James L. Roark ● Michael P. Johnson
Patricia Cline Cohen ● Sarah Stage
Susan M. Hartmann
The American Promise
A History of the United States
Fifth Edition
CHAPTER 1
Ancient America,
Before 1492
Copyright © 2012 by Bedford/St. Martin's
I. Archaeology and History
1. Differences between archaeologists and historians
• archaeologists focus on physical objects such
as bones and pots, while historians focus on
writing.
2. Writing and language as evidence
3. Artifacts and environmental clues as evidence
• look at environmental factors: scrutinize soil,
geological strata, pollen, and climate to find out
about ancient and pre-contact Americans;
II. The First Americans
A. African and Asian Origins
1. Pangaea and continental drift
•
. About 240 million years ago, continental drift pushed the landmass apart,
allowing oceans to surround land much like our current geography.
2. Homo sapiens
3. Migration across Beringia
•
•
Two factors made migration possible; first, people adapted to the frigid climate; second, the Wisconsin
glaciation (25,000 BP to 14,000 BP) caused the sea level to drop so that people could cross the land
bridge of Beringia between Siberia and Alaska.
4. Paleo-Indians
they traveled to North America in small bands looking for wildlife to hunt; probably arrived after
15,000 BP.
B. Paleo-Indian Hunters
1. Abundance of game
•
Paleo-Indians traveled along the eastern side of Canada’s Rocky Mountains or traveled by boat
along the Pacific Coast; they migrated to the tip of South America within one thousand years.
2. Clovis point
•
used a spearhead called a Clovis point, named for the place in New Mexico where it was excavated;
they hunted mammoths, bison, and smaller animals; shared common ancestry and way of life.
3. Big-game extinction and changes in Paleo-Indian way of life
•
11,000 BP, large mammals became extinct, probably due to warming climates and perhaps
overhunting; to compensate, Paleo-Indian hunters preyed on smaller animals and dedicated more
energy to foraging—collecting bugs, berries, and fruits
III. Archaic Hunters and Gatherers
A. Great Plains Bison Hunters
1. Folsom point
• hunters began to focus on the Rocky Mountains in the Great Plains
after the extinction of mammoths. Archaic Indians hunted with
Folsom points, discovered by archaeologists in New Mexico
between two ribs of a giant bison; hunters moved frequently with
their prey and developed trapping techniques to kill large numbers
of animals with spears.
2. Advantage of bows and arrows
• reached hunters from the north around AD 500; largely replaced
spears; hunters could shoot animals from farther away; weapons
were easier to make and less costly to lose; Paleo-Indians did not
have access to horses.
B. Great Basin Cultures
1. Varying zones of habitation
• Basin Indians lived between the Rocky Mountains and Sierra
Nevada, an area of environmental diversity that featured hot
deserts, rainy marshes, and cold, treeless mountains.
2. Plants as primary food source
• allowed Great Basin peoples to maintain their hunter-gatherer
lifestyle for centuries after Europeans arrived in AD 1492.
III. Archaic Hunters and Gatherers
C. Pacific Coast Cultures
1. Diversity of California’s environment
•
•
•
very diverse peoples, with five hundred tribes speaking some ninety
languages.
2. California peoples: Chumash
about 5000 BP near Santa Barbara; had many violent clashes over acorns,
their primary food source.
3. Northwest peoples
permanent villages; caught whales and fish for food; developed
sophisticated woodworking skills and made carvings and canoes; warfare
occurred over fishing sites.
D. Eastern Woodland Cultures
1. Forest environment
•
•
•
•
archaic peoples settled east of the Mississippi River in a forest
environment; Woodland peoples hunted deer as their most important
source of food, clothing (skins), and weapons (bones); settlements
usually had 25 to 150 people; burial sites suggest Woodland people lived
about eighteen years.
2. Agriculture and pottery
4000 BP, Woodland cultures added agriculture and pottery
grew gourds, pumpkins, sunflowers, and tobacco; corn became a
significant food crop
pottery originated in Mexico; heavy pots were not good for nomads, but
for settled Woodland people, pots worked better than fragile, leaky
baskets.
IV. Agricultural Settlements and Chiefdoms
A. Southwestern Cultures
1. Agricultural settlements
•
•
•
•
•
•
hunters and gatherers lived in present-day Arizona, New Mexico, and
southern Utah and Colorado; characterized by agricultural settlements
and multi-unit dwellings called pueblos
adapted agriculture because dry climate and fluctuations in rainfall made
the supply of wild plant food unreliable; began cultivating corn around
3500 BP; planting corn required Southwestern Indians to restrict
migrations to tend to the crop and to develop irrigation to grow it.
2. Mogollon culture
around AD 200; small farming settlements, each included a dozen pit
houses; Mogollon culture began to decline around AD 900 for reasons
that remain obscure.
3. Hohokam culture
southern Arizona around AD 500
used sophisticated grids of irrigation canals to plant and harvest crops
twice a year; built ball courts reminiscent of Mexican cultures; declined
about AD 1400, perhaps because rising soil salinity hurt crop yields.
4. Anasazi culture
flourish around AD 100 to the north in southern Utah and Colorado and
northern Arizona and New Mexico. Beginning around AD 1000, some
began to move to large, multi-story cliff dwellings; others built huge,
stone-walled pueblos; a drought that began in AD 1130 caused the
disappearance of the Anasazi culture.
B. Woodland Burial Mounds and Chiefdoms
1. Adena culture
• built hundreds of burial mounds in central Idaho between 2500 BP
and 2100 BP; usually buried people with grave goods such as
spear points and stone pipes.
