Native+American+History

Since the end of the 15th century, the [|migration] of Europeans to the Americas, and their importation of [|Africans] as [|slaves], has led to centuries of conflict and adjustment between [|Old] and [|New World] societies. Europeans created most of the early written historical record about Native Americans after the colonists' immigration to the Americas. [|[3]] Many Native Americans lived as [|hunter-gatherer] societies and told their histories by oral traditions. In many groups, women carried out sophisticated cultivation of numerous varieties of staple crops: maize, beans and squash. The indigenous cultures were quite different from those of the [|agrarian], proto-industrial, mostly Christian [|immigrants] from western [|Eurasia]. Many Native cultures were [|matrilineal] ; the people occupied lands for use of the entire community, for hunting or agriculture. Europeans at that time had [|patriarchal] cultures and had developed concepts of individual property rights with respect to land that were extremely different. The differences in cultures between the established Native Americans and immigrant Europeans, as well as shifting alliances among different nations of each culture through the centuries, caused extensive political tension, ethnic violence and social disruption. The Native Americans suffered high fatalities from the contact with [|infectious] Eurasian diseases, to which they had no acquired [|immunity]. [|Epidemics] after European contact caused the greatest loss of life for indigenous populations. Estimates of the pre-Columbian population of what today constitutes the U.S. vary significantly, ranging from 1 million to 18 million. [|[4]][|[5]] After the colonies revolted against [|Great Britain] and established the United States of America, President [|George Washington] and [|Henry Knox] conceived of the idea of "civilizing" Native Americans in preparation for assimilation as United States citizens. [|[6]][|[7]][|[8]][|[9]][|[10]] Assimilation (whether voluntary as with the [|Choctaw], [|[11]][|[12]] or forced) became a consistent policy through American administrations. During the 19th century, the ideology of [|Manifest destiny] became integral to the American nationalist movement. Expansion of European-American populations to the west after the American Revolution resulted in increasing pressure on Native American lands, warfare between the groups, and rising tensions. In 1830, the U.S. Congress passed the [|Indian Removal Act], authorizing the government to relocate Native Americans from their homelands within established states to lands west of the [|Mississippi River] , accommodating European-American expansion. The first European Americans to encounter the western interior tribes were generally fur traders and trappers. There were also [|Jesuit] [|missionaries] active in the Northern Tier. As United States expansion reached into the [|American West], settler and miner migrants came into increasing conflict with the [|Great Basin] , [|Great Plains] , and other Western tribes. These were complex [|nomadic] cultures based on [|horse culture] and seasonal [|bison] hunting. They carried out strong [|resistance] to United States incursions in the decades after the American Civil War, in a series of [|Indian Wars], which were frequent up until the 1890s, but continued into the 20th century. The transcontinental [|railroad] brought more non-Natives into tribal land in the west. Over time, the U.S. forced a series of treaties and land cessions by the tribes, and established reservations for them in many western states. U.S. agents encouraged Native Americans to adopt European-style farming and similar pursuits, but European-American agricultural technology of the time was inadequate for often dry reservation lands. In 1924, Native Americans who were not already U.S. citizens were [|granted citizenship] by [|Congress]. Contemporary Native Americans have a unique relationship with the United States because they may be members of nations, tribes, or bands with sovereignty and [|treaty rights]. Since the late 1960s, Native American activism has led to the building of cultural infrastructure and wider recognition: they have founded independent newspapers and online media; FNX, the first Native American television channel (2011), [|[13]] community schools, [|tribal colleges], and tribal museums and language programs; [|Native American studies] programs in major universities; and national and state museums. Native American and Alaskan Native authors have been increasingly published; they work as academics, policymakers, doctors, and in a wide variety of occupations. Cultural activism has led to an expansion of efforts to teach and preserve indigenous languages for younger generations. Their societies and cultures flourish within a larger population of descendants of immigrants (both voluntary and involuntary): [|African], [|Asian] , [|Middle Eastern] , [|European] , and other peoples.
 * Native Americans in the United States** are the [|indigenous peoples in North America] within the boundaries of the present-day [|continental] [|United States], parts of [|Alaska] , and the island state of [|Hawaii] . They are composed of numerous, distinct [|Native American tribes] and [|ethnic groups] , many of which survive as intact political communities. The terms used to refer to Native Americans have been [|controversial] . According to a 1995 [|US Census Bureau] set of home interviews, most of the respondents with an expressed preference refer to themselves as**American Indians** or **Indians**, and this term has been adopted by major newspapers and some academic groups; however, this term does not include [|Native Hawaiians] or those [|Alaskan Natives] , such as [|Aleuts] , [|Alutiiq] , [|Cup'ik] , [|Yup'ik] , and [|Inuit] peoples, who are not American Indians.

