Native Americans Flashcards
What century did the Europeans arrive in North America
In fact, by the time European adventurers arrived in the 15th century .
How did Native Americans arrive in North America?
the nomadic ancestors of modern Native Americans who hiked over a “land bridge” from Asia to what is now Alaska more than 12,000 years ago.
How many people were living in America, when the Europeans arrived?
A.D., scholars estimate that more than 50 million people were already living in the Americas
How many native americans lived in The United States Area, when Europeans arrived?
Of these, some 10 million lived in the area that would become the United States.
How did people classify and group Native Americans?
As time passed, these migrants and their descendants pushed south and east, adapting as they went. In order to keep track of these diverse groups, anthropologists and geographers have divided them into “culture areas,” or rough groupings of contiguous peoples who shared similar habitats and characteristics.
The Arctic Region housed what Native Americans?
The Arctic culture area, a cold, flat, treeless region (actually a frozen desert) near the Arctic Circle in present-day Alaska, Canada and Greenland, was home to the Inuit and the Aleut
What dialects did in the Inuits and Aleuts speak?
Both groups spoke, and continue to speak, dialects descended from what scholars call the Eskimo-Aleut language family
Describe life in Arctic Region for an Inuit or Aleut
Because it is such an inhospitable landscape, the Arctic’s population was comparatively small and scattered. Some of its peoples, especially the Inuit in the northern part of the region, were nomads, following seals, polar bears and other game as they migrated across the tundra. In the southern part of the region, the Aleut were a bit more settled, living in small fishing villages along the shore.
How many Native Americans and Alaska Natives live in North America today?
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are about 4.5 million Native Americans and Alaska Natives in the United States today. That’s about 1.5 percent of the population.
Describe homes for the Inuits and Aleuts
The Inuit and Aleut had a great deal in common. Many lived in dome-shaped houses made of sod or timber (or, in the North, ice blocks).
Describe clothing and boats for Inuits and Aleuts
They used seal and otter skins to make warm, weatherproof clothing, aerodynamic dogsleds and long, open fishing boats (kayaks in Inuit; baidarkas in Aleut).
When did the US purchase Alaska
By the time the United States purchased Alaska in 1867,
Why did the population of Native Americans in Alaska drop by 1867
decades of oppression and exposure to European diseases had taken their toll: The native population had dropped to just 2,500; the descendants of these survivors still make their home in the area today.
Describe the SubArctic Region
The Subarctic culture area, mostly composed of swampy, piney forests (taiga) and waterlogged tundra, stretched across much of inland Alaska and Canada.
What were the main languages of the Subarctic region
Athabaskan (western)
Algonquian (eastern)
Describe life in the SubArctic (travel/settlements/hunting)
In the Subarctic, travel was difficult—toboggans, snowshoes and lightweight canoes were the primary means of transportation—and population was sparse. In general, the peoples of the Subarctic did not form large permanent settlements; instead, small family groups stuck together as they traipsed after herds of caribou. They lived in small, easy-to-move tents and lean-tos, and when it grew too cold to hunt they hunkered into underground dugouts.
When did fur trade really take off?
17th & 18th century
After the growth of the fur trade in the 17th/18th centuries, what did the Native Americans focus on in the Subarctic region?
The growth of the fur trade in the 17th and 18th centuries disrupted the Subarctic way of life—now, instead of hunting and gathering for subsistence, the Indians focused on supplying pelts to the European traders—and eventually led to the displacement and extermination of many of the region’s native communities.
What was the Northeast Area considered?
The Northeast culture area, one of the first to have sustained contact with Europeans, stretched from present-day Canada’s Atlantic coast to North Carolina and inland to the Mississippi River valley.
Name some Iroquoian speakers from the Northeast region
Iroquoian speakers (these included the Cayuga, Oneida, Erie, Onondaga, Seneca and Tuscarora), most of whom lived along inland rivers and lakes in fortified, politically stable villages,
Describe and list the Algonquian speakers of the northeast region
and the more numerous Algonquian speakers (these included the Pequot, Fox, Shawnee, Wampanoag, Delaware and Menominee) who lived in small farming and fishing villages along the ocean. There, they grew crops like corn, beans and vegetables.
Describe Iroquoians
Life in the Northeast culture area was already fraught with conflict—the Iroquoian groups tended to be rather aggressive and warlike, and bands and villages outside of their allied confederacies were never safe from their raids—and it grew more complicated when European colonizers arrived.
What constantly caused the Iroquois and Algonquians to take sides?
Colonial wars
Describe the Southeast Area
The Southeast culture area, north of the Gulf of Mexico and south of the Northeast, was a humid, fertile agricultural region
What were the natives of the southeast area experts in?
