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NATIVE AMERICAN ANCESTRY AND BEGINNINGS!
“Long, long ago, before the time we are living in now, a terrible thing happened to the world. There were people who survived this terrible thing and did not forget, so others who came after them should not forget either. The people took the memory of what had happened and put it into a story, and they gave the story to the children and they in turn passed it on to their children and so in this way the story was handed down from generation to generation. Of course the story did not stay exactly the same over all this time as any good storyteller knows, details can be added here and alterations made there, so as the years went by the story evolved and reformed like a drifting cloud shrinking and swelling.
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And as the world slowly changed people stopped believing in the truth of the story, “That’s just an old legend, a fantasy and a fairytale”, they would say. But those among them who were wiser and less proud imagined otherwise. “We know that deep in the heart of the story is an ancient memory and we know that the memory is true!!” It seems apt to begin the origin story of Native American peoples with a quote from a creation myth from the Sioux tribe of the Plains. The origins of the Native Americans have been written about and discussed extensively by historians, archaeologists and anthropologistsfrom all around the world. Their hard work and research has given us some ‘good stories’ which tell us about how the first native peoples of the America’s came from Asia as hunter gatherers, following large game across what is now known as the ‘Bering Strait’, but in ancient times was called ‘Beringia’. |
Others have begun to uncover stories of the lost city of ‘Atlantis’. Images of great and advanced civilisations populating this once great island create an alternative ‘story’ for the native peoples ancestry. And most importantly we can look to the myths and legends of the Native American people themselves with their strong and powerful ‘oral tradition’ of storytelling being handed down over generations and generations!.
The antiquity of any indigenous people is always shrouded in great mystery! And its truth?
The Story Begins…
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The vast continent of North America stretches thousands of kilometres from icy arctic regions in the north to dry sunbaked landscapes in the south. Enormous oceans, the Pacific, the Arctic, and the Atlantic Ocean border it. Historians, archaeologists and others working in these fields estimate that the first dates of arrivals into North America look at 10.000BC – 50.000BC maybe even earlier!! Although there is no surety, it is obvious that the ‘New World’ was not so new!! Christopher Columbus’s great find of 1492, where he spied the island off the coast of North America, and to his surprise discovered ‘Indians’ (as he called them), was somewhat of a naive discovery!! Given that at the time of the explorers reaching North America its land was vastly populated by a variety of Native Peoples. |
(The population numbers have been said to be anything up to thirty million!!). Not so much a discovery of a new world but more of a stumbling upon of an already inhabited continent of diverse tribes and cultures. |
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‘Migration, Movement and the Sacred Hoop’!
And as tribes moved around this vast country (as they did) there is evidence of how interaction with other tribes transformed and influenced these people’s ways of life, as they made adjustments to their own traditions and cultures to incorporate those of their neighbours. Even though the native American people had great diversity, they shared certain traits that are found to be common to many indigenous peoples, this being their connection with the land and the natural world.
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The native American people’s relationship with their world is rooted in a profound respect for the land, ‘Mother Earth’ and ‘Father Sky’ the forms and features of the landscape including all the creatures, the trees, the plants and the animals. From the smallest insect to the largest sea creatures all of life was sacred to the native people, and they believe that humans were not above creation but part of it, and therefore as keepers of the earth must be respectful and keep a balanced and harmonious relationship with the world and the land. Never taking too much and always putting back, they believed and still strongly hold these concepts and philosophies that all things are our relations and we are all connected with the ‘Sacred Hoop’ the circle of life. The quote below by Jamie Sams shows us this creative connection. ‘
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The ancestors teach us that when we wear our hair in braids we honour our connections to the Earth Mother and all our relations. Our braids represent our ties to the earth and the tangible world, when we wear our hair free we connect our spiritual essences to the spirits that ride on the wind. Our connections to all living things are strong when we honour the truth in each part of creation and respect the right of all life forms to create life abundant’! Jamie Sams. ‘Earth Medicine’, Ancestors ways of many moons. |
What an amazing story! Columbus would have had to tell about the native people of America with their social, spiritual and political structures, their incredible endurance and resourcefulness shown in their abilities to adapt to their landscape. Also he could tell how creatively they lived and how this was shown in the way they celebrated their connection with their Earth Mother, the colourful ritual and storytelling traditions they held sacred, handed down over generations from their ancestors the first native Americans. |
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Changing Landscapes!
