Dr. Robert Owens Chronicles the History of the Future

America: Chapter One – Indians December 18, 2024

Native Americans (even pre-Columbian ones) are often enlisted in our contemporary debates through commercials and quotes.  Such as when Iron Eyes Cody an Italian American actor famous for portraying Indians stood with an artificial tear rolling down his cheek as he looked at discarded fast food wrappers, or the stirring environmental speech supposedly given by Chief Seattle which has no basis in History.  This is the attempted manipulation of modern populations through the exploitation and distortion of another culture.  It is cultural chauvinism of the most blatant kind and shows no respect or appreciation for the dignity of others.  Our study seeks to avoid this type of crass insensitivity and to discuss the culture which makes up the milieu of American colonial life in context.

Where did the Native Americans come from?  Most experts propose and support the Land Bridge or Bearing Straight Theory.  This theory, which is rejected by most Native Americans, posits that during the last ice age the water levels fell so low that the Bearing Straight between North America and Asia became dry land.  Across this land bridge the ancestors of the Native Americans, tribal people from Siberia and Mongolia, crossed spreading out to fill both North and South America.  Native Americans point to their own histories and cultural knowledge to dispute these theories most attesting to the belief that they were always here.  However, some variation of the immigration theories is generally accepted by non-Native American scholars. 

According to migration theories the initial and the largest waves of migration ended approximately 10,000 years ago as the retreating glaciers brought sea levels to their modern levels.  Subsequent waves of migration were accomplished by tribes with boats such as the Intuits and Aleuts.  These Paleo-Indians lived by hunting and gathering as was typical of all Paleolithic peoples.   They followed herds and weather patterns, seeking better living conditions and adequate food supplies ever South and East spreading out to fill every nook and cranny of the Americas.  These resourceful people adapted to the many different environmental niches, building societies and technologies that utilized available resources to an amazing degree.

The occupation of the land soon brought changes.  The large mammals such as the giant beaver, the mastodon, the horse and the camel which once covered the vast grasslands died out or were hunted to extinction.  The climate warmed and the circumstances changed.  Growing populations began to jostle for resources and constant subdivision soon brought contending groups to a land once devoid of humanity.

As time progressed the Paleo-Indians of the early migration period developed into the Archaic Indians of tribal history.  These people became adept at horticulture changing and adapting the landscape to meet their needs.  The increase of food supplies combined with the warming climate led to increased life spans, population growth and further solidification of cultural differences.  The ingenuity and skill of the various Native American peoples in adapting wild plants to their use is seen in the many crops which through the Columbian Exchange have become staples of the world’s food supply.

Many large and highly specialized cultures developed in the area that would one day become the United States.

 In the Southwest the Anasazi and the Hohokam built great cities and some of the largest irrigation systems in the ancient world.  They established trading networks that stretched across the continent and deep into Central America.  These remarkable people built impressive cliff dwellings and vast complexes such as in Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde.  These cultures also developed pottery and horticulture to an amazing degree.  Their distinctive pottery motifs are still popular and the large surpluses of food they were able to grow supported a diverse and specialized civilization that endured for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years.

The Mound Builders built impressive cities and controlled a large area along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers.  They built their cities as far North as Minnesota and as far South as Florida, as far west as Oklahoma and as far East as Ohio.  They built the great city of Cahokia in what is today Illinois.  At its peak Cahokia was the largest settlement north of central Mexico.  It thrived for more than three centuries.  This city of pyramids and paved streets possessed a population from 10,000 to 20,000.  They erected the third largest pyramid in the Americas.  The traders from Cahokia traveled across much of North America, from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes, from the Atlantic coast to Oklahoma.

The Native Americans had many different religious beliefs.  Overall, these religious systems can almost universally be typified as animism.  Which is a belief in numerous personalized, supernatural beings endowed with reason, intelligence and volition.  And that these beings inhabit both objects and living beings and govern their existences. Basically, this is the belief that everything is conscious, that everything has a soul.  The term has been further extended to refer to a belief that the natural world is a community of living personas, only some of whom are human.

Important parts of these beliefs included respect for all things believed to have a spirit, the use of dreams and visions to communicate with the spirit world and shamanism.  Once the Europeans arrived their various versions of Christianity intruded into the religious beliefs and practices of the Native Americans.  This often led to a blend of the two religious systems best typified by the development and growth of the Native American Church.

These are the people who greeted the Europeans as they arrived in the Americas.  They were a highly social people divided into multiple civilizations and cultures.  Their technology was as varied as their languages and their societies ranged from simple to highly complex.  One thing they weren’t was savages in an untamed wilderness.