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32 CHAPTER 1

Societies of North America

MAIN IDEA WHY IT MATTERS NOW TERMS & NAMES

ONE AMERICAN’S STORYMany Native Americans today work to save their culture. Haida artist Bill

Reid took part in this effort. When he was a teenager in the 1930s, few

Haida artists were making totem poles or other Haida crafts. Reid began

to learn about Haida arts from his grandfather.

Reid studied Northwest Coast native arts and jewelry making. Soon he

created gold jewelry with Haida designs and carved sculptures. When Reid

died, his work was praised.

A VOICE FROM THE PAST

Canada has lost one of its greatest artists. A descendant of a lineage of greatHaida artists . . . , Bill Reid revived an artistic tradition that had survived onlyin museum collections.

Dr. George MacDonald, at Bill Reid’s memorial service, March 24, 1998

Written records and people like Reid have preserved knowledge of the

cultures that flourished in the Americas when Europeans arrived. This

section explains the diversity of Native American groups in 1500.

Native American DiversityBy 1500, Native Americans had divided into hundreds of cultural groups,speaking perhaps 2,000 languages. One reason Native Americans were sodiverse was that each group adapted to its own environment—whethersubzero ice fields, scorching deserts, or dense forests.

Environment shaped each group’s economy, technology, and religion.Technology is the use of tools and knowledge to meet human needs. Insome regions, Native Americans based their economy on farming. Inothers, they relied on hunting or fishing. Different environments causedtechnology to vary. In coastal areas, farmers made tools from shells. In

By 1500, a variety of Native American

groups—each with a distinct

culture—lived in North America.

Many Americans today claim one or

more of these cultures as part of

their heritage.

technology

tundra

kayak

matrilineal

slash-and-burnagriculture

Deganawida

Iroquois League

Taking Notes

Use your chart totake notes about the societies ofNorth America.

AMERICAS

WESTAFRICA

EUROPE

Trade

CALIFORNIA STANDARDS

CST3 Students use a variety of mapsand documents to identify physicaland cultural features of neighbor-hoods, cities, states, and countriesand to explain the historical migra-tion of people, expansion and disin-tegration of empires, and thegrowth of economic systems.

REP4 Students assess the credibility ofprimary and secondary sources anddraw sound conclusions from them.

HI2 Students understand and distin-guish cause, effect, sequence, andcorrelation in historical events,including the long- and short-termcausal relations.

deserts, they used irrigation. Environment affected religion, too. NativeAmericans strongly believed that certain places were sacred—and thatanimals, plants, and natural forces had spiritual importance.

Although Native American groups had many differences, they all feltclosely connected to nature, as shown in the following chant.

In addition, trade linked Native Americans. Trading centers developedacross North America, especially at points where two cultures met.

Peoples of the North and Northwest CoastThe Aleut (uh•LOOT) and the Inuit (IHN•yoo•iht) were peoples of thefar North. The Aleut lived on islands off Alaska, and the Inuit lived nearthe coast on tundra. Tundra is a treeless plain that remains frozen underits top layer of soil. Ice and snow cover the ground most of the year.

Because their climate was too cold for farming, the Inuit and Aleutwere hunters. They paddled kayaks, small boats made of animal skins,

The World in 1500 33

Kwakiutl

Haida

Chinook

Pomo

Shoshone

Crow Mandan

Dakota(Sioux)

Cheyenne

ArapahoPawnee

OsageApache

Kiowa

Kansas

Ojibwa

Ottawa

Sauk

Algonquin

Huron

MiamiIowa

Potawatomi

Shawnee

Chickasaw

ChoctawCreek

Seminole

Navajo

PuebloHopi

Zuni

Paiute

Pima

Huichol

Aztec Taino

Chumash

Blackfoot

Cree

DelawareSusquehanna

Powhatan

Tuscarora

IroquoisWampanoagPequot

Cherokee

NezPerce

P A C I F I CO C E A N

ATLANTICOCEAN

G u l f o fM e x i c o

40°N

Tropic of Cancer

120°W

80°W

0

0

500 Miles

1,000 Kilometers

Native American CulturesSubarcticNorthwest CoastCaliforniaPlateauGreat BasinMesoamericanSouthwestPlainsEastern WoodlandsSoutheasternCaribbeanMajor trade routes

North America, 1500

GEOGRAPHY SKILLBUILDERInterpreting Maps1. Movement Which Native

American culture was able totrade directly with the Aztecs?

