Tribe: The Pawnee Nation, which includes the Chaui, the Kitkehakhi, the Pitahawirata and the Skidi. "Pawnee" is the name given to them by the Lakota, who were one of their enemies. They call themselves the "Chahiksichahiks."
Meaning of Name: "Chahiksichahiks," means "the men of men." "Chaui" means "People in the middle." "Kitkehakhi" means "Little Muddy Bottom Village." "Pirahawirata" means "Man Screaming," and "Skidi" means "Wolf."
Location: The Pawnee had lived in Nebraska and northern Kansas since about 1250 AD, but relocated of their own volition to Oklahoma in 1874.
Original Language: Pawnee, a dialect of Caddo.
Tribal Affiliations: The French, the Americans, the Cherokee.
Traditional Enemies: The various Pawnee tribes looked after their own until they were forced to band together to resist the English, the Spanish, and, at one time, the Americans who encroached upon their land. They were at frequent war with the Lakota, the Cheyenne, the Arapaho, the Comanche and the Kiowa.
Traditional Style of Housing: The Pawnee were semi-sedentary, and during the Spring and Fall, they lived in rectangular or circular earth lodges built on the high banks of rivers. These looked like small hills covered in grass, like a Hobbit's shire, with a foyer leading to an entrance facing east. Each lodge took about two years to build due to the need for seasoned wood and dry mud and grass. First, a three-foot deep hole had to be dug, and then roughly ten-foot wood scaffolding had to be imbedded firmly in the ground and erected over the hole. The center poles were painted in sacred black, white, yellow and red, and a second outer ring of poles outlined the circumference, with horizontal poles that provided stability to the lodge. More poles covered the wooden frames, upon which was placed thatch and dirt, upon which eventually grass grew. The entire lodge was so stable that it could withstand straight-line winds and tornadoes, and since most storms travel west to east, the east-facing entrance meant that debris would not clog up the door. Each lodge lasted between ten and fifteen years, or twenty-to-thirty tornado seasons, and housed up to fifty people, usually the mother's line. And during the Summer and Winter, which was buffalo-hunting season, the Pawnee lived in teepees which could be easily transported.
Traditional Attire: Before contact with white people, Pawnee clothing was fairly typical of the People of the Plains; colorfully-beaded, fringed and quilled buckskin shirts and leggings, moccasins, ponchos, and blankets made of skins for the men, and long plain buckskin dresses or ponchos and skirts for the women. After the white men came, they quickly incorporated ready-to-wear off-the-rack clothing into their everyday wardrobe and embellished them with silk ribbons and other decorations. The women wore their hair plain and long. The men sported scalp-locks which were often greased with buffalo fat and curved backwards until it looked like a backwards-facing horn. Otherwise, Pawnee men wore their hair loose and long, and with roaches or fancy feathered headdresses for ceremonial occasions.
Traditional Foods: While the earth-lodges were (hopefully) safely up on the bluffs overlooking the rivers and streams, Pawnee crops were closer to the water where the women grew corn, beans, squash, melons and possibly sunflowers. They probably also grew their own or foraged for mulberries, wild plums, asparagus, grapes, elderberries, chokeberries, gooseberries, raspberries, chives, borage, calendula, hyssop, hickory nuts, black walnuts, crabapples, yucca and edible mushrooms. Hunting season brought in bison, bear, elk and deer meat which could be cooked or dried and eaten as jerky or used in making pemmican. The Pawnee men also hunted panther and skunk, but mostly for their fur and hides with which to make accessories. The women, probably the younger ones, also went on hunting trips and did the meat processing, the cooking, the tanning and the setting up of their teepees.
Position of Women: The Pawnee were matrilineal and matrilocal, meaning that lineage was reckoned through the mother's line, and that young men moved into their mothers-in-law's lodges, although they were certainly welcomed back into their own mother's homes. The women owned their own lodges and teepees, owned their own equipment, and did most of the work. They also made most of the decisions for the family and tribe when it came to marriages, food production, diplomacy, trade and peace, and men made most of the decisions when it came to hunting, war, spiritual matters and health. There was, however, one notable and probably elderly female warrior who went by the interesting name, "Old Lady Grieves the Enemy." Women were not, on the other hand, allowed to be chieftains, medicine men or shamans, nor could they inherit or bequeath property, probably apart from what they owned.
Pawnee Courtship: Although I couldn't find any information specific to Pawnee courtship, it probably follows patterns similar to those found in other People of the Plains. And if young women went on hunting trips with young men, this would provide an excellent opportunity for the man to show off his horsemanship and hunting skills, and for the woman to show off her cooking and domestic skills. What did come up in my research is that Pawnee relationships were fluid and serial monogamy was common, which does explain why the lineage of the children was reckoned through the mother's line.
Interesting Tidbits:
The Skidi Pawnee, at one time, practiced a somewhat humane form of human sacrifice as part of their fertility ritual. In this, a Skidi hunter-warrior would dream of the Morning Star, a male figure of light, and then tell the Morning Star priest (or holy man) about the dream. They would then gather a group of men to raid a teepee village belonging to the Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche or Kiowa where they would capture one of their enemy's maidens. This did nothing to promote peace between the Pawnee and their enemies who would be forced to try to capture her back again or seek revenge. Provided that they were not successful, the enemy maiden would be taken back to the hunter-warrior's teepee and be taken very good care-of until the hunting party returned to their earth-lodges in the Spring, and probably thereafter, until her time of ritual sacrifice. (I would suppose that if the young hunter-warrior fell in love with her during this time, she would be rendered ineligible for virgin sacrifice, and the Skidi men would have to raid another village for her replacement.)
Then, when the Morning Star was barely visible through a red early-morning sunrise (the beginning of the Spring rainy season), the tribe would know that it was time for the sacrifice, at which time, they would build an altar/stage above an open pit in which they would place sacred objects. Then, in the very early morning about four days after the first rains of the season, all of the men, boys and male babies of the Skidi tribe would gather just before daybreak around the altar/stage. The enemy maiden was then brought forth from the hunter-warrior's earth-lodge and tied to a pole on the altar. As soon as the Morning Star arose, she would be shot through the heart with a well-aimed arrow, stabbed with a knife to hasten death and bleeding, and then shot full of arrows by the other Skidi men. After that, her body would be taken to a place on the eastern side of the village where it would be placed face-down upon the earth and her blood would flow into the ground to give nourishment to the prairie-lands.
Parenthetically, I could not find information regarding the beginnings of this custom. However, since it bears some similarity to Aztecan customs, I think that it is possible that in the 1540's, when the Spanish explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado passed through Pawnee country looking for riches, he may have described it to the locals, since he had passed through Aztec country first, and that they thought it was a swell idea and decided to make this custom their own. And, while the Skidi may have done ritual human sacrifices long before 1540 AD, they are, so far, the only Native American tribe north of the Mexican border that I have come across to do so.
Traditional Religions: Native American Church, Christianity, traditional tribal religions.
Slavery and the Pawnee: The Pawnee were so often captured and enslaved that the word "Pawnee" became equivalent to "Slave." However, as can be seen in the "Interesting Customs" section, the Pawnee also enslaved members of other tribes for sacrifice and probably to do the menial labor like weeding the crops, feeding the horses, setting up teepees, tanning the hides, making the wicker mats, making the lodges and general fetching-and-carrying.
Current Population: There are currently about 3200 registered Pawnee. This is down from 60,000 reckoned in the early 18th Century when they were one of the largest tribes in the Plains.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: Casinos, gas stations, smoke shops and a truck stop.
Famous Pawnee: None that I have heard of.
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Thursday, May 21, 2015
An Aside on Sign Language
Language is essential to communication, for without communication, there can be no peace or understanding or coming to agreements. Unfortunately, in the Great Plains, and in other places, communication was hindered for lack of a common language. The Native Americans of the Plains, the Desert, and points north and south, spoke Sahaptian, Siouan, Muscogean, Tanoan, Algonquin, Athabascan, Caddo, Numic, Pueblo, Nahuetl, their own unique tribal language, or some dialect. When white men invaded or settled in their territories, they spoke English, French, Gaelic, German or Spanish. How could one tribe communicate with another for purposes of trade or peace (because war pretty much speaks for itself), or with white men, if they did not speak the same language? Even a talented translator can only do so much.
And so it was that Native American Sign Language was born, and from that came American Sign Language, which, since English is the lingua franca of the United States, is still used to "speak" to the deaf. There were many variations of Native American Sign Language, depending on the tribe, but for the most part, it helped at least 36 tribes communicate with each other and with white men. Given my limited computer skills, it would be impossible for me to include a sampling of sign language here. Fortunately, there are many books on Native American Sign Language that are available on the Internet, as well as websites and videos. One such website is http://www.warpaths2peacepipes.com/native-american-indian/native-American-sign-language.htm
And so it was that Native American Sign Language was born, and from that came American Sign Language, which, since English is the lingua franca of the United States, is still used to "speak" to the deaf. There were many variations of Native American Sign Language, depending on the tribe, but for the most part, it helped at least 36 tribes communicate with each other and with white men. Given my limited computer skills, it would be impossible for me to include a sampling of sign language here. Fortunately, there are many books on Native American Sign Language that are available on the Internet, as well as websites and videos. One such website is http://www.warpaths2peacepipes.com/native-american-indian/native-American-sign-language.htm
An Aside on Diseases
Before white men came along and screwed everything up for the Native Americans, the indigenous tribes of North, Central and South America enjoyed a fair amount of good health, and as a result, were stronger, taller and more robust than the Europeans. And there were good reasons for this: They ate healthy, natural and organic food which were not saturated with pesticides, chemicals, salts, preservatives, fillers or deep-fried, except for Fry Bread, and their meat, most of which was wild, was not artificially fattened or confined to small quarters.
The women also got plenty of sunshine and exercise either by working on their gardens and crops, gathering fruits and vegetables from nature (plenty of walking, reaching and bending), carrying around infants in cradle-boards, pounding meat into thin strips for drying, grinding corn or acorns, or by setting up their own teepees. The men got plenty of sunshine and exercise, too, via hunting, fishing, sports and waging war. The eighteen million Native Americans who lived in the United States before white men got here weren't all compacted into small cities where diseases can easily spread, but were spread out across the entire country. Cahokia, the largest Native American city in North America, had a population of only about 40,000 at its peak, which is less populated than Joplin, Missouri. Otherwise, most tribes consisted of, at most, about two hundred people in small villages scattered across the countryside, and this, too, confined diseases to a relatively small area.
On the other hand, as much as the Native Americans' healthy lifestyle worked for them, after the white men brought European diseases to the New World, their tribal lifestyle worked against them. Because they felt very strongly that no one should go hungry, food was shared with the entire tribe, and shared food can transmit diseases. They also felt that no one should have to suffer alone, and so when someone fell ill, that person was not quarantined, but was visited by his or her friends and family members, who also fell ill. Furthermore, while most Native Americans tried to avoid white men like the plague, others could not manage to stay away from the white merchants who sold them things that they found that they could not live without, like nice cotton material and cast-iron skillets. Therefore, those tribes-persons who bought things from the traveling salesmen spread diseases to whomever they came in contacted with. Sweat lodges and menstrual lodges, too, by their very nature, served as incubators for diseases, and later so did poverty and lack of access to medical care.
Additionally, while tribal shamans and native healers could handle some of the minor diseases and those related to stress, they were helpless against Smallpox, Measles, Scarlet Fever, Typhoid Fever, Typhus, Influenza, Pertussis, Tuberculosis, Cholera, Diphtheria, Chicken Pox, and sexually-transmitted diseases. Some of these diseases, like Measles and Chicken pox, if contracted by children, do not usually result in death, but others, like Tuberculosis, are deadly no matter what the person's age. And what Native American disease was bestowed upon the whites for their gift of "civilization?" Possibly Syphillis, but scientists are still debating it.
To make matters worse, if a Native American managed to survive the diseases brought to them by the invading Europeans, sometimes he or she chose to commit suicide rather than live with disfiguring scars, blindness or deafness that might have accompanied the disease. And some of those diseases caused other secondary problems, like encephalitis and brain damage, kidney problems, heart problems, meningitis, pneumonia, gastrointestinal bleeding, breathing problems, paralysis, sepsis, toxic shock syndrome, spontaneous abortions and chronic infection. And if his or her entire family had been wiped out by Smallpox, for example, suicide might seem like a good option whether he or she were suffering from long-term physical symptoms or not.
Now, white people were aware that the Native American folk were contracting these diseases, and many of them felt badly about it and tried to do something about it, especially after vaccines came out in the middle of the nineteenth century. Others, not so much. The Calvinists and hardline Christians blamed the Native Americans for their illness by saying that the genocide of Native Americans was God's Plan for European domination. Why? Because the "godless" Native Americans were not Christians and had not been baptized or married in a Christian church, even if they had enjoyed a deeply spiritual life and had married in accordance with the customs of their tribe. Therefore, in the hardline Christians' tight little minds, Native Americans were living in sin, and deserved whatever disease they got, even though it was the white man who had brought it to them.
Other white men, who were naturally immune, somehow conveyed the impression that it was only because of the blessings of the Christian God that they hadn't succumbed to the illnesses that wiped out entire tribes, and if the Native Americans would just join their church, then God would smile upon them and bless them with immunity, too. Unfortunately, in many places, the Native Americans who joined the missions succumbed even more quickly to diseases because of their overcrowded and badly-ventilated living-quarters, and one Spanish priest opined that something had to be done because Smallpox was depriving the mission of much-needed slaves.
Even if Native Americans didn't catch Smallpox and the like, they still ran the risk of catching something lethal from the domesticated animals that white men had brought with them from Europe. White men had been living side-by-side with their animals for thousands of years and, through natural selection (because those who lived were stronger, more resilient and immune, and able to pass on their immunity to their children) didn't succumb to the diseases that those animals might have carried. But on this side of the Atlantic, there were no domesticated cattle, horses, chickens, pigs, goats, sheep, geese, donkeys, and, if one considers them "domesticated," cats. And some of these animals carried pathogens which, if spread to pregnant women through contact with fecal matter, led to spontaneous abortions which led to a decrease in the number of tribal members. And some of these diseases were just plain deadly to people in general, especially when contracted by infants, the elderly, or people whose immune systems had already been compromised.
These diseases and their carriers is as follows: Tetanus: horses, donkeys and sheep; Salmonellosis: horses, sheep, cows, pigs and goats; Ringworm: horses, sheep, cows, pigs and goats; Anthrax: horses, cows and donkeys; Brucellosis: horses and cows; Leptospirosis: horses, cows, pigs and goats; Cryptosporidiosis: horses, sheep, cows, pigs and geese; Vesticular stomatitis: horses and cows; West Nile Virus: horses, chickens; Equine encephalitis: horses; Contagious ecthyma: sheep and goats; Toxoplasmosis: sheep and geese; Q-Fever: sheep, cows and goats; Campylobactor: sheep, geese, pigs; Dermatophilosis: cows; E-coli: cows, goats, pigs and geese; Giardiasis: cows; Pseudocowpox: cows; Tuberculosis: cows; Listeriosis: cows; Salmonella: chickens and geese; Influenza: pigs, donkeys, geese; Yersiniosis: pigs; Psittacosis: goats; Giardia: geese; Listeria: geese, and Pasteurella Multocida: geese.
Nor have Native Americans escaped the ravages of modern life. Even though the above-listed diseases can be prevented by keeping the enclosures clean and the run-off away from human consumption, and even though childhood vaccinations have drastically reduced the outbreaks of things like Smallpox, Measles and Tuberculosis, Native American still catch diseases to which not even white men and women are immune. Heart disease, Cancer, Type II Diabetes and Liver Disease are the top four killers of probably all North Americans, regardless of ethnic origin. In this country, largely because of the radical change in their lifestyle, Native Americans also suffer from obesity, substance abuse, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, COPD, child molestation, depression, domestic violence, teen pregnancies, hepatitis, hypertension, alcoholism and HIV/AIDs, and in South American countries, they also have to deal with malaria, typhoid, dengue fever and yellow fever.
The Native American community is aware of these problems and has tried to address them. Since about 78% of the Native American population in the United States lives off the reservation, there are many urban Native American clinics that provide services to tribal members and sometimes even non-tribal members. They may offer HIV services, classes in nutrition and wellness to combat Type II Diabetes, WIC and SNAP, counseling for substance abuse and alcohol, job training, positive parenting, counseling for domestic violence and mental illness, life skills, medical care, dental care, and smoking cessation. But, as it is with all things government-funded, whenever there are cutbacks in the budget, it is safe to assume that cuts will be made to programs that help Native Americans, both on and off the reservation.
The women also got plenty of sunshine and exercise either by working on their gardens and crops, gathering fruits and vegetables from nature (plenty of walking, reaching and bending), carrying around infants in cradle-boards, pounding meat into thin strips for drying, grinding corn or acorns, or by setting up their own teepees. The men got plenty of sunshine and exercise, too, via hunting, fishing, sports and waging war. The eighteen million Native Americans who lived in the United States before white men got here weren't all compacted into small cities where diseases can easily spread, but were spread out across the entire country. Cahokia, the largest Native American city in North America, had a population of only about 40,000 at its peak, which is less populated than Joplin, Missouri. Otherwise, most tribes consisted of, at most, about two hundred people in small villages scattered across the countryside, and this, too, confined diseases to a relatively small area.
On the other hand, as much as the Native Americans' healthy lifestyle worked for them, after the white men brought European diseases to the New World, their tribal lifestyle worked against them. Because they felt very strongly that no one should go hungry, food was shared with the entire tribe, and shared food can transmit diseases. They also felt that no one should have to suffer alone, and so when someone fell ill, that person was not quarantined, but was visited by his or her friends and family members, who also fell ill. Furthermore, while most Native Americans tried to avoid white men like the plague, others could not manage to stay away from the white merchants who sold them things that they found that they could not live without, like nice cotton material and cast-iron skillets. Therefore, those tribes-persons who bought things from the traveling salesmen spread diseases to whomever they came in contacted with. Sweat lodges and menstrual lodges, too, by their very nature, served as incubators for diseases, and later so did poverty and lack of access to medical care.
