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The American Yawp, Volume 1, edited by Joseph Locke and Ben Wright, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the original free This shelf’s study material is shared under the same license (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Chapter 2 · pp. 17–52
This chapter looks at the Americas before and during the arrival of Europeans. It covers how Indigenous peoples explain their own origins and how scientists describe early migration. It then follows the rise of farming, trade, monumental building, and cities, and the many ways Native societies organized power, family, and belief. It ends with the upheaval caused by European arrival and the Columbian Exchange.
In 1519 the Spanish reached Tenochtitlán, built on a lake and linked by causeways and canals. It held about 70,000 buildings and perhaps 250,000 people, which put it among the largest cities in the world. One Spanish soldier said the sight was like an enchanted vision. The city shows that the Spanish arrived in a world with a long, rich history of its own (p. 17).
Indigenous peoples preserve that history in many forms, not only in writing. Origin stories appear in maps, paintings, wampum belts, and weavings. They are also carried in dances, songs, and story cycles told on set occasions. Each form passes sacred knowledge from earlier generations to people alive today. The wide range of stories matches the wide range of Indigenous cultures (p. 17).
Stories about land, plants, and animals matter as much as stories about the first humans. They teach that all beings are connected. In the Cherokee account, the animals of a crowded Sky World held a council and chose to look for land below. Only Water Beetle could dive deep enough to bring up mud from the Under World. That mud became Elohi, an in-between world where everyone could live. The animals here make decisions and act, so they are more than scenery (p. 17).
Lenape and Haudenosaunee traditions say that Sky Woman fell to a watery world, and that this is how Earth, or Turtle Island (the name for North America), took shape. In the Lenape version, Beaver, Goose, and Muskrat helped her land on the back of the Great Turtle. In the Haudenosaunee version, she carried Tobacco and Strawberry with her. The clay under her feet spread outward as she danced, and it grew into the Earth (pp. 17–18).
Most of these stories belong to particular places, and they hold both history and guidance for living. In the Ute story, Coyote opens a bag against orders, and people of many languages pour out. The Ute were the last to emerge, in the mountains. The Anishinaabe story is about migration. A family follows a white shell (megis) from the waters of the Northeast to a land where food grows on water, meaning wild rice (manoomin). Their journey ends at the rapids of Bawating, where the Three Fires Confederacy was born: the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi (p. 19). Such stories record duties and relationships as well as events. Kinship ties helped communities adapt to new environments and keep this history alive (p. 19).
Archaeologists, anthropologists, and climate scientists study pottery, tree rings, genes, and ice cores. Their ancestors mostly came to the Americas in the last five centuries, and the timeline they build comes from their own historical setting. Even so, the two kinds of knowledge agree on some key points. Oral, linguistic, ecological, archaeological, and genetic evidence all show many groups, perhaps from different starting points, moving and settling over thousands of years (pp. 19–20).
Scientists estimate that two founding populations came from Siberia along the Pacific coast between about 24,000 and 15,000 years ago. Overland arrivals began about 1,000 years later. More coastal migration followed around 12,000 years ago (p. 20).
When sea levels were low, the continental shelf between Siberia and Alaska lay exposed. This area is called Beringia, after the Bering Strait waters that later flooded it. It was more than six hundred miles across and grew grasses and low plants. Giant animals grazed there and crossed between Siberia and Alaska (p. 20).
The journey was not only an overland walk. Low seas let people travel by water among Pacific Rim islands, following currents and sea life toward the Northwest Coast. Fossilized footprints at White Sands, New Mexico, show that people were walking in North America about 23,000 years ago (p. 20).
About 19,000 years ago the climate warmed. Ice sheets up to two miles thick melted, and the meltwater raised sea levels and made new lakes, valleys, and waterways. Ice-free land could now support plants, animals, and people, and some travelers followed animals onto it. Rising seas later pushed some coastal groups inland (pp. 20, 22).
