THIS BOOK IS WRITTEN out of the simple, fierce conviction that our cultures are not dead and our civilizations have not been destroyed. It is written with the understanding that our present tense is evolving as rapidly and creatively as everyone elseโs. In a sense, it is a selfish project. I wantโI needโto see Indian life as more than a legacy of loss and pain, because I want to pass on to my beautiful children a rich heritage and an embracing vision of who we were and who we are. But I have not allowed myself to conjure alternative (hopeful but false) realities out of the desire to make up for a traumatic past or to imagine a better future. Looking at what actually was and is, beyond the blinders that the โdead Indianโ narrative has imposed, means reckoning with relentless attacks on our sovereignty and the suffering it has created. But it also brings into view the ingenious and resourceful counterattacks we have mounted over the decades, in resistance to the lives the state would have us live. It has allowed me to trace the many varied paths Indians have forged where old ones have been closed off or obscured.
age of exploration
There is a tendency to view the European settlement of North America, and the corresponding decimation of many tribes and cultures, as sudden and inevitable. It was neither.
- age of exploration: 10/12/1492
- 1490s-1510s
- John Cabot: Atlantic Canada
- Joรฃo Fernandes (Lavrador), Corte-Real: Labrador
- Juan Ponce de Leรณn: Caparra (Puerto Rico)
- Hernรกn Cortรฉs, Francisco Pizaarro: Mexico
- Spanish:
- Columbus
- 1526, 1566: South Carolina
- 1559: Spanish Pensacola
- 1527: Norman, Breton, Portuguese โ Newfoundland
- 1538: Huguenots โ Saint Kitts
- 1564: Jacksonville, French
- 1570: Chesapeake Bay, French
- 1585: Roanoke, English
- 1598: Sable, English
- 1490s-1510s
- early colonization failed due to disease, starvation, attack from indigenous and colonial groups (esp. Spain)
- focus would shift to exploitive settlement vs. exploitative colonization
- exploitative colonization: enclaves traveling to export resources
- exploitive settlement: permanent settlement + exp. colonization + efficiency improvement
- focus would shift to exploitive settlement vs. exploitative colonization
- failures due to exploiting โquick buckโ in gold and slaves; profit in โslow buckโ โ cotton, tobacco, timber, furs, slaved gold/silver mining, geems
- colonization depended on colonizers
- Spanish Catholics prosecuted Natives and pagans, but resistance led to Indian religious integration
- New England Puritans performed scarce integration in comparison
There is a tendency to treat Columbusโs arrival in the Caribbean and the subsequent colonization of mainland North America as of a piece. Certainly, the narrative still included in many textbooks is that Columbus sailed west to see if the earth was round and โfoundโ Indians; then Europeans who loved freedom and were fleeing tyranny came over, bringing the Old World and the New into a long, friendly handshake. There is another, more recent version, that the colonists arrived intent on genocide and were largely successful at it. Neither account is true. Columbus sailed west for money. The colonists came for money and they stayed for money. Indigenous peoples, for their part, resisted, helped, hindered, played, and constantly negotiated the changes brought by colonization and dispossession.
- use of violence, dependency, intermarriage, conversion, and rhetoric to colonize
columbus ๐
- context for columbus; Iberian civil wars, change of Ottoman and monopolists / European economy and politics; feudal mercantilism wars
Columbus was a hired gun. The Spanish crown needed someone to advance its interests. Like a gun, Columbus, as a representative of power, quickly became an agent of violence.
- modern Bahamas
- 1495: 550 Indians shipped for sale; 200+ diedd en route โ 1499 regular slave trade grown in Andalusian markets
- Andalusia: a community of Spain on the southern peninsula
- โstop slavingโ โ had to be โenemies of the Catholic church and of the crownโ and justified in capturing and enslaving
- โeventually he realized it would be more profitable to keep Indians in the New World in slavery than to send them back to Spanish marketsโ
- instead of enslavement and reeducation in religion and Spanish custom
[...] the Indians stayed in the Caribbean because โthe Indians of Espaรฑola were and are the greatest wealth of the island, because they are the ones who dig, and harvest, and collect the bread and other supplies, and gather the gold from the mines, and do all the work of men and beasts alike.โ In short, while Columbus found gold and silver and other natural resources, the indigenous lives and bodies were the greatest natural resource he came upon.
- 1498: Hispaniola schism
- negative relationship with Church: chose not to baptize Native peoples; โpreferred to leave them [โฆ] โsoulless,โ which meant that they were free to be enslavedโ
- torture and mutilation, sold into slavery, humiliation
north american colonization
cosmology and civilization
Most Indians do not see themselves as merely the first in a long series of arrivals to North America; they see themselves as indigenous. And the belief in tribal indigeneity is crucial to understanding modern Indian realities. The rhetorical stance that Indians are merely one group of travelers with no greater stake than any other clashes with Indiansโ cultural understanding that we have always been here and that our control over our place in this worldโnot to mention our control over the narrative and history of that placeโhas been deeply and unjustly eroded.
- โan equally vast and varied cultural landscape that had been evolving for ten millenniaโ
- earliest evidence: Pennsylvania and Chile
- Meadowcroft Rockshelter: 19,000 years ago; tools, 149 animal species, squash/corn/bean farming
- Monte Verde: complete village inundated in a peat bog, โa king of anaerobic amberโ; 19,000 ya
- evidence predates Bering strait (10,000 ya); settled before Asiatic wanderss
- prehistoric Indians share DNA with Asian and European populations
- hypothesis: Europeans migrated to far east Asia, then descendants migrated 20-30,000 ya
- different cosmologies of Natives which all establish they have always lived in North America
- Kiowa, small tribe origin: believe they came into the world through a hollow log, but someone got stuck
- Navajo (Dinรฉ): traveled from the center of the earth through a series of worlds until reaching earth, homelanadd
- many are โbottom-upโ tribes: emerged from the earth
- others are โtop-downโ: Creator made the heavens and earth, placed down handiwork and animals, and people came last
- And it bears mentioning that in our cosmology we are the most immature of all creation, having been made last, and that as such we have the least tenure upon the land.
Over these homelands various empires and nation-statesโSpanish, British, French, Dutch, and, later, Americanโhave crawled, mapping and claiming as they went. But neither these maps nor the conquests enabled by them have eradicated or obscured the fact that immigrants made their homes and villages and towns and cities on top of Indian homelands. Any history that persists in using the old model of New World history as something made by white people and done to Indian people, therefore, is not a real history of this place. Rather, as the historian Colin Calloway has suggested, history didnโt come to the New World with Cabot or Columbus; theyโand those who followedโbrought European history to the unfolding histories already here.
Science tells us only that the humans of the New World arrived a long time ago, and likely in many different ways. Culture and history tell us something more profound: that New World tribal people emerged here, as cultures and as people. No one else can make that claim. Columbus and Cabot and the rest didnโt discover the New World or new peoples. They met Indian people with distinct histories, homelands and technologies, and deepโand deeply consideredโconcepts of themselves and their place in the world.
the atlantic coast
Despite the best efforts of the government and the millions of dollars it spent, the Southeast was never entirely freed of Indians, and it likely never will be. They lived on in the swamps of Florida, the hills of southern Appalachia, the bayous of Alabama and Louisiana.
- โthe southeastโ; eastern U.S.
- many prehistoric tribes lived on lower grounds; coastal archaeology necessary
- over 5,000 ya; shell middens in Florida and N.C; vibrant coastal cultures
- Virginia: thousands of village sites
- unknown tribes and cultures: hypothesized small, mobile villages of 150 people who migrate from coast to inland with diets of fish, game, and forage
- populations shifting depending on availability of food
- 2500โ2000 BCE: clay pots โ more sedentary/settled style; evidence of food surpluses and reliance on plants, farming/cultivation of plants (sunflower, lambโs quarter, gourds, goosefoot, knotweed, Jer. artichokes)
- wooden palisades, warring
- lived in Florida for 12,000+ years by 1513
- prehistoric Florida was 2x size today
- dried; megafauna (bison and mastodon) until climate change and hunting
- Archaic and Paleolithic societies relied on aquaculture
- agriculture later, and absent in some societies: arose ~700 BCE
- 1513: many tribes, including Ais, Alafay, Amacano, Apalachee, Bomto, Calusa, Chatot, Chine, Guale, Jororo, Luca, Mayaca, Mayaimi, Mocoso, Pacara, Pensacola, Pohoy, Surruque, Tequesta, Timicua, and Viscayno
- tribes in other SE areas: Hatteras, Koroa, Chiaha, Biloxi, etc.
Spanish colonization
The Indian response to the Spanish was determined to a great extent by three constants of first contact: the spread of disease, attempts at slavery, and the spread of information.
- likely first colonizers were Spanish from Caribbean
- Ponce de Leรณn: 1513; โLa Floridaโ
- Pedro de Salazar: 500 slaves, spread of disease
- Pedro de Quejo and Francisco Gordillo: 1521
- Pรกnfilo de Narvรกez: 1527
- Hernando de Soto: 1539
- missions established in 16thc in Florida and Georgia; conscript and enslavement โ high disease โ colonial attacks
- Florida, Georgia, S/N.C, Kentucky, and Tennessee under Spanish and British colonialism
- tribes reduced to few amalgamated (โpolymerizedโ) tribes: Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee, Creek, Cherokee, Yamasee, Catawba, Miccosukee, and Seminole
- tribe wars, colonial-tribe alliances, government-tribe alliances (John Marshallโs court vs. Georgia, Andrew Jackson)
โRemovalโ (Trail of Tears)
- T.J, ~1803: abandon hunting, encourage agriculture and manufacturing; 18thc tribes were primarily agricultural
- growing yam, bean, corn, squash
- decline of hunting after white-tail deer driven to near-extinction bc of buckskin trade
- small settlements with intensive farming; established governments
- plantation-style farming of cotton and exports, even w/ black slaves
- 1829, Andrew Jackson
- Cherokee balance of power government; New Echota (Calhoun)
- ordered move west of Mississippi or join states (Georgia for Cherokee, who had anti-Creek hunting laws)
- John Ross at court; Marshall Trilogy: removal was unlawful
- regardless: 1830โ1850, 125,000+ Indians removed in wintertime
- 3,500+ Creek, 5,000+ Cherokee, and more died on road and more died of starvation in new land
So it wasnโt merely โgerms and steelโ that spelled the end of the โred race.โ The Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, and many others had weathered disease and rebounded. Moreover, they had done almost everything โrightโ by the standards of the new republic. They had fought for the government (including under Jackson at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend). They had devoted themselves to farming and trade, developed court and legislative systemsโthey had proved themselves socially and culturally adaptive. And this had done nothing to assuage the determination of the colonists and settlers to seize their land and resources. โNeither superior technology nor an overwhelming number of settlers made up the mainspring of the birth of the United States or the spread of its power over the entire world,โ writes historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. โRather, the chief cause was the colonialist settler-stateโs willingness to eliminate whole civilizations of people in order to possess their land.โ
The Seminole Wars
- Seminole tribe