Additionally, while tribal shamans and native healers could handle some of the minor diseases and those related to stress, they were helpless against Smallpox, Measles, Scarlet Fever, Typhoid Fever, Typhus, Influenza, Pertussis, Tuberculosis, Cholera, Diphtheria, Chicken Pox, and sexually-transmitted diseases. Some of these diseases, like Measles and Chicken pox, if contracted by children, do not usually result in death, but others, like Tuberculosis, are deadly no matter what the person's age. And what Native American disease was bestowed upon the whites for their gift of "civilization?" Possibly Syphillis, but scientists are still debating it.
To make matters worse, if a Native American managed to survive the diseases brought to them by the invading Europeans, sometimes he or she chose to commit suicide rather than live with disfiguring scars, blindness or deafness that might have accompanied the disease. And some of those diseases caused other secondary problems, like encephalitis and brain damage, kidney problems, heart problems, meningitis, pneumonia, gastrointestinal bleeding, breathing problems, paralysis, sepsis, toxic shock syndrome, spontaneous abortions and chronic infection. And if his or her entire family had been wiped out by Smallpox, for example, suicide might seem like a good option whether he or she were suffering from long-term physical symptoms or not.
Now, white people were aware that the Native American folk were contracting these diseases, and many of them felt badly about it and tried to do something about it, especially after vaccines came out in the middle of the nineteenth century. Others, not so much. The Calvinists and hardline Christians blamed the Native Americans for their illness by saying that the genocide of Native Americans was God's Plan for European domination. Why? Because the "godless" Native Americans were not Christians and had not been baptized or married in a Christian church, even if they had enjoyed a deeply spiritual life and had married in accordance with the customs of their tribe. Therefore, in the hardline Christians' tight little minds, Native Americans were living in sin, and deserved whatever disease they got, even though it was the white man who had brought it to them.
Other white men, who were naturally immune, somehow conveyed the impression that it was only because of the blessings of the Christian God that they hadn't succumbed to the illnesses that wiped out entire tribes, and if the Native Americans would just join their church, then God would smile upon them and bless them with immunity, too. Unfortunately, in many places, the Native Americans who joined the missions succumbed even more quickly to diseases because of their overcrowded and badly-ventilated living-quarters, and one Spanish priest opined that something had to be done because Smallpox was depriving the mission of much-needed slaves.
Even if Native Americans didn't catch Smallpox and the like, they still ran the risk of catching something lethal from the domesticated animals that white men had brought with them from Europe. White men had been living side-by-side with their animals for thousands of years and, through natural selection (because those who lived were stronger, more resilient and immune, and able to pass on their immunity to their children) didn't succumb to the diseases that those animals might have carried. But on this side of the Atlantic, there were no domesticated cattle, horses, chickens, pigs, goats, sheep, geese, donkeys, and, if one considers them "domesticated," cats. And some of these animals carried pathogens which, if spread to pregnant women through contact with fecal matter, led to spontaneous abortions which led to a decrease in the number of tribal members. And some of these diseases were just plain deadly to people in general, especially when contracted by infants, the elderly, or people whose immune systems had already been compromised.
These diseases and their carriers is as follows: Tetanus: horses, donkeys and sheep; Salmonellosis: horses, sheep, cows, pigs and goats; Ringworm: horses, sheep, cows, pigs and goats; Anthrax: horses, cows and donkeys; Brucellosis: horses and cows; Leptospirosis: horses, cows, pigs and goats; Cryptosporidiosis: horses, sheep, cows, pigs and geese; Vesticular stomatitis: horses and cows; West Nile Virus: horses, chickens; Equine encephalitis: horses; Contagious ecthyma: sheep and goats; Toxoplasmosis: sheep and geese; Q-Fever: sheep, cows and goats; Campylobactor: sheep, geese, pigs; Dermatophilosis: cows; E-coli: cows, goats, pigs and geese; Giardiasis: cows; Pseudocowpox: cows; Tuberculosis: cows; Listeriosis: cows; Salmonella: chickens and geese; Influenza: pigs, donkeys, geese; Yersiniosis: pigs; Psittacosis: goats; Giardia: geese; Listeria: geese, and Pasteurella Multocida: geese.
Nor have Native Americans escaped the ravages of modern life. Even though the above-listed diseases can be prevented by keeping the enclosures clean and the run-off away from human consumption, and even though childhood vaccinations have drastically reduced the outbreaks of things like Smallpox, Measles and Tuberculosis, Native American still catch diseases to which not even white men and women are immune. Heart disease, Cancer, Type II Diabetes and Liver Disease are the top four killers of probably all North Americans, regardless of ethnic origin. In this country, largely because of the radical change in their lifestyle, Native Americans also suffer from obesity, substance abuse, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, COPD, child molestation, depression, domestic violence, teen pregnancies, hepatitis, hypertension, alcoholism and HIV/AIDs, and in South American countries, they also have to deal with malaria, typhoid, dengue fever and yellow fever.
The Native American community is aware of these problems and has tried to address them. Since about 78% of the Native American population in the United States lives off the reservation, there are many urban Native American clinics that provide services to tribal members and sometimes even non-tribal members. They may offer HIV services, classes in nutrition and wellness to combat Type II Diabetes, WIC and SNAP, counseling for substance abuse and alcohol, job training, positive parenting, counseling for domestic violence and mental illness, life skills, medical care, dental care, and smoking cessation. But, as it is with all things government-funded, whenever there are cutbacks in the budget, it is safe to assume that cuts will be made to programs that help Native Americans, both on and off the reservation.
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
Four Tribes in South America
Tribes: There are hundreds, if not thousands of tribes in South America, and a huge portion of the population, up to 90%, can claim to have full or part native South American blood. However, for the sake of brevity, I will include only four tribes here: the Tehuelche, the Valdivians, the Incans and the Yanomami.
Meanings of Names: The name "Tehuelche" means "Fierce People" in the language of their ancient neighbors, the Mapuche. I don't know what they call or called themselves, or if they called themselves something apart from where they lived.... The "Valdivians" are so-called because they lived near the Ecuadorian City of Valdivia, which was named after the Spanish conquistador, Pedro de Valdivia. What they called themselves, I do not know, but they're long gone now.... The term "Inca" means "ruler" or "lord" in ancient Quechua, the mother-tongue of the Andes.... And the term "Yanomami" means "People," as compared to ducks, cows or trees. They call themselves the "Yanomami," but it does depend largely on where they live.
Locations: The Tehuelche live in the pampas in what used to be called "Patagonia," but what is now large parts of Chile and Argentina, that long curvy part of South America before you get to Antarctica. They've been there since about 12,500 BC.... The Valdivian people lived in what is now known as the City of Valdivia in Ecuador, which is just south of Columbia, which is just south of Central America, from about 3800 BC to 1500 BC. They have since disappeared from history.... Even though Peru has been occupied for 11,000 years, the Incans only held power from roughly 1300 AD until roughly 1600 AD.... And scientists think that the Yanomami have lived in the Amazonian rainforests of Southern Venezuela and Brazil since people first arrived in South America some 42,000 years ago, and that their lifestyle has not changed since.
Original or Current Languages: The Tehuelche speak Spanish, Tehuelche and Mapudungun, the languages of Patagonia.... Nobody knows what the Valdivians spoke, but since there are similarities between Valdivian pottery and Japanese pottery and culture, it's possible that they spoke some kind of Japanese dialect.... The Incans speak Quechua and other tribal languages, and the Yanomami speak Yanam, Sanuma, Yanomami and Yanomamo, all dialects of Yanomami.
Tribal Affiliations: The Tehuelche, for the most part, seemed to have gotten along with the other tribes of Pre-Columbian Patagonia, and they all seemed to have banded together to resist the Spanish conquistadores when they invaded South America. Nonetheless, they admitted defeat when the Argentine government occupied their lands. The Valdivians, too, seemed to have gotten along well with their neighbors, with whom they actively traded.
Traditional Enemies: The Incans, on the other hand, were a much more war-like tribe, and they tended to alienate their neighbors to the point that, when the Spaniards came to conquer Peru, many of the Inca neighbors allied themselves with the Spaniards instead of the Incans. And the Yanomami are also a war-like people, but their violence seems to be against their own women, other Yanomami tribes and the encroachment of modern life, meaning, anything that's happened since the Stone Age.
Traditional Styles of Housing:
The Tehuelche are a nomadic people who lived on the Atlantic shoreline, in the mountains or on the pampas, which are the South American Plains, and their dwellings reflected their hunting-and-gathering lifestyle. Their native housing is reportedly rounded, made of a light wood frame draped in sown-together animal skins, with a large front door sheltered by a sort of awning, and were probably made and owned by the women.
The Valdivians, who lived sedentary lives on the Pacific coast of Ecuador, built their huts around a large central plaza in which were ceremonial pyramids, shrines and tombs. These huts were made of mud bricks and stone, with thatched roofs of palm fronds and other greenery, and had small terraced gardens for their vegetables and fruits.
Thanks to entire intact and remote mountainous cities like Machu Picchu and the Incans' relatively late place in history, we have a much better idea of what their houses looked like; they were rectangular buildings with tall pitched and thatched roofs and had tall rectangular windows. They were probably built and owned by the Incan men or the Incan government.
Each Yanomami mini-tribe lives in large oval multi-generational communal open-floor-plan hut made of poles and thatch, in the middle of which is a large clearing. Because these dwellings are flimsy and subject to the whims of Nature and bugs, they have to be rebuilt every 4-6 years.
Traditional Attire:
Because it gets very cold in Patagonia, the Tehuelche wore and probably still wear thick clothing made of guanacos (a type of llama) or rhea (a type of ostrich) hide and fur, including boots, which made the Europeans think that their feet were extremely large. The clothing is made by the women.
Nothing has come down to us regarding Valdivian clothing styles, but judging from their clay representations of goddesses, the women had short ornate hairstyles or headdresses, large breasts, rounded bellies and distinctly Oriental features. They may have worn white cotton skirts, robes, or baggy trousers that may have been trimmed in red or black. The Valdivians did not engage in war so we have no representations of male attire.
The Incans wore alpaca, vicuna, or llama wool or cotton clothing, depending on where they lived. The men wore colorful tunics, breechcloths and cloaks and the women wore colorful long dresses with mantles and sashes. Both men and women wore jewelry and sandals. The Emperor was allowed to wear the most colorful, feathered, and bejeweled attire and headdresses and the rest of his people were not. Their clothing styles are still very heavy and colorful. However, cloth production was a function of the government who hired the women to make them, and the Incan government allowed its citizens only two sets of clothes to be worn until they were too threadbare, at which time, the government would issue another set.
Because the Amazonian rainforest is very hot and muggy, the Yanomami traditionally dress in very little: a simple red loincloth will suffice for both genders (and is required of the young women once they reach puberty), coupled with short bowl-cut hair, light jewelry, decorative strings and bare feet. Modern life is catching up with them, and so many of them are wearing cotton shirts and shorts, and flip-flops. Patterned face and body painting is very common.
Traditional Foods:
The Tehuelche lived off the land, and so the men caught whatever could be obtained by a knife or a bola, which was a long leather strap with two leather balls at the end. This included guanacos and rheas, and probably birds, small South American raccoons, iguanas, tapirs, and deer. Those who lived on the coast probably ate their share of sea lions and sea otters. The women gathered whatever seasonal fruits that they could get in trade or gather from their respective environments: passion fruit, jaboticaba (which is a large sweet berry that grows directly on the trunks of the jaboticaba tree), cherimoya, pumpkins, melons, sweet potatoes, and guanabana, which is a prickly fruit that tastes like a combination of strawberries, coconut, pineapple and banana.
The Valdivians of Ecuador probably ate whatever grew in their cultivated gardens which were probably owned by the women, was nearby or could be traded with their neighbors: tomatoes, chilies, potatoes, amaranth from which they got quinoa, yuca (which is an entirely different plant than yucca), plantains, corn, onions, pumpkins, peanuts, bananas, passion fruit, naranjilla (which is like a cross between a rhubarb and lime), uvilla (a semi-sweet fruit), taxo (a banana-passionfruit) and tamarillo (a tree tomato fruit.) The men probably were the ones responsible for catching shrimp, langostinos, shellfish, squid, eels, bonito, mullet, tortoises, iguanas, guinea pigs, deer and rabbits.
Because the scope of the Incan Empire encompassed large amounts of Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Columbia and Argentina, they had access to all of the foods eaten by the Tehuelche and the Valdivians, and then some. Their diet also included peccaries (wild pigs), guinea pigs, armadillos, amaranth, seaweed, cacao, different kinds of beans, sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, oca (a starchy root vegetable), avocados, pineapple, papaya, young llamas and vicunas, wild ducks, manta rays, small sharks, frogs, dogs, bears, ocelots, jaguars, depending on their position in Incan society. They also regularly drank "chicha" which is a kind of fermented corn beer. The women preserved much of their food for later use and stored in convenient locations throughout their empire.
The Yanomami practice hunting, fishing, some limited agriculture and gathering. They eat bananas, sugar cane, sweet potatoes, mangoes, papaya, manioc, nuts, shellfish, insect larva, fish, honey, plantains, grubs, termites, frogs, land crabs, caterpillars, armadillos, deer, tapir, monkey, boar, palm fruit, jaguars, snakes, and they also grow and chew tobacco. However, so little meat is eaten by the Yanomami that they tend to be protein-deficient.
Position of Women:
Tehuelche society was a hunting-and-gathering society, so the men hunted and the women gathered, cooked, took care of their dogs and children, and may have owned their own huts, as did their Northern counterparts. The women also took care of the animal skins by tanning them, painting patterns on them with red, yellow, black and blue pigments and then sewing them into clothing or hut-material.
Valdivian culture died out so long ago that it would be impossible to precisely say what the position of women was, but they did have goddesses, and that usually reflects a fair amount of respect for women, fertility and child-bearing. Women were also probably the ones who planted and tended their gardens and fruit trees, sewed the clothes and took care of the children while the men fished, hunted and perhaps tended the cotton fields. Valdivian women were also the first people in the Americas to make pottery. Since they tended toward peace and trade, it is also possible that the movers and shakers of Valdivian culture were women, as were the healers and the shamans.
Incan Society was very government-controlled, regulated and stratified, but men and women held equal but complimentary positions in it. Women were the cooks, the weavers, the childcare-providers and the homemakers while the men did the hunting and went to war, and both were considered essential for survival. Women were also divided into groups according to social class and looks. At age ten, the richer and prettier girls were separated from the poorer and plainer girls and sent off to become the "Chosen Women." This meant that they were earmarked to become priestesses for the Sun God, given in marriage to the Emperor or the aristocracy and then were given government administrative jobs, or were sacrificed to the gods. The poorer and plainer girls of the village were left to learn domestic skills, work for the government as weavers, and married whomever was chosen for them. At lest in Incan Society, nobody died an old maid.
If the Incans were somewhat hard on their women, the Yanomami are far worse. Beatings with blunt or sharp instruments is common, as is branding, in order to keep the women docile and obedient. Although women are the basket-weavers, the pack-mules, the clothing-makers, the cooks, the gardeners, the fisher-folk, the hunters of insects and small game, do all of the gathering, provide 80% of the Yanomami diet and do everything that they can to keep the peace, the men seem to rule their households with an iron fist. Women are usually married off to their uncles at an early age, are not allowed to be healers, shamans or chiefs, are not allowed to take hallucinogenic drugs, and may have to share their husbands with several other of their wives. The good news is that when the Yanomami women do manage to survive to old age, and the normal life expectancy for Yanomami women is a mere twenty-five years, they are accorded a tremendous amount of respect.
Tribal Courtship:
I couldn't find any information on the courtship patterns of the Tehuelche or the Valdivians. However, among the Incans, if a young man were interested in a young woman, he would approach her father and make an offering of goods or services, and based on that offer, the potential bride's father would accept or decline. If a marriage was to take place, the wedding was comprised of a simple exchange of gifts, a feast, and the groom would offer his bride a sandal to indicate that he was willing to take care of her for the rest of her life. (Gives new meaning to the old "Cinderella" story.) If that failed, then once a year, all of the unmarried 20 year-old men of the village and all of the unmarried 16 year-old women of the village were lined up and the head of the village would play matchmaker by choosing which girl would marry which guy. If two young men wanted to marry the same girl, they would present their arguments to the chieftain who would then decide. Marriages in the Yanomami tribes were also arranged, usually by male relatives, for the purposes of alliances. Child-brides, some as young as five, were betrothed to their uncles, and would go live with them and assume their wifely duties as soon as they hit puberty.
Interesting Tidbits: The Tehuelche men were among the tallest in the world, well over six-foot tall, at a time when the average European man was about five foot six.
The ancestors of the Valdivians may have migrated around the Pacific Rim from Japan to Ecuador during a 2500-year period of global warming. Japanese culture during the Early and Middle Jomon Period (5000 BC to 2500 BC and 2500 BC to 1500 BC respectively) coincides neatly with the culture of the Valdivians of the same time period, including the development of pottery, which the Japanese women may have brought with them to Ecuador.
For as government-controlled as the Incans were, no law-abiding person in their empire ever went hungry, naked, unemployed or homeless. However, God help you if you broke any of their laws because punishment was swift and brutal. Needless to say, the crime rate in the Incan Empire was very low.