Around 16,000 years ago, skilled navigators sailed down the Pacific coast. They settled where the local ecosystem could feed them, in coves and river mouths rich in fish and shellfish. In the Pacific Northwest, people used nets, dams, and traps for salmon and dried or smoked the catch for storage. At Haida Gwaii, people hunted whales and seals and traveled in cedar log canoes (pp. 20, 22).
Inland, hunters followed caribou and bison herds with the seasons. Rivers were highways. The Columbia and Snake lead toward the Upper Missouri headwaters, and from there water flows to the Lower Missouri and the Mississippi. Evidence shows people living in Central Texas and on Parson's Island, Maryland, about 14,500 years ago. The Gulf Coastal Plains wetlands offered waterfowl and aquatic life and could be crossed on foot or by dugout canoe (p. 22).
Later migrants arrived in the north at different times. The Na Dene, ancestors of the Apache and Navajo (Diné), crossed the Bering Strait between 10,000 and 8,000 BCE in small hunter-gatherer bands. Around 3000 BCE, the ancestors of the Aleut and Inuit arrived. They eventually moved to islands such as the Aleutians (p. 22).
Hunting large animals such as bison and caribou by drives took many people working together, not individuals or small bands. These hunts were seasonal and social, so they also gave families chances to exchange goods and culture. Communities therefore built social and political arrangements to organize the hunt and the relationships around it (pp. 22–23).
The climate settled about 6,000 years ago. By the medieval warm period, around 950 CE, farming had become easier. It could feed more people and support political structures. By the end of the fifteenth century, about 100 million Indigenous people lived in the Western Hemisphere, roughly two-fifths of them in North America. Europe had only about 50 million, so the Americas were far from empty (p. 23).
In the Mississippi Valley, farming grew from changes in weather and soil. Slow-moving tributaries dropped silt and built the fertile plains known as the American Bottomlands. Summers lengthened and rain became more predictable. Foragers, hunters, and fishers could now rely on growing domesticated plants. Indigenous women played an especially important part, learning to domesticate wild plants and develop new crops (p. 23).
As the weather settled down, people in the Mississippi Valley began to rely more on planting. Slower rivers dropped silt and built up rich bottomland soil. Summers grew longer and rains became easier to predict. Groups who had mostly foraged, hunted, and fished found that tending plants was now a practical choice. Women played a major part, because they learned how to domesticate wild plants and grow new ones (p. 23).
The Eastern Agricultural Complex is the name for one result. People chose and looked after wild plant relatives until they became larger and more reliable crops. In the Mississippi Valley these included goosefoot, knotweed, marsh elder, sunflowers, and gourds. Not every community became a farming community, though. Many mixed gathering, hunting, and fishing with deliberate planting through the seasons. Bottle-gourd seeds in Florida, about 10,000 years old, show that careful tending began very early (pp. 23–24).
Farther south, caves in present-day Mexico hold preserved chili peppers, avocados, prickly pear, squash, beans, and maize. Farmers there also ate rabbit, deer, and fish alongside their crops (p. 24).
Maize was bred in Mesoamerica from wild grasses as early as 8,700 years ago. Farmers noticed which plants were largest and hardiest, kept those, and pollinated them. After many generations the kernels and stalks grew bigger and stronger, and the plant came to resemble modern corn (p. 24).
Maize was valuable for three reasons:
Knowledge passed from one community to another, and maize reached the Gulf coast area about 6,000 years ago. Growing it in drier places pushed people to build irrigation systems, which in turn advanced farming in arid parts of North America (p. 24).
Maize moved north by people and trade. Travelers carried it, and communities swapped seeds along trade networks. It reached the US Southwest about 3,200 years ago, the eastern half of the continent over 2,000 years ago, and the far north roughly 1,000 years after that (p. 29).
Corn did not become the main food everywhere at once. Still, it holds deep spiritual meaning. Hopi stories say the kachina spirit Muingwu grew corn from his body. Kiché Maya tell of the maize god Hun Hunahpu mixing corn and water to make the first humans. Penobscot stories call corn a gift from the body of First Mother (p. 29).
