North American Indians

North American Indians (also Native Americans) are the original inhabitants of the Americas. The Native Americans of North America are typically considered to be all those tribes north of Central Mexico. While technically part of North America, most archaeologists tend to place the civilizations of Central Mexico into a separate category. Tribes in North America maintained a wide variety of subsistence patterns, from hunting and gathering, to intensive agriculture. North America is also home to two of the most unusual groups of hunter-gatherers, the Northwest Coast tribes, and the Aleuts. The first Native Americans are believed to have migrated from Asia via the Bering land bridge, the exposed continental shelf through Alaska between Asia and North America during the last Ice Age.

While the American Indian population once numbered over 100 million, over 90% were killed by European diseases augmented by changes in the natural habitat caused by the new arrivals.

Culture Areas of North America

American Indians of North America are generally divided into culture areas according to similarities in geography, environment, subsistence patterns, language family, and similar social practices. According to the Handbook of North American Indians, there are ten such cultural areas.

Arctic

Greenland, extreme northern Canada, and the northern and western coastlines of Alaska: Inuit.

Subarctic

Most of central Canada and interior Alaska.

Northeast

New England, Nova Scotia, the Great Lakes region, the Chesapeake Bay area, and most of current day W. Virginia, the Ohio River valley, and Illinois: Hurons, Shawnee, Iroquois.

Southeast

N. Carolina excluding the NE corner, western Virginia, southern W. Virginia, and all the southern states east of the Mississippi River, in addition to parts of Arkansas, Louisiana, and eastern Texas: Cherokee, Creek, Seminole.

Plains

the entire Midwest United States from Texas north to southern parts of Canada: Sioux, Cheyenne.

Southwest

Central Mexico north into W. Texas, NM, and AZ: Navajo, Pueblo, Apache.

Great Basin

Nevada, Utah, N. Arizona, W. Colorado, W. Wyoming, S. Idaho, SE Oregon, and parts of W. California: Shoshone, Utes.

California

Interior and Coastal California and N. Baja: Modoc.

Northwest Coast

N. California to S. Alaska along 1500 miles of coastline: Tlingit, Tsimshian.

Plateau

Parts of Oregon, Washington, N. Idaho, W. Montana, and SW Canada: Nez Perce.

Today

Today, many Indian tribes are seeing a resurgence, such as in California, through laws that give them special privileges in allowing gambling in the form of slot machines and other gaming, through outreach programs to reunite urban Indians with both their reservation families and other urban tribal members; programs set up both by the tribe themselves (often with assistance of state and local governments) to teach their languages and open schools that focus on a tribal way of life. Most tribes have been granted some limited power in self governance as well, significantly in the area of the sentencing of tribal members in various criminal and civil issues. Special tax breaks have helped Indian people and Indian reservations become more self-sufficient. Some states have even revisited the definition of 'reservation' based on the Dawes Act which originally provided for substantially more "reservation" land if the Indian people would buy it as individual land, and either market it or farm it (the intent was to help Indian Peoples integrate into the American social and economic systems). So for instance in Wisconsin, Indian reservation land can include buying real estate in Milwaukee - far from the physical location of the tribes themselves.

Self governance is a huge issue, with each of the over 300 recognized tribes having different rules and regulations placed on them by the Government. As with every other political system in the world, Indian People disagree with each other about many issues from how to spend government money to how "traditional" to become, to what religion should be the focal point of the tribe.

Other issues remain between recognized Sovereign Nations and the US government including mineral right issues, natural resource husbandry and mediation, conflicts with government run museums (as well as a few private museums) over who has the right to various artifacts, what rights modern Indian peoples should and should not have when dealing with artifacts that are clearly earlier than the oldest known existence of any particular tribe (for example, who has rights to archaeological finds at Mesa Verde, which represents an extinct tribe, the Anisazii).

War and Social Issues

In addition to vast decimation by the hands of European groups, in contrast to those who worked to covert Indians to faith in Christ, armed conflict and ritual violence between Indians themselves are of considerable antiquity in North America. In North American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence, it is evidenced that in contrast to revisionist history that tribal warfare was more like football games, recent findings provide more evidence that from antiquity Indians fought each other, that internecine "warfare was ubiquitous; every major culture area of native North America reviewed herein has produced archaeological, ethnohistorical, osteological, or ethnographic evidence of armed conflict and ritual violence." This could involve the taking of human trophies being encouraged before contact with Europeans, and hostilities that at least among some areas resulted in "the massacre and mutilation of men, women, and children."

