The Western Hemisphere Before the Conquest
Indians are traditionally viewed as natural features of the land, rather like mountains or rivers or buffalo or troublesome, if colorful, wild varmints, affecting American history only by at times impeding the civilizing progress of advancing settlers.
Civilization in America emerged from certain centers, just as it did in the three other major continental land masses of the world. These centers tended to incorporate groups and territory on their peripheries, sometimes in growth spurts that led to periods of integration, sometimes very gradually through periods of decline and disintegration. The shifting of boundaries and control in the Western Hemisphere resembled that in Europe and Asia, especially in that it occurred over thousands and thousands of years.
The Iroquois Confederacy
- At first five, eventually six nations formed from thousands of agricultural villages from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic to the Carolinas.
- Population around two million.
Eastern Woodland Indians
- Many diverse groups who lived along the eastern coast, from Nova Scotia to Florida, and west to the Great Lakes.
- Three large language stocks: Algonquian, Iroquoian, and Siouan; included the Delaware, Ojibway/Chippewa, Sauk, Fox, Menominee, Kickapoo, Illinois, Winnebago, Shawnee, Seminole, Creek, as well as thirty or forty more nations.
- Population hard to estimate since thousands were obliterated before awareness of them was developed; certainly in the hundreds of thousands, possibly half a million or more.
Political organization of these semi-nomadic town dwellers took the form of large confederacies such as the Three Fires, composed of the Ojibways, Potawatomis, and Ottawas on the eastern end of Lake Superior. Wide trade networks were well established. The people were skilled in hunting; they also cultivated wild rice, squash, corn, and other crops. They developed snowshoes, used birch bark to build canoes and houses, and produced maple syrup. They introduced wampum, seashells strung on strings or braided into bets, used for trading and also as a way of remembering for a non-literate society; for example, belts might embody the terms of treaties in the symbolic placement of the shells. Some tribes were matri-lineal; some created clans claiming descent from the spirit of an animal, or special societies formed for a specific purpose such as war or healing. Occasional wars of battles gave the erroneous impression to early settlers that all these people were warlike; the French and English used ancient enmities to turn tribes against each other.
http://www.nativetech.org/scenes/
Peoples of the Plains and Prairies
- Several centers of state development, from West Texas to the sub-Artic.
- Cree in prairies of Canada, Lakota and Dakota (Sioux) in present-day North and South Dakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho to the west and south.
- Human population approximately one million; bison population around eighty million.
Fishing Peoples of the Pacific Northwest
The great sea has set me in motion.
Eskimo Song
- Included the Tlingit, Hoopa, Poma, Karok, and Yurok peoples.
- Total population of four million.
Villages between the Two Great Mountain Ranges
Nez Perce Man, 1899
- Nez Perce, Blackfeet, Shoshones, Utes, Paiutes and others.
- Inhabited difficult terrain, developed clan-based democratic communities which shifted habitations according to animal migrations and seasons.
- Around two hundred thousand people.
Peoples of the Southwest
Zuni Woman with a pot
Navajo Chant
- Desert and alpine arid and semi-arid region, fragile land base suffering from drought.
- One to two hundred city-states maintained by Pueblo and Hopi Indians, living according to the “right way”: moderations, industry, peaceful interactions.
- Developed vast irrigation systems, including extensive leak-proof canals.
- Also home for the Athabascans (Navajos and Apaches), who hunted and traded, interacted and intermarried with the Pueblo peoples and became involved in the inter-village fights and wars engendered by disputes over water usage and territory.
- Numbered around two hundred thousand.
Major Nations of the Southeas
Creek Warrior Osceola
- One of the most fertile agricultural belts in the world, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico along the southeast portion of what is now the United States.
- Muskogee-speaking Choctaw, Creek, and Chickasaw in the south center; Algonquin-speaking Cherokee in the east; Natchez in the west.
- Five major nations, a thriving civilization in 1492.
- Total population of at least two to three million.
These states functioned in a confederacy similar to that of the Iroquois, with decision making based on popular consensus. Among these groups were mound builders who created massive communal graves and temples; it is possible that they had contact with Mayans or other groups in Central America.
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/northamerica/creek_indians.html
http://www.tolatsga.org/chick.html
http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/tribes/natchez/natchezhist.htm
The Toltec Nation
Toltec Warriors at Tula Ruins
- Appeared around two thousand years ago in central Mexico, creating great cities.
- After flourishing for two centuries, wiped out by invaders who waged war among themselves.
- Expanded through wars of conquest to an area from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific and northwards.
- Population of some thirty million.
Mayan Civilization
- Prospered for five centuries in the northwest of what is now Central America.
- Population around ten million.
- Important as the place Columbus first landed.
- Total population of at least several million.
Four Major Nation-State Formations in the Southern Continent
Machu Pechu one of the sites of the Inca Empire
- The peoples of the Amazon basin.
- The Mapuche (Araucan) of the Pacific regions.
