10 Things That You Must Listen To About Native American Culture. The question that pops out in our mind whenever we take a glance at American history, ‘Who are native Americans?’ The Native Americans are also known as American Indians or first Americans are the native peoples of the existing United States (including territories of the united states) and Canada. These native Americans were already living there before Christopher Columbus discovered current America in the 15th century A.D. According to American Archaeologists, they came from Asia to present Alaska some 15000 years ago, crossing the land bridge.
Table of Contents
Cultural groups division of natives:
Native people had their own culture, food sources, and way of living. As some groups accustom to Material Culture that involved weapons, tools, bow and arrow, stone implements, pottery, domesticated dogs, etc. They used every single part of buffalo to make useful objects. Some native Americans habitat to Hunting and Gathering Culture as they hunted wild animals and gathered wild berries, herbs, vegetables, etc. Other people belonged to agriculture and domestication. They tamed many animals and plant varieties like beans, potatoes, and seed plants.
Culture-Areas of Native Americans:
Scholars approximated that when European people arrived in the Americas in the 15th century, around 50 million people were already living there. As time passed, the Europeans overpowering began in the 16th century, and soon the native Americans ravage military power and enslavement. To keep the course of these diverse groups, Anthropologists and geographers divided the rough groupings of aboriginal people into diverse Culture-areas. Ten culture-areas are most hooked: the Arctic, the Subarctic, the Northeast, the Southeast, the Plains, the Southwest, the Great Basin, California, the Northwest Coast, and the Plateau.
1- THE ARCTIC:
Climate:
The arctic area is cold, regular, and clear (treeless) land, near the arctic circle in the most northern parts of existing Alaska, Canada, and Greenland.
People:
It was home to the Inuit and the Aleut groups, and they spoke the Eskimo-Aleut language. They were small and scattered due to the land climate. The Inuit people in the northern part were migrants as they migrated across Tundra. While in the southern part, the Aleut settle in small villages alongshore.
Culture & Food:
They used seal and otter skins to make warm fur clothes to prevent cold weather. Fish and sea mammals were their food and northern people accustom to hunting and gathering culture on the shore. Their homes were of a domed shape made of timber or ice blocks. Dogsleds, fishing boats, folk tales, anecdotes were important features of their culture.
2- THE SUBARCTIC:
Climate:
The region is marshy, cold, flat, and composed of coniferous forests, including existing in Alaska and most of Canada.
People:
Aboriginal people of this region classify or tribes depended on the language they spoke. These include Gwich’in, Tanaina, Deg-Xiang who spoke the Athabaskan language. Cree, Ojibwa, Naskapi spoke the Algonquian language.
Culture and Food:
In this region traveling and transportation was not an easy task. Thus, the people of the subarctic did not settle instead they lived in small, easy-to-move tents and migrate in the winter season. Their food source included fishing, beavers, caribou, berries, roots, etc. The dog sled, horse sleigh, hutches, snowshoes, and wool garments also existed in their culture.
3- THE NORTHEAST:
Region& Climate:
The region is flat land with some gentle undulating slopes, having an extensive coastline and enough rivers and lakes. The climate is temperate and has a deciduous forest. This culture-area reached from existing Canada’s Atlantic coast to North Carolina and inland to the Mississippi river valley.
People:
This area had many tribes I.e., Mohawk, Huron, Algonquin, Iroquois, fox, Mohican, Ojibwa, etc. They divide into two main groups based on the languages. The Iroquoian language family and the Algonquian language family.
Culture and Food:
Iroquoian speakers resided beside inland rivers and lakes in secure, stable villages, and the Algonquian speakers inhabited small fishing and farming villages beside the ocean. Animals like deer, moose, waterfowl, turkeys, fish, and cultivated crops like corn, beans, and seed plant such as Chenopodium use as food sources. Their houses construct as wigwams and longhouses that coverers with rush matting or sheets of barks. Dugouts made of trunks of whole trees, birch bark canoes, clothing made of pelts and deerskin, and medicines were features of their culture.
4- THE SOUTHEAST:
People:
The best-known native peoples from this region, also known as the five civilized tribes, are the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, and Seminole.
Culture and Food:
Tribes in the southeast were Muskogean language speakers. The most native were farmers as they grew crops maize, beans, sunflower, tobacco and they organized their homes in small market villages also called hamlets. The southeast was also famous for its religious iconography which involved ‘bird themes’. House construction included wigwams, earth-berm dwellings, and chickens.
