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Aztec floating gardens: chinampas
By the year 500, Mayan cities had been in existence for more than 300 years and the Maya had reached their peak in economic prosperity. It is estimated that two hundred years later the Mayan population peaked. Then, between the years 750 and 900, one Mayan city after another was abandoned and much of the Mayan population disappeared. The last of the hieroglyphic writing erected in the city of Copan (Copán) was dated for the year 800. The last hieroglyphic writing in the city of Piedra Negras is dated 810. The last writing on a stele in Tikal is dated as 869. Abandoned cities, where Maya had thought their gods dwelled, became overgrown with jungle and filled with the chatter of monkeys and birds.
The few Maya who remained were on the periphery of what had been Mayan civilization. Exactly why Mayan civilization disappeared is not known. One cause dismissed by scholars is that of invasion by outsiders. One possible cause is a decline in food production. On the skeletal remains of Maya who lived during the period of decline, archaeologists have found signs of inadequate nutrition. These remains were shorter in stature, the bones thinner, with dental enamel problems (another sign of insufficient nutrition) and more signs of disease.
The Maya had had an inefficient slash and burn agriculture that required land to be left fallow for five to fifteen years after only two to five years of cultivation. Agriculture had spread with the growing population, and, with agricultural fields replacing natural forest, rains may have caused much soil erosion. The Maya may have had trouble with their water supply. In much of Maya country water ponds had been used as a source of drinking water and for aquatic food such as frogs, and indications have been found that these ponds had become silted.
A diminishing food supply would have created social upheaval and war. Warfare had been a preoccupation of Mayan lords. But with wars victors remain, and the complete abandonment of lands suggests another cause of the end of Maya civilization. Wars may have helped in addition to an increase in mosquitoes and disease. But complete abandonment suggests that the heart of the problem was the unavailability of food.
How the great city in south-central Mexico, Teotihuacan (Teotihuacán), was connected with the demise of Mayan civilization is unknown. But around the year 750, Teotihuacan was among those cities destroyed and left in ruins. Great palaces were burned to the ground. Major temples were abandoned. And the city's population was reduced to a few people living in hovels in a few sections of the city.
At least some of the towns around Teotihuacan survived, the most influential of which was Xochicalco. It was a city with writing and some signs of Mayan influences, a city protected by walls and ditches, as were a couple of lesser cities in the area: Cacaxtla and Teotenange. In these towns were stone carvings and painted murals depicting militarism and human sacrifices.
After the fall of Teotihuacán and its empire, communities around Teotihuacan warred against each other, as cities are inclined to do when they were not dominated by a central power. In the 800s and 900s a people called Toltecs invaded the region and established themselves at a city called Tula. And around the year 900 a people called the Mixtecs, who had been in the Oaxaca area since the 600s, became dominant there and in an adjacent area called Pueblo.
By the year 1000 the Toltecs had wandered into what had been Maya country, to Chichén Itzá, where they built their own monuments, including a great pyramid, and a ball court. From Chichen Itza the Toltecs acquired control over the northern half of what had been Mayan lands. And for about a century the Toltecs of Chichen Itza maintained contact with the Toltecs of Tula.
Tula had grown into the largest city on the continent, with a population of about 50,000. They had agriculture, but they were still in the Stone Age - their tools and weapons of wood and stone. They had copper, but it was cold pounded and used for jewelry. They wore cotton fabrics, and they wore feathers as ornaments. Cocoa was a popular drink, and cocoa was used by the wealthy to buy slaves.
Tula imported goods from afar, more than had Teotihuacan, but apparently, according to archaeologists, Tula had no empire as had Teotihuacan. Then in the 1100s drought came. Around the year 1150, Tula was abandoned and destroyed. And, beginning around the year 1200, another people, the Aztecs, began drifting into the area.
The Aztecs came to an area that today is Mexico City. It was an area high in elevation, surrounded by mountains, with a lake and swampland - an area that was to become known as the Valley of Mexico. The last branch of Aztecs to arrive there was the Mexica, who arrived around the year 1250.