- The Guarani of Paraguay and Argentina.
- The peoples of the Inca state, present-day Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia.
- Total population fifty million.
http://www.mapuche-nation.org/english/main/feature/m_nation.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guarani

Kirkpatrick Sale, The Conquest of Paradise, 316-317
The Natives’ View of the Land
Cahokian Indian Mound
Men of the Good
… There was little or no quarrelling observed among the Tainos by the Spaniards. The old caciques and their councils of elders were said to be well-behaved, had a deliberate way of speaking and great authority…. The peoples were organized to the gardens (conucos) or to the sea and the hunt. They had ball games played in bateyes, or courtyards, in front of the cacique’s house. They held both ceremonial and social dances, called areitos, during which their creation stories and other cosmologies were recited. Among the few Taino-Arawak customs that have survived the longest, the predominant ideas are that ancestors should be properly greeted by the living humans at prescribed times and that natural forces and the spirits behind each group of food and medicinal plants and useful animals should be appreciated in ceremony.
As can be seen throughout the Americas, American indigenous peoples and their systems of life have been denigrated and misperceived. Most persistent of European ethnocentrisms toward Indians is the concept of “the primitive,” always buttressed with the rule of “least advanced” to “ most advanced” imposed by the prism of Western Civilization—the more “primitive” a people, the lower the place they are assigned in the scale of “civilization.” The anti-nature attitude…[inherent in this idea] came over with the Iberians of the time, some of whom even died rather than perform manual labor, particularly tiling of the soil. The production and harvesting of food from sea, land, and forests were esteemed human activities among Tainos. As with other indigenous cultures, the sophistication and sustainability of agricultural and natural harvesting systems was an important value and possibly the most grievous loss caused by the conquest of the Americas.
Jose Barreiro, “A Note on Tainos: Whither Progress?”
It is difficult to get an accurate picture of the inhabitants of the lands visited by Columbus for two reasons: overall, they were very quickly destroyed, and most of the words we have on the subject were written by the Europeans who were responsible for that destruction. The current state of knowledge about pre-Columbian civilization in the Western Hemisphere reflects scholars’ fairly recent attempts to describe the cultures found by Europeans in a fair and nonjudgmental way.
For a long time learned writers wanted to justify the conquest by pretending that the hunting and gathering tribes existing in what became the Americas had only recently migrated from Asia over the Bering Strait and therefore had little claim to the vast resources of the ”new world.” If the explorers and colonizers found only a seemingly endless, relatively unpopulated wilderness, they were clearly entitled, indeed mandated by the presumptions of their own culture, to tame it. And furthermore, if the groups of human beings they encountered were unorganized, unskilled, unchurched, unschooled—in short, “primitive”—then the colonizers had every right to share their superior civilization. According to this line of reasoning, massacres and murders were necessitated by the resistance of the subjects of their generosity.
Now it is generally agreed that human beings have lived on the American continent for at least twenty thousand years and possibly as much as twice that long. They may indeed be the oldest known people on earth (Brandon, 26)
Scholars disagree about where they originated. It is possible that they crossed what is now Alaska from what is now Siberia, using a land bridge exposed by the lowering of the ocean during the last Ice Age. Moving southward and populating the whole continent took thousands of generations, until much, much later, by the late fifteenth century, many diverse cultures and civilizations with very long histories occupied the land mass of which Europe knew nothing.
Population estimates range widely, but a rough academic consensus now maintains that between ninety and one hundred twenty million people lived in the Americas before Columbus’ voyage, compared to sixty to seventy million people in Europe at the same time (excluding Russia.)
The extraordinarily rich variety of cultures had adapted not only to their wide range of physical environments but also to each other. Some were gentle and peaceful, some were fierce and quarrelsome, some were reserved in their demeanor, and some were emotional. Some remained hunters and gatherers, others developed kingdoms and empires.
http://ezinearticles.com/?America-Before-Columbus&id=1730020
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_American_indigenous_peoples
Languages
Cherokee script
Groups in the Western Hemisphere spoke some two thousand distinct languages at the time of the conquest, some as different from one another as Chinese and English. In the entire “old world” about three thousand languages are known to have existed at the end of the fifteenth century. The languages of the “new world” can’t be classified as primitive, in vocabulary or in any other respect.
“Whereas Shakespeare used about 24, 000 words, and the King James Bible about 7,000, the Nahuatl of Mexico used 27,000 words, while the Yahgans of Tierra del Fuego, considered to be one the world’s most retarded peopled, possessed a vocabulary of at least 30,000 words” (Stravianos, 213-214)
http://www.geocities.com/cheyenne_language/langlinks.htm
http://www.native-languages.org/
Characteristics
We are all thankful to our Mother, the Earth, for she gives us all that we need for life. She supports our feet as we walk about upon her. It gives us joy that she continues to care for us as she has from the beginning of time. To our Mother, we send greetings and thanks. Now our minds are one.