While the devastating effects of wars by European against Indians are not to be minimized, trade with Europeans could reduce traditional forms of intergroup conflict during the early contact period. However, as unjust warring is the usually the result of lust (Ja, 4:2) tribal warfare also could shift from "raiding each other based on revenge, and a desire to acquire prestige goods and status, to an extremely violent pattern of engagements arising from unequal access to foreign trade goods and the quest for war booty, revenge killings, status intensification, and slaves", as it did among Northwest Coast Indians.

Later, after the American Indian Peoples were rounded up onto reservations, the sudden dependence on the government created situations that are often associated with welfare situations. Both because of biology (Indian people like many Asian people do not break down alcohol the same way Europeans do) and the lack of being a "bread winner" that men throughout history find critical to identity as head of the family, alcohol and drug abuse became very common both among reservation and urban Indians, as is the case today. A strong rise in child and spousal abuse occurred after the "welfare state" like existence for the men came into being. Without the need to provide for the family, depression sets in, and is a common problem on the reservation.

Conflicts between "traditionalists" and "modernists", between "Christian Indians" and "tribal religion" Indians, between urban Indians and reservation Indians, and "full bloods" and "mixed bloods" are common among Indian people and effect their politics and social life. In the 1980's, Indian reservations began to see a rise in gangs, often as a result of drugs and drug wars with other social cultures in large cities.

Yet at the same time, Indian People have a proud heritage and find strength there to renew their cultures. They are, as a people, generally both proud to be American and (since World War I), proud soldiers for this country. At any Indian gathering, the first people onto the dance floor, or introduced politically, or recognized for contributions to the tribe are the elder male veterans, then the elder women (non veterans), the all other veterans, and only then people who have not served in the US military.

Indian People have many problems to solve, but new social services, generally run and funded by the tribes themselves, along with new recognition of Indian People's contributions to society are ways that tribes and individuals are trying to change things.

Praying Indians

A class of Christian Indians known as "praying Indians" helped the Europeans, but were treated shamefully due to distrust by most of the Colonialists. Missionary John Eliot arrived in Boston, Massachusetts from England in 1631, and learned the language of the local Native Americans. Eliot preached to the Massachusett Tribal Sachem Waban at Nonantum (Wellesley, MA) on October 28, 1646, and Waban immediately turned to the Lord Jesus Christ and his people then also became Christians.

Twenty years after the arrival of Eliot, the Massachusetts General Court established Natick (meaning “Place of Searching”) as the first praying Indian village/town in 1651, helping them to be able to to worship in peace. This was the first formally "Christian town" in America, and consisted at first of 51 inhabitants in seven villages, with seven more being later established. The beloved (by the Indians at least) Eliot became known as the “Apostle to the Indians.”

In 1663 Eliot, with help from Christian Indians, completed the first Bible printed in America, a Bible written in the Massachusett-Natick Indian language, which was a difficult task, as this language was completely oral.

Other praying Indian Towns also were established, including Ponkapoag (Stoughton, MA) and Nashoba (Littleton, MA), and by 1675, it is estimated that 20 percent of the Native Indians in New England lives in praying Towns.

However, it was in the winter of 1675 that an intense trial in the wilderness began. The colonists, being largely distrustful of the Praying Indians, and being fearful that they might join "King Phillip" (Metacom), the mighty Wampanoag Indian Chief in an ongoing war, they removed the approximately 200 Natick Praying Indians to Deer Island at midnight on October 30. The Indians made no opposition, and were left unprotected on the frigid Island, being forbidden to light fires, hunt game, build shelters, and so suffered from hunger and little clothing, though they may have been able to dig clams and fish. A month later this crime was multiplied as the praying Indian Villages of Ponkapoag and Nashoba were sent to suffer interment on the Island, which lasted until into 1676. An attempt by the now elderly Eliot going by boat to bring supplies to the Natives is said to have ended when the boat was capsized by some angry colonists. Most of the 500 Indians died of cold and starvation, while some of the Praying Indians worked as spies for the colonists and fought for them.

After the death of King Phillip Pastor Eliot and Daniel Gookin secured the Indians release, personally removing the Indians from the Island and bearing the financial cost to do so. They returned to face the loss of homes and property, and means of survival. A remnant lived on however, as a testimony of enduring faith.

Deer Island today exists mainly as a sewage treatment plant, but with a park with an open walk which remembers the plight of the Natives that were once imprisoned there.

See Also

• American Indian
• Native American
• Colombian Exchange
• Cherokee