Native American History: A History from Beginning to End

by Hourly History

“We will be known forever by the tracks we leave.” —Dakota proverb

Given this multitude of different peoples living in different areas and adopting very different ways of life and different languages, it will be seen that there is no such thing as a typical Native American. The image that most people have of Native Americans is one based on the tribes of the Plains, but this has almost nothing to do with the lives of the vast majority of these people.

America, before the coming of western settlers, was a rich tapestry of different ways of life, languages, religions, cultures, and social systems. The nomadic, warlike people of the Plains had very little in common with the peaceful town-dwelling tribes of the Northwest Coast, but all are classed together as Native Americans.

Although the horse is believed to have first evolved in North America, it became extinct at around the same time that the first human settlers crossed the Bering Land Bridge. When the first European settlers arrived, they brought horses with them, and some tribes adopted the horse as a means of hunting and warfare.

In the period before white settlement, there weren’t any horses in North America, nor were there any domesticated animals such as oxen, which meant that farming was limited to what could be achieved using human muscle. Domesticated dogs were, however, common amongst Native American tribes. They were used for hunting, as guards, and for transportation and hauling sleds. In some tribes, dogs were also used for food.

Most farming involved the “three sisters:” winter squash, maize, and beans, generally tepary or common beans. All three originated in South America and were gradually spread throughout North America—many tribes used these products of farming as trade goods. These thr...

Tall, straight maize provided a structure on which climbing beans could thrive without the need for poles. The beans put nitrogen into the soil, which improved the growth of maize and squash. The squash provided ground cover which helped to eliminate weeds. A diet based on maize, beans, and squash provided complex carbohydrates and amino and fatty acids and constituted a healthy diet, particularly if supplemented by fish or meat. Those tribes who lived close to the sea or rivers ...

There was no distinction between what we would now call the natural and supernatural, and ghosts and spirits were seen as simply another element of the natural world. Animals were often used as symbols of particular characteristics or as embodiments of spirits. Most of these religions believed in the persistence of the human soul and in an afterlife which wasn’t very different from real life.

One of the odd and so far unexplained factors of Native American religious tradition is the widespread inclusion of a story of a catastrophic flood which decimated humanity and left only a few survivors to start anew. This account was included in the traditions of many diverse tribes, and it echoes similar beliefs held by the Sumerians in ancient Mesopotamia. There is no possible point of contact between Sumerians and Native Americans of the same period, which has led some anthropologists and historians to speculate that this myth may be based on an actual event that occurred in humankind’s ancient past.

However, life in pre-colonial America was not a peaceful rural idyll. Many tribes were warlike, and there were a great many wars between tribes, often conducted with extreme brutality. Tribes fought over hunting rights, cultural differences, and sometimes simply because they wanted to expand into territory controlled by a rival tribe.

Fighting and war were, to most tribes, an entirely natural and understandable part of life, and successful and brave warriors were accorded great respect. The killing of women and children was routine in these wars as was the taking of trophies to signify the killing of an enemy—tribes in the Southwest and the Plains took scalps both as trophies and to be used in tribal ceremonies.

Wars seldom caused huge numbers of casualties, but the treatment of those captured was extreme. Captives were routinely tortured to death, not to extract information, but as a form of entertainment. Women were often the torturers as it was considered that they had the patience to keep their hapless victims alive fo...

Native American culture was extremely varied in the thousands of years it existed before contact with Europeans. There were hundreds of tribes speaking hundreds of languages and living in different ways in different parts of the country.

No-one is quite sure who the first European visitors to the Americas were. It seems likely that the first white settlers were Vikings who arrived in the late tenth century CE, though they established only small, temporary settlements and made no attempt at conquest in mainland America. They did build settlements in present-day Canada, and it is thought that they were motivated to visit the east coast of North America in search of timber to use for construction and boat building. The impact of the Vikings on Native American people appears to have been minimal.

Columbus initially thought that he had arrived at the eastern side of Asia, which is why he referred to the indigenous people he found as Indians. It was soon realized that he had discovered an entirely different continent, but this name continued to be used to describe Native American people for the next 500 years.

This conflict, which occurred from 1675 to 1678 ended with the almost complete destruction of the Wampanoag and Narragansett. It also inflicted major damage on the colonies—several colonial towns were destroyed and one in ten colonial men of fighting age died. The fact that England had provided virtually no support to the colonists during this bitter conflict led some to wonder whether the English colonies might do better if they were independent. Some historians mark the beginning of what was to become a movement for American independence to this first major conflict between New England colonists and Native American tribes.

“Life is not separate from death. It only looks that way.” —Blackfoot proverb

Spain still occupied parts of present-day Florida, but the Spanish Empire was becoming increasingly weak, and its hold on its American colonies was beginning to slip—there were never more than a few hundred Spanish colonists in Florida.

One of the problems was alcohol. Before the arrival of European settlers, Native Americans had relatively little contact with alcoholic beverages. Some southwestern tribes traditionally brewed wines and beers, but these had a relatively low alcohol content and were mainly used during religious ceremonies. The Europeans brought with them distilled spirits and new attitudes towards alcohol.