chapter 1 the first americans to 1500 chapter 1 the first americans to 1500 © 2009 pearson...

Chapter 1The First Americans

to 1500

Chapter 1The First Americans

to 1500

© 2009 Pearson Education, Inc.

OUT OF MANY

A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

A Continent of Villages

ESSENTIAL QUESTION• What types of lifestyles did the First

Americans have?

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Chapter Focus Questions

• How were the Americas first settled?• In what ways did native communities adapt to

the distinct regions of North America?• What were the consequences of the

development of farming for native communities?• What was the nature of the Indian cultures in the

three regions where Europeans first explored and settled?

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The First American Settlers

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Who Are the Indian People?

• The name “Indian” came from Christopher Columbus’ belief he had reached the Indies.

• Enormously diverse group of people – 2,000 separate cultures– Several hundred different languages– Many different physical characteristics

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A forensic artist reconstructed this bust from the skull of “Kennewick Man,” whose skeletal remains were discovered along the Columbia River in 1996. Scientific testing suggested that the remains were more than nine thousand years old.

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Migration from Asia

• Map: Migration Routes from Asia to America• New genetic research links American Indians and

northwest Asians.• Beringia land bridge between Siberia and Alaska

– Glaciers locked up enough water to lower sea levels, creating grasslands 750 miles wide from north to south.

• Three migrations from Asia beginning about 30,000 years ago – Traveled by land (ice-free corridor) and along coast

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MAP 1.1 Migration Routes from Asia to America During the Ice Age, Asia and North America were joined where the Bering Straits are today, forming a migration route for hunting peoples. Either by boat along the coast, or through a narrow corridor between the huge northern glaciers, these migrants began making their way to the heartland of the continent as much as 30,000 years ago.

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Clovis: The First American Environmental Adaptation

• Clovis tradition was a new and powerful technology. – More sophisticated style of making fluted blades and

lance points.– Named for site of first discovery: Clovis, New Mexico

• Clovis bands were mobile, foraging communities of 30–50 individuals from interrelated families.

• Clovis bands migrated seasonally to the same hunting camps.

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These Clovis points are typical of thousands that archaeologists have found at sites all over the continent, dating from a period about 12,000 years ago. When inserted in a spear shaft, these three- to six-inch fluted points made effective weapons for hunting mammoth and other big game. The ancient craftsmen who made these points often took advantage of the unique qualities of the stone they were working to enhance their aesthetic beauty.

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Hunting Traditions

• Massive climate shift placed stress on big game animals

• Great Plains hunters concentrated on American bison (buffalo), requiring fast, accurate weapons.

• Folsom tradition was a refinement of Clovis. • Hunters used spear-throwers to hurl lances at bison

called an atlalt • Sophisticated hunting techniques included

stampeding bison herds over cliffs. – Required sophisticated division of labor and knowledge of

food preservation techniques• Map: Native North American Culture Areas and

Trade Networks, ca. 1400 CE

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The Atlatl and Mammoth

.

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Trading Networks

When, in 1927, archaeologists at Folsom, New Mexico, uncovered this dramatic example of a projectile point embedded in the ribs of a long-extinct species of bison, it was the first proof that Indians had been in North America for many thousands of years.

SOURCE: Courtesy of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

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The Development of Farming

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Mexico

• People living in central Mexico developed farming of maize about 5,000 years ago.

• Other American crops included potatoes, beans, squash, tomatoes, peppers, avocados, chocolate, and vanilla.

• Agriculture stimulated sedentary lifestyle and rise of large, urban complexes.

• Teotihuacán had 200,000 inhabitants. • Mesoamerican civilizations were characterized

by an elite class of rulers and priests, monumental public works, and systems of mathematics and hieroglyphic writing.

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Mesoamerican maize cultivation, as illustrated by an Aztec artist for the Florentine Codex, a book prepared a few years after the Spanish conquest. The peoples of Mesoamerica developed a greater variety of cultivated crops than those found in any other region in the world, and their agricultural productivity helped sustain one of the world’s great civilizations.

SOURCE: Image #1739-3, courtesy of the Library, American Museum of Natural History.

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Farming

• Adoption of farming was a gradual process and the domesticationdomestication of plants began.

• Climate, abundant food sources, and cultural values sometimes led to rejection of farming. – People often adopted farming simply as a way to

increase food production.

• Foraging could provide more varied diet, was less influenced by climate, and required less work. – Studies have shown that farmers were more subject

to different diseases and famine than foragers.

• Favorable climate was pivotal to the adoption of farming.

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Increasing Social Complexity

• Farming stimulated increasing social complexity. • Families were grouped into clans that bound

people together into a tribe. • Tribes were led by clan leaders of chiefs and

advised by councils of elders. – Chiefs were responsible for collection, storage, and

distribution of food.

• Gender strictly divided labor. • Marriage ties were generally weak. • Growing populations required larger food

surpluses and led to war.

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Farming In Early North America

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Farmers of the Southwest

• Farming began to emerge in the Southwest during the first millennium B.C.E.

• The Hohokam: – Grew maize, beans, squash, tobacco, and

cotton – Villages in the floodplain of the Salt and Gila

rivers between C.E. 300 to 1500– Developed the first Developed the first irrigationirrigation system in system in

America, north of MexicoAmerica, north of Mexico– Shared many traits with Mesoamerican

civilization.