The Yanomami eat bugs in order to supplement their diet. According to reports, insect larva, when fried, take on the taste of the oil that they are fried in, but otherwise taste like nothing; grubs taste like bone marrow, and reportedly like lobster when sautéed; termites taste like pineapple when raw and like vegetables when cooked, and lemon ants taste like lemons. The Yanomami also practice endo-cannibalism in which they mix the ashes of their cremated dead with plantain juice and then drink this concoction in order for the dead person's spirit to continue in the living.
Traditional Religions: Animism, polytheism, shamanism, and, more recently, Catholicism.
Tribal Slavery: The Tehuelche and the Incans had slaves, many of the Yanomami were enslaved and their lands confiscated by other people, and we don't know about the Valdivians.
Current Populations: There are currently about 10,600 Tehuelche in South America. There are no more Valdivians or, strictly speaking, Incans. And there are approximately 35,000 Yanomami.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: The Tehuelche seem to make their money off of agro-tourism and sheep. The Valdivians and the Incans are no longer factors in today's economy, and the Yanomami make baskets which are sold to companies that distribute the profits to organizations to help save the Yanomami from extinction.
Famous Tehuelche, Valdivians, Incans and Yanomami: No one that I have heard of, except for Kuzco, the fictional Incan Emperor in "The Emperor's New Groove."
Meanings of Names: The name "Tehuelche" means "Fierce People" in the language of their ancient neighbors, the Mapuche. I don't know what they call or called themselves, or if they called themselves something apart from where they lived.... The "Valdivians" are so-called because they lived near the Ecuadorian City of Valdivia, which was named after the Spanish conquistador, Pedro de Valdivia. What they called themselves, I do not know, but they're long gone now.... The term "Inca" means "ruler" or "lord" in ancient Quechua, the mother-tongue of the Andes.... And the term "Yanomami" means "People," as compared to ducks, cows or trees. They call themselves the "Yanomami," but it does depend largely on where they live.
Locations: The Tehuelche live in the pampas in what used to be called "Patagonia," but what is now large parts of Chile and Argentina, that long curvy part of South America before you get to Antarctica. They've been there since about 12,500 BC.... The Valdivian people lived in what is now known as the City of Valdivia in Ecuador, which is just south of Columbia, which is just south of Central America, from about 3800 BC to 1500 BC. They have since disappeared from history.... Even though Peru has been occupied for 11,000 years, the Incans only held power from roughly 1300 AD until roughly 1600 AD.... And scientists think that the Yanomami have lived in the Amazonian rainforests of Southern Venezuela and Brazil since people first arrived in South America some 42,000 years ago, and that their lifestyle has not changed since.
Original or Current Languages: The Tehuelche speak Spanish, Tehuelche and Mapudungun, the languages of Patagonia.... Nobody knows what the Valdivians spoke, but since there are similarities between Valdivian pottery and Japanese pottery and culture, it's possible that they spoke some kind of Japanese dialect.... The Incans speak Quechua and other tribal languages, and the Yanomami speak Yanam, Sanuma, Yanomami and Yanomamo, all dialects of Yanomami.
Tribal Affiliations: The Tehuelche, for the most part, seemed to have gotten along with the other tribes of Pre-Columbian Patagonia, and they all seemed to have banded together to resist the Spanish conquistadores when they invaded South America. Nonetheless, they admitted defeat when the Argentine government occupied their lands. The Valdivians, too, seemed to have gotten along well with their neighbors, with whom they actively traded.
Traditional Enemies: The Incans, on the other hand, were a much more war-like tribe, and they tended to alienate their neighbors to the point that, when the Spaniards came to conquer Peru, many of the Inca neighbors allied themselves with the Spaniards instead of the Incans. And the Yanomami are also a war-like people, but their violence seems to be against their own women, other Yanomami tribes and the encroachment of modern life, meaning, anything that's happened since the Stone Age.
Traditional Styles of Housing:
The Tehuelche are a nomadic people who lived on the Atlantic shoreline, in the mountains or on the pampas, which are the South American Plains, and their dwellings reflected their hunting-and-gathering lifestyle. Their native housing is reportedly rounded, made of a light wood frame draped in sown-together animal skins, with a large front door sheltered by a sort of awning, and were probably made and owned by the women.
The Valdivians, who lived sedentary lives on the Pacific coast of Ecuador, built their huts around a large central plaza in which were ceremonial pyramids, shrines and tombs. These huts were made of mud bricks and stone, with thatched roofs of palm fronds and other greenery, and had small terraced gardens for their vegetables and fruits.
Thanks to entire intact and remote mountainous cities like Machu Picchu and the Incans' relatively late place in history, we have a much better idea of what their houses looked like; they were rectangular buildings with tall pitched and thatched roofs and had tall rectangular windows. They were probably built and owned by the Incan men or the Incan government.
Each Yanomami mini-tribe lives in large oval multi-generational communal open-floor-plan hut made of poles and thatch, in the middle of which is a large clearing. Because these dwellings are flimsy and subject to the whims of Nature and bugs, they have to be rebuilt every 4-6 years.
Traditional Attire:
Because it gets very cold in Patagonia, the Tehuelche wore and probably still wear thick clothing made of guanacos (a type of llama) or rhea (a type of ostrich) hide and fur, including boots, which made the Europeans think that their feet were extremely large. The clothing is made by the women.
Nothing has come down to us regarding Valdivian clothing styles, but judging from their clay representations of goddesses, the women had short ornate hairstyles or headdresses, large breasts, rounded bellies and distinctly Oriental features. They may have worn white cotton skirts, robes, or baggy trousers that may have been trimmed in red or black. The Valdivians did not engage in war so we have no representations of male attire.
The Incans wore alpaca, vicuna, or llama wool or cotton clothing, depending on where they lived. The men wore colorful tunics, breechcloths and cloaks and the women wore colorful long dresses with mantles and sashes. Both men and women wore jewelry and sandals. The Emperor was allowed to wear the most colorful, feathered, and bejeweled attire and headdresses and the rest of his people were not. Their clothing styles are still very heavy and colorful. However, cloth production was a function of the government who hired the women to make them, and the Incan government allowed its citizens only two sets of clothes to be worn until they were too threadbare, at which time, the government would issue another set.
Because the Amazonian rainforest is very hot and muggy, the Yanomami traditionally dress in very little: a simple red loincloth will suffice for both genders (and is required of the young women once they reach puberty), coupled with short bowl-cut hair, light jewelry, decorative strings and bare feet. Modern life is catching up with them, and so many of them are wearing cotton shirts and shorts, and flip-flops. Patterned face and body painting is very common.
Traditional Foods:
The Tehuelche lived off the land, and so the men caught whatever could be obtained by a knife or a bola, which was a long leather strap with two leather balls at the end. This included guanacos and rheas, and probably birds, small South American raccoons, iguanas, tapirs, and deer. Those who lived on the coast probably ate their share of sea lions and sea otters. The women gathered whatever seasonal fruits that they could get in trade or gather from their respective environments: passion fruit, jaboticaba (which is a large sweet berry that grows directly on the trunks of the jaboticaba tree), cherimoya, pumpkins, melons, sweet potatoes, and guanabana, which is a prickly fruit that tastes like a combination of strawberries, coconut, pineapple and banana.
The Valdivians of Ecuador probably ate whatever grew in their cultivated gardens which were probably owned by the women, was nearby or could be traded with their neighbors: tomatoes, chilies, potatoes, amaranth from which they got quinoa, yuca (which is an entirely different plant than yucca), plantains, corn, onions, pumpkins, peanuts, bananas, passion fruit, naranjilla (which is like a cross between a rhubarb and lime), uvilla (a semi-sweet fruit), taxo (a banana-passionfruit) and tamarillo (a tree tomato fruit.) The men probably were the ones responsible for catching shrimp, langostinos, shellfish, squid, eels, bonito, mullet, tortoises, iguanas, guinea pigs, deer and rabbits.
Because the scope of the Incan Empire encompassed large amounts of Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Columbia and Argentina, they had access to all of the foods eaten by the Tehuelche and the Valdivians, and then some. Their diet also included peccaries (wild pigs), guinea pigs, armadillos, amaranth, seaweed, cacao, different kinds of beans, sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, oca (a starchy root vegetable), avocados, pineapple, papaya, young llamas and vicunas, wild ducks, manta rays, small sharks, frogs, dogs, bears, ocelots, jaguars, depending on their position in Incan society. They also regularly drank "chicha" which is a kind of fermented corn beer. The women preserved much of their food for later use and stored in convenient locations throughout their empire.
The Yanomami practice hunting, fishing, some limited agriculture and gathering. They eat bananas, sugar cane, sweet potatoes, mangoes, papaya, manioc, nuts, shellfish, insect larva, fish, honey, plantains, grubs, termites, frogs, land crabs, caterpillars, armadillos, deer, tapir, monkey, boar, palm fruit, jaguars, snakes, and they also grow and chew tobacco. However, so little meat is eaten by the Yanomami that they tend to be protein-deficient.
Position of Women:
Tehuelche society was a hunting-and-gathering society, so the men hunted and the women gathered, cooked, took care of their dogs and children, and may have owned their own huts, as did their Northern counterparts. The women also took care of the animal skins by tanning them, painting patterns on them with red, yellow, black and blue pigments and then sewing them into clothing or hut-material.
Valdivian culture died out so long ago that it would be impossible to precisely say what the position of women was, but they did have goddesses, and that usually reflects a fair amount of respect for women, fertility and child-bearing. Women were also probably the ones who planted and tended their gardens and fruit trees, sewed the clothes and took care of the children while the men fished, hunted and perhaps tended the cotton fields. Valdivian women were also the first people in the Americas to make pottery. Since they tended toward peace and trade, it is also possible that the movers and shakers of Valdivian culture were women, as were the healers and the shamans.
Incan Society was very government-controlled, regulated and stratified, but men and women held equal but complimentary positions in it. Women were the cooks, the weavers, the childcare-providers and the homemakers while the men did the hunting and went to war, and both were considered essential for survival. Women were also divided into groups according to social class and looks. At age ten, the richer and prettier girls were separated from the poorer and plainer girls and sent off to become the "Chosen Women." This meant that they were earmarked to become priestesses for the Sun God, given in marriage to the Emperor or the aristocracy and then were given government administrative jobs, or were sacrificed to the gods. The poorer and plainer girls of the village were left to learn domestic skills, work for the government as weavers, and married whomever was chosen for them. At lest in Incan Society, nobody died an old maid.
If the Incans were somewhat hard on their women, the Yanomami are far worse. Beatings with blunt or sharp instruments is common, as is branding, in order to keep the women docile and obedient. Although women are the basket-weavers, the pack-mules, the clothing-makers, the cooks, the gardeners, the fisher-folk, the hunters of insects and small game, do all of the gathering, provide 80% of the Yanomami diet and do everything that they can to keep the peace, the men seem to rule their households with an iron fist. Women are usually married off to their uncles at an early age, are not allowed to be healers, shamans or chiefs, are not allowed to take hallucinogenic drugs, and may have to share their husbands with several other of their wives. The good news is that when the Yanomami women do manage to survive to old age, and the normal life expectancy for Yanomami women is a mere twenty-five years, they are accorded a tremendous amount of respect.
Tribal Courtship:
I couldn't find any information on the courtship patterns of the Tehuelche or the Valdivians. However, among the Incans, if a young man were interested in a young woman, he would approach her father and make an offering of goods or services, and based on that offer, the potential bride's father would accept or decline. If a marriage was to take place, the wedding was comprised of a simple exchange of gifts, a feast, and the groom would offer his bride a sandal to indicate that he was willing to take care of her for the rest of her life. (Gives new meaning to the old "Cinderella" story.) If that failed, then once a year, all of the unmarried 20 year-old men of the village and all of the unmarried 16 year-old women of the village were lined up and the head of the village would play matchmaker by choosing which girl would marry which guy. If two young men wanted to marry the same girl, they would present their arguments to the chieftain who would then decide. Marriages in the Yanomami tribes were also arranged, usually by male relatives, for the purposes of alliances. Child-brides, some as young as five, were betrothed to their uncles, and would go live with them and assume their wifely duties as soon as they hit puberty.
Interesting Tidbits: The Tehuelche men were among the tallest in the world, well over six-foot tall, at a time when the average European man was about five foot six.
The ancestors of the Valdivians may have migrated around the Pacific Rim from Japan to Ecuador during a 2500-year period of global warming. Japanese culture during the Early and Middle Jomon Period (5000 BC to 2500 BC and 2500 BC to 1500 BC respectively) coincides neatly with the culture of the Valdivians of the same time period, including the development of pottery, which the Japanese women may have brought with them to Ecuador.
For as government-controlled as the Incans were, no law-abiding person in their empire ever went hungry, naked, unemployed or homeless. However, God help you if you broke any of their laws because punishment was swift and brutal. Needless to say, the crime rate in the Incan Empire was very low.
The Yanomami eat bugs in order to supplement their diet. According to reports, insect larva, when fried, take on the taste of the oil that they are fried in, but otherwise taste like nothing; grubs taste like bone marrow, and reportedly like lobster when sautéed; termites taste like pineapple when raw and like vegetables when cooked, and lemon ants taste like lemons. The Yanomami also practice endo-cannibalism in which they mix the ashes of their cremated dead with plantain juice and then drink this concoction in order for the dead person's spirit to continue in the living.
Traditional Religions: Animism, polytheism, shamanism, and, more recently, Catholicism.
Tribal Slavery: The Tehuelche and the Incans had slaves, many of the Yanomami were enslaved and their lands confiscated by other people, and we don't know about the Valdivians.
Current Populations: There are currently about 10,600 Tehuelche in South America. There are no more Valdivians or, strictly speaking, Incans. And there are approximately 35,000 Yanomami.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: The Tehuelche seem to make their money off of agro-tourism and sheep. The Valdivians and the Incans are no longer factors in today's economy, and the Yanomami make baskets which are sold to companies that distribute the profits to organizations to help save the Yanomami from extinction.
Famous Tehuelche, Valdivians, Incans and Yanomami: No one that I have heard of, except for Kuzco, the fictional Incan Emperor in "The Emperor's New Groove."
Friday, May 15, 2015
An Aside on Sports and the Native Americans
It wasn't all work and no play for the Native Americans. As early as 1700 BC, the Olmecs of Central America played a deadly game that was like a cross between field hockey, soccer and racquetball, using rubber balls that could be as large as nine pounds. The Mayans called the game "Pitz" and the Aztecs called it "Ollamalitzli." Ollamalitzli courts were found from Nicaragua to Arizona in the American Southwest. A modern variation of this game, without the human sacrifice aspect, is called "Ulama."
In North America, Stickball, which preceded Lacrosse, was played by the Choctaw, the Seminole and the Creek. The Choctaw and the Chickasaw also played a game similar to Lacrosse called "Toli" and Lacrosse itself was played by the Nakota, the Cree, the Chippewa, the Sioux, the Iroquois and the Cheyenne. The Miwok, the Paiute and the Shoshone played a game similar to ice hockey called "Shinny." The Sioux, the Ojibwe and the Iroquois also engaged in a game called "Snow Snake" which was a bit like bowling, only with sticks and snow. The Choctaw, the Chumash, the Chickasaw and the Creek played a game called "Chunkey," the object of which was to engage in a footrace while getting the point of a stick through the small center hole of a rolling stone disk. This game was so deadly serious that whole fortunes were lost to gambling on it, and it was the direct cause of suicides among those who lost.
Similar to Chunkey was the game of "Hoops." In this game, which was played by the boys in the Crow, Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes, one boy would roll a netted hoop along the ground and two boys would take turns trying to throw their stick through the center hole. This game was obviously very good for training boys to take careful aim.
There was a game called "Pasuckuakohowog" which was like soccer. It was played by the Algonquin-speaking tribes of southeastern Canada, the eastern seaboard, the Great Lakes region and Virginia. The Pasuckuahowog field was a half a mile long and 500 feet wide, and could have as many as 500 players, which probably included several hundred second-string players who were called off the bench due to injuries. The object seems to have been to get a small stone ball through a hole in the middle of a moving disk. It was a very violent game that was basically a substitute for all-out war, except that the players wore disguises and afterwards, the two teams got together for a nice feast.
Otherwise, the Kumeyaay played dice and ran footraces, the Chumash liked to swim and probably body-surf at the beach, and the Mojave also liked to swim in the Colorado River. The Seminole liked to alligator-wrestle but this may be a modern thing done to entertain the tourists. The Miwok children liked to play jacks, the Cherokee children liked to play marbles, and the Apache liked to compete in footraces, archery and horseback-riding.
In North America, Stickball, which preceded Lacrosse, was played by the Choctaw, the Seminole and the Creek. The Choctaw and the Chickasaw also played a game similar to Lacrosse called "Toli" and Lacrosse itself was played by the Nakota, the Cree, the Chippewa, the Sioux, the Iroquois and the Cheyenne. The Miwok, the Paiute and the Shoshone played a game similar to ice hockey called "Shinny." The Sioux, the Ojibwe and the Iroquois also engaged in a game called "Snow Snake" which was a bit like bowling, only with sticks and snow. The Choctaw, the Chumash, the Chickasaw and the Creek played a game called "Chunkey," the object of which was to engage in a footrace while getting the point of a stick through the small center hole of a rolling stone disk. This game was so deadly serious that whole fortunes were lost to gambling on it, and it was the direct cause of suicides among those who lost.
Similar to Chunkey was the game of "Hoops." In this game, which was played by the boys in the Crow, Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes, one boy would roll a netted hoop along the ground and two boys would take turns trying to throw their stick through the center hole. This game was obviously very good for training boys to take careful aim.
There was a game called "Pasuckuakohowog" which was like soccer. It was played by the Algonquin-speaking tribes of southeastern Canada, the eastern seaboard, the Great Lakes region and Virginia. The Pasuckuahowog field was a half a mile long and 500 feet wide, and could have as many as 500 players, which probably included several hundred second-string players who were called off the bench due to injuries. The object seems to have been to get a small stone ball through a hole in the middle of a moving disk. It was a very violent game that was basically a substitute for all-out war, except that the players wore disguises and afterwards, the two teams got together for a nice feast.
Otherwise, the Kumeyaay played dice and ran footraces, the Chumash liked to swim and probably body-surf at the beach, and the Mojave also liked to swim in the Colorado River. The Seminole liked to alligator-wrestle but this may be a modern thing done to entertain the tourists. The Miwok children liked to play jacks, the Cherokee children liked to play marbles, and the Apache liked to compete in footraces, archery and horseback-riding.
The Nakota of the Northern Great Plains
Tribe: The Nakota are also called the "Assiniboine," from the Ojibwe word "Asinii-bwaan." They were originally part of the Yanktonai Sioux tribe but broke away in 1640 AD.
Meaning of Name: "Nakota" means "the allies." "Assiniboine" means "Stone Sioux" because they boiled their meat by dropping heated stones into the pot. (Think 'Pot-roast,' 'Stew' and 'Braised.')
Location: The Nakota lived in the Northern Great Plains, but currently live in southern Alberta and Manitoba in Canada and in the northern parts of Montana and North Dakota in the United States.
Original Language: Siouan.
Tribal Affiliations: The Cree, the Crow, the Mandan, the Hidatsa, the Arikara and the Sioux on occasion.
Traditional Enemies: The Sioux, the Gros Ventre and the Blackfoot, who were also their trading partners on occasion.
Traditional Style of Housing: Teepees, which used to be only about twelve feet high, until the Nakota acquired horses, at which time, they increased the size of their teepees, I guess so that both rider and horse could get through the entrance-flap. Once they became unmanageably large, they were probably erected by the Nakota men. They probably also had larger teepees that served as town halls, and smaller ones that served as menstrual lodges and sweat-lodges.
Traditional Attire: The men wore breechcloths with leather leggings, fringed and beaded shirts, and moccasins. For wars and ceremonies, the men wore long feathered headdresses or buffalo headdresses. Until the white man came, the women wore long fringed and decorated dresses made of mountain goat skin or deerskin. After the white man came, the women wore wool or cotton dresses with rounded yokes decorated with rows of beads, bells, cowrie shells, Dentalia shells, elk teeth and quills set in a design that was passed down from mother to daughter and had symbolic significance. Turtle designs indicated protective qualities, spider web and dragon fly designs indicated the kinship with the thunder-being, and some designs indicated a special event that had happened in that person's life. To use another person's identifying design was like copyright infringement and ought not to be done.
Traditional Foods: The nomadic Nakota followed the buffalo, which they ate along with the available bighorn sheep, rabbit, deer and occasional fish, all of which they probably flavored with prairie sage, juniper berries, wild onion and wild garlic that the women had gathered. Like the other Plains people, the women also gathered and cooked or raw buffalo berries, currants, crabapples, chokecherries, elderberries, gooseberries, cherries, wild plums, rhubarb, juneberries, honey-locust pulp, black walnuts, hazelnuts, strawberries, sunflower seeds, wheatgrass, wild rye, fiddlehead ferns, squash, and the sap from the sugar maple. They had to trade with the more settled tribes in order to obtain corn and milled flour.
Position of Women: Like the other the People of the Plains, Nakota women owned their own teepees, took care of the kids, did the housework, cooked, went along on hunting trips to take care of the meats and hides, did the sewing, and kept the home-fires burning while the men waged war. Only the men could become chiefs.
Nakota Courtship: The Nakota probably followed the courtship patterns of their parent tribe, the Sioux. Because this was a patriarchal culture, the fathers set the bride-price of their daughters, who had little say in the entire process. One bride might be worth anywhere from one to one hundred horses, which is why horses were so greatly valued by the Sioux, and her value was judged not only on her looks, but on her virginity and skills at domestic chores, beadwork, sewing, tanning and culinary skills. Once a young Nakota man expressed an interest in getting married, his mother would begin to work on her future daughter-in-law's teepee and furnishings. This teepee, once completed, would go up the next time the tribe set up camp. The rest of the tribe, upon seeing the new teepee, would wait breathlessly to see whose household was going to be presented with horses, because that was the family of the girl the ardent young bachelor wanted to impress. If the father of the prospective bride accepted the bride-price of horses, and added them to his own herd, the match was made. If not, I guess that the groom and his family took down the teepee and stowed it away for the next bride.
Interesting Tidbits: The Nakota traded actively fur-for-goods with the French, the English, the Canadians and the Americans, particularly with regards to the Hudson Bay Company.... The Nakota live on reservations or reserves with Cree, Saulteaux, Sioux and Gros Ventre, except for the Nakota of Manitoba who do not.
Traditional Religion: Traditional tribal religion, Native American Church and Christianity.
Slavery and the Nakota: I have read nothing that indicates that the Nakota participated in the slave trade or took prisoners during war and turned them into slaves. This doesn't mean that they didn't, though.
Current Population: There are 3,500 registered Nakota.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: Mostly real estate deals, some manufacturing and a casino-resort in Alberta, Canada.
Famous Nakota: None that I have heard of.
Meaning of Name: "Nakota" means "the allies." "Assiniboine" means "Stone Sioux" because they boiled their meat by dropping heated stones into the pot. (Think 'Pot-roast,' 'Stew' and 'Braised.')
Location: The Nakota lived in the Northern Great Plains, but currently live in southern Alberta and Manitoba in Canada and in the northern parts of Montana and North Dakota in the United States.
Original Language: Siouan.
Tribal Affiliations: The Cree, the Crow, the Mandan, the Hidatsa, the Arikara and the Sioux on occasion.
Traditional Enemies: The Sioux, the Gros Ventre and the Blackfoot, who were also their trading partners on occasion.
Traditional Style of Housing: Teepees, which used to be only about twelve feet high, until the Nakota acquired horses, at which time, they increased the size of their teepees, I guess so that both rider and horse could get through the entrance-flap. Once they became unmanageably large, they were probably erected by the Nakota men. They probably also had larger teepees that served as town halls, and smaller ones that served as menstrual lodges and sweat-lodges.
Traditional Attire: The men wore breechcloths with leather leggings, fringed and beaded shirts, and moccasins. For wars and ceremonies, the men wore long feathered headdresses or buffalo headdresses. Until the white man came, the women wore long fringed and decorated dresses made of mountain goat skin or deerskin. After the white man came, the women wore wool or cotton dresses with rounded yokes decorated with rows of beads, bells, cowrie shells, Dentalia shells, elk teeth and quills set in a design that was passed down from mother to daughter and had symbolic significance. Turtle designs indicated protective qualities, spider web and dragon fly designs indicated the kinship with the thunder-being, and some designs indicated a special event that had happened in that person's life. To use another person's identifying design was like copyright infringement and ought not to be done.
Traditional Foods: The nomadic Nakota followed the buffalo, which they ate along with the available bighorn sheep, rabbit, deer and occasional fish, all of which they probably flavored with prairie sage, juniper berries, wild onion and wild garlic that the women had gathered. Like the other Plains people, the women also gathered and cooked or raw buffalo berries, currants, crabapples, chokecherries, elderberries, gooseberries, cherries, wild plums, rhubarb, juneberries, honey-locust pulp, black walnuts, hazelnuts, strawberries, sunflower seeds, wheatgrass, wild rye, fiddlehead ferns, squash, and the sap from the sugar maple. They had to trade with the more settled tribes in order to obtain corn and milled flour.
Position of Women: Like the other the People of the Plains, Nakota women owned their own teepees, took care of the kids, did the housework, cooked, went along on hunting trips to take care of the meats and hides, did the sewing, and kept the home-fires burning while the men waged war. Only the men could become chiefs.
Nakota Courtship: The Nakota probably followed the courtship patterns of their parent tribe, the Sioux. Because this was a patriarchal culture, the fathers set the bride-price of their daughters, who had little say in the entire process. One bride might be worth anywhere from one to one hundred horses, which is why horses were so greatly valued by the Sioux, and her value was judged not only on her looks, but on her virginity and skills at domestic chores, beadwork, sewing, tanning and culinary skills. Once a young Nakota man expressed an interest in getting married, his mother would begin to work on her future daughter-in-law's teepee and furnishings. This teepee, once completed, would go up the next time the tribe set up camp. The rest of the tribe, upon seeing the new teepee, would wait breathlessly to see whose household was going to be presented with horses, because that was the family of the girl the ardent young bachelor wanted to impress. If the father of the prospective bride accepted the bride-price of horses, and added them to his own herd, the match was made. If not, I guess that the groom and his family took down the teepee and stowed it away for the next bride.
Interesting Tidbits: The Nakota traded actively fur-for-goods with the French, the English, the Canadians and the Americans, particularly with regards to the Hudson Bay Company.... The Nakota live on reservations or reserves with Cree, Saulteaux, Sioux and Gros Ventre, except for the Nakota of Manitoba who do not.
Traditional Religion: Traditional tribal religion, Native American Church and Christianity.
Slavery and the Nakota: I have read nothing that indicates that the Nakota participated in the slave trade or took prisoners during war and turned them into slaves. This doesn't mean that they didn't, though.
Current Population: There are 3,500 registered Nakota.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: Mostly real estate deals, some manufacturing and a casino-resort in Alberta, Canada.
Famous Nakota: None that I have heard of.
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
The First People of Canada
Tribes of Canada: The largest tribes are the Metis (which is the combination of First People and Europeans, mostly French, English and Scots and are now considered their own ethnic group), the Cree, the Ojibwe and the Inuit. There are dozens of smaller tribes, but for purposes of simplicity, these are the major four.
Meanings of Names: "Metis" is French for "Middle," since the Metis are midway between the First People and the European (specifically French, English or Scots.) The Cree call themselves the "Nehilawe" which means "Those Who Speak Our Language." "Objiwe" means "Those Who Stammer" in Cree. And "Inuit" means "the People."
Locations: The Metis live all over Canada. The Cree are found in the Northwest Territories, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba. The Ojibwe live in the Northwest Territories, Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. And the Innuit live in the Yukon and the Nunavut, as well as in Alaska.
Original or Current Languages: The Metis speak their own native mother-tongue and/or English, French or Gaelic. The Cree and the Ojibwe speak a dialect of Algonquin. The Inuit speak Inuktitut.
Tribal Affiliations: The First People of Canada traded and for the most part kept the peace with each other and with the French, English, the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Basque and the Scots.
Traditional Enemies: Because the Metis were the peace-keepers between the First People and the traders from Europe and Great Britain, there was not the level of disagreement between the indigenous tribes and the whites in Canada. However, the Ojibwe, the Inuit and the Cree did not get along.
Traditional Styles of Housing: The Metis sometimes lived in canvas tents, and other times, lived in farmhouses or log cabins, depending on the preference or construction-abilities of their white mates.
The Cree and the Ojibwe, who lived south of the Artic Circle, lived in teepees, wood or skin wigwams, lean-tos, semi-subterranean sod-and-wood, conical lodges, long domed lodges or log cabins, depending on their location. The Inuit, who were nomadic, lived in igloos or teepees made of caribou or sealskin during the long cold season but would gather in villages during the short summers. Some of the Inuit who lived in the slightly less snowy areas, lived in semi-subterranean sod-and-log homes.
Traditional Attire: The Metis often wore brightly-colored finger-woven sashes around their waists to keep out the cold and were famous for their intricate floral embroidery and beadwork which they applied to everything. The Cree and the Ojibwe wore beaded and fringed buckskin clothing similar to the People of the Plains in the United States. The Inuit made parkas, pants, gloves, stockings, mukluks and boots (three layers of footwear) out of caribou, rabbit, otter, and other furry animals, and layered their clothing to provide as much warmth as possible. The hoods of women's parkas were especially large so that they could carry infants and toddlers. Once the children were too big and heavy for their mother's hood, they would graduate to wearing furry "onesies" or combination outfits.
Traditional Foods: The Cree, the Ojibwe and the Metis hunted or trapped buffalo, porcupine, hare, marten, woodchuck, caribou, musk ox, bear, moose, elk, waterfowl, lots of fish including salmon. The women of these tribes also gathered raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, cherries, wild grapes, hazelnuts, crabapples, tiger lily bulbs, groundnuts, wild asparagus, marigolds, squash, maple syrup, moss, dandelions and made pemmican. They drank pine nettle tea to stave off colds. Instead of fry bread, they ate baked baking-soda bread. The Inuit men hunted seals, walruses, beluga whales, narwhales, caribou, musk ox, arctic fox, polar bear, arctic hare, fished for whitefish, char, salmon, trout and trapped birds.
Position of Women: Inuit women did the cooking, the making of clothing and the childcare. Men made the houses and did the hunting and the fishing. Women of the subarctic tribes also caught the small game, fished and processed hides while men hunted the big game. Both the Cree and the Ojibwe were patrilineal and patrilocal. It is, however, among the Metis that women had their greatest impact. As Cree and Ojibwe women met, translated for, sewed for, cooked for, guided, and formally or informally married French, English and Scottish fur traders, their children became part of a mixed-race tradition which did not gain formal and somewhat legal recognition until the end of the twentieth century. They, in turn, became a bridge between European traders and the indigenous people of Canada in language translation, customs, business and government service.
First People Courtships: None that I found that were distinctive of Canadian Inuits, Ojibwe, Cree or Metis.
Interesting Tidbits: The Cree and the Ojibwe used wampum belts as currency and to record historical events, and the Inuit have been known to eat their meat raw.
Traditional Religions: Animism, Shamanism, Catholicism, Anglican, Pentecostal.
The First People and Slavery: It depends on how you feel about the "country marriage" in which the Cree, Ojibwe and Inuit women cooked, cleaned house for, made clothing for, took care of, and helped obtain, clean, and tan pelts for the white English, French and Scots trappers, hunters and traders without pay. Inuit people have been know to either enslave or be slaves. It could also be that the indigenous women of Canada as well as the indigenous women of the American colonies and western territories were kidnapped by other Native American tribes, along with their children, and then sold into slavery to trappers in Canada. (See entry for the Sauk and Fox tribes.)
Current Population: There are roughly 450,000 registered Metis, 200,000 registered Cree, 154,000 registered Ojibwe and 118,000 regisitered Inuit in Canada.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: Logging, fishing, trapping, tourism, and Cree casinos. The poverty rate for the Cree, Ojibwe and Inuit is still pretty high.
Famous First People of Canada: None that I have heard of, but I am not Canadian.
Meanings of Names: "Metis" is French for "Middle," since the Metis are midway between the First People and the European (specifically French, English or Scots.) The Cree call themselves the "Nehilawe" which means "Those Who Speak Our Language." "Objiwe" means "Those Who Stammer" in Cree. And "Inuit" means "the People."
Locations: The Metis live all over Canada. The Cree are found in the Northwest Territories, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba. The Ojibwe live in the Northwest Territories, Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. And the Innuit live in the Yukon and the Nunavut, as well as in Alaska.
Original or Current Languages: The Metis speak their own native mother-tongue and/or English, French or Gaelic. The Cree and the Ojibwe speak a dialect of Algonquin. The Inuit speak Inuktitut.
Tribal Affiliations: The First People of Canada traded and for the most part kept the peace with each other and with the French, English, the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Basque and the Scots.
Traditional Enemies: Because the Metis were the peace-keepers between the First People and the traders from Europe and Great Britain, there was not the level of disagreement between the indigenous tribes and the whites in Canada. However, the Ojibwe, the Inuit and the Cree did not get along.
Traditional Styles of Housing: The Metis sometimes lived in canvas tents, and other times, lived in farmhouses or log cabins, depending on the preference or construction-abilities of their white mates.
The Cree and the Ojibwe, who lived south of the Artic Circle, lived in teepees, wood or skin wigwams, lean-tos, semi-subterranean sod-and-wood, conical lodges, long domed lodges or log cabins, depending on their location. The Inuit, who were nomadic, lived in igloos or teepees made of caribou or sealskin during the long cold season but would gather in villages during the short summers. Some of the Inuit who lived in the slightly less snowy areas, lived in semi-subterranean sod-and-log homes.
Traditional Attire: The Metis often wore brightly-colored finger-woven sashes around their waists to keep out the cold and were famous for their intricate floral embroidery and beadwork which they applied to everything. The Cree and the Ojibwe wore beaded and fringed buckskin clothing similar to the People of the Plains in the United States. The Inuit made parkas, pants, gloves, stockings, mukluks and boots (three layers of footwear) out of caribou, rabbit, otter, and other furry animals, and layered their clothing to provide as much warmth as possible. The hoods of women's parkas were especially large so that they could carry infants and toddlers. Once the children were too big and heavy for their mother's hood, they would graduate to wearing furry "onesies" or combination outfits.
Traditional Foods: The Cree, the Ojibwe and the Metis hunted or trapped buffalo, porcupine, hare, marten, woodchuck, caribou, musk ox, bear, moose, elk, waterfowl, lots of fish including salmon. The women of these tribes also gathered raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, cherries, wild grapes, hazelnuts, crabapples, tiger lily bulbs, groundnuts, wild asparagus, marigolds, squash, maple syrup, moss, dandelions and made pemmican. They drank pine nettle tea to stave off colds. Instead of fry bread, they ate baked baking-soda bread. The Inuit men hunted seals, walruses, beluga whales, narwhales, caribou, musk ox, arctic fox, polar bear, arctic hare, fished for whitefish, char, salmon, trout and trapped birds.
Position of Women: Inuit women did the cooking, the making of clothing and the childcare. Men made the houses and did the hunting and the fishing. Women of the subarctic tribes also caught the small game, fished and processed hides while men hunted the big game. Both the Cree and the Ojibwe were patrilineal and patrilocal. It is, however, among the Metis that women had their greatest impact. As Cree and Ojibwe women met, translated for, sewed for, cooked for, guided, and formally or informally married French, English and Scottish fur traders, their children became part of a mixed-race tradition which did not gain formal and somewhat legal recognition until the end of the twentieth century. They, in turn, became a bridge between European traders and the indigenous people of Canada in language translation, customs, business and government service.
First People Courtships: None that I found that were distinctive of Canadian Inuits, Ojibwe, Cree or Metis.
Interesting Tidbits: The Cree and the Ojibwe used wampum belts as currency and to record historical events, and the Inuit have been known to eat their meat raw.
Traditional Religions: Animism, Shamanism, Catholicism, Anglican, Pentecostal.
The First People and Slavery: It depends on how you feel about the "country marriage" in which the Cree, Ojibwe and Inuit women cooked, cleaned house for, made clothing for, took care of, and helped obtain, clean, and tan pelts for the white English, French and Scots trappers, hunters and traders without pay. Inuit people have been know to either enslave or be slaves. It could also be that the indigenous women of Canada as well as the indigenous women of the American colonies and western territories were kidnapped by other Native American tribes, along with their children, and then sold into slavery to trappers in Canada. (See entry for the Sauk and Fox tribes.)
Current Population: There are roughly 450,000 registered Metis, 200,000 registered Cree, 154,000 registered Ojibwe and 118,000 regisitered Inuit in Canada.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: Logging, fishing, trapping, tourism, and Cree casinos. The poverty rate for the Cree, Ojibwe and Inuit is still pretty high.
Famous First People of Canada: None that I have heard of, but I am not Canadian.
The Crow of the West
Tribe: The Crow, who call themselves the "Apsaalooke" and, alternately, the "Absaroka."
Meaning of Name: The name "Apsaalooke" means "Children of the Large-Beaked Bird" in the language of the Hidatsa, a neighboring Sioux tribe. The French translators translated "Apsaalooke" as "Gens du Corbeaux," or "People of the Crows." When French was translated into English, the "Crows" remained.
Location: At one time, the Crow were semi-nomadic hunters and farmers who lived near Lake Erie in the Ohio Valley. Then they were pushed north by the more aggressive Ojibwe and Cree to Lake Winnipeg in Canada. After that, they were pushed west by the Cheyenne, and then both the Crow and the Cree were pushed further west by the Lakota Sioux to parts of North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming. Once they got to Yellowstone Valley, they got tired of being pushed around, so they scooted over the Shoshone who lived in Yellowstone, acquired horses from the Comanche who had gotten them from the Spanish, took up semi-permanent residence and started hunting buffalo. The Crow currently live in Montana.
Original Language: Siouan.
Tribal Affiliations: Hidatsa, Shoshone, Salish, Koontenai, Nez Perce, Kutenai, Kiowa, Mandans, and Americans, whom they saw would eventually come to dominate their land. They also traded with the Comanche for horses.
Traditional Enemies: Ojibwe, Cree, Cheyenne, Lakota, Blackfoot, Gros Ventre, Nakota, Pawnee, Ute, and Arapaho.
Traditional Style of Housing: The Crow erected some of the tallest and largest teepees on the Plains, some as wide as about 20'-25' across, perhaps to allow the horses to come in or to draw attention to themselves. These teepees had four poles each and were often painted, with an opening in the top for the smoke to get out, and sometimes, whole extended families lived therein. Because they were so large, they were probably erected with the help of some of the men of the tribe.
Traditional Attire: While the Crow women wore their hair short and were usually attired in long plain deerskin dresses, leggings and moccasins, the Crow men were the peacocks of the Yellowstone River Valley. They wore woolen leggings imported from Europe, individualistic and colorfully-beaded and fringed breech-cloths, colorfully-beaded and fringed shirts, colorfully-beaded vests and moccasins that went up to their shins, and fancy robes. The men also wore long eagle-feather headdresses, ornate porky roaches, necklaces, beaded headbands, face-paint and tattoos. The most notable thing about the Crow men was their shiny bear-greased hair, which they grew very long and wore in braids decorated with strips of beaver or otter fur, pipes and feathers. They were known particularly for their upswept bangs that were painted in white, and possibly other colors. Think Elvis Presley's, James Dean's or Robert Pattinson's hair in the "Twilight" movies. Their beadwork was especially colorful, and each color represented something found in nature. Pink meant "sunrise," red meant "sunset," yellow meant "sun," blue meant "sky," white meant "clouds," "rain" or "sleet" and black meant "the death of an enemy." Sometimes they would outline the color in white beads just to accentuate them.
Traditional Foods: The Crow men hunted buffalo, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, deer, elk, and bear. The Crow women made pemmican and gathered elderberries, service berries (aka "choke cherries," and "juneberries,") Buffalo berries, crabapples, cranberries, raspberries, rhubarb, wild plums, corn, beaver, rabbit, moose, wild turnips, and Saskatoon berries, which are sweet and nutty berries that are now promoted as "Superfruits."
Position of Women: Even though they became a hunting-and-gathering tribe, they had originally been agrarian, and as such, the Crow were a matrilineal society. Women owned their own teepees, inherited land and goods, and were just as likely to be the healers, the chiefs and the lawmakers as the men. Some were even warriors. Crow men, when they married, went to live in the teepees of their wives and their mothers-in-law, and descent was reckoned through the female line. The Crow were very welcoming toward Two-Spirits, whom they called "bate," pronounced "ba-tay."
Crow Courtship: Not much was found about Crow courtship patterns except that they used horses to "purchase" a bride. However, if the potential bride didn't want to marry the young man in question, she didn't have to, and the horses were probably discretely returned to him. My guess is also that since the women owned their own teepees, prospective or existing grooms were strongly advised to kill enough bison to give skins to their fiancées, wives or mothers so that they could make their enormous teepees, or they would be living with her mother for the rest of their lives. And divorces were easy to obtain.
Interesting Tidbits: The Crow had very large packs of dogs for pulling travois, as early warning systems, as small game-hunting companions and as pets. Then, once the Crow started using horses as pack animals, the dogs were still used for early warning systems, as hunting companions and as pets.... In 1914, the Crow had 40,000 horses, the largest herd on the Plains, and at least 600 dogs.
Traditional Religions: the Crow Way, the Tobacco Society and Christianity.
The Crow and Slavery: Like most of the People of the Plains, they probably took slaves during raids and used them for doing menial labor or for trade.
Current Population: There are more than 12,000 registered Crow.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: Land is leased to gas, oil and coal companies, as well as to ranchers for their herds of cattle, and the Crow do have casinos. Nonetheless, they still have a high unemployment and poverty rate.
Famous Crow: None that I have heard of.
Meaning of Name: The name "Apsaalooke" means "Children of the Large-Beaked Bird" in the language of the Hidatsa, a neighboring Sioux tribe. The French translators translated "Apsaalooke" as "Gens du Corbeaux," or "People of the Crows." When French was translated into English, the "Crows" remained.
Location: At one time, the Crow were semi-nomadic hunters and farmers who lived near Lake Erie in the Ohio Valley. Then they were pushed north by the more aggressive Ojibwe and Cree to Lake Winnipeg in Canada. After that, they were pushed west by the Cheyenne, and then both the Crow and the Cree were pushed further west by the Lakota Sioux to parts of North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming. Once they got to Yellowstone Valley, they got tired of being pushed around, so they scooted over the Shoshone who lived in Yellowstone, acquired horses from the Comanche who had gotten them from the Spanish, took up semi-permanent residence and started hunting buffalo. The Crow currently live in Montana.
Original Language: Siouan.
Tribal Affiliations: Hidatsa, Shoshone, Salish, Koontenai, Nez Perce, Kutenai, Kiowa, Mandans, and Americans, whom they saw would eventually come to dominate their land. They also traded with the Comanche for horses.
Traditional Enemies: Ojibwe, Cree, Cheyenne, Lakota, Blackfoot, Gros Ventre, Nakota, Pawnee, Ute, and Arapaho.
Traditional Style of Housing: The Crow erected some of the tallest and largest teepees on the Plains, some as wide as about 20'-25' across, perhaps to allow the horses to come in or to draw attention to themselves. These teepees had four poles each and were often painted, with an opening in the top for the smoke to get out, and sometimes, whole extended families lived therein. Because they were so large, they were probably erected with the help of some of the men of the tribe.
Traditional Attire: While the Crow women wore their hair short and were usually attired in long plain deerskin dresses, leggings and moccasins, the Crow men were the peacocks of the Yellowstone River Valley. They wore woolen leggings imported from Europe, individualistic and colorfully-beaded and fringed breech-cloths, colorfully-beaded and fringed shirts, colorfully-beaded vests and moccasins that went up to their shins, and fancy robes. The men also wore long eagle-feather headdresses, ornate porky roaches, necklaces, beaded headbands, face-paint and tattoos. The most notable thing about the Crow men was their shiny bear-greased hair, which they grew very long and wore in braids decorated with strips of beaver or otter fur, pipes and feathers. They were known particularly for their upswept bangs that were painted in white, and possibly other colors. Think Elvis Presley's, James Dean's or Robert Pattinson's hair in the "Twilight" movies. Their beadwork was especially colorful, and each color represented something found in nature. Pink meant "sunrise," red meant "sunset," yellow meant "sun," blue meant "sky," white meant "clouds," "rain" or "sleet" and black meant "the death of an enemy." Sometimes they would outline the color in white beads just to accentuate them.
Traditional Foods: The Crow men hunted buffalo, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, deer, elk, and bear. The Crow women made pemmican and gathered elderberries, service berries (aka "choke cherries," and "juneberries,") Buffalo berries, crabapples, cranberries, raspberries, rhubarb, wild plums, corn, beaver, rabbit, moose, wild turnips, and Saskatoon berries, which are sweet and nutty berries that are now promoted as "Superfruits."
Position of Women: Even though they became a hunting-and-gathering tribe, they had originally been agrarian, and as such, the Crow were a matrilineal society. Women owned their own teepees, inherited land and goods, and were just as likely to be the healers, the chiefs and the lawmakers as the men. Some were even warriors. Crow men, when they married, went to live in the teepees of their wives and their mothers-in-law, and descent was reckoned through the female line. The Crow were very welcoming toward Two-Spirits, whom they called "bate," pronounced "ba-tay."
Crow Courtship: Not much was found about Crow courtship patterns except that they used horses to "purchase" a bride. However, if the potential bride didn't want to marry the young man in question, she didn't have to, and the horses were probably discretely returned to him. My guess is also that since the women owned their own teepees, prospective or existing grooms were strongly advised to kill enough bison to give skins to their fiancées, wives or mothers so that they could make their enormous teepees, or they would be living with her mother for the rest of their lives. And divorces were easy to obtain.
Interesting Tidbits: The Crow had very large packs of dogs for pulling travois, as early warning systems, as small game-hunting companions and as pets. Then, once the Crow started using horses as pack animals, the dogs were still used for early warning systems, as hunting companions and as pets.... In 1914, the Crow had 40,000 horses, the largest herd on the Plains, and at least 600 dogs.
Traditional Religions: the Crow Way, the Tobacco Society and Christianity.
The Crow and Slavery: Like most of the People of the Plains, they probably took slaves during raids and used them for doing menial labor or for trade.
Current Population: There are more than 12,000 registered Crow.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: Land is leased to gas, oil and coal companies, as well as to ranchers for their herds of cattle, and the Crow do have casinos. Nonetheless, they still have a high unemployment and poverty rate.
Famous Crow: None that I have heard of.
Sunday, May 10, 2015
The Sioux of the Dakotas
Tribe: The Sioux includes the Lakota and the Dakota, but not the Nakota, who broke away from the Sioux Nation in 1640. The Sioux refer to the Great Sioux Nation as the "Ochethi Sakowin." There are thirteen tribes combined into seven Sioux nations: the Teton, the Mdewakanton, the Wahpeton, the Wahpakhute, the Sisseton, the Yankton, and the Yanktonai.
Meaning of Name: The name "Sioux" is an abbreviated form of the French word "Nadouessioux," which is based on an Ojibwe or Chippewa word for "barbarian" or "little snake." "Lakota" and "Dakota" both mean "ally" or "friend," which is why the Sioux prefer to refer to themselves as the "Lakota" and the "Dakota." Culturally, there is no difference between the Lakota and the Dakota. The actual difference is in the dialects used by the tribes.
Location: The original Sioux tribes lived in Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota. They now live in North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Manitoba and Saskatchewan in Canada, so most of them still live on their old stomping grounds.
Original Language: Siouan.
Tribal Affiliations: The French and the Arikara, for purposes of trading. They also allied themselves with the Cheyenne for purposes of waging war
Traditional Enemies: the Nakota, the Kiowa, the Chippewa, the Pawnee, the Cheyenne and the Americans.
Traditional Style of Housing: Three-pole teepees, like most of the nomadic People of the Plains. These teepees could be set up or taken down by the women who made, erected and owned them, in about an hour. They probably also had larger tents that served as meeting-places, and smaller ones that served as sweat-lodges and menstrual-lodges.
Traditional Attire: Like most of the People of the Plains, the women wore long decorated deerskin or elk-skin rectangular-shaped long dresses and the men wore breech-cloths, leggings and buckskin tunics. They usually wore their hair long or in braids. Many adopted European styles once they met white people, and decorated their shirts and dresses with long silk ribbons, cowrie shells, elk teeth, quills and beads.
Traditional Foods: The Santee and the Yankton-Yanktonai Sioux lived fairly settled lives and so had time to garden and work the land. At that time, the women grew or gathered wild rice, corn, potatoes, buffalo, elk, deer, chokeberries, rhubarb, asparagus, mushrooms, ramps, radishes, hazelnuts, hickory nuts and chestnuts. The Sioux men hunted or trapped pheasant, partridge, turkey, duck, turtle, bear, deer, elk, muskrat, trout, salmon, walleye and bison. Those Santee-Sioux who live in Minnesota still enjoy these foods. The Teton-Sioux were the buffalo-hunters and their diet was limited to corn (which they traded to obtain), buffalo, pemmican, parched corn, dried fruits, nuts and other easily-transported foods.
Position of Women: Women did the cooking, cleaning, childcare, hide preparation and sewing, and put up and took down the teepees, which were their property. This was a hunting and war-making culture, and the main power rested with the men.
Sioux Courtship: If a young Sioux man fell in love but was unsure if his love would be returned, he would purchase a love potion from a medicine man. If he drank it and did not get sick, this love potion was supposed to make him irresistible to the object of his affections. If he could not stomach the idea of drinking elk urine or whatever was in the potion, he could try to wow her by playing a flute outside her teepee. If she came out, he knew she was interested. If not, she wasn't. Another way for a young Sioux man to meet the girl of his dreams was to waylay her on a path that he knew she commonly took. If she stopped, she was interested, and if she didn't, she wasn't. However, if after everything that he had done to show his interest, and she still didn't want to marry him, he had one trick left: He would present the parents of his love-interest with gifts of blankets, food, fine clothing or horses. If the father of his intended accepted the gift, the match was made and the indifferent bride had no voice in the matter at all. On the other hand, if a young Sioux maiden wanted a particular young man, she would stand outside her teepee wrapped in a blanket until he came by, at which time, she would open it to him. If he stepped inside her cocoon, the match was made, and all that he would have to do at that point would be to present her father with the offering of food, fine clothing, blankets, and anywhere from one to four horses.
Interesting Tidbits: The Sioux of the Yankton and Yanktonai tribes quarry pipestone, which is a soft stone used to make calumet, or peace pipes.... The Sioux have four all-male societies. The Akichita are the young warriors, hunters and police-men. The Naca are the old men who are the law-makers who choose seven to ten men, the Wichasa Ithanchan, to enforce them. The Wichasa Ithanchan, in turn, choose four "Shirt Wearers" to settle quarrels. Below them in rank are the Wakichunza, or "Pipe Holders" who organize events, regulate peace ceremonies and supervise the warriors and the hunters.
Traditional Religion: Wakan Tanka, Midewiwin, Christianity
The Sioux and Slavery: Like the Iroquois, the Sioux took prisoners in battle and were known to adopt them to take the place of the tribal member who had been killed. If they were kept as slaves, they were treated well as one would treat valued property, and were assigned the menial tasks, or were traded for goods and credit.
Current Population: There are more than 170,000 registered Sioux.
Current Sources of Tribal Income: Casinos and hotels, manufacturing, gas stations and smoke shops. Nonetheless, the poverty rate among the Sioux is very high, and suicides among young Sioux is at 20%.
Famous Sioux: Chief Sitting Bull, who defeated Custer at Little Big Horn. Also Crazy Horse, Black Elk, and Gregory "Pappy" Boyington, a WWII hero.
Meaning of Name: The name "Sioux" is an abbreviated form of the French word "Nadouessioux," which is based on an Ojibwe or Chippewa word for "barbarian" or "little snake." "Lakota" and "Dakota" both mean "ally" or "friend," which is why the Sioux prefer to refer to themselves as the "Lakota" and the "Dakota." Culturally, there is no difference between the Lakota and the Dakota. The actual difference is in the dialects used by the tribes.
Location: The original Sioux tribes lived in Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota. They now live in North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Manitoba and Saskatchewan in Canada, so most of them still live on their old stomping grounds.
Original Language: Siouan.
Tribal Affiliations: The French and the Arikara, for purposes of trading. They also allied themselves with the Cheyenne for purposes of waging war
Traditional Enemies: the Nakota, the Kiowa, the Chippewa, the Pawnee, the Cheyenne and the Americans.
Traditional Style of Housing: Three-pole teepees, like most of the nomadic People of the Plains. These teepees could be set up or taken down by the women who made, erected and owned them, in about an hour. They probably also had larger tents that served as meeting-places, and smaller ones that served as sweat-lodges and menstrual-lodges.
Traditional Attire: Like most of the People of the Plains, the women wore long decorated deerskin or elk-skin rectangular-shaped long dresses and the men wore breech-cloths, leggings and buckskin tunics. They usually wore their hair long or in braids. Many adopted European styles once they met white people, and decorated their shirts and dresses with long silk ribbons, cowrie shells, elk teeth, quills and beads.
Traditional Foods: The Santee and the Yankton-Yanktonai Sioux lived fairly settled lives and so had time to garden and work the land. At that time, the women grew or gathered wild rice, corn, potatoes, buffalo, elk, deer, chokeberries, rhubarb, asparagus, mushrooms, ramps, radishes, hazelnuts, hickory nuts and chestnuts. The Sioux men hunted or trapped pheasant, partridge, turkey, duck, turtle, bear, deer, elk, muskrat, trout, salmon, walleye and bison. Those Santee-Sioux who live in Minnesota still enjoy these foods. The Teton-Sioux were the buffalo-hunters and their diet was limited to corn (which they traded to obtain), buffalo, pemmican, parched corn, dried fruits, nuts and other easily-transported foods.
Position of Women: Women did the cooking, cleaning, childcare, hide preparation and sewing, and put up and took down the teepees, which were their property. This was a hunting and war-making culture, and the main power rested with the men.
Sioux Courtship: If a young Sioux man fell in love but was unsure if his love would be returned, he would purchase a love potion from a medicine man. If he drank it and did not get sick, this love potion was supposed to make him irresistible to the object of his affections. If he could not stomach the idea of drinking elk urine or whatever was in the potion, he could try to wow her by playing a flute outside her teepee. If she came out, he knew she was interested. If not, she wasn't. Another way for a young Sioux man to meet the girl of his dreams was to waylay her on a path that he knew she commonly took. If she stopped, she was interested, and if she didn't, she wasn't. However, if after everything that he had done to show his interest, and she still didn't want to marry him, he had one trick left: He would present the parents of his love-interest with gifts of blankets, food, fine clothing or horses. If the father of his intended accepted the gift, the match was made and the indifferent bride had no voice in the matter at all. On the other hand, if a young Sioux maiden wanted a particular young man, she would stand outside her teepee wrapped in a blanket until he came by, at which time, she would open it to him. If he stepped inside her cocoon, the match was made, and all that he would have to do at that point would be to present her father with the offering of food, fine clothing, blankets, and anywhere from one to four horses.
Interesting Tidbits: The Sioux of the Yankton and Yanktonai tribes quarry pipestone, which is a soft stone used to make calumet, or peace pipes.... The Sioux have four all-male societies. The Akichita are the young warriors, hunters and police-men. The Naca are the old men who are the law-makers who choose seven to ten men, the Wichasa Ithanchan, to enforce them. The Wichasa Ithanchan, in turn, choose four "Shirt Wearers" to settle quarrels. Below them in rank are the Wakichunza, or "Pipe Holders" who organize events, regulate peace ceremonies and supervise the warriors and the hunters.
Traditional Religion: Wakan Tanka, Midewiwin, Christianity
The Sioux and Slavery: Like the Iroquois, the Sioux took prisoners in battle and were known to adopt them to take the place of the tribal member who had been killed. If they were kept as slaves, they were treated well as one would treat valued property, and were assigned the menial tasks, or were traded for goods and credit.
Current Population: There are more than 170,000 registered Sioux.
Current Sources of Tribal Income: Casinos and hotels, manufacturing, gas stations and smoke shops. Nonetheless, the poverty rate among the Sioux is very high, and suicides among young Sioux is at 20%.
Famous Sioux: Chief Sitting Bull, who defeated Custer at Little Big Horn. Also Crazy Horse, Black Elk, and Gregory "Pappy" Boyington, a WWII hero.
The Quapaw of Oklahoma
Tribe: The Quapaw (or "Arkansea" according to the Algonquin-speaking tribes of the Ohio Valley and "Ugahxpa" in Quapaw, themselves.)
Meaning of Name: "The Downstream People."
Location: Originally from the northeastern Ohio Valley, they were pushed out of their homeland by the Iroquois in the 1200's and ended up in Arkansas by the 1700s. They were then removed to Oklahoma in 1834. Their reservation is on the site of one of the most toxic and contaminated Superfund sites in the United States that has led to learning disabilities and other lead-poisoning problems.
Original Language: Quapaw, a Dhegiha branch of the Siouan linguistic family.
Tribal Affiliations: The Quapaw were a fairly peace-loving people who traded goods with the other tribes in an effort to maintain the peace. They especially liked the French, but were also friendly with the Spanish, the Osage, the Omaha, the Kansa, the Ponca, the Miami, the Wyandot, the Seneca, the Ottawa, the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Tunica, the Caddo, and eventually, the Chickasaw.
Traditional Enemies: Originally, the Spanish and the British. Also the Natchez, the Osage and the Chickasaw. The Quapaw preferred to count coup rather than try to destroy their enemies.
Traditional Style of Housing: Their villages were protected by a ditch and a wall (palisades.) Their rectangular houses were build on flat-topped dirt mounds to protect against flooding and looked a bit like long stiff caterpillars covered in bark. These homes, palisades and villages were built by the men. A longhouse, which was longer than the others, served as a town hall, and there were probably sweat-lodges, menstrual-lodges, smoke-houses and storehouses for the surplus.
Traditional Attire: Fairly traditional for the People of the Plains before white people arrived. The women originally wore long deerskin dresses and moccasins and carried beaded purses. The men wore breech-cloths with leggings which were held up with beaded garters, deerskin tunics and moccasins. Both wore fancy beadwork and fringes. Like the Iroquois who had chased them out of the upper Ohio Valley, the men shaved their heads, had scalp-locks and wore roaches, although the chiefs wore the longer and fancier headdresses. After white people arrived, the Quapaw women switched to ruffled cotton or broadcloth dresses and aprons trimmed in silk appliqued ribbons.
Traditional Foods: The women grew maize, onions, garlic chives, grapes, squash, beans, melons, sunflowers and tobacco (for pipe-smoking), and had orchards of fruit trees, like persimmon and peaches. They gathered blueberries, wild greens, walnuts, pecans and acorns (which had to be leached of their tannins.) The men hunted deer, bear (particularly prized for its rendered fat, which was sweet and used like margarine), bison, raccoons, rabbits, possum, turtles, turkey, geese, quail, and ducks, and fished or caught trout, bass, crayfish, catfish, paddlefish (prized for its caviar-like eggs), sturgeon (probably also prized for its eggs), eel, shad, pickerel, carp, suckers, buffalo fish, redhorse fish, crappie, walleye, drum fish and many others.
Position of Women: Patrilineal and patri-local, so the children were reckoned through their father's line and the Quapaw women went to live with their husbands' families. Women were the farmers and gatherers, and men were the hunters, warriors, the home-builders and major tribal decision-makers. Both men and women took care of the horses. At one time, the position of Chief was passed from father to son.
Quapaw Courtship: Unmarried women wore braids in coils behind their ears. Other than that, I could not find any information.
Interesting Tidbits: The Quapaw buried their dead sitting up and strapped to a pole, with their stuff buried beside them.... Before they were introduced to horses, the Quapaw traveled by cypress-wood dugout canoes and had travois-pulling dogs....The Quapaw had access to salt springs while they lived in Arkansas, and so were able to salt their food.... The Quapaw were divided into two main divisions, Earth and Sky, and into twenty-one subdivisions or clans: the Beaver, Small Bird, Black Bear, Buffalo, Crane, Deer, Dog, Eagle, Elk, Fish, Grizzly Bear, Ancestral, Black Bear, Panther, Snake, Star, Sun, Thunder, Turtle, Upper World, "Nikiata," and "Tizhu" clans. You could not marry someone from the Earth moiety if you were of the Sky moiety, and you could not marry someone from the Sky moiety if you were an Earth moiety, because the Earth and Sky don't mix except in tornadoes and then there's trouble.
Traditional Religion: Traditional tribal religion, Big Moon and Little Moon Native American Church and Roman Catholic.
Slavery and the Quapaw: A slave burial site was recently found in Arkansas that contained the remains of both African-Americans and Quapaw people. I am not sure what this means.
Current Population: There are more than 3000 registered Quapaw.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: Tourism, smoke shops, gas stations, casinos and a golf course.
Famous Quapaw: None that I have heard of.
Meaning of Name: "The Downstream People."
Location: Originally from the northeastern Ohio Valley, they were pushed out of their homeland by the Iroquois in the 1200's and ended up in Arkansas by the 1700s. They were then removed to Oklahoma in 1834. Their reservation is on the site of one of the most toxic and contaminated Superfund sites in the United States that has led to learning disabilities and other lead-poisoning problems.
Original Language: Quapaw, a Dhegiha branch of the Siouan linguistic family.
Tribal Affiliations: The Quapaw were a fairly peace-loving people who traded goods with the other tribes in an effort to maintain the peace. They especially liked the French, but were also friendly with the Spanish, the Osage, the Omaha, the Kansa, the Ponca, the Miami, the Wyandot, the Seneca, the Ottawa, the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Tunica, the Caddo, and eventually, the Chickasaw.
Traditional Enemies: Originally, the Spanish and the British. Also the Natchez, the Osage and the Chickasaw. The Quapaw preferred to count coup rather than try to destroy their enemies.
Traditional Style of Housing: Their villages were protected by a ditch and a wall (palisades.) Their rectangular houses were build on flat-topped dirt mounds to protect against flooding and looked a bit like long stiff caterpillars covered in bark. These homes, palisades and villages were built by the men. A longhouse, which was longer than the others, served as a town hall, and there were probably sweat-lodges, menstrual-lodges, smoke-houses and storehouses for the surplus.
Traditional Attire: Fairly traditional for the People of the Plains before white people arrived. The women originally wore long deerskin dresses and moccasins and carried beaded purses. The men wore breech-cloths with leggings which were held up with beaded garters, deerskin tunics and moccasins. Both wore fancy beadwork and fringes. Like the Iroquois who had chased them out of the upper Ohio Valley, the men shaved their heads, had scalp-locks and wore roaches, although the chiefs wore the longer and fancier headdresses. After white people arrived, the Quapaw women switched to ruffled cotton or broadcloth dresses and aprons trimmed in silk appliqued ribbons.
Traditional Foods: The women grew maize, onions, garlic chives, grapes, squash, beans, melons, sunflowers and tobacco (for pipe-smoking), and had orchards of fruit trees, like persimmon and peaches. They gathered blueberries, wild greens, walnuts, pecans and acorns (which had to be leached of their tannins.) The men hunted deer, bear (particularly prized for its rendered fat, which was sweet and used like margarine), bison, raccoons, rabbits, possum, turtles, turkey, geese, quail, and ducks, and fished or caught trout, bass, crayfish, catfish, paddlefish (prized for its caviar-like eggs), sturgeon (probably also prized for its eggs), eel, shad, pickerel, carp, suckers, buffalo fish, redhorse fish, crappie, walleye, drum fish and many others.
Position of Women: Patrilineal and patri-local, so the children were reckoned through their father's line and the Quapaw women went to live with their husbands' families. Women were the farmers and gatherers, and men were the hunters, warriors, the home-builders and major tribal decision-makers. Both men and women took care of the horses. At one time, the position of Chief was passed from father to son.
Quapaw Courtship: Unmarried women wore braids in coils behind their ears. Other than that, I could not find any information.
Interesting Tidbits: The Quapaw buried their dead sitting up and strapped to a pole, with their stuff buried beside them.... Before they were introduced to horses, the Quapaw traveled by cypress-wood dugout canoes and had travois-pulling dogs....The Quapaw had access to salt springs while they lived in Arkansas, and so were able to salt their food.... The Quapaw were divided into two main divisions, Earth and Sky, and into twenty-one subdivisions or clans: the Beaver, Small Bird, Black Bear, Buffalo, Crane, Deer, Dog, Eagle, Elk, Fish, Grizzly Bear, Ancestral, Black Bear, Panther, Snake, Star, Sun, Thunder, Turtle, Upper World, "Nikiata," and "Tizhu" clans. You could not marry someone from the Earth moiety if you were of the Sky moiety, and you could not marry someone from the Sky moiety if you were an Earth moiety, because the Earth and Sky don't mix except in tornadoes and then there's trouble.
Traditional Religion: Traditional tribal religion, Big Moon and Little Moon Native American Church and Roman Catholic.
Slavery and the Quapaw: A slave burial site was recently found in Arkansas that contained the remains of both African-Americans and Quapaw people. I am not sure what this means.
Current Population: There are more than 3000 registered Quapaw.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: Tourism, smoke shops, gas stations, casinos and a golf course.
Famous Quapaw: None that I have heard of.
Saturday, May 9, 2015
The Choctaw of the South
Tribe: The Choctaw (also, Chahta)
Meaning of Name: "Choctaw" comes from the name of one of their legendary leaders, Chahta. The Choctaw and the Chickasaw were originally part of the same tribe that migrated to the southeast part of the united states, and then split in half. The Chickasaw were named after Chahta's older brother, Chicksa.
Location: Originally from Mississippi, Florida, Alabama and Louisiana, in 1831, the Choctaw were the first of the "Five Civilized Tribes" to be forced out of their homeland and relocated to "Indian Territory." They currently reside in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Mississippi.
Original Language: Muscogean.
Tribal Affiliations: The Chickasaw, French, Spanish, British, American Colonists.
Traditional Enemies: The Muscogee and the Chickasaw. (Like most brothers, they fight, they make up, they fight, they make up...)
Traditional Style of Housing: Tall, pyramid-shaped homes made of wood frames and plastered walls, with thatched or shingled roofs. They looked like homes built by the Cherokee and were probably made by the men but owned by the women. Choctaw villages probably also had a town hall, sports fields, smokehouses, sweat-lodges, storehouses and menstrual-lodges.
Traditional Attire: Originally, breechcloths for the men and skirts for the women, which worked well with the sweltering heat of their lands in the south. They both wore moccasins when outside, but both went barefoot at home. However, the Choctaw quickly adopted European styles as soon as they met the Spanish, the British, and especially the Provincials from Brittany, France, at which point, the men started wearing turbans and the women started wearing upright silver combs in their hair with long ribbons hanging down from the back, like Spanish mantillas. Women also traditionally wore long solid-colored skirts with ruffles around the bottom, puffy sleeves on their blouses, starched white ruffled aprons and a white kerchief around their necks like the peasant women of the French Revolution. Decoration, such as ribbons and appliques, were in a contrasting trim.
Traditional Foods: As a settled, agrarian culture, Choctaw women grew corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers. Depending on where they lived, they gathered or grew plantains, swamp cabbage, garlic chives, bird peppers, grapes, red mulberries, yucca, blackberries, purslane, dandelions, plums, Jerusalem artichokes, gallberries for tea, blueberries, cherries, cherimoya, mayhaws (which taste like cranberries but make good jelly), pawpaws (which taste like a combination of pears and bananas), over-ripe medlars (which taste like apple butter), persimmons. They used dandelions, sarsaparilla, sassafras and gallberries to make beverages. The men fished, hunted small game and deer, and drank sarsaparilla or sassafras tea. The Choctaw also chewed on dogwood stems to clean and freshen their teeth.
Position of Women: Choctaw are matrilineal, with children inheriting their clan from their mothers. The house and everything that was in it, except for the weapons, was the woman's, and she kept everything if she and her husband divorced. She was also entitled to the most food, since it was she who gathered it, grew it, cooked it or preserved it. Women were the farmers, gatherers and caretakers, men were the hunters and warriors. Choctaw women participated in wars and diplomatic relations with their husbands, made the decision whether or not to adopt captives into the tribe, and were well-respected as the ones who brought forth and sustained life. The Choctaw women were and are also exceptionally beautiful, at least by this white person's standards.
Choctaw Courtship: Choctaw courtship is very cute. If a young Choctaw man sees a girl that he particularly fancies at a dance or gathering, he flips a stone or token her way. If she likes him, she flips it back. If she doesn't, she gets up and walks away. If she likes him, though, they both go off to tell their maternal aunts, who grill them mercilessly regarding the qualities of each. If the aunts think that the couple would make a good match, they go off to tell the minister, and the wedding date is set. However, the deal is not yet made, because just before the pre-wedding feast, the prospective bride takes off running, and the groom takes off after her. If he catches her too soon, she is considered weak and indifferent, and if he takes too long to catch her, he is considered weak and indifferent, in which case the whole wedding is called off and they just have a party.
Interesting Tidbits: The Choctaw are divided into matrilineal clans: Wind, Bear, Deer, Wolf, Panther, Holly Leaf, Bird, Raccoon and Crawfish.... They were the first code-talkers during WWII.... Like many Native American people, they are communally-oriented and have trouble understanding how or why white people don't take care of their elderly or their poor.... The Choctaw were the builders of the mysterious and sacred 25-foot mound, with its chthonic cave, called "Nanhi Waiya" ("Beloved Mother") in Mississippi. This is said to be the place where brothers Chahta and Chicksa and their followers stopped, and Chahta led his people south to Louisiana and Florida while Chicksa and his followers stayed put.
Traditional Religion: Traditionally, the Choctaw were sun-worshippers.
Slavery and the Choctaw: The Choctaw had black slaves, but reports of how they felt about slavery vary.
Current Population: There are more than 160,000 registered Choctaw.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: Casinos in Louisiana, Mississippi and Oklahoma, as well as smoke shops, manufacturing, travel companies, a printing company, a document archiving company and a management services company. They seem to be doing very well.
Famous Choctaw: Famous people who claimed or claim to be part Choctaw include Billy Bob Thornton, Jessica Biel, Roy Rogers, James Earl Jones and the late Rue McClanahan.
Meaning of Name: "Choctaw" comes from the name of one of their legendary leaders, Chahta. The Choctaw and the Chickasaw were originally part of the same tribe that migrated to the southeast part of the united states, and then split in half. The Chickasaw were named after Chahta's older brother, Chicksa.
Location: Originally from Mississippi, Florida, Alabama and Louisiana, in 1831, the Choctaw were the first of the "Five Civilized Tribes" to be forced out of their homeland and relocated to "Indian Territory." They currently reside in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Mississippi.
Original Language: Muscogean.
Tribal Affiliations: The Chickasaw, French, Spanish, British, American Colonists.
Traditional Enemies: The Muscogee and the Chickasaw. (Like most brothers, they fight, they make up, they fight, they make up...)
Traditional Style of Housing: Tall, pyramid-shaped homes made of wood frames and plastered walls, with thatched or shingled roofs. They looked like homes built by the Cherokee and were probably made by the men but owned by the women. Choctaw villages probably also had a town hall, sports fields, smokehouses, sweat-lodges, storehouses and menstrual-lodges.
Traditional Attire: Originally, breechcloths for the men and skirts for the women, which worked well with the sweltering heat of their lands in the south. They both wore moccasins when outside, but both went barefoot at home. However, the Choctaw quickly adopted European styles as soon as they met the Spanish, the British, and especially the Provincials from Brittany, France, at which point, the men started wearing turbans and the women started wearing upright silver combs in their hair with long ribbons hanging down from the back, like Spanish mantillas. Women also traditionally wore long solid-colored skirts with ruffles around the bottom, puffy sleeves on their blouses, starched white ruffled aprons and a white kerchief around their necks like the peasant women of the French Revolution. Decoration, such as ribbons and appliques, were in a contrasting trim.
Traditional Foods: As a settled, agrarian culture, Choctaw women grew corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers. Depending on where they lived, they gathered or grew plantains, swamp cabbage, garlic chives, bird peppers, grapes, red mulberries, yucca, blackberries, purslane, dandelions, plums, Jerusalem artichokes, gallberries for tea, blueberries, cherries, cherimoya, mayhaws (which taste like cranberries but make good jelly), pawpaws (which taste like a combination of pears and bananas), over-ripe medlars (which taste like apple butter), persimmons. They used dandelions, sarsaparilla, sassafras and gallberries to make beverages. The men fished, hunted small game and deer, and drank sarsaparilla or sassafras tea. The Choctaw also chewed on dogwood stems to clean and freshen their teeth.
Position of Women: Choctaw are matrilineal, with children inheriting their clan from their mothers. The house and everything that was in it, except for the weapons, was the woman's, and she kept everything if she and her husband divorced. She was also entitled to the most food, since it was she who gathered it, grew it, cooked it or preserved it. Women were the farmers, gatherers and caretakers, men were the hunters and warriors. Choctaw women participated in wars and diplomatic relations with their husbands, made the decision whether or not to adopt captives into the tribe, and were well-respected as the ones who brought forth and sustained life. The Choctaw women were and are also exceptionally beautiful, at least by this white person's standards.
Choctaw Courtship: Choctaw courtship is very cute. If a young Choctaw man sees a girl that he particularly fancies at a dance or gathering, he flips a stone or token her way. If she likes him, she flips it back. If she doesn't, she gets up and walks away. If she likes him, though, they both go off to tell their maternal aunts, who grill them mercilessly regarding the qualities of each. If the aunts think that the couple would make a good match, they go off to tell the minister, and the wedding date is set. However, the deal is not yet made, because just before the pre-wedding feast, the prospective bride takes off running, and the groom takes off after her. If he catches her too soon, she is considered weak and indifferent, and if he takes too long to catch her, he is considered weak and indifferent, in which case the whole wedding is called off and they just have a party.
Interesting Tidbits: The Choctaw are divided into matrilineal clans: Wind, Bear, Deer, Wolf, Panther, Holly Leaf, Bird, Raccoon and Crawfish.... They were the first code-talkers during WWII.... Like many Native American people, they are communally-oriented and have trouble understanding how or why white people don't take care of their elderly or their poor.... The Choctaw were the builders of the mysterious and sacred 25-foot mound, with its chthonic cave, called "Nanhi Waiya" ("Beloved Mother") in Mississippi. This is said to be the place where brothers Chahta and Chicksa and their followers stopped, and Chahta led his people south to Louisiana and Florida while Chicksa and his followers stayed put.
Traditional Religion: Traditionally, the Choctaw were sun-worshippers.
Slavery and the Choctaw: The Choctaw had black slaves, but reports of how they felt about slavery vary.
Current Population: There are more than 160,000 registered Choctaw.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: Casinos in Louisiana, Mississippi and Oklahoma, as well as smoke shops, manufacturing, travel companies, a printing company, a document archiving company and a management services company. They seem to be doing very well.
Famous Choctaw: Famous people who claimed or claim to be part Choctaw include Billy Bob Thornton, Jessica Biel, Roy Rogers, James Earl Jones and the late Rue McClanahan.
The Comanche of the Southwest
Tribe: The Comanche, which included or includes the Yamparitas, the Jutes, the Kotsotekas, the Nonowas, the Kwahades, the Tenewas, and the Penatekas. Many Kiowa and Apache also joined the Comanches.
Meaning of Name: The word "Comanche" comes from the Ute word "Kimantsi" which means "enemy." The Comanche called themselves the Numinu, which means "the people."
Location: Originally, the Comanche were part of the Shoshone tribe and the dominant force in the Great Plains. They were located in New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas in an area they called the "Comancheria," or "Comanche Earth." They currently live in Oklahoma, Texas, California and New Mexico.
Original Language: A Shoshone/Numic dialect of the Uto-Aztecan linguistic family.
Tribal Affiliations: The French, the Germans, the Wichita, the Osage, some of the Kiowa, the Apache and some of the Utes.
Traditional Enemies: The other Utes, the other Kiowa, the other Apache, and the Spanish, the Mexicans and the Americans, especially the Texans.
Traditional Style of Housing: Teepees, constructed, toted around and owned by the Comanche women. Comanche villages also probably had large teepees for tribal meetings, and smaller ones for sweat-lodges and menstrual-lodges.
Traditional Attire: Like most of the People of the Plains, the Comanche women wore long buckskin, deerskin or elkskin dresses with long fringes or trailing ribbons, and Comanche men wore buckskin, deerskin or elk-skin breech-clothes, leggings and tunics with fringes and trailing ribbons. The men also wore, on occasion, headdresses with a circle of eagle feathers that stuck straight up in the air and had ermine tails trailing down the back. Men wore their hair in two long braids and women wore their hair loose. For war and for ceremonies, some of the male dancers wore very large woolly buffalo scalps with the horns attached. They were one of the few Plains people who wore buffalo heads.
Traditional Foods: Mostly, buffalo, with some rabbit, birds, fish, pronghorn antelope, and black bears. They ate wild mustang, armadillos, skunks, snakes, rats, lizards frogs and grasshoppers when times were lean, and Texas Longhorn cattle when they could get them. The women gathered plums, grapes, juniper berries, persimmons, mulberries, wild grapes, acorns, pecans, wild onions, radishes, prickly pear fruit, blackberries and wild potatoes. The Comanche were unusual in that they drank milk, as long as it was from buffalo, deer and elk. (Native Americans, like Asians, are lactose-intolerant, at least when it comes to cow's milk.) They also made pemmican out of pulverized dried meat and rendered animal fat. For sweet pemmican, they added dried berries (blackberries, mulberries, raisins) pecans and honey. For savory pemmican, they added small chili peppers or maybe juniper berries. Pemmican, once prepared, could last for years in a saddlebag or parfleche.
Position of Women: Like most of the nomadic People of the Plains, Comanche society was male-dominant. Men were the hunters, the warriors and the chiefs. Women took care of the home, cooking, skinning, clothing preparation, and putting up and taking down the teepees, which they owned. Descent was patrilineal.
Comanche Courtship: Similar to that of the Sioux except for the following: If a young Comanche man wanted to marry a specific young Comanche woman, he would get his uncle or a friend to take one or more of his horses to his beloved's father's house. Then the uncle or friend would speak to the father of the prospective bride about his nephew or friend, and then leave. If the father approved, the horses were added to the father's herd, but if not, they were released and driven back to the groom's herd. On the other hand, if the girl didn't want to marry that particular young Comanche man because she had another husband in mind, the lovers would elope.
Interesting Tidbits: As soon as the Pueblo gave Spanish horses to the Shoshone who were living in the Yellowstone Valley in Wyoming at the time, some of the Shoshone grabbed those horses, broke off with their parent tribe, and took off south for form their own tribe, the Comanche. Some say that they were following the buffalo, and others say that they found horses so invaluable that they took off for white settlements so that they could obtain more... They were very skilled at making silver and copper jewelry.... Comanche midwives hung umbilical cords from the hackberry tree and if the umbilical cord was left undisturbed, the child would have a long and healthy life... When boy infants were born, a flap might be painted by the door of the tent to indicate the birth of a new warrior.... Boys were named after their grandfather or paternal uncle and girls were named after a relative in the father's family.... Comanche of either gender painted the parts of their hair with colored pigments or clays .... The Comanche were known for their brutality against their enemies.....Some of the code-talkers during WWII were Comanche.
Traditional Religion: Native American Church, Christianity, traditional tribal religion.
Slavery and the Comanche: The Comanche commonly took prisoners during their wars and raids, and sold them to the Spanish and the Mexicans. Although, to be fair, they also captured the Spanish, the Mexicans and the Americans as slaves and sold them to other tribes, kept them or killed them outright.
Current Population: There are more than 15,200 registered Comanche.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: A college, four casinos, at least one of which is in Oklahoma, and ten smoke shops.
Famous Comanche: Sorry, although the list is long, no one that I have heard of.
Meaning of Name: The word "Comanche" comes from the Ute word "Kimantsi" which means "enemy." The Comanche called themselves the Numinu, which means "the people."
Location: Originally, the Comanche were part of the Shoshone tribe and the dominant force in the Great Plains. They were located in New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas in an area they called the "Comancheria," or "Comanche Earth." They currently live in Oklahoma, Texas, California and New Mexico.
Original Language: A Shoshone/Numic dialect of the Uto-Aztecan linguistic family.
Tribal Affiliations: The French, the Germans, the Wichita, the Osage, some of the Kiowa, the Apache and some of the Utes.
Traditional Enemies: The other Utes, the other Kiowa, the other Apache, and the Spanish, the Mexicans and the Americans, especially the Texans.
Traditional Style of Housing: Teepees, constructed, toted around and owned by the Comanche women. Comanche villages also probably had large teepees for tribal meetings, and smaller ones for sweat-lodges and menstrual-lodges.
Traditional Attire: Like most of the People of the Plains, the Comanche women wore long buckskin, deerskin or elkskin dresses with long fringes or trailing ribbons, and Comanche men wore buckskin, deerskin or elk-skin breech-clothes, leggings and tunics with fringes and trailing ribbons. The men also wore, on occasion, headdresses with a circle of eagle feathers that stuck straight up in the air and had ermine tails trailing down the back. Men wore their hair in two long braids and women wore their hair loose. For war and for ceremonies, some of the male dancers wore very large woolly buffalo scalps with the horns attached. They were one of the few Plains people who wore buffalo heads.
Traditional Foods: Mostly, buffalo, with some rabbit, birds, fish, pronghorn antelope, and black bears. They ate wild mustang, armadillos, skunks, snakes, rats, lizards frogs and grasshoppers when times were lean, and Texas Longhorn cattle when they could get them. The women gathered plums, grapes, juniper berries, persimmons, mulberries, wild grapes, acorns, pecans, wild onions, radishes, prickly pear fruit, blackberries and wild potatoes. The Comanche were unusual in that they drank milk, as long as it was from buffalo, deer and elk. (Native Americans, like Asians, are lactose-intolerant, at least when it comes to cow's milk.) They also made pemmican out of pulverized dried meat and rendered animal fat. For sweet pemmican, they added dried berries (blackberries, mulberries, raisins) pecans and honey. For savory pemmican, they added small chili peppers or maybe juniper berries. Pemmican, once prepared, could last for years in a saddlebag or parfleche.
Position of Women: Like most of the nomadic People of the Plains, Comanche society was male-dominant. Men were the hunters, the warriors and the chiefs. Women took care of the home, cooking, skinning, clothing preparation, and putting up and taking down the teepees, which they owned. Descent was patrilineal.
Comanche Courtship: Similar to that of the Sioux except for the following: If a young Comanche man wanted to marry a specific young Comanche woman, he would get his uncle or a friend to take one or more of his horses to his beloved's father's house. Then the uncle or friend would speak to the father of the prospective bride about his nephew or friend, and then leave. If the father approved, the horses were added to the father's herd, but if not, they were released and driven back to the groom's herd. On the other hand, if the girl didn't want to marry that particular young Comanche man because she had another husband in mind, the lovers would elope.
Interesting Tidbits: As soon as the Pueblo gave Spanish horses to the Shoshone who were living in the Yellowstone Valley in Wyoming at the time, some of the Shoshone grabbed those horses, broke off with their parent tribe, and took off south for form their own tribe, the Comanche. Some say that they were following the buffalo, and others say that they found horses so invaluable that they took off for white settlements so that they could obtain more... They were very skilled at making silver and copper jewelry.... Comanche midwives hung umbilical cords from the hackberry tree and if the umbilical cord was left undisturbed, the child would have a long and healthy life... When boy infants were born, a flap might be painted by the door of the tent to indicate the birth of a new warrior.... Boys were named after their grandfather or paternal uncle and girls were named after a relative in the father's family.... Comanche of either gender painted the parts of their hair with colored pigments or clays .... The Comanche were known for their brutality against their enemies.....Some of the code-talkers during WWII were Comanche.
Traditional Religion: Native American Church, Christianity, traditional tribal religion.
Slavery and the Comanche: The Comanche commonly took prisoners during their wars and raids, and sold them to the Spanish and the Mexicans. Although, to be fair, they also captured the Spanish, the Mexicans and the Americans as slaves and sold them to other tribes, kept them or killed them outright.
Current Population: There are more than 15,200 registered Comanche.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: A college, four casinos, at least one of which is in Oklahoma, and ten smoke shops.
Famous Comanche: Sorry, although the list is long, no one that I have heard of.
Friday, May 8, 2015
The Kumeyaay of Southern California
Tribe: The Kumeyaay, which includes the Ipai, the Tipai and the Kamia tribes. They were formerly known as the Diegueno, the name given to them by the Spanish missionaries.
Meaning of Name: "Kumeyaay" means "Those who face the water from the cliff," which is probably a reference to the cliffs of La Jolla, Del Mar and Point Loma. "Ipai" and "Tipai" mean "People." I don't know what "Kamia" means.
Location: San Diego coastline on the west, north to Oceanside, east of the Salton Sea, to south of Ensenada, Mexico. They have lived in the area since 10,000 BC. In about 7000 BC, after the Pleistocene Era, the cultures of the Chumash, Kumeyaay and the desert Patayan (Quechan) tribes merged and openly traded with each other.
Original Language: Yuman, of the Hokan linguistic family.
Tribal Affiliations: Seemed to be friendly with all neighboring tribes.
Traditional Enemies: The Spanish, the Mexicans and the Americans.
Traditional Style of Housing: Dome-like houses made of willow branches, like the Chumash' houses, either with or without ribs from beached whales, since the Kumeyaay didn't have seaworthy boats for harpooning whales in the open ocean like the Chumash did.
Traditional Attire: Even thousands of years ago, the people of what was later San Diego County were imitating the people of what was later Los Angeles. Like the Chumash, the men went naked except for a woven agave belt for holding hunting tools. The women wore willow-bark skirts, bangs, and woven hats. Body art was common, as were wearing sandals or going barefoot.
Traditional Foods: Those Kumeyaay who lived on the coast fished for bass, bonefish, halibut, seal, oysters, clams, grunion, squid, mussels, abalone, crab, and gathered seaweed and whatever edible greenery and process-able acorns that they could find on the coast. Those Kumeyaay who lived inland or in the mountains caught and ate snakes, possum, ducks, deer, rat, kangaroo mice, gophers, voles, bats, ground squirrel, chipmunk, grasshoppers (which, roasted, taste like asparagus or green beans), cactus, pinyon nuts, cactus fruit, sagebrush (for seasoning), wild peppers, prickly pears, and acorn mush. Acorn mush, by the way, reportedly tastes nutty and can be eaten hot as a porridge or cold as a cross between pudding and bread. Probably best when sweetened with wild honey or milkweed nectar. The women grew squash, beans, and corn. They were probably herbalists, as well, considering their access to manzanita, sagebrush and laurel sumac which could be used for medicinal herbal teas, and cacti, the slime of which soothed sunburn, which you can get in San Diego, even on a cloudy day.
Position of Women: Descent is patrilineal and the main power base was male, but women could also be the shaman, doctors, scientists and secondary leaders. They also did the childcare, gathering, food-preparation, clothing production, basket-weaving, minor hunting and medicinal cures preparation.
Kumeyaay Courtship: Like the Chumash, the Kumeyaay don't seem to advertise their courtship patterns.
Interesting Tidbits: The Kumeyaay did their fishing from light canoes made of tule, a sort of bulrush that was used for making just about everything from baskets to boats to skirts to hats.... Like the Chumash, they used Olivella shells as currency.
Traditional Religion: traditional tribal religion and (reluctantly) Catholicism.
