Pawnees explain their beginnings this way:

The first Pawnee man and woman received life from Tirawa, a male spirit of the upper cosmos who held the powers of thunder and lightning. The Pawnee male was represented by the Morning Star of the East, woman by the Evening Star in the West. Long ago, they and their descendants migrated from colder climates, south into the plains of North America. Pawnee origin stories vividly tell of a universe divided into male and female components. The Pawnee farmed and hunted along the Platte, Republican, and Loup rivers that interlocked parts of Nebraska, Wyoming, and Colorado, along the outer reaches of the northern plains. Their settlement patterns and gendered division of labor complemented the Pawnee bond with the stars and earth. This relationship was evident in a rich Pawnee ceremonial, wherein Pawnees set corn medicine bundles next to posts at the center of villages and used the stars and an understanding of four sacred cardinal directions to target fertile lands. Broken into four village divisions aligned with the four cardinal points, each village had corn and medicine bundles of different types to sustain balance between Tirawa and Mother Earth, the female cosmic being of fertility. Mother Maize was the most powerful of the corns. Pawnee gave thanks to Mother Maize through elaborate rituals that included gifts of bison meat. The cosmic balance between the Morning Star and the Evening Star—the original man and woman—was maintained in all facets of Pawnee life.

 

 

Beginnings

Many Native Americans insist that their people populated North America long before the dates postulated by the Bering land bridge theory. They may be right. Many Pacific coast peoples have oral traditions of great floods that carried them to the lands on which they resided. In the Bella Coola story, “When the water rose to the top of the mountain,” they tied up their boats, placed their ceremonial masks on the land, and planted their villages. “The masks are still there and turned to stone,” referencing the rock cliffs along the coast. The Bella Coola, like their neighbors, may have experienced flooding when the glaciers receded at the end of last Ice Age, during a period known as the Wisconsin Glaciation, when the land bridge opened between 30,000 BCE to 11,000 BCE (before the common era). If coastal peoples witnessed the rising tides of glacial warming, then they could have been in North America long before the supposed Bering corridor ever opened (see Map 1.1)

 

The Scientific Evidence

Scientists do not know the precise details of the first population movements to the Western Hemisphere. Many paleoanthropologists (scientists who study the origins of human beings) believe that people from northeastern Asia crossed the Bering Strait using a land bridge that connected Asia to what is now Alaska. Samples of soil drilled from the seabed between Alaska and present-day Siberia confirm that the Bering land bridge once existed. There is general agreement that hunter-gatherers crossed the bridge by migrating through a narrow ice-free corridor. Still, questions linger. When, how, and in what numbers did these people, known as Paleo Indians, migrate? One recent discovery narrows the time frame. In 2013, excavations of an 11,500-year-old encampment in the Tanana River Valley of Central Alaska unearthed from a burial pit the skeletal remains of what appears to be a six-week-old girl. Named “Sunrise Girl-Child” by the team of scientists, the youngster belonged to a subgroup of migrating people who opted not to continue their journey and instead established a small community that eventually failed. A complete DNA analysis was finally completed in January 2018, and scientists at the University of Alaska and the University of Copenhagen found that about half of the child’s DNA is that of Northern Eurasians, or Siberians, while the remainder is consistent with the DNA of Native Americans.

 

This finding fits well into recent scholarship regarding the Bering Strait Theory of native origins. Most of the Canadian-Alaskan-Siberian stretch was covered completely in ice until about 12,500 years ago, note scientists at the University of Copenhagen, and therefore “incapable of sustaining human life” at any earlier time. “The land was completely naked and barren” and could not provide for migrating herds of bison for hundreds of years. The combined discoveries of ice sheets across the region and the finding of Sunrise Child-Girl certainly places humans along the path of the Bering Strait migrations and restricts their travel to an age more recent than the theory initially offered. There are additional wrinkles to the long-accepted Bering Strait argument. What explains the presence of 12,000-year-old human remains found in an underwater Mexican cave in the early twenty-first century? The bones of a teenage girl were discovered in a 100-foot-deep water-filled pit called Hoyo Negro, or Black Hole.

 

Her mitochondrial DNA indicated an Asian lineage, a trait exhibited by about 10 percent of the Native American population. The Bering Strait land bridge timeline now generally accepted does not mesh with the discovery of this teenage girl’s bones. Meadowcroft Rock shelter, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, gives archaeologists a glimpse into the lives of the earliest people of the Eastern Woodlands, a commonly used designation for the territories east of the Mississippi River, running from present-day Canada to the Gulf Coast. Skeptics have claimed that the site’s bifaces, meaning two-sided stone tools, were not manmade artifacts. Others use radiocarbon dating (a method that tests for a steady measurable amount of carbon from archaeological site remains) to date the handmade tools to 13,000 BCE to 12,000 BCE or even as early as 30,000 BCE. If these people used the Bering land bridge, their eastward migration following big game on foot to the Eastern Woodlands would have taken just 1,000 to 2,000 years. Moreover, the stone tools at Meadowcroft were from a unique culture, unlike findings from the present-day plains and Southwest dated to the same period, and once considered the earliest tools used by people in North America. A recent coastal find on the southern coast of Chile at Monte Verde that includes mastodon bones with human-worked stone tools raises more questions about the Bering Strait crossing. Radiocarbon dating.

 

 

 

The Kwakiutl Story of the Deluge

Christians have the epic story of a flood in the Old Testament Book of Genesis. In that story, Noah built his Ark to save the animals and select people from certain doom. The same story appears in the Islamic Qur’an, the holy book of the Muslim world that also contains the teachings of the prophet Muhammed, the founder of Islam. The Kwakiutl of British Columbia are one of many Pacific coast peoples who have a story of a massive flood that settled over the earth. The Quatsino people that lived below the inlet knew the Flood was coming long before it happened. Some of the people hid in underground chambers safe from the waters, but most of the people built strong canoes to ride out the flood. The largest of these canoes was made of a long cedar [for the canoe] with rope made from twisted cedar bark. Attached to this lead canoe was a large rock anchor. All the canoes were lashed together, and wooden containers of dried meat, fish, clams and berries were stored onboard. Once the canoes were prepared, the skies darkened and torrential rains began to fall. The people noticed that the inlet’s water was rising above the high tide mark. With this, some families boarded the canoes; others went underground. “I see a big wave coming,” someone shouted, and they all looked and could see, in the distance, a mountain of water racing toward them. The flood hit, and the canoes rose level with the mountain tops across from their village. They avoided huge trees that were rooted up and carried by the rushing water. Pieces of their former homes dashed against the sides of their canoes. Some of the canoes broke away and were lost in the raging storm. The canoes that broke away later ended up in other places and started other tribes.

 

 

suggests that people may have occupied Monte Verde as early as 12,500 BCE or perhaps even much earlier. If the dating is correct, how did Paleo-Indians migrate so far south so fast? With other coastal sites in North and South America predating 20,000 BCE, some scholars have offered a new hypothesis: peopling of the Western Hemisphere might have followed water routes in addition to an ice-free corridor from Siberia. Geological evidence might support this coastal route argument. Dropping sea levels between 13,000 BCE and 14,000 BCE opened up huge ranges of ice-free land along the western continental shelf. In boats made of animal skins, people might have skirted from the Siberian region down the western coast to South America, establishing small settlements as they traveled. And in the case of the Hoyo Negro find, the Journal of Science has suggested that people from Southeast Asia possibly sailed or drifted eastward across the ocean, landing in Central or South America and commenced a migration from there. Indeed, the Harvard University geneticist Pontus Skoglund found DNA links between Amazon Indians and the indigenous peoples of Australia and New Guinea.

 

However, they arrived, Paleo-Indians took full advantage of the animal and plant resources available in the Americas. Studies of contemporary hunter-gatherers, particularly in Africa, show that men hunt while women stay close to campsites, rearing children and gathering wild plants. Paleo-Indians probably lived like these present-day hunter-gatherer societies. They lived together in small bands and hunted available game such as deer and rabbits, but mostly they followed the migratory patterns of large game animals. Paleo-Indian men were skilled hunters, using a deep knowledge of the behavior and habits of their prey to bring down large animals. They developed specialized weapons to increase their chances of success and to decrease the risks the hunted animals posed to themselves. For example, Paleo-Indian men employed atlatls, hand-held tools carved out of wood, that allowed hunters to throw spears farther and with more force, thus making it possible for a hunter to make a fatal throw from a safer distance.