- super-supertribe of Creek, Choctaw, and some other tribes
- allied with Spanish to displace tribes to Cuba
- traditionalist Creeks joined after Red Stick Rebellion (Creek War)
- ~6,000 around 1812
- raiding in Georgia; 1818 campaign by Jackson pre-presidency toward First Seminole War
- attack Seminole, recover runaway slaves, displace Spanish in Florida
- Florida and 28mil acres secureed, Treaty of Moultrie Creek (1823) moved Seminole into central Floridan reservation
- 1832: Treaty of Payneโs Landing
- enforced in 1835; aggravated resistance from chief
- Second War
- 12/28/1835: military enforcement โ โDade Massacreโ
- followed by plantation, fort, and Cape Fl lighthouse attack
- Florida swamp survival
- war ended in 1842
- captured Seminoles moved west to Indian Territory; many persisted
- Third War
- 1850s: remaining attacking settlers
- combatants removed west in 1858 (declared over 5/8/1858)
- remainder lived in backcountry and swamps of Florida
American Northeast
- peaked ~3000 BCE to 700 BCE
- sea level stabilized, temperature warmed; fishing and shellfish hunting
- 3000 BCE site: deer, moose, seal, walrus, beaver, mink, sea mink, river otter, fisheer, bear, swordfish, cod, sturgeon, sculpin, mallards, black ducks, loons, eagles, and shellfish
- cultural and population boom: funerary proceedings, pottery
- fracture of tribes and reliance of inland hunting
- cool temp, low calories (hickory nuts scarce)
- moose โ deer; foraging
- loss of practices
- maize encountered: 1200 CE
- population growth; internecine war
- European fish fleets early 16c
- Iroquois Confederacy tribes inland, Algonquian tribes on Atlantic coast
Algonquian tribes
- Powhatan, Nanticoke, Pennacook, Massachuset, Mohegan, Delaware, Mahican, Abenake, Miโkmaq, Pequot, Wampanoag, etc.
- seasonal villages/tribes, migratory
- summer netting birds and coastal foraging
- fall net spawning fish
- winter large villages, conservation
- agricultural mobility: slash-and-burn; new planting grounds
- This is one reason early European explorers and colonists found cathedral-like old-growth forests and rich, open country ready for planting. The โvirgin landโ they described was hardly virgin at all, having been shaped by the tribes of the region for millennia.
Iroquois Confederacy
- 1100 CE (Woodland period)
- Cayuga, Oneida, Seneca, Onondaga, and Mohawk
- intense, stable, protected villages w/ cornfields and squash/bean acres
-
- Tuscarora later
- contact story: Pilgrims
- 1500s; English fishing fleets moved from Denmark and Eur. Hanseatic League + Breton and Basque, using for reciprocal trade and theft
- Gaspar Corte-Real, Portugal, 1501: captured 57 Miโkmaq and enslaved
- 1580: moose hide theft
- French slavery, display of natives in England
- 1614: Thomas Hunt + 26 Wampanoag enslaved; John Smith (Pocahontas)
- spread of disease: 1592 measles, leptospirois
- 1616-1619: up to 90% population wiped out
- power vacuums, extinction
- 1630 war from Pequot: Pequot sold into slavery, exterminated
- 1890: expropriation and assimilation; Wampanoag, Mashantucket, Miโkmaq, Abenake, others endured
Great Lakes and Ohio River Valley
- crossroads region; โhub of the New Worldโ
- migrating waterfowl, fish, game followed ice age; reliance on waterways by 500 BCE Woodland period
- flow of knowledge: bow, pottery, horticulture, architecture, burial
- middle Woodland: Hopewell complex/exchange network/culture
- oxbow/floodplain homes with large villages, mounds, earthwork
- large effigy mounds
- well-off, well-connected
- fine dining on burial; animal bones
- artistic culture; carvings
- disappearance of network ~500CE, Cahokia, etc.
- tribal refugees from coast โ inland โ conflict and political disruption
- hunting disruption from disease
- war, illness, death
- beaver fur trade, Pays dโen Haut; 1530s and early 1540s; 1512
- Iroquois Confederacy strained travel with military might
- west Great Lakes: Shawnee, Odawa, Potawatomi, Ojibwe, Sac, Fox, Menominee, Ho-Chunk (Winnebago), Osage, Miami, Dakota, Cree, Mandan, Arikara, Hidatsa, Huron, etc.