Travelling along the river valleys of the Great Plains, westward through the South Pass of the Rockies to the Great Basin, southwest around the heel of the Rockies to southern California or southward into middle America all the way to ‘Fierra del fuego’ at the southern tip of the ‘new world’. A picture begins to unfold as we explore the imagery of the Native Indian ancestors discovering the America’s themselves following the big game over a long period of time which saw climate and landscape changes. Mountains came and went, passageway’s were submerged in the melting of huge ice rocks! that sometimes blocked their pathways. The migration and habitation of the America’s by the native people’s was not ‘overnight’, and it is interesting for us to ponder upon the cycles of time and the native peoples migration over that time, perhaps it can allow us to develop a greater understanding of the connection to ancestory they possess as a people and also their connection and respect for their Mother Earth. Later migrations to the new world occurred after the final submersion of ‘Bering’ in about 3.000 – 1.000 BC where the Aleuts and Athapascan’s crossed the Bering Sea using skin boat and wooden dugouts.
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We cannot be one hundred per cent sure of the reasons for tribes and groups movement and migration once in North America. However there is some evidence of environmental factors, over population and conflicts with other tribes as examples. The movement was not necessarily ‘en mass’ but more a steady trickle of native peoples and their families moving from one place to the next and from one area to another area, evolving culturally but also maintaining their own culture and traditions. Good examples of this are the Navajo of the southwest. In the Navajo origin story we here how they ascend to the surface of the world, this can be seen as symbolic and allegorical of the Athapascan migration that links tribes from the Arctic to Mexico through their ‘roots’ – as a common language family! (often people’s movements and origins were traced by anthropologists and linguists through language remnants, stories and similarities in ritual). But not all migration was voluntary, history shows us the sadness of migration through stories of groups and tribes being involuntary moved on from land they may have been connected with for 100’s of years!.
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OTHER STORIES TO TELL!! The Native American people have their own stories and many stand by their belief that they were created in North America.!!! There is a widespread belief tradition that many Native American Indians have an origin from the east ‘by sea’. Woodland tribes of the U.S. believed their ancestors once dwelt ‘to-wards the rising sun’, and according to Hopi legend their progenitors came from the tropical south, but earlier there had been a catastrophe some lives were saved by living under the sea and others survived by crossing the sea on huge reed rafts!! The Delaware’s said they come from the ‘first land beyond the ‘great ocean’. Indeed many of the creation stories of the northeast, southeast and the plains tribes tell of how the earth was formed from a clump of earth from the waters. ‘Water, water everywhere, that’s how it was in the beginning….’ |
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| The Iowa native Indians say ‘at first all men lived on an island where the star of day is born’, Sioux tradition also refers to an island to-wards the east or sunrise, ‘where all the tribes were formerly one!’ They came to their new homes after floating on the sea for weeks. It is worth noting that it is difficult to find many storiesr legends among the native tribes and |
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Links with Atlantis!
And then we return again to the intriguing story of the cities under the sea. The recent emergence of the ‘myth of Atlantis’ has excited the imaginations of many people, it has been linked with many oceanographers and marine explorers findings, one being near ‘Bimini’ where apparently a structure discovered was said to have been made from limestone blocks measuring 60 X 100 feet, its floor plan was found to duplicate the Mayan Temple of the Turtles!! Interesting, after all the Mayans, Toltecs and other ancient peoples of Central America traced their origins to an island in the eastern sea named ‘Aztlan’ or ‘Atlan’!! mmm………
Whatever the origins of the native peoples the migrations continued, and over millenniums the populations grew and the people adapted to their surroundings and the environments they lived in. As well as being hunter – gatherers they developed domesticated planting most notably, maize, beans and squashes known as ‘The Three Sisters’.
‘THE THREE SISTERS’
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The term ‘The Three Sisters’ was originally used by the Iroquois in the northeast and Canada and meant ‘our sustainers or those who support us” collectively called ‘DE-O-HA-KO’. The crops were considered to be special gifts from the Great Spirit and were believed to be protected by ‘The Three Sisters’. It is interesting when we look at how the crops were planted and the technique used known as ‘companion planting’, as this gives us a clue as to why the native people saw these crops as sacred and protectors. During this technique flat-topped mounds of soil were built for each cluster of crops these were about 30cm (1ft) high and 50cm (20inches) wide, several maize seeds were planted close together in the centre of each mound. As the maize grew (6inches tall), the beans and squash were planted around the maize alternating between beans and squash. |
By growing surplus crops, which could be stored, and dried, tribes and groups were able to spend more time on developing other specialist areas such as arts and crafts and spirituality. The ritual and ceremonies devoted to the celebration of this were nurtured and developed along side forms of governance and philosophical thinking! |
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The memories of this young native are spoken with simplicity and humility and create a picture for us of a busy, resourceful and active community of people very different from the negative descriptions that Native American Indians had to endure from the ignorance of many white settlers who misunderstood their ways.
