A WORLD APART The First Americans

Starter – August 26th• Take about 5 minutes and write down every word you associate with Native

Americans.

Going West• Not all of America was the English going west

• Spanish were heading north from Mexico

• Russians coming east from Siberia

• French coming south through the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi River

• You cannot simply say there were Europeans, Africans, and Indians converging together because it was far more complex than that.

• When thrown together in the New World, each had to find a new commonality to aid in their survival in the new world.

• VIP = All three groups—Europeans, Africans, & Indians were in a flux when they encountered each other in the colonies.

Beringia

• Ice sheet across the Bering Strait that connected what’s now Russia (Siberia) and Alaska

• Paleo-Indians crossed Beringia circa 12,000 years ago

• Spread quickly throughout the Americas

Changing Cultures• The first people in the Americas were

hunter-gatherers, roaming in nomadic tribes hunting big game like mammoths, mastodons, etc.

• 11,000 years ago, most big game in the Americas became extinct and the now indigenous people switched to fishing and smaller game.

• Eventually they began to domesticate plants and farming culture developed.

• With a stable food supply, the first permanent settlements begin to arise.

Birth of Civilizations

• Stable food supply = permanent settlements

• Excess food supply = job specialization

• Builders, leaders, organizers, potters, weavers, etc.

• Civilization—complex culture, centered around cities, with people working at specialized occupations who operate under complex government

Tenochtitlan

Emergence of Different Identities

• Native Americans adapted to the geography of where they lived, using natural resources to survive.

• This led to the development of culture groups.

• A culture group is a group of people who live in the same region.

• The people in a culture group have the same way of life.

• Native American are not a monolithic people but a very diverse population that share some of the same underlying beliefs.

Unifying Native Beliefs• Most Native Americans even though very unique and

different shared some similar cultural characteristics.

• All Native Americans believed in animism (spirits live in inanimate objects) and to understand the “spirit world” one’s dreams must be interpreted by a shaman (priest).

• Most Natives believed that every person had a spirit guide usually shown in the form of an animal that helped a person find their “path”.

• Most Native American tribal names when translated mean “human beings” or the “people”.

Unifying Native Beliefs• Native American warfare mimicked the hunt with the

use of ambush style attacks by small war parties (group of warriors).

• Most boys were tested by battle to reach manhood.

• Native warfare was not meant to annihilate another tribe, but to humiliate. When captives were taken they were used as slaves and most of the time allowed to return to their own tribe or remain with the new tribe.

Unifying Native Beliefs• Most Native tribes were matrilineal (family identity coming

from the mother).

• Women were the “homemakers” and men were the hunters/warriors.

• Native tribes were highly democratic (people ruled) and bureaucratic (organized with a chain of command) mostly ran by a chief or a Tribal Council.

• Native Americans did not believe in private property, but that all nature was owned by Manitou (god) and man was to look after it.

• No Native tribes had any form of written language only an oral language.

Indian Society Video• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS8DEjd2QBg