Many of its natives were expert farmers—they grew staple crops like maize, beans, squash, tobacco and sunflower—who organized their lives around small ceremonial and market villages known as hamlets
What were the indigenous people of the southeast area known as? What language did they speak?
Perhaps the most familiar of the Southeastern indigenous peoples are the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole, sometimes called the Five Civilized Tribes, who all spoke a variant of the Muskogean language.
When the US had gained its freedom, what had been made of the southeast culture?
By the time the U.S. had won its independence from Britain, the Southeast culture area had already lost many of its native people to disease and displacement.
What happened in 1830 with the Federal Indian Removal Act?
In 1830, the federal Indian Removal Act compelled the relocation of what remained of the Five Civilized Tribes so that white settlers could have their land. Between 1830 and 1838, federal officials forced nearly 100,000 Indians out of the southern states and into “Indian Territory” (later Oklahoma) west of the Mississippi. The Cherokee called this frequently deadly trek the Trail of Tears.
Where was The Plains area located?
The Plains culture area comprises the vast prairie region between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, from present-day Canada to the Gulf of Mexico
Who were the inhabitants of the plains region?
Before the arrival of European traders and explorers, its inhabitants—speakers of Siouan, Algonquian, Caddoan, Uto-Aztecan and Athabaskan languages—were relatively settled hunters and farmers.
What happened to the Plains region after the Europeans arrived?
After European contact, and especially after Spanish colonists brought horses to the region in the 18th century, the peoples of the Great Plains became much more nomadic.
What groups hunted after a very popular Native American animal?
Groups like the Crow, Blackfeet, Cheyenne, Comanche and Arapaho used horses to pursue great herds of buffalo across the prairie.
What kind of housing did the Plains region Native Americans utilize?
The most common dwelling for these hunters was the cone-shaped teepee, a bison-skin tent that could be folded up and carried anywhere. Plains Indians are also known for their elaborately feathered war bonnets.
As white traders moved across the region to the West, what became of the people of the Plains region?
As white traders and settlers moved west across the Plains region, they brought many damaging things with them: commercial goods, like knives and kettles, which native people came to depend on; guns; and disease. By the end of the 19th century, white sport hunters had nearly exterminated the area’s buffalo herds. With settlers encroaching on their lands and no way to make money, the Plains natives were forced onto government reservations.
What were the “boundaries” of the Southwest region?
The peoples of the Southwest culture area, a huge desert region in present-day Arizona and New Mexico (along with parts of Colorado, Utah, Texas and Mexico) developed two distinct ways of life.
What were the names of some of the southwest native americans and what did they grow?
Sedentary farmers such as the Hopi, the Zuni, the Yaqui and the Yuma grew crops like corn, beans and squash.
What was the housing for the southwest area native americans?
Many lived in permanent settlements, known as pueblos, built of stone and adobe. These pueblos featured great multistory dwellings that resembled apartment houses. . At their centers, many of these villages also had large ceremonial pit houses, or kivas.
Describe the Navajo & Apache Native Americans
Other Southwestern peoples, such as the Navajo and the Apache, were more nomadic. They survived by hunting, gathering and raiding their more established neighbors for their crops. Because these groups were always on the move, their homes were much less permanent than the pueblos. For instance, the Navajo fashioned their iconic eastward-facing round houses, known as hogans, out of materials like mud and bark.
What happened to the Southwestern Native Americans?
By the time the southwestern territories became a part of the United States after the Mexican War, many of the region’s native people had already been exterminated. (Spanish colonists and missionaries had enslaved many of the Pueblo Indians, for example, working them to death on vast Spanish ranches known as encomiendas.) During the second half of the 19th century, the federal government resettled most of the region’s remaining natives onto reservations.
Describe the Great Basin Area
The Great Basin culture area, an expansive bowl formed by the Rocky Mountains to the east, the Sierra Nevadas to the west, the Columbia Plateau to the north, and the Colorado Plateau to the south, was a barren wasteland of deserts, salt flats and brackish lakes
Describe the people of the Great Basin Area
Its people, most of whom spoke Shoshonean or Uto-Aztecan dialects (the Bannock, Paiute and Ute, for example), foraged for roots, seeds and nuts and hunted snakes, lizards and small mammals.
What did housing look like for the Great Basin Native Americans?
Because they were always on the move, they lived in compact, easy-to-build wikiups made of willow poles or saplings, leaves and brush. Their settlements and social groups were impermanent, and communal leadership (what little there was) was informal.
Describe life in the Great Basin after European contact
After European contact, some Great Basin groups got horses and formed equestrian hunting and raiding bands that were similar to the ones we associate with the Great Plains natives. After white prospectors discovered gold and silver in the region in the mid-19th century, most of the Great Basin’s people lost their land and, frequently, their lives.
How many Californian Native Americans were there prior to Europeans ?
Before European contact, the temperate, hospitable California culture area had more people—an estimated 300,000 in the mid-16th century—than any other.
Explain the diversity of the Californian Native Americans
It was also more diverse: Its estimated 100 different tribes and groups spoke more spoke more than 200 dialects. (These languages derived from the Penutian (the Maidu, Miwok and Yokuts), the Hokan (the Chumash, Pomo, Salinas and Shasta), the Uto-Aztecan (the Tubabulabal, Serrano and Kinatemuk;
What are “Mission Indians”?
also, many of the “Mission Indians” who had been driven out of the Southwest by Spanish colonization spoke Uto-Aztecan dialects) and Athapaskan (the Hupa, among others). In fact, as one scholar has pointed out, California’s linguistic landscape was more complex than that of Europe.
Explain Californian life for a Native American
Despite this great diversity, many native Californians lived very similar lives. They did not practice much agriculture. Instead, they organized themselves into small, family-based bands of hunter-gatherers known as tribelets. Inter-tribelet relationships, based on well-established systems of trade and common rights, were generally peaceful.
Explain the infiltration of the Spanish explorers in California
Spanish explorers infiltrated the California region in the middle of the 16th century. In 1769, the cleric Junipero Serra established a mission at San Diego, inaugurating a particularly brutal period in which forced labor, disease and assimilation nearly exterminated the culture area’s native population.
Describe the climate and area of the Northwest
The Northwest Coast culture area, along the Pacific coast from British Columbia to the top of Northern California, has a mild climate and an abundance of natural resources.
Describe the natural resources of the Northwest
In particular, the ocean and the region’s rivers provided almost everything its people needed—salmon, especially, but also whales, sea otters, seals and fish and shellfish of all kinds. As a result, unlike many other hunter-gatherers who struggled to eke out a living and were forced to follow animal herds from place to place, the Indians of the Pacific Northwest were secure enough to build permanent villages that housed hundreds of people apiece.
How would you describe the villages of the Northwest and their social structure
Those villages operated according to a rigidly stratified social structure, more sophisticated than any outside of Mexico and Central America. A person’s status was determined by his closeness to the village’s chief and reinforced by the number of possessions—blankets, shells and skins, canoes and even slaves—he had at his disposal.
(Goods like these played an important role in the potlatch, an elaborate gift-giving ceremony designed to affirm these class divisions.)
Who were the prominent groups of the Northwest?
Prominent groups in the region included the Athapaskan Haida and Tlingit; the Penutian Chinook, Tsimshian and Coos; the Wakashan Kwakiutl and Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka); and the Salishan Coast Salish.
What were the boundaries of The Plateau?
The Plateau culture area sat in the Columbia and Fraser river basins at the intersection of the Subarctic, the Plains, the Great Basin, the California and the Northwest Coast (present-day Idaho, Montana and eastern Oregon and Washington).
Describe the people of the Northwest
Most of its people lived in small, peaceful villages along stream and riverbanks and survived by fishing for salmon and trout, hunting and gathering wild berries, roots and nuts.
Describe the languages spoken in the Southern Plateau Region
In the southern Plateau region, the great majority spoke languages derived from the Penutian (the Klamath, Klikitat, Modoc, Nez Perce, Walla Walla and Yakima or Yakama). North of the Columbia River, most (the Skitswish (Coeur d’Alene), Salish (Flathead), Spokane and Columbia) spoke Salishan dialects
Describe the new movement in the Plateau region in the 18th century
In the 18th century, other native groups brought horses to the Plateau. The region’s inhabitants quickly integrated the animals into their economy, expanding the radius of their hunts and acting as traders and emissaries between the Northwest and the Plains.
Describe Lewis & Clark in 1805 in the Plateau Region
In 1805, the explorers Lewis and Clark passed through the area, drawing increasing numbers of disease-spreading white settlers. By the end of the 19th century, most of the remaining Plateau Indians had been cleared from their lands and resettled in government reservations.
Who were the first Native Americans to meet the English??
The Indians with whom the English first make contact in America are from the Algonquian group of tribes. The first encounter is friendly.
Who was one of the first groups to trade with the English?
Secotan
Explain the conflict in Roanoke the chief that suffered the consequences
Meanwhile the first attempts at English colonization in America also end badly. The 1585 settlers in Roanoke Island initially enjoy good relations with the Indians, but by the following spring they are on the verge of war. The English strike first, employing the ancient technique of treachery. On June 1, 1586, the Indian chief Pemisapan and other tribal leaders are invited to a council on the shore of the Croatan Sound. As they approach, they are shot.