…When the women were not busy with other things, they had handwork to do. The Cheyenne and the Arapaho women made the finest of moccasins. Whether they were made of strong, smoked elk skin or of soft dressed buckskin, they always fitted the feet they were made for, and were decorated with designs that suited the line of the foot…white visitors at Darlington used to ask them where they got their patterns for the designs they used on leggings or armbands or moccasins or garters, and how they transferred the patterns to the skins they worked them on. It was a question that always puzzled the Indian women for the designs were in their own minds; they had never had patterns like those women now use for embroidery. “It was given to me”, was about the only answer an Indian woman could make when she was asked this question, and sometimes she pointed to her forehead and smiled. It was like asking a bird how it flew…
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…there were many other things the women made from the skins they dressed. Nearly every man had a fancy leather pouch that his wife had made for him, to hold his pipe and tobacco. This was a long, narrow bag, with a drawstring, and with one side decorated in a fine design of beads or quillwork. For children, there were beautiful little beaded cases for the navel cord and for charms, hung from the hood of the cradle board or fastened in the hair, and for almost everyone there were fans…
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…the men like the women made many things by hand. Some men made nothing but arrows and that was a kind of work that took more skill than most men have today…. Everyman had to spend a good deal of time making and keeping in good shape the gear he needed for war and for ceremonies…. Every warrior had his own specially decorated shield.. The toughest part of the buffalo hide was used to make a shield; this, when soaked in water and dried slowly, became so thick and hard that few arrows could go through it. In nearly every village there was a painter who decorated the shield of the men in his village with the design and in the colours that were each man’s special protection and power… …fathers and mothers made fine toys for their children. Fathers made bows and arrows for their sons, and made them so true that little boys could bring down squirrels or birds with them. Sometimes the boys dressed the squirrel they had shot and cooked and ate it, and then sat around their fire telling their “buffalo story” as if they were old hunters... ..as a schoolboy at Darlington and later on as an employee there, I remember the men and women busy about the camp and the children playing they were busy at the same tasks. Nobody seemed hurried or worried; nobody set a time when a thing had to be done, or complained of his tools or his materials. He had all the time the sun above gave him and all the materials Mother Earth provided. There were no bosses and no employees, no wages and no strikes. What was made by our men and women then was beautiful and lasting, and more suited to our needs than anything we have bought in stores since we have followed the white man’s road... |
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Diversity and the creation of the ‘Culture Area Concept’!
As we continue the unfolding story of the Native American Indian ancestry and beginnings we get a picture forming of an evolving people with their distinctive characteristics, food production, social and political organisations, arts, crafts and ceremonies and ritual. Because of the manner in which native peoples adapted to their environments archaeologists in the 1930’s developed the ‘culture area’ concept. It came from the discovery that Native Indian culture was reflected in and by the environment in which they had lived for most of their history!
There are 12 main divisions (Culture areas);
The Northeast, Northwest, Southeast and Southwest, Great Plains, Great Basin, Plateau, California, Arctic and Subarctic, Mesoamerica and Circum-Caribbean.
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Each of these areas had distinctive characteristics including food production, social and political organisations, arts and crafts, spiritual rituals and ceremonies. It would seem that the history of early Native American Indians, shows us a vision of a place where diverse nations lived in harmony and balance with their environment, and where possible with each other! Indeed the productivity and use of resources by the native peoples shows them to be the first ecologists! Using the gifts of mother earth wisely and with respect, they were in touch with the changing cycles of the planet and adapted to its changes over a period, which spans thousands of years!! How challenging it would have been to these native peoples as European settlers and explorers began to arrive! Bringing with them a very different way of being. The story that was to follow this contact is one that has been told and retold many times throughout history and in many ways, and it is one that continues today… |
European contact and settlers come to North America!!
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In 1492, an Italian named Christopher Columbus who worked for the Spanish ‘discovered’ the America’s whilst looking for a trade route to India. He was probably not the first and he was certainly not the last! Suddenly the Native American people found themselves with a whole new set of challenges. These Europeans did not just explore North America, they settled there too!! Often displacing the native peoples as they went. Soon European settlers were springing up everywhere and gradually these settlements were to drastically alter North America and the Native American way of life. “Only to the white man was Nature a ‘wilderness’ and only to him was the land infested with wild animals and savage people. To us it was tame, not until the hairy man from the east came and with brutal frenzy heaped injustices upon our people did the ‘Wild West’ begin for us!!" |
The history that was to follow has been expressed and shown in numerous ways, often through the media of television and films. Some have been sensitive and well researched especially in recent years but many were not and this unfortunately gave a very one sided and negative view of the Native American in the battle for the rights to his lands and culture.
