Native American Culture

Introduction:

Perhaps the greatest mistake one
could make when considering Native
American culture would be to assume
that there existed only one such homogeneous
culture among the indigenous
peoples of North America. Rather, there
is an assortment of distinct and diverse
cultural aspects that, when bound
together, make a whole. This book will
show that there isn’t just a group of
American “Indians,” but rather individual
societies with marked differences—and
similarities—that form what is called
Native American culture.
The “first peoples” of North America
are believed to have arrived on the continent
as the result of Asiatic migrations
over what is today known as the Bering
Strait. Though some recent evidence disputes
this theory, these peoples are
supposed to have traveled over a land
bridge that existed during the time of
these migrations, between 20,000 and
60,000 years before the present era. The
land bridge was most likely caused by
glacial activity that lowered ocean levels
to such an extent that groups of Stone-
Age hunters were able to travel on foot
from present-day Russia to what is now
Alaska. Once across, these groups split
up in a broad fashion spreading throughout
the continent and beyond: from
Greenland and today’s eastern United
States seaboard to the east, to the tip of
South America to the south, and extending
past the Arctic Circle in the north.

As a generally recognized point of reference,
Christopher Columbus’s arrival
in the New World begins a natural curiosity
by Europeans about this amazing
frontier. It is believed that in 1492 there
existed a population of between 600,000
and 2 million indigenous peoples living
in the areas now known as Canada and
the United States. This population segment
and its descendants are the focus of
this book.
Since the turn of the 20th century,
one tool anthropologists use in their
studies is defining culture areas, which
are geographic regions where similar
cultural traits co-occur. There are 10 commonly
defined culture areas for Native
Americans. The Arctic is comprised of
the northernmost North America and
Greenland, while the Subarctic encompasses
the Alaskan and Canadian region
south of the Arctic, not including the
Maritime Provinces. The Northwest culture
area is defined by a narrow strip
of Pacific coast land and islands from
the southern border of Alaska to northwest
Canada. Roughly all of present-day
California and the northern section of
Baja California (northern Mexico) make
up the aptly named California culture
area. The Plateau region lies between the
Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Coast
mountain system. The Great Basin culture
area encompasses almost all of presentday
Utah and Nevada, as well as parts
of Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado,…………..