2. Location Which culture livedaround the Great Lakes?

BackgroundThe Inuit are also called theEskimo.

SkillbuilderAnswers1. the people ofthe Southwest2. the people ofthe EasternWoodlands

Miwok

Text not available for use onthis CD-ROM. Please refer tothe text in the textbook.

into icy seas to spear whales, seals, and walruses. They hunted thesemammals for food, and they made seal and walrus skins into clothes.Some Inuit religious ceremonies honored the spirits of the whales andseals they caught. The Inuit also hunted such land animals as caribou.They made arrowheads and spear points from bones and antlers.

Farther south, Northwest Coast people also hunted sea mammals.But they mostly fished for salmon. Living by forests, Northwest Coastpeople used wood for houses, boats, and carved objects. They traded

such coastal products as shells for items from theinland, such as furs.

Northwest Coast groups such as the Kwakiutl(KWAH•kee•OOT•uhl) and Haida had a special cere-mony—the potlatch. Individuals would give away mostor all of their goods as a way to claim status and bene-fit their community. They held potlatches to mark lifeevents, such as naming a child or mourning the dead.

Peoples of the WestUnlike the Native Americans of the Northwest Coast, those of the Westdid not rely mainly on the sea. The peoples of the West included tribesin California, the Columbia Plateau, and the Great Basin. Much of theWest is desert or is not suitable for farming. The people who lived thereexisted mainly by hunting and gathering.

The men hunted deer, elk, antelope, rabbits, and birds. They alsofished, especially for salmon that swam up the western rivers. Womengathered such wild foods as nuts, seeds, and berries. Many westerngroups moved with the seasons to collect food.

The women of some western tribes became expertweavers. Pomo women wove beautiful baskets that theyused to gather and store food. They wove some basketstightly enough to be watertight.

The peoples of the West had strong spiritual beliefs,often linked to nature. Some held ceremonies to ensure alarge food supply. Others held dances to ask for rain, forplant growth, and for good hunting. Still others believedthat their religious leaders could contact the spirit world.

Peoples of MexicoFar to the south, the Aztecs ruled a great civilization inwhat is now central Mexico. The origin of the Aztecs isunclear. They may have been hunters and gatherers likethe Native Americans of the West. Sometime during the1100s, they migrated into the Valley of Mexico.

In 1325, they began to build their capital city,Tenochtitlán (teh•NAWCH•tee•TLAHN), on islands inLake Texcoco. Two things helped the Aztecs become astrong empire. First, they drained swamps and built an

A. PossibleAnswer becausethose items wereunavailable intheir area

A. MakingInferences Whywould inlandpeople trade forseashells?

B. Reading a MapOn the map onpage 33, locatethe cultures ofCalifornia, thePlateau, and theGreat Basin.Notice why thesethree togetherare called thepeoples of theWest.

The Aztec Calendar

This stone is the Aztec calenderwheel. In the center is the sungod. Around it are symbols forthe 20 days of the Aztec month.Three are enlarged below.

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“The term [potlatch]comes fromChinook . . . andmeans ‘to give.’”

Gloria Cranmer Webster, U’mista Cultural Centre

RabbitDeer

Death

irrigation system. This enabled them to grow plenty of food. Second,they were a warlike people who conquered most of their neighbors. Thedefeated people then had to send the Aztecs food and resources.

The Aztecs had a complex society. Rulers were the highest class. Priestsand government workers ranked next. Slaves and servants were at the bot-tom. The Aztecs had elaborate religious ceremonies linked to their calen-dar and their study of the sun, moon, and stars. Many of their beliefs camefrom earlier Mesoamerican cultures.

