North American Indians

North American indians map, Census 2000. See larger map: [1]

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.

Historical role of disease and war on Indian populations

Deaths by disease

Indian populations suffered substantial losses over time, mainly due to disease and warfare. As author Guenter Lewy reports, great disparities exists in estimates of native American Indian populations before the arrival of Europeans, from around 1.2 million to 12 million, with assertions being given of inflation or deflation of numbers. However, it is generally accepted that that only 250,000 native Americans were alive in the territory of the United States at the end of the 19th century. The major cause of the reduction of population is understood by many scholars to be virgin-soil epidemic, that of death through the the spread of highly contagious diseases to which the Natives had no immunity. The principal pathogen was smallpox, the effects of which also killed by hunger by reducing the food gatherers. Other killers included measles, influenza, whooping cough, diphtheria, typhus, bubonic plague, cholera, and scarlet fever. It is estimated that between 75 to 90 percent of all Indian deaths resulted from such killers. While there is evidence that some Europeans promoted this decimation, and certain liberal historians are given to ideological-driven charges, specific accounts of such are in dispute, but poor medical understanding, as well as poor conditions and later forced relocations, such as that of Cherokee resettlement 1838, certainly fostered it. However, the largest loss of life occurred well before such forced relocation, and sometimes after only little contact with European traders from Europe.

Death by war

Puritans first regarded the Natives as potential friends and converts, and relations for some time were amicable. However, later developments would result in the Puritan seeing the Indians as hostile. The murder of several colonists in late 1636 by the feared (by colonists and other Indians alike) Pequot tribe, resulted in increased alarm and hostilities. Torture of prisoners was a routine practice for most Indian tribes, and the Pequots in particular had a reputation for cruelty and ruthlessness, and openly flayed the skin of one of their captors alive, and cut off his fingers and toes, while roasting another. Some Indians also engaged in cannibalism, eating certain body parts of their enemies. While the colonists sometimes engaged in torture in order to gain information, and the means of war on both sides could be brutal, the revelation of the type of cruelty these warring Indians engaged in resulted in a fear and a determination to subdue them.

A particularly brutal war followed, that of King Philip’s War (1675-76), in which fifty-two of New England’s 90 towns were attacked, and seventeen were razed to the ground, and 25 were pillaged. Although Boston's colonial council in Boston had declared "that none be Killed or Wounded that are Willing to surrender themselves into Custody", this would not be English "civilized warfare", and Indian deaths were even higher, with many captured Natives being executed or sold into slavery to foreign countries. Soon, the colonists would become more like their enemies in brutality, albeit somewhat tempered in places by religious restraints.

Enlistment and incitement of Indians by the French, and expansion westward by European settlers resulted in escalating hostilities, and substantial deaths on both sides. The premise that force was the answer was challenged by a number of federal commissioners, but the Europeans overall had the upper hand, and both sides engaging in indiscriminate killing. True and perhaps exaggerated stories of savage killings by Indians spread, and with it increasing animosity toward them outside the East, and desire to exterminate them. The Reverend William Crawford reported in September 1864 that the attitude of the white population of Colorado was, “There is but one sentiment in regard to the final disposition which shall be made of the Indians: ‘Let them be exterminated—men, women, and children together.’” To which he added, "I do not myself share in such views." Violent conflicts due to the Gold Rush saw great decimation of the Indian population of California, mainly by disease but also by killing, with settlers sometimes killing any who were in their way, and retaliating to Indian savagery with greater intensity.

For a more through and balanced account of wars between the Indians and settlers, the reader is directed to the main source for the above, Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide?, by Guenter Lewy.

Deaths by internecine conflicts

In addition to decimation by war with 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 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.

New England praying Indians

A class of Christian Indians known as praying Indians helped the European Colonialists, but were treated shamefully due to distrust by most of the Colonialists.

Roger Williams of Rhode Island and and Thomas Mayhew of Martha's Vineyard were the first English missionaries to seek the conversion of New England's natives, but John Eliot was much more successful, largely because of his command of the complex native Algonquian language.

Between 1646 to 1674, this “Apostle to the Indians,” saw some 1100 Massachusetts natives convert to the Christian religion, and played a central role in establishing fourteen “Praying Indian” communities in the eastern part of Massachusetts.

The praying town of Natick was the oldest, being founded in 1651, and in 1674 6 more principal praying towns existed: Hassanamesit, Magunkaquog, Nashobah, Okommakamesit, Punkapog, and Wamesit. However, the praying Indians were practically destroyed by the other Native Americans in King Philip's War circa 1675 and by the English, both of whom viewed them as traitors. From a estimated population of 1,100 in 1674, they were reduced to only 300 by 1680.

Missionary John Eliot

John Eliot (1605 - 1690), born in Widford, Hertfordshire, England in 1604, was the younger son of Bennett Eliot, a wealthy landowner. At the age of only fifteen he entered Jesus College at Cambridge University, where he soon was recognized as a brilliant linguist and classical scholar.

In 1631 Eliot joined a great migration of Puritans to North America, resulting from the persecution of nonconformists (men who in conscience toward God could not assent to the Church of England. Eliot found a home in Boston, Massachusetts, and was immediately hired as a substitute for the then-absent Reverend John Wilson. Although the Boston congregation wanted Eliot to be an associate minister when Wilson returned from England, he chose to become the pastor of the church of neighboring Roxbury. Eliot served in that pastorate for almost sixty years, while also fathering six children during his long and happy union with his wife, Ann (Mumford) Eliot, which lasted until his death in 1690.

Eliot learned the language of the local Native Americans, and some fifteen years after his arrival in America he began his missionary work to the American Indians. In addition to his personal burden, Eliot had official support during that period, as the English government had required of the Bay Colony that conversion of the natives be a high priority in granting its charter in 1628. The seal of the Mass Bay Colony even featured an Indian pleading with the English to “Come over and help us,” based on Acts 16:9, but very little had been accomplished as yet.

However, Eliot found hardness of heart in his first attempt mid-1646, that being was to the Indian community under Sachem Cutshamekin at Neponset (in Dorchester), as the older Sachem rejected the gospel and his braves openly ridiculed and mocked the clergyman.

Eliot found more hope among a small band of Indians under a native leader of somewhat lesser stature named Waban, whom he described as "one who gives more grounded hope of serious respect for the things of God, than any as yet I have known of that forlorn generation. Waban was son-in-law of the Sachem of Concord, whose commuity lived on the southwest slope of Nonantum Hill (presently on Brighton-Newton line.)

Accompanied by two of three other clergymen, Eliot delivered about a one hour sermon in the Algonquian language in October, 1646, followed later by a three hour lectureship, resulting in Waban immediately turning to the Lord Jesus Christ and his people also soon became Christians. The offical sanction of the work by the government also meant that the need for more land was made to Eliot, who interceded for them (leading liberal historians to impugn their motives).

On November 4 of the next month, the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony voted "for the good of the Indians" to give the desired land, with Eliot being part of the commission which was to handle the matter. Asked by the Indians what to call their Christian village, Eliot recommended that it be called Nonantum, which in English signifies rejoicing, because “they hearing the word, and seeking to know God, the English did rejoice at it."

In seventeenth-century New England, Christian practice was a way of life, and steady, dutiful habits and working towards economic stablity were part of what constituted true Christian faith, and which living in English-style buildings and maintaining English work rhythms on geographically defined homesteads was conducieve to.

An early historian of Newton, pastor Jonathan Homer, provided the following description of the "Praying Indian" village of Nonantum:

Mr. Eliot...furnished them, by the public aid, with shovels, spades, mattocks, and iron crows, and stimulated the most industrious with money.... The houses of the meanest were found to be equal to those of the sachems or chiefs in other places. They surrounded the town with ditches...and with a stone-wall.