 

 

Clovis and Folsom Cultures

 

Clovis peoples flourishing from 13,500 BCE to 12,900 BCE created an important technological innovation. Clovis culture gets its name from a town in northeast New Mexico, where archaeologists first uncovered the distinctive Clovis projectile points, stone tips fixed to projectile weapons. Clovis hunters fluted their points. They flaked off the bottoms and created grooves on either side of the tip so hunters could haft the arrowheads to spears. Fluting and the distinctive chipping along the sides that made the edges of the points jagged and sharp also made tips more durable. Clovis points were quite durable, could be reused, and were sharper and harder and thus more piercing, making hunters better armed against large animals. Clovis tools also included bifaces, stone-worked tools used to cut meat and hides. The archaeological record shows Clovis hunters particularly interested in mammoths and large bison. The remains of these animals are often found at Clovis sites, along with the distinctive fluted points and other hand-worked materials. The Lehrner site in Southeast Arizona yielded 13 mammoth remains. At Murray Springs, Arizona, archaeologists unearthed the remains of 11 bison and one mammoth, along with many hand-worked stones. Modern-day elephant movements give scientists some sense of the potential migratory patterns of bison and mammoths and thus the hunting patterns of Clovis men. Elephants travel in herds, returning generation after generation to the same places to feed and drink.

 

Clovis people probably tracked mammoth and bison herds. Archaeologists have uncovered Clovis sites on low-lying ground, usually near rivers, ponds, or springs. Clovis hunters returned to sites like Lehner time and time again. Clovis people pursued large game in many parts of North America until 12,900 BCE when they begin to disappear from the archaeological record, succeeded by a host of new hunter-gatherer cultures. Paleoanthropologists offer multiple explanations for why Clovis hunters vanished. As their population grew, they may simply have hunted the large game animals into extinction, bringing on starvation, malnutrition, or their melding with other people’s then appearing on the scene. Another argument focuses on climate change. As the Ice Age ended, food and water sources for Clovis prey animals diminished. Without food and water, the large animals died out, leading to a tremendous decrease in the Clovis population, which was also forced to adapt to the arid landscape. In either case, native North America changed dramatically by 9,000 BCE, and new cultures replaced Clovis. Around this time, buffalo herds became the primary target of large-game hunters. Buffalo survived the climate changes that may have doomed other large animals by adapting to low-grassland grazing. Folsom people emerged as the new buffalo-hunting culture.

 

The Folsom cultural tradition earned its name from the town in northeast New Mexico where archaeologists first discovered the distinct Folsom fluted spear points. Folsom peoples, like Clovis bands, were excellent trackers and hunters, but Folsom peoples hunted buffalo with a more diverse set of strategies. Archaeologists have uncovered significant Folsom kill sites at Casper, Wyoming; Linden Meier and Olson-Chubbuck, in Colorado; and Cooper, Oklahoma. All of these Great Plains sites reveal the variety and complexity of the Folsom hunting culture. At the Casper site, dated to roughly between 8,000 BCE and 7,000 BCE, Folsom hunters trapped 100 bison. Hunters often led a herd toward a cliff or steep ridge, probably dressing themselves in bison hides and making noises to scare the animals. Once the bison plummeted over the cliff, hunters butchered them and hauled their harvest back to camp. Many of these kill sites, like the one at Casper, produced more meat than one nomadic group could have consumed. Excess meat was probably traded or shared with other bands. Archaeological data also indicate that many Folsom hunters engaged in a long-distance trade in the stone materials used in tool and weapon making. Although bands were nomadic, social and economic exchanges like this were essential to settlement patterns, marriage practices, and community networks. At the Olson-Chubbuck site, hunters forced 157 buffalo into a ravine, and the remains reveal that the hunters only killed 75 percent of the catch. 

The meat could have fed more than 100 people for approximately a month and was probably shared or traded through community networks of Folsom hunters. At the Cooper site, a buffalo skull was painted with a red pigment in the shape of a lightning bolt. One of the earliest examples of Great Plains art, the lightning bolt indicates both increasing cultural diversity and the emergence of a ritual and spiritual life surrounding the taking of animal life. Folsom hunters also returned to places where herds habitually grazed and drank water. At the Linden Meier site, dated to about 8,000 BCE, archaeologists have discovered layers of encampments, suggesting that generations of hunters returned to the same spot. Like the Folsom hunters, later generations of Great Plains hunters recognized buffalo as a source of food, pride, and spiritual power. The Assiniboine, a Siouan-speaking people once of the Northern Plains, crossing as hunters in the United States and Canada, later related their origins to the spiritual power of the buffalo. The first Assiniboine asked a spiritual guide, Inktomi, about food. Inktomi wanted the Assiniboine to avoid cannibalism, so he created buffalo. Under Inktomi’s guidance, Assiniboine men learned to hunt the large beasts and make stone scrapers to remove hides. With his spiritual powers, Inktomi also taught Assiniboine women to skin a buffalo and about which sections of the animals were best to eat.

 

 

Changes in the West

The demise of the Clovis culture and the concurrent rise of the Folsom people occurred at a time when the foundations of agriculture were being laid in North America. Farming, however limited it was, depended on a climate conducive to growing crops and sufficient water to sustain their growth. Hunting continued to provide supplies of meat, and fishing still sustained those peoples residing on the coast or inland bodies of water, but, once supplemented with harvests of corn and other vegetables and fruits, the overall health of native peoples improved significantly, allowing for greater longevity and an increase in their populations. Agricultural productivity required better farm tools for cultivating croplands that expanded as populations rose.

 

 A rising reliance on agriculture carried with it the necessity of fashioning permanent communities a sedentary existence supplanted the nomadic life of earlier cultures. Sedentary living required a more complex social order, giving rise to more formal and rigid structures of governance, interfamily relations, and property usage. In short, the rise of agriculture in North America fundamentally transformed human activity. The pace of cultural transformation depended in large measure on the land occupied by a people and the climate that governed it. There were native groups that did not develop an agrarian base for themselves but instead secured crops through trade with farming villages. Coastal natives, for example, often increased their harvest of fish, clams, and other water-based foods and actively bartered these for corn and other foodstuffs while supplementing their diet with hunted game, berries, and nuts. North America was in transition, establishing permanent and complex communities.

 

California Indians

Between 5000 BCE and 4000 BCE, new lifestyles and patterns of social organization emerged alongside the hunter gatherers along the Pacific Coast. For example, between 3000 BCE and 2000 BCE, California Indians established semi-permanent villages to replace nomadic foraging communities, exploiting an array of coastal and inland resources. California Indians gathered shellfish, used the bow and arrow and harpoons to hunt large animals and seals, and caught fish. They also gathered seeds, especially those found in acorns. To facilitate the gathering and processing of acorns, villages were situated near oak forests. Women were responsible for acorn processing, grinding them with stone mortars and pestles, leeching the tannic acid out of them, and then cooking or storing them. As California villages grew in size and became more dependent on processed acorns, women developed more efficient mortars and pestles and lightweight basket designs to replace cumbersome stone or ceramic storage pots. Around 3000 BCE, climate change allowed for a dramatic increase in the population of the Pacific Coast. To meet this challenge, California Indians developed new forms of subsistence, adding small scale agriculture to acorn gathering and hunting. The organization and planning demanded by agriculture gave rise to ranked societies led by chiefs who allocated and controlled the distribution of resources and land. Long-distance trade in goods such as shell beads suggest increased social complexity in California and the beginning of extensive tribal networks.

 

 

The Northwest

Prestigious burial goods such as fine woodcarvings and shells indicate the beginnings of hierarchical societies on the Northwest coast, present-day Alaska, British Columbia, and the coastal islands, by about 1000 BCE. The demands of ocean fishing and hunting drove Northwest peoples toward hierarchy and social specialization. Hunters needed sophisticated boats, harpoons, knives, and other blades to hunt and then remove the skins and cut the carcasses of seals and whales. Hunting such animals also required a hierarchical labor system, one in which hunters accepted the leadership roles of trackers and harpooners. Skilled wood carvers made canoes that could carry the necessary hunting implements and the weight of the crew. Craftsmen also used red and yellow cedar, fur, and spruce to build elaborate homes.