The Aztecs’ most important ritual involved feedingtheir sun god human blood. To do this, the Aztecs sac-rificed prisoners of war by cutting out the person’s heartwhile he was still alive. One reason the Aztecs foughtso many wars was to capture prisoners to sacrifice.

Peoples of the SouthwestNorth of the Aztec, in what is now the AmericanSouthwest, lived the Pueblo people. Their ancestorswere the ancient Hohokam and Anasazi. Like theirancestors, the Pueblo used irrigation to alter their desertregion for farming. They lived in many-storied housesof adobe—dried mud bricks. These large buildingssometimes held an entire village.

Pueblo Indian farmers raised corn, beans, andsquash. For meat, they hunted game and raised turkeys.Men did most of the farming, hunting, weaving, andbuilding. Women ground the corn and cooked thefood, repaired the adobe houses, and crafted pottery.

The Navajo and the Apache were nomadic, or wan-dering, hunter-gatherers who came to the region laterthan the Pueblo. For food, they relied mainly on gameand on cactus, roots, and piñon nuts. Often, they tradedthese wild products for crops that the Pueblo had grown. Overtime, the Navajo adopted farming and other Pueblo practices.

Peoples of the Great PlainsFarther north, the Great Plains is a flat grassland regionstretching from the Mississippi River west to the RockyMountains. Today, most people think of Plains Indians onhorseback, but originally they had no horses. The Spanish firstbrought horses to the Americas in the 1500s.

Some Plains groups were nomads. Others lived in villages byrivers, where land was easier to farm. In summer, entire villages setout to track bison. Hunting bison on foot was difficult, but Plainstribes used their environment to help them. Working together, thevillagers stampeded the herd over a cliff, so the fall would kill ordisable the animals. Plains Indians not only ate the bison’s meat.They also made its hide into clothes and its bones into tools.

C. DrawingConclusions Whydo you think theNavajo adoptedfarming?C. PossibleAnswer becausethey saw that itgave the Pueblo astable food supply

BackgroundHorses spreadacross NorthAmerica throughtrade and byescaping fromhumans and wan-dering on theirown.

KACHINA DANCES

Every year in summer the Hopi,Zuni, and other Pueblo Indiansheld a religious celebration. Theceremony called on the kachinas,or spirits of the ancestors. ThePueblo believed the kachinashad the power to bring a plenti-ful harvest. At the festival,masked dancers played the roleof different kachinas. Theydanced and sang songs to bringrain in the year ahead. Today,the Pueblo also carve kachinadolls, shown below, as well ashold dances.

The World in 1500 35

In winter such northern Plains groups as the Mandans and Pawneelived in large circular lodges. Wooden beams held up the earthen walls.A hole at the top provided air, light, and an outlet for smoke from thefire. Buried partly underground, the earth lodge protected the peoplefrom the extreme cold and wind of the Plains climate.

The spiritual beliefs of Plains tribes varied. Some felt a close tie toregional animals such as the bison or plants such as corn. Some honoredsacred places, such as the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming.Many Plains tribes held a ceremony called the Sun Dance, whichinvolved making a vow and asking the Creator for aid.

Peoples of the SoutheastThe Southeast, which stretches from east Texas to the Atlantic Ocean, hasmild winters and warm summers with plentiful rainfall. The long growingseason led the Choctaw (CHAHK•taw), Chickasaw (CHIHK•uh•SAW),and other southeastern groups to become farmers. As many other NativeAmericans did, they grew corn, beans, squash, and pumpkins.

Women did most of the farming, while men hunted, fished, andcleared land. The men spent months in the forest tracking deer. In theSoutheast, people traced their family ties through the women. Societiesin which ancestry is traced through the mother are called matrilineal.

