Native Americans in the United States is the phrase that describes
indigenous peoplesThe indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Americas, their descendants, and many ethnic groups who identify with those peoples...
from
North AmericaNorth America is the northern continent of the Americas, situated in the Earth's northern hemisphere and in the western hemisphere. It is bordered on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the east by the North Atlantic Ocean, on the southeast by the Caribbean Sea, and on the west by the North Pacific...
now encompassed by the continental
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, including parts of
AlaskaAlaska is the largest state of the United States of America by area; it is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
and the island state of
HawaiiHawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states, and is the only state made up entirely of islands. It is located on an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of Australia. The state was admitted to the Union on August...
. They comprise a large number of distinct
tribesAn Indian tribe is any extant or historical tribe, band, nation, or other group or community of Indigenous peoples in the Americas.-Legal definition in the United States:...
,
statesA sovereign state is a political association with effective internal and external sovereignty over a geographic area and population which is not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state...
, and
ethnic groupAn ethnic group is a group of humans whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage that is real or presumed.Ethnic identity is further marked by the researcher Seng Yang in the recognition from others of a group's distinctiveness and the recognition of common cultural,...
s, many of which survive as intact political communities. Native Americans have also been known as
Indians,
American Indians,
Aboriginal Americans,
Amerindians,
Amerinds,
Colored,
First Americans,
Indigenous,
Original Americans,
Red Indians,
Redskins or
Red Men.
European colonization of the Americas led to centuries of conflict and adjustment between
OldThe Old World consists of those parts of Earth known to Europeans, Asians, and Africans in the 15th century.-Regions:The Old World includes Europe, Asia, and Africa , plus surrounding islands...
and
New WorldThe New World is one of the names used for the non-Afro-Eurasian parts of the Earth, specifically the Americas and possibly Australia. When the term originated in the late 15th century, the Americas were new to the Europeans, who previously thought of the world as consisting only of Europe, Asia,...
societies. Most of the written historical record about Native Americans was made by Europeans after initial contact. Native Americans lived in hunter/farmer subsistence societies with significantly different value systems than those of the European colonists. The differences in culture between the Native Americans and Europeans, and the shifting alliances among different nations of each culture, led to great misunderstandings and long lasting cultural conflicts.
Estimates of the pre-Columbian population of what today constitutes the United States of America vary significantly, ranging from 1 million to 18 million.
After the colonies revolted against Great Britain and established the United States of America, the ideology of
Manifest destinyManifest Destiny is a term that was used in the 19th century to designate the belief that the United States was destined, even divinely ordained, to expand across the North American continent, from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean...
became integral to the American nationalist movement. In the late 18th century,
George WashingtonGeorge Washington was the commander of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War and served as the first President of the United States of America...
and
Henry KnoxHenry Knox was an American bookseller from Boston who became the chief artillery officer of the Continental Army and later the nation's first Secretary of War.-Early life and marriage:...
conceived of the idea of "civilizing" Native Americans in preparation of American citizenship. Assimilation (whether voluntary as with the
ChoctawThe Choctaw are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States . They are of the Muskogean linguistic group...
, or forced) became a consistent policy through American administrations. In the early 19th century, most Native Americans of the American
Deep SouthThe Deep South is a descriptive category of the cultural and geographic subregions in the American South. Historically, it is differentiated from the "Upper South" as being the states which were most dependent on plantation type agriculture during the antebellum period...
were removed from their homelands to accommodate American expansion with some groups presently residing in Alabama, Florida, Lousianna, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee. By the American Civil War, many Native American nations had been relocated west of the
Mississippi RiverThe Mississippi River is the second longest river in the United States, with a length of from its source in Lake Itasca in Minnesota to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico....
. Major Native American resistance took place in the form of "Indian Wars," which were frequent up until the 1890s.
Native Americans today have a unique relationship with the United States of America because they can be found as members of nations, tribes, or bands of Native Americans who have sovereignty or independence from the government of the United States. Their societies and cultures still flourish amidst a larger immigrated American populace of African,
AsianAsian people or Asiatic people is a demonym for people from Asia. However, the use of the term varies by country and person, often referring to people from a particular region or subregion of Asia...
, Middle Eastern, and
EuropeanThe European peoples are the various nations and ethnic groups of Europe. European ethnology is the field of anthropology focusing on Europe....
peoples. Native Americans who were not already U.S. citizens were
granted citizenship in 1924The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, also known as the Snyder Act, was proposed by Representative Homer P. Snyder of New York and granted full U.S. citizenship to America's indigenous peoples, called "Indians" in this Act...
by the Congress of the United States.
Pre-Columbian
- Further information: Lithic period (18000 BCE - 8000 BCE) and Pre-Columbian
The Pre-Columbian era incorporates all period subdivisions in the history and prehistory of the Americas before the appearance of significant European influences on the American continents, spanning the time of the original settlement in the Upper Paleolithic to European colonization during the...
and Models of migration to the New WorldThere have been several models of migration to the New World proposed by various academic communities. The question of how, when and why humans first entered the Americas is of intense interest to archaeologists and anthropologists and has been a subject of heated debate for centuries...
According to the still-debated
New World migration modelThere have been several models of migration to the New World proposed by various academic communities. The question of how, when and why humans first entered the Americas is of intense interest to archaeologists and anthropologists and has been a subject of heated debate for centuries...
, a migration of humans from
EurasiaEurasia is a large landmass covering about 52,990,000 km
2 or about 10.6% of the Earth's surface...
to the Americas took place via Beringia, a
land bridgeA land bridge, in biogeography, is an isthmus or wider land connection between otherwise separate areas, which allows terrestrial animals and plants to cross over and colonise new lands...
which formerly connected the two continents across what is now the
Bering StraitThe Bering Strait's technical name is Imakpik.The Bering Strait is a sea strait between Cape Dezhnev, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, the easternmost point of the Asian continent and Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska, the westernmost point of the North American continent, with latitude of about 65° 40'...
. Falling
sea levelMean sea level is the average height of the ocean's surface ; used as a standard in reckoning land elevation.- Measurement :...
s created the
Bering land bridgeThe Bering land bridge was a land bridge roughly 1,000 miles north to south at its greatest extent, which joined present-day Alaska and eastern Siberia at various times during the Pleistocene ice ages...
that joined
SiberiaSiberia , is the vast region constituting almost all of Northern Asia and for the most part currently serving as the massive central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, having served in the same capacity previously for the USSR from its beginning, and the Russian Empire beginning in the...
to
AlaskaAlaska is the largest state of the United States of America by area; it is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
, which began about 60,000 - 25,000 years ago. The minimum time depth by which this migration had taken place is confirmed at 12,000 years ago, with the upper bound (or earliest period) remaining a matter of some unresolved contention. These early Paleoamericans soon spread throughout the Americas, diversifying into many hundreds of culturally distinct nations and tribes. The North American climate finally stabilized by 8000 BC, climatic conditions were very similar to today's. This led to wide spread migration,
cultivationIn agriculture, cultivation is the process of growing plants on arable land. It is usually associated with large-scale agriculture, as opposed to small-scale gardening. Crop cultivation requires fertile soil, water , and seeds. Cultivation involves the sowing of the seeds in the appropriate season...
and subsequently a dramatic rise in population all over the Americas. This big game hunting culture labeled as the
Clovis cultureThe Clovis culture is a prehistoric Paleoindian culture that first appears in the archaeological record of North America around 11,500 rcbp radiocarbon years ago, at the end of the last glacial period, characterized by a particular tool kit adapted to the hunting of large mammals...
is primarily identified with fluted projectile points. The culture received its name from artifacts found near
Clovis, New MexicoClovis is a city in and the county seat of Curry County, New Mexico, United States. Its population was 37,213 as of the 2009 census.Clovis is located in the Llano Estacado and eastern New Mexico regions. The largely agricultural town is also noted for its role in early rock music history...
, the first evidence of this tool complex, excavated in 1932. The Clovis culture ranged over much of North America and even appeared in South America. The culture is identified by distinctive
Clovis pointClovis points are the characteristically-fluted projectile points associated with the North American Clovis culture. They date to the Paleoindian period around 13,500 years ago...
, a flaked flint spear-point with a notched flute by which it was inserted into a shaft. Dating of Clovis materials has been by association with animal bones and by the use of carbon dating methods. Recent reexaminations of Clovis materials using improved carbon dating methods produced results of 11,050 and 10,800 radiocarbon years B.P. Numerous Paleoindian cultures occupied North America, with some restricted to the
Great PlainsThe Great Plains are the broad expanse of prairie and steppe which lie west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada. This area covers parts of the U.S...
and
Great LakesThe Great Lakes are a collection of freshwater lakes located in eastern North America, on the Canada – United States border. Consisting of Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario, they form the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth. They are sometimes referred to as the "Third...
of the modern United States of America and
CanadaCanada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
as well as adjacent areas to the west and south west. The
Folsom TraditionThe Folsom Complex is a name given by archaeologists to a specific Paleo-Indian archaeological culture that occupied much of central North America...
was characterized by use of
Folsom pointFolsom points are a distinct form of chipped stone projectile points associated with the Folsom Tradition of North America. The style of toolmaking was named for Folsom, New Mexico where the first sample was found within the bone structure of a bison in 1927....
s as projectile tips and activities known from kill sites where slaughter and butchering of
bisonMembers of the genus Bison are large even-toed ungulates within the subfamily Bovinae. Two extant species and four extinct species are recognized...
took place and Folsom tools were left behind dates to between 9000 BC and 8000 BC.
Poverty Point culturePoverty Point culture is an archaeological culture that corresponds to an ancient group of American Indians who inhabited the area of the lower Mississippi Valley and surrounding Gulf coast. This culture thrived from 2200 BC- 700 BC, which is during the late Archaic period...
is an
archaeological cultureIn addition to its usual meaning in social science, in archaeology, the term culture is also used in reference to several related concepts unique to the discipline.-Archaeological culture:...
who inhabited the area of the lower Mississippi Valley and surrounding Gulf coast. The culture thrived from 2200 BC- 700 BC, which is during the late
Archaic periodIn the sequence of North American pre-Columbian cultural stages first proposed by Gordon Willey and Philip Phillips in 1958, the Archaic period was the second period of human occupation in the Americas, from around 8000 BC to 1000 BC although as its ending is defined by the adoption of sedentary...
. Evidence of this culture has been found at more than 100 sites including the
Jaketown SiteJaketown Site is an archaeological site with two prehistoric mounds in Humphreys County, Mississippi, United States. Located along Mississippi Highway 7 approximately seven miles north of Belzoni, the site was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1990....
near Belzoni, Mississippi.
According to the oral histories of many of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, they have been living there since their genesis, described by a wide range of traditional creation accounts. The
Na-DeneNa-Dene is a Native American language family which includes at least the Athabaskan languages, Eyak, and Tlingit languages. An inclusion of Haida is controversial...
people occupy much of northwest and central North America starting around 8000 BC. They were the earliest ancestors of the Athabascan- speaking peoples, including the
NavajoNavajo may refer to:* Navajo people* Navajo Nation, the governmental entity of the Navajo people* Navajo language, spoken by the Navajo people-Places in the United States:* Navajo, San Diego, California* Navajo, New Mexico* Navajo City, New Mexico...
and
ApacheApache is the collective term for several culturally related groups of Native Americans in the United States originally from the American Southwest. These indigenous peoples of North America speak a Southern Athabaskan language, and are related linguistically to the languages of Athabaskan...
. They had villages with large multi-family dwellings, used only seasonally, which meant people did not live there year round, but might live there for the summer to hunt and fish to gather food supplies for the winter. The
Oshara TraditionOshara Tradition was a Southwestern Archaic Tradition centered in north-central New Mexico, the San Juan Basin, the Rio Grande Valley, southern Colorado, and southeastern Utah...
is from 5500 BC to 600 CE and was a Southwestern Archaic Tradition centered in north-central
New MexicoNew Mexico is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. Inhabited by Native American populations for many centuries, it has also been part of the Imperial Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain, part of Mexico, and a U.S. territory. Among U.S...
, the
San Juan BasinThe San Juan Basin is a drainage basin and geologic structural basin in the Four Corners region of the Southwestern United States; its main portion covers around 4,600 square miles, encompassing much of northwestern New Mexico, northeastern Arizona, and parts of Colorado and Utah.As a drainage...
, the
Rio GrandeThe Rio Grande is a river that forms part of the border between the United States and Mexico. At long, it is the fourth-longest river system in the United States...
Valley, southern
ColoradoColorado is a U.S. state located in the Rocky Mountain region of the United States of America. It may also be considered to be part of the Western and Southwestern regions of the United States. Colorado entered statehood in 1876 and was nicknamed the “Centennial State”...
, and southeastern
UtahUtah is a western state of the United States. It was the 45th state admitted to the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80 percent of Utah's 2,736,424 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering around Salt Lake City. In contrast, vast expanses of the state are nearly uninhabited, making...
. The
Woodland periodThe Woodland period of North American pre-Columbian cultures is to the time from roughly 1000 BCE to 1000 CE in the eastern part of North America...
of
North AmericaNorth America is the northern continent of the Americas, situated in the Earth's northern hemisphere and in the western hemisphere. It is bordered on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the east by the North Atlantic Ocean, on the southeast by the Caribbean Sea, and on the west by the North Pacific...
n
pre-ColumbianThe Pre-Columbian era incorporates all period subdivisions in the history and prehistory of the Americas before the appearance of significant European influences on the American continents, spanning the time of the original settlement in the Upper Paleolithic to European colonization during the...
cultures refers to the time period from roughly 1000
BCECommon Era, abbreviated as CE, is a designation for the calendar system most commonly used world-wide for numbering the year part of the date...
to 1000 CE in the eastern part of North America. The term "Woodland" was coined in the 1930s and refers to prehistoric sites between the Archaic period and the
Mississippian cultureThe Mississippian culture was a mound-building Native American culture that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 CE to 1500 CE, varying regionally....
s. The Hopewell tradition is the term used to describe common aspects of the Native American culture that flourished along rivers in the northeastern and midwestern
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
from 200 BC to 500 CE.
The Hopewell tradition was not a single
cultureCulture is a term that has different meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
or society, but a widely dispersed set of related populations, which were connected by a common network of trade routes, known as the Hopewell Exchange System. At its greatest extent, the
Hopewell exchange system ran from the Southeastern
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
into the southeastern
CanadianCanada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
shores of
Lake OntarioLake Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. The lake is bounded on the north by the Canadian province of Ontario and on the south by Ontario's Niagara Peninsula and by the U.S. state of New York...
. Within this area societies participated in a high degree of exchange with the highest amount of activity along waterways. The Hopewell exchange system received materials from all over the United States.
Coles Creek cultureColes Creek culture is an archaeological culture in the Lower Mississippi valley in the southern United States. The period marks a significant change in the cultural history of the area. Population increased dramatically and there is strong evidence of a growing cultural and political complexity,...
is an
archaeological cultureIn addition to its usual meaning in social science, in archaeology, the term culture is also used in reference to several related concepts unique to the discipline.-Archaeological culture:...
from Lower
MississippiThe Mississippi River is the second longest river in the United States, with a length of from its source in Lake Itasca in Minnesota to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico....
valley in the southern United States. The period marks a significant change in the cultural history of the area. Population increased dramatically and there is strong evidence of a growing cultural and political complexity, especially by the end of the Coles Creek sequence. Although many of the classic traits of
chiefdomA chiefdom is a type of complex society of varying degrees of centralization that is led by an individual known as a chief.In anthropological theory, one model of human social development rooted in ideas of cultural evolution describes a chiefdom as a form of social organization more complex than a...
societies aren't yet manifested, by 1000 CE the formation of simple elite polities had begun. Coles Creek sites are found in
ArkansasArkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquin name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares a border with six states, with its eastern border largely defined by the Mississippi River. Its diverse geography ranges from the mountainous regions of the...
,
LouisianaThe State of Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state divided into parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
,
OklahomaOklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,617,316 residents in 2007 and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
,
MississippiMississippi is a state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The state's name comes from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, and takes its name from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi . The state is heavily forested outside of the...
, and
TexasTexas is the second-largest U.S. state in both area and population, and the largest state in the contiguous United States.The name had wide usage among native Americans, meaning "friends" or "allies"...
. It is considered ancestral to the
Plaquemine cultureThe Plaquemine culture was an archaeological culture in the lower Mississippi River Valley in western Mississippi and eastern Louisiana. Good examples of this culture are the Medora Site in West Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, and the Anna, Emerald Mound, Winterville and Holly Bluff sites located...
.
HohokamHohokam is one of the four major prehistoric archaeological traditions of what is now the American Southwest. Variant spellings in current, official usage include Hobokam, Huhugam and Huhukam. The culture was differentiated from others in the region in the 1930s by archaeologist Harold S...
is one of the four major prehistoric archaeological traditions of what is now the American Southwest. Living as simple farmers they raising corn and beans, these early Hohokam founded a series of small villages along the middle
Gila RiverThe Gila River The Gila River The Gila River ( is a tributary of the Colorado River, 650 miles (1,044 kilometers) long, in the southwestern states of New Mexico and Arizona.-Description:...
. The communities were located near good arable land, with dry farming common in the earlier years of this period.
WellsA water well is an excavation or structure created in the ground by digging, driving, boring or drilling to access groundwater in underground aquifers. The well water is drawn by an electric submersible pump, a vertical turbine pump, a handpump or a mechanical pump...
, usually less than deep, were dug for domestic water supplies by 300 CE to 500CE. Early Hohokam homes were constructed of branches bent in a semi-circular fashion and then covered with twigs, reeds and heavily applied mud and other items at hand. Although not as technologically advanced as the Mesoamerican civilizations further south, there were extensive pre-Columbian sedentary societies evolving. The
Iroquois League of NationsThe Iroquois , also known as the Haudenosaunee or the "People of the Longhouse", are an indigenous people of North America. In the 16th century or earlier, the Iroquois came together in an association known as the Iroquois League, or the "League of Peace and Power"...
or "People of the Long House" was a politically advanced and unique social structure that was at the very least inspirational if not directly influential on the later development of the democratic United States government, a departure from the strong monarchies from which the Europeans came. The
Southeastern Ceremonial ComplexThe Southeastern Ceremonial Complex is the name given to the regional stylistic similarity of artifacts, iconography, ceremonies and mythology of the Mississippian culture that coincided with their adoption of maize agriculture and chiefdom-level complex social organization from...
is the name given to the regional stylistic similarity of
artifactsAn artifact or artefact is any object made or modified by a human. In archaeology, an artifact is an object recovered by some archaeological endeavor, which may have a cultural interest. Examples include stone tools such as projectile points, pottery vessels, metal objects such as buttons or guns,...
,
iconographyIconography is the branch of art history which studies the identification, description, and the interpretation of the content of images. The word iconography literally means "image writing", and comes from the Greek εἰκών "image" and γράφειν "to write". A secondary meaning is the painting of icons...
,
ceremoniesthumb|right|250px|Part of the ceremony of the Changing of the Guard in Whitehall, London.A ceremony is an activity, infused with ritual significance, performed on a special occasion.-Celebration of life:...
and
mythologyMythology is the study of myths and or of a body of myths. For example, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece. The term "myth" is often used colloquially to refer to a false story;...
of the
Mississippian cultureThe Mississippian culture was a mound-building Native American culture that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 CE to 1500 CE, varying regionally....
that coincided with their adoption of
maizeMaize , is a herbaceous plant domesticated in Mesoamerica and subsequently spread throughout the American continents...
agriculture and
chiefdomA chiefdom is a type of complex society of varying degrees of centralization that is led by an individual known as a chief.In anthropological theory, one model of human social development rooted in ideas of cultural evolution describes a chiefdom as a form of social organization more complex than a...
-level complex social organization from 1200 CE to 1650 CE. Contrary to popular belief, this development appears to have no direct links to
MesoamericaMesoamerica or Meso-America is a region and culture area in the Americas, extending approximately from central Mexico to Honduras and Nicaragua, within which a number of pre-Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries...
, but developed independently. This Ceremonial Complex represents a major component of the
religionA religion is a system of human thought which usually includes a set of narratives, symbols, beliefs and practices that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to a higher power, deity or deities, or ultimate truth...
of the Mississippian peoples, and is one of the primary means by which their religion is understood.
European explorations
- Further information: European colonization of the Americas
The start of the European colonization of the Americas is typically dated to 1492, although there was at least one earlier colonization effort...
After 1492
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
an exploration of the Americas revolutionized how the
OldThe Old World consists of those parts of Earth known to Europeans, Asians, and Africans in the 15th century.-Regions:The Old World includes Europe, Asia, and Africa , plus surrounding islands...
and
New WorldThe New World is one of the names used for the non-Afro-Eurasian parts of the Earth, specifically the Americas and possibly Australia. When the term originated in the late 15th century, the Americas were new to the Europeans, who previously thought of the world as consisting only of Europe, Asia,...
s perceived themselves. One of the first major contacts, in what would be called the American
Deep SouthThe Deep South is a descriptive category of the cultural and geographic subregions in the American South. Historically, it is differentiated from the "Upper South" as being the states which were most dependent on plantation type agriculture during the antebellum period...
, occurred when conquistador
Juan Ponce de LeónJuan Ponce de León, was a Spanish explorer. He became the first Governor of Puerto Rico by appointment of the Spanish Crown. He led the first European expedition to Florida, which he named...
landed in
La FloridaFlorida is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States, bordering Alabama to the northwest and Georgia to the north. It was the 27th state admitted to the United States...
in April of 1513. Ponce de León was later followed by other Spanish explorers, such as
Pánfilo de NarváezPánfilo de Narváez was a Spanish conqueror and soldier in the Americas. He is most remembered as the leader of two expeditions, one to Mexico in 1520 to oppose Hernán Cortés, and another, disastrous, to Florida in 1527....
in 1528 and Hernando de Soto in 1539.
From the 16th through the 19th centuries, the population of Native Americans declined in the following ways:
epidemic diseasesSee also: 2009 flu pandemic A pandemic is an epidemic of infectious disease that is spreading through human populations across a large region; for instance a continent, or even worldwide. A widespread endemic disease that is stable in terms of how many people are getting sick from it is not a...
brought from Europe;
GenocideGenocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group.While precise definition varies among genocide scholars, a legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of...
and warfare at the hands of European explorers and colonists; displacement from their lands;
internal warfareEndemic warfare is the state of continual, low-threshold warfare in a tribal warrior society. Endemic warfare is often highly ritualized and plays an important function in assisting the formation of a social structure among the tribes' men by proving themselves in battle.Ritual fighting permits...
, enslavement; and a high rate of
intermarriageInterracial marriage occurs when two people of differing racial groups marry, often creating multiracial children. This is a form of exogamy and can be seen in the broader context of miscegenation .-Legality of interracial marriage:In the Western world certain...
. Most mainstream scholars believe that, among the various contributing factors,
epidemic diseaseAn infectious disease is a clinically evident disease resulting from the presence of pathogenic microbial agents, including pathogenic viruses, pathogenic bacteria, fungi, protozoa, multicellular parasites, and aberrant proteins known as prions...
was the overwhelming cause of the population decline of the American natives because of their lack of immunity to new diseases brought from Europe. With the rapid declines of some populations and continuing rivalries among their own nations, Native Americans sometimes re-organized to form new cultural groups.
Impact on Native Populations
The lack of hard evidence or written records has made estimating the number of Native Americans living in what is today the United States of America before the arrival of the European explorers and settlers the subject of much debate. A low estimate arriving at around 1 million was first posited by anthropologist
James MooneyJames Mooney was an American anthropologist who lived for several years among the Cherokee. He was born at Richmond, Indiana. In 1885 he became connected with the Bureau of American Ethnology at Washington, D.C. under John Wesley Powell. He compiled a tribal list containing 3,000 titles...
in the 1890s, computing population density of each culture area based on its
carrying capacityThe carrying capacity of a biological species in an environment is the population size of the species that the environment can sustain indefinitely, given the food, habitat, water and other necessities available in the environment...
.
By the end of the twentieth century, however, a Henry Dobyns published his studies estimating the population to be 18 million, which takes into account the mortality rates caused by
infectious diseaseAn infectious disease is a clinically evident disease resulting from the presence of pathogenic microbial agents, including pathogenic viruses, pathogenic bacteria, fungi, protozoa, multicellular parasites, and aberrant proteins known as prions...
s of
EuropeanA European American is a person who resides in the United States and is either from Europe or is the descendant of European immigrants or founding colonists. Spanish Americans are the earliest European American group, with a continuous presence since 1565...
explorers and settlers against which Native Americans had no natural
immunityImmunity is a biological term that describes a state of having sufficient biological defenses to avoid infection, disease, or other unwanted biological invasion. Immunity involves both specific and non-specific components. The non-specific components act either as barriers or as eliminators of wide...
. Dobyns combined the known mortality rates of these diseases among native people with reliable population records of the 19th century, to calculate the probable size of the original populations.
Chicken pox and
measlesMeasles is an infection of the respiratory system caused by a virus, specifically a paramyxovirus of the genus Morbillivirus. Morbilliviruses, like other paramyxoviruses, are enveloped, single-stranded, negative-sense RNA viruses...
, though common and rarely fatal among Europeans, often proved deadly to Native Americans.
SmallpoxSmallpox is an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning spotted, or varus, meaning "pimple"...
proved particularly deadly to Native American populations.
EpidemicDefining an epidemic can be subjective, depending in part on what is "expected". An epidemic may be restricted to one locale , more general or even global...
s often immediately followed European exploration and sometimes destroyed entire village populations. While precise figures are difficult to determine, some historians estimate that up to 80% of some
Native populationsThe population figures for the New World prior to the 1492 voyage of Christopher Columbus are unknown. Estimates based on archaeological data and written records from European settlers range from as low as 8 million to as many as 112 million indigenous "Native Americans"...
died due to European diseases after first contact. One theory of Columbian exchange suggests explorers from the
Christopher ColumbusChristopher Columbus was a navigator, colonizer and explorer whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean led to general European awareness of the American continents in the Western Hemisphere...
expedition contracted
syphilisSyphilis is a sexually transmitted disease caused by the spirochetal bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The route of transmission of syphilis is almost always through sexual contact, although there are examples of congenital syphilis via transmission from mother to child in utero.The...
from indigenous peoples and carried it back to Europe, where it spread widely. Other researchers believe that the disease existed in Europe and
AsiaAsia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.6% of the earth's total surface area and with approximately 4 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population.Asia is traditionally defined as part of the...
before Columbus and his men returned from exposure to indigenous peoples of the Americas, but that they brought back a more virulent form. (
See SyphilisSyphilis is a sexually transmitted disease caused by the spirochetal bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The route of transmission of syphilis is almost always through sexual contact, although there are examples of congenital syphilis via transmission from mother to child in utero.The...
.)
In 1618–1619, smallpox wiped out 90% of the
Massachusetts BayThe Massachusetts Bay, also called Mass Bay, is one of the large bays of the Atlantic Ocean that form the distinctive shape of the coastline of the U.S. state of Massachusetts. Its waters extend 65 miles into the Atlantic Ocean. Massachusetts Bay includes the Boston Harbor, Dorchester Bay, Quincy...
Native Americans. Historians believe Mohawk Native Americans were infected after contact with children of Dutch traders in Albany in 1634. The disease swept through Mohawk villages, reaching Native Americans at
Lake OntarioLake Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. The lake is bounded on the north by the Canadian province of Ontario and on the south by Ontario's Niagara Peninsula and by the U.S. state of New York...
in 1636, and the lands of the
IroquoisThe Iroquois , also known as the Haudenosaunee or the "People of the Longhouse", are an indigenous people of North America. In the 16th century or earlier, the Iroquois came together in an association known as the Iroquois League, or the "League of Peace and Power"...
by 1679, as it was carried by Mohawks and other Native Americans who traveled the trading routes. The high rate of fatalities caused breakdowns in Native American societies and disrupted generational exchanges of culture.
Between 1754 and 1763 many Native American tribes were involved in the
French and Indian WarThe French and Indian War, also known as the War of the Conquest or referred as part of the larger conflict known as the Seven Years' War, was a war fought in North America between 1754 and 1763...
/Seven Years War with French forces against British Colonial militias. Native Americans fought on both sides of the conflict over Western US Territories; the greater number of tribes, unwilling to be subjugated, fought with the French, while fewer tribes fought with the British to prove assimilation and loyalty in support of treaties, many of which were later dishonored. Though there is some evidence of biological warfare with pox infected blankets at Pontiac's Rebellion, the contact of trade and combat provided much greater exposure to disease.
Similarly, after initial direct contact with European explorers in the 1770s, smallpox rapidly killed at least 30% of
Northwest CoastThe "West Coast", "Western Seaboard", or "Pacific Coastline" are terms for the westernmost coastal states of the United States. It most often comprises California, Oregon and Washington...
Native Americans. For the next 80 to 100 years, smallpox and other diseases devastated native populations in the region.
Puget SoundPuget Sound is a sound or complex of inland marine waterways in the northwestern part of Washington, United States, extending from the eastern end of the Strait of Juan de Fuca south to the head of the sound at the state capital of Olympia. It branches out from Admiralty Inlet and Deception Pass...
area populations once as high as 37,000 were reduced to only 9,000 survivors by the time settlers arrived en masse in the mid-19th century.
Smallpox epidemics in
1780–1782Between 1775 and 1782, a smallpox epidemic raged across much of North America, killing more than 130,000 people. It rampaged the town of Boston during the British occupation and the American siege of 1775. It was present during the American invasion of Quebec in 1775...
and
1837–1838The smallpox epidemic that ravaged the people of the Great Plains in 1837 and 1838 was believed to have begun in spring of 1837 when a deckhand became ill aboard an American Fur Company steamboat named S.S. St. Peter. The steamboat traveling up the Missouri River to Fort Union from St...
brought devastation and drastic depopulation among the
Plains IndiansThe Plains Indians are the Indigenous peoples who live on the plains and rolling hills of the Great Plains of North America.-Plains Indians:...
. By 1832, the federal government finally established a
smallpox vaccinationThe smallpox vaccine was the first successful vaccine to be developed. The process of vaccination was discovered by Edward Jenner in 1796, who acted upon his observation that milkmaids who caught the cowpox virus did not catch smallpox...
program for Native Americans (
The Indian Vaccination Act of 1832). It was the first program created to address a health problem of Native Americans.
Animal introductions
With the meeting of two worlds, animals, insects, and plants were exchanged between two. The horse, pig, and cow were all old world animals that were introduced to Native Americans who never knew such animals.
In the sixteenth century, Spaniards and other Europeans brought
horseThe horse is a hoofed mammal, a subspecies of one of seven extant species of the family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...
s to the Americas. The early
American horseEquus scotti is an extinct species of Equus, the genus that includes the horse. E. scotti was native to North America and likely evolved from earlier, more zebra-like North American equids early in the Pleistocene Epoch...
was game for the earliest humans and was hunted to extinction about 7,000 BC, just after the end of the last glacial period. The reintroduction of horses resulted in benefits to Native Americans. As they adopted the animals, they began to change their cultures in substantial ways, especially by extending their ranges. Some of the horses escaped and began to breed and increase their numbers in the wild.
The reintroduction of the horse to North America had a profound impact on Native American culture of the Great Plains. The tribes trained and used horses to ride and to carry packs or pull
travoisA travois is a frame used by Native Americans, notably the Plains Indians of North America, to drag loads over land...
. They fully incorporated the use of horses into their societies, including expanding their territories, exchanging goods with neighboring tribes, hunting
gameGame is any animal hunted for food or not normally domesticated. Game animals are also hunted for sport.The type and range of animals hunted for food varies in different parts of the world. This will be influenced by climate, animal diversity, local taste and locally accepted view about what can or...
(especially
bisonThe American Bison is a North American species of bison, also commonly known as the American Buffalo. "Buffalo" is somewhat of a misnomer for this animal, as it is only distantly related to either of the two "true buffaloes", the Asian Buffalo and the African Buffalo...
) and conducting warring raids.
Foundations for freedom
For some Europeans, Native American societies reminded them of a conception of a golden age known to them only in folk history. The political theorist Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote that the idea of freedom and democratic ideals was born in the Americas because "it was only in America" that Europeans from 1500 to 1776 knew of societies that were "truly free."
The
Iroquois nationsThe Iroquois , also known as the Haudenosaunee or the "People of the Longhouse", are an indigenous people of North America. In the 16th century or earlier, the Iroquois came together in an association known as the Iroquois League, or the "League of Peace and Power"...
' political confederacy and
democraticDemocracy is a system of government in which either the actual governing is carried out by the people governed , or the power to do so is granted by them...
governmentA government is the body within a community, political entity or organization which has the authority to make and enforce rules, laws and regulations.....
have been credited as influences on the
Articles of ConfederationThe Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, commonly referred to as the Articles of Confederation, was the first constitution of the United States of America and legally established the union of the states. The Second Continental Congress appointed a committee to draft the Articles in June...
and the
United States ConstitutionThe Constitution of the United States of America is the supreme law of the United States. It is the foundation and source of the legal authority underlying the existence of the United States of America and the federal government of the United States...
. Historians debate how much the colonists borrowed from existing Native American governmental models. Several founding fathers had contact with Native American leaders and had learned about their style of government. Prominent figures such as
Thomas JeffersonThomas Jefferson was the third President of the United States , the principal author of the Declaration of Independence , and one of the most influential Founding Fathers for his promotion of the ideals of republicanism in the United States...
and
Benjamin FranklinBenjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author and printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, soldier, and diplomat...
were more involved with their stronger and larger native neighbor—the Iroquois.
John RutledgeJohn Rutledge was an American statesman and judge. He was the first Governor of South Carolina following the signing of the Declaration of Independence. For a time, he held dictatorial powers in that state. He was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, and he signed the United States...
of
South CarolinaSouth Carolina is a U.S. state that borders Georgia to the south and North Carolina to the north. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence from the British Crown during the American Revolution. The colony was...
in particular is said to have read lengthy tracts of Iroquoian law to the other framers, beginning with the words "We, the people, to form a union, to establish peace, equity, and order..."
Colonials revolt
During the
American RevolutionThe American Revolution is the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen of Britain's colonies in North America at first rejected the governance of the Parliament of Great Britain, and later the British monarchy itself, to become the sovereign United States of...
, the newly proclaimed
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
competed with the British for the allegiance of Native American nations east of the
Mississippi RiverThe Mississippi River is the second longest river in the United States, with a length of from its source in Lake Itasca in Minnesota to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico....
. Most Native Americans who joined the struggle sided with the British, hoping to use the
American Revolutionary WarThe American Revolutionary War , also sometimes known as the American War of Independence, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen united former British colonies in North America, and concluded in a global war between several European great powers...
to halt further colonial expansion onto Native American land. Many native communities were divided over which side to support in the war. The first native community to
sign a treaty with the new United States GovernmentThe Treaty of Fort Pitt — also known as the Treaty With the Delawares, the Delaware Treaty, or the Fourth Treaty of Pittsburgh, — was signed on September 17, 1778 and was the first written treaty between the new United States of America and any American Indians—the Lenape in this case...
was the
LenapeThe "Lenape", pronounced IPA: , , or in English, means "the people." Sometimes the name is spelled Lenape or Lenapi. Also known as the Lenni Lenape, the "true people", or as the "Delaware Indians", they are organized bands of Native American peoples with shared cultural and linguistic...
. For the
IroquoisThe Iroquois , also known as the Haudenosaunee or the "People of the Longhouse", are an indigenous people of North America. In the 16th century or earlier, the Iroquois came together in an association known as the Iroquois League, or the "League of Peace and Power"...
Confederacy, the American Revolution resulted in
civil warA civil war is a war between organized groups within a single nation state, or, less commonly, between two nations created from a formerly-united nation state. The aim of one side may be to take control of the nation or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies...
. The only Iroquois tribe to ally with the colonials were the Onondaga.
Frontier warfare during the American Revolution was particularly brutal, and numerous atrocities were committed by settlers and native tribes alike. Noncombatants suffered greatly during the war. Military expeditions on each side destroyed villages and food supplies to reduce the ability of people to fight, as in frequent raids in the Mohawk Valley and western New York. The largest of these expeditions was the
Sullivan ExpeditionThe Sullivan Expedition, also known as the Sullivan-Clinton Expedition, was a campaign led by Major General John Sullivan and Brigadier General James Clinton against Loyalists and the four nations of the Iroquois who had sided with the British in the American Revolutionary War.The expedition...
of 1779, in which American colonial troops destroyed more than 40 Iroquois villages to neutralize Iroquois raids in
upstate New YorkUpstate New York is the region of New York State north of the core of the New York metropolitan area.-Definition:There is no clear or official boundary between Upstate New York and Downstate New York, but the term "Upstate" is sometimes used to refer to the whole of the state besides New York City...
. The expedition failed to have the desired effect: Native American activity became even more determined.
The British made peace with the Americans in the
Treaty of Paris (1783)The Treaty of Paris, signed on September 3, 1783, ratified by the Congress of the Confederation on January 14, 1784 and by the King of Great Britain on April 9, 1784 , formally ended the American Revolutionary War between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the United States of America, which had...
, through which they ceded vast Native American territories to the United States without informing the Native Americans, leading immediately to the
Northwest Indian WarThe Northwest Indian War , also known as Little Turtle's War and by various other names, was a war fought between the United States and a large confederation of Indians for control of the Northwest Territory, which ended with a decisive U.S. victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794...
. The United States initially treated the Native Americans who had fought with the British as a conquered people who had lost their lands. Although many of the Iroquois tribes went to Canada with the Loyalists, others tried to stay in New York and western territories and tried to maintain their lands. Nonetheless, the state of New York made a separate treaty with Iroquois and put up for sale of land that had previously been their territory. The state established a reservation near Syracuse for the Onondagas who had been allies of the colonists.
The United States was eager to expand, to develop farming and settlements in new areas, and to satisfy land hunger of settlers from New England and new immigrants. The national government initially sought to purchase Native American land by treaties. The states and settlers were frequently at odds with this policy.
Transmuted Native America
European nations sent Native Americans (sometimes against their will) to the Old World as objects of curiosity. They often entertained royalty and were sometimes prey to commercial purposes.
ChristianizationThe historical phenomenon of Christianization, the conversion of individuals to Christianity or the conversion of entire peoples at once, also includes the practice of converting native pagan practices and culture, pagan religious imagery, pagan sites and the pagan calendar to Christian uses, due...
of Native Americans was a charted purpose for some European colonies.
United States policy toward Native Americans had continued to evolve after the American Revolution.
George WashingtonGeorge Washington was the commander of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War and served as the first President of the United States of America...
and
Henry KnoxHenry Knox was an American bookseller from Boston who became the chief artillery officer of the Continental Army and later the nation's first Secretary of War.-Early life and marriage:...
believed that Native Americans were equals but that their society was inferior. Washington formulated a policy to encourage the "civilizing" process. Washington had a six-point plan for civilization which included,
1. impartial justice toward Native Americans
2. regulated buying of Native American lands
3. promotion of commerce
4. promotion of experiments to civilize or improve Native American society
5. presidential authority to give presents
6. punishing those who violated Native American rights.
Robert Remini, a historian, wrote that "once the Indians adopted the practice of private property, built homes, farmed, educated their children, and embraced Christianity, these Native Americans would win acceptance from white Americans." The United States appointed agents, like
Benjamin HawkinsBenjamin Hawkins was an American farmer, statesman, and Indian agent from North Carolina. He was a delegate to the Continental Congress and a United States Senator, as well as a long term diplomat and agent to the Creek Indians.-Biography:Benjamin was bornto Philemon and Delia Martin Hawkins on...
, to live among the Native Americans and to teach them how to live like whites.
Assimilation
In the late eighteenth century, reformers starting with Washington and Knox, supported educating native children, in efforts to "
civilizeA civilization is a complex society or culture group characterized by dependence upon agriculture, long-distance trade, state form of government, occupational specialization, population, and class stratification.-Definition:...
" or otherwise assimilate Native Americans to the larger society (as opposed to relegating them to reservations). The Civilization Fund Act of 1819 promoted this civilization policy by providing funding to societies (mostly religious) who worked on Native American improvement.
After the American Civil War and Indian wars in the late 19th century,
Native American boarding schoolsIn the late eighteenth century, reformers starting with Washington and Knox, in efforts to "civilize" or otherwise assimilate Native Americans , adopted the practice of educating native children in modern American culture...
were established, which were often run primarily by or affiliated with Christian missionaries. At this time American society thought that Indian children needed to be acculturated to the general society. The boarding school experience often proved traumatic to Native American children, who were forbidden to speak their native languages, taught
ChristianityChristianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented by the revelations in the New Testament....
and denied the right to practice their native religions, and in numerous other ways forced to abandon their Native American identities and adopt European-American culture. There were documented cases of sexual, physical and mental abuse occurring at these schools.
Native Americans as American citizens
In 1857, Chief Justice
Roger B. TaneyRoger Brooke Taney was the eleventh United States Attorney General. He also was the fifth Chief Justice of the United States, holding that office from 1836 until his death in 1864, and was the first Roman Catholic to hold that office. He is most remembered for delivering the majority opinion in...
expressed that since Native Americans were "free and independent people" that they could become U.S. citizens. Taney asserted that Native Americans could be naturalized and join the "political community" of the United States.
The
Indian Citizenship Act of 1924The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, also known as the Snyder Act, was proposed by Representative Homer P. Snyder of New York and granted full U.S. citizenship to America's indigenous peoples, called "Indians" in this Act...
granted U.S. citizenship to all Native Americans. Prior to the passage of the act, nearly two-thirds of Native Americans were already U.S. citizens. The earliest recorded date of Native Americans' becoming U.S. citizens was in 1831 when the Mississippi
ChoctawThe Choctaw are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States . They are of the Muskogean linguistic group...
became citizens after the United States Legislature ratified the
Treaty of Dancing Rabbit CreekThe Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was a treaty signed on September 27, 1830 between the Choctaw and the United States Government. This was the first removal treaty carried into effect under the Indian Removal Act...
. Under article XIV of that treaty, any Choctaw who elected not to move with the Choctaw Nation could become an American citizen when he registered and if he stayed on designated lands for five years after treaty ratification.
Through the years, Native Americans became US citizens by:
1. Treaty provision (as with the Mississippi Choctaw)
2. Registration and land allotment under the Dawes Act of February 8, 1887The Dawes Act was enacted on February 8, 1887 regarding the distribution of land to Native Americans in Oklahoma. Named after its sponsor, U.S. Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts, the act was amended in 1891 and again in 1906 by the Burke Act...
3. Issuance of Patent in Fee Simple
4. Adopting Habits of Civilized Life
5. Minor Children
6. Citizenship by Birth
7. Becoming Soldiers and Sailors in the U.S. Armed Forces
8. Marriage to a US citizen
9. Special Act of Congress.
American expansion justification
In July 1845, the New York newspaper editor John L. O’Sullivan coined the phrase “Manifest Destiny,” to explain how the "design of Providence" supported the territorial expansion of the United States.
Manifest DestinyManifest Destiny is a term that was used in the 19th century to designate the belief that the United States was destined, even divinely ordained, to expand across the North American continent, from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean...
had serious consequences for Native Americans since continental expansion implicitly meant the occupation of Native American land. Manifest Destiny was an explanation or justification for expansion and westward movement, or, in some interpretations, an ideology or doctrine which helped to promote the process of civilization. Advocates of Manifest Destiny believed that expansion was not only good, but that it was obvious and certain. The term was first used primarily by
Jacksonian DemocratsJacksonian democracy is the political philosophy of United States President Andrew Jackson and his supporters. Jackson's policies followed the era of Jeffersonian democracy which dominated the previous political era...
in the 1840s to promote the annexation of much of what is now the
Western United StatesThe Western United States, commonly referred to as the American West or simply "the West," traditionally refers to the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. Because the U.S. expanded westward after its founding, the meaning of the West has evolved over time...
(the
Oregon TerritoryThe Territory of Oregon was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from August 14, 1848, until February 14, 1859, when the southwestern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Oregon.-History:...
, the
Texas AnnexationThe Texas Annexation of 1845 was the voluntary annexation of the Republic of Texas to the United States of America, becoming the twenty-eighth state...
, and the
Mexican CessionThe Mexican Cession of 1848 is a historical name in the United States for the region of the present day southwestern United States that Mexico ceded to the U.S. in 1848, excluding the areas east of the Rio Grande, which had been claimed by the Republic of Texas, though the Texas Annexation...
).
The age of Manifest Destiny, which came to be known as "
Indian RemovalIndian Removal was a nineteenth century policy of the government of the United States to relocate Native American tribes living east of the Mississippi River to lands west of the river...
", gained ground. Although some humanitarian advocates of removal believed that Native Americans would be better off moving away from whites, an increasing number of Americans regarded the natives as nothing more than "savages" who stood in the way of American expansion.
Thomas JeffersonThomas Jefferson was the third President of the United States , the principal author of the Declaration of Independence , and one of the most influential Founding Fathers for his promotion of the ideals of republicanism in the United States...
believed that while Native Americans were the intellectual equals of whites, they had to live like the whites or inevitably be pushed aside by them. Jefferson's belief, rooted in
EnlightenmentThe Age of Enlightenment, or simply The Enlightenment, is a term used to describe a time in Western philosophy and cultural life, centered upon the eighteenth century, in which reason was advocated as the primary source and legitimacy for authority....
thinking, that whites and Native Americans would merge to create a single nation did not last, and he began to believe that the natives should emigrate across the
Mississippi RiverThe Mississippi River is the second longest river in the United States, with a length of from its source in Lake Itasca in Minnesota to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico....
and maintain a separate society.
Indian Appropriations Act of 1871
In 1871 Congress added a rider to the Indian Appropriations Act ending United States recognition of additional Indian tribes or independent nations, and prohibiting additional treaties.
Resistance
U.S. government authorities entered into numerous treaties during this period but later violated many for various reasons. Other treaties were considered "living" documents whose terms could be altered. Major conflicts east of the Mississippi River include the
Pequot WarThe Pequot War was an armed conflict in 1634-1638 between an alliance of Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colonies, with Native American allies , against the Pequot tribe...
,
Creek WarThe Creek War , also known as the Red Stick War and the Creek Civil War, began as a civil war within the Creek nation...
, and
Seminole WarsThe Seminole Wars, also known as the Florida Wars, were three conflicts in Florida between various groups of Native Americans, collectively known as Seminoles, and the United States. The First Seminole War was from 1817 to 1818; the Second Seminole War from 1835 to 1842; and the Third Seminole War...
. Notably, a multi-tribal army led by
TecumsehTecumseh also Tecumtha or Tekamthi, was a Native American leader of the Shawnee and a large tribal confederacy that opposed the United States during Tecumseh's War and the War of 1812...
, a Shawnee chief, fought a number of engagements during the period 1811-12, known as
Tecumseh's WarTecumseh's War or Tecumseh's Rebellion are terms sometimes used to describe a conflict in the Old Northwest between the United States and an American Indian confederacy led by the Shawnee leader Tecumseh...
. In the latter stages, Tecumseh's group allied with the British forces in the
War of 1812The War of 1812, between the United States of America and the British Empire , lasted from 1812 to 1815. It was fought chiefly on the Atlantic Ocean and on the land, coasts and waterways of North America.There were several immediate stated causes for the U.S...
and was instrumental in the conquest of
DetroitDetroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the seat of Wayne County. Detroit is a major port city on the Detroit River, in the Midwest region of the United States. Located north of Windsor, Ontario, Detroit is the only major U.S. city that looks south to Canada. It was founded...
.
St. Clair's DefeatSt. Clair's Defeat, also known as the Battle of the Wabash or Battle of Wabash River, was fought on November 4, 1791, in the Northwest Territory between the United States and the Western Confederacy of American Indians, as part of the Northwest Indian War...
(1791) was the worst U.S. Army defeat by Native Americans in U.S. history.
Native American Nations west of the Mississippi were numerous and were the last to submit to U.S. authority. Conflicts generally known as "
Indian WarsIndian Wars is the name used in the United States to describe a series of conflicts between the colonial or federal government and the native people of North America....
" broke out between American government and Native American societies. The Battle of Little Bighorn (1876) was one of the greatest Native American victories. Defeats included the
Creek WarThe Creek War , also known as the Red Stick War and the Creek Civil War, began as a civil war within the Creek nation...
of 1813-14, the Sioux Uprising of 1862, the
Sand Creek MassacreThe Sand Creek Massacre was an incident in the Indian Wars of the United States that occurred on November 29, 1864, when Colorado Territory militia attacked and destroyed a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho encamped in southeastern Colorado Territory...
(1864) and
Wounded KneeIn the Wounded Knee Massacre, on December 29, 1890, 350 troops of the US 7th Cavalry, supported by four Hotchkiss guns, surrounded an encampment of Miniconjou Sioux and Hunkpapa Sioux near Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota. The Army had orders to escort the Sioux to the railroad for transport to...
in 1890. These conflicts were catalysts to the decline of dominant Native American culture. By 1872, the U.S. Army pursued a policy to exterminate all Indians unless or until they agreed to surrender and live on
reservationAn Indian reservation is an area of land managed by a Native American tribe under the United States Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs. Because Native American tribes have limited national sovereignty, laws on tribal lands vary from the surrounding area...
s "where they could be taught Christianity and agriculture."
Removals and reservations
In the nineteenth century, the incessant
westward expansion of the United StatesManifest Destiny is a term that was used in the 19th century to designate the belief that the United States was destined, even divinely ordained, to expand across the North American continent, from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean...
incrementally compelled large numbers of Native Americans to resettle further west, often by force, almost always reluctantly. Native Americans believed this forced relocation illegal, given the Hopewell Treaty of 1785. Under President
Andrew JacksonAndrew Jackson was the seventh President of the United States . He was military governor of Florida , commander of the American forces at the Battle of New Orleans , and eponym of the era of Jacksonian democracy...
,
United States CongressThe United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States of America, consisting of two houses, the Senate and the House of Representatives. Both senators and representatives are chosen through direct election....
passed the
Indian Removal ActThe Indian Removal Act, part of a United States government policy known as Indian removal, was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson on May 26, 1830.-19), the U.S. House passed it on 26 May 1830 ; Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians,...
of 1830, which authorized the President to conduct treaties to exchange Native American land east of the
Mississippi RiverThe Mississippi River is the second longest river in the United States, with a length of from its source in Lake Itasca in Minnesota to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico....
for lands west of the river. As many as 100,000 Native Americans relocated to the West as a result of this
Indian RemovalIndian Removal was a nineteenth century policy of the government of the United States to relocate Native American tribes living east of the Mississippi River to lands west of the river...
policy. In theory, relocation was supposed to be voluntary and many Native Americans did remain in the East. In practice, great pressure was put on Native American leaders to sign removal treaties.
The most egregious violation of the stated intention of the removal policy took place under the
Treaty of New EchotaThe Treaty of New Echota was a treaty signed on December 29, 1835 in New Echota, Georgia by officials of the United States government and representatives of a minority Cherokee political faction. The treaty was amended and ratified in March 1836. The treaty established terms under which the entire...
, which was signed by a dissident faction of
CherokeeThe Cherokee are a Native American people from the Southeastern United States...
s but not the elected leadership. President Jackson rigidly enforced the treaty, which resulted in the deaths of an estimated 4,000 Cherokees on the
Trail of TearsThe Trail of Tears was the relocation and movement of Native Americans in the United States from their homelands to Indian Territory in the Western United States. The phrase originated from a description of the removal of the Choctaw Nation in 1831...
. About 17,000 Cherokees, along with approximately 2,000 enslaved blacks held by Cherokees, were removed from their homes.
Native American Removal forced or coerced the relocation of major Native American groups in the
Eastern United StatesThe Eastern Half of The United States, the American East, or simply the East is traditionally defined as the states east of the Mississippi River...
, resulting directly and indirectly in the deaths of tens of thousands. Tribes were generally located to reservations where they could more easily be separated from traditional life and pushed into European-American society. Some southern states additionally enacted laws in the 19th century forbidding non-Native American settlement on Native American lands, with the intention to prevent sympathetic white missionaries from aiding the scattered Native American resistance.
Traditions of Native American Slavery
The majority of Native American tribes did practice some form of slavery before the European introduction of African slavery into North America; but none exploited slave labor on a large scale. In addition, Native Americans did not buy and sell captives in the pre-colonial era, although they sometimes exchanged enslaved individuals with other tribes in peace gestures or in exchange for their own members. In fact, the word "slave" may not even accurately apply to these captive people.
The situation of enslaved Native Americans varied among the tribes. In many cases, enslaved captives were adopted into the tribes to replace warriors killed during a raid. Other tribes practiced debt slavery or imposed slavery on tribal members who had committed crimes; but this status was only temporary as the enslaved worked off their obligations to the tribal society.
Among some
Pacific NorthwestThe Pacific Northwest is a region in the northwest of North America, bound by the Pacific Ocean to the west. There are several partially overlapping definitions of the region, but they generally include the Canadian province of British Columbia and the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon, and...
tribes, about a quarter of the population were slaves. Other slave-owning tribes of North America were, for example,
ComancheThe Comanche are a Native American ethnic group whose range consisted of present-day eastern New Mexico, southern Colorado, northeastern Arizona, southern Kansas, all of Oklahoma, and most of northwest Texas. Originally, the Comanches were hunter-gatherers, with a typical Plains Indian culture....
of Texas,
CreekThe Muscogee , also known as the Creek or Creeks, are an American Indian people originally from the southeastern United States. Mvskoke is their name in traditional spelling. Modern Muscogees live primarily in Oklahoma, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. Their language, Mvskoke, is a member of the...
of Georgia, the
PawneeThe Pawnee are a Native American tribe that historically lived along the Platte, Loup and Republican Rivers in present-day Nebraska and in Northern Kansas...
, and
Klamath]The Klamath are a Native American tribe of the Plateau culture area in Southern Oregon.-Pre-contact:Prior to the arrival of European explorers, the Klamath people lived in the area around the Upper Klamath Lake and the Klamath, Williamson, and Sprague rivers...
.
European enslavement
When Europeans arrived as colonists in North America, Native Americans changed their practice of slavery dramatically. They found that British settlers, especially those in the southern colonies, purchased or captured Native Americans to use as forced labor in cultivating tobacco, rice, and indigo. Native Americans began selling war captives to whites rather than integrating them into their own societies. As the demand for labor in the West Indies grew with the cultivation of sugar cane, Europeans enslaved Native Americans for export to the "sugar islands." Accurate records of the numbers enslaved do not exist. Scholars estimate tens of thousands of Native Americans may have been enslaved by the Europeans.
The slave trade of Native Americans lasted only until around 1730, and it gave rise to a series of devastating wars among the tribes. The Indian wars of the early 18th century, combined with the increasing importation of African slaves, effectively ended the Native American slave trade by 1750. Colonists found it too easy for Native American slaves to escape, and the wars took the lives of numerous colonial slave traders. The remaining Native American groups banned together to face the Europeans from a position of strength. Many surviving Native American peoples of the southeast joined confederacies such as the
ChoctawThe Choctaw are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States . They are of the Muskogean linguistic group...
, the
CreekCreek may refer to:*Creek, a small stream* Creek , an inlet of the sea, narrower than a cove * Creek, a narrow channel/small stream between islands in the Florida Keys*Creek people, a native American people...
, and the
CatawbaCatawba may refer to several things:*Catawba , a Native American tribe*Catawban languages-Botany:*Catalpa, a genus of trees, based on the name used by the Catawba and other Native American tribes*Catawba , a variety of grape...
for protection.
Native American women were at risk for rape whether they were enslaved or not, as in many southern communities, there were a disproportionate number of men in the early colonial years. Both Native American and African enslaved women suffered rape and sexual harassment by slaveholders.
Native American adoption of African slavery
Native Americans resisted Anglo-American encroachment on their lands and maintained cultural ways. Native Americans interacted with enslaved Africans and African Americans on many levels. Europeans considered both races inferior. Over time all the cultures interracted. Native Americans began to slowly absorb white culture Native Americans shared some experiences with Africans, especially during the period when both were enslaved.
The five civilized tribes tried to gain power by owning slaves, as they assimilated some other European-American ways. Among the slave-owning families of the
CherokeeThe Cherokee are a Native American people from the Southeastern United States...
, 78 percent claimed some white ancestry. The nature of the interactions among the peoples depended upon the historical character of the Native American groups, the enslaved people, and the European slaveholders. Native Americans often assisted runaway slaves. However, they also sold Africans to whites, trading them like so many blankets or horses.
While Native Americans might treat enslaved people as brutally as Europeans did, most Native American masters rejected the worst features of southern white bondage (Chattel Slavery). Though less than 3% of Native Americans owned slaves, bondage created destructive cleavages among Native Americans. It added to a class hierarchy that seemed related to European ancestry, but was based on the transfer of social capital as a result of such heritage. Proposals for
Indian RemovalIndian Removal was a nineteenth century policy of the government of the United States to relocate Native American tribes living east of the Mississippi River to lands west of the river...
heightened tensions of cultural changes due to the increase in the number of mixed-race Native Americans. Full bloods sometimes tried harder to maintain traditional ways, including control of land. The more traditional members who did not hold slaves often resented the sale of lands to Anglo-Americans.
King Philip's War
King Philip's WarKing Philip's War, sometimes called Metacom's War or Metacom's Rebellion, was an armed conflict between Native American inhabitants of present-day southern New England and English colonists and their Native American allies from 1675–1676...
sometimes called Metacom's War or Metacom's Rebellion, was an armed conflict between Native American inhabitants of present-day southern New England and English colonists and their Native American allies from 1675–1676. It continued in northern New England (primarily on the Maine frontier) even after King Philip was killed, until a treaty was signed at Casco Bay in April 1678. According to a combined estimate of loss of life in Schultz and Tougias' "King Philip's War, The History and Legacy of America's Forgotten Conflict" (based on sources from the Department of Defense, the Bureau of Census, and the work of Colonial historian Francis Jennings), 800 out of 52,000 English colonists of
New EnglandNew England is a region of the United States. It is located at the northeastern corner of the US, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean, Canada and the state of New York, consisting of the modern U.S...
(1 out of every 65) and 3,000 out of 20,000 natives (3 out of every 20) lost their lives due to the war, which makes it proportionately one of the bloodiest and costliest in the history of America. More than half of New England's ninety towns were assaulted by Native American warriors. One in ten soldiers on both sides were wounded or killed.
The war is named after the main leader of the Native American side, Metacomet, Metacom, or Pometacom, known to the English as "King Philip."
Civil War
Many Native Americans served in the military during the
Civil WarThe American Civil War , also known as the War Between the States and several other names, was a civil war in the United States of America. Eleven Southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America...
., the vast majority of whom siding with the confederates. By fighting with the European-Americans, Native Americans hoped to gain favor with the prevailing government by supporting the war effort. They also believed war service might mean an end to discrimination and relocation from ancestral lands to western territories. While the war raged and African Americans were proclaimed free, the U.S. government continued its policies of assimilation, submission, removal, or extermination of Native Americans.
General
Ely S. ParkerEly Samuel Parker , was a Native American of the Seneca nation who was an attorney, engineer, tribal diplomat, and a lieutenant colonel during the American Civil War, where he served as adjutant to General Ulysses S. Grant. He wrote the final draft of the Confederate surrender terms at Appomattox...
, a member of the
Seneca tribeThe Seneca are a group of indigenous people native to North America. They were the nation located farthest to the west within the Six Nations or Iroquois League in New York before the American Revolution. While exact population figures are unknown, approximately 15,000 to 25,000 Seneca live in...
, created the articles of surrender which General
Robert E. LeeRobert Edward Lee was a career United States Army officer, an engineer, and among the most celebrated generals in American history. Lee was the son of Major General Henry Lee III "Light Horse Harry" , Governor of Virginia, and his second wife, Anne Hill Carter...
signed at
Appomattox Court HouseThe Appomattox Court House National Historical Park is a National Historical Park of original and reconstructed nineteenth century buildings. It was signed into law August 3, 1935. The village was made a national monument in 1940 and a national historical park in 1954...
on April 9, 1865. Gen. Parker, who served as Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's military secretary and was a trained attorney, was once rejected for Union military service because of his race. At Appomattox, Lee is said to have remarked to Parker, "I am glad to see one real American here," to which Parker replied, "We are all Americans."
Spanish–American War
The Spanish–American War was an armed military conflict between Spain and the United States that took place between April and August 1898, over the issues of the liberation of Cuba, Philipines and Puerto Rico.
Theodore RooseveltTheodore Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States. He is well remembered for his energetic persona, his range of interests and achievements, his model of masculinity, and his "cowboy" image. He was a leader of the Republican Party and founder of the short-lived Bull Moose Party...
actively encouraged intervention in Cuba. Roosevelt worked with
Leonard WoodLeonard Wood was a physician who served as the Chief of Staff of the United States Army, Military Governor of Cuba and Governor General of the Philippines. Early in his military career, he was awarded the Medal of Honor...
in convincing the Army to raise an all-volunteer regiment, the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry. The "Rough Riders" was the name bestowed on the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry and the only regiment to see action. Recruiters gathered a diverse bunch of men consisting of cowboys, gold or mining prospectors, hunters, gamblers, and Native Americans. There were sixty Native Americans who served as "Rough Riders."
World War II
Some 44,000 Native Americans served in the United States military during
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. Described as the first large-scale exodus of indigenous peoples from the
reservationsAn Indian reservation is an area of land managed by a Native American tribe under the United States Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs. Because Native American tribes have limited national sovereignty, laws on tribal lands vary from the surrounding area...
since the removals of the 1800s, the international conflict was a turning point in Native American history. Men of native descent were
draftedConscription in the United States has been employed several times, usually during war but also during the nominal peace of the Cold War...
into the military like other American males. Their fellow soldiers often held them in high esteem, in part since the legend of the tough Indian warrior had become a part of the fabric of American historical legend. White servicemen sometimes showed a lighthearted respect toward American Indian comrades by calling them "chief."
The resulting increase in contact with the world outside of the reservation system brought profound changes to Native American culture. "The war," said the U.S. Indian commissioner in 1945, "caused the greatest disruption of Native life since the beginning of the reservation era", affecting the habits, views, and economic well-being of tribal members. The most significant of these changes was the opportunity—as a result of wartime labor shortages—to find well-paying work. Yet there were losses to contend with as well. Altogether, 1,200 Pueblo people served in World War II; only about half came home alive. In addition many more
NavajoThe Navajo or Diné of the Southwestern United States are the second largest Native American tribe of Northern America. In the 2000 U.S. census, 298,197 people claimed to be fully or partly of Navajo ancestry. The Navajo Nation constitutes an independent governmental body which manages the Navajo...
served as code talkers for the military in the Pacific. The code they made was never cracked by the Japanese.
Native Americans today
In 1975 the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act was passed, marking the culmination of 15 years of policy changes. Related to Indian activism, the Civil Rights Movement and community development aspects of social programs of the 1960s, the Act recognized the need of Native Americans for self-determination. It marked the US government's turn away from the policy of termination, the US government encouraged American Indians' efforts at self government and determining their futures.
There are 562
federally recognized tribal governments in the United States. These tribes possess the right to form their own government, to enforce laws (both civil and criminal), to tax, to establish requirements for membership, to license and regulate activities, to zone and to exclude persons from tribal territories. Limitations on tribal powers of self-government include the same limitations applicable to states; for example, neither tribes nor states have the power to make war, engage in foreign relations, or coin money (this includes paper currency).
Many Native Americans and advocates of Native American rights point out that the US Federal government's claim to recognize the "sovereignty" of Native American peoples falls short, given that the US still wishes to govern Native American peoples and treat them as subject to US law. True respect for Native American sovereignty, according to such advocates, would require the United States federal government to deal with Native American peoples in the same manner as any other sovereign nation, handling matters related to relations with Native Americans through the Secretary of State, rather than the
Bureau of Indian AffairsThe Bureau of Indian Affairs is an agency of the federal government of the United States within the US Department of the Interior charged with the administration and management of 55.7 million acres of land held in trust by the United States for Native Americans in the United States, Native...
. The Bureau of Indian Affairs reports on its website that its "responsibility is the administration and management of of land held in trust by the United States for American Indians, Indian tribes, and Alaska Natives." Many Native Americans and advocates of Native American rights believe that it is condescending for such lands to be considered "held in trust" and regulated in any fashion by a foreign power, whether the US Federal Government, Canada, or any other non-Native American authority.
According to 2003
United States Census BureauThe United States Census Bureau is the government agency that is responsible for the United States Census. It also gathers other national demographic and economic data. As part of the United States Department of Commerce, the Census Bureau serves as the leading source of quality data about...
estimates, a little over one third of the 2,786,652 Native Americans in the United States live in three states:
CaliforniaCalifornia is the most populous state in the United States, and the third largest by area. California is the second most populous sub-national entity in the Americas, behind only São Paulo, Brazil...
at 413,382,
ArizonaThe State of Arizona is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. The capital and largest city is Phoenix. The second largest city is Tucson, followed in size by the four Phoenix metropolitan area cities of Mesa, Glendale, Chandler, and Scottsdale.Arizona was the 48th and...
at 294,137 and
OklahomaOklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,617,316 residents in 2007 and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
at 279,559.
As of 2000, the largest tribes in the U.S. by population were
NavajoThe Navajo Nation is a semi-autonomous Native American homeland covering about 26,000 square miles , occupying all of northeastern Arizona, the southeastern portion of Utah, and northwestern New Mexico...
,
CherokeeThe Cherokee are a Native American people from the Southeastern United States...
,
ChoctawThe Choctaw are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States . They are of the Muskogean linguistic group...
,
SiouxSioux are a Native American and First Nations people. The term can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or any of the nation's many dialects...
, Chippewa,
ApacheApache is the collective term for several culturally related groups of Native Americans in the United States originally from the American Southwest. These indigenous peoples of North America speak a Southern Athabaskan language, and are related linguistically to the languages of Athabaskan...
,
BlackfeetThe Piegan Blackfeet are a tribe of Native Americans based in Montana. Many members of the tribe currently live as part of the Blackfeet Nation in northwestern Montana, with population centered in Browning...
,
IroquoisThe Iroquois , also known as the Haudenosaunee or the "People of the Longhouse", are an indigenous people of North America. In the 16th century or earlier, the Iroquois came together in an association known as the Iroquois League, or the "League of Peace and Power"...
, and
PuebloPueblos are traditional communities of Native Americans in the southwestern United States of America. The communities are recognized worldwide for their adobe buildings, which are sometimes called "pueblos"...
. In 2000, eight of ten Americans with Native American ancestry were of mixed blood. It is estimated that by 2100 that figure will rise to nine out of ten.
In addition, there are a number of tribes that are
recognized by individual states, but not by the federal government. The rights and benefits associated with state recognition vary from state to state.
Some tribal nations have been unable to establish their heritage and obtain federal recognition. The
Muwekma OhloneThe Ohlone people, also known as the Costanoan, are the indigenous people of Northern California who occupy the areas around San Francisco Bay, Monterey Bay, and the lower Salinas Valley when the Spanish arrived in the late-18th century...
of the San Francisco bay area are pursuing litigation in the federal court system to establish recognition. Many of the smaller eastern tribes have been trying to gain official recognition of their tribal status. The recognition confers some benefits, including the right to label arts and crafts as Native American and permission to apply for grants that are specifically reserved for Native Americans. But gaining recognition as a tribe is extremely difficult; to be established as a tribal group, members have to submit extensive
genealogicalGenealogy is the study of families and the tracing of their lineages and history. Genealogists use oral traditions, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kinship and pedigrees of its members...
proof of tribal descent.
Native American struggles amid poverty to maintain life on the reservation or in larger society have resulted in a variety of health issues, some related to nutrition and health practices. The community suffers a disproportionately high rate of
alcoholismAlcoholism is a term with multiple and sometimes conflicting definitions. In common and historic usage, alcoholism is any condition that results in the continued consumption of alcoholic beverages, despite health problems and negative social consequences...
.. In addition, some studies have found high rates of
heart diseaseHeart disease or cardiopathy is an umbrella term for a variety for different diseases affecting the heart. As of 2007, it is the leading cause of death in the United States, England, Canada and Wales, killing one person every 34 seconds in the United States alone.-Coronary heart disease:Coronary...
, diabetes,
drug addictionDrug addiction is a pathological condition which arises due to frequent drug use. The disorder of addiction involves the progression of acute drug use to the development of drug-seeking behavior, the vulnerability to relapse, and the decreased, slowed ability to respond to naturally rewarding stimuli...
,
mental illnessA mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern that occurs in an individual and is thought to cause distress or disability that is not expected as part of normal development or culture. The recognition and understanding of mental disorders has changed over time and...
and suicide. Agencies working with Native American communities are trying better to respect their traditions and integrate benefits of Western medicine within their own cultural practices.
In July 2000 the
Washington stateWashington State may refer to:* The state of Washington* Washington State University, a land-grant college in that state....
Republican PartyThe Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the Grand Old Party or the GOP, despite being the younger of the two major parties. In the U.S...
adopted a resolution recommending that the federal and legislative branches of the U.S. government terminate tribal governments . In 2007 a group of
Democratic PartyThe Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. It is the oldest political party in continuous operation in the United States and it is one of the oldest parties in the world. In the U.S...
congressmen and congresswomen introduced a bill in the
U.S. House of RepresentativesThe United States House of Representatives, commonly referred to as the "House," is the lower house of the bicameral United States Congress, the upper house being the United States Senate. The composition and powers of the House and the Senate are established in Article One of the Constitution...
to "terminate" the
Cherokee NationThe Cherokee Nation is the largest of three Cherokee federally recognized tribes in the United States...
. As of 2004, various Native Americans are wary of attempts by others to get control of their reservation lands for natural resources, such as
coalCoal is a readily combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock normally occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...
and
uraniumUranium is a silvery-white metallic chemical element in the actinide series of the periodic table that has the symbol U and atomic number 92. Besides its 92 protons, a uranium nucleus can have between 141 and 146 neutrons. The most common uranium isotopes are U-238 and U-235 . A uranium atom has...
in the West.
In the state of
VirginiaThe Commonwealth of Virginia is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" because it is the birthplace of eight U.S. presidents. The geography and climate of the state are shaped by the Blue...
, Native Americans face a unique problem. Virginia has no federally recognized tribes. Some analysts attribute this to work by
Walter Ashby PleckerWalter Ashby Plecker was a physician and public health advocate who was the first registrar of Virginia's Bureau of Vital Statistics....
, who as registrar of the state's Bureau of Vital Statistics vigorously applied his own interpretation of the
one-drop ruleThe one-drop rule is a historical colloquial term for a belief among some people in the United States that a person with any trace of African ancestry is black....
. He served from 1912-1946. In 1920 the state's General Assembly passed a law recognizing only two races: "white" and "colored". Plecker believed that the state's Native Americans had been "mongrelized" by intermarriage with
African AmericanAfrican Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa. In the United States, the terms are generally used for Americans with at least partial Sub-Saharan African ancestry...
s and, further, that some people with partial black heritage were trying to pass as Indians. To Plecker, anyone with any African heritage had to be classified as colored, regardless of appearance and cultural identification. Plecker pressured local governments into reclassifying all Native Americans in the state as "colored", and gave them lists of family surnames to examine for reclassification based on his interpretation of data and the law. This led to the state's destruction of accurate records related to Native American communities and families. Sometimes different members of the same family were split by classification as "white" or "colored". There was no place for primary identification as Native American.
To achieve federal recognition and its benefits, tribes must prove their continuous existence since 1900. The federal government has maintained this requirement, in part because through participation on councils and committees, federally recognized tribes have been adamant about groups' satisfying the same requirements as they did.
In the early 21st century, Native American communities remain an enduring fixture on the United States landscape, in the American economy, and in the lives of Native Americans. Communities have consistently formed governments that administer services like firefighting,
natural resourceNatural resources occur naturally within environments that exist relatively undisturbed by mankind, in a natural form. A natural resource is often characterized by amounts of biodiversity existent in various ecosystems.Natural resources are derived from the environment...
management, and
law enforcementIn North American English, a Law enforcement agency is an organisation that enforces the law.Outside North America, such organisations are called police services. In North America, some of these services are called police, others have other names In North American English, a Law enforcement agency...
. Most Native American communities have established
courtA court is a body, often a governmental institution, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes and dispense civil, criminal, or administrative justice in accordance with rules of law....
systems to adjudicate matters related to local ordinances, and most also look to various forms of moral and social authority vested in traditional affiliations within the community. To address the housing needs of Native Americans, Congress passed the
Native American Housing and Self Determination Act (NAHASDA) in 1996. This legislation replaced public housing, and other 1937 Housing Act programs directed towards Indian Housing Authorities, with a block grant program directed towards Tribes.
Societal discrimination, racism and conflicts
Perhaps because the most well-known Native Americans live on reservations relatively isolated from major population centers, universities have conducted relatively little public opinion research on attitudes toward them among the general public. In 2007 the non-partisan Public Agenda organization conducted a focus group study. Most non-Indians admitted they rarely encountered Native Americans in their daily lives. While sympathetic toward Native Americans and expressing regret over the past, most people had only a vague understanding of the problems facing Native Americans today. For their part, Native Americans told researchers that they believed they continued to face prejudice and mistreatment in the broader society.
Conflicts between the federal government and Native Americans occasionally erupt into violence. Perhaps the more notable late 20th century event was the
Wounded Knee incidentThe Wounded Knee incident began February 27, 1973 when the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota was seized by followers of the American Indian Movement...
in small town
South DakotaSouth Dakota is a state located in the Midwestern region of the United States of America. It is named after the Lakota and Dakota Sioux American Indian tribes. South Dakota was carved out of the southern half of the Dakota Territory and admitted to the Union on November 2, 1889...
. During the period of expanding civil rights protests, activist members of the
American Indian MovementThe American Indian Movement is a Native American activist organization in the United States. AIM gained international press when it seized of the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters in Washington, D.C., in 1972, and in 1973 had a standoff at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian...
(AIM) had taken control of
Wounded KneeWounded Knee can refer to:* Wounded Knee Creek* Wounded Knee, South Dakota* Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890* Wounded Knee incident of 1973In literature:...
. They were protesting issues related to Indian rights and the nearby Pine Ridge Reservation. On February 27, 1973, federal law enforcement officials and the United States military surrounded the town. In the ensuing confrontation, two members of AIM were killed and one United States Marshal was wounded and paralyzed.
Leonard PeltierLeonard Peltier is an American activist and member of the American Indian Movement who was convicted and sentenced in 1977 to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment for the murder of two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents who were killed during a 1975 shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian...
, an AIM activist and leader of the event, was arrested and charged, and at trial convicted of causing the uprising that resulted in the attack on the US marshal. He was sentenced to life in prison.
In 2004, Senator
Sam BrownbackSamuel Dale "Sam" Brownback is the senior United States Senator from the U.S. state of Kansas. During 2007, he was a candidate in the Republican primaries for the 2008 Presidential election...
(
RepublicanThe Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the Grand Old Party or the GOP, despite being the younger of the two major parties. In the U.S...
of
KansasKansas is a state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa tribe, who inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south wind," although this was...
) introduced a joint resolution (Senate Joint Resolution 37) to “offer an apology to all Native Peoples on behalf of the United States” for past “ill-conceived policies” by the United States Government regarding Indian Tribes. The
United States SenateThe United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral United States Congress, the lower house being the House of Representatives. The composition and powers of the Senate and the House are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution . Each U.S state is represented by two senators,...
has yet to take action on the measure.
In 2007, AIM activist
John GrahamJohn or Johnny Graham may refer to:*John Graham & Associates, also known as John Graham & Company, an architectural firm.In politics and history...
was extradited from Canada to the US to stand trial for killing N.S. Mimaq in 1975. The Native American woman activist was killed years after the Wounded Knee standoff, allegedly for having been an FBI informant at the time.
Native American mascots in sports
The use of Native American mascots in sports has become a contentious issue in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and
CanadaCanada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. Americans have had a history of "playing Indian" that dates back to at least the 1700s. Many individuals admire the heroism and romanticism evoked by the classic Native American warrior image, but numerous Native Americans think use of items associated with them as
mascotThe term mascot – defined as a term for any person, animal, or object thought to bring luck – colloquially includes anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name...
s is both offensive and demeaning. While many universities（For example,
North Dakota Fighting SiouxThe North Dakota Fighting Sioux is the name of the athletic teams of the University of North Dakota which is located in the city of Grand Forks, North Dakota, in the United States. The current logo is a Native American figure...
of
University of North DakotaThe University of North Dakota is a public university in Grand Forks, North Dakota, USA. Established by the Dakota Territorial Assembly in 1883, six years before the establishment of the state of North Dakota, UND is the oldest university in the state and enrolls over 13,100 students. UND was...
） and professional sports teams(
For example,
Chief WahooChief Wahoo is a trademarked mascot for the Cleveland Indians baseball team. The illustration is a Native American cartoon caricature. The mascot has been accused of reinforcing negative stereotypes about Native Americans, similar to previously discarded mascots like Chief Illiniwek and honorifics...
of
Cleveland IndiansThe Cleveland Indians are a professional baseball team based in Cleveland, Ohio. They are in the Central Division of Major League Baseball's American League. Since , they have played in Progressive Field . The team's spring training facility is in Goodyear, Arizona...
). no longer use such images without consultation with Native American nations, some lower level schools and sports teams continue to do so.
In August 2005, the
National Collegiate Athletic AssociationThe National Collegiate Athletic Association is a voluntary association of about 1,281 institutions, conferences, organizations and individuals that organizes the athletic programs of many colleges and universities in the United States and Canada...
(NCAA) banned the use of "hostile and abusive" Native American mascots in postseason tournaments. An exception was made to allow the use of tribal names as long as approved by that tribe (such as the Seminole Tribe of Florida's approving use of their name for the team of
Florida State UniversityFlorida State University is a space-grant and sea-grant public university located in Tallahassee, Florida, United States. It is a comprehensive doctoral research university with medical programs and significant research activity as determined by the Carnegie Foundation...
.) The use of Native American-themed team names in U.S. professional sports is widespread. Examples are mascot
Chief WahooChief Wahoo is a trademarked mascot for the Cleveland Indians baseball team. The illustration is a Native American cartoon caricature. The mascot has been accused of reinforcing negative stereotypes about Native Americans, similar to previously discarded mascots like Chief Illiniwek and honorifics...
and teams such as the
Cleveland IndiansThe Cleveland Indians are a professional baseball team based in Cleveland, Ohio. They are in the Central Division of Major League Baseball's American League. Since , they have played in Progressive Field . The team's spring training facility is in Goodyear, Arizona...
and
Washington RedskinsThe Washington Redskins are a professional American football team based in the Washington, D.C. area. The team plays at FedExField in Landover, Maryland, which is in Prince George's County, Maryland. The team's headquarters and training facility are at Redskin Park in Ashburn, Virginia, a community...
, considered controversial by some.
Depictions by Europeans and Americans
Native Americans have been depicted by
American artists in various ways at different historical periods. During the sixteenth century, the artist
John WhiteJohn White , was an English artist, and one of several early English colonists who sailed with Richard Grenville in 1585 to the john white...
made watercolors and engravings of the people native to the southeastern states. John White’s images were, for the most part, faithful likenesses of the people he observed.
Later the artist Theodore de Bry used White’s original watercolors to make a book of engravings entitled,
A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia. In his book, de Bry often altered the poses and features of White’s figures to make them appear more European. During the period when White and de Bry were working, when Europeans were first coming into contact with native Americans, Europeans were greatly interested in in native American cultures. Their curiosity created demand for a book like de Bry’s.
Three centuries later, during the construction of the
Capitol buildingThe United States Capitol is the meeting place of the United States Congress, the legislature of the Federal government of the United States. Located in Washington, D.C., it sits atop Capitol Hill at the eastern end of the National Mall. Though not in the geographic center of the District of...
in the early nineteenth century, the U.S. government commissioned a series of four relief panels to crown the doorway of the
RotundaThe United States Capitol rotunda is the central rotunda of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.. Located below the Capitol dome, is the tallest part of the Capitol and has been described as its "symbolic and physical heart."...
. The reliefs encapsulate a vision of European—Native American relations that had assumed mythic historical proportions by the nineteenth century. The four panels depict:
The Preservation of Captain Smith by Pocahontas (1825) by Antonio Capellano,
The Landing of the Pilgrims (1825) and
The Conflict of Daniel Boone and the Indians (1826–27) by Enrico Causici, and
William Penn’s Treaty with the Indians (1827) by Nicholas Gevelot. The reliefs present idealized versions of the Europeans and the native Americans, in which the Europeans appear refined and the natives appear ferocious. The
WhigThe Whig Party was a political party of the United States during the era of Jacksonian democracy. Considered integral to the Second Party System and operating from 1833 to 1856, the party was formed in opposition to the policies of President Andrew Jackson and the Democratic Party...
representative of
VirginiaThe Commonwealth of Virginia is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" because it is the birthplace of eight U.S. presidents. The geography and climate of the state are shaped by the Blue...
,
Henry A. WiseHenry Alexander Wise was an American statesman from Virginia.-Early life:Wise was born in Drummondtown, Accomack County, Virginia, to Major John Wise and his second wife Sarah Corbin Cropper, whose families had been long settled there...
, voiced a particularly astute summary of how Native Americans would read the messages contained in all four reliefs: “We give you corn, you cheat us of our lands: we save your life, you take ours.” While many nineteenth-century images of native Americans conveyed similarly negative messages, artists such as
Charles Bird KingCharles Bird King is a United States artist who is best known for his portraiture. In particular, the artist is notable for the portraits he painted of Native American delegates coming to Washington D.C., which were commissioned by government's Bureau of Indian Affairs.-Biography:Charles Bird King...
sought to express a more balanced image of Native Americans.
During this time there were writers of fiction who were informed about Native American culture and wrote about it with sympathy. One such writer was
Marah Ellis RyanMarah Ellis Ryan was born either February 27, 1860 or 1866. As Ellis Martin, she married Samuel Erwin Ryan , an Irish actor and comedian, in 1883. She died July 11, 1934....
.
In the 20th century, early portrayals of Native Americans in movies and
televisionTelevision is a widely used telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images, either monochromatic or color, usually accompanied by sound. "Television" may also refer specifically to a television set, television programming or television transmission...
roles were first depicted by European-Americans dressed in mock traditional attire. Examples included
The Last of the Mohicans (1920),
Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans (1957), and
F TroopF Troop is a satirical American television sitcom that originally aired from 1965-1967 on ABC. It was originally broadcast in the United States from September 14, 1965 to finishing on April 6, 1967, producing a total of 65 episodes. The first season [34 episodes] was filmed in black-and-white, and...
(1965-67). In later decades, Native American actors such as
Jay SilverheelsJay Silverheels was a Canadian Mohawk Indian and an actor. He was well known for his role as Tonto, the faithful Native American companion of the Lone Ranger in a long-running American television series.-Early life:...
in
The Lone Ranger television series (1949-57) and
Iron Eyes CodyIron Eyes Cody, born Espera de Corti was an American actor. He was famous for portraying Native Americans in Hollywood films, although his ancestry was discovered to be Italian...
came to prominence. Roles of Native Americans were limited and not reflective of Native American culture. In the 1970s some Native Americans roles were improved in movies:
Little Big ManLittle Big Man is a 1970 American Western film directed by Arthur Penn and based on the 1964 novel by Thomas Berger. It is a picaresque comedy and drama about a Caucasian boy raised by the Cheyenne nation during the 19th century...
(1970),
Billy JackBilly Jack is the second, and highest grossing, in a series of motion pictures centering on a fictional character of the same name, played by Tom Laughlin who also directed and co-wrote the script. Filming began in Prescott, Arizona, in fall 1969, but the movie was not completed until 1971....
(1971), and
The Outlaw Josey WalesThe Outlaw Josey Wales is a 1976 revisionist Western film set at the end of the American Civil War directed by and starring Clint Eastwood , with Chief Dan George, Sondra Locke, Bill McKinney, John Vernon, Paula Trueman, Sam Bottoms, Geraldine Keams, John Russell, Woodrow Parfrey, Joyce Jameson,...
(1976) depicted Native Americans in minor supporting roles.
In addition to overtly negative depictions, Native people on US television have also been relegated to secondary, subordinate roles. During the years of the series
BonanzaBonanza is an American television series that ran on NBC from September 12, 1959 to January 16, 1973. Lasting 14 seasons, it is among the longest running Western television series and continues to air in syndication....
(1959-1973), no major or secondary Native characters appeared on a consistent basis. The series
The Lone RangerThe Lone Ranger is an American radio and television show created by George W. Trendle and developed by writer Fran Striker.The eponymous character is a masked Texas Ranger in the American Old West, originally played by Paul Halliwell, who gallops about righting injustices with the aid of his...
(1949-1957),
CheyenneCheyenne are a Native American people of the Great Plains. The Cheyenne Nation is composed of two united tribes, the Só'taa'e and the Tsé-tsêhéstâhese , which translates to "those like us". The name Cheyenne derives from Dakota Sioux Šahíyena, meaning "little Šahíya"...
(1957-1963), and
Law of the PlainsmanLaw of The Plainsman is a Western television series starring Michael Ansara that aired on the NBC television network from October 1, 1959, until May 5, 1960. The character of Native American U.S...
(1959-1963) had Native characters who were essentially aides to the central White characters. This characterization was also a feature of later television pilots and shows such as
How the West Was WonHow the West Was Won is an American western television series starring James Arness, Fionnula Flanagan, and Bruce Boxleitner. A spin-off of the 1962 Cinerama film, it aired as a mini-series in 1977, and as a regular series in 1978 and 1979, preceded by a 2,5 hours long pilot episode, The Macahans,...
. These programs resembled the “sympathetic” yet contradictory film
Dances With WolvesDances with Wolves is a 1990 epic film based on the book of the same name which tells the story of a Civil War-era United States Army lieutenant who travels to the American frontier to find a military post...
of 1990, in which, according to Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, the narrative choice was to relate the Lakotas story as told through a Euro-American voice, for wide impact among a general audience.
During the 1990s, several major films were released in which Native Americans were portrayed with historical accuracy and a sense of cultural continuity:
Dances with WolvesDances with Wolves is a 1990 epic film based on the book of the same name which tells the story of a Civil War-era United States Army lieutenant who travels to the American frontier to find a military post...
(1990),
The Last of the MohicansThe Last of the Mohicans is a 1992 historical epic film set in 1757 during the French and Indian War. It was directed by Michael Mann and based on James Fenimore Cooper's classic novel, although it owes more to George B. Seitz's 1936 film adaptation than the source novel...
(1992), and
Geronimo: An American LegendGeronimo: An American Legend is a 1993 film, starring Wes Studi as Geronimo, Jason Patric as 1st Lt. Charles B. Gatewood, Gene Hackman as Brig. Gen. George Crook, Robert Duvall as Chief of Scouts Al Sieber, and Matt Damon as 2nd Lt. Britton Davis. The film was directed by Walter Hill from a...
(1993). All employed Native American actors, and had accurate portrayals of culture and languages.
In 2004, Co-Producer Guy Perrotta presented the film
Mystic Voices: The Story of the Pequot War (2004), a television documentary on the first major war between colonists and Native peoples in the Americas. Perrotta and Charles Clemmons intended to increase public understanding of the significance of this early event. They believed it had significance not only for northeastern Native Peoples and descendants of English and Dutch colonists, but for all Americans today. The producers wanted to make the documentary as historically accurate and as unbiased as possible. They invited a broadly based Advisory Board, and used scholars, Native Americans, and descendants of the colonists to help tell the story. They elicited personal and often passionate viewpoints from contemporary Americans. The production portrayed the conflict as a struggle between different value systems that included not only the Pequots, but a number of Native American tribes, most of which allied with the English. It not only presents facts, but also seeks to help the viewer better understand the people who fought the War.
In 2009,
We Shall RemainWe Shall Remain is a documentary by Ric Burns, brother of Ken Burns about Native Americans. It is part of the American Experience series.-Episode List:...
(2009), a television documentary by
Ric BurnsEric D. Burns — known as Ric Burns — is a documentary filmmaker and writer. He has written, directed and produced historical documentaries for nearly 20 years, beginning with his collaboration on the celebrated PBS series The Civil War , which he produced with his brother Ken Burns and wrote with...
and part of the
American ExperienceAmerican Experience is a television program airing on the PBS network in the United States. The program airs documentaries, many of which have won awards, about important or interesting events and people in American history...
series, presented a five-episode series from a Native American perspective: it represented "an unprecedented collaboration between Native and non-Native filmmakers and involves Native advisors and scholars at all levels of the project." The five episodes explore the impact of
King Philip's WarKing Philip's War, sometimes called Metacom's War or Metacom's Rebellion, was an armed conflict between Native American inhabitants of present-day southern New England and English colonists and their Native American allies from 1675–1676...
on the northeastern tribes, the "Native American confederacy" involved in
Tecumseh's WarTecumseh's War or Tecumseh's Rebellion are terms sometimes used to describe a conflict in the Old Northwest between the United States and an American Indian confederacy led by the Shawnee leader Tecumseh...
, the forced relocation known as
Trail of TearsThe Trail of Tears was the relocation and movement of Native Americans in the United States from their homelands to Indian Territory in the Western United States. The phrase originated from a description of the removal of the Choctaw Nation in 1831...
, the pursuit and capture of
GeronimoGeronimo was a prominent Native American leader and medicine man of the Chiricahua Apache who fought against Mexico and the United States and their expansion into Apache tribal lands for several decades.-Biography:Goyahkla was...
and the
Apache WarsThe Apache Wars were fought during the nineteenth century between American settlers, the U.S. and or Confederate States Army and many Apache tribes in what is now the southwestern United States.-Origins:...
, and concludes with the
American Indian MovementThe American Indian Movement is a Native American activist organization in the United States. AIM gained international press when it seized of the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters in Washington, D.C., in 1972, and in 1973 had a standoff at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian...
's involvement at the
Wounded Knee incidentThe Wounded Knee incident began February 27, 1973 when the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota was seized by followers of the American Indian Movement...
and the resurgence in modern Native cultures afterward.
Common usage in the United States
The term
Native American was originally introduced in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
by anthropologists as a more accurate term for the indigenous people of the Americas, as distinguished from the people of India. Because of the widespread acceptance of this newer term in and outside of academic circles, some people believe that
Indians is outdated or offensive. People from India (and their descendants) who are citizens of the United States are known as
Indian American...
s or
Asian Indians.
Criticism of the
neologismA neologism ; from Greek νές is a newly coined word that may be in the process of entering common use, but has not yet been accepted into mainstream language. Neologisms are often directly attributable to a specific person, publication, period, or event...
Native American, however, comes from diverse sources. Some American Indians have misgivings about the term
Native American.
Russell MeansRussell Charles Means is an activists for the rights of American Indians. Means has also had notable careers in politics, acting, and music.-Early life:...
, a famous American Indian activist, opposes the term
Native American because he believes it was imposed by the government without the consent of American Indians. He has also argued that this use of the word Indian derives not from a confusion with
IndiaIndia, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal...
but from a
SpanishSpanish or Castilian is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that originated in northern Spain and gradually spread in the Kingdom of Castile, evolving into the principal language of government and trade in the Iberian peninsula...
expression
En Dio, meaning "in God". Furthermore, some American Indians question the term
Native American because, they argue, it serves to ease the conscience of "white America" with regard to past injustices done to American Indians by effectively eliminating "Indians" from the present. Still others (both Indians and non-Indians) argue that
Native American is problematic because "native of" literally means "born in," so any person born in the Americas could be considered "native". However, very often the compound "Native American" will be
capitalizedCapitalization is writing a word with its first letter as a majuscule and the remaining letters in minuscules , in those writing systems which have a case distinction...
in order to differentiate this intended meaning from others. Likewise, "native" (small 'n') can be further qualified by formulations such as "native-born" when the intended meaning is only to indicate place of birth or origin.
A 1995 US Census Bureau survey found that more American Indians in the United States preferred
American Indian to
Native American. Nonetheless, most American Indians are comfortable with
Indian,
American Indian, and
Native American, and the terms are often used interchangeably. The traditional term is reflected in the name chosen for the
National Museum of the American IndianThe National Museum of the American Indian is a museum dedicated to the life, languages, literature, history, and arts of the native peoples of the Western Hemisphere. It was established in 1989 through an Act of Congress...
, which opened in 2004 on the Mall in
Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C. , formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States, founded on July 16, 1790...
.
Recently, the U.S. Census Bureau has introduced the "Asian-Indian" category to avoid ambiguity when sampling the Indian-American population.
Gambling industry
GamblingGambling is the wagering of money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods. Typically, the outcome of the wager is evident within a short period....
has become a leading industry.
CasinoA casino is a facility that houses and accommodates certain types of gambling activities. Casinos are most commonly built near or combined with hotels, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships and other tourist attractions...
s operated by many Native American governments in the United States are creating a stream of gambling revenue that some communities are beginning to use as leverage to build diversified economies. Native American communities have waged and prevailed in legal battles to assure recognition of rights to self-determination and to use of natural resources. Some of those rights, known as treaty rights, are enumerated in early treaties signed with the young United States government.
Tribal sovereigntyTribal sovereignty refers to the inherent authority of indigenous tribes to govern themselves. At the foundation of the constitutional status of tribes is the idea that tribes have an inherent right to govern themselves—the power is not delegated by congressional acts. Congress can, however, limit...
has become a cornerstone of American
jurisprudenceJurisprudence is the theory and philosophy of law. Scholars of jurisprudence, or legal philosophers, hope to obtain a deeper understanding of the nature of law, of legal reasoning, legal systems and of legal institutions. Modern jurisprudence began in the 18th century and was focused on the first...
, and at least on the surface, in national legislative policies. Although many Native American tribes have casinos, they are a source of conflict. Most tribes, especially small ones such as the
Winnemem WintuThe Winnemem Wintu are a band of the Native American Wintu tribe originally located along the lower McCloud River, above Shasta Dam near Redding, California.-History:...
of
Redding, CaliforniaFor the city in Pennsylvania, see Reading, PennsylvaniaRedding is a city in Northern California. It is the county seat of Shasta County, California, USA...
, feel that casinos and their proceeds destroy culture from the inside out. These tribes refuse to participate in the gambling industry.
Ethno-linguistic classification
Far from forming a single ethnic group, Native Americans were divided into several hundred ethno-linguistic groups, most of them grouped into the Na-Dené (
AthabaskanAthabaskan or Athabascan is the name of a large group of closely related indigenous peoples of North America, located in two main Southern and Northern groups in western North America, and of their language family...
), Algic (including
AlgonquianThe Algonquian languages languages are a subfamily of Native American languages that includes most of the languages in the Algic language family. The name of the Algonquian language family is distinguished from the orthographically similar Algonquin dialect of the Ojibwe language, which is itself...
), Uto-Aztecan,
IroquoianThe Iroquoian languages are a First Nation and Native American language family. The language family, amongst others, includes Mohawk, Huron-Wyandot and Cherokee.Every language in this family has at least one nasal vowel phoneme...
,
Siouan-CatawbanSiouan-Catawban is a language family of North America that is located primarily in the Great Plains of North America with a few outlier languages in the east.Some authors call this family simply Siouan...
,
Yok-UtianYok-Utian is a hypothetical language family of California. It consists of the Yokutsan and Utian families.The name Yok-Utian was coined by Geoffrey Gamble. Catherine Callaghan is one of the major investigators of this hypothesis. Callaghan and Gamble's research on this family started in 1991...
,
SalishanThe Salishan languages are a group of languages of the Pacific Northwest...
and
Yuman-CochimíYuman-Cochimí is a family of languages spoken in Baja California and northern Sonora in Mexico and southern California and western Arizona in the United States.-Genetic relations:...
phyla, besides many smaller groups and several
language isolateA language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical relationship with other languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common with any other language. They are in effect language families consisting of a single...
s. Demonstrating genetic relationships has proved difficult due to the great linguistic diversity present in North America.
The indigenous peoples of North America can be classified as belonging to a number of large cultural areas:
- Alaska Natives
Alaska Natives are the indigenous peoples of Alaska. They include: Inupiat, Yupik, Aleut, Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Eyak, and a number of Northern Athabaskan cultures.-History:In 1912 the Alaska Native Brotherhood was founded...
- Arctic: Eskimo-Aleut
- Subarctic: Northern Athabaskan
Northern Athabaskan is a geographic sub-grouping of the Athabaskan language family spoken in the northern part of North America, particularly in Alaska and the Yukon...
- Western United States
The Western United States, commonly referred to as the American West or simply "the West," traditionally refers to the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. Because the U.S. expanded westward after its founding, the meaning of the West has evolved over time...
- Californian tribes: Yok-Utian, Pacific Coast Athabaskan
Pacific Coast Athabaskan is a geographic grouping of the Athabaskan language family.-California Athabaskan:Pacific Coast Athabaskan is a geographic grouping of the Athabaskan language family....
, Coast MiwokThe Coast Miwok were the second largest group of Miwok Native American people. The Coast Miwok inhabited the general area of modern Marin County and southern Sonoma County in Northern California, from the Golden Gate north to Duncans Point and eastward to Sonoma Creek...
, YurokYurok is a moribund Algic language. It is the traditional language of the Yurok tribe of Del Norte County and Humboldt County on the far North Coast of California, U.S., most of whom now speak English...
, Palaihnihan-Family division:Palaihnihan is said to comprise:# Atsugewi # Achumawi -Genetic relations:The basis of this assertion is weakened by poor quality of data...
- Plateau tribes: Interior Salish
Interior Salish is one of the two main subgroups of the Salishan language family, the other being Coast Salish, but can also refer to First Nations/Native American cultures who speak the language . The language can be divided into Northern and Southern Interior Salish groups, each with its own...
, Plateau PenutianPlateau Penutian is a family of languages spoken in northern California, reaching through central-western Oregon to northern Washington and central-northern Idaho.-Family division:...
- Great Basin tribes
The Great Basin tribes of Native Americans occupied an area of some 400,000 mile² , between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada, in what is now Nevada, and parts of Oregon, California, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah...
: Uto-AztecanUto-Aztecan is a Native American language family. It is one of the largest and most well-established linguistic families of the Americas...
- Pacific Northwest Coast
The Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Pacific Northwest Coast, their descendants, and many ethnic groups who identify with those historical peoples. They are now situated within the Canadian Province of British Columbia and the U.S...
: Pacific Coast AthabaskanPacific Coast Athabaskan is a geographic grouping of the Athabaskan language family.-California Athabaskan:Pacific Coast Athabaskan is a geographic grouping of the Athabaskan language family....
, Coast SalishCoast Salish languages are a subgroup of the Salishan language family. These languages are spoken by First Nations or Native American peoples inhabiting the territory that is now the southwest coast of British Columbia around the Georgia Strait and the state of Washington around Puget Sound...
- Southwestern tribes: Uto-Aztecan
Uto-Aztecan is a Native American language family. It is one of the largest and most well-established linguistic families of the Americas...
, YumanThe Yuman people are a group of Native American ethnic groups of the Yuman-Cochimí language family. The historic Yuman-speaking peoples in this region were skilled warriors and active traders, maintaining exchange networks with the Pima in southern Arizona and with the Pacific coast.The term...
, Southern AthabaskanSouthern Athabaskan is a subfamily of Athabaskan languages spoken primarily in the North American Southwest with two outliers in Oklahoma and Texas. These languages are spoken by various groups of Apache and Navajo peoples.Western Apaches call their language Nnee biyáti’ or Ndee biyáti’...
- Central United States
The Central United States is sometimes conceived as between the Eastern United States and Western United States as part of a three-region model, roughly coincident with the Midwestern United States plus the western and central portions of the Southern United States; the term is also sometimes used...
- Plains Indians
The Plains Indians are the Indigenous peoples who live on the plains and rolling hills of the Great Plains of North America.-Plains Indians:...
: SiouanThe Siouan languages are a Native American language family of North America, and the second largest indigenous language family in North America, after Algonquian. The Siouan family is related to the Catawban family, together making up the Siouan-Catawban family...
, Plains AlgonquianThe Plains Algonquian languages are commonly grouped together as a subgroup of the larger Algonquian family, itself a member of the Algic family. Though this grouping is often encountered in the literature, it is an areal grouping rather than a genetic one...
, Southern AthabaskanSouthern Athabaskan is a subfamily of Athabaskan languages spoken primarily in the North American Southwest with two outliers in Oklahoma and Texas. These languages are spoken by various groups of Apache and Navajo peoples.Western Apaches call their language Nnee biyáti’ or Ndee biyáti’...
- Eastern United States
The Eastern Half of The United States, the American East, or simply the East is traditionally defined as the states east of the Mississippi River...
- Northeastern Woodlands tribes: Iroquoian
The Iroquoian languages are a First Nation and Native American language family. The language family, amongst others, includes Mohawk, Huron-Wyandot and Cherokee.Every language in this family has at least one nasal vowel phoneme...
, Central AlgonquianThe Central Algonquian languages are commonly grouped together as a subgroup of the larger Algonquian family, itself a member of the Algic family. Though this grouping is often encountered in the literature, it is an areal grouping rather than a genetic one...
, Eastern AlgonquianThe Eastern Algonquian languages constitute a subgroup of the larger Algonquian family, itself a member of the Algic family. Prior to European contact, Eastern Algonquian consisted of some seventeen or more languages occupying contiguous territory on the Atlantic coast of North America and adjacent...
- Southeastern tribes
Southeastern tribes or Southeastern cultures are an ethnographic classification for Native American peoples that inhabited the Southeastern United States that shared common cultural traits...
: MuskogeanMuskogean is an indigenous language family of the Southeastern United States. Though there is an ongoing debate concerning their interrelationships, the Muskogean languages are generally divided into two branches, Eastern Muskogean and Western Muskogean...
, SiouanThe Siouan languages are a Native American language family of North America, and the second largest indigenous language family in North America, after Algonquian. The Siouan family is related to the Catawban family, together making up the Siouan-Catawban family...
, CatawbanThe Catawban languages form a small language family in east North America. The Catawban family is a sub-family of the larger Siouan-Catawban family.-Family division:The Catawban family consists of 2 languages:...
, IroquoianThe Iroquoian languages are a First Nation and Native American language family. The language family, amongst others, includes Mohawk, Huron-Wyandot and Cherokee.Every language in this family has at least one nasal vowel phoneme...
Of the surviving languages, Uto-Aztecan has the most speakers (1.95 million) if the languages in Mexico are considered (mostly due to 1.5 million speakers of Nahuatl); Nadene comes in second with approximately 180,200 speakers (148,500 of these are speakers of
NavajoNavajo or Navaho is an Athabaskan language spoken in the southwest United States by the Navajo people...
). Na-Dené and Algic have the widest geographic distributions: Algic currently spans from northeastern Canada across much of the continent down to northeastern Mexico (due to later migrations of the
KickapooThe Kickapoos are one of the Algonquian-speaking Native American tribes. According to the Anishinaabeg, the name "Kickapoo" means "Stands Here and there". It referred to the tribe's migratory patterns. The name can also mean "wanderer"...
) with two outliers in
CaliforniaCalifornia is the most populous state in the United States, and the third largest by area. California is the second most populous sub-national entity in the Americas, behind only São Paulo, Brazil...
(
YurokYurok is a moribund Algic language. It is the traditional language of the Yurok tribe of Del Norte County and Humboldt County on the far North Coast of California, U.S., most of whom now speak English...
and
WiyotWiyot is an extinct Algic language, formerly spoken by the Wiyot people of Humboldt Bay, California. The language's last native speaker, Della Prince, died in 1962. Some Wiyots are attempting a revival of the language....
); Na-Dené spans from Alaska and western
CanadaCanada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
through
WashingtonWashington is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. Washington was carved out of the western part of Washington Territory which had been ceded by Britain in 1846 by the Oregon Treaty as settlement of the Oregon Boundary Dispute. It was admitted to the Union as the...
,
OregonOregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
, and California to the
U.S. SouthwestThe Southwestern United States is defined as the states that lie west of the Mississippi River, with the qualification of a certain northern limit such as the 37, 38, 39, or 40 degree north latitude. A 97.33 longitude degree west could qualify as the separation of the American Southwest from the...
and northern Mexico (with one outlier in the Plains).
Another area of considerable diversity appears to have been the
SoutheastThe US Southeast is the eastern portion of the Southern United States, but the Census Bureau does not provide a standard definition of a "Southeast" region of the United States, and organizations that need to subdivide the US are free to define a "Southeast" region to fit their needs...
; however, many of these languages became extinct from European contact and as a result they are, for the most part, absent from the historical record.
Cultural aspects
Though cultural features, language, clothing, and customs vary enormously from one tribe to another, there are certain elements which are encountered frequently and shared by many tribes.
Early
hunter-gathererA hunter-gatherer society is one whose primary subsistence method involves the direct procurement of edible plants and animals from the wild, foraging and hunting without significant recourse to the domestication of either...
tribes made stone weapons from around 10,000 years ago; as the age of
metallurgyMetallurgy is a domain of materials science that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their intermetallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are called alloys. It is also the technology of metals: the way in which science is applied to their practical use...
dawned, newer technologies were used and more efficient weapons produced. Prior to contact with Europeans, most tribes used similar weaponry. The most common implements were the bow and arrow, the war club, and the spear. Quality, material, and design varied widely.
Native American use of fireIn addition to simple cooking, Pre-Columbian Native Americans used fire in many and significant ways, ranging from protecting an area from fire to landscape-altering clearing of prairie.-Human-shaped landscape:...
both helped provide insects for
foodFood is any substance, usually composed of carbohydrates, fats, proteins and water, that can be eaten or drunk by an animal, including humans, for nutrition or pleasure. Items considered food may be sourced from plants, animals or other categories such as fungus or fermented products like alcohol...
and
altered the landscape of the continentPre-Columbian savannas once existed across North America. These were created and maintained in a fire ecology by Native Americans until the 16th century death of most natives. Surviving natives continued using fire to clear savanna until European colonists began colonizing the eastern seaboard...
to help the human population flourish.
Large mammals like
mammothA mammoth is any species of the extinct genus Mammuthus. These proboscideans are members of Elephantidae, the family of elephants and mammoths, and close relatives of modern elephants. They were often equipped with long curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long hair. They lived from...
s and
mastodonMastodons or mastodonts were large tusked mammal species of the extinct genus Mammut found in Asia, Africa, Europe, North America and Central America from the Oligocene through Pleistocene, 33.9 mya to 11,000 years ago. The American mastodon is the most recent and best known species of the group...
s were largely extinct by around 8,000 B.C. Native Americans switched to hunting other large game, such as
bisonThe American Bison is a North American species of bison, also commonly known as the American Buffalo. "Buffalo" is somewhat of a misnomer for this animal, as it is only distantly related to either of the two "true buffaloes", the Asian Buffalo and the African Buffalo...
. The Great Plains tribes were still hunting the bison when they first encountered the Europeans. The Spanish reintroduction of the horse to North America in the 17th century and Indians' learning to use them greatly altered the natives' culture, including changing the way in which they hunted large game. (Evidence of ore-historic horses prior to the arrival of the Spanish has been found in the
La Brea Tar PitsThe La Brea Tar Pits are a famous cluster of tar pits around which Hancock Park was formed, in the urban heart of Los Angeles. Asphalt or tar has seeped up from the ground in this area for tens of thousands of years. The tar is often covered with water...
in Los Angeles, CA.) In addition, horses became such a valuable, central element of Native lives that they were counted as a measure of wealth.
Organization
Gens structure
Early European American scholars described the Native Americans as having a society dominated by clans or
gentesIn ancient Rome, a gens was a family or clan that shared a common name and a belief in a common ancestor...
(in the Roman model) before tribes were formed. There were some common characteristics:
- The right to elect its sachem
Sachem may refer to:* Sachem, a Native American leader* A leader of Tammany Hall* The Sachem award, which replaced the Sagamore of the Wabash as Indiana's highest civilian honor* Sachem School District in Long Island...
and chiefs.
- The right to depose its sachem and chiefs.
- The obligation not to marry in the gens.
- Mutual rights of inheritance of the property of deceased members.
- Reciprocal obligations of help, defense, and redress of injuries.
- The right to bestow names on its members.
- The right to adopt strangers into the gens.
- Common religious rights, query.
- A common burial place.
- A council of the gens.
Tribal structure
Subdivision and differentiation took place between various groups. Upwards of forty stock languages developed in North America, with each independent tribe speaking a dialect of one of those languages. Some functions and attributes of tribes are:
- The possession of the gentes.
- The right to depose these sachems and chiefs.
- The possession of a religious faith and worship.
- A supreme government consisting of a council of chiefs.
- A head-chief of the tribe in some instances.
Society and art
The
IroquoisThe Iroquois , also known as the Haudenosaunee or the "People of the Longhouse", are an indigenous people of North America. In the 16th century or earlier, the Iroquois came together in an association known as the Iroquois League, or the "League of Peace and Power"...
, living around the
Great LakesThe Great Lakes are a collection of freshwater lakes located in eastern North America, on the Canada – United States border. Consisting of Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario, they form the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth. They are sometimes referred to as the "Third...
and extending east and north, used strings or belts called
wampumWampum are traditional, sacred shell beads of Eastern Woodlands tribes. They include the white shell beads fashioned from the North Atlantic channeled whelk shell and the white and purple beads, made from the quahog, or Western North Atlantic hard-shelled clam...
that served a dual function: the knots and beaded designs mnemonically chronicled tribal stories and legends, and further served as a medium of exchange and a unit of measure. The keepers of the articles were seen as tribal dignitaries.
Pueblo peoples crafted impressive items associated with their religious ceremonies.
KachinaA kachina is a spirit being in western Pueblo cosmology and religious practices. The western Pueblo, Native American cultures located in the southwestern United States, include Hopi, Zuni, Tewa Village , Acoma Pueblo, and Laguna Pueblo...
dancers wore elaborately painted and decorated masks as they ritually impersonated various ancestral spirits. Sculpture was not highly developed, but carved stone and wood fetishes were made for religious use. Superior weaving, embroidered decorations, and rich dyes characterized the textile arts. Both turquoise and shell jewelry were created, as were high-quality pottery and formalized pictorial arts.
NavajoThe Navajo or Diné of the Southwestern United States are the second largest Native American tribe of Northern America. In the 2000 U.S. census, 298,197 people claimed to be fully or partly of Navajo ancestry. The Navajo Nation constitutes an independent governmental body which manages the Navajo...
spirituality focused on the maintenance of a harmonious relationship with the spirit world, often achieved by ceremonial acts, usually incorporating
sandpaintingSandpainting is the art of pouring colored sands, powdered pigments from minerals or crystals, and pigments from other natural or synthetic sources onto a surface to make a painting. These are often ritual paintings for religious or healing ceremonies...
. The colors—made from sand, charcoal, cornmeal, and pollen—depicted specific spirits. These vivid, intricate, and colorful sand creations were erased at the end of the ceremony.
Agriculture
Native American agriculture started about 7,000 years ago in the area of present-day Illinois. The first crop the Native Americans grew was squash. This was the first of several crops the Native Americans learned to domesticate. Others included
cottonCotton is a soft, staple fiber that grows in a form known as a boll around the seeds of the cotton plant, a shrub native to tropical and subtropical regions around the world, including the Americas, India and Africa. The fiber most often is spun into yarn or thread and used to make a soft,...
,
sunflowerSunflowers are annual plants native to the Americas, that possess a large inflorescence .-Description :...
, pumpkins,
tobaccoTobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as an organic pesticide, and in the form of nicotine tartrate it is used in some medicines. In consumption it most commonly appears in the forms of smoking, chewing, snuffing, or...
, goosefoot, and sump weed.
Agriculture in the southwest started around 4,000 years ago when traders brought cultigens from Mexico. Due to the varying climate, some ingenuity was needed for agriculture to be successful. The climate in the southwest ranged from cool, moist mountains regions, to dry, sandy soil in the desert. Some innovations of the time included
irrigationIrrigation is an artificial application of water to the soil. It is usually used to assist in growing crops in dry areas and during periods of inadequate rainfall...
to bring water into the dry regions and the selection of seed based on the traits of the growing plants that bore them. In the southwest, they grew beans that were self-supported, much like the way they are grown today.
In the east, however, they were planted right by corn in order for the vines to be able to "climb" the cornstalks. The most important crop the Native Americans raised was
maizeMaize , is a herbaceous plant domesticated in Mesoamerica and subsequently spread throughout the American continents...
. It was first started in
MesoamericaMesoamerica or Meso-America is a region and culture area in the Americas, extending approximately from central Mexico to Honduras and Nicaragua, within which a number of pre-Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries...
and spread north. About 2,000 years ago it reached eastern America. This crop was important to the Native Americans because it was part of their everyday diet; it could be stored in underground pits during the winter, and no part of it was wasted. The husk was made into art crafts, and the cob was used as fuel for fires. By 800 A.D. the Native Americans had established three main crops — beans, squash, and corn — called the
three sistersThe Three Sisters are the three main agricultural crops of some Native American groups in North America: squash, maize, and climbing beans ....
.
The agriculture gender roles of the Native Americans varied from region to region. In the southwest area, men prepared the soil with
hoesA Hoe is an agricultural tool used to*agitate the surface of the soil around plants, to remove weeds*pile soil around the base of plants ;*create narrow furrows and shallow trenches for planting seeds and bulbs;...
. The women were in charge of planting, weeding, and harvesting the crops. In most other regions, the women were in charge of doing everything, including clearing the land. Clearing the land was an immense chore since the Native Americans rotated fields frequently. There is a tradition that
SquantoTisquantum was a Patuxet American Indian who assisted the Pilgrims after their first winter in the New World and was integral to their survival...
showed the Pilgrims in New England how to put fish in fields to act like a fertilizer, but the truth of this story is debated. Native Americans did plant beans next to corn; the beans would replace the
nitrogenNitrogen is a chemical element that has the symbol N and atomic number 7 and atomic mass 14.00674 u. Elemental nitrogen is a colorless, odorless, tasteless and mostly inert diatomic gas at standard conditions, constituting 78% by volume of Earth's atmosphere.Many industrially important...
which the corn took from the ground, as well as using corn stalks for support for climbing. Indians used controlled fires to burn weeds and clear fields; this would put nutrients back into the ground. If this did not work, they would simply abandon the field to let it be fallow, and find a new spot for cultivation.
Europeans in the eastern part of the continent observed that Natives cleared large areas for cropland. Their fields in New England sometimes covered hundreds of acres. Colonists in Virginia noted thousands of acres under cultivation by Native Americans.
Native Americans commonly used tools such as the
hoeA Hoe is an agricultural tool used to*agitate the surface of the soil around plants, to remove weeds*pile soil around the base of plants ;*create narrow furrows and shallow trenches for planting seeds and bulbs;...
,
maulA splitting maul is a heavy, long-handled hammer used for splitting a piece of wood along its grain. One side of it is like a sledgehammer and the other side is like an axe.- Wedged mauls :...
, and
dibberA dibber or dibble is a pointed wooden stick for making holes in the ground so that seeds, seedlings or small bulbs can be planted. Dibbers come in a variety of designs including the straight dibber, T-handled dibber, trowel dibber, and L-shaped dibber....
. The hoe was the main tool used to till the land and prepare it for planting; then it was used for weeding. The first versions were made out of wood and stone. When the settlers brought iron, Native Americans switched to iron hoes and hatchets. The dibber was a digging stick, used to plant the seed. Once the plants were harvested, women prepared the produce for eating. They used the maul to grind the corn into mash. It was cooked and eaten that way or baked as corn bread.
Religion
No particular religion or religious tradition is hegemonic among Native Americans in the United States. Most self-identifying and federally recognized Native Americans claim adherence to some form of Christianity, some of these being cultural and religious syntheses unique to the particular tribe such as the various forms of the
Native American ChurchNative American Church, a religious denomination which practices Peyotism or the Peyote religion, originated in the U.S. state of Oklahoma, and is the most widespread indigenous religion among Native Americans...
. Traditional Native American ceremonies are still practiced by many tribes and bands, and the older theological belief systems are still held by many of the "traditional" people. These
spiritualitiesSpirituality is relating to, consisting of, or having the nature of spirit; not tangible or material. Synonyms include immaterialism, dualism, incorporeality and eternity....
may accompany adherence to another faith, or can represent a person's primary religious identity. While much Native American spiritualism exists in a tribal-cultural continuum, and as such cannot be easily separated from tribal identity itself, certain other more clearly-defined movements have arisen among "traditional" Native American practitioners, these being identifiable as "religions" in the clinical sense. Traditional practices of some tribes include the use of sacred herbs such tobacco, sweetgrass or
sageLeucophyllum is a genus of evergreen shrubs in the figwort family, Scrophulariaceae, native to the southwestern United States and Mexico. The dozen-odd species are often called "sages", although they have no relationship to the genus Salvia....
. Many Plains tribes have sweatlodge ceremonies, though the specifics of the ceremony vary among tribes. Fasting, singing and prayer in the ancient languages of their people, and sometimes
drummingAmerican Indian music is the music that is used, created or performed by Native North Americans. In addition to the tribally specific music of those groups there now exist pan-tribal and intertribal genres as well as distinct Indian subgenres of popular music including: rock, blues, hip hop,...
are also common.
The Midewiwin Lodge is a traditional medicine society inspired by the oral traditions and prophesies of the
OjibwaThe Ojibwe or Chippewa is the largest group of Native Americans-First Nations north of Mexico, including Métis. They are the third-largest in the United States, surpassed only by Cherokee and Navajo. They're equally divided between the United States and Canada...
(Chippewa) and related tribes.
Another significant religious body among Native peoples is known as the
Native American ChurchNative American Church, a religious denomination which practices Peyotism or the Peyote religion, originated in the U.S. state of Oklahoma, and is the most widespread indigenous religion among Native Americans...
. It is a
syncretisticSyncretism is the attempt to reconcile disparate or contrary beliefs, often while melding practices of various schools of thought. This may involve attempts to merge and analogise several originally discrete traditions, especially in the theology and mythology of religion, and thus assert an...
church incorporating elements of Native spiritual practice from a number of different tribes as well as symbolic elements from
ChristianityChristianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented by the revelations in the New Testament....
. Its main rite is the
peyoteLophophora williamsii , better known by its common name Peyote, , is a small, spineless cactus. It is native to southwestern Texas and through central Mexico...
ceremony. Prior to 1890, traditional religious beliefs included
Wakan TankaIn the Sioux tradition , Wakan Tanka is the term for the "sacred" or the "divine". It is often translated as "The Great Spirit"...
. In the American Southwest, especially
New MexicoNew Mexico is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. Inhabited by Native American populations for many centuries, it has also been part of the Imperial Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain, part of Mexico, and a U.S. territory. Among U.S...
, a syncretism between the
CatholicismThe Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church. With more than a billion members, over half of all Christians and more than one-sixth of the world's population, the Catholic Church is a communion of the Western, or Latin Rite Church, and...
brought by Spanish missionaries and the native religion is common; the religious drums, chants, and dances of the
Pueblo peopleThe Pueblo people are a Native American people in the Southwestern United States. Their traditional economy is based on agriculture and trade. When first encountered by the Spanish in the 16th century, they were living in villages that the Spanish called pueblos, meaning "villages"...
are regularly part of
MassesThe Mass is the Eucharistic celebration in the Latin liturgical rites of the Catholic Church. The term is used also of similar celebrations in Old Catholic Churches, in the Anglo-Catholic tradition of Anglicanism, in many Lutheran Churches, and in a small amount of High Church Methodist parishes...
at
Santa FeSanta Fe is the capital of the state of New Mexico. It is the fourth-largest city in the state and is the seat of . Santa Fe had a population of 62,203 at the April 1, 2000 census; the estimate for July 1, 2006, is 72,056...
's Saint Francis Cathedral. Native American-Catholic syncretism is also found elsewhere in the United States. (e.g., the National
Kateri TekakwithaBlessed Kateri Tekakwitha or Blessed Catherine Tekakwitha , the daughter of a Mohawk warrior and a Catholic Algonquin woman, was born in the Mohawk fortress of Ossernenon near present-day Auriesville, New York. When she was four, smallpox swept through Ossernenon, and Tekakwitha was left with...
Shrine in
Fonda, New YorkFonda is a village in Montgomery County, New York, United States. The population was 810 at the 2000 census. Fonda is the county seat of Montgomery County...
and the
National Shrine of the North American MartyrsThe National Shrine of the North American Martyrs, also dedicated as the Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs, is a Roman Catholic shrine in Auriesville, New York dedicated to the Jesuit missionaries who were martyred at the Mohawk Indian village of Ossernenon between 1642 and 1646. St. Rene Goupil, a...
in
Auriesville, New YorkAuriesville is a hamlet in the northeastern part of the town of Glen in Montgomery County, New York, United States, along the south bank of the Mohawk River. It lies north of the New York City area and about forty miles west of Albany, the state capital...
).
Native Americans are the only known ethnic group in the United States requiring a federal permit to practice their
religionA religion is a system of human thought which usually includes a set of narratives, symbols, beliefs and practices that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to a higher power, deity or deities, or ultimate truth...
. The
eagle feather lawThe eagle feather law provides many exceptions to federal wildlife laws regarding eagles and other migratory birds to enable Native Americans to continue their traditional practices....
(Title 50 Part 22 of the Code of Federal Regulations) stipulates that only individuals of certifiable Native American ancestry enrolled in a federally recognized tribe are legally authorized to obtain
eagleEagles are large birds of prey which are members of the bird family Accipitridae, and belong to several genera which are not necessarily closely related to each other. Most of the more than 60 species occur in Eurasia and Africa...
feathers for religious or spiritual use. Native Americans and non-Native Americans frequently contest the value and validity of the eagle feather law, charging that the law is laden with discriminatory racial preferences and infringes on tribal sovereignty. The law does not allow Native Americans to give
eagleEagles are large birds of prey which are members of the bird family Accipitridae, and belong to several genera which are not necessarily closely related to each other. Most of the more than 60 species occur in Eurasia and Africa...
feathers to non-Native Americans.
Gender roles
Most Native American tribes had traditional gender roles. In some tribes, such as the
IroquoisThe Iroquois , also known as the Haudenosaunee or the "People of the Longhouse", are an indigenous people of North America. In the 16th century or earlier, the Iroquois came together in an association known as the Iroquois League, or the "League of Peace and Power"...
nation, social and clan relationships were
matrilinealMatrilineality is a system in which lineage is traced through the mother and maternal ancestors. In this article matrilineality also is a societal system in which one belongs to one's matriline or mother's lineage, which can involve the matrilineal inheritance of property and/or titles.A...
and/or
matriarchalMatriarchy refers to a gynecocentric form of society, in which the leading role is taken by the women and especially by the mothers of a community....
, although several different systems were in use. One example is the Cherokee custom of wives owning the family property. Men hunted, traded and made war, while women gathered plants, cared for the young and the elderly, fashioned clothing and instruments and cured meat. The cradleboard was used by mothers to carry their baby while working or traveling. However, in some (but not all) tribes a kind of
transgenderTransgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to diverge from the normative gender roles....
was permitted; see
Two-SpiritTwo-Spirit people, or berdache was a term created in 1990 in anthropological literature, to describe Native Americans who fulfill one of many mixed gender roles found traditionally among many Native Americans and Canadian First Nations indigenous groups...
.
At least several dozen tribes allowed
polygynyPolygyny is a form of marriage in which a man has two or more wives at the same time." It is distinguished from a relationship where a man who has a sexual partner outside marriage, such as a concubine, casual sexual partner, paramour, or other culturally recognized secondary partner...
to sisters, with procedural and economic limits.
Apart from making home, women had many tasks that were essential for the survival of the tribes. They made weapons and tools, took care of the roofs of their homes and often helped their men hunt
bisonThe American Bison is a North American species of bison, also commonly known as the American Buffalo. "Buffalo" is somewhat of a misnomer for this animal, as it is only distantly related to either of the two "true buffaloes", the Asian Buffalo and the African Buffalo...
.
In some of the Plains Indian tribes there reportedly were medicine women who gathered herbs and cured the ill.
In some of these tribes such as the
SiouxSioux are a Native American and First Nations people. The term can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or any of the nation's many dialects...
girls were also encouraged to learn to ride, hunt and fight. Though fighting was mostly left to the boys and men, there had been cases of women fighting alongside them, especially when the existence of the tribe was threatened.
Sports
Native American leisure time led to competitive individual and team sports. Early accounts include team games played between tribes with hundreds of players on the field at once..
Jim ThorpeJacobus Franciscus "Jim" Thorpe * Gerasimo and Whiteley. pg. 28
* , americaslibrary.gov, accessed April 23, 2007. was an American athlete...
,
Notah Begay IIINotah Ryan Begay III is an American professional golfer. He is the only full-blooded American Indian professional tour golfer in the history of the game.-Amateur career:...
,
Jacoby EllsburyJacoby McCabe Ellsbury is a Major League Baseball outfielder for the Boston Red Sox. Ellsbury was first drafted, though did not sign, by the Tampa Bay Rays in the 23rd round of the 2002 MLB Draft; he was then drafted by Boston in 2005, 23rd overall, in the draft, after three years at Oregon State...
, and
Billy MillsWilliam Mervin Mills or "Billy" Mills is the second Native American ever to win an Olympic gold medal. He accomplished this feat in the 10,000 meter run at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics making him the only American ever to win the Olympic gold in this event.A former United States Marine, Billy Mills is...
are well known professional athletes.
Team based
Native American ball sports, sometimes referred to as
lacrosseLacrosse is a team sport of Native American origin that is played using a small solid rubber ball and a long-handled racquet called a crosse or lacrosse stick. The head of the lacrosse stick is strung with loose netting that is designed to hold the lacrosse ball...
, stickball, or baggataway, was often used to settle disputes rather than going to war which was a civil way to settle potential conflict. The
ChoctawThe Choctaw are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States . They are of the Muskogean linguistic group...
called it ISITOBOLI ("Little Brother of War"); the
Onondaga- Native American/First Nations :* Onondaga , a Native American/First Nations people and one of the five founding nations of the Iroquois Confederacy* Onondaga language- Geology :...
name was DEHUNTSHIGWA'ES ("men hit a rounded object"). There are three basic versions classifed as Great Lakes, Iroquoian, and Southern. The game is played with one or two rackets/sticks and one ball. The object of the game is to land the ball on the opposing team's goal (either a single post or net) to score and prevent the opposing team from scoring on your goal. The game involves as few as twenty or as many as 300 players with no height or weight restrictions and no protective gear. The goals could be from a few hundred feet apart to a few miles; in Lacrosse the field is 110 yards. A Jesuit priest referenced stickball in 1729, and George Catlin painted the subject.
Individual based
Chunke was a game that consisted of a stone shaped disk that was about 1–2 inches in length. The disk was thrown down a corridor so that it could roll past the players at great speed. The disk would roll down the corridor, and players would throw wooden shafts at the moving disk. The object of the game was to strike the disk or prevent your opponents from hitting it.
U.S. Olympics
Jim ThorpeJacobus Franciscus "Jim" Thorpe * Gerasimo and Whiteley. pg. 28
* , americaslibrary.gov, accessed April 23, 2007. was an American athlete...
, a Sauk and Fox Native American, was an all-round athlete playing football and baseball in the early 20th century. Future President Dwight Eisenhower injured his knee while trying to tackle the young Thorpe. In a 1961 speech, Eisenhower recalled Thorpe: "Here and there, there are some people who are supremely endowed. My memory goes back to Jim Thorpe. He never practiced in his life, and he could do anything better than any other football player I ever saw."
In the 1912 Olympics, Thorpe could run the 100-yard dash in 10 seconds flat, the 220 in 21.8 seconds, the 440 in 51.8 seconds, the 880 in 1:57, the mile in 4:35, the 120-yard high hurdles in 15 seconds, and the 220-yard low hurdles in 24 seconds. He could long jump 23 ft 6 in and high-jump 6 ft 5 in. He could
pole vaultPole vaulting is an athletic field event in which a person uses a long, flexible pole as an aid to leap over a bar. Pole jumping competitions were known to the ancient Greeks, as well as the Cretans and Celts...
11 feet,
put the shotThe shot put is an athletics event involving "putting" a heavy metal ball as far as possible...
47 ft 9 in,
throw the javelinThe javelin throw is a track and field athletics throwing event where the object to be thrown is the javelin, a spear approximately 2.5 meters in length. Javelin is an event of both the men's decathlon and the women's heptathlon.- Rules and Competitions :...
163 feet, and throw the
discusThe discus throw is an event in track and field competition, in which an athlete throws a heavy disc — called a discus — in an attempt to mark a farther distance than his or her competitors. It is an ancient sport, as evidenced by the 5th century BC Myron statue, Discobolus...
136 feet. Thorpe entered the U.S. Olympic trials for both the pentathlon and the decathlon.
Billy MillsWilliam Mervin Mills or "Billy" Mills is the second Native American ever to win an Olympic gold medal. He accomplished this feat in the 10,000 meter run at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics making him the only American ever to win the Olympic gold in this event.A former United States Marine, Billy Mills is...
, a Lakota and USMC officer, won the Gold medal in the 10,000 meter run at the
1964 Tokyo OlympicsThe 1964 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XVIII Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event held in Tokyo, Japan in 1964. Tokyo had been awarded with the organisation of the 1940 Summer Olympics, but this honor was subsequently passed to Helsinki because of Japan's...
. He was the only American ever to win the Olympic gold in this event. An unknown prior to the Olympics, he had finished second in the U.S. Olympic trials.
Music and art
Traditional
Native American musicAmerican Indian music is the music that is used, created or performed by Native North Americans. In addition to the tribally specific music of those groups there now exist pan-tribal and intertribal genres as well as distinct Indian subgenres of popular music including: rock, blues, hip hop,...
is almost entirely
monophonicTexture is one of the basic elements of music. People use texture to describe the number of rhythms played at a specific time. In music, texture also means the overall quality of sound of a piece, most often indicated by the number of voices in the music and by the relationship between these voices...
, but there are notable exceptions. Native American music often includes
drumThe drum is a member of the percussion group of music instruments, technically classified as a membranophone.. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a shell and struck, either directly with parts of a player's body, or with some sort of...
ming and/or the playing of rattles or other percussion instruments but little other instrumentation.
FlutesThe Native American flute has achieved some measure of fame for its distinctive sound, used in a variety of New Age and world music recordings. The instrument was originally very personal; its music was played without accompaniment in courtship, healing, meditation, and spiritual rituals...
and whistles made of wood, cane, or bone are also played, generally by individuals, but in former times also by large ensembles (as noted by Spanish
conquistadorConquistador is the term widely used to refer to the Spanish soldiers, explorers, and adventurers who brought much of the Americas under the control of Spain in the 15th through the 17th centuries following Europe's discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus in 1492...
de SotoHernando de Soto was a Spanish explorer and conquistador who, while leading the first European expedition deep into the territory of the modern-day United States, was the first European to discover the Mississippi River....
). The tuning of these flutes is not precise and depends on the length of the wood used and the hand span of the intended player, but the finger holes are most often around a whole step apart and, at least in Northern California, a flute was not used if it turned out to have an interval close to a half step.
Performers with Native American parentage have occasionally appeared in American popular music, such as
Robbie RobertsonRobbie Robertson is a Canadian singer-songwriter, and guitarist. He is best known for his membership in The Band. He was ranked 78th in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. The Band has been inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Canadian Music...
(The Band),
Rita CoolidgeRita Coolidge is a mulitiple Grammy Award winning American vocalist. During the '70s and '80s, she charted hits on Billboard's Pop, Country, Adult Contemporary and Jazz charts. She is of Scottish and Cherokee Native American ancestry.-Personal life:She graduated from Andrew Jackson Senior High in...
,
Wayne NewtonCarson Wayne Newton , better known as Wayne Newton, is an American singer and entertainer based in Las Vegas, Nevada. He performed over 30,000 solo shows in Las Vegas over a period of over 40 years, earning him the nickname Mr. Las Vegas...
,
Gene ClarkGene Clark, born Harold Eugene Clark was an American singer-songwriter, and one of the founding members of the folk-rock group The Byrds....
,
Buffy Sainte-MarieBuffy Sainte-Marie, OC is an Academy Award-winning Canadian First Nations musician, composer, visual artist, pacifist, educator and social activist.-Personal life:...
,
BlackfootBlackfoot is a Southern rock band from Jacksonville, Florida formed in 1970. Though they are a Southern rock band, at their peak, they were more popular as a hard rock band....
,
Tori AmosTori Amos is a pianist and singer-songwriter of American citizenship. She was at the forefront of a number of female singer-songwriters in the early 1990s and was noteworthy early in her career as one of the few alternative rock performers to use a piano as her primary instrument...
,
RedboneRedbone is a Native American rock group that was most active in the 1970s. They reached the Top 5 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1974 with the song, "Come and Get Your Love".-Career:...
, and
CocoRosieCocoRosie is a duo based in France and formed by sisters Bianca Leilani "Coco" and Sierra Rose "Rosie" Casady in 2003.Sierra mainly plays the guitar, piano and harp, and contributes vocals. Bianca sings and manipulates various children's toys/electronic & percussion instruments as well as other...
. Some, such as
John TrudellJohn Trudell is an American author, poet, musician, and former political activist.- Personal background :Trudell was born in Omaha, Nebraska. Son of a Santee Sioux father and a Mexican mother, he grew up around the Santee Sioux Reservation...
, have used music to comment on life in Native America, and others, such as
R. Carlos NakaiR. Carlos Nakai is a Native American flautist of Navajo/Ute heritage.-Biography:Born Ray Carlos Nakai, in Flagstaff, Arizona, he released his first album, Changes, in 1983...
integrate traditional sounds with modern sounds in instrumental recordings. A variety of small and medium-sized recording companies offer an abundance of recent music by Native American performers young and old, ranging from pow-wow drum music to hard-driving rock-and-roll and rap.
The most widely practiced public musical form among Native Americans in the United States is that of the pow-wow. At
pow-wowA pow-wow is a gathering of North America's Native people. The word derives from the Narragansett word powwaw, meaning "spiritual leader"....
s, such as the annual
Gathering of NationsThe Gathering of Nations is one of the largest Pow-wows in the United States. It is held annually in April 23rd-25th, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Over 500 tribes from around the United States and Canada travel to Albuquerque to participate. There are 32 Dance categories, and different age group...
in
AlbuquerqueAlbuquerque is the largest city in the state of New Mexico, United States. It is the county seat of Bernalillo County and is situated in the central part of the state, straddling the Rio Grande. The city population was 521,999 as of July 1, 2008, according to U.S. census estimates, and ranks as...
,
New MexicoNew Mexico is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. Inhabited by Native American populations for many centuries, it has also been part of the Imperial Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain, part of Mexico, and a U.S. territory. Among U.S...
, members of drum groups sit in a circle around a large drum. Drum groups play in unison while they sing in a native language and dancers in colorful regalia dance clockwise around the drum groups in the center. Familiar pow-wow songs include honor songs, intertribal songs, crow-hops, sneak-up songs, grass-dances, two-steps, welcome songs, going-home songs, and war songs. Most indigenous communities in the United States also maintain traditional songs and ceremonies, some of which are shared and practiced exclusively within the community.
Native American art comprises a major category in the world art collection. Native American contributions include
potteryPottery is the ceramic ware made by potters. Major types of pottery include earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain. The places where such wares are made are called potteries. Pottery is one of the oldest human technologies and art-forms, and remains a major industry today...
(
Native American potteryPrior to the coming of Europeans, the people of both the North and South American continents had a wide variety of pottery traditions. However, there is no evidence that a Native American potter ever invented the pottery wheel. Because of this, all known Pre-Columbian American pottery was made...
),
paintingPainting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . In art, the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, clay or concrete...
s,
jewelleryJewellery or jewelry is an item of personal adornment, such as a necklace, ring, brooch or bracelet, that is worn by a person. It may be made from gemstones or precious metals, but may be from any other material, and may be appreciated because of geometric or other patterns, or meaningful symbols...
,
weavingWeaving is the textile art in which two distinct sets of yarns or threads, called the warp and the filling or weft , are interlaced with each other to form a fabric or cloth...
s,
sculptureSculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard and/or plastic material, sound, and/or text and or light, commonly stone , metal, glass, or wood. Some sculptures are created directly by finding or carving; others are assembled, built together and fired, welded, molded,...
s, basketry, and
carvingsWood carving is a form of working wood by means of a cutting tool held in the hand , resulting in a wooden figure or figurine or in the sculptural ornamentation of a wooden object...
.
Franklin GrittsFranklin Gritts, also known as Oau Nah Jusah, or They Have Returned, was a Cherokee artist best known for his contributions to the "Golden Era" of Native American art, both as a teacher and an artist....
, was a Cherokee artist, who taught students from many tribes at Haskell Institute (now
Haskell Indian Nations UniversityHaskell Indian Nations University is a four-year degree-granting university in Lawrence, Kansas, which offers post-high school education to members of federally recognized Native American tribes in the United States. Students are required to pay semester fees similar to many other colleges in the...
) in the 1940s, the
Golden Age of Native American painters.
The integrity of certain Native American artworks is now protected by an act of Congress that prohibits representation of art as Native American when it is not the product of an enrolled Native American artist.
Economy
The
InuitInuit is a general term for a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic regions of Canada, Greenland, and Alaska...
, or
EskimoEskimos or Esquimaux are indigenous peoples who have traditionally inhabited the circumpolar region from eastern Siberia , across Alaska and Canada, and all of Greenland....
, prepared and buried large amounts of dried meat and fish.
Pacific NorthwestThe Pacific Northwest is a region in the northwest of North America, bound by the Pacific Ocean to the west. There are several partially overlapping definitions of the region, but they generally include the Canadian province of British Columbia and the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon, and...
tribes crafted seafaring dugouts 40–50 feet long for fishing. Farmers in the Eastern Woodlands tended fields of maize with hoes and digging sticks, while their neighbors in the Southeast grew tobacco as well as food crops. On the Plains, some tribes engaged in agriculture but also planned buffalo hunts in which herds were driven over bluffs. Dwellers of the Southwest deserts hunted small animals and gathered acorns to grind into flour with which they baked wafer-thin bread on top of heated stones. Some groups on the region's mesas developed irrigation techniques, and filled storehouses with grain as protection against the area's frequent droughts.
In the early years, as these native peoples encountered European explorers and settlers and engaged in trade, they exchanged food, crafts, and furs for blankets, iron and steel implements, horses, trinkets, firearms, and alcoholic beverages.
Barriers to economic development
Today, other than tribes successfully running casinos, many tribes struggle. There are an estimated 2.1 million Native Americans, and they are the most impoverished of all ethnic groups. According to the
2000 CensusA census of the general population was conducted in several countries in the year 2000. The 2000 Census may refer to:In the United States:* 2000 United States Census, the 22nd decennial federal censusIn Costa Rica:...
, an estimated 400,000 Native Americans reside on reservation land. While some tribes have had success with gaming, only 40% of the 562 federally recognized tribes operate
casinosCasinos can refer to:*the plural of Casino*Casinos, Valencia, a municipality in Spain...
. According to a 2007 survey by the U.S. Small Business Administration, only 1 percent of Native Americans own and operate a business. Native Americans rank at the bottom of nearly every social statistic: highest teen suicide rate of all minorities at 18.5 per 100,000, highest rate of teen pregnancy, highest high school drop out rate at 54%, lowest
per capita incomePer capita income means how much each individual receives, in monetary terms, of the yearly income generated in the country. This is what each citizen is to receive if the yearly national income is divided equally among everyone. Per capita income is usually reported in units of currency per year...
, and
unemploymentUnemployment occurs when a person is available to work and seeking work but currently without work. The prevalence of unemployment is usually measured using the unemployment rate, which is defined as the percentage of those in the labor force who are unemployed...
rates between 50% to 90%.
The barriers to
economic developmentEconomic development is the increase in the standard of living of a nation's population associated with sustained growth from a simple, low-income economy to a modern, high-income economy...
on Indian reservations often cited by others and two experts Joseph Kalt and Stephen Cornell of the
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic DevelopmentThe Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development was founded in 1987 at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. It administers tribal awards programs as well as providing support for students and conducting research.-External links:* * *...
at
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and currently comprises ten separate academic units...
, in their classic report:
What Can Tribes Do? Strategies and Institutions in American Indian Economic Development, are as follows (incomplete list, see full Kalt & Cornell report):
- Lack of access to capital.
- Lack of human capital (education, skills, technical expertise) and the means to develop it.
- Reservations lack effective planning.
- Reservations are poor in natural resources.
- Reservations have natural resources, but lack sufficient control over them.
- Reservations are disadvantaged by their distance from markets and the high costs of transportation.
- Tribes cannot persuade investors to locate on reservations because of intense competition from non-Indian communities.
- The Bureau of Indian Affairs is inept, corrupt, and/or uninterested in reservation development.
- Tribal politicians and bureaucrats are inept or corrupt.
- On-reservation factionalism destroys stability in tribal decisions.
- The instability of tribal government keeps outsiders from investing.
- Entrepreneurial skills and experience are scarce.
- Tribal cultures get in the way.
One of the major barriers for overcoming the economic strife is the lack of entrepreneurial knowledge and experience across Indian reservations. “A general lack of education and experience about business is a significant challenge to prospective entrepreneurs,” also says another report on Native American
entrepreneurshipEntrepreneurship is the act of being an entrepreneur which is a French word meaning one who undertakes an endeavor. Entrepreneurs assemble resources including innovations, finance and business acumen in an effort to transform innovations into economic goods. This may result in new organizations...
by the Northwest Area Foundation in 2004. “Native American communities that lack entrepreneurial traditions and recent experiences typically do not provide the support that entrepreneurs need to thrive. Consequently, experiential entrepreneurship education needs to be embedded into school curricula and after-school and other community activities. This would allow students to learn the essential elements of entrepreneurship from a young age and encourage them to apply these elements throughout life.”. One publication devoted to addressing these issues is
Rez BizRez Biz is the title of an American monthly magazine initially distributed in Arizona and New Mexico. The magazine is targeted to Native Americans who are interested in running their own businesses and seeking success stories. Its goal is to improve the economic living conditions of Native Americans...
magazine.
Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans
Interracial relations between Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans is a complex issue that has been mostly neglected with "few in-depth studies on interracial relationships". Europeans relational impact was wide spread and marriages was immediate. One of the first documented cases was recorded in Post-Columbian Mexico where a Spanish man (
Hernán CortésHernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro, 1st Marqués del Valle de Oaxaca was a Spanish conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec empire and brought large portions of mainland Mexico under the King of Castile, in the early 16th century...
) and a Native American woman (Rebecca/Malinal/Malinche) birthed the first multi-racial Native American.
Native American and African relations
Although not as significant as contact with Europeans, Africans had some interaction with Native Americans. The earliest record of African and Native American contact occurred in April 1502, when the first Africans were brought to Hispanola to serve as slaves.
Often Native Americans resented the presence of African Americans. In one description the "Catawaba tribe in 1752 showed great anger and bitter resentment when an African American came among them as a trader." The Cherokee had the strongest color prejudice of all Native Americans to gain favor with Europeans. The hostility has been attributed to European fears of a unified revolt of Native Americans and African Americans: "Whites sought to convince Native Americans that African Americans worked against their best interests." In 1751, South Carolina law stated:
"The carrying of Africans among the Native Americans has all along been thought detrimental, as an intimacy ought to be avoided."
Europeans considered both races inferior and made efforts to make both Native Americans and Africans enemies. Native Americans were rewarded if they returned escaped slaves, and African Americans were rewarded for fighting in "Indian Wars".
"Native Americans, during the transitional period of Africans becoming the primary race enslaved, were enslaved at the same time and shared a common experience of enslavement. They worked together, lived together in communal quarters, produced collective recipes for food, shared herbal remedies, myths and legends, and in the end they intermarried." Because of this many tribes encouraged marriage between the two groups, to create stronger, healthier children from the unions. In the eighteenth century, many Native American women did marry freed or
runawayRunaway Slave is the debut album from Hip Hop duo Showbiz and A.G., members of legendary New York crew D.I.T.C..-Album information:The effort was a highly praised underground release, but didn't sell strong numbers...
African men due to a large decrease in the population of men in Native American villages. In addition, records also show that many Native American women actually bought African men, but unknown to European sellers the women freed and married the men into their tribe. It was also beneficial for African men to marry or have children by a Native American woman because children born to a mother who was not a slave were free. European colonists often requested the return of any runaway slaves in treaties. In 1726, the British Governor of New York exacted a promise from the Iroquois to return all runaway slaves who had joined up with them. In the mid 1760s, Huron and Delaware Native Americans were also requested to return runaway slaves however no record of slaves being returned occurred. Ads were used to request the return of slaves.
Slave ownership was prevalent among a few Native American tribes, especially in the southeast where the
CherokeeThe Cherokee are a Native American people from the Southeastern United States...
,
ChoctawThe Choctaw are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States . They are of the Muskogean linguistic group...
, and
CreekCreek may refer to:*Creek, a small stream* Creek , an inlet of the sea, narrower than a cove * Creek, a narrow channel/small stream between islands in the Florida Keys*Creek people, a native American people...
lived. Though less than 3% of Native Americans owned slaves, bondage practices created destructive divisions among Native Americans. Among the Cherokee, records show that slave holders in the tribe were largely the children of European men that had showed their children the economics of slavery. As European expansion increased more African and Native American marriages became more prominent.
A few historians suggest that most African Americans have Native American heritage Based on the work of geneticists, a PBS series on African Americans explained that while most African Americans are racially mixed, it is relatively rare that they have Native American ancestry. According to the PBS series, the most common "non-black" mix is English and Scots-Irish. However, the Y-chromosome and mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA) testing processes for direct-line male and female ancestors can fail to pick up the heritage of many ancestors. (Some critics thought the PBS series did not sufficiently explain the limitations of DNA testing for assessment of heritage.) Another study suggests that relatively few Native Americans have African-American heritage. A study reported in
The American Journal of Human Genetics stated, "We analyzed the European genetic contribution to 10 populations of African descent in the United States (Maywood, Illinois; Detroit; New York; Philadelphia; Pittsburgh; Baltimore; Charleston, South Carolina; New Orleans; and Houston) ... mtDNA haplogroups analysis shows no evidence of a significant maternal Amerindian contribution to any of the 10 populations."
Researchers caution that genetic ancestry DNA testing has limitations and should not be depended on by individuals to answer all their questions about heritage. Testing cannot distinguish among separate Native American tribes. Nor can it be used alone to assert membership in a tribe.
Native Americans and assimilation acceptance with Europeans
European impact was immediate, widespread, and profound—more than any other race that had contact with Native Americans during the early years of colonization and nationhood. Europeans living among Native Americans were often called "white indians". They "lived in native communities for years, learned native languages fluently, attended native councils, and often fought alongside their native companions."
The early male settlers also often married Native American women. Early contact was often charged with tension and emotion, but also had moments of friendship, cooperation, and intimacy. Marriages took place in both English and French colonies between European men and Native women. On April 5, 1614,
PocahontasPocahontas was a Virginia Indian woman notable for having assisted colonial settlers at Jamestown in present-day Virginia. She was converted to Christianity and married the English settler John Rolfe. After they traveled to London, she became famous in the last year of her life...
married Englishman
John RolfeJohn Rolfe was one of the early English settlers of North America. He is credited with the first successful cultivation of tobacco as an export crop in the Colony of Virginia and is known as the husband of Pocahontas, daughter of the chief of the Powhatan Confederacy.No one knows what John Rolfe...
, and they had a child called
Thomas RolfeThomas Rolfe was the only child of Pocahontas by her English husband John Rolfe.Rolfe was born at Smith's Plantation in Jamestown, Virginia. After growing up in England, on 13 September 1632 he married Elizabeth Washington, at St James's church, Clerkenwell, London, and their daughter Anne was...
.
Intimate relations among Native American and Europeans were widespread, beginning with the French and Spanish explorers and trappers. For instance, in the early 19th century, the Native American woman
SacagaweaSacagawea was a Shoshone woman who accompanied the Lewis and Clark Expedition, led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, in their exploration of the Western United States...
, who would help translate for the
Lewis and Clark ExpeditionThe Lewis and Clark Expedition was the first overland expedition undertaken by the United States to the Pacific coast and back. The expedition team was headed by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and assisted by Sacajawea and Toussaint Charbonneau. The expedition's goal was to gain an accurate...
, was married to French trapper
Toussaint CharbonneauToussaint Charbonneau was a French-Canadian explorer and trader, and a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. He is also known as the husband of Sacagawea.- Early years :...
. They had a son named
Jean Baptiste CharbonneauJean Baptiste Charbonneau traveled across North America as an infant with his mother Sacagawea as part of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which journeyed from North Dakota to Oregon and back again during 1805 and 1806. He was the son of Sacagawea and her French Canadian husband, trapper and...
. This was the most typical pattern among the traders and trappers.
Many settlers feared Native Americans because they were different. Their ways seemed savage to whites, and they were suspicious of a culture they did not understand.
A Native American author Andrew J. Blackbird in 1897, found that white settlers introduced some immoralities into Native American tribes.
He wrote in his book, History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan,
"The Ottawas and Chippewas were quite virtuous in their primitive state, as there were no illegitimate children reported in our old traditions. But very lately this evil came to exist among the Ottawas-so lately that the second case among the Ottawas of Arbor Croche is yet living in 1897. And from that time this evil came to be quite frequent, for immorality has been introduced among these people by evil white persons who bring their vices into the tribes."
The U. S. government had two purposes in mind when making land agreements with Native Americans. First, they wanted to open it up more land for white settlement. Second, they wanted to ease tensions between whites and Native Americans by forcing Natives to use the land like whites did. The government had a variety of strategies to accomplish these aims; many treaties required Native Americans to become farmers in order to keep their land. Government officials often did not translate the documents Native Americans were forced to sign, and native chiefs often had little or no idea what they were signing.
For a Native American man to marry a white woman he had to get consent of the parents as long as "he can prove to support her as a white woman in a good home". In the early 1800s, Shawnee Native American Tecumseh and blonde hair & blued eyed Rebbecca Galloway had a inter-racial affair. In the late 19th century, three European-American middle-class female staff married Native American men met during the years when Hampton Institute ran its Indian program.
Charles EastmanCharles Alexander Eastman February 19 1858 - January 8 1939, Native American author, physician, and reformer. He was of Santee Sioux and Anglo-American ancestry. Active in politics and issues on American Indian rights, he also helped found the Boy Scouts of America.- Early life :He was named...
married his European-American wife
Elaine GoodaleElaine Goodale Eastman and Dora Read Goodale were American poets and sisters.They were born in Mount Washington, Massachusetts and grew up on their father's farm. They showed remarkable poetic precocity. Poems of Elaine appeared as early as her eighth year, in Sky Farm Life, a monthly conducted...
whom he had met in Dakota Territory when Goodale was social worker and the superintendent of Indian education for the reservations. They had six children together.
Blood Quantum
Intertribal mixing was common among Native American tribes, so individuals could be said to be descended from more than one tribe. Bands or entire tribes occasionally split or merged to form more viable groups in reaction to the pressures of climate, disease and warfare. A number of tribes traditionally adopted captives into their group to replace members who had been captured or killed in battle. These captives came from rival tribes and later from European settlers. Some tribes also sheltered or adopted white traders and runaway slaves and Native American-owned slaves. Tribes with long trading histories with Europeans show a higher rate of European admixture, reflecting years of intermarriage between European men and Native American women. A number of paths to genetic diversity among Native Americans thus existed.
While in recent years some commentators have suggested high rates of admixture between Native Americans and African Americans, genetic genealogists have found lesser frequency. Literary critic and author Henry Louis Gates, Jr. cites experts who argue that only 5 percent of African Americans have at least 12.5 percent Native American ancestry (equivalent to one great-grandparent). Of course this means that a greater percentage could have a very small percentage of ancestry, but it also suggests that past estimates of admixture may have been too high. As some
genetic testsA genealogical DNA test examines the nucleotides at specific locations on a person's DNA for genetic genealogy purposes. The test results are not meant to have any informative medical value and do not determine specific genetic diseases or disorders ; they are intended only to give genealogical...
assess only direct male or female ancestors, individuals may not discover Native American ancestry from other ancestors. Among an individual's 64 4xgreat-grandparents, direct testing yields DNA evidence of only two.
In addition to limitations if only direct male and female lines are tested, DNA testing cannot be used for determining tribal membership because it can not distinguish among Native American groups. Native American identity has historically been based on culture, not just biology. The Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism (IPCB) notes that:
"Native American markers" are not found solely among Native Americans. While they occur more frequently among Native Americans they are also found in people in other parts of the world.
Geneticists also state:
not all Native Americans have been tested especially with the large number of deaths due to disease such as small pox, it is unlikely that Native Americans only have the genetic markers they have identified, even when their maternal or paternal bloodline does not include a non-Native American.
To receive tribal services, a Native American must belong to and be certified by a recognized tribal organization. Each tribal government makes its own rules for citizens or tribal members. The federal government has standards related to services available to certified Native Americans. For instance, Federal scholarships for Native Americans require the student to be enrolled in a federally recognized tribe and have at least one-quarter Native American descent (equivalent to one grandparent), attested by a
Certificate of Degree of Indian BloodA Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood or Certificate of Degree of Alaska Native Blood is an official U.S. document that certifies an individual possesses a specific degree of Native American blood of a federally recognized Indian tribe, band, nation, pueblo, village, or community...
card. Among tribes, qualification may be based upon a required percentage of Native American "blood", or the "blood quantum" of an individual seeking recognition.
To attain certainty, some tribes have begun requiring
genealogical DNA testA genealogical DNA test examines the nucleotides at specific locations on a person's DNA for genetic genealogy purposes. The test results are not meant to have any informative medical value and do not determine specific genetic diseases or disorders ; they are intended only to give genealogical...
ing, but this is usually related to proving parentage or direct descent from a certified member. Requirements for tribal membership vary widely by tribe. The Cherokee require documented genealogical descent from a Native American listed on the early 20th century
Dawes RollsThe Dawes Rolls were created by the Dawes Commission. The Commission, authorized by United States Congress in 1893, was required to negotiate with the Five Civilized Tribes to convince them to agree to an allotment plan and dissolution of the reservation system...
. Tribal rules regarding recognition of members who have heritage from multiple tribes are equally diverse and complex.
Tribal membership conflicts have led to a number of activist groups, legal disputes and court cases. One example are the Cherokee freedmen, descendants of enslaved African Americans once held by the Cherokees, who were granted citizenship in the Cherokee nation as freedmen after the Civil War, by federal treaty. The Cherokee nation has recently excluded them from the roles unless individuals can prove descent from a Cherokee Indian (not just freedman) on the Dawes Rolls.
In the 20th century, an increasing number of Caucasian-Americans have seemed more interested in claiming descent from Native Americans. Many people have claimed descent from the Cherokee.
Notable Native Americans of the United States
Population
In 2006, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that about 1.0 percent of the U.S. population was of
American IndianThe indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Americas, their descendants, and many ethnic groups who identify with those peoples...
or Alaska Native descent. This population is unevenly distributed across the country. Below, all 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, are listed by the proportion of residents citing
American IndianThe indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Americas, their descendants, and many ethnic groups who identify with those peoples...
or Alaska Native ancestry, based on 2006 estimates:
In 2006, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that about less than 1.0 percent of the U.S. population was of
Native HawaiianNative Hawaiians refers to the indigenous Polynesian people of the Hawaiian Islands or their descendants...
or
Pacific IslanderPacific Islander Americans, also known as Oceanian Americans, are residents of the United States with original ancestry from Oceania. They represent the smallest racial group counted in the United States census of 2000. They numbered 874,000 people or 0.3 percent of the United States population...
descent. This population is unevenly distributed across 26 states. Below, are the 26 states that had at least 0.1%. They are listed by the proportion of residents citing
Native HawaiianNative Hawaiians refers to the indigenous Polynesian people of the Hawaiian Islands or their descendants...
or
Pacific IslanderPacific Islander Americans, also known as Oceanian Americans, are residents of the United States with original ancestry from Oceania. They represent the smallest racial group counted in the United States census of 2000. They numbered 874,000 people or 0.3 percent of the United States population...
ancestry, based on 2006 estimates:
External links
- Precolumbian Native American History, Art & Culture @ LostWorlds.org
- The Story of the Pequot War documentary on the Pequot War
The Pequot War was an armed conflict in 1634-1638 between an alliance of Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colonies, with Native American allies , against the Pequot tribe...
- American Indian History and Related Issues
- American Indians of the Pacific Northwest at the University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections
- Edward Curtis: Selling the North American Indian Representing the Native American at the dawn of the 20th century from American Studies at the University of Virginia
- Bonneville Collection of 19th century photographs of Native Americans at University of South Carolina Library's Digital Collections Page
- Houghton Mifflin Encyclopedia of North American Indians
- Indian Days of the Long Ago By Thomas L. M’Kenney and James Hall. Publisher: Philadelphia: E.C. Biddle, etc., 1836–44. (searchable facsimile at the University of Georgia Libraries; DjVu
DjVu is a computer file format designed primarily to store scanned documents, especially those containing a combination of text, line drawings, and photographs. It uses technologies such as image layer separation of text and background/images, progressive loading, arithmetic coding, and lossy...
& layered PDF)
- McKenney and Hall Tribes of North America
- Ndakinna Cultural Center Native American Museum & Cultural Center in Vermont
- Trail of Tears - The Dream We Dreamed
- Native American Treaties and Information from UCB Libraries GovPubs
- Native American History from the Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress and is the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and holds the largest number of books. The head...
American MemoryAmerican Memory is an Internet-based archive for public domain image resources, as well as audio, video, and archived Web content. It is published by the Library of Congress. The archive came into existence on October 13, 1994 after $13,000,000 was raised in donations.-National collaborative:From...
project
- O'Brien, Francis J. Jr. (Moondancer) “Southern New England—-Aquidneck Indian Council”