NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURES
EARLY SOCIETIES
NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURE AREAS
SHARED BELEIFS
I CAN

Identify 2 types of Early Societies in North America and Explain where and
how they lived

Define totems

List 3 cultural regions of Native North Americans

State 2 examples of shared beliefs between Native North Americans
EARLY SOCIETIES

Earliest people in N America- hunters & gathers

After about 5000 BC some learned to farm and lived in villages

Not as populated as South America and Mesoamerica; they were complex
societies before Europeans
EARLY SOCIETIES

Anasazi

Present day Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah

Dry environment, but grew maize, squash & beans

Learned how to use irrigation to increase food production
EARLY SOCIETIES

Anasazi Dwellings

Early lived in pit houses dug into the ground

After 750 AD began to build pueblos (aboveground houses made of heavy clay
called adobe)

Built them on top of each other, multi-storied (some housed about 1000 people)

Cliff Dwellers- built houses in canyon walls, only be reached by ladder. WHY?
Protection from enemies
Cliff Dwellers
DECLINE OF THE ANASAZI

Drought

Disease

Or invasions from nomadic tribes from the North

Might have caused them to move
MOUND BUILDERS

Eastern part of North America

Farming societies

Hopewell

Lived along the Mississippi, Ohio, and lower Missouri River valleys

Agriculture and Trade

Built large burial mounds to honor their dead

Declined around 700AD
MOUND BUILDERS

Mississippian- same area as the Hopewell

Skilled farmers and traders

Built large settlements; largest city Cahokia, near present day St. Louis
(30,000)

Mounds- had flat tops and temples were built on top of the mound.

Mounds could be up to 100ft tall and cover 16 acres

Mound builders had declined by time Europeans arrived
Mound Builders
NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURE AREAS

Sub-artic

Followed seasonal migrations of deer

Lived in shelters from animal skins and log homes

Further south they had a rich supply of fish, plants, and animals. So developed
large villages, without the need to farm
NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURE AREAS
SEE MAP on PG 13

Pacific Northwest
Carved images of totems– ancestor or
animal spirits, on tall wooden poles
 Great religious and historical
signficance
West and Southwest California Region
* Food sources were plentiful
* lived in large families or groups 50300
* over 100 different languages spoken

Great Basin
Little Rain, so they gathered
seeds, dug roots, trapped small
animals
Southwest
Pueblo groups, like the Anasazi,
irrigated. Focused on Rain
and successful maize. Large
towns
NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURE AREAS
Great Plains

Mainly grasslands, home to buffalo,
deer, elk, and more

Nomadic hunters– used bow and
arrows, would often chase over cliffs,
or into a corral


Used buffalo hides for teepees, and
used almost all of the buffalo for
something.
Some tribes were matrilineal-traced
ancestry through mothers.
Northeast and Southeast

Eastern N America rich in resources

Animals, plants, wood, fish,

Cherokee, Creek, Seminole lived in
farming villages governed by village
councils

Northern groups did more hunting

Southern Groups- more farmers,
hunters, and traders
NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURE AREAS

Northeast and Southeast

Iroquois

Created the Iroquois league

An alliance or confederation, that protected each other from non-iroquois
groups.

The league helped them to become one of the most powerful Native
Americans peoples in North America
SHARED BELEIFS
RELIGION
PROPERTY

LINKED TO NATURE

INVIDUAL OWNERSHIP ONLY TO CROPS
YOU GREW

SPRIRITUAL FORCES WERE
EVERYWHERE- HEAVENLY BODIES
AND ON EARTH

LAND ITSELF WAS EVERYONE. RIGHT
TO USE IT WAS TEMPORARY

HONORED SPIRITS DAILY

PRESERVE LAND FOR FUTURE
GENERATIONS (not like Europeans)

CEREMONIES MAINTAINED THE
GROUP’S RELATIONSHIP TO EARTH
AND SKY

LITTLE INTEREST- IN LG POLITICAL
UNITS. SO NO LG EMPIRES LIKE AZTECS
OR INCA OF MESOAMERICA