In southeastern villages, people gathered at a central square for pub-lic meetings and such religious ceremonies as the Green Corn Festival.Held once a year, this festival offered thanks for the corn harvest andalso served as a kind of New Year’s celebration. People cleaned theirhouses, threw away old pots, and settled quarrels as a sign of a fresh startfor the year.

Peoples of the Eastern WoodlandsLike the Southeast, the Northeast had plenty of fish, game, and rain. Butthe climate was colder with snowy winters. Forests covered much of theregion, so it is called the Eastern Woodlands. Most of the people livingthere spoke either an Iroquoian or Algonquian language.

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Vocabularylodge: house

D. AnalyzingCauses Whywould a longgrowing seasonlead people tobecome farmers?D. PossibleAnswer becausethe long seasonwould enablethem to producemore crops

Many NativeAmericans in theSoutheast andEastern Wood-lands playedlacrosse usingsticks like these.Modern Americanshave adopted the game.

Like all Native Americans, the Iroquois learned tolive in their environment. They hunted wild game.They adapted the forest for farming by using slash-and-burn agriculture. In slash-and-burn agriculture,farmers chopped down and then burned trees on a plotof land. The ashes from the fire enriched the soil.When a field’s soil became worn out, the farmer aban-doned it and cleared a new field. The Iroquois lived inlonghouses, bark-covered shelters as long as 300 feet.One longhouse held eight to ten families.

The Algonquin lived in wigwams, domelike housescovered with deerskin and slabs of bark. For protection,both the Iroquois and Algonquin surrounded their vil-lages with high fences made of poles. Iroquois villagersoften needed protection not only from the enemies ofthe Iroquois, but from each other. The Iroquois oftenraided neighboring villages for food and captives.

In the late 1500s, five northern Iroquois nations tookthe advice of a peace-seeking man named Deganawida.They stopped warring with each other and formed an alliance. Thisalliance of the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, and Seneca wasthe Iroquois League. The League brought a long period of peace to theIroquois. A council of leaders from each nation governed the League.They followed rules called the Great Law of Peace. The Iroquois werealso a matrilineal society. If a leader did something wrong, the womenof his clan could vote him out of office.

Across the Atlantic, the peoples of West Africa also adapted to theirenvironment and engaged in trade. West Africa was the region fromwhich most Africans were brought to the Americas. You will read aboutit in the next section.

The World in 1500 37

2. Using GraphicsUse a cluster diagram torecord how Native Americansfrom each region adapted totheir environment. (HI1)

3. Main Ideasa. What were some of thereligious ceremonies ofNative Americans? (HI1)

b. How were the Pueblo liketheir ancestors, theHohokam? (HI1)

c. How did the formation ofthe Iroquois League benefitits member nations? (HI1)

4. Critical ThinkingDrawing ConclusionsHow did trade benefit bothgroups that took part in it?(HI1)

THINK ABOUT• who the Northwest Coast

people traded with andwhat they exchanged

• what the Puebloexchanged with nomadicgroups

1. Terms & NamesExplain the

significance of:• technology• tundra• kayak• matrilineal• slash-and-burn

agriculture• Deganawida• Iroquois League

Section Assessment

ACTIVITY OPTIONS

ARTLANGUAGE ARTS

Reread the Navajo chant on page 33. Draw an illustration to go with the chantor write additional verses. (REP4)

2

DEGANAWIDA (THEPEACEMAKER)

Iroquois tradition honorsDeganawida as the Peacemaker.Seeing how destructive warfarewas for the Iroquois, Deganawidawent from tribe to tribe anddescribed his dream of peace. Apoor speaker, he persuaded fewwarriors. Finally, an Iroquois chiefnamed Hiawatha spoke for him.After long negotiations, the lead-ers of the warring nations madepeace. However, Deganawida’sown tribe, the Huron, did not jointhe League.

How did both Deganawidaand Hiawatha lead theIroquois toward peace?

BackgroundAlthough it is aquick way toclear fields, slash-and-burn agricul-ture does causeenvironmentaldamage bydestroyingforests.

Adapted toEnvironment

People ofthe North