good boats and some quirky traits.
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Carib Boats
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They were boat experts, having four types
 Pirogues
 Large canoes
 Small canoes
 Rafts
The first two types were dugouts, but the sides were built
up with planks, sewn together and pitched with bitumen.
The average length of the piroque was 40 feet, some were
large enough to carry 50 persons. Each one had a keel, a
raised and pointed bow, a series of plank seats, and a flatpooped stern carved with an animal’s head to frighten the
enemy and often decorated with a barbecued human arm
In historic times, (and perhaps earlier) the pirogues had
three masts and the canoes two, each supporting a sail
made from cotton or from palm-leaf matting.
Rouse 1948: 553-554
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Who Has The
Boat Technology Advantage?
Carib
Arawak
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Rouse 1948: Plates 91, 94
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Cannibal Warriors
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The Carib held assemblies to decide upon war and to fix
a rendezvous; at these meetings the old women
harangued them on the cruelty of the enemy, the war
chief exhorted them to revenge themselves, they
became very drunk, and at the height of the festival they
ate some enemy flesh, smoked and preserved from the
last raid.
Each warrior was given a gourd full of pebbles, a string
with knots [quipu?], or a stick with notches, to tell how
many days before he had to be at the rendezvous.
The primary weapon was the 6 foot long bow and
arrows.
Caribs attacked at dawn to catch the enemy asleep. If
the enemy was defeated, they pillaged the village and
roasted and ate the enemy corpses. They bound
prisoners and carried them home. They then ate the
men and incorporated the women and children into their
own families.
Rouse 1948: 559-560
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The Essential Carib
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Cannibal Warrior Society or Agricultural Folks who could
expand their territory and were a bit “in you face” with
defeated groups?
Most contemporary analysts agree that the Caribs were
culturally and socially similar to the Arawaks, but were
more aggressive against outsiders.
Key issue here is: Did the Spanish select one cultural
characteristic (i.e., eating defeated opponents) in order
to essentialize the Caribs and to rationalize the conquest,
conversion, and enslavement of all New World peoples?
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The Foundation of Essentialization
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After Columbus made contact with the Carib during his
second voyage, in 1493, he purposely sailed farther
south in order to investigate these fierce savages of
whom he had heard in Hispaniola. {Note here that he
first developed this Carib assessment from their enemies
the Arawak}
He discovered a Carib village in Guadeloupe where he
received on board six captive Arawak women. There was
no battle because the Carib men were gone.
He then proceeded to St. Croix where Carib warriors
attacked his expedition before it departed for the Arawak
island of Puerto Rico.
Rouse 1948: 547-548
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Essential Response
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The Spanish made no attempt to settle the Lesser
Antilles. There was no gold there, and the agricultural
potentialities did not compensate the difficulty of
subduing the Carib.
[Note, that the small villages of the Carib were scattered
on the high islands in isolated valleys that were difficult
to approach and easy to defend.]
[Note, that the Spanish had little interest in farming.]
The Spanish colonists did, however, make numerous
slave raids against the Carib islands taking advantage,
after the prohibition of such raids elsewhere, of a
provision permitting their attacks on cannibals.
Rouse 1948: 548
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Expansion of an Essentialization
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Why did the Spanish (and later other Europeans) care to characterize
the Indians of the New World as cannibals?
Morgan (1997: 176) argues that Europeans involved in conquest and
slavery needed rationalizations for their actions. They accomplished
this by developing stereotypes of American Indians (and later
Africans) that would distance these peoples from the world of white
civilization. Being a cannibal made the person a just candidate for
slavery. Indian and African women were characterized in negative
terms that would remove them from the protection of European
norms, and in turn position them as valid candidates for slavery,
abuse, and even death. Morgan illustrates this point with reference to
a 1592 book where an Indian woman was portrayed in a drawing as
licking the juices of grilled human flesh from her fingers.
Jennings (1975) called the this process the “Cant Of Conquest;” a
battle of words and ideas in which the conquest and enslavement of
others is deemed just and even good for them because it brings them
out of a savage condition into a civilized state.
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Selected References
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Berkes, F., C. Folke, M. Gadgil (1995) Traditional
Ecological Knowledge, Biodiversity, Resilience, and
Sustainability. In Biodiversity Conservation C. A. Perrings
(ed.). Pp. 281- 299. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic
Publishers.
Carmony, N. and D. Brown eds. (1979) The Wilderness
of the Southwest. Salt Lake: University of Utah Press.
Castilla, Juan (1993) Humans: Capstone Strong Actors in
the Past and Present Coastal Ecological Play in Humans
as Components of Ecosystems by M. McDonnel and S.
Pickett (eds).
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References
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Connell, Joseph H. (1978) Diversity in Tropical Rain Forests and Coral
Reefs. Science 199(4335): 1302-1310.
Groark, Kevin (1996) “Ritual and Therapeutic Use of ‘Hallucinogenic’
Harvester Ants (Pogonomyrmex) in Native South-Central California.”
Journal of Ethnobiology 16(1): 1-30.
Jackson, Jeremy (et al.) 2001(July 27) Historical Overfishing and the
Recent Collapse of Coastal Ecosystems. Science Vol 293, 629-638.
Jennings, Francis (1975) The Invasion of American: Indians, Colonialism,
and the Cant of Conquest. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina
Press.
Mann, Charles (2002) The Real Dirt on Rainforest Fertility. Science
Magazine (August 9) Vol. 297: 292-293.
Milanich, Jerald T. (1994) Archaeology of Precolumbian Florida. University
Presses of Florida, Tallahassee, FL.
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References
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Morgan, Jennifer (1997) Some Could Suckle: Male Travelers, Female Bodies,
and the Gendering of Racial Ideologies, 1500 to 1770. William and Mary
Quarterly 54(1): 167-192.
Rappaport, Roy (1968) Pigs for the Ancestors. New Haven: Yale University
Press.
Rouse, Irving (1948) The West Indies: Part 3. In Julian H. Steward (ed.)
Handbook of South American Indians, The Circum-Caribbean Tribes. Pp.
495565 . Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office
Stoffle, R., R. Toupal, and N. Zedeno (2003) Landscape, Nature, and
Culture: A Diachronic Model of Human-Nature Adaptations. In Nature Across
Cultures: Views of Nature and the Environment in Non-Western Cultures, H.
Selin (ed.). Pp. 97-114. Great Britain: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Stokstad, Erik 2001 (July 27) Fossils With Lessons for Conservation Biology.
Science Vol 293, 592-593.
Vayda, Andrew (1993) Ecosystems and Human Action. In Humans as
Components of Ecosystems by McDonnel and Pickett (eds.) Pp.72-78.
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