North Americans tend to generalize when considering the native tribes that once populated the
continent.
An idea that they all lived in small villages, in tents of animal skins or small wooden lean-tos
predominates.
It is an image presented by Hollywood, television, and the western novels of Louis L’Amour
and Zane Grey.
The image is inaccurate in most cases.
The Native American tribes were of several nations, diverse cultures, and their impact
on modern life remains immeasurable.
They changed the way the world ate, and still eats.
They were the first society to cultivate corn, potatoes, and the southwestern Native Americans
and those of Mexico gave the world chocolate.
Though some lived in primitive conditions, others developed large and complex societies,
with class systems and forms of government which rivaled those of contemporaneous Europe.
Here are 10 misconceptions about the native tribes of North America, and some insights
into tribal life when the Europeans first came to the New World.
10.
They were primitive tribes of hunter-gatherers
The ancient city of Cahokia alone belies the idea that North American natives were primitive
tribes, living in tents of animal skins, or simple wooden huts.
Archaeological studies prove Cahokia was a thriving city covering more than six square
miles of Illinois land across the Mississippi River from present-day St. Louis.
More than 100,000 people lived there four centuries before the coming of Christopher
Columbus.
Houses were placed in a manner similar to modern American cities, with open public spaces
and parks, in a grid marked by wide streets.
Evidence of water distribution systems exists in the ruins of the ancient city, which was
abandoned around the beginning of the 13th century, for reasons as yet unknown.
The Algonquian tribes of North America built large towns, with multistoried dwellings in
many cases, surrounded by fields of crops and orchards.
Game and fish provided a significant portion of their diet, and roving bands from within
their own tribe and others often competed for food, and raided the villages of other
peoples.
The majority of North American natives spent their lives near the place of their birth,
unless war or natural disasters forced them to move to more promising areas.
There were tribes of nomadic peoples, such as the Apache in the southwestern states and
the Plains Indians, but the majority of native tribes occupied lands for centuries, and defended
them against their enemies.
9.
They had no concept of land ownership
The often cited idea that American Indians had no concept of land ownership and property
rights is completely devoid of fact.
They did.
Native Americans claimed ownership of vast tracts of land, on which they lived, hunted,
and farmed.
They claimed territorial rights based on conquest, purchase, exchange, and inheritance.
They bought and sold land, to each other and to arriving European settlers.
Often, in dealing with the latter, they sold property rights to lands which were claimed
by other tribes, essentially swindling the Europeans.
The mythical sale of Manhattan Island to the Dutch for $24 worth of trinkets was one such
instance.
The natives (Canarsees) that sold the island to Peter Minuit, for sixty Dutch guilders
(about $1,000), conveyed land which was not theirs to begin with.
The Weckquaesgeeks tribe controlled the island.
Later, the Cherokee sold the rights to live in the Transylvania region of then-Virginia,
now Kentucky, in the Sycamore Shoals treaty.
The Cherokee sold lands which were not strictly theirs, it being shared by mutual agreement
as hunting grounds with the Shawnee and Wyandot.
The Cherokee nation splintered following the treaty, with numerous bands of warriors attacking
the ensuing white settlements in the Blue Grass region.
Similar events with the Shawnee and allied tribes, such as the Mingo and Miami, occurred
in the regions which became Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.
American history is replete with incidents in which native American tribes sold or traded
lands in agreements which tribal elements refused to accept, and started wars with the
settlers who occupied the lands.
8.
The European and later American settlers broke every treaty made with them
The idea of the white settlers scamming the Native Americans, treating with them under
false pretenses and violating every treaty made with them out of greed gained precedence
in the 1950s and 1960s.
The acceptance of the concept coincided with the civil rights movement in the United States.
Both sides broke treaties, just as both sides committed atrocities on the other.
For example, in 1757 the British garrison at Fort William Henry in New York surrendered
to a French and Indian force under Louis-Joseph de Montcalm.
Montcalm promised the British and American troops, and several of their families, safe
passage.
His Indian allies ignored the agreement, and massacred men, women, and children.
Pontiac’s Rebellion, Tecumseh’s Confederation and the Northwest Indian War, and the Black
Hawk War, all began with native violations of treaties negotiated and agreed to by tribal
elders.
Conversely, the Great Sioux War and other conflicts with the western tribes began following
encroachments of American settlers on Indian lands in violation of treaties.
The history of negotiations and treaties with the American Indian tribes contains incidents
of false dealings, misrepresentations, and out and out falsehoods by Indians and whites,
going back to the earliest days of colonization of the Americas by the Europeans.
7.
They lived in humble dwellings of earth, wood, and animal skins
Well, some tribes did live in such abodes.
The tepees, wooden huts, and igloos of Hollywood and history were real.
Not all Native Americans lived in crude structures, however, and some resided in dwellings of
considerable sophistication.
When General John Sullivan commanded the punitive expedition against the Onondaga, Seneca, and
Cayuga in 1779, his troops were surprised at the native villages they encountered.
They observed well-built homes of stone and wood, many with multiple stories and windows
paned with glass.
More the forty such villages and large towns were destroyed by the troops during the campaign,
breaking the back of the longstanding Iroquois Confederacy.
Elsewhere, American Indians built elaborate homes with an eye towards their architecture.
Tribes of the American southwest built roomed homes of mud and adobe.
The Navajo constructed permanent homes known as hogans, with wooden frameworks forming
a dome, covered with mud and stone.
In the southern plains, houses covered with grass protected the inhabitants from the elements.
Long before the arrival of the Europeans to the Pacific northwest, Native Americans used
cedar planks lashed to wooden frames to erect houses and to serve as drying sheds for the
fish they harvested from the region’s streams and the water of the Pacific.
6.
They were a largely egalitarian society
Class status among the vast majority of American Indian tribes followed family lines, with
some tribes based on matrilineal societies and others patrilineal.
For nearly all, status was conferred based on the degree of relationship with tribal
leaders.
Among the Cherokee, for example, women owned the property belonging to the family.
Women brought their husbands into the family, often into the family home.
The descent of tribal chiefs in matrilineal clans, and thus control over tribal affairs,
was through the mother.
Men marrying into the family in matrilineal tribes had no standing within the clan, not
even as fathers raising their children.
The mother’s brothers, or sons, assumed the role of raising their nieces’ or sisters’
children.
Among the northern plains tribes, particularly the Lakota and Dakota, the longstanding myth
of women serving as humble squaws, subservient to their husbands, is false.
Lakota women and girls were trained in the arts of hunting and war, and frequently fought
enemies in defense of the home, though they seldom joined raiding parties.
Their standing within the community depended on their abilities to serve the tribe, as
did that of the men.
In matrilineal tribes the male leader, known as the chief, remained in practice subservient
to his mother, by tradition and by unwritten law.
5.
The Southwestern tribes roamed the deserts and mountains
Some did, particularly after the horse was introduced to the continent when the Spaniards
arrived.
The Apache and Comanche in particular adapted to the horse for both hunting and raiding
enemies.
Centuries before that event, the Ancestral Pueblo peoples resided in the area now known
as the Four Corners, where Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona meet.
Eight centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ they cultivated corn, in the form of
maize, to supplement their diet of game.
They built irrigation systems to support their crops which included waters routed from the
Rio Grande, Colorado, and Little Colorado Rivers.
Their irrigation systems allowed the planting of beans and squash to supplement their crops
of corn.
The Apache and Navajo roamed the region, hunting the area to exhaustion over the centuries,
and leaving to pursue the game.
The Ancestral Pueblos endured several extended droughts, followed by flooding which destroyed
much of their farmlands and irrigation systems.
By the time the Spanish arrived, most of them were gone from the region, having fled the
area and the Apache and Navajo raiders.
The Spaniards encountered their relatively few descendants, still living in the multi-story
dwelling complexes which the Europeans called pueblos, or villages.
Most were located along the rivers which had once fed the complex system of canals and
dams watering their crops.
4.
The New World was sparsely settled at the time of Columbus
When the first Europeans arrived at what they soon called the New World, they encountered
spaces like nothing ever seen before.
Vast virgin forests stretched to nearly the water’s edge in some areas.
Others found open plains and what they believed, and reported, as small populations of natives.
In Mesoamerica the Spaniards and Portuguese encountered the cities of the Mayan, Incan,
and Aztec civilizations.
In North America the early European arrivals reported the Indians living in relatively
small villages and towns.
With no idea of the size and diversity of the North American continent, rulers and scholars
in Europe believed the New World sparsely populated by uncivilized peoples, as wild
as the game which teemed in the woods.
In truth, between 60 and 70 million natives lived on the North American continent, from
the Arctic Circle to its southernmost extremity.
Numerous cultures emerged on the continent before the European arrival, including the
mound builders, the Confederation of the Iroquois, the Hopi and Pueblo, and the Inuit in the
north.
The various Indian nations and clans were connected by a complex system of trails through
the eastern woods and on the plains, cut by migrating buffalo.
Elaborate diplomatic relationships developed, with alliances and agreements over the use
of hunting grounds, water rights, and tribal property.
Trade between tribes, such as furs and game for crops and weapons, was in place.
The Europeans understood none of it, nor the extent of the population in North America
which exceeded that of the continent from whence they came.
3.
The North American natives did not engage in warfare with each other
Beginning in the 1960s and continuing through the present day, a myth over inter-tribal
warfare among the American tribes gained acceptance.
The myth essentially blames the Europeans for introducing warfare to North America.
Its proponents claim the native tribes did not make war on each other, other than in
demonstrations of courage by touching an enemy with a coup stick.
The claim is utter nonsense, archaeological evidence and the various tribes’ own folklore
describe centuries of warfare between tribes across the entire continent.
Cannibalism among the North American tribes was ritualized, eating the flesh of enemy
warriors killed in battle, or tortured as prisoners, was recorded contemporaneously
by witnesses.
The western plains saw numerous wars between the various tribes competing for the resources
offered by the land.
The nomadic tribes followed the buffalo, their chief source of meat, furs, and tools manufactured
from the bones.
In the eastern woodlands, European explorers found many of the tribes living in villages
and towns protected by palisades, and extensive alarm systems in place to warn of an impending
encroachment.
The completely peaceful, idyllic existence described by some required neither.
Warfare between tribes did not end with a united attempt to wipe out the arriving Europeans,
instead many tribes allied themselves with the new arrivals, happy to have their superior
weapons available for use against ancient enemies.
2.
Their religions were based on a Great Spirit
Hollywood created the myth of all Indians worshipping a “Great Spirit,” though they
had other gods and spiritual entities as well.
The North American Indians had as many religious systems as tribes, and differing ways of worshiping.
Some, such as the Pueblo, worshiped the crops as they grew in the fields.
Some tribes believed spirits controlled the weather and developed rituals to appease them.
Nearly all worshiped the sun in some form or another, as well as the moon and other
celestial bodies.
Omens, revealed through trances achieved by various means, bore great spiritual significance,
and affected the direction of personal and tribal affairs.
The Iroquois did believe in a Great Spirit, the creator of all things, including the spirit
which flowed through all things.
The Mohawk, like many eastern tribes, believed in all existence imbued with spirit.
Nearly all the North American Indians held similar beliefs, creating religions based
on animism – the idea that all things possess life in some form, and hence are animated.
The belief extended to rocks, water, the weather, animals, birds, trees, and even sounds.
The spirits in control could be either evil or good, with existence a continuous struggle
between the extremes.
Many eastern tribes believed the smoke from tobacco carried messages to the spirits, and
smoking was a major part of religious ceremonies.
1.
They grew only simple crops to supplement their diets of meat and fish
Native American tribes are connected to maize, a type of corn which they grew so extensively
it came to be known as Indian corn.
They also grew beans of several types, gourds to serve as utensils, pumpkins for food, and
other forms of squash.
Along the eastern seaboard Indians husbanded tobacco crops from Florida to the Connecticut
Valley.
Through time, myths emerged about the Indians which led to the belief they sustained themselves
with game and fish, supplemented by just a few berries and nuts harvested from the forests.
Not so.
Many Indian villages had extensive farms, with the crops grown communally.
As with all farmers, crops grown depended on the local climate and soil conditions.
The Spanish in the south were astonished to see Indians eating freely of tomatoes, at
the time believed in Europe to be poisonous.
In the southwest, progressive farming techniques such as terracing and crop rotation were applied
by Indian farmers.
Indian crops included potatoes and sweet potatoes, several types of peppers, peanuts, avocadoes,
sunflowers, and wild rice.
Most Indian villages had communal storehouses to store crops for the winter months.
Orchards cultivated by Indians provided cherries, apples, and crabapples.
They also resorted freely to native plants for greens, including dandelion and chicory.