Although generalization is risky because of the variety of lifestyles and systems represented in the many pre-Columbian cultures, it’s safe to say that at least some of the cultures of the “new world” exhibited admirable characteristics. People in those ancient societies tried to live according to the moral principles agreed on by their forebears. Among many groups’ freedom and equality prevailed, with no division between rich and poor, no form of servitude, no money, no meddling governmental bureaucracy, no private property. In many cases governments were established to promote the general good, not to create a state apparatus for repression.
http://impurplehawk.com/naspirit.html
http://www.livingmyths.com/Native.htm
http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Wisdom/poemsidx.html
Attitudes toward Property
One very basic difference between the two worlds, the one known to Europeans and the one unknown, was the attitude toward property.
With some notable exceptions, the European way of life had developed into a focus on individual competition for the acquisition of property. What motivated the early colonizers was desire for gold and other minerals, for land as a means of production, for labor to extract or create wealth and commodities, and for all the other promised riches of the newly discovered territory. From humble settlers looking for small land-holdings to powerful forces of land and mineral speculation, all white frontier expansionists understood the advantages of owning property.
The basic attitude of the inhabitants of the unknown world (also with some notable exceptions) seems to have focused more on cooperation, using property in common rather than competing to acquire private property. In many of the native groups, all members seemed to live as equals, with no hierarchies or class structure. Societies emphasized the nonmaterial satisfaction of being in harmony with nature; individuals didn’t appear to work very hard. The profit motive was far from primary.
“It might be said, in sum, that the Indian world was devoted to living while the European world was devoted to getting. This may be the essence of the Indian world and image” (Brandon, 8)
For instance, the people referred to as the Incas, one of the most highly developed civilizations according to European criteria, valued harmony with the universe as their chief goal of life. Their intricate political organization relied on two principles: reciprocity and redistribution.
Reciprocity, the mutual exchange of gifts, was important to the allyus, groups united by kinship ties that formed the basis of society. Gradually, these small groups organized into much larger units and fed into a central government which had a high respect for local institutions. Farmers paid a tribute from their surpluses to a coordinating center, responsible for storing the collected produce and redistributing it to local chieftains in time of need (Wachtel, 61).
http://academic.udayton.edu/race/02rights/s98blak2.htm
Meaning of the Land
“In a way that few Europeans could understand, the land was Indian culture: it provided Native Americans with their sense of a fixed place in the order of the world, with their religious observances, and with their lasting faith in the importance of the struggling but united community as opposed to the ambitious acquisitive individual” (Segal and Stineback,28)
Identification with the land in no way implied ownership. The concept of owning the land was as foreign to the Indians as the idea of owning the air would be to us. The early inhabitants had an intimate and abiding relationship with nature that colored their view of humans as only one of many species participating in an intricate web of life. The rituals, myths, and ceremonies passed down through the ages that helped individuals understand their obligations and responsibilities played a primary role, at the very center of existence.
Living on the land required conscious caretaking, a finely-tuned sense of balance, and respect in such everyday activities as hunting, farming and foraging.
http://www.wvculture.org/hiStory/indland.html
http://www.freeonlineresearchpapers.com/difference-between-european-native-american-perspective
http://matriarchy.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=146&Itemid=29
Importance of Giving Gifts

Potlatch ritual
The generosity of the Indians was extolled by Columbus and other early explorers. It was a natural product of the understanding among natives that life depended on the largesse of nature. Grateful recipients of good harvests and successful hunting expeditions routinely shared their bounty with others in the ritual known as “potlatch” among Northwest Coast Indians.
The formal distribution of food and other goods to the community was deeply engrained in the society and went beyond mere customs of hospitality; the colonizers benefited greatly from its practice.

The natives who rowed out to investigate the strange intruders in their gigantic ships, greatly overdressed for the climate and so eager to display the power of their weapons, were Tainos, related to a larger group known as Arawaks. Evidently they were peaceful and agricultural, living in houses built of perishable materials such as reed and palm trees.
Some of their household implements have been recovered: small stones chipped and carved in the shape of chisels, gouges, spearheads, hoes, and knives; mortars and pestles, the latter with carved heads, possibly idols; beads of stone and oyster shell and fragments of pottery.
Frederick Ober, commissioned in 1890 as a special representative of the World’s Columbian Exposition to follow the path taken by Columbus, reported on his findings, “There yet remain other articles to mention, which show that these barbarians did have among them, or were in communication with, skillful artisans who carved wonderful things in wood and stone, the like of which have not been found elsewhere…
“When the Indies were discovered, all the common people sat on the ground in the presence of strangers, but… their chiefs made use of low seats, of stone or wood, carved in the shape of a beast or reptile, with very short legs, its head and tail erect, and with golden eyes” (Ober, 84)
http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3390
Variety and Harmony
It is safe to say, then, that in the immediate world Columbus and his crew “discovered,” human beings lived in harmony with nature and shared nature’s bounty and that the larger world later visited by other Europeans was characterized by a very large populations and a wide variety of cultural patterns.