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During the next few hundred years the story tells of wars and feuding of lies and deceit of the sadness of massacres and the loss of homes, culture and spiritual freedoms. 1565 saw the first permanent European settlement on the North American mainland at St. Augustine, Florida, built by the Spanish. Then the English colonists established a settlement in 1607 in Virginia, called Jamestown! The French established a colony in Quebec, Canada then more English colonists arriving in Massachusetts in 1620 and so the stories go on and on. At first the native peoples learnt to co-exist with the European settlers, often setting up trade works, often Native American people helped assist the settlers in learning how to farm and hunt and adapt to the plants and animals of their new environments. |
| ‘Thanksgiving’!! There is the story of the Mayflower Pilgrims who in 1622 were helped by the Wampanoag Indians (who lived nearby), half the pilgrims had died during the winter of 1621 and so in 1622 the pilgrims worked with the Native American Indian people on their annual ‘thanksgiving’ harvesting ceremony. The custom continued and in 1863, Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday!! There is a bronze statue in Plymouth, Massachusetts of the Wampanoag chief, ‘Massasoit’, the inscription underneath the figure reads; ‘Protector and Preserver of the Pilgrims’! The Native American peoples also adopted European technologies however their attitude towards them was different to that of the Europeans. Whereas the white man fought to tame the earth and use it to better himself individually and for the accumulation of wealth, the native peoples saw themselves as part of nature and survived by adapting to and co-operating with it!! |
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"The Great Spirit is our father but the Earth is our mother. She nourishes us, that which we put into the ground she returns to us….”
‘Big Thunder’
Wabanki nation in Maine
However these friendly feelings did not last as Europeans created larger colonies and settlements, the native American peoples believed that while it was acceptable for individual groups to live and hunt on a particular area of land they did not consider that the land was theirs to sell or trade! Rather it was only temporary in their care. As the story continues we learn how the native peoples were pushed out of their own lands often into territories of other Native Indian nations, which increased the intertribal contact and conflicts.
“ No tribe has a right to sell, even to each other much less to strangers who demand all and will take no less. Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the clouds and the great sea as well as the earth?!! Did not the great spirit make them all for the use of his children??”
‘Tecumseh’
Tecuntha Shawnee Chief.
Killer Disease!!
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The explorers and colonists also brought with them a wide range of diseases, which spread quickly amongst the native peoples who had no immunity to them. They could be transmitted through trade goods or a single infected person, diseases such as small pox and the measles annihilated entire native communities as well as other forms of disease. Some populations were completely lost!! For the Native American, tribal identity was stronger than racial, just as for the white settlers religious or national identity took precedence over shared race. Much of the conflicts and feuding which persisted over generations among the native peoples would serve as a function in their culture as ritual and rites of passage, however the Native Americans were mostly a peaceful people and at a time of oppression of their cultures the native ‘wars’ can be seen as the people protecting their lands, their people and their way of life and spiritual beliefs from invasion and the exploitation by European settlers. Uprisings came from the trickery of white traders, the forced sale of lands, forced labour or enslavement of the Native American people, the repression of their indigenous religion and the failure to pay stipulated annuities, where all understandable grievances for the native peoples. |
The white settlers and Europeans decided that the Native American people had no ‘religion’ only superstitions, in fact nothing could have been further from the truth, their connection with the ‘Great Spirit’ was inextricably woven into their everyday lives. They prayed often and held rituals and ceremonies regularly to show respect and honour their spirits. Yet often Native American Indian children were taken to boarding schools where they were not allowed to speak their own language and were taught ‘christian values’ and American and English ways!! This ensuing loss of identity saw problems with alcoholism and disaffection. The conflict with the white man is told in many of the stories that have been recorded including The Trail of Tears, Little Bighorn, The Ghost Dance and many more which are beyond the scope of this piece of writing. The killing of the Buffalo’s of the great plains as a way of wiping out the native American Indians who lived there is but one of the examples of numerous accounts of the atrocities that occurred. |
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The following quotes are from Black Elks account of the ‘Butchering at Wounded Knee’.
“ In the morning the soldiers began to take all the guns away from the Big Foots, who were camped in the flat below the little hill where the monument and burying ground are now. The people had stacked most of their guns and even their knives, by the tepee where Big Foot was lying sick. Soldiers were on the little hill and all around, and there were soldiers across the dry gulch to the south and over east along Wounded Knee Creek too. The people were nearly surrounded and the wagon-guns were pointing at them.
Some had not yet given up their guns, and so the soldiers were searching all the tepees, throwing things around and poking into everything.