 

The decoration of such homes marked families as members of specific clans, groups that associated descent within one or two specific lines and that adopted an animal as a totem, or spiritual symbol, to represent them. Wood carvers built gigantic totem poles decorated with depictions of their clan’s mythical birds and animals, as well as mythical human spirits. An archaeological site at Ozette, Washington, that was buried by a sixteenth-century mudslide and preserved virtually intact provides a glimpse into Pacific Northwest social and cultural diversity. Archaeologists there discovered wooden boxes with artistic symbols, whale teeth, hunting tools, baskets, and carved planks and poles. Nootkan-speaking groups along Puget Sound like the Makah shared these cultural patterns with people such as the Kwakiutl of Vancouver Island and the coastal Salish peoples. A variety of factors, including population growth, food surplus, and perhaps competition and warfare over hunting and settlement territories, contributed to the development of complex systems of social ranking among Northwest coast peoples after 1000 BCE. Such systems divided elites from non-elites and established each individual’s social status and responsibilities.

 

Households remained the central unit of work and consumption but were, themselves, incorporated into the ranking system. To display status and power, families with surplus food and prestige goods such as finely carved boxes, canoes, and beads and stone gathered for potlatch ceremonies. During these ceremonies, wealthy families recounted orally their family histories as represented in mythical accounts, and then redistributed goods to families of lesser wealth and importance to strengthen kin and community ties. East of the coast is a vast region known as the Interior Plateau. Two main rivers bisect it: the Columbia River of the southern plateau and the Fraser River located in the more wooded north. Salish-speakers from the same linguistic stock as peoples of the coast lived along the Fraser River. Penutian-speakers who lived close to the Columbia River were famous salmon fishers. They moved their villages to follow salmon migratory patterns. After 3000 BCE, salmon fishing plateau people established long-distance trade networks with their linguistic cousins of the Northwest coast, and farther to the south into the Great Basin, a region between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Coastal range of the Sierra Nevada. Turquoise and shells from the South and West were exchanged for fish grease and animal hides. Wooden painted masks of mythical creatures traveled from the Northwest coast to the Interior Plateau.

 

The Dalles, natural rock platforms along the Columbia River, were places not only of trade but also where Indians from Plateau, Northwest coast, and Great Basin villages met to exchange prestige goods. Plateau peoples saw these meeting places as sacred and honored them with painted artwork called pictographs and carved artwork called petroglyphs that featured faces, stick people, circles of the sun, heads, eagles and other birds, sheep, deer, and images of hunters in ritual postures. Places like The Dalles were also the site of vision quests, or spiritual journeys. To honor the guardian spirits who lived near sacred points of The Dalles, people made offerings, but also used different pigments of color to paint their visions as they looked for spiritual guidance in song and other rites. A present-day elder among the Flathead Lake Kutenai in Montana told one observer of how vision quests were often linked spiritually to rock formations and his peoples’ long tradition of a sacred landscape. His people traveled “on top of Chief Rock, near Dayton . . . up there is a little circle of stones where we would lay. All kinds of spirits dwell up there.”  Among these spirits were birds and particularly the coyote, which spoke directly to people. “Coyote gave me a song,” the elder recalled. “Deer gave me the power to hunt successfully.” For the ancestors of people who traded at The Dalles, sacred powers to hunt, fish, trade, and maintain community balance and harmony came from visiting rock formations.

 

Eastern Woodlands Traditions

 

Far from the sacred landscapes of the Columbia Plateau and the Great Plains lived the peoples of the Eastern Woodlands, occupying the vast lands east of the Mississippi from Canada to the Gulf Coast. Exchange networks in seashells, jasper, and copper extended into the Eastern Woodlands after 3000 BCE. In time, possession of such goods came to denote rank and status. Each tribe or band lived in its own area, but they were connected to each other by trade that flowed in multiple directions. Copper came from the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River areas. Shells from the Atlantic coast and soapstone from the Appalachians also appeared in burial sites. Shell-mound deposits also indicate a steady diet of coastal and freshwater mussels, contributing to the diversified economy and resource base necessary to support the region’s increasing population. Indian Knoll, a site in Kentucky, dated to about 3000 BCE to 2000 BCE, is one of the best-preserved shell-deposit sites. Indians of the Eastern Woodlands had a spiritual life that developed from far-flung networks of esoteric knowledge and spiritually charged trade goods. Special burials based on kinship, age, and leadership indicate the presence of elite groups. Indian Knoll, for example, had more than 1,000 burials.

