I wanted to decode Pocahontas but I already knew that she was a fictional character because she lived before the American Revolutionary War. So, she being a native American, I decided to decode the Indians that are living and breathing at this moment and now you will know if this decode is truthful or that I am entirely wrong about the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
I didn't decode all of the tribes because there was no need....all you need to analyse is down below. If you want to decode more tribes then add the word INDIAN to the tribe for a more accurate decode.
Now....my conclusions is that there were no native indians that lived in North America and globally that they were placed at the appropriate time so that they can ASSIMILATE into the environment. When and at what date is anyone's guess.
Culturally,
the indigenous peoples of the Americas are usually recognized as
constituting two broad groupings, American Indians and Arctic
peoples. American Indians are often further grouped by area of
residence: Northern America (present-day United States and Canada),
Middle America (present-day Mexico and Central America; sometimes
called Mesoamerica), and South America. This article is a survey of
the culture areas and recent developments of the indigenous peoples
and cultures of the United States and Canada. Some of the terminology
used in reference to indigenous Americans is explained in Sidebar:
Tribal Nomenclature: American Indian, Native American, and First
Nation;
Sidebar: The Difference Between a Tribe and a Band; and Sidebar:
Native American Self-Names. An overview of all the indigenous peoples
of the Americas is presented in American Indian; discussions of
various aspects of indigenous American cultures may also be found in
the articles pre-Columbian civilizations; Middle American Indian;
South American Indian; Arctic: The people; American Indian languages;
Native American religions; and Native American arts.
205
Indigenous Peoples 88..97..106 =16= Sixteen (311=64p/2=32 Unnatural) (205=25 Trick)
115
American Indian 70 This is a Hoax (115/5=23 Faker, Duped, Fraud)
135
Native American 63..81 /3=27 Faked
186
Native American Indian 96..114 /3=38-Death, Kabbalah, HaHaHAHAHa
200
Indigenous Americans 92..101=26p Lie (200=20 WeDo) (301/7=43=14p
Sham)
145
First Nation 55..64 (145/5=29 Deceits) (209/11=19 Bogus)
96
Sixteen 33..42 (96,42 Freemason) (33 Reward, Destiny)
This
region lies near and above the Arctic Circle and includes the
northernmost parts of present-day Alaska and Canada. The topography
is relatively flat, and the climate is characterized by very cold
temperatures for most of the year. The region's extreme northerly
location alters the diurnal cycle; on winter days the sun may peek
above the horizon for only an hour or two, while the proportion of
night to day is reversed during the summer months (see midnight sun).
The
indigenous peoples of the North American Arctic include the Eskimo
(Inuit and Yupik/Yupiit) and Aleut; their traditional languages are
in the Eskimo-Aleut family. Many Alaskan groups prefer to be called
Native Alaskans rather than Native Americans; Canada's Arctic peoples
generally prefer the referent Inuit.
The
Arctic peoples of North America relied upon hunting and gathering.
Winters were harsh, but the long hours of summer sunlight supported
an explosion of vegetation that in turn drew large herds of caribou
and other animals to the inland North. On the coasts, sea mammals and
fish formed the bulk of the diet. Small mobile bands were the
predominant form of social organization; band membership was
generally based on kinship and marriage (see also Sidebar: The
Difference Between a Tribe and a Band). Dome-shaped houses were
common; they were sometimes made of snow and other times of timber
covered with earth. Fur clothing, dog sleds, and vivid folklore,
mythology, and storytelling traditions were also important aspects of
Arctic cultures.
72
Eskimo 27..36..45
123
Eskimo Indian 60..69..78 (201=21 Hoax)
73
Inuit 28
82
Yupik 28..37
100
Yupiit 37
59
Aleut 14
131
Eskimo-Aleut 41..59..59
This
region lies south of the Arctic and encompasses most of present-day
Alaska and most of Canada, excluding the Maritime Provinces (New
Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island), which are part of
the Northeast culture area. The topography is relatively flat, the
climate is cool, and the ecosystem is characterized by a swampy and
coniferous boreal forest (taiga) ecosystem.
Prominent
tribes include the Innu (Montagnais and Naskapi), Cree, Ojibwa,
Chipewyan, Beaver, Slave, Carrier, Gwich'in, Tanaina, and Deg Xinag
(Ingalik). Their traditional languages are in the Athabaskan and
Algonquian families.
Small
kin-based bands were the predominant form of social organization,
although seasonal gatherings of larger groups occurred at favoured
fishing locales. Moose, caribou, beavers, waterfowl, and fish were
taken, and plant foods such as berries, roots, and sap were gathered.
In winter people generally resided in snug semisubterranean houses
built to withstand extreme weather; summer allowed for more mobility
and the use of tents or lean-tos. Snowshoes, toboggans, and fur
clothing were other common forms of material culture. See also
American Subarctic peoples.
58
Innu 22
113
Montagnais 41..50
71
Naskapi 26..35..44
122
Naskapi Indian 59..68..
31
Cree 22
60
Ojibwa 24
104
Chipewyan 50
155
Chipewyan Indian 83=23p Faker, Duped, Fraud (155/5=31 B.S.)
53
Beaver 26..44
59
Slave 14..23..41
This
culture area reaches from the present-day Canadian provinces of
Quebec, Ontario, and the Maritimes (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and
Prince Edward Island) south to the Ohio River valley (inland) and to
North Carolina (on the Atlantic Coast). The topography is generally
rolling, although the Appalachian Mountains include some relatively
steep slopes. The climate is temperate, precipitation is moderate,
and the predominant ecosystem is the deciduous forest. There is also
extensive coastline and an abundance of rivers and lakes.
Prominent
tribes include the Algonquin,
Iroquois, Huron, Wampanoag, Mohican, Mohegan, Ojibwa, Ho-chunk
(Winnebago), Sauk, Fox, and Illinois.
The traditional languages of the Northeast are largely of the
Iroquoian and Algonquian language families.
Most
Northeastern peoples engaged in agriculture, and for them the village
of a few dozen to a few hundred persons was the most important social
and economic unit in daily life. Groups that had access to reliably
plentiful wild foods such as wild rice, salmon, or shellfish
generally preferred to live in dispersed hamlets of extended
families. Several villages or hamlets formed a tribe, and groups of
tribes sometimes organized into powerful confederacies. These
alliances were often very complex political organizations and
generally took their name from the most powerful member tribe, as
with the Iroquois Confederacy.
Cultivated
corn (maize), beans, squash, and weedy seed-bearing plants such as
Chenopodium formed the economic base for farming groups. All
northeastern peoples took animals including deer, elk, moose,
waterfowl, turkeys, and fish. Houses were wickiups (wigwams) or
longhouses; both house types were constructed of a sapling framework
that was covered with rush matting or sheets of bark. Other common
aspects of culture included dugouts made of the trunks of whole
trees, birchbark canoes, clothing made of pelts and deerskins, and a
variety of medicine societies. See also Northeast Indian.
123
Iroquois 51..60
174
Iroquois Indian 84..93
This
region reaches from the southern edge of the Northeast culture area
to the Gulf of Mexico; from east to west it stretches from the
Atlantic Ocean to somewhat west of the Mississippi valley. The
climate is warm temperate in the north and grades to subtropical in
the south. The topography includes coastal plains, rolling uplands
known as the Piedmont, and a portion of the Appalachian Mountains; of
these, the Piedmont was most densely populated. The predominant
ecosystems were coastal scrub, wetlands, and deciduous forests.
Perhaps
the best-known indigenous peoples originally from this region are the
Cherokee,
Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole,
sometimes referred to as the Five Civilized Tribes. Other prominent
tribes included the Natchez,
Caddo,
Apalachee, Timucua, and Guale.
Traditionally, most tribes in the Southeast spoke Muskogean
languages; there were also some Siouan language speakers and one
Iroquoian-speaking group, the Cherokee.
The
region's economy was primarily agricultural and often supported
social stratification; as chiefdoms, most cultures were structured
around hereditary classes of elites and commoners, although some
groups used hierarchical systems that had additional status levels.
Most people were commoners and lived in hamlets located along
waterways. Each hamlet was home to an extended family and typically
included a few houses and auxiliary structures such as granaries and
summer kitchens; these were surrounded by agricultural plots or
fields. Hamlets were usually associated with a town that served as
the area's ceremonial and market centre. Towns often included large
earthen mounds on which religious structures and the homes of the
ruling classes or families were placed. Together, each town and its
associated hamlets constituted an autonomous political entity. In
times of need these could unite into confederacies, such as those of
the Creek and Choctaw.
People
grew corn, beans, squash, tobacco, and other crops; they also
gathered wild plant foods and shellfish, hunted deer and other
animals, and fished. House forms varied extensively across the
region, including wickiups (wigwams), earth-berm dwellings, and, in
the 19th century, chickees (thatched roofs with open walls). The
Southeast was also known for its religious iconography, which often
included bird themes, and for the use of the “black drink,” an
emetic used in ritual contexts. See also Southeast Indian.
121
Cherokee Indian 76..85 (197=45p Kabbalah, HaHaHAHAHa)
103
Apalachee Indian 67=19p Bogus (103=27p Faked) (170=17 Lie)
The
Plains lie in the centre of the continent, spanning the area between
the western mountains and the Mississippi River valley and from the
southern edge of the Subarctic to the Rio Grande in present-day
Texas. The climate is of the continental type, with warm summers and
cold winters. Relatively flat short-grass prairies with little
precipitation are found west of the Missouri River and rolling
tallgrass prairies with more moisture are found to its east.
Tree-lined river valleys form a series of linear oases throughout the
region.
The
indigenous peoples of the Plains include speakers of Siouan,
Algonquian, Uto-Aztecan, Caddoan, Athabaskan, Kiowa-Tanoan, and
Michif languages. Plains peoples also invented a sign language to
represent common objects or concepts such as “buffalo” or
“exchange.”
Earth-lodge
villages were the only settlements on the Plains until the late 16th
century; they were found along major waterways that provided fertile
soil for growing corn, beans, squash, sunflowers, and tobacco. The
groups who built these communities divided their time between
village-based crop production and hunting expeditions, which often
lasted for several weeks and involved travel over a considerable
area. Plains villagers include the
Mandan, Hidatsa, Omaha, Pawnee, and Arikara.
By
1750 horses from the Spanish colonies in present-day New Mexico had
become common in the Plains and had revolutionized the hunting of
bison. This new economic opportunity caused some local villagers to
become dedicated nomads, as with the Crow (who retained close ties
with their Hidatsa kin), and also drew agricultural tribes from
surrounding areas into a nomadic lifestyle, including the Sioux,
Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Comanche, Arapaho, and Kiowa.
Groups
throughout the region had in common several forms of material
culture, including the tepee, tailored leather clothing, a variety of
battle regalia (such as feathered headdresses), and large drums used
in ritual contexts. The Sun Dance, a ritual that demanded a high
degree of piety and self-sacrifice from its participants, was also
found throughout most of the Plains.
The
Plains is perhaps the culture area in which tribal and band
classifications were most conflated. Depictions of indigenous
Americans in popular culture have often been loosely based on Plains
peoples, encouraging many to view them as the “typical” American
Indians. See also Plains Indian.
111
Arapaho Indian 66,111-This is a Lie (177/3=59=17p Lie)
130
Cheyenne Indian 76 (206=26 Lie)
113
Comanche Indian 68 (181=42p Freemason)
This
culture area lies between the Rocky Mountains and the Mexican Sierra
Madre, mostly in present-day Arizona and New Mexico. The topography
includes plateaus, basins, and ranges. The climate on the Colorado
Plateau is temperate, while it is semitropical in most of the basin
and range systems; there is little precipitation and the major
ecosystem is desert. The landscape includes several major river
systems, notably those of the Colorado and the Rio Grande, that
create linear oases in the region.
The
Southwest is home to speakers of Hokan, Uto-Aztecan, Tanoan, Keresan,
Kiowa-Tanoan, Penutian, and Athabaskan languages. The region was the
home of both agricultural and hunting and gathering peoples, although
the most common lifeway combined these two economic strategies. Best
known among the agriculturists are the Pueblo Indians, including the
Zuni
and Hopi. The Yumans, Pima, and Tohono O'odham (Papago) engaged in
both farming and foraging,
relying on each to the extent the environment would allow. The Navajo
and the many Apache
groups usually engaged in some combination of agriculture, foraging,
and the raiding of other groups.
The
major agricultural products were corn, beans, squash, and cotton.
Wild plant foods, deer, other game, and fish (for those groups living
near rivers) were the primary foraged foods. The Pueblo peoples built
architecturally remarkable apartment houses of adobe and stone
masonry (see pueblo architecture) and were known for their complex
kinship structures, kachina (katsina) dances and dolls, and fine
pottery, textiles, and kiva and sand paintings. The Navajo built
round houses (“hogans”) and were known for their complex clan
system, healing rituals, and fine textiles and jewelry. The
Apaches, Yumans, Pima, and Tohono O'odham generally
built thatched houses or brush shelters and focused their expressive
culture on oral traditions. Stone channels and check dams (low walls
that slowed the runoff from the sporadic but heavy rains) were common
throughout the Southwest, as were basketry and digging sticks. See
also Southwest Indian.
