History of

Native American Tribes

10,000B.C. to 1500A.D.

The Early Settlement of AmericaAmericas first came to be inhabited

by ancient Siberians who crossed on foot from Asia to Alaska over a land bridge that spanned the Bering Sea.

Uncertainties remain as to the chronology of the migrations, the source populations that contributed to the migrations, and the migration routes.

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“Three Waves” Most scientists now believe that Native

American populations arose from at least three migrations, with the majority descended entirely from a single group of First American migrants that crossed over through Beringia.

The early Paleoamericans soon spread throughout the Americas, diversifying into many hundreds of culturally distinct nations and tribes.

Archeological classificationThe pre-Columbian archaeological record in the

Americas is conventionally divided into five phases according to an enduring system established in Gordon Willey and Philip Phillips's 1958 book Method and Theory in American Archaeology:

1. Lithic stage2. The Archaic Stage3. The Formative stage4. The Classic stage5. The Post-Classic stage

Pre-Colombian Cultures1. The Clovis culture is a

megafauna hunting culture that is primarily identified by use of its fluted spear points.

The Clovis culture ranged over much of North America and also appeared in South America and is identified by the distinctive Clovis point, a flaked flint spear-point with a notched flute, by which it was inserted into a shaft of the spear.

2. Na-Dené-speaking peoples entered North America starting around 8000 BCE, reaching the Pacific Northwest by 5000 BCE, and from there migrating along the Pacific Coast and into the interior.

-They were the earliest ancestors of a distinctive language group including the present-day and historical Navajo and Apache people.

3. Poverty Point Culture (Mound-Builders)- is an archaeological culture that corresponds to an ancient group of Indigenous peoples who inhabited the area of the lower Mississippi Valley and surrounding Gulf coast from about 2200 BCE - 700 BCE.

Archeologists have identified more than 100 sites as belonging to this mound builder culture, which also formed a large trading network throughout the eastern part of what is now the United States.

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- In the center of the site is a plaza, a constructed and leveled, flat, open area covering about 37 acres.

This was the largest settlement at that time in North America. The site also had a 50 feet high, 500 feet long earthen pyramid, which was aligned east to west.

A large bird effigy mound, measuring 70 feet high and 640 feet across, is also located on the Poverty Point site.

Poverty Point

The Hopewell tradition was not a single culture or society, but a widely dispersed set of related populations, who were connected by a common network of trade routes, known as the Hopewell Exchange System.

At its greatest extent, the Hopewell exchange system ran from the Southeastern United States into the southeastern Canadian shores of Lake Ontario.

4. Hopewell Tradition (200Bc-500A.D.)

Politics: The Hopewellian peoples had leaders, but they were not like powerful rulers who could command armies of slaves and soldiers.

Artwork of the Hopewell- The Hopewell created some of the finest craftwork and artwork of the Americas.

Most of their works had some religious significance, and their graves were filled with necklaces, ornate carvings made from bone or wood, decorated ceremonial pottery, ear plugs, and pendants.

5. Coles Creek culture (700-1200A.D.)-is a Late Woodland archaeological culture in the Lower Mississippi valley in the southern United States.

Although many of the classic traits of chiefdom societies are not yet manifested, by 1000 CE the formation of simple elite polities had begun.

Coles Creek sites are found in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

6. Hohokam- (1-1450A.D.) were an ancient Native American culture centered on the present-day US state of Arizona.

In North America, the Hohokam were the only culture to rely on irrigation canals to water their crops since as early as 800 AD, and their irrigation systems supported the largest population in the Southwest by AD 1300.

Since the 9th century and extending into the 15th century, they maintained what was to become extensive irrigation networks that rivaled the complexity of those used in the ancient Near East, Egypt, and China.

6. The Mississippian culture was a mound-building Native American civilization that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 to 1600, varying regionally.

1. The construction of large, truncated earthwork pyramid mounds

2. Maize-based agriculture. 3. shell tempered pottery.4. Widespread trade networks.5. The development of the chiefdom 6. institutionalized social inequality.7. A centralization of control 8. The beginnings of a settlement

hierarchy

Cultural Traits of Mississippian Culture

7. Iroquois Confederacy (The Great League of Peace)- The history of the Iroquois Confederacy goes back to its formation in the 15th century or earlier, bringing together five distinct nations in the southern Great Lakes area into "The Great League of Peace“

- The League is governed by a Grand Council, an assembly of fifty chiefs or sachems, each representing one of the clans of one of the nations.

- According to tradition, the League was formed through the efforts of two men, Dekanawida, sometimes known as the Great Peacemaker, and Hiawatha.