Native American History and European Colonization in North America
Native Americans
Five Tribes
- Cherokee
- Choctaw
- Muscogee (Creek)
- Chickasaw
- Seminole
Regions
- Arctic: Hunting and fishing
- Subarctic: Hunting
- Coastal: Fishing
- Coastal: Fishing and gathering
- Plateau: Fishing, hunting, and gathering
- Desert: Gathering
- Pueblo: Farming
- Plains: Hunting
- Woodland: Farming
- Mississippi: Farming
Three Sisters of Farming
Woodland farmers, Plains, Mississippi farmers, Maya (corn, beans, squash)
Woodland Farmers
- Southern Canada and Northern U.S.
- Sophisticated culture
- Permanently settled (agriculture)
- Humid continental climate
- Iroquois Confederacy (largest grouping)
Mississippi Farmers
- Southeastern U.S.
- Humid subtropical
- Sophisticated societies
- Permanently settled
- Urban centers
- Mound societies
- Chiefdoms
- Five Tribes
Mound Societies
Cahokia, near modern-day St. Louis, was home to an estimated 40,000 Cahokian people, after whom the city was named.
Plains Hunters
- Plains region
- Sedentary and nomadic
- Farming, hunting, and gathering
Horse
- Re-introduced by Coronado
- Nomadic lifestyle (less egalitarian)
- Comanche, Apache
- Intertribal conflict
Plateau and Desert Hunter-Gatherers
- Between the Sierra Nevadas and the Rocky Mountains
- Housing… Wikiup: lodge consisting of a frame covered with matting or brush; used by nomadic Native Americans
Pueblo Farming
- Southwest region of the US
- Three main groups: Mogollon, Hohokam, and Anasazi
- Arid climate = irrigation systems = agriculture flourished = surplus food = sedentary
Coastal Fisher-Gatherers and Coastal Fishers
- Pacific Northwest and other coastal areas
- Fishing and hunting = no agricultural system needed
- Densely populated settlements
Subarctic and Arctic Hunters and Fishers
- Northern regions
- Arctic: Inuit and the Aleut
- Subarctic:
- Small populations
- Subsistence hunters and gatherers
- Fishing
- Persistence of traditional beliefs
Impacts of European Colonization on Native Americans
Disease
Typhus, smallpox, diphtheria, measles • Ravaged population 1492-early 1900s
Why?
Indigenous population had no previous exposure to disease
How?
Europeans to the Americas, spread within populations, urban/trade centers
Consequence
- 1 million by the start of the 19th century
- Called into question healers
- Lost historical and cultural knowledge
- Allowed Europeans to take control in ~40 years
Settlement Patterns
- Resource availability
- Slowing of European settlement expansion
- Natives role in transition
- Ex.: Wampanoag Tribe (woodland farmers)
- Helped Europeans survive winter
- Food; cultivation of crops
- Friendly -> disease and war
Forced Relocation
Policy of removal and resettlement • Political control over land by Europeans and then by Canadians and Americans • Fought Native American tribal nations for land • European settlement west = remaining Natives west • Use of treaties to displace Native Americans • Resistance to colonization
Indian Removal Act of 1830
Forced relocation • Supposed to be voluntary • Target: Five Tribes • Trail of Tears: series of forcible moves • Choctaw: about 500 survivors out of the first 2,000 • Disease and malnutrition • Thousands of people deprived of their rights, their homes, and often, their lives. • Marginal lands in Oklahoma
Separation and Containment
Reservations (1851-United States) and Reserves (Canada) • Goal: protection from evils of society; assimilation; eventually become members of society • Easier to control; out of public eye; centralized for education and acculturation • ‘cultural hospice’ Social change: education as ‘cultural genocide’ • Adopt proper work habits, manner of dress, sexual conduct, public behavior • Purged of Native heritage • Many: sought out Christianity and encouraged children to attend school = adapt to a changing world • Not every boarding school experience was negative
Native Americans Today
Population in the US
- 573 federally recognized American Indian and Alaska Native Tribes
- ~1% of today’s population (2.9 out of 320 mill.)
- American Indian or Native Alaskan only
- About ¾ Native Americans live off reservations
- About ¾ live in urban or suburban areas
- Great Plains: fraction but grew by 40% between 1990 and 2010
- Lower life expectancy and higher disease burden than average US
- About 30% live below poverty level
- On reservations: 38-63% below poverty
Spatial Segregation
Geography reflects forced migration from homelands • Small reservations in east • Larger reservations on Plains and west
Dakota Access Pipeline Project (DAPL)
- Standing Rock Sioux Tribe: protests April 2016
- Land promised in 1851 Treaty of Laramie
- Sacred Stone Camp: so workers can’t continue to build
- Social/Cultural
- “Pipeline Politics”
- Environment
Attempts to Redress Past Injustices
Nunavut: created in 1999 as a homeland for Canada’s Inuit people • Iqaluit: capital • Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act • Nunavut Act • Population: almost 39,000
Texas derives from a Caddo Indian word that means “friends” or “allies.”
54% of State name origins are Native American.
European Colonization
Why?
- Religious/political reasons
- Alternative route to the East
- Political/economic desires of feudal leaders for power and financial stability
- Colonialism: the practice of taking over the human and natural resources of often distant places to produce wealth for mother countries
- Commercial exploitation of new lands and peoples
Columbian Exchange
Process of transferring plants, animals, microbes, and people across the Atlantic in both directions • not just trading these goods, but transplanting them from Europe and Africa into the Americas and the other way around
Atlantic Slave Trade: Forced Migration
Forced Africans to the Americas • Began 1492+; height: 1700-1810) • Why?: fueled by high demand for labor on plantations in the Americas • Severely depopulated large areas • How many enslaved Africans? • Estimated 12-15 million -> double • We will never know the real numbers.
Spanish Colonization
- Large settlements
- Presence of: Spanish language, architecture, Catholic religion
- Control local populations:
- Missions: religious conquest
- Presidios: military control
- Land grants: depended on the size
- Sugar plantations, gold mines, cattle ranching
Spanish settlement Veracruz, Mexico est. 1519
French Colonization
Where?: shores of the St. Lawrence River, Newfoundland, and Acadia (Nova Scotia) but gradually expanding to include much of the Great Lakes region, parts of the trans-Appalachian West, Mississippi River • Fishing, fur trade, agricultural settlements • Trade and exploitation of resources • Long lots: ribbon-like pieces of land that runs perpendicular to each other • North America wasn’t a priority for France
Quebec long lot system
Dutch Colonization
Where?: New Amsterdam- today’s Manhattan Island (around New York) • Successful in fur and coastal trades; those areas expanded • Not successful: encouraging agricultural settlement and development • Labor shortages • Patron system: feudal system; land given to investors and then rent the land to farmers (tenant farmers) • Solution: let anybody come in • Entrepot: place where goods are shipped and distributed to other places
British Colonization
Distinguishing Characteristics
- Entered late
- Britain made North American a priority
- Foundation for American culture and society
- Less homogenous than French or Spanish
- 13 very distinct areas of settlements
What values and cultural assumptions did the British colonists transfer to North America? How did those values conflict with the values of Native Americans?
- Private property: boundaries
- Agricultural areas: Native Americans move around but British had their land and stayed
What modifications did the English settlers have to make to cope with the unique physical environments of the New World?
British vs New World environments • Change in landscape • New crops • Adjust agriculture • Christianize values (what’s right)
Culture Hearth
Nuclear area where a distinctive set of cultural traits develops/forms and is diffused
Chesapeake Bay Culture Hearth
Where?: tidewater areas of Maryland and Virginia • Adopted natural crops: tobacco vs olives • Tobacco: discovered from Native Americans, difficult to grow • Slave labor -> forced Africans • Hierarchical system: wealth elite and landless worker • Rural, dispersed settlements
New England (“Yankee”) Culture Hearth
Where?: northwest corner of the US; older southeastern segment, and northern area • Dominant region during the century of rapid expansion • Boston is the chief hub: shared leadership with lower Connecticut Valley and Narragansett Bay region • Homogenous: 90% population was British • 1620 Pilgrims but Puritans 1629 -> exception to first effective settlement
Middle Colonies (Midland) Culture Hearth
Where?: Pennsylvania sub-region, New York sub-region • Late 17th century: William Penn • Philadelphia: major port city • Agriculture and industries • Polyglot: more of an ethnic mosaic vs melting pot • Staging area for western migration
Immigration and Settlement: 1790-1930
Cultural landscape: visible human imprint on the land. Material culture: the visible aspect of culture, the physical, tangible objects made and used by members of a culture group. Vernacular architecture: native or unique to a particular place, concerned with the domestic and functional. The Icelanders: Vernacular Architecture. Cultural selectivity: what traits are selected to be put into the new society/place. Cultural borrowing: borrowing from another group • ex. Swedes are credited with introducing the log cabin. Cultural simplification (cultural devolution): relocate to another place -> drop some of the traits/cultural characteristics you previously had. Cultural pluralism: diverse society. Sequent occupance: layers of history in the cultural landscape
Colonial and Early American Period (1607- 1844+10 years)
First wave of immigration: • Naturalization Act of 1795 (renewed in 1802) • No limit on immigration but residency requirement and give notice • Oath of allegiance, proof of character and behavior • Available only to “free white persons” • Host culture: the dominant, majority cultural group within a country or society, which usually occupies a dominant socio- economic position • Anglo culture group: WASP, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (dominated northwestern European core) • About 75% British, 8% German, rest Dutch, French, or Spanish.
First Wave: 1820+
Push factors (1st wave importance): conditions in the home country that encourages outmigration • Examples: political unrest, crop failures (Ireland potato famine 1845-1847), land shortages
The Second Major Wave of Immigration
Begins during American Civil War to 1873 then sharp decline for 4-5 years ~1880 • Pull factors (2nd wave greater significance): conditions in the receiving country that encourage immigration • Examples: land, employment, wages • Chain migration (family reunification): tendency of people to migrate along channels, over a period of time, from specific source areas to specific destinations • better chance of achieving prosperity • Less ‘shock’
Second Major Wave of Immigration
Begins during American Civil War to 1873 then sharp decline for 4-5 years ~1880 • Source areas: Northern and Western Europe • Destination in North America: • New York (>2/3), New Orleans, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore • Preadaptation: adaptive skills and traits possessed by a group prior to migration, giving them survival ability and a competitive advantage in occupying their new environment
The “Great Deluge” 1878-1898: Third Wave of Immigration
Greater than 23 million immigrants • Push factors: industrialization, persecution of the Jews • Pull factors: demand for unskilled or semi-skilled labor • Source areas: 2/3 from South and Eastern Europe, Austria- Hungry, other areas • Destination in North America: • Urban areas for work (factories) • Assimilation: complete blending of an ethnic group into the host culture, resulting in a loss of all distinctive ethnic traits • Slowed by social networks
Impacts
- Slowing of assimilation process
- Formation of ghettos
- Restrictive immigration policies
Immigration Restrictions and Transition Period Late 1800s-1930
California Gold Rush 1848, Transcontinental Railroad 1862
Chinese immigration: port of San Francisco, mostly single men, goal: make a fortune and move back to China, reality: many stayed in the US and worked in low-paying jobs • California: own laws to discourage Chinese immigration
Arguments for Immigration Restriction
Job competition, religious and political differences, racism, nativist movements
Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)
Suspended Chinese immigration for 10 years and declared Chinese immigrants ineligible for naturalization
Gentleman’s Agreement (1907)
Policy to calm growing tension between the US and Japan over the immigration of Japanese workers
Contract Labor Law 1885
Prohibit corporations or individuals from paying for the transportation of foreign laborers in the United States
Quota Acts of 1921 and 1924 (National Origins Act)
Objective: restore the ethnic makeup of the country’s white population to that of the early 19th-century
Township and Range System
Geometric system of land division based on lines of attitude and longitude; used in majority of American states
Challenges to New Orleans’ Dominance
- Growth of Chicago
- Railroad transformed Chicago
- Small settlement -> bustling commercial and transportation center
- 1850: city contained not 1 mile of track, but within 5 years, 2,200 miles of track serving 150,000 square miles
- Terminated in Chicago
Western Settlement Frontiers, 1841-1865
- Oregon country
- 1846 49th parallel: US- Canadian border
- Willamette Valley
- Utah (Mormons)
- Irrigated agriculture
- “Wavelike” expansion stopped near 98th meridian
- But: California Gold Rush 1849
- Attracted new settlers
Open-Range Cattle Ranching
A method of raising cattle on natural vegetation in an area without fences
Dust Bowl
The Great Plains region devastated by drought in the 1930s, including Oklahoma and Texas panhandles and neighboring sections of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico
Buffalo Commons
Depopulated counties of the plains should become open range for bison, with at least a portion under the management of Native Americans
The Great Migration (1st, 1916-1940)
About 1.6 million people move: from mostly Southern rural areas to northern industrial cities
Why?
- Jim Crow South, Black Codes
- Need for industrial workers in the North: following strict legislation that limited immigration