5- THE PLAINS:
People:
Speakers of Siouan, Uto-Aztecan, Caddoan, Kiowa, Algonquian, Tanoan, and Michif languages include native peoples of the plains. Peoples of plains also invented the gesture language to represent the objects like buffalo.
Culture and Food:
The plains region is the culture-area in which tribes and groups were most conflated. The only accommodation of the native Americans was the earth lodge villages until the late 16th century. The villages were along waterways that provide fertile soil for the cultivation of crops. Hunting is also included in their culture. Material culture included the tepee, tailored leather clothing, headdresses, and drums. A ritual ‘sundance was also present in native peoples of the plains.
6- THE SOUTHWEST:
People:
The native Americans of the southwest spoke the Hokan, Uto-Aztecan, Tanoan, Keresan, Penutian languages.
Culture and Food:
Agriculture, hunting& gathering culture found in peoples. The major agricultural products were crops like corn, cotton, beans, and squash. Wild plants gathering, hunting deer, fishing were major sources of food. The pueblo peoples constructed houses of adobe and stone masonry. They were also known for their pottery, dances& dolls, textiles, kiva, and sand paintings. The Navajo peoples built round houses and were famous for their clan system, healing rituals, textile, and jewelry. Stone channels, check dams, basketry, and digging sticks were common in southwest culture.
7- THE GREAT BASIN:
People:
The great basin is home to the speakers of the Hokan language known as Washoe and other tribes who spoke Numic languages.
Culture & Food:
The native people accustom to hunting and gathering culture. Most of the groups used seeds and pinon nuts as food.
Some groups replaced their brush shelters with tepees. Nets, digging sticks, basketry, grinding stones for seed processing, and rock art includes in material culture.
8- CALIFORNIA:
This culture-area is existing in ‘California in America (U.S.) and Mexico’.
People:
It estimates that around 300,000 native people were already living in this region before European contiguity. They organized 100 different tribes and groups who spoke more than 200 patois and included some 20 language families. These languages were more diverse than all European languages. Eminent tribes comprised the Hupa, Yuki, Pomo, Wintun, Maidu, Yurok, and Yana, etc.
Culture & Food:
Hunting and gathering was a trouble-free food source for peoples of America as cultivation practice only across the Colorado River. In wild food sources, Acorns were most important. They developed a method to convert acorns into flour form for ensuring constant food. Fishing, hunting& gathering of wild plants were sources of food. Their house construction varied from wood-framed style to communal-style apartments. In this region, the native peoples of America were also known for their trade fairs, basketry, and toloache religions.
9- THE NORTHWEST COAST:
People, Culture & Food:
The native people speak Athabaskan, Tsimshianic, Salishan. And prominent groups include Haida, Tsimshian, Tlingit, Bella, Coola, chinook, Coast Salish.
The main source of food in this region were fish, salmons, sea mammals, shellfish, sea otters, seals, wild plants and birds, etc. The region had everything essential because of the ocean and rivers.
So, instead of migrating to other places, people of the northwest coast establish enough to set up permanent houses in villages.
10- THE PLATEAU:
People, Culture& Food:
The plateau culture area existed in the Columbia and river Fraser basins at the convergence of other culture areas like the subarctic, the plains, the California, etc.
Native Americans of the plateau in the Southern region spoke languages derived from the Penutian. In the Northern region, most Salish spoke Salishan patois. Most people settled their house in small villages along riverbanks and they had their chief of village selected from the larger tribe.
Their culture included fishing (Columbia & Fraser river), hunting & gathering. And their main source of food were fish, nuts, roots, wild camas, and the hunting of animals. In the 18th century, they expanded their hunting range and started trade with the arrival of other natives and animals like horses. They are known for their finest herds and horse breeding programs.
Most of the abiding native Americans of the plateau had been taken away from their region by the end of the 19th century and relocated in government provisions.
• Present-day American culture and influence of African American culture and Latin American culture.
When we talk about the present American state culture and food, we can’t ignore the fact that besides Native Americans, the population of the U.S. embellished on intermixing of other nations, especially from Europe. The state is diverse as it has framed Native Americans, Latin Americans, African Americans, and Asians. In America, over 300 languages are spoken and there is no formal language of the U.S.
So, In early history, food influence Native peoples and other cultures.
Article Written By Mariya Hussain.