Slavery and the Kumeyaay: The Kumeyaay were too far south to be tapped for the slave-trade by the Mojave, the Chumash and the other slave-trading nations. However, the Kumeyaay were enslaved by the Spanish missionaries to work on their buildings and farms, and by the Mexicans to work on their ranches and fields and homes as unpaid domestic servants, and by the Americans, who were probably just as brutal, if not more-so, than the Spanish and the Mexicans.
Current Population: There are more than 3,000 registered Kumeyaay.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: Casinos.
Famous Kumeyaay: None.
Meaning of Name: "Kumeyaay" means "Those who face the water from the cliff," which is probably a reference to the cliffs of La Jolla, Del Mar and Point Loma. "Ipai" and "Tipai" mean "People." I don't know what "Kamia" means.
Location: San Diego coastline on the west, north to Oceanside, east of the Salton Sea, to south of Ensenada, Mexico. They have lived in the area since 10,000 BC. In about 7000 BC, after the Pleistocene Era, the cultures of the Chumash, Kumeyaay and the desert Patayan (Quechan) tribes merged and openly traded with each other.
Original Language: Yuman, of the Hokan linguistic family.
Tribal Affiliations: Seemed to be friendly with all neighboring tribes.
Traditional Enemies: The Spanish, the Mexicans and the Americans.
Traditional Style of Housing: Dome-like houses made of willow branches, like the Chumash' houses, either with or without ribs from beached whales, since the Kumeyaay didn't have seaworthy boats for harpooning whales in the open ocean like the Chumash did.
Traditional Attire: Even thousands of years ago, the people of what was later San Diego County were imitating the people of what was later Los Angeles. Like the Chumash, the men went naked except for a woven agave belt for holding hunting tools. The women wore willow-bark skirts, bangs, and woven hats. Body art was common, as were wearing sandals or going barefoot.
Traditional Foods: Those Kumeyaay who lived on the coast fished for bass, bonefish, halibut, seal, oysters, clams, grunion, squid, mussels, abalone, crab, and gathered seaweed and whatever edible greenery and process-able acorns that they could find on the coast. Those Kumeyaay who lived inland or in the mountains caught and ate snakes, possum, ducks, deer, rat, kangaroo mice, gophers, voles, bats, ground squirrel, chipmunk, grasshoppers (which, roasted, taste like asparagus or green beans), cactus, pinyon nuts, cactus fruit, sagebrush (for seasoning), wild peppers, prickly pears, and acorn mush. Acorn mush, by the way, reportedly tastes nutty and can be eaten hot as a porridge or cold as a cross between pudding and bread. Probably best when sweetened with wild honey or milkweed nectar. The women grew squash, beans, and corn. They were probably herbalists, as well, considering their access to manzanita, sagebrush and laurel sumac which could be used for medicinal herbal teas, and cacti, the slime of which soothed sunburn, which you can get in San Diego, even on a cloudy day.
Position of Women: Descent is patrilineal and the main power base was male, but women could also be the shaman, doctors, scientists and secondary leaders. They also did the childcare, gathering, food-preparation, clothing production, basket-weaving, minor hunting and medicinal cures preparation.
Kumeyaay Courtship: Like the Chumash, the Kumeyaay don't seem to advertise their courtship patterns.
Interesting Tidbits: The Kumeyaay did their fishing from light canoes made of tule, a sort of bulrush that was used for making just about everything from baskets to boats to skirts to hats.... Like the Chumash, they used Olivella shells as currency.
Traditional Religion: traditional tribal religion and (reluctantly) Catholicism.
Slavery and the Kumeyaay: The Kumeyaay were too far south to be tapped for the slave-trade by the Mojave, the Chumash and the other slave-trading nations. However, the Kumeyaay were enslaved by the Spanish missionaries to work on their buildings and farms, and by the Mexicans to work on their ranches and fields and homes as unpaid domestic servants, and by the Americans, who were probably just as brutal, if not more-so, than the Spanish and the Mexicans.
Current Population: There are more than 3,000 registered Kumeyaay.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: Casinos.
Famous Kumeyaay: None.
Thursday, May 7, 2015
The Chumash of Malibu Beach
Tribe: The Chumash, also known as the "Costanoan."
Meaning of Name: "Seashell People."
Location: The Chumash have occupied the coastal regions from Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo through Los Angeles, including the Channel Islands, since about 10,000 BC. Place-names include Malibu, Lompoc, Ojai, Pismo Beach, Point Mugu, Point Hueneme and Simi Valley, which also gives a good indication of where they lived. Because of the mild climate, the Chumash lived quiet, settled lives and didn't need to plant crops or store food, because where they lived, food was plentiful, and they traded with the other local tribes for what they needed.
Original Language: Chumash (it appears to be unrelated to other dialects except for some linguistic similarity to Polynesian.)
Tribal Affiliations: Other Chumash tribes and the Tongva, who also lived in the Los Angeles Basin but spoke Ute-Aztecan, and the Kumeyaay to the south, who spoke Yuman, which is a branch of the Hokan linguistic family.
Traditional Enemies: The Spanish missionaries.
Traditional Style of Houses: Very large dome-shaped houses made of willow branches and reinforced with whalebone. Probably made by the men but owned by the women. Villages also had sweat-lodges and menstrual-lodges.
Traditional Attire: The Chumash men usually went naked except for a belt, and the women wore a knee-length grass or animal-skin skirt and a fez-shaped basket-weave hat. The Spanish missionaries changed all that when they invaded the coastline of California, at which point, the enslaved Chumash were forced to switch to cotton peasant garb: plain white one-piece dresses for the women and a pair of white cotton trousers and a plain white cotton shirt for the men.
Traditional Foods: The men gathered mussels, abalone, clams, oysters, spiny lobster, octopus, squid, oceanic fish and mammals (due to the Chumash's fine canoes) such as whales, dolphin, bass, swordfish, bass, Bonita, and river fish like trout and chub. They and their neighbors the Tongva feasted on grunion after the grunion runs. The men hunted for or trapped deer, rabbits, ducks and geese while the women gathered dandelions greens, wild onions, wild lettuces, currants, gooseberry, elderberry and blackberries and flavored their foods with sage, mustard, bay leaves, and gathered black walnuts, laurel sumac, and wild grains like rye, buckwheat and chia. And, like the other acorn-eating tribes of California, the women gathered acorns, bleached out the bitter tannins and made it into a mush which could be stored and eaten at leisure. The Chumash were also talented herbalists.
Position of Women: Equal to that of men. A Chumash daughter could inherit her father's chieftain or shaman position. What seemed to matter most is if a person was rich in Olivella shells, because money meant power, which had to be kept within the family. Transsexuals and homosexuals were also accepted and esteemed in Chumash society.
Chumash Courtship: If a Chumash man wanted a particular girl, he had to pay a bride-price, probably in Olivella shells or other things that the bride's father wanted. Other than that, I have no idea.
Interesting Tidbits: The Chumash used strands of cut-out pieces of Olivella shells (they look like white olive seeds) as currency.... They used tar, most likely from the La Brea Tar Pits, to seal their plank-wood boats.... Flat noses were considered an attractive trait, so babies' noses were flattened soon after birth. This may also suggest that thousands of years ago, wide-nosed Polynesians arrived in the Channel Islands then immigrated down to Mexico, where they founded the Olmec civilization, and that what remained of their Polynesian culture was a preference for wide-noses by both the Chumash and the Olmecs.... The book, The Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell (1960) is based on the true story about a Chumash girl who was left alone on one of the Channel Islands, managed to survive on her own for many years, and then died soon after she was rescued.
Traditional Religion: Traditional tribal religion and (reluctantly) Catholicism.
Slavery and the Chumash: The Spanish used Chumash slaves to make their missions and do their farm-work, care for livestock, tan hides, and produce the things necessary to run the missions. Taking care of crops and livestock was not part of the Chumash lifestyle, which did not endear the Chumash to the missionaries, or the missionaries to the Chumash, so many of the Chumash tried to run away. Unfortunately, there was no Underground Railroad in California for the mission slaves, so when they were caught and returned to the missions, they were brutally punished or killed. Death rates were high among the Chumash due to slavery and diseases against which they had no natural immunity, including those diseases borne by European livestock.
Current Population: There are more than 5,000 registered Chumash.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: Originally, bead-making, basket-weaving and trading. Now, mostly casinos.
Famous Chumash: None that I have heard of.
Meaning of Name: "Seashell People."
Location: The Chumash have occupied the coastal regions from Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo through Los Angeles, including the Channel Islands, since about 10,000 BC. Place-names include Malibu, Lompoc, Ojai, Pismo Beach, Point Mugu, Point Hueneme and Simi Valley, which also gives a good indication of where they lived. Because of the mild climate, the Chumash lived quiet, settled lives and didn't need to plant crops or store food, because where they lived, food was plentiful, and they traded with the other local tribes for what they needed.
Original Language: Chumash (it appears to be unrelated to other dialects except for some linguistic similarity to Polynesian.)
Tribal Affiliations: Other Chumash tribes and the Tongva, who also lived in the Los Angeles Basin but spoke Ute-Aztecan, and the Kumeyaay to the south, who spoke Yuman, which is a branch of the Hokan linguistic family.
Traditional Enemies: The Spanish missionaries.
Traditional Style of Houses: Very large dome-shaped houses made of willow branches and reinforced with whalebone. Probably made by the men but owned by the women. Villages also had sweat-lodges and menstrual-lodges.
Traditional Attire: The Chumash men usually went naked except for a belt, and the women wore a knee-length grass or animal-skin skirt and a fez-shaped basket-weave hat. The Spanish missionaries changed all that when they invaded the coastline of California, at which point, the enslaved Chumash were forced to switch to cotton peasant garb: plain white one-piece dresses for the women and a pair of white cotton trousers and a plain white cotton shirt for the men.
Traditional Foods: The men gathered mussels, abalone, clams, oysters, spiny lobster, octopus, squid, oceanic fish and mammals (due to the Chumash's fine canoes) such as whales, dolphin, bass, swordfish, bass, Bonita, and river fish like trout and chub. They and their neighbors the Tongva feasted on grunion after the grunion runs. The men hunted for or trapped deer, rabbits, ducks and geese while the women gathered dandelions greens, wild onions, wild lettuces, currants, gooseberry, elderberry and blackberries and flavored their foods with sage, mustard, bay leaves, and gathered black walnuts, laurel sumac, and wild grains like rye, buckwheat and chia. And, like the other acorn-eating tribes of California, the women gathered acorns, bleached out the bitter tannins and made it into a mush which could be stored and eaten at leisure. The Chumash were also talented herbalists.
Position of Women: Equal to that of men. A Chumash daughter could inherit her father's chieftain or shaman position. What seemed to matter most is if a person was rich in Olivella shells, because money meant power, which had to be kept within the family. Transsexuals and homosexuals were also accepted and esteemed in Chumash society.
Chumash Courtship: If a Chumash man wanted a particular girl, he had to pay a bride-price, probably in Olivella shells or other things that the bride's father wanted. Other than that, I have no idea.
Interesting Tidbits: The Chumash used strands of cut-out pieces of Olivella shells (they look like white olive seeds) as currency.... They used tar, most likely from the La Brea Tar Pits, to seal their plank-wood boats.... Flat noses were considered an attractive trait, so babies' noses were flattened soon after birth. This may also suggest that thousands of years ago, wide-nosed Polynesians arrived in the Channel Islands then immigrated down to Mexico, where they founded the Olmec civilization, and that what remained of their Polynesian culture was a preference for wide-noses by both the Chumash and the Olmecs.... The book, The Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell (1960) is based on the true story about a Chumash girl who was left alone on one of the Channel Islands, managed to survive on her own for many years, and then died soon after she was rescued.
Traditional Religion: Traditional tribal religion and (reluctantly) Catholicism.
Slavery and the Chumash: The Spanish used Chumash slaves to make their missions and do their farm-work, care for livestock, tan hides, and produce the things necessary to run the missions. Taking care of crops and livestock was not part of the Chumash lifestyle, which did not endear the Chumash to the missionaries, or the missionaries to the Chumash, so many of the Chumash tried to run away. Unfortunately, there was no Underground Railroad in California for the mission slaves, so when they were caught and returned to the missions, they were brutally punished or killed. Death rates were high among the Chumash due to slavery and diseases against which they had no natural immunity, including those diseases borne by European livestock.
Current Population: There are more than 5,000 registered Chumash.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: Originally, bead-making, basket-weaving and trading. Now, mostly casinos.
Famous Chumash: None that I have heard of.
The Miwok of Northern California
Tribe: The Miwok
Meaning of Name: The name "Miwok" is Miwokan for "People."
Location: A wide, but not long, geographical area from Marin County north of San Francisco, to the Sierra Nevada Mountains and Yosemite National Park to south of San Francisco. The Miwok have occupied that area since at least 1000 BC and have been in the Sierra Nevadas since 500 AD.
Original Language: Miwokan, a branch of the Utian linguistic family, or possibly the Penutian, or Uto-Aztecan linguistic family.
Tribal Affiliations: Ohlone, Patwin, Pomo and Yokut tribes.
Traditional Enemies: The Mono and, depending on the location of the tribe, the Spanish, the English, the Mexicans, the Russians and the Americans, especially during the Gold Rush, since gold was found on what was once their land. (The Miwok's form of money were strings of disks made out of punched-out rounds of Washington clam shells.)
Traditional Style of Housing: Depending on the location, either a rounded dome-like wickiup made of woven tule, or a teepee-like lean-to made of cedar bark and branches. Villages typically had storehouses, granaries, sweat-lodges, menstrual-lodges, and round male-only "spirit dance" lodges that was fairly large and partially subterranean.
Traditional Attire: Loincloths, tunics, and boots. Both women and men wore their hair long, and had tattoos and piercings. The men sometimes wore headbands decorated with feathers.
Traditional Foods: Depending on where the tribe lived, the women gathered acorns, seaweed, bulbs, clams, oysters, mussels, abalone, grasshoppers, greens, seeds and berries while the men hunted for deer, rabbit, skunk, bat, salmon, trout, sea lions, seals, sea otters, ducks, brown bears, and antelope, but they did not hunt more dangerous animals like king snakes, rattlesnakes and grizzly bears.
Position of Women: Relatively low. Descent was patrilineal and the culture was male-dominant. However, the work that women did in terms of cooking, basket-making, food-gathering, childcare and keeping the home-fires burning was valued equally or nearly equally with the work that men did of hunting, boat-making, fishing and warfare.
Miwok Courtship: How the Miwok courted remains a mystery.
Interesting Tidbits: The word "Yosemite" comes from the Miwok word "asamati" which means "bear.".... The Miwok were the inspiration for Ewoks in the Star Wars movies.... And the Miwok had dogs and smoked pipe-tobacco.
Traditional Religion: Only men were allowed to be Shamans, and only men were allowed in the round wooden ceremonial "spirit dance" houses.
Slavery and the Miwok: Miwok men and women were often enslaved or made indentured servants, which is like short-term slavery.
Current Population: There are more than 3,500 registered Miwok.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: Most Miwokan live in poverty or near-poverty on reservations or Rancherias. Some rely on logging, basketry and tourism for income, and others rely on casinos.
Famous Miwok: None.
Meaning of Name: The name "Miwok" is Miwokan for "People."
Location: A wide, but not long, geographical area from Marin County north of San Francisco, to the Sierra Nevada Mountains and Yosemite National Park to south of San Francisco. The Miwok have occupied that area since at least 1000 BC and have been in the Sierra Nevadas since 500 AD.
Original Language: Miwokan, a branch of the Utian linguistic family, or possibly the Penutian, or Uto-Aztecan linguistic family.
Tribal Affiliations: Ohlone, Patwin, Pomo and Yokut tribes.
Traditional Enemies: The Mono and, depending on the location of the tribe, the Spanish, the English, the Mexicans, the Russians and the Americans, especially during the Gold Rush, since gold was found on what was once their land. (The Miwok's form of money were strings of disks made out of punched-out rounds of Washington clam shells.)
Traditional Style of Housing: Depending on the location, either a rounded dome-like wickiup made of woven tule, or a teepee-like lean-to made of cedar bark and branches. Villages typically had storehouses, granaries, sweat-lodges, menstrual-lodges, and round male-only "spirit dance" lodges that was fairly large and partially subterranean.
Traditional Attire: Loincloths, tunics, and boots. Both women and men wore their hair long, and had tattoos and piercings. The men sometimes wore headbands decorated with feathers.
Traditional Foods: Depending on where the tribe lived, the women gathered acorns, seaweed, bulbs, clams, oysters, mussels, abalone, grasshoppers, greens, seeds and berries while the men hunted for deer, rabbit, skunk, bat, salmon, trout, sea lions, seals, sea otters, ducks, brown bears, and antelope, but they did not hunt more dangerous animals like king snakes, rattlesnakes and grizzly bears.
Position of Women: Relatively low. Descent was patrilineal and the culture was male-dominant. However, the work that women did in terms of cooking, basket-making, food-gathering, childcare and keeping the home-fires burning was valued equally or nearly equally with the work that men did of hunting, boat-making, fishing and warfare.
Miwok Courtship: How the Miwok courted remains a mystery.
Interesting Tidbits: The word "Yosemite" comes from the Miwok word "asamati" which means "bear.".... The Miwok were the inspiration for Ewoks in the Star Wars movies.... And the Miwok had dogs and smoked pipe-tobacco.
Traditional Religion: Only men were allowed to be Shamans, and only men were allowed in the round wooden ceremonial "spirit dance" houses.
Slavery and the Miwok: Miwok men and women were often enslaved or made indentured servants, which is like short-term slavery.
Current Population: There are more than 3,500 registered Miwok.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: Most Miwokan live in poverty or near-poverty on reservations or Rancherias. Some rely on logging, basketry and tourism for income, and others rely on casinos.
Famous Miwok: None.
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