 

The dead were buried in a fetal position, and some were sprinkled with ocher dust and adorned with shell ornaments such as beads. Between 2200 BCE and 700 BCE, a unique cultural tradition emerged at a central point of the vast exchange networks among the eastern Indians. Located in the lower Mississippi Valley near the Gulf Coast, the Poverty Point culture (named after a site in Louisiana) provides evidence of dramatic cultural change among the Eastern Woodland peoples. There are more than 100 Poverty Point sites, the largest of which stands on the Macon Ridge that overlooks the Mississippi floodplain, near the confluence of the Mississippi, Arkansas, Red, Ohio, and Tennessee rivers. Strategically positioned to serve as a trade nexus, Poverty Point was comprised of large earthen mounds. The center of the Poverty Point site ranges over 490 acres, with six concentric semicircular mounds established about 130 feet from each other. Archaeologists know next to nothing about the social organization of Poverty Point. Relying on data from later mound-building cultures, they speculate that chiefs and spiritual leaders oversaw the construction of the vast mounds that acted as centers of trade. Outlying villages produced squash and gourds, while within the mounds archaeologists have discovered immense amounts of prestige goods such as copper, galena (lead ore that often contains silver), jasper, and quartz. Scholars believe that Poverty Point developed and amassed sufficient wealth to permit social stratification and the emergence of leaders with the authority to organize and command the labor necessary to build the mounds. Poverty Point remains a puzzle, but it foreshadowed the rise of other complex societies in the Eastern Woodlands.

 

 

Adena and Hopewell Cultures

The mound-building tradition that began in the Eastern Woodlands continued in the Adena and Hopewell cultures. From about 1000 BCE to 100 BCE, the Adena complex in the central Ohio River valley was an engine for social and cultural change across the region. Adena was a vast mound-building center comprised of ceremonial burial mounds. By about 200 BCE, these mounds became more complex, becoming much larger in size and capable of accommodating more bodies, each painted with red and yellow ocher. Alongside these burial sites were circular enclosed areas where it is likely families of the deceased along with people of high status gathered to worship their ancestors.

 

The graves included sophisticated handcrafted effigies and pipe stems in the form of both humans and animals. A new mound-building culture emerged out of the Adena complex known as the Hopewell tradition, flourishing from 200 BCE to 500 BCE. The Hopewell tradition encompassed more people and was socially and culturally more complex than the traditions that preceded it. It was a focal point of trade networks that ranged across most of North America, bringing shell, obsidian, mica, and turquoise to the craftspeople of Hopewell. Built over centuries, Hopewell mounds were shaped like circles, octagons, and squares. The mounds had ritual and ceremonial importance, in addition to serving as burial sites. Archaeologists believe that many of these earthen mounds were aligned to reflect astronomical events, particularly sunrise and moonrise patterns. The mound building culture of Hopewell was most likely the work of “bigmen,” elites who gained power and authority from spiritual and mythological knowledge and the control of trade. Masks and effigies of animals and mythical spirits were used in the performance of rites that enhanced these leaders’ position as directors of Hopewell spiritual life. The interment of bodies with high-prestige items suggests that “bigman” status and privilege extended into the afterlife. Roads connected outlying villages to the center of Hopewell.

 

These villages, which traded with Hopewell and shared its culture, might have functioned as ritual political centers with their own burial mounds, but they certainly acknowledged the larger mounds as the main centers of Hopewell life. Hopewell depended on intensive production of corn, beans, and squash for subsistence, with many villages located near floodplains to facilitate growing. Hopewell culture went into rapid decline around 400 BCE. Archaeologists believe that the introduction of maize contributed to the fall of Hopewell. With the spread of maize, clan and kinship networks became more focused on their own intensive cultivation of maize and not their connections to the larger Hopewell structure, to the detriment of the “bigmen” whose prestige and power were derived from those networks. Because the Hopewell networks facilitated cultural connections between the peoples who made up the broader cultural tradition, their decline brought with it the collapse of the tradition as a whole.

 

Mississippian Chiefdoms

Between 800 BCE and 1200 BCE, during the Warm Period, agriculture spread rapidly throughout the Eastern Woodlands, giving rise to a new age of chiefdoms in the Southeast and Midwest, known collectively as the Mississippian tradition. The most organized chiefdoms were Cahokia, across from St. Louis, Missouri, along the Mississippi River, and Moundville in northwest Alabama. Cahokia and Moundville oversaw vast territories and featured elaborate social and political structures. Cults played key roles in spiritual and political life at Cahokia and Moundville. A warrior cult honored elite men who had proven themselves in battle, and a fertility cult honored the harvests. The periodic rebuilding of the tops of mounds and platforms symbolized the fertility of the crops and population expansion, and created opportunities for the chiefdoms elaborate displays of prestige. Built along a floodplain, Cahokia served almost as a city-state, with the large mound occupied by the chiefdom at the center of a network of supporting villages. Population estimates for Cahokia itself have been placed at about 15,000 with as many as another 25,000 residing in surrounding villages. Given its service as a regional trade center, Cahokia probably drew another 50,000 guests annually. The city’s base population alone in the thirteenth century equaled that of London. Among pre-Columbian Indian societies, only those in Mexico had more people. At the center of Cahokia was a magnificent mound built between the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Its size rivaled the large stone structures in Mexico and Yucatan. At Cahokia’s central plaza, and atop its main mound, called Monk’s Mound, priests and chiefs used myth, cosmology, and trade to cement their rule over Cahokia’s population. Monk’s Mound was built in four stages from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries. In a meticulously organized layout, Cahokia laborers built numerous other mounds of different sizes and shapes. Many of the mounds at Cahokia served as burial sites for the most elite of its residents. After the twelfth century, however, Cahokia began to decline as populations dispersed from the main ceremonial center, breaking up the surrounding villages that serviced the large city-state. Lesser “Mississippian” chiefdoms existed throughout the Southeast into the sixteenth century. Like Cahokia,  these chiefdoms also developed complex social, cultural, and political structures.

 

 

The Iroquois

Iroquoian-speakers lived in the portion of the Eastern Woodlands that is now northern New York State and Southeast Canada. Iroquois people lived in rectangular longhouses made of bark and wood that could hold numerous families. The Iroquois harvested corns, beans, and squash the “three sisters” with women tilling the soil. The Iroquois were matrilineal, tracing descent through the lines of their mothers, so women had tremendous power in the appointment of clan leaders and decisions regarding warfare. At the time of European contact in the early sixteenth century and into the seventeenth century, the major Iroquoian tribes were the Huron, Erie, and Neutral in Canada, and the Five Nations Iroquois in New York State: the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk.

 

Archaeological remains of protective fences, or palisades, around villages indicate that warfare was common among the Iroquois. Sometime before 1600, several Iroquois tribes decided to resolve the factionalism, feuding, and warfare that had been so devastating for so many generations and together they formed the Iroquois League. According to Iroquois legend, a grandmother and mother recognized that a young boy, Deganawida, was a potential peacemaker.

 

When he grew older, he traveled through Iroquoia, from west to east, carrying his message of peace to warriors and chiefs alike. One of Deganawida’s converts among the Onondaga was Hiawatha. Deganawida taught Hiawatha the Condolence Ceremony, a ritual designed to facilitate the reconciliation of former enemies. Together they then carried this message of condolence to the Mohawks, who adopted the ceremony. Deganawida and Hiawatha traveled farther spreading their message of peace and encouraging intertribal unity. Soon, the Iroquois nations made peace among themselves and formed the Iroquois League.

The Onondaga, Mohawk, Seneca, Cayuga, and Oneida joined symbolically into one longhouse, a sacred unity overseen by sachems elected from specific clans by clan mothers. The “Keepers of the Eastern Door” of the League’s longhouse were the Mohawks, the most eastern tribe in New York. The “Keepers of the Western Door” were the Senecas who resided far to the west. At the center was Onondaga, in whose territory the Iroquois League would meet and light the council fires.

 

Conclusion

The first Europeans to reach North America did not discover a “Garden of Eden” occupied by peoples who lived in a state of harmony and balance with nature. Native North America had its own rich and complex history before Europeans arrived. Scientists use archaeological dating techniques and evidence from excavated sites to investigate this history. Native peoples look to their stories to understand their past. Although seemingly incompatible, when considered together science and native traditions shed light on the beginnings of Indian life in North America. When Europeans arrived in the Americas in 1500, they encountered societies that had been changing and developing for 15,000 years. In this chapter, we focused on the societies of North America. In the next, we will turn to the societies of South America, giving particular attention to the Maya, the Aztecs, and the Inca.