2. Hopewell culture
• Evolved from Adena in 2100 BP; extended through drainage areas
of Ohio and Mississippi Rivers
• built larger mounds; burial restricted to highest ranking members
of society
• declined about AD 400; reasons are obscure, but archaeologists
speculate bows and arrows and agriculture allowed for smaller
settlements away from the central authority of the chiefdom.
3. Mississippian culture
• from AD 800 until about AD 1500
• also built mounds, in the floodplains of southeastern river systems
• at Cahokia, huge mounds had platforms for ceremonies and
housed great chiefs; created woodhenges, likely used for celestial
observations.
Anasazi of North America
• Anasazi: Chaco
Canyon in New
Mexico
– developed large
settlements based
on sophisticated
irrigation
technology and
transportation
systems.
– May have died out
because of
environmental
factors
Mound Builders of North America
• Mound builders:
Ohio and Mississippi
Valleys
– Built ceremonial burial
mounds
– Cahokia, a large
settlement rivaling in
size and sophistication
cities in medieval
Europe
– traded and interacted
with numerous other
Native cultures in
North America
Courtesy, National Museum of the American Native, Smithsonian Institution #P18523
V. Native Americans in the 1490s
A. Eastern and Great Plains Peoples
1. Algonquian tribes
• Atlantic seaboard, Great Lakes region, and upper Midwest; Atlantic seaboard tribes
grew corn and crops and hunted and fished
• Great Lakes and New England had a cool climate that made agriculture impractic
2. Iroquoian tribes
• Pennsylvania and upstate New York, as well as hilly upland regions of the Carolinas
and Georgia
• three distinguishing features: success in cultivating corn and other crops allowed
them to build permanent settlements; societies adhered to matrilineal rules of
descent; and an Iroquoian confederation formed the League of Five Nations for war
and diplomacy
• five tribes were Seneca, Onondaga, Mohawk, Oneida, and Cayuga
3. Muskogean peoples
• woodlands of the Southeast; included Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Natchez
tribes
• bountiful environment allowed hunting, gathering, and agriculture to thrive
• old Mississippian culture lived on in practices like building temple mounds and
worshipping the sun.
B. Southwestern and Western Peoples
1. Large population
• about a quarter of all native North Americans; descended from Mogollan, Hohokam,
and Anasazi; lived in settled agricultural communities, many of them pueblos.
•
2. Threatened by the Athapascans
3. Delayed development of agriculture
Northwest people had access to abundant salmon; The Dalles on the Columbia
River was the largest trading center in ancient North America.
V. Native Americans in the 1490s
C. Cultural Similarities
1. Gathering techniques and agriculture
2. Bows, arrows, weapons for hunting and warfare
3. Absence of writing: other forms of human expression-baskets, pottery,beads,
burial rites
4. Adaptation to natural and social environments
• did not live in complete peace, however; conflict occurred between
and among tribes
• some Native Americans, such as those who lived at Cahokia,
practiced human sacrifice
5. Manipulation of the environment to meet needs
• Dwellings altered landscape
• gathering techniques shifted the balance of local plants toward
useful varieties
• used fire to clear land for planting corn.
6. Fire as hunting tool
• forced buffalo together and deer to race out from burning
underbrush, which made them easier to slaughter
• Indians also used fire to clear entangling underbrush from forests,
which encouraged the growth of tender young plants; attracting
deer and other game.
Prehistoric Cahokia Mounds, ca.
1100–1150 A.D.
• Drawing by William R. Iseminger based on archaeological evidence.
Monks Mound dominated the palisaded area, which had at its center a
rectangular ball court with two poles.
Depiction of Cahokia Mounds 1150 A.D. by William R. Iseminger. Courtesy of Cahokia Mounds Historic Site.
Central and South American Cultures
• Mayans
– Lived in present-day
Yucatan, southern
Mexico, Guatemala
from 200-1000AD
– Very advanced cities,
governments, and
trade
– Knew math and
astronomy perhaps
better than
Europeans.
– Also known for
bloody rituals.
The Mayan Pyramid
of Kukulkan
VI. The Mexica: A Mesoamerican Culture
1. Large, diverse population
• (Europeans called them Aztecs) Empire stretched from
coast to coast across central Mexico; population
between 8 million and 25 million people; built
enormous monuments; we know more about them
because of the notes of Spanish conquistadors; by the
1490s, the Mexica ruled an empire that covered more
land than Spain and Portugal combined and contained
almost three times as many people.
2. Culture based on war
• worshipped the war god Huitzilopochtli
• warriors held the highest positions in social hierarchy;
young men hoped to rise in social class by fighting;
capturing prisoners was considered the ultimate act of
bravery
• Mexican priests sacrificed prisoners by cutting out their
hearts, believing it fed the sun’s craving for blood.
3. Power and wealth in Mexican empire
• tribute paid in goods, not money; tribute collection
reflected the fact that the relatively small nobility of
Mexican warriors and the even smaller priesthood
commanded the obedience of millions of people
• elite redistributed wealth from the poor to the rich;
led to the incredible achievements of the Mexicans,
such as huge cities and temples.
4. Conquered peoples not assimilated
• conquest caused resentment among people who did
not feel Mexican rule was legitimate or equitable
• Spanish manipulated this resentment after AD 1492
to conquer the Mexica
Aztecs Defending Tenochtitlan
• This drawing depicts Aztecs defending the temple of Tenochtitlán, which
was overthrown by the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés in 1519–
1521. The city’s main temple was the site of ritual human sacrifices.
© ARPL/ HIP/ The Image Works