The
Great Basin culture area is centred in the intermontane deserts of
present-day Nevada and includes adjacent areas in California, Oregon,
Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. It is so named
because the surrounding mountains create a bowl-like landscape that
prevented water from flowing out of the region. The most common
topographic features are basin and range systems; these gradually
transition to high intermontane plateaus in the north. The climate is
temperate in the north and becomes subtropical to the south. Higher
elevations tend to receive ample moisture but other areas average as
little as 2 inches (50 mm) per year. Much of the region's surface
water, such as the Great Salt Lake, is brackish. The predominant
ecosystem is desert.
The
Great Basin is home to the Washoe, speakers of a Hokan language, and
a number of tribes speaking Numic languages (a division of the
Uto-Aztecan language family). These include the Mono,
Paiute, Bannock, Shoshone, Ute, and Gosiute.
The
peoples of this region were hunters and gatherers and generally
organized themselves in mobile, kin-based bands. Seeds, piñon nuts,
and small game formed the bulk of the diet for most groups, although
those occupying northern and eastern locales readily adopted horses
and equestrian bison hunting after Spanish mounts became available.
Some of these latter groups also replaced wickiups and brush
shelters, the common house forms until that time, with Plains-style
tepees; peoples in the west and south, however, continued to use
traditional house forms well into the 19th century. Other common
forms of material culture included digging sticks, nets, basketry,
grinding stones for processing seeds, and rock art. See also Great
Basin Indian.
This
culture area approximates the present states of California (U.S.) and
northern Baja (Mex.). Other than the Pacific coast, the region's
dominant topographic features are the Coast Range and the Sierra
Nevada; these north-south ranges are interspersed with high plateaus
and basins. An extraordinary diversity of local conditions created
microenvironments such as coasts, tidewaters, coastal redwood
forests, grasslands, wetlands, high deserts, and mountains.
California
includes representatives of some 20 language families, including
Uto-Aztecan, Penutian, Yokutsan, and Athabaskan; American linguist
Edward Sapir described California's languages as being more diverse
than those found in all of Europe. Prominent tribes, many with a
language named for them, include the
Hupa, Yurok, Pomo, Yuki, Wintun, Maidu, and Yana.
Many
California peoples eschewed centralized political structures and
instead organized themselves into tribelets, groups of a few hundred
to a few thousand people that recognized cultural ties with others
but maintained their political independence. Some tribelets comprised
just one village and others included several villages; in the latter
cases, one village was usually recognized as more important than the
others. The relatively few groups that lived in areas with sparse
natural resources preferred to live in small mobile bands.
Agriculture
was practiced only along the Colorado River; elsewhere hunting and
gathering provided a relatively easy living. Acorns were the most
important of the wild food sources; California peoples devised a
method of leaching the toxins from acorn pulp and converting it into
flour, thus ensuring abundant and constant food. Fishing, hunting,
and gathering shellfish and other wild foods were also highly
productive. Housing varied from wood-framed single-family dwellings
to communal apartment-style buildings; ceremonial structures were
very important and could often hold several hundred people. The
California peoples were also known for their fine basketry,
ritualized trade fairs, and the Kuksu and Toloache religions. See
also California Indian.
This
culture area is bounded on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the
east by the Coast Range, the Sierra Nevada, and the Rocky Mountains;
it reaches from the area around Yakutat Bay in the north to the
Klamath River area in the south. It includes the coasts of
present-day Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, much of southern
Alaska, and a small area of northern California. The topography is
steep and in many places the coastal hills or mountains fall abruptly
to a beach or riverbank. There is an abundance of precipitation—in
many areas more than 160 inches (406 cm) annually, but rarely less
than 30 inches (76 cm). The predominant ecosystems are temperate
rainforests, intertidal zones, and the ocean.
This
culture area is home to peoples speaking Athabaskan, Tshimshianic,
Salishan, and other languages. Prominent tribes include the Tlingit,
Haida, Tsimshian, Kwakiutl, Bella Coola, Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka),
Coast Salish, and Chinook.