Pre-Columbian
Further information: [|Settlement of the Americas], [|Paleo-Indians] , and [|Pre-Columbian era] Map showing the approximate location of the ice-free corridor and specific Paleoindian sites ( [|Clovis theory] ). According to the theory of the [|Settlement of the Americas], migrations of humans from [|Eurasia] to the Americas took place via [|Beringia] , a [|land bridge] which formerly connected the two continents across what is now the [|Bering Strait]. The number and composition of the migrations is still being debated. [|[14]] Falling [|sea levels] created the [|Bering land bridge] that joined [|Siberia] to [|Alaska], which began about 60,000–25,000 years ago. [|[14]] [|[15]] The minimum time depth by which this migration had taken place is confirmed at 12,000 years ago, with the upper bound (or earliest period) remaining a matter of some unresolved contention. [|[16]] [|[17]] Three major migrations occurred, as traced by linguistic and genetic data; the early [|Paleoamericans] soon spread throughout the Americas, diversifying into many hundreds of culturally distinct nations and tribes. [|[18]] The North American climate finally stabilized by 8000 [|BCE] ; climatic conditions were very similar to today's. [|[19]] This led to widespread migration, [|cultivation] of crops, and subsequently a dramatic rise in population all over the Americas. The big-game hunting culture, labeled as the [|Clovis culture], is primarily identified with its production of fluted [|projectile] points. The culture received its name from artifacts found near [|Clovis, New Mexico] ; the first evidence of this tool complex was excavated in 1932. The Clovis culture ranged over much of North America and also appeared in South America. The culture is identified by the distinctive [|Clovis point], a flaked flint spear-point with a notched flute, by which it was inserted into a shaft. Dating of Clovis materials has been by association with animal bones and by the use of [|carbon dating] methods. Recent reexaminations of Clovis materials using improved carbon-dating methods produced results of 11,050 and 10,800 radiocarbon years [|B.P.] (roughly 9100 to 8850 BCE). Numerous [|Paleoindian] cultures occupied North America, with some arrayed around the [|Great Plains] and [|Great Lakes] of the modern [|United States of America] and [|Canada], as well as adjacent areas to the West and Southwest. According to the oral histories of many of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, they have been living on this continent since their genesis, described by a wide range of traditional [|creation stories]. Other tribes have stories that recount migrations across long tracts of land and a great river, believed to be the [|Mississippi]. [|[20]] Genetic and linguistic data connect the indigenous people of this continent with ancient northeast Asians. Archeological and linguistic data has enabled scholars to discover some of the migrations within the Americas. The [|Folsom Tradition] was characterized by use of [|Folsom points] as projectile tips, and activities known from kill sites, where slaughter and butchering of [|bison] took place. Folsom tools were left behind between 9000 BCE and 8000 BCE. [|[21]] A [|Folsom point] for a spear. [|Na-Dené] -speaking peoples entered North America starting around 8000 BCE, reaching the [|Pacific Northwest] by 5000 BCE, [|[22]] and from there migrating along the [|Pacific Coast] and into the interior. Linguists, anthropologists and archeologists believe their ancestors comprised a separate migration into North America, later than the first Paleo-Indians. They settled first around present-day [|Queen Charlotte Islands], [|British Columbia] , from where they migrated into Alaska and northern Canada, south along the Pacific Coast, and into the interior. They were the earliest ancestors of the [|Athabascan] - speaking peoples, including the present-day and historical [|Navajo] and [|Apache]. They constructed large multi-family dwellings in their villages, which were used seasonally. People did not live there year round, but for the summer to hunt and fish, and to gather food supplies for the winter. [|[23]] The [|Oshara Tradition] people lived from 5500 BCE to 600 CE. The [|Southwestern Archaic Tradition] was centered in north-central [|New Mexico], the [|San Juan Basin] , the [|Rio Grande] Valley, southern [|Colorado] , and southeastern [|Utah]. Since the 1990s, archeologists have explored and dated eleven Middle [|Archaic] sites in present-day Louisiana and Florida at which early cultures built complexes with multiple [|earthwork] [|mounds] ; surprisingly, they were societies of hunter-gatherers rather than the settled agriculturalists believed necessary to build such complex structures over long periods. The prime example is [|Watson Brake] in northern Louisiana, whose 11-mound complex is dated to 3500 BCE, making it the oldest, dated site in the Americas for such complex construction. It is nearly 2,000 years older than the [|Poverty Point] site. Construction of the mounds went on for 500 years and the site was abandoned about 2800 BCE, likely due to changing environmental conditions. [|[24]] [|Poverty Point culture] is a Late Archaic [|archaeological culture] that inhabited the area of the lower Mississippi Valley and surrounding Gulf Coast. The culture thrived from 2200 BCE–700 BCE, during the Late Archaic period. [|[25]] Evidence of this culture has been found at more than 100 sites, from the major complex at [|Poverty Point, Louisiana] across a 100-mile (160 km) range to the [|Jaketown Site] near [|Belzoni, Mississippi]. Poverty Point is a 1 square mile (2.6 km2) complex of six major earthwork concentric rings, with additional platform mounds at the site. Artifacts show the people traded with other Native Americans located from Georgia to the Great Lakes region. This is one among numerous mound sites of complex indigenous cultures throughout the Mississippi and Ohio valleys. They were one of several succeeding cultures often described as [|mound builders]. The [|Woodland period] of [|North American] [|pre-Columbian] cultures refers to the time period from roughly 1000 BCE to 1000 CE in the eastern part of North America. The term "Woodland" was coined in the 1930s and refers to prehistoric sites dated between the [|Archaic period] and the [|Mississippian cultures]. The [|Hopewell tradition] is the term used to describe common aspects of the Native American culture that flourished along rivers in the northeastern and midwestern [|United States] from 200 BCE to 500 CE. [|[26]] [|Cultural areas] of pre-Columbian North America, according to [|Alfred Kroeber]. The Hopewell tradition was not a single [|culture] or society, but a widely dispersed set of related populations, who were connected by a common network of trade routes, [|[27]] known as the Hopewell Exchange System. At its greatest extent, the Hopewell exchange system ran from the Southeastern [|United States] into the southeastern [|Canadian] shores of [|Lake Ontario]. Within this area, societies participated in a high degree of exchange; most activity was conducted along the waterways that served as their major transportation routes. The Hopewell exchange system traded materials from all over the United States. [|Coles Creek culture] is an [|archaeological culture] from the Lower [|Mississippi] valley in the southern present-day United States. The period marked a significant change in the cultural history of the area. Population increased dramatically. There is strong evidence of a growing cultural and political complexity, especially by the end of the Coles Creek sequence. Although many of the classic traits of [|chiefdom] societies were not yet manifested, by 1000 CE the formation of simple [|elite] polities had begun. Coles Creek sites are found in [|Arkansas], [|Louisiana] , [|Oklahoma] , [|Mississippi] , and [|Texas]. It is considered ancestral to the [|Plaquemine culture]. [|Hohokam] is one of the four major prehistoric archaeological traditions of the present-day [|American Southwest]. [|[28]] Living as simple farmers, they raised corn and beans. The early Hohokam founded a series of small villages along the middle [|Gila River]. The communities were located near good arable land, with [|dry farming] common in the earlier years of this period. [|[28]] [|Wells], usually less than 10 feet (3 m) deep, were dug for domestic water supplies by 300 CE to 500 CE. [|[28]] Early Hohokam homes were constructed of branches bent in a semi-circular fashion and covered with twigs and reeds. The last layer was heavily applied mud and other materials at hand. [|[28]] The [|Mississippian culture], which extended throughout the Ohio and Mississippi valleys and built sites throughout the Southeast, created the largest [|earthworks] in North America north of Mexico, most notably at [|Cahokia] , on a tributary of the Mississippi River in present-day Illinois. Its 10-story [|Monks Mound] has a larger circumference than the [|Pyramid of the Sun] at [|Teotihuacan] or the [|Great Pyramid] of [|Egypt]. The 6 square miles (16 km2) city complex was based on the culture's cosmology; it included more than 100 mounds, positioned to support their sophisticated knowledge of [|astronomy], and built with knowledge of varying soil types. It included a [|Woodhenge], whose sacred [|cedar] poles were placed to mark the summer and winter [|solstices] and fall and spring [|equinoxes]. The society began building at this site about 950 CE, and reached its peak population in 1250 CE of 20,000–30,000 people, which was not equalled by any city in the present-day United States until after 1800. Cahokia was a major regional [|chiefdom], with trade and tributary chiefdoms located in a range of areas from bordering the [|Great Lakes] to the [|Gulf of Mexico]. In the sixteenth century, the earliest Spanish explorers encountered Mississippian peoples in the interior of present-day North Carolina and the Southeast. Natives of Northern California, painting by Mikhail Tikhanov, 1818 Sophisticated pre-Columbian sedentary societies evolved in North America. The [|Mississippian culture] developed the [|Southeastern Ceremonial Complex], the name which archeologists have given to the regional stylistic similarity of [|artifacts] , [|iconography] , [|ceremonies] and [|mythology]. The rise of the complex culture was based on the people's adoption of [|maize] agriculture, development of greater population densities, and [|chiefdom] -level complex social organization from 1200 CE to 1650 CE. [|[29]] [|[30]] Contrary to popular belief, this development appears to have had no direct links to [|Mesoamerica]. The peoples developed an independent, sophisticated and stratified society, after the cultivation of maize allowed the accumulation of crop surpluses to support a higher density of population. This in turn led to the development of specialized skills among some of the peoples. The Ceremonial Complex represents a major component of the [|religion] of the Mississippian peoples, and is one of the primary means by which their religion is understood. [|[31]] The [|Haudenosaunee] ( [|Iroquois League of Nations] or "People of the Long House"), then based in present-day upstate and western [|New York], had a [|confederacy] model from the mid-15th century. Some historians have suggested that it contributed to the political thinking during the development of the later United States government. Their system of affiliation was a kind of federation, different from the strong, centralized European monarchies. [|[32]] [|[33]] Leadership was restricted to a group of 50 [|sachem] [|chiefs], each representing one [|clan] within a tribe; the [|Oneida] and [|Mohawk people] had nine seats each; the [|Onondagas] held fourteen; the [|Cayuga] had ten seats; and the [|Seneca] had eight. Representation was not based on population numbers, as the Seneca tribe greatly outnumbered the others. When a sachem chief died, his successor was chosen by the senior woman of his tribe in consultation with other female members of the clan; property and hereditary leadership were passed [|matrilineally]. Decisions were not made through voting but through consensus decision making, with each sachem chief holding theoretical [|veto power]. The Onondaga were the " [|firekeepers] ", responsible for raising topics to be discussed. They occupied one side of a three-sided fire (the Mohawk and Seneca sat on one side of the fire, the Oneida and Cayuga sat on the third side.) [|[34]] Elizabeth Tooker, an [|anthropologist], has said that it was unlikely the US founding fathers were inspired by the confederacy, as it bears little resemblance to the system of governance adopted in the United States. For example, it is based on inherited rather than elected leadership, selected by female members of the tribes, consensus decision-making regardless of population size of the tribes, and a single group capable of bringing matters before the legislative body. [|[34]] Long-distance trading did not prevent warfare and displacement among the indigenous peoples, and their oral histories tell of numerous migrations to the historic territories where Europeans encountered them. The Iroquois invaded and attacked tribes in the Ohio River area of present-day Kentucky and claimed the hunting grounds. Historians have placed these events as occurring as early as the 13th century, or in the 17th century [|Beaver Wars]. Through warfare, the Iroquois drove several tribes to migrate west to what became known as their historically traditional lands west of the Mississippi River. Tribes originating in the Ohio Valley who moved west included the [|Osage], [|Kaw] , [|Ponca] and [|Omaha people]. By the mid-17th century, they had resettled in their historical lands in present-day [|Kansas], [|Nebraska] , [|Arkansas] and [|Oklahoma]. The Osage warred with [|Caddo] -speaking Native Americans, displacing them in turn by the mid-18th century and dominating their new historical territories. [|[35]]