Farming did not lead to one kind of government. Around 1000 CE, the ancestors of the Menominee farmed corn, climbing beans, and winter squash on raised fields at Anaem Omot in northern Wisconsin. The fields served individual families in a mostly decentralized, egalitarian society. Other communities used farming to support larger, more hierarchical structures (p. 24).
Watson Brake in Louisiana dates to about 5,400 years ago and may be the oldest monumental earthen architecture on the continent. Eleven earthworks are linked by ridges in an oval nearly 900 feet across. Building it took technical skill and political coordination. Its builders hunted deer, fished, gathered nuts, and raised early wild crops such as goosefoot, knotweed, and marsh elder (p. 24).
Poverty Point in northeastern Louisiana was built over about 600 years. Workers carried dirt in baskets to make concentric, crescent-shaped earthworks that lined up with celestial patterns. The layout used a precise measuring system based on equilateral triangles, later used across the eastern Mississippi Valley. Although hundreds of people lived there, it was mainly a trade center. Artifacts came from as far as 800 miles away, from the Appalachians to the hills of Iowa. The residents did not farm. They gathered nuts, seeds, and wild fruits, fished, and hunted turtles, deer, and alligators. They cooked meat with heated clay "cooking balls" (pp. 24–25).
Plains and pemmican. Bison were found across the continent but gathered mostly on the Great Plains. Warming lengthened the bison breeding season and spread short-grass prairie. About 4,800 years ago, Plains peoples began making pemmican from pounded dried bison meat mixed with fat and berries. It gives complete energy, keeps well, and is easy to carry, so it fit seasonally mobile lives (p. 26).
Pacific Northwest and salmon. Peoples such as the Kwakwaka'wakw, Tlingit, and Haida lived in a mild, forested land with many rivers. Salmon was essential, and people treated it with respect. Its image stood for prosperity, life, and renewal and appeared on poles, baskets, canoes, and oars. Each season the Coastal Salish and others held a First Salmon Ceremony when the fish were first seen. Sustainable harvesting protected salmon runs. Cedar canoes up to fifty feet long carried as many as twenty men to catch halibut and sturgeon, sometimes thousands of pounds in one canoe (pp. 26–27).
The Olmec. Around 3,200 years ago, the Olmec of Veracruz grew maize, avocado, cacao, beans, squash, and yucca. They made rubber balls for a ball game played across Mesoamerica. They also developed the Long Count Calendar, an early use of the idea of zero, and a writing system. Their colossal stone heads of rulers weighed up to forty tons. Their trade reached across the isthmus of Mexico, and other peoples imitated their art for centuries (p. 27).
Extra food let societies support more people, and that called for larger political structures. The Pacific Northwest became one of the most densely populated parts of North America (p. 27).
There, the potlatch developed. This was a large feast marking births and weddings and setting social status. Hosts showed wealth by giving food, art, and performances, and the more they gave away, the more prestige they gained. Some saved for decades. Potlatches were also political. Among the Tlingit they helped settle land and resource claims, choose clan leaders, confirm alliances, and resolve disputes (p. 27).
Surplus had a darker side too. Large fields needed many workers, and Cahokia relied on coerced labor made possible through extended empires. In other places, food security freed people for art, administration, and spiritual work. This helped cities such as Tenochtitlán, Cahokia, and Puebloan communities grow (pp. 27, 29).
Teotihuacán, in central Mexico northeast of Mexico City, was one of the largest corn-supported cities. It had at least 25,000 people, likely more, living in neighborhoods of ethnically distinct groups from across Mesoamerica. Its Pyramids of the Sun and Moon stood out. Later Nahuatl-speakers, including the Aztecs and Toltecs, saw it as the birthplace of the gods (p. 29).
After Teotihuacán slowly declined, the Toltec rose. They took on skills from its descendants, including weaving, architecture, and astronomy. Their cities had markets, libraries, and universities. Their government was centralized and theocratic, but the palace held more power than the temple. Controlling water gave them a stable government, which made rapid city growth possible (p. 29).
Some of the earliest large projects in North America were about managing resources. Two examples come from very different landscapes: the Arizona desert and the rainy Pacific Northwest.
Desert irrigation in the Southwest. About 2,500 years ago, the ancestors of today's Pueblo peoples, sometimes called the Hohokam, farmed in the dry land near present-day Phoenix. They dug canals using clay and digging sticks. The canals carried river water to fields of cotton and to the Three Sisters (corn, beans, and squash). The whole system had over 800 miles of main canals plus hundreds of miles of smaller branches. The longest known canal was twenty miles. Moving this much water by hand shows how organized the work must have been. (p. 30)
Cedar in the Pacific Northwest. Along the northwest coast, the key resource was cedar. Ancestors of the Stó:lō–Coast Salish people hunted seals, sea otters, and whales from large red cedar canoes. Cedar planks also made huge houses. The Suquamish "Old Man House" on Puget Sound was about 500 feet long. Cedar trunks were also carved and painted into poles that told stories and showed identity. Anthropologists later called them totem poles, and they became the region's best-known art. People also carved masks, hand drums, and rattles from wood. (pp. 30–31)
Trade networks. Native communities were linked by family ties, politics, and culture, and long-distance trade held them together. The Mississippi was a main trade "artery," but every waterway carried goods and news. Some examples show how far goods traveled:
(p. 31)
Chaco Canyon. Ancestral Puebloans adjusted to changing climates. As the land grew warmer, some moved up to the mesas. As it dried, many followed pinyon trees and animals to find water. In the highlands they shifted from wooden pit houses to stone buildings set into cliffs. Chaco Canyon, in present-day New Mexico, was a major center. Its biggest building, Pueblo Bonito, had about 600 rooms, rose five stories, and covered over two acres. It was decorated with copper bells, turquoise, and macaw feathers. Homes included a kiva, a small dugout room that was central to ceremony and community life. Builders tracked the stars and lined up their homes with the paths of the sun and moon. Between 900 and 1300 CE, as many as 15,000 Pueblo people lived in the Chaco complex. Roads stretching hundreds of miles tied communities and trade routes together. (pp. 31–32)
Drought as a cause of change. Climate could also force people to change how they lived. A severe drought in 1130 CE led Chaco residents to scatter into smaller settlements. Chaco is still spiritually and culturally important today. (p. 32)
The Pacific Northwest saw a similar pattern. A long drought made salmon runs harder to predict. Trade and travel moved away from rivers and onto overland trails. Root crops, especially camas bulbs, became an important winter food. Salish communities tended camas prairies, harvested them carefully, and held ceremonies in spring. Frequent fires on these prairies increased wildlife, berries, and medicines. (p. 33)
Size and setting. About a thousand years ago, Cahokia (just east of modern St. Louis) was the largest Mississippian settlement. Its population may have peaked near 30,000, and it covered 2,000 acres. No city north of Mexico matched that population until after the American Revolution. Monks Mound, a ten-story earthen hill, stood at its center, and its base was larger than the pyramids of Egypt. The earthworks seem to have reflected the movements of the sun, moon, and stars, and they were also places of trade and political maneuvering. (p. 33)
Why it grew. Cahokia sat near the Mississippi, Illinois, and Missouri rivers, which linked the Great Lakes to the Southeast. Seashells found there had traveled over a thousand miles. Corn fed the crowds of pilgrims, traders, warriors, and settlers, though growing it often relied on people captured in war. (p. 33)
Misconception: Native slavery was the same as the transatlantic slave trade. It was not. In many Native societies, war captives were seen as people without kinship ties. They were not simply property, and their status was not always permanent. Adoption or marriage could bring a captive into a kin network as a full community member. Even so, taking captives helped communities gain labor and power. (pp. 33–34)
Rise and collapse. Around 1050 CE, Cahokia's population grew by almost 500 percent in one generation, and newcomers were absorbed into the city and nearby towns. By 1300 CE it had collapsed. Older explanations blamed environmental disaster or slow emigration. Newer research points to rising warfare, shown by defensive stockades, and to political tension inside the city made worse by environmental change. Its successors became small tribal republics. (p. 34)
Spread of Cahokian culture. People shaped by Cahokia are called Mississippian. Historians think emissaries carried religious ideas, specialized labor, and building styles to other places. People along the Black Warrior River rebuilt their city with pyramids and a large central plaza. Smaller communities sent young people there to learn. (p. 35)
Matrilineal chiefdoms. Mississippian societies were organized into chiefdoms. Chiefs were usually male, but authority passed through the mother's family line. Women had power because they controlled farming and food. The Lady of Cofitachequi, whom Spaniards met in 1540, ruled a community between the future Carolinas and the lower Mississippi. Historian Christina Snyder suggests she may have gained power because disease left no legitimate male heir. Her authority rested on control of food, trade, and weapons, and on her people's support. (p. 35)
The Maya. Two thousand years ago, the largest populations in North America included Puebloan, Mississippian, and Mesoamerican groups. In Mesoamerica the Maya built city-states such as Chichen Itza, Mayapan, and Uxmal, with large temples. A joint priesthood and nobility governed. In outlying villages, ordinary people kept clan structures. They worked nobles' fields, paid rent for land, and gave labor and taxes for roads and buildings. The Maya also developed writing, advanced mathematics, and very accurate calendars. (p. 35)
Poverty Point and "two types" of society. By about a thousand years ago, most Native people in what is now the US lived in small kin-based communities. The Cherokee, for example, emerged after the mound-building era, in a shift away from Cahokia's hierarchical style. Poverty Point, however, shows that farming was not required for complexity. Its builders did not farm, yet planning and building its huge earthworks took advanced mathematics and skilled labor, which suggests strong political organization. This challenges the view that societies were either hierarchical farming civilizations or simple foragers led by a chief and council. (pp. 36–37)
Matrilineal societies. Groups like the Gitksan and Cherokee traced ancestry through the mother. Fathers often joined the mother's extended family, and a mother's brothers sometimes played a bigger part in raising children. Women had great local influence, and men's status often depended on their ties to women. Women often chose husbands, and divorce was fairly easy. (p. 37)
Shifting cultivation and the Three Sisters. In shifting cultivation, farmers cut forest, burned the undergrowth, and planted in the nutrient-rich ashes. When yields fell, they moved on and let the forest regrow. In the Eastern Woodlands, burning underbrush also made open, parklike hunting grounds. The Three Sisters work as a team in small raised hills: corn gives bean vines something to climb, beans add nitrogen to the soil, and squash leaves hold water and shade the ground. Together the crops supplied most of the energy, fiber, vitamins, and minerals people need. (p. 37)
Gender roles and belief. Women had authority over farming and fertility, using hoes, adzes, and diggers, while children and elders gathered wild foods and medicines. Men usually hunted and fished, but big-game hunts for bison or caribou involved most of the community, and women cured hides, which they owned. Work roles were more flexible than in Europe: Luther Standing Bear recalled men at home helping lighten women's work. Many Native peoples believed all living things held a spirit, and they approached it through ceremony, song, and dance. Their religions were often inclusivist, meaning people could add new beliefs and practices to explain a changing world. (pp. 37–38)
Matrilineal descent. A matrilineal society traces family ancestry through the mother. The Gitksan and the Cherokee were organized this way. A child's father often joined the mother's extended family. Sometimes the mother's brothers, the child's uncles, played a bigger part in raising the child than the father did. Mothers had great influence locally, and a man's identity and standing often depended on his ties to women. Women commonly chose their husbands, and divorce was usually simple. (p. 37)
Shared work. Gender roles were more flexible than in Europe, and men and women worked as partners. Women held authority over farming, which linked them to the fertility of the earth. They worked the fields with hoes, adzes, and diggers. Men usually hunted and fished. A Hidatsa woman remembered her father helping her mother with the children, and Luther Standing Bear recalled hunters at home "lightening the work" of women. Big-game hunts for bison or caribou needed most of the community. Women took part by cleaning and curing hides, and they owned the finished hides. (pp. 37–38)
Shifting cultivation. Many groups used this cycle:
In the Eastern Woodlands, people also burned underbrush on purpose. This created open, parklike hunting grounds and cleared land for crops. (p. 37)
The Three Sisters. Corn, beans, and squash were planted together in small raised hills, and each helps the others:
Together the crops supplied most of the energy, fiber, vitamins, and minerals people need. They gave high yields without wearing out the soil. (p. 37)
Spirit and openness. Many Native peoples believed all living things have a spirit. People could call on spiritual power through ceremony, song, or dance. Many religions were also inclusivist: individuals could add new beliefs or practices to make sense of a changing world. (p. 38)
Misconception: chiefs as kings. Powerful Eastern Woodlands chiefs did not rule like European kings. Communities chose chiefs for their leadership and wisdom. Chiefs gave guidance and helped settle disputes, and they worked with a council. Any adult could speak in council. Decisions came by consensus, not majority vote. If people could not agree, those who disagreed could leave and found a new community nearby. (p. 39)
Varied systems. Not all societies were so democratic:
Land and generosity. Land was generally seen as something individuals had the right to use, not a commodity to buy and sell. Leaders were judged by how well they provided for their people. Powhatan of Virginia, for example, gave back about 90 percent of the resources he collected, focusing on the neediest. (p. 39)
Knowledge was kept in many forms. The Ojibwe wrote medical treatments, recipes, songs, and stories on birch-bark scrolls. Eastern Woodlands peoples wove fibers, quilled skins, and shaped earthworks. Plains artists painted hides. Northwest artists carved cedar poles. Maya, Zapotec, and Nahua peoples painted histories on textiles or hides and carved them in stone. The khipu, a knotted-string record made in central Peru between 600 and 1000 CE, has never been deciphered. Only about 600 survive because Spanish colonists destroyed most. (p. 40)
The Nahua moved from Aztlán into the Valley of Mexico around 1100 CE and founded small city-states called altepetl. The Mexica founded Tenochtitlán on a lake island in 1325. In 1427 Tenochtitlán and allies defeated Azcapotzalco. Tenochtitlán, Texcoco, and Tlacopan then formed the Triple Alliance, or Aztec Empire. They ruled through subject peoples who paid tribute: food, luxury goods, troops, and captives. (pp. 40–41)
To feed a dense population, the city used irrigation, dams, and chinampas, which were artificial islands built from dredged lake mud. During a drought and famine, Nezahualcoyotl of Texcoco built an aqueduct and irrigation system. By 1502, under Moctezuma II, the Mexica were the region's leading military and economic power. (p. 41)
Lenape. Lenape farmers worked river bottomlands in the Hudson and Delaware watersheds and gathered in larger groups for planting and harvest. Their many settlements were linked by clans, ceremony, kinship, and consensus. Descent was matrilineal, and a married man joined his wife's clan. Women had authority over marriages, households, farming, and choosing sachems. Sachems led by consent and earned authority through wisdom and experience. (pp. 41–42)
Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Between 600 and 1,000 years ago, war and drought pushed the Peacemaker to spread a plan for peace. Jigonhasse supported him first, and Hiawatha became his spokesperson. The Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca joined the Great League of Peace, represented by fifty sachems chosen by Clan Mothers. The Onondaga leader Tadadaho at first refused but later agreed. The council fire would stay at Onondaga. Weapons were buried under an uprooted white pine, whose branches stand for shelter and peace. The League's federal system inspired later US founders, and the Tuscarora joined in the nineteenth century. The wampum Hiawatha Belt shows the unity of the original five nations. (pp. 42–44)
European arrival and the Columbian Exchange moved people, animals, plants, and microbes between hemispheres. This broke up old power structures and brought violence and disease. But Native societies had developed for thousands of years before, so these events began the second chapter of American history, not the first. (pp. 44–45)