The
peoples of the Northwest Coast had abundant and reliable supplies of
salmon and other fish, sea mammals, shellfish, birds, and a variety
of wild food plants. The resource base was so rich that they are
unique among nonagricultural peoples in having created highly
stratified societies of hereditary elites, commoners, and slaves.
Tribes often organized themselves into corporate “houses”—groups
of a few dozen to 100 or more related people that held in common the
rights to particular resources. As with the house societies of
medieval Japan and Europe, social stratification operated at every
level of many Northwest Coast societies; villages, houses, and house
members each had their designated rank, which was reflected in nearly
every social interaction.
Most
groups built villages near waterways or the coast; each village also
had rights to an upland territory from which the residents could
obtain terrestrial foods. Dwellings were rectilinear structures built
of timbers or planks and were usually quite large, as the members of
a corporate “house” typically lived together in one building.
Northwest Coast cultures are known for their fine wood and stone
carvings, large and seaworthy watercraft, memorial or totem poles,
and basketry. The potlatch, a feast associated with the bestowal of
lavish gifts, was also characteristic of this culture area. See also
Northwest Coast Indian.
Lying
at the crossroads of five culture areas (the Subarctic, Plains, Great
Basin, California, and Northwest Coast), the Plateau is surrounded by
mountains and drained by two great river systems, the Fraser and the
Columbia. It is located in present-day Montana, Idaho, Oregon,
Washington, and British Columbia. Topographically, the area is
characterized by rolling hills, high flatlands, gorges, and mountain
slopes. The climate is temperate, although milder than the adjacent
Plains because the surrounding mountain systems provide protection
from continental air masses. The mountains also create a substantial
rain shadow; most precipitation in this region falls at higher
elevations, leaving other areas rather dry. The predominant
ecosystems are grassland and high desert, although substantial
forested areas are found at altitude.
Most
of the languages spoken in this culture area belong to the Salishan,
Sahaptin, Kutenai, and Modoc and Klamath families. Tribes include the
Salish,
Flathead, Nez Percé, Yakama, Kutenai, Modoc and Klamath, Spokan,
Kalispel, Pend d'Oreille, Coeur d'Alene, Walla Walla,
and Umatilla.
“Flathead” is incorrectly used in some early works to denote all
Salishan-speaking peoples, only some of whom molded infants' heads so
as to achieve a uniform slope from brow to crown; notably, the people
presently referred to as the Flathead did not engage in this practice
(see head flattening).
The
primary political unit was the village; among some groups a sense of
larger tribal and cultural unity led to the creation of
representative governments, tribal chieftainships, and confederations
of tribes. This was possible in part because the Columbia and Fraser
rivers provided enough salmon and other fish to support a relatively
dense population; however, this region was never as heavily populated
or as rigidly stratified as the Northwest Coast.
Efficient
hunters and gatherers, Plateau groups supplemented fish with
terrestrial animals and wild plant foods, especially certain
varieties of camas (Camassia). Most groups resided in permanent
riverside villages and traveled to upland locales during fair-weather
foraging excursions; however, horses were readily adopted once
available and some groups subsequently shifted to nomadic buffalo
hunting. These groups quickly adopted tepees and many other Plains
cultural forms; they became particularly respected for their equine
breeding programs and fine herds (see Appaloosa). Plateau fishing
villages were characterized by their multifamily A-frame dwellings,
while smaller conical structures were used in the uplands; both house
forms were covered with grass, although canvas became a popular
covering once available. In terms of portable culture, the Plateau
peoples were most characterized by the wide variety of substances and
technologies they used; continuously exposed to new items and ideas
through trade with surrounding culture areas, they excelled at
material innovation and at adapting others' technologies to their own
purposes.
The
Northeast Indians began to interact regularly with Europeans in the
first part of the 16th century. Most of the visitors were French or
English, and they were initially more interested in cartography and
trade than in physical conquest. Like their counterparts in the
Southeast, most Northeast Indians relied on a combination of
agriculture and foraging, and many lived in large walled settlements.
However, the Northeast tribes generally eschewed the social
hierarchies common in the Southeast. Oral traditions and
archaeological materials suggest that they had been experiencing
increasingly fierce intertribal rivalries in the century before
colonization; it has been surmised that these ongoing conflicts made
the Northeast nations much more prepared for offensive and defensive
action than the peoples of the Southwest or the Southeast had been.
Discussions
of the early colonial period in this region are typically organized
around categories that conjoin native political groupings and
European colonial administrations. The discussion below considers two
broad divisions: the Algonquian-speaking tribes of the mid-Atlantic
region, an area where the English settled, and the Algonquian- and
Iroquoian-speaking tribes of New England and New France, where the
English and the French competed in establishing colonial outposts.
The
mid-Atlantic groups that spoke Algonquian languages were among the
most populous and best-organized indigenous nations in Northern
America at the time of European landfall. They were accustomed to
negotiating boundaries with neighbouring groups and expected all
parties to abide by such understandings. Although they allowed
English colonizers to build, farm, and hunt in particular areas, they
found that the English colonial agenda inherently promoted the
breaking of boundary agreements. The businessmen who sponsored the
early colonies promoted expansion because it increased profits; the
continuous arrival of new colonizers and slaves caused settlements to
grow despite high mortality from malaria and misfortune; and many of
the individuals who moved to the Americas from England—especially
the religious freethinkers and the petty criminals—were precisely
the kinds of people who were likely to ignore the authorities.
The
earliest conflict between these Algonquians and the colonizers
occurred near the Chesapeake Bay. This region was home to the several
hundred villages of the allied Powhatan tribes, a group that
comprised many thousands of individuals. In 1607 this populous area
was chosen to be the location of the first permanent English
settlement in the Americas, the Jamestown Colony. Acting from a
position of strength, the Powhatan were initially friendly to the
people of Jamestown, providing the fledgling group with food and the
use of certain lands.
By
1609 friendly interethnic relations had ceased. Powhatan, the leader
for whom the indigenous alliance was named, observed that the region
was experiencing a third year of severe drought; dendrochronology
(the study of tree rings) indicates that this drought ultimately
spanned seven years and was the worst in eight centuries. In response
to English thievery (mostly of food), Powhatan prohibited the trading
of comestibles to the colonists. He also began to enforce bans
against poaching. These actions contributed to a period of starvation
for the colony (1609–11) that nearly caused its abandonment.
It
is not entirely clear why Powhatan did not press his advantage, but
after his death in 1618 his brother and successor, Opechancanough,
attempted to force the colonists out of the region. His men initiated
synchronized attacks against Jamestown and its outlying plantations
on the morning of March 22, 1622. The colonists were caught unawares,
and, having killed some 350 of the 1,200 English, Opechancanough's
well-organized operation created so much terror that it nearly
succeeded in destroying the colony.
The
so-called Powhatan War continued sporadically until 1644, eventually
resulting in a new boundary agreement between the parties; the
fighting ended only after a series of epidemics had decimated the
region's native population, which shrank even as the English
population grew. Within five years, colonists were flouting the new
boundary and were once again poaching in Powhatan territory. Given
the persistence of the mid-Atlantic Algonquians, their knowledge of
local terrain, and their initially large numbers, many scholars argue
that the Algonquian alliance might have succeeded in eliminating the
English colony had Powhatan pressed his advantage in 1611 or had its
population not been subsequently decimated by epidemic disease.
During
the 15th and early 16th centuries, warfare in the Northeast culture
area fostered the creation of extensive political and military
alliances. It is generally believed that this period of increasing
conflict was instigated by internal events rather than by contact
with Europeans; some scholars suggest that the region was nearing its
carrying capacity. Two of the major alliances in the area were the
Huron confederacy (which included the Wendat alliance) and the Five
Tribes (later Six Tribes), or Iroquois Confederacy. The constituent
tribes of both blocs spoke Iroquoian languages; the term “Iroquoian”
is used to refer generally to the groups speaking such languages,
while references to the “Iroquois” generally imply the tribes of
the Iroquois Confederacy alone.
The
Huron were a relatively tight alliance of perhaps 20,000–30,000
people who lived in rather dense settlements between Hudson Bay and
the St. Lawrence River, an area thus known as Huronia. This was the
northern limit at which agriculture was possible, and the Huron grew
corn (maize) to eat and to trade to their Subarctic Indian
neighbours—the Innu to the north and east and the Cree to the
west—who provided meat and fish in return. The Huron confederacy is
believed to have coalesced in response to raids from other Iroquoians
and to have migrated northward to escape pressure from the Five
Tribes to their south and southeast. Although the Huron coalition's
major goal was defense, the strength of the alliance also helped them
to maintain trading, rather than raiding, relationships with the
Innu, the Cree, and later the French.
The
Five Tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy lived south of the St.
Lawrence River and Lake Erie, for the most part in the present-day
state of New York. The alliance comprised the Mohawk,
Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga,
and Seneca
peoples; the Tuscarora joined the confederacy later. Evenly matched
with the Huron alliance in terms of aggregate size, the Iroquois were
more loosely united and somewhat less densely settled across the
landscape. While the Huron nations traded extensively for food, this
was less the case for the Five Tribes, who relied more thoroughly
upon agriculture. Before colonization they seem to have removed
southward, perhaps in response to raids from the Huron to their
north. The alliances among the Five Tribes were initiated not only
for defense but also to regulate the blood feuds that were common in
the region. By replacing retributory raids among themselves with a
blood money payment system, each of the constituent nations was
better able to engage in offensive and defensive action against
outside enemies.
The
Northeast was crisscrossed by an extensive series of trade routes
that consisted of rivers and short portages. The Huron used these
routes to travel to the Cree and Innu peoples, while the Iroquois
used them to travel to the Iroquoians on the Atlantic coast. The
French claimed the more northerly area and built a series of trade
entrepôts at and near Huron communities, whose residents recognized
the material advantages of French goods as well as the
fortifications' defensive capabilities. The Huron alliance quickly
became the gatekeeper of trade with the Subarctic, profiting
handsomely in this role. Its people rapidly adopted new kinds of
material culture, particularly iron axes, as these were immensely
more effective in shattering indigenous wooden armour than were
traditional stone tomahawks.
For
a period of time the new weapons enabled the Huron confederacy to
gain the upper hand against the Iroquois, who did not gain access to
European goods as quickly as their foes. By about 1615 the long
traditions of interethnic conflict between the two alliances had
become inflamed, and each bloc formally joined with a member of
another traditional rivalry—the French or the English. Initially
the Huron-French alliance held the upper hand, in no small part
because the French trading system was in place several years before
those of the Dutch and English. The indigenous coalitions became more
evenly matched after 1620, however, as the Dutch and English trading
system expanded. These Europeans began to make guns available for
trade, something the French had preferred not to do. The Huron found
that the technological advantage provided by iron axes was
emphatically surpassed by that of the new firearms.
French
records indicate that a smallpox epidemic killed as many as
two-thirds of the Huron alliance in 1634–38; the epidemic affected
the Iroquois as well, but perhaps to a lesser extent. At about the
same time, it became increasingly clear that beavers, the region's
most valuable fur-bearing animals, had been overhunted to the point
of extinction in the home territories of both groups. The Iroquois
blockaded several major rivers in 1642–49, essentially halting
canoe traffic between Huronia and the Subarctic. The combination of
smallpox, the collapse of the beaver population, and the stoppage of
trade precipitated an economic crisis for the Huron, who had shifted
so far from a subsistence economy to one focused on exchange that
they faced starvation. Decades of intermittent warfare culminated in
fierce battles in 1648–49, during which the Iroquois gained a
decisive victory against the Huron and burned many of their
settlements. In 1649 the Huron chose to burn their remaining villages
themselves, some 15 in all, before retreating to the interior.
Having
defeated the Huron confederacy to their north and west, the Iroquois
took the Beaver Wars to the large Algonquin population to their north
and east, to the Algonquian territory to their west and south, and to
the French settlements of Huronia. They fought the alliances of these
parties for the remainder of the 17th century, finally accepting a
peace agreement in 1701. With both the Huron and the Iroquois
confederacies having left Huronia, mobile French fur traders took
over much of the trade with the Innu and Cree, and various bands of
Ojibwa began to enter the depopulated region from their original
homelands to the south of the Great Lakes.
The
European exploration of the Subarctic was for many decades limited to
the coasts of the Atlantic and Hudson Bay, an inland sea connected to
the Atlantic and the Arctic oceans. The initial European exploration
of the bay occurred in 1610. It was led by the English navigator
Henry Hudson, who had conducted a number of voyages in search of a
northwest passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
The
Subarctic climate and ecosystem were eminently suited to the
production of fur-bearing animals. This circumstance was well
understood by the Huron alliance, which maintained a virtual lock on
trade between this region and the French posts to the south until
about 1650. Although the French colonial administration purported to
encourage entrepreneurial individuals, its bureaucracy could be
difficult to work with. In the 1660s, brothers-in-law Pierre Esprit
Radisson and Médard Chouart des Groseilliers, their pelts seized by
authorities for the lack of a proper license, offered the English
their services as guides to the region around Hudson Bay. The English
hired the men and sponsored an exploratory voyage in 1668. The
expedition was well received by the resident Cree, who had relied
upon the Hurons for trade goods and found their supply greatly
diminished in the wake of the Beaver Wars.
The
initial voyage was successful enough to instigate the creation of the
Hudson's Bay Company, which was chartered in 1670. Its first governor
was Prince Rupert, an experienced military commander and the cousin
of King Charles II. The company was granted proprietary control of
the vast territory from Labrador to the Rocky Mountains, a region
that soon became known as Rupert's Land. Company traders spent the
remainder of the 17th century building relationships with the local
Cree, Innu, and Inuit peoples. The Hudson's Bay Company eventually
became one of the most dominant forces of colonialism in Northern
America, maintaining political control over Rupert's Land until 1870
and economic control of the north for decades more.
By
about 1685 the company had built a series of trading posts around the
bay. These posts were staffed by company employees who were
instructed not to travel far afield. As a result, indigenous peoples
came to the posts to trade, and particular bands became associated
with particular posts. Known as Home Guard Indians, the relatively
close proximity of these bands and Hudson's Bay Company employees
often led to intermarriage, adoption, and other forms of kinship.
Band members with limited mobility might spend most of the year at a
post community, and all of the population would usually reside there
for some part of the year.
The
French built a few trading posts in the Subarctic but found that
having independent contractors transport goods to native communities
was more profitable—as was the practice of taking over Hudson's Bay
Company posts after running off the staff. Accustomed to the
difficult conditions of the boreal forest and the tundra, the Innu,
Cree, and Inuit could easily defend themselves against potential
depredations by Europeans. Many bands chose not to form an exclusive
alliance with either colonial power. Instead, they played the French
and the English against one another in order to gain advantageous
terms of exchange, profiting as the two colonial powers squabbled for
control over the northern trade.
The
American Revolution (1775–83)
The
discontentment caused by the Quebec Act contributed directly to a
third 18th-century war of empire, the American Revolution (1775–83),
in which 13 of the English colonies in North America eventually
gained political independence. This war was especially important to
the Iroquois Confederacy, which by then included the Tuscarora. The
confederacy had long been allied with the English against the Huron,
the northern Algonquians, and the French. Now the Iroquois were faced
with a conundrum: a number of the English individuals with whom they
had once worked were now revolutionaries and so at least nominally
allied with France. All the foreigners, whether English loyalists,
revolutionaries, or French, promised to uphold the sovereignty of
Iroquois lands, but by this time most Indians recognized that such
promises were as likely to be expediencies as they were to be true
pledges. This left the council of the Iroquois Confederacy with the
problem of balancing its knowledge of individual colonizers, some of
whom were trustworthy allies, against its experiences with the
colonial administrations, which were known to be inconstant. Despite
much deliberation, the council was unable to reach consensus. As its
decisions could only be enacted after full agreement, some
individuals, families, and nations allied themselves with the English
loyalists and others with the colonial upstarts and their French
allies.
For
the colonizers, the war ended with the Peace of Paris (1783). The
treaties between England and the new United States included the
English cession of the lands south of the St. Lawrence River and the
Great Lakes and as far west as the Mississippi River. The indigenous
nations were not consulted regarding this cession, which placed those
Iroquois who had been allied with the English loyalists in what was
now U.S. territory. Realizing that remaining in the territory would
expose them to retribution, several thousand members of the
Iroquois-English alliance left their homes and resettled in Canada.
The
nascent United States was deeply in debt after the war and had a
military too small to effectively patrol its extensive borders.
Hoping to overextend and reconquer the upstarts, their
rivals—formidable alliances comprising the displaced Iroquois, the
Algonquians, and the English in the north and the Spanish with some
of the Chickasaw,
Creek, Cherokee, and Choctaw in
the south—engaged in munitions trading and border raids. The United
States committed to a number of treaties in order to clarify matters
with indigenous nations, but in eastern North America the end of the
18th century was nonetheless characterized by confusion over, and
lack of enforcement of, many territorial boundaries.
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MLA Style: "Native American." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2013.
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APA Style: Native American. (2013). Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica.
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