Why study Native American
history?
Modern relevance: The
“reconquista”
Pre-Contact Native American
Society
Native American Origins
• Native accounts
• Scientific explanations
Iroquois Origin myth
Scientific explanations of
Native American origins
• Bering Strait land bridge
– Original migration
– Later migrations (Athapascans, Inuits,
Aleuts)
• Local coastal migration (north to south)
• Transoceanic migration (from Europe,
Asia, or Polynesia)
The Bering Land Bridge
Kennewick Man
• Kennewick man
discovered in 1996
in Washington.
• Picture shows an
anthropologist’s
reconstruction of
Kennewick man’s
appearance.
Controversy over
Kennewick Man
• Native American Graves Protection and
Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)
• Competing explanations for origin:
Native American vs European
What is “Indian”?
• No single native culture
• Not static
• Cultural patterns influenced by
environment
Five examples
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•
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•
•
Mexico
American midwest
American southwest
American east coast
Canada
The problem of Source Bias
Mexico
• Sources:
– Early explorers’ accounts
– Archaeology
– Early ethnographies (Sahagun history,
Florentine codex)
Tenochtitlan
Teotihuacan
Florentine Codex
Nahuatl (Aztec) picture
writing
Mayan hieroglyphics
American Southwest
• Sources:
– Early explorers’ accounts
– Native American oral histories
– Archaeology
American Midwest
• Sources:
– Early western explorers’ diaries and letters
– Archaeology
Cahokia, near present-day St. Louis, MO:
estimated population 20,000
estimated time period: 900-1550 AD
Trade
• Long-distance trade networks
– Examples of trade centers: Chaco, Casas
Grandes, Cahokia
American East Coast
• Sources:
– Early ethnographies (John White, Thomas
Hariot)
– Archaeology
– Early contact accounts
John White watercolors
(Engraved and mass-produced by
Theodore deBry)
Agriculture
Secotan, Indian village
in Virginia
Trade and
ritual
Wampumpeage,
or wampum, made
from shells
Canada
• Sources:
– The Jesuit Relations
– Other early accounts
– Native American oral histories
Iroquois longhouses
The French Approach to
Colonization
• Trade predominated over settlement
– Coureurs de bois
The Mourning Wars
• The Iroquois Confederation
– Senecas, Mohawks, Onondagas, Cayugas,
Oneidas
• Purpose:
– Status for warriors
– Maintenance of population through captive
taking
Contact
The Clash of Cultures
European responses to
Native Americans
• European traditions: The Wild man of
Germany
Land Use Patterns
Gender Roles
Patterns of
Government
and Authority
Religion
The Columbian Exchange
Biological repercussions of
European colonization of
the New World
Biological exchange
• Europeans > New World:
– Domesticated animals
– European grains, plants and weeds
– Old World diseases: smallpox, measles,
etc.
Biological Exchange
• Native Americans > Europe
– New World plants: corn, potatoes,
tomatoes, tobacco, etc.
– New World diseases: syphilis and tropical
diseases
• “One night with
Venus--a
lifetime with
Mercury.”
Impact of Contact
Population
• Original estimates of precontact Native
population of North America: 25,000 in
New England; 1,000,000 in North
America excluding Mexico (equivalent
to population estimate in 1620)
(James Mooney, Aboriginal
Population of America North of Mexico, 1928)
• Current precontact population estimate:
– 125,000-145,000 in New England
– 4 million to 10 million in North America
– 8 million in Hispaniola (down to near zero
in 1535)
– 25 million in Mexico (down to 1.3 million in
1600)
Why the difference?
Impact of European Contact
with the New World
Demographic Disaster for Native
Americans
Contemporary Explanations
for Deaths
• Cruelty of the Spanish (The Black
Legend)
• “What we have committed in the Indies
stands out as one of the most
unpardonable offenses committed
against God and mankind.”
– Bertolome de Las Casas
Bertolome de las Casas
Accounts from Primary
Records: Mexico
• “When the city fell, ‘the streets, squares,
houses, and courts were filled with
bodies, so that it was almost impossible
to pass. Even Cortes was sick from the
stench in his nostrils.”
(Indian testimony of the epidemic during Hernan
Cortes’s seige of Tenochtitlan, 1520)
Accounts from Primary
Records: American East
Coast
• “Within a few dayes after our departure from every
such townes, that people began to die very fast, and
many in a short space; in some townes about
twentie, in some fourtie, in some sixtie, & in one six
score, which in trueth was very much in respect to
their numbers . . . The disease also was so strange
that they neither knew what it was, nor how to cure it;
the like by report of the oldest men in the countrey
never happened before, time out of mind.”
(Thomas Hariot, account of settlement at Roanoke,
1587)
Accounts from Primary
Records: Canada
• The Indians “are astonished and often complain that,
since the French mingle with and carry on trade with
them, they are dying fast and the population is
thinning out. For they assert that, before this
association and intercourse, all their countries were
very populous and they tell how one by one the
different coasts, according as they have begun to
traffic with us, have been more reduced by disease.”
(The Jesuit Relations, on New France, 1616)
Cause: Epidemic Disease
Contributing Factors
• Virgin population
• Native Americans’ lack of domesticated
animals
Impact of Depopulation
• Increased conflict between Indians and
Europeans
• Power vacuum among Indian groups
• Impression of Europeans as powerful,
“gods”
• Justification for ideas of vacuum
domicilium
Consequences of Cultural
Interaction
Trade
• Benefits:
– Metal cooking pots could be placed directly
on fire
– Metal tools allowed Indian arts and crafts
to become more complex
– Firearms made hunting easier
– Competition for Indian market gave natives
leverage with Europeans
Trade
• Consequences:
– De-skilling
– Competition for trade led to war
– Spread of disease
Alliances
• Benefits:
– Assistance against more powerful native
groups (aftermath of epidemics)
– Favored status in trade
• Drawbacks:
– Resentment of other tribes
– Escalation of arms race