The Indians, thus settled, were instructed in husbandry, and were excited to a prudent as well as industrious management of their affairs. Some of them were taught such trades as were most necessary for them, so that they completely built a house for public worship, 50 feet in length and 25 feet in breadth

However, in less than five years after its foundation, Eliot was obliged to migrate the entire population of this first North American Christian Indian community to a 3,000-acre site some fifteen miles to the southwest, in the present town of Natick.

Twenty years after the arrival of Eliot, the Massachusetts General Court established Natick (meaning “Place of Searching”) as the 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 lived 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.

Praying Indians in Delaware

During the period of the 1730s to the 1770s, the Delaware Indians had been forced out of their homelands in the east and had found temporary refuge along the Ohio River.

Among these was a contingent of Moravian Indian converts in western Delaware. During the 1740s the Moravians had established communities of Indian Christians from Georgia to New York , but these were gradually moved westward further away from "civilization", due to increasing pressures of European settlements. Yet the Moravians believed that healthy communities could exist separate from both the negative influences of European society as well as the pagan customs of non-Christianized Indians.

In the early 1770s settlements of Christian Indians were established in Gnadenhutten, Salem and New Schonbrunn where Delawares, Mohicans, and other tribal affiliations mingled together as religious communities.

However, war between some of the Delawares outside these communities and the Americans broke out, resulting in the destruction of Coshocton on April 19, 1781, which was located in the middle of the warpath between the American forces at Pittsburgh, and the British stronghold of Detroit.

The Christian Indians in the Moravian villages were unarmed noncombatants and at this time were not molested, but in September 1781, certain Indian tribes who were allied with the British forced the Christian Indians and the white missionaries to move from their Moravian villages to a new village on the Sandusky. The missionaries were also taken to Detroit and tried for treason by the British, but were acquitted.

Being in need of food over 100 of the Christian Indians returned to their old Moravian villages in February of 1782, seeking to harvest the crops they had been forced to leave behind. However, war was still ongoing, and an adhoc militia of 160 Pennsylvania local frontiersmen led by Colonel David Williamson, seeking to destroy Indian villages and looking for Indian scalps, found the Christian Indians at Gnadenhutten. Although the pacifism of the Moravian Indians was well known, and they had been very helpful to the American cause, the militiamen accused them of taking part in ongoing raids against them, and sought to frame them as guilty. At a council called by Williamson, his men (some of whom had recently lost relations to Indians) voted to kill them all, with records showing only 18 voting to spare them.

A website created to honor the slain (and the main source for this section), states,

“

On the evening of the 7th, the Indians spent their last hours praying and singing, knowing that their spirits would soon be in the presence of their God. They did not resist, they did not struggle. The next morning the slaughter began. The women were killed in one building, the men in the other. The old, the young and the infants were all massacred. The lists of the victims contain the names of infants and toddlers who were killed. As the victims were brought into the slaughter houses, many sang hymns, others prayed. The word of God was on their lips as the mallet or tomahawk crashed into their skulls... The other abandoned Moravian towns were then burned as well. Two Indian boys, one of whom had been scalped, survived to tell of the massacre. The bordermen who had committed the mass murder were hailed as heroes by most of their fellow frontiersmen, but were deemed as criminals by most of the rest of America.

”

90-96 Delaware (Lenni Lenape), Mohican, and other Indians who had been converted by Moravian missionaries to Christianity died, and as a result of the the massacre, Indian distrust of Americans and resistance to them much increased.

Negative effects of resettlement

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.

Indian tribes today

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.

Today, many Indian tribes are seeing a resurgence, such as in California, with outreach programs working 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. Laws have been enacted in some States that give Indians special privileges in allowing gambling in the form of slot machines and other gaming, resulting in economic gains but with increased addictive behavior, and at the expense of spiritual and social values.

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).

See also

• American Indian
• Native American
• Colombian Exchange
• Cherokee
• Ethnic Groups Gallery

Further reading

• Daniel Gookin,Historical Account of the Doings and Sufferings of the Christian Indians in New England in the years 1675-1677
• William L. Traxel, Footprints of the Welsh Indians: settlers in North America before 1492
• John McIntosh, The origin of the North American Indians