[ [|edit] ] European exploration and colonization
Main articles: [|Age of Discovery] and [|European colonization of the Americas] //Discovery of the Mississippi// by [|William Henry Powell] (1823–1879) is a [|Romantic] depiction of de Soto's seeing the Mississippi River for the first time. It hangs in the [|United States Capitol rotunda]. After 1492, [|European] [|exploration and colonization of the Americas] revolutionized how the [|Old] and [|New Worlds] perceived themselves. One of the first major contacts, in what would be called the American [|Deep South], occurred when the conquistador [|Juan Ponce de León] landed in [|La Florida] in April 1513. Ponce de León was later followed by other Spanish explorers, such as [|Pánfilo de Narváez] in 1528 and [|Hernando de Soto] in 1539. The subsequent [|European colonists in North America] often rationalized their expansion of empire with the assumption that they were saving a barbaric, pagan world by spreading Christian civilization. [|[36]] In the [|Spanish colonization of the Americas], the policy of [|Indian Reductions] resulted in the forced conversions to Catholicism of the [|indigenous people] in northern // [|Nueva España] .// They had long-established [|spiritual] and [|religious traditions] and [|theological] beliefs. What developed during the colonial years and since has been a syncretic Catholicism that absorbed and reflected indigenous beliefs; the religion changed in New Spain.

[ [|edit] ] Impact on native populations
From the 16th through the 19th centuries, the population of Indians declined in the following ways: [|epidemic diseases] brought from Europe; [|genocide] and warfare [|[37]] at the hands of European explorers and colonists, as well as between tribes; displacement from their lands; [|internal warfare], [|[38]] [|enslavement] ; and a high rate of [|intermarriage]. [|[39]] [|[40]] Most mainstream scholars believe that, among the various contributing factors, [|epidemic] [|disease] was the overwhelming cause of the population decline of the American natives because of their lack of [|immunity] to new diseases brought from Europe. [|[41]] [|[42]] [|[43]] With the rapid declines of some populations and continuing rivalries among their nations, Native Americans sometimes re-organized to form new cultural groups, such as the [|Seminoles] of Florida in the eighteenth century and the [|Mission Indians] of [|Alta California]. Estimating the number of Native Americans living in what is today the United States of America before the arrival of the European explorers and settlers has been the subject of much debate. While it is difficult to determine exactly how many Natives lived in North America before Columbus, [|[44]] estimates range from a low of 2.1 million ( [|Ubelaker] 1976) to 7 million people (Russell Thornton) to a high of 18 million (Dobyns 1983). [|[45]] A low estimate of around 1 million was first posited by the anthropologist [|James Mooney] in the 1890s, by calculating population density of each culture area based on its [|carrying capacity]. In 1965, the American [|anthropologist] [|Henry Dobyns] published studies estimating the original population to have been 10 to 12 million. By 1983, he increased his estimates to 18 million. [|[46]] He took into account the mortality rates caused by [|infectious diseases] of [|European] explorers and settlers, against which Native Americans had no immunity. Dobyns combined the known mortality rates of these diseases among native people with reliable population records of the 19th century, to calculate the probable size of the original populations. [|[4]] [|[5]] By 1800, the Native population of the present-day United States had declined to approximately 600,000, and only 250,000 Native Americans remained in the 1890s. [|[47]] Conference between French and Indian leaders around a ceremonial fire. [|Chicken pox] and [|measles], although by this time [|endemic] and rarely fatal among Europeans (long after being introduced from [|Asia] ), often proved deadly to Native Americans. [|Smallpox] proved particularly fatal to Native American populations. [|[48]] [|Epidemics] often immediately followed European exploration and sometimes destroyed entire village populations. While precise figures are difficult to determine, some historians estimate that at least 30% (and sometimes 50% to 70%) of some [|Native populations] died after first contact due to Eurasian smallpox. [|[49]] One element of the [|Columbian exchange] suggests explorers from the [|Christopher Columbus] expedition contracted [|syphilis] from indigenous peoples and carried it back to Europe, where it spread widely. [|[50]] Other researchers believe that the disease existed in Europe and [|Asia] before Columbus and his men returned from exposure to indigenous peoples of the Americas, but that they brought back a more virulent form. In 1618–1619, smallpox killed 90% of the Native Americans in the area of the [|Massachusetts Bay]. [|[51]] Historians believe many Mohawk in present-day New York became infected after contact with children of [|Dutch] traders in [|Albany] in 1634. The disease swept through Mohawk villages, reaching the Onondaga at [|Lake Ontario] by 1636, and the lands of the western [|Iroquois] by 1679, as it was carried by Mohawk and other Native Americans who traveled the trading routes. [|[52]] The high rate of fatalities caused breakdowns in Native American societies and disrupted generational exchanges of culture. Between 1754 and 1763, many Native American tribes were involved in the [|French and Indian War] / [|Seven Years War]. Those involved in the [|fur trade] in the northern areas tended to ally with French forces against British colonial militias. Native Americans fought on both sides of the conflict. The greater number of tribes fought with the French in the hopes of checking British expansion. The British had made fewer allies, but it was joined by some tribes that wanted to prove assimilation and loyalty in support of treaties to preserve their territories. They were often disappointed when such treaties were later overturned. The tribes had their own purposes, using their alliances with the European powers to battle traditional Native enemies. Native California Population, according to Cook 1978. The 2010 U.S. Census reported 723,225 Native Americans in California. [|[53]] After European explorers reached the West Coast in the 1770s, smallpox rapidly killed at least 30% of [|Northwest Coast] Native Americans. For the next 80 to 100 years, smallpox and other diseases devastated native populations in the region. [|[54]] [|Puget Sound] area populations, once estimated as high as 37,000 people, were reduced to only 9,000 survivors by the time settlers arrived en masse in the mid-19th century. [|[55]] The [|Spanish missions in California] did not significantly affect the [|population of Native Americans], but the numbers of the latter decreased rapidly after California ceased to be a Spanish colony, especially during the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th (see chart on the right). Smallpox epidemics in [|1780–1782] and [|1837–1838] brought devastation and drastic depopulation among the [|Plains Indians]. [|[56]] [|[57]] By 1832, the federal government established a [|smallpox vaccination] program for Native Americans (//The Indian Vaccination Act of 1832//). It was the first federal program created to address a health problem of Native Americans. [|[58]] [|[59]]

[ [|edit] ] Animal introductions
With the meeting of two worlds, animals, insects, and plants were carried from one to the other, both deliberately and by chance, in what is called the [|Columbian Exchange]. Sheep, pigs, horses, and cattle were all Old World animals that were introduced to contemporary Native Americans who never knew such animals. [|[60]] In the 16th century, Spaniards and other Europeans brought [|horses] to the Americas.[// [|citation needed] //] The early [|American horse] had been game for the earliest humans on the continent. It was hunted to extinction about 7000 BCE, just after the end of the [|last glacial period] .[// [|citation needed] //] Native Americans benefited by reintroduction of horses. As they adopted use of the animals, they began to change their cultures in substantial ways, especially by extending their nomadic ranges for hunting. Some of the horses escaped and began to breed and increase their numbers in the wild. The reintroduction of the horse to [|North America] had a profound impact on [|Native American culture of the Great Plains]. The tribes trained and used horses to ride and to carry packs or pull [|travois]. The people fully incorporated the use of horses into their societies and expanded their territories. They used horses to carry goods for exchange with neighboring tribes, to hunt [|game], especially [|bison] , and to conduct wars and horse raids.

[ [|edit] ] King Philip's War
[|King Philip's War] sometimes called [|Metacom] 's War or Metacom's Rebellion, was an armed conflict between Native American inhabitants of present-day southern New England and English colonists and their Native American allies from 1675–1676. It continued in northern New England (primarily on the Maine frontier) even after King Philip was killed, until a [|treaty was signed at Casco Bay] in April 1678.[// [|citation needed] //] According to a combined estimate of loss of life in Schultz and Tougias' "King Philip's War, The History and Legacy of America's Forgotten Conflict" (based on sources from the Department of Defense, the Bureau of Census, and the work of Colonial historian Francis Jennings), 800 out of 52,000 English colonists of [|New England] (1 out of every 65) and 3,000 out of 20,000 natives (3 out of every 20) lost their lives due to the war, which makes it proportionately one of the bloodiest and costliest in the history of America.[// [|citation needed] //]More than half of New England's ninety towns were assaulted by Native American warriors. One in ten soldiers on both sides were wounded or killed. [|[61]] The war is named after the main leader of the Native American side, Metacomet, Metacom, or Pometacom, known to the English as "King Philip." He was the last Massasoit (Great Leader) of the Pokanoket Tribe/Pokanoket Federation & Wampanoag Nation. Upon their loss to the Colonists and the attempted genocide of the Pokanoket Tribe and Royal Line, many managed to flee to the North to continue their fight against the British (Massachusetts Bay Colony) by joining with the Abanaki Tribes and Wabanaki Federation.[// [|citation needed] //]

[ [|edit] ] European enslavement
When Europeans arrived as [|colonists] in North America, Native Americans changed their practice of [|slavery] dramatically. Native Americans began selling war captives to whites rather than integrating them into their own societies as they had done before. As the demand for labor in the [|West Indies] grew with the cultivation of [|sugar cane], Europeans enslaved Native Americans for the [|Thirteen Colonies] , and some were exported to the "sugar islands." The British settlers, especially those in the southern colonies, purchased or captured Native Americans to use as forced labor in cultivating tobacco, rice, and indigo. Accurate records of the numbers enslaved do not exist. Scholars estimate tens of thousands of Native Americans may have been enslaved by the Europeans, being sold by Native Americans themselves. Slavery became a caste of people who were foreign to the English (Native Americans, Africans and their descendants) and non-Christians. The Virginia General Assembly defined some terms of slavery in 1705: > All servants imported and brought into the Country... who were not Christians in their native Country... shall be accounted and be slaves. All Negro, mulatto and Indian slaves within this dominion ... shall be held to be real estate. If any slave resists his master ... correcting such slave, and shall happen to be killed in such correction ... the master shall be free of all punishment ... as if such accident never happened. —Virginia General Assembly declaration, 1705 [|[62]] The slave trade of Native Americans lasted only until around 1730. It gave rise to a series of devastating wars among the tribes, including the [|Yamasee War]. The [|Indian Wars] of the early 18th century, combined with the increasing importation of African slaves, effectively ended the Native American slave trade by 1750. Colonists found that Native American slaves could easily escape, as they knew the country. The wars cost the lives of numerous colonial slave traders and disrupted their early societies. The remaining Native American groups banded together to face the Europeans from a position of strength. Many surviving Native American peoples of the southeast strengthened their loose coalitions of language groups and joined confederacies such as the [|Choctaw], the [|Creek] , and the [|Catawba] for protection. Native American women were at risk for rape whether they were enslaved or not; during the early colonial years, settlers were disproportionately male. They turned to Native women for sexual relationships. [|[63]] Both Native American and African enslaved women suffered rape and sexual harassment by male slaveholders and other white men. [|[63]]

[ [|edit] ] Native American slavery
Further information: [|Slavery among Native Americans in the United States] and [|Slavery among Indigenous peoples of the Americas]

[ [|edit] ] Traditions of Native American slavery
The majority of Native American tribes did practice some form of slavery before the European introduction of African slavery into North America, but none exploited slave labor on a large scale. In addition, Native Americans did not buy and sell captives in the pre-colonial era, although they sometimes exchanged enslaved individuals with other tribes in peace gestures or in exchange for their own members. [|[64]] The conditions of enslaved Native Americans varied among the tribes. In many cases, young enslaved captives were adopted into the tribes to replace warriors killed during warfare or by disease. Other tribes practiced debt slavery or imposed slavery on tribal members who had committed crimes; but, this status was only temporary as the enslaved worked off their obligations to the tribal society. [|[64]] Among some [|Pacific Northwest] tribes, about a quarter of the population were slaves. [|[65]] Other slave-owning tribes of North America were, for example, [|Comanche] of Texas, [|Creek] of Georgia, the [|Pawnee], and [|Klamath]. [|[66]]

[ [|edit] ] Native American adoption of African slavery
Native Americans interacted with enslaved Africans and African Americans on many levels. Over time all the cultures interacted. Native Americans began slowly to adopt white culture. [|[67]] Native Americans in the South shared some experiences with Africans, especially during the period, primarily in the 17th century, when both were enslaved. The colonists along the Atlantic Coast had begun enslaving Native Americans to ensure a source of labor. At one time the slave trade was so extensive that it caused increasing tensions with the various [|Algonquian] tribes, as well as the [|Iroquois]. Based in New York and Pennsylvania, they had threatened to attack colonists on behalf of the related [|Iroquoian] [|Tuscarora] before they migrated out of the South in the early 1700s. [|[68]] In the 1790s, [|Benjamin Hawkins] was assigned as the US agent to the southeastern tribes, who became known as the Five Civilized Tribes for their adoption of numerous Anglo-European practices. He advised the tribes to take up slaveholding to aid them in European-style farming and plantations. He thought their traditional form of slavery, which had looser conditions, was less efficient than [|chattel] slavery. [|[69]] In the nineteenth century, some members of these tribes who were more closely associated with settlers, began to purchase African-American slaves for workers. They adopted some European-American ways to benefit their people. The writer William Loren Katz contends that Native Americans treated their slaves better than did the typical European American in the [|Deep South]. [|[70]] Though less than 3% of Native Americans owned slaves, bondage created destructive cleavages among those who were slaveholders. Among the [|Five Civilized Tribes], mixed-race slaveholders were generally part of an elite hierarchy, often based on their mothers' clan status, as the societies had [|matrilineal] systems. As did Benjamin Hawkins, European fur traders and colonial officials tended to marry high-status women, in strategic alliances seen to benefit both sides. The Choctaw, Creek and Cherokee believed they benefited from stronger alliances with the traders and their societies.[// [|citation needed] //] The women's sons gained their status from their mother's families; they were part of hereditary leadership lines who exercised power and accumulated personal wealth in their changing Native American societies. The historian Greg O'Brien calls them the Creole generation to show that they were part of a changing society.[// [|citation needed] //] The chiefs of the tribes believed that some of the new generation of mixed-race, bilingual chiefs would lead their people into the future and be better able to adapt to new conditions influenced by European Americans. [|[70]] Proposals for [|Indian Removal] heightened the tensions of cultural changes, due to the increase in the number of [|mixed-race] Native Americans in the South. Full bloods, who tended to live in areas less affected by colonial encroachment, generally worked to maintain traditional ways, including control of communal lands. While the traditional members often resented the sale of tribal lands to Anglo-Americans, by the 1830s they agreed it was not possible to go to war with the colonists on this issue.

[ [|edit] ] Foundations for freedom
Further information: [|Great Law of Peace] // [|The Treaty of Penn with the Indians] // by [|Benjamin West] painted in 1771 Some Europeans considered Native American societies to be representative of a golden age known to them only in folk history. [|[71]] The political theorist [|Jean Jacques Rousseau] wrote that the idea of freedom and democratic ideals was born in the Americas because "it was only in America" that Europeans from 1500 to 1776 knew of societies that were "truly free." [|[71]] > Natural freedom is the only object of the policy of the [Native Americans]; with this freedom do nature and climate rule alone amongst them ... [Native Americans] maintain their freedom and find abundant nourishment... [and are] people who live without laws, without police, without religion. — [|Jean Jacques Rousseau], //Jesuit and Savage in New France// [|[71]] In the twentieth century, some writers have credited the [|Iroquois nations] ' political confederacy and [|democratic] [|government] as being influences for the development of the [|Articles of Confederation] and the [|United States Constitution]. [|[72]] [|[73]] In October 1988, the U.S. Congress passed Concurrent Resolution 331 to recognize the influence of the Iroquois Constitution upon the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. [|[74]] But, leading historians of the period note that historic evidence is lacking to support such an interpretation. [|Gordon Wood] wrote, "The English colonists did not need the Indians to tell them about federalism or self-government. The New England Confederation was organized as early as 1643." [|[75]] The historian [|Jack Rakove], a specialist in early American history, in 2005 noted that the voluminous documentation of the Constitutional proceedings "contain no significant reference to Iroquois." [|[75]] Secondly, he notes: "All the key political concepts that were the stuff of American political discourse before the Revolution and after, had obvious European antecedents and referents: bicameralism, separation of powers, confederations, and the like." [|[75]]

[ [|edit] ] American Revolution
Yamacraw [|Creek] Native Americans meet with the Trustee of the colony of Georgia in England, July 1734. The painting shows a Native American boy (in a blue coat) and woman (in a red dress) in European clothing. During the [|American Revolution], the newly proclaimed [|United States] competed with the British for the allegiance of Native American nations east of the [|Mississippi River]. Most Native Americans who joined the struggle sided with the British, based both on their trading relationships and hopes that colonial defeat would result in a halt to further colonial expansion onto Native American land. Many native communities were divided over which side to support in the war and others wanted to remain neutral. The first native community to [|sign a treaty with the new United States Government] was the [|Lenape]. For the [|Iroquois] Confederacy, based in New York, the American Revolution resulted in [|civil war]. The only Iroquois tribes to ally with the colonials were the Oneida and Tuscarora. [|Frontier warfare during the American Revolution] was particularly brutal, and numerous atrocities were committed by settlers and native tribes alike. Noncombatants suffered greatly during the war. Military expeditions on each side destroyed villages and food supplies to reduce the ability of people to fight, as in frequent raids by both sides in the [|Mohawk Valley] and western New York. [|[76]] The largest of these expeditions was the [|Sullivan Expedition] of 1779, in which American colonial troops destroyed more than 40 Iroquois villages to neutralize Iroquois raids in [|upstate New York]. The expedition failed to have the desired effect: Native American activity became even more determined. > American Indians have played a central role in shaping the history of the nation, and they are deeply woven into the social fabric of much of American life.... During the last three decades of the twentieth century, scholars of ethnohistory, of the "new Indian history," and of Native American studies forcefully demonstrated that to understand American history and the American experience, one must include American Indians. —Robbie Ethridge, //Creek Country//. [|[77]] Bronze medals struck at behest of Virginia governor [|Thomas Jefferson] and carried by [|Joseph Martin] to give to Cherokee allies of colonial forces. Notice peace pipe atop the medal The British made peace with the Americans in the [|Treaty of Paris (1783)], through which they ceded vast Native American territories to the United States without informing or consulting with the Native Americans. The [|Northwest Indian War] was led by Native American tribes trying to repulse American settlers. The United States initially treated the Native Americans who had fought as allies with the British as a conquered people who had lost their lands. Although most members of the Iroquois tribes went to Canada with the Loyalists, others tried to stay in New York and western territories to maintain their lands. The state of New York made a separate treaty with Iroquois nations and put up for sale 5,000,000 acres (20,000 km2) of land that had previously been their territories. The state established small reservations in western New York for the remnant peoples. > The Indians presented a reverse image of European civilization which helped America establish a national identity that was neither savage nor civilized. —Charles Sanford, //The Quest for Paradise// [|[78]]

[ [|edit] ] 18th century United States
The United States was eager to expand, to develop farming and settlements in new areas, and to satisfy land hunger of settlers from New England and new immigrants. The national government initially sought to purchase Native American land by [|treaties]. The states and settlers were frequently at odds with this policy. [|[79]] [|George Washington] advocated the advancement of Native American society and he "harbored some measure of goodwill towards the Indians." [|[80]] European nations sent Native Americans (sometimes against their will) to the Old World as objects of curiosity. They often entertained royalty and were sometimes prey to commercial purposes. [|Christianization] of Native Americans was a charted purpose for some European colonies. > Whereas it hath at this time become peculiarly necessary to warn the citizens of the United States against a violation of the treaties.... I do by these presents require, all officers of the United States, as well civil as military, and all other citizens and inhabitants thereof, to govern themselves according to the treaties and act aforesaid, as they will answer the contrary at their peril. —George Washington, Proclamation Regarding Treaties, 1790. [|[81]] United States policy toward Native Americans had continued to evolve after the American Revolution. [|George Washington] and [|Henry Knox] believed that Native Americans were equals but that their society was inferior. Washington formulated a policy to encourage the "civilizing" process. [|[7]] Washington had a six-point plan for civilization which included, > 1. impartial justice toward Native Americans