There was a man called Yellow Bird, and he and another man were standing in front of the tepee where Big Foot was lying sick. They had white sheets around and over them, with eyeholes to look through, and they had guns under these. An officer came to search them. He took the other man’s gun, and started to take Yellow Bird’s. But Yellow Bird would not let go. He wrestled with the officer, and while they were wrestling, the gun went off and killed the officer. Wasichus and some others have said he meant to do this, but Dog Chief was standing right there and he told me it was not so. As soon as the gun went off, Dog Chief told me, an officer shot and killed Big Foot who was lying sick inside the tepee.
Then suddenly nobody knew what was happening, except that the soldiers were all shooting and wagon-guns began going off right in among the people. Many were shot down right there. The women and children ran into the gulch and up west, dropping all the time, for the soldiers shot them as they ran. There were only about a hundred warriors and there were nearly five hundred soldiers. The warriors rushed to where they had piled their guns and knives. They fought soldiers with only their hands until they got their guns.
Dog Chief saw Yellow Bird run into a tepee with his gun, and from there he killed soldiers until the tepee caught fire. Then he died full of bullets.
It was a good winter day when all this happened. The sun was shining, but after the soldiers marched away from their dirty work, a heavy snow began to fall. The wind came up in the night. There was a big blizzard and it grew very cold. The snow drifted deep in the crooked gulch and it was one long grave of butchered women and children and babies, who had never done any harm and were only trying to run away."
Black Elk
Black Elk speaks.
The land swindling and the general cultural onslaught continued well into the 1970’s, many native peoples were herded to live on reservations, which were not in their own territories or homelands and were often set up in desolate areas with very few resources.
“ For each tribe of men ‘Usen’ created, he also made a home. In the land for any particular tribe he placed whatever would be best for the welfare of that tribe, thus it was in the beginning. The Apache’s and their homes, each created for the other by ‘Usen’ himself! When they are taken from these homes they sicken and die.”
Geronimo
Apache Leader
To-days World and the Future!!
However for all the hardships that the native peoples have faced they have not lost their identity as ‘The Native People of America’. They have shown the integrity and strength of the Native American way. The 1960’s and 70’s saw new activism in Native American communities, mass rallies and protests meetings led to celebrations of culture against past wrongs. This activism continues and gears itself toward the self determination in daily life, not merely claiming identity and heritage of the past but in securing a stable and progressive future. With the Civil Rights movements of the late 1960’s native Indian activist organisations began to raise awareness about the native Indian problems.
There is still much debate about rights and treaties but efforts to recover land and secure compensation for broken treaties are finding their way to the US law courts. Economic hardship is a major issue for many native peoples however some natural resources such as timber and mineral wealth (although still underdeveloped and not totally under native peoples control) have become areas of possible economic development.
One of the most significant economic developments is found in the creation of ‘Casino’s’ by a number of native nations, and the profit sharing of these developments has enabled a long awaited improvement of the standard of living of the Native American Indian population including better housing, roads, medical care and education. Educational programmes have blossomed and continue to grow with larger numbers of Native American Indian people entering professional and scholarly fields, in the areas of medicine and law. Organisations are working and constantly developing areas of conservation working for the resources and public education about treaty rights and Native Indian ecology.
Tourism is providing an ever-widening opportunity for the native Indian to build businesses to develop the arts and crafts of their nations. The production and sale of traditionally crafted objects, jewellery, beadwork, pottery and basketry along side contemporary art works are providing a source of income and worldwide recognition.
We are also experiencing a recognition of the native spirituality spreading across the world, where people are learning and training in the ways of the ancestors and their present generations, numerous books of wisdom teachings are inspiring and encouraging those of other countries and nationalities in the ways of integrity, respect and balance for our ‘mother earth’. Reminding us of what the Native American Indians have always known and lived by that we are all part of the ‘Sacred Hoop’ equal to all our relatives.
Going forward!!
It would be naïve to say all the battles are won, however the story that will continue is still being written as the outlook for the Native American people is positive for the first time in generations, To-day Native American populations are increasing and although many of the present day native arts and culture is rooted in past traditions, it is also being created in a contemporary society that is adapting and developing with the world now and will continue to grow and develop in the struggle for cultural identity.
“Self awareness is nothing more than facing the Great Smoking Mirror that reflects all of life, seeing the part of Self that are mirrored in others. These parts of the Self come in every form and with every contact that we have in the natural world. The creative person recognizes how to capture these images and to use them to recreate the former Self into the new potential”
Jamie Sams
Earth Medicine. Ancestor’s ways of harmony for many moons.
Go to page 2 of our Native Amercian History