The Aztecs were an impoverished, uprooted people who had been living by hunting and gathering. They were without writing, with an oral history, and, according to their legend, they were from somewhere in the north called Azatlan and had been led to the Valley of Mexico by a magician-priest.
In the Valley of Mexico, the Mexica Aztecs found that all land adequate for farming was occupied, and they settled onto an infertile hilly region named for grasshoppers - today the glorious Chapultapec region of Mexico City. Their neighbors despised them for what they saw as their barbaric ways and drove them from Chapultapec to an area where they were forced to live off snakes and lizards. Then they were driven away again, to a swampy region within the valley.
This hardship proved a blessing for them. The swamps provided them with wild plants and fish, frogs and ducks to eat. And similar to so-called barbarians who had come upon civilization in Mesopotamia, the Mexica Aztecs were resourceful and learned quickly. They built terraces on hills that were previously not farmable. Copying the agriculture that was traditional in the Valley of Mexico they constructed dikes. Aztec success was built upon their agriculture. They built chinampas, floating gardens on swamp. Mud from canals was put on mats. Trees were planted at the corners, and the roots of the trees anchored the chinampa in place. On the chinampas the Aztecs grew corn, avocados, beans, chili peppers, squash, and tomatoes. Aztec food production allowed for an expansion in population and a wealth that permitted an expansion in empire.
The Mexica Aztecs saw themselves as having done well. They built for themselves a community called Tenochtitlan, surrounded by lush green cultivated fields and water, which they traversed with canoes. With their new prosperity, the Mexica rapidly increased in number, and their success impressed their neighbors. The Mexica entered regional politics and allied themselves with neighbors who had been expanding against others. The Mexica had not forgotten their warrior tradition. They were skilled soldiers and became skilled diplomats. They became allies with the dominant power in the region, the Tepanecs of Azcapotzalco, a little to the northwest of Tenochtitlan. As members of an alliance they were participants in the first significant empire in south-central Mexico since Teotihuacan.
In 1428, the Mexica Aztecs fought and defeated their former ally, the Tepanecs. Between 1428 and 1450, with its two remaining allies, the Mexica Aztecs conquered most of the Valley of Mexico and beyond, including Xochicalco, sixty kilometers (37 miles) to the south of Tenochtitlan.
Nature intervened. From 1450 to 1454 famine dominated the Valley of Mexico, which stimulated an effort at greater food production, and the Mexica expanded their power to the rich food producing areas along the Atlantic Coast and to the Pacific Coast.
The Mexica method of expansion was not much different from that of other conquerors. Representatives of the Mexica would approach the ruler of a town and announce that the town should pay tribute to the Mexica and their allies. If the ruler accepted, he maintained local power under the Mexica. If he refused, war was declared. And where the Mexica fought they would demand food. Local people, seeing the Mexica and their allies arrayed just outside of their village, were often eager to provide food and whatever else would please the army. But if displeased by the response of the village, the army would plunder and kill.
The Mexica had become divided by class. A few of them were nobles - men of wealth who controlled much land and the labor of commoners and slaves. There was ranking within the nobility, but, regardless of rank, the nobles were unified in defense of their status against threats from commoners. Nobles married those from other noble families, and they used marriage to link themselves into a kinship network - which they reinforced by exchanging luxury goods.
Nobles were concerned with appearing serious, serene rather than haughty and as having good manners - a sign, they thought, of good breeding. They viewed the common Aztec as unnecessarily loud, as too demonstrative and as insufficient in self-restraint and dignity. They believed that one should eat calmly lest one be mocked. They associated a lack of restraint with idiocy. And they believed in sincerity. They claimed that their lord god, Tezcatlioca, saw what was in the heart so that with only feigned humility one could not maintain the respect of the gods.