> 2. regulated buying of Native American lands

> 3. promotion of commerce

> 4. promotion of experiments to civilize or improve Native American society

> 5. presidential authority to give presents

> 6. punishing those who violated Native American rights. [|[9]]

[|Robert Remini], a historian, wrote that "once the Indians adopted the practice of private property, built homes, farmed, educated their children, and embraced Christianity, these Native Americans would win acceptance from white Americans." [|[8]] The United States appointed agents, like [|Benjamin Hawkins], to live among the Native Americans and to teach them how to live like whites. [|[6]] > How different would be the sensation of a philosophic mind to reflect that instead of exterminating a part of the human race by our modes of population that we had persevered through all difficulties and at last had imparted our Knowledge of cultivating and the arts, to the Aboriginals of the Country by which the source of future life and happiness had been preserved and extended. But it has been conceived to be impracticable to civilize the Indians of North America — This opinion is probably more convenient than just. —Henry Knox to George Washington, 1790s. [|[80]] In the late 18th century, reformers starting with Washington and Knox, [|[82]] supported educating native children and adults, in efforts to " [|civilize] " or otherwise assimilate Native Americans to the larger society (as opposed to relegating them to [|reservations] ). The [|Civilization Fund Act] of 1819 promoted this civilization policy by providing funding to societies (mostly religious) who worked on Native American improvement. > I rejoice, brothers, to hear you propose to become cultivators of the earth for the maintenance of your families. Be assured you will support them better and with less labor, by raising stock and bread, and by spinning and weaving clothes, than by hunting. A little land cultivated, and a little labor, will procure more provisions than the most successful hunt; and a woman will clothe more by spinning and weaving, than a man by hunting. Compared with you, we are but as of yesterday in this land. Yet see how much more we have multiplied by industry, and the exercise of that reason which you possess in common with us. Follow then our example, brethren, and we will aid you with great pleasure... —President Thomas Jefferson, Brothers of the Choctaw Nation, December 17, 1803 [|[83]] [|Benjamin Hawkins], seen here on his plantation, teaches [|Creek] Native Americans how to use European technology. Painted in 1805.

[ [|edit] ] Resistance
[|Tecumseh] was the Shawnee leader of [|Tecumseh's War] who attempted to organize an alliance of Native American tribes throughout North America. [|[84]] As American expansion continued, Native Americans resisted settlers' encroachment in several regions of the new nation (and in unorganized territories), from the Northwest to the Southeast, and then in the West, as settlers encountered the tribes of the [|Great Plains]. East of the Mississippi River, an intertribal army led by [|Tecumseh], a Shawnee chief, fought a number of engagements in the Northwest during the period 1811–12, known as [|Tecumseh's War]. In the latter stages, Tecumseh's group allied with the British forces in the [|War of 1812] and was instrumental in the conquest of [|Detroit]. Conflicts in the Southeast include the [|Creek War] and [|Seminole Wars], both before and after the [|Indian Removals] of most members of the [|Five Civilized Tribes] beginning in the 1830s under President [|Andrew Jackson] 's policies. Native American nations on the plains in the west continued armed conflicts with the United States throughout the 19th century, through what were called generally " [|Indian Wars] ." The [|Battle of Little Bighorn] (1876) was one of the greatest Native American victories. Defeats included the [|Sioux Uprising] of 1862, [|[85]] the [|Sand Creek Massacre] (1864) and [|Wounded Knee] in 1890. [|[86]] [|Indian Wars] continued into the early 20th century. According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census (1894), > "The Indian wars under the government of the United States have been more than 40 in number. They have cost the lives of about 19,000 white men, women and children, including those killed in individual combats, and the lives of about 30,000 Indians." [|[87]]

[ [|edit] ] American expansion
Native Americans flee from the allegorical representation of [|Manifest Destiny], [|Columbia] , painted in 1872 by [|John Gast] In July 1845, the New York newspaper editor John L. O’Sullivan coined the phrase, "Manifest Destiny," as the "design of Providence" supporting the territorial expansion of the United States. [|[88]] [|Manifest Destiny] had serious consequences for Native Americans, since continental expansion for the United States took place at the cost of their occupied land. Manifest Destiny was a justification for expansion and westward movement, or, in some interpretations, an ideology or doctrine that helped to promote the process of civilization. Advocates of Manifest Destiny believed that expansion was not only good, but that it was obvious and certain. The term was first used primarily by [|Jacksonian Democrats] in the 1840s to promote the annexation of much of what is now the [|Western United States] (the [|Oregon Territory], the [|Texas Annexation] , and the [|Mexican Cession] ). > What a prodigious growth this English race, especially the American branch of it, is having! How soon will it subdue and occupy all the wild parts of this continent and of the islands adjacent. No prophecy, however seemingly extravagant, as to future achievements in this way [is] likely to equal the reality. —Rutherford Birchard Hayes, U.S. President, January 1, 1857, Personal Diary. [|[89]] The age of Manifest Destiny, which came to be associated with extinguishing American Indian territorial claims and removing them to reservations, gained ground as the United States population explored and settled west of the Mississippi River. Although Indian Removal from the Southeast had been proposed by some as a humanitarian measure to ensure their survival away from Americans, conflicts of the nineteenth century led some Americans to regard the natives as "savages".