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Hohokam Village: with Irrigation network

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The Anasazis

• Anasazi farming culture arose on the plateau of Colorado River around Four Corners area where Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico meet.– Built densely populated, multistoried apartment

complexes (pueblos) – Grew high-yield maize in terraced fields irrigated by

canals • Supplemented vegetable diet by hunting with bow and

arrow

– Culture consisted of 25,000 communities– Declined because of extended drought and arrival of

Athapascan migrants, leading to abandonment of Four Corners area.

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Cliff Palace, at Mesa Verde National Park in southwest Colorado, was created 900 years ago when the Anasazis left the mesa tops and moved into more secure and inaccessible cliff dwellings. Facing southwest, the building gained heat from the rays of the low afternoon sun in winter, and overhanging rock protected the structure from rain, snow, and the hot midday summer sun. The numerous round kivas, each covered with a flat roof originally, suggest that Cliff Palace may have had a ceremonial importance.

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Mississippian Society

• Introduction of bow and arrow, development of new maize variety, and switch from digging sticks to hoes were basis of Mississippian culture.– Developed sophisticated maize farming– Centered around permanent villages on

Mississippi River floodplain, with Cahokia as urban center

• Linked by river transportation system.

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The Great Serpent Mound in southern Ohio, the shape of an uncoiling snake more than 1,300 feet long, is the largest effigy earthwork in the world. Monumental public works like these suggest the high degree of social organization of the Mississippian people.SOURCE: Photo by George Gerster. Comstock Images.

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Cahokia Mounds (Illinois)

This bottle in the shape of a nursing mother (dated about 1300 BCE) was found at a Mississippian site. Historians can only speculate about the thoughts and feelings of the Mississippians, but such works of art are testimonials to the universal human emotion of maternal affection.

SOURCE: “Nursing Mother Effigy Bottle.” From the Whelpley Collection at the St. Louis Science Center. WL-23. Photograph © 1985 the Detroit Institute of Arts.

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The Politics of Warfare and Violence

• Warfare predated the colonial era– Hunting communities organized small raids

on farming communities.– Farming communities fought to gain land

for cultivation.– Highly organized tribal armies developed

• The bow and arrow was the deadly weapon of war.

• Scalping originated among warring tribes.– Eventually, many cities collapsed and

people scattered forming small decentralized communities.

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Seeing History An Early European Image of Native Americans.

Cultural Regions of North America on the Eve of

Colonization

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Map 1.3 Population Density of Indian Societies in the Fifteenth Century Based on what is called the “carrying capacity” of different subsistence strategies—the population density they could support-historical demographers have mapped the hypothetical population density of Indian societies in the fifteenth century, before the era of European colonization. Populations were densest in farming societies or in coastal areas with marine resources and sparest in extreme environments like the Great Basin.

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The South

• The Natchez lived in floodplains of lower Mississippi Delta.

• Class society ruled by “Great Sun” and a small group of nobles ruling the majority

• Persistent territorial conflict with other confederacies elevated warriors to an honored status.

• Practiced public torture and human sacrifice of enemies

• Chiefdoms were unstable, resulting in scattering of people into smaller decentralized communities.

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Timucuans of the Southeast• Matrilineal lines- ancestors traced through

mother• Mound Builders- built oyster shell mounds• Natives to Jacksonville (stretched from NE

Florida into South Carolina)• Several villages, ruled by caciques or

chiefs some of which were subjected to the rule of a larger village

• Participated in Human Sacrifice

High Ranking Chief/ Cacique

Gator Hunting

Deer Hunting

Timucuan Bar-B-Q

Growing Crops

Timucuan Village

Preparing for War

Timucuan Warfare

The New Queen Being Taken to the King, engraved by Theodor de Bry in the sixteenth century from a drawing by Jacques le Moyne, an early French colonist of Florida. The communities of Florida were hierarchical, with classes and hereditary chiefs, some of whom were women. Here, le Moyne depicted a “queen” being carried on an ornamental litter by men of rank.SOURCE: Neg.No.324281,Photographed by Rota, engraving by de Bry. American Museum of Natural History Library.

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The Northeast

• Colder part of eastern woodlands with geography of coastal plains, mountains, rivers, lakes, and valleys.

• The Iroquois:– Lived in present-day Ontario and upstate New York– Grew corn, beans, squash,and sunflowers– Matrilineal family lineage centered around longhouses– Formed confederacy to eliminate warfare

• The Algonquians:– Comprised at least 50 distinct, patrilineal cultures– Were organized into bands with loose ethnic affiliation in

north

– Farmed and lived in villages in south

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This deerskin cape, embroidered with shells by an Indian craftsman, is thought to be the chief’s mantle that Powhatan, leader of a confederacy of Algonquian villages in the Chesapeake region, gave to an English captain as part of an exchange of presents in 1608. The animal effigies are suggestive of the complex religious beliefs centering on the relationship of hunters to their prey.

Source: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England, U.K.

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The Hiawatha wampum belt of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois Five Nation Confederacy is exquisitely constructed of nearly seven thousand purple and white drilled shell beads, woven together with buckskin thongs and hemp thread. It is a ceremonial artifact, a symbol of unity of the five Iroquois nations. With the central tree or heart pointed up, the first two squares on the right represent the Mohawk and Oneida, the tree stands for the Onondaga, where the council met, and the third and fourth squares for the Cayuga and Seneca nations. The belt itself dates from the early eighteenth century, but the design is thought to have originated with the Confederacy itself, perhaps in the twelfth century CE.

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First European Contacts

The Vikings

Leif Eriksson

Newfoundland, Canada settled in 1003

Ruins of first European settlement in America