Aztec kings were aligned with the nobles. They claimed that they were chosen by the gods to rule and that their primary function after service to the gods was the defense of their subjects. Aztec kings claimed that they were descended from Toltec kings - a claim that bolstered dynastic legitimacy. They revered Toltec objects. They described Toltec kings as having been semi-divine, as super-human in their accomplishments and as having invented most of Mesoamerican culture, including writing, the calendar, the arts and other crafts.
Among common Aztecs upward mobility was possible through the priesthood or through warfare. Warriors were ranked by the number of enemies they had captured, and exceptionally successful warriors were given some of the responsibilities and privileges of nobles. There were merchants benefiting a thriving local market and long distance trade. And at the bottom of Aztec society were those unable to support themselves who had sold themselves into slavery to a noble. Some were put into slavery as punishment for a crime. But slavery among the Aztecs was not inherited. The children of slaves were free.
The Mexica Aztecs attributed their success, not so much to their agriculture. They saw their success as the result of their being the chosen people of their war god, Huitzilopochtli and as their having sustained their sun god, Tonatiuh. They sought to avoid punishment by pleasing their gods. They had stories about the creation of the universe, beginning with a first god that was both male and female, who gave birth to four god-sons, and two of these sons created the earth, mortals and other gods. The Aztecs had gods of rain, moisture and agricultural fertility. Each god had one or more temples where its idol was housed, and each god had full-time priests to attend to its interests, priests who were mostly male, who attended sacred fires that burned in large braziers, who played music at ceremonies, burned incense and left food for their god.
Fundamental to Aztec religion was the belief that the gods had created the sun by throwing themselves into a huge fire, that the gods had spilled their own blood to create humankind and that humans were obliged to pay back their blood debt to the gods. Aztec priests scarred and mutilated their bodies in their constant bloodletting. Some priests appeared especially devout with their long, unwashed hair matted with dried blood. War was favored as a way of obtaining blood and sacrificial men for the gods. Most people who were sacrificed to the gods were those captured in warfare. And warfare was encouraged to obtain such persons.
Archaeological evidence indicates that children were the frequent and special targets of sacrifice. They were sacrificed to the rain god in hope of rainfall the following year, and the priests were joyful to see the tears of the children as they were being led away to their deaths, the priests believing the children's tears to be a sign of coming rain.
Sacrifices were public spectacles that took place at the top of a pyramid in a town plaza. The person to be sacrificed was taken up steps to an apex of a temple. Priests assisted in the sacrifice, performed by a special priest with an official flint knife. The victim's heart was torn from his or her body. Then the victim was sent rolling down the temple steps. At the bottom of the steps the victim's head was separated from his body and mounted on a skull rack next to the temple. The blood of the victim was soaked up with bark and the bark put on a fire, the smoke believed to carry the blood to the gods.
Perhaps only on very special occasions was a sacrifice followed by a ceremonial meal. As such a meal a portion of the sacrificed person's body was eaten, to honor the victim's memory and perhaps to ingest some admirable quality of the sacrificed. There is no evidence that the Aztecs had developed the kind of early philosophical thought that in Europe gave rise to the beginnings of science and to differentiation between the material and the spiritual.
In the year 500 much of South America was still inhabited by hunter-gatherers, but it also had growers in what are now Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Peru and Bolivia. The more densely populated areas were about ten persons per square mile - sparse compared to Europe at that time but many times greater than those areas that supported hunter-gatherers, estimated to average around ten persons for every 500 square miles or 1,300 square kilometers.
Farming had existed around Lake Titicaca since around 1000 BCE, and just south of Lake Titicaca the city of Tiahuanaco appeared around the end of the first century BCE. Tiahuanaco's population grew to between 20,000 and 50,000, and Tiahuanaco conquered nearby villages. Then, around the year 700 CE, Tiahuanaco began to decline, for reasons unknown. About 440 miles to the northwest of Tiahuanaco was another imperial city, Huari, which was still powerful in the year 700, its influence reaching 500 miles to the north and 275 miles southward to the Pacific Coast. But by the year 800 its power also faded, while Tiahuanaco was being abandoned, never to be resettled. But remaining across the highlands were numerous towns each with a thousand or so inhabitants.
About the same time that Huari collapsed, a city called Chan Chan emerged as the dominant power among fortified towns along the Pacific Coast, in the lowland region next to the Andes Mountains, where lowland towns had been fighting each other over rivers of fresh water. Chan Chan was a city about three by four miles, with adobe buildings and surrounded by thirty miles of irrigated corn fields and gardens. In the 1300s Chan Chan expanded about 200 miles northward along the coast and a hundred miles southward, where its expansion was stopped by another coastal power, Chincha. By 1370, Chan Chan had walls ten feet thick at the bottom and thirty feet high, it had terraced hillsides and canals for irrigation. Metallurgy there had improved, copper from what is now northern Chile having been combined with tin. Bronze knives and plowing sticks were made, bringing to the Americas a short lived bronze age, while Chan Chan's weavers were making cloth that had 250 threads to the inch compared to the 85 threads per inch that was being produced in Europe.
In the early 1400s an empire was in the making in the highlands of what is now Peru. From the town of Cuzco the Inca had been raiding and plundering their ethnically different neighbors. In 1438 a federation of tribes called the Chanca attacked the Inca. The Inca drove the Chanca from Cuzco and then - not unlike the Egyptians after they drove out the Hyksos - the Inca launched an expansion of their own, their king, Yupanqui (Yupánqui), acquiring the name the Destroyer. And success made the Inca stronger, Yupanqui strengthening his army by taking into its ranks conquered men, to be officered only by the Inca.
Yupanqui began rebuilding Cuzco, and around 1463 he turned leadership of his army over to his son, Topac (Tópac). Yupanqui was interested in building, and in Cuzco stone buildings, walls and walkways arose. Nearby rivers were channeled. The Cuzco Valley floor was leveled for agriculture, and agricultural terraces were built on the surrounding hillsides.
Between 1463 and 1471 Yupanqui's son, Topac, extended the Inca Empire northward, and a policy of scattering uncooperative peoples began, the Inca filling the vacated areas with docile people who had been under Inca rule for sometime and knew how the Inca system of government worked.
In 1471 Yupanqui died, and Tópac succeeded him. A rumor spread among conquered people near Lake Titicaca that Topac had died while having led troops on one of his excursions into the tropical rain forest. Independence was attempted, but Topac came and defeated the rebellions. Following this success, Tópac led his army farther south, conquering parts of what today are Bolivia, Argentina and Chile, establishing the empire's southernmost border at the Maule River by 1476. Then Topac expanded from his highland region around Cuzco westward to the Pacific Coast, finding only minimal resistance along the way, except for people in the Cañete Valley, who were able to resist the Inca for three years before they too were overrun.
After his successful expansion to the Pacific, Topac concerned himself with administering his empire. On a network of roads that the Inca had built, Tópac traveled through his territories. He counted and classified his subjects, a census for the sake of labor assignments and military conscription. He also chose young women to serve as temple maidens for state shrines or as brides for soldiers who had distinguished themselves in battle.
The Inca saw themselves as favored by their gods. They saw themselves as less lustful and less foolish than other peoples. They had a myth that preceding them had been a people who had grown progressively soft and had turned to sodomy and away from the hard work of growing food and away from warfare. The Inca believed that the gods had put them into the world in place of these people to teach humanity how to do right - a myth that suited their imperialism.
The Inca as yet had no writing. With no book to quote from their myths were oral. It included their chief god, Virachocha, creator of the earth, creator of humans and of all the animals that roamed the surface of the earth. The Inca saw Virachocha as lord instructor who taught people their skills. They saw Virachocha as an old man of the sky who not only created people and sent humanity to the four directions but also destroyed people.
The Inca saw their gods as in control, and, to please their gods, all important events were preceded by divination - attempts to read the mind of the gods. To predict the future, the meandering of a spider was observed, or the arrangement taken by cocoa leaves in a shallow dish of water, or the intestines of a llama were examined. If something went wrong, such as the rain not falling, it was seen as someone's misdeed rather than the fault of the gods. It was believed that if something went wrong someone must have failed to observe the proper religious ceremony. To placate the gods, confessions had to be made and penitence accomplished.
The Lord God of the Inca was frequently offered food, such as priests throwing corn onto the hot coals of a fire and saying, "Eat this Lord Sun so that you will know that we are your children." In Cuzco on the first day of every lunar month a flock of pure white llamas were driven into the town square. The llamas stood before the images of various gods, the llamas divided among thirty priests (one priest for every day of the month and about three llamas to each priest) and then the llamas were slaughtered, chunks of their flesh thrown into a fire and their bones powdered for later rituals.
Humans were also sacrificed - everyday at sunrise and on other important occasions. Catastrophes such as a military defeat, a famine or spreading disease required a human sacrifice. So too did a special occasion for a king. People without physical blemishes were preferred to better please the gods. Many of the sacrificed were children, occasionally two hundred at a time. Before being sacrificed, the children were lavished with attention and food so as not to enter the presence of the gods hungry and crying.
When an Inca man died his favorite wives and servants were given drink until intoxicated. Then they were executed in order to accompany the dead man into the other world. The bodies of the dead were mummified. On occasion the mummies were brought into Cuzco's town square to face the square's idols. Beer was put next to the mummies, and attempts were made to keep flies from annoying them.
To fulfill their duty to their gods, the Inca took their religion and its idols to the territories they had conquered. Being polytheistic they did not deny the existence of the gods of those they had conquered. They merely thought their gods superior. The Inca brought the gods of the conquered back to Cuzco, in the form of idols. And they held the idols hostage, alongside conquered nobility, to insure the good behavior of the conquered.
King Topac died in 1493, the year after Columbus had journeyed to the Caribbean. Topac's death was followed by a civil war, and emerging as successor was Topac's son, Huayna Cápac. Huayna Capac's empire stretched across more than a thousand miles, north and south. South of Cuzco, forest people were making raids into his empire to acquire bronze tools and metal for body ornaments, and in the far north of his empire were rebellions. Huayna Capac went north on an expedition. There he made minor gains in territory, including an area called Quito. There, for reasons that are unclear, he chose to stay, leaving Cuzco to be run by others. And, similar to emperors of Rome during its decline, he surrounded himself with bodyguards who were foreigners.
By now the Inca Empire had reached it zenith. Cuzco was a city of between 100,000 and 300,000 inhabitants. It was a city of bureaucrats, guards, servant-slaves (yanaconas) and tribute laborers from the conquered territories, working for the Inca nobility. The nobility was seeking new ways of expanding their wealth. Rivalry between the nobles was rising. And the Spaniards were expanding in the Caribbean.
On lands now called Alaska, eastward to the Hudson Bay, and along the rim of Greenland, were those who called themselves the people. Neighbors to the south of the people around Hudson Bay, namely the Cree, called them "eaters of raw meat," the Cree word for this being "eskimo." This is what outsides called them until recently, although they disliked eating uncooked meat. They are now called what they prefer - the Inuit.
The Inuit lived in log cabins insulated with turf and they lived in temporary dwellings of ice called igloos. In winter the Inuit were more isolated from one another than in the summer, when some of them joined other families at fishing places on rivers and lakes, forming groups as large as several hundred persons.
In addition to fishing, the Inuit hunted caribou and bears. They thrived in conditions that would have killed the average twentieth century suburbanite. From one-man kayaks they harpooned seals in the open sea - a craft to be copied by Europeans for recreation. The Inuits made translucent skylights from very thin ice or gut. From hides they made their clothing and pails for hauling water and for storing meat. Hides were used for plates, but where wood was available they carved wooden plates and used bark to make containers and baskets. They made sleds, which were pulled by their teams of dogs. They made parkas. And they found comfort in their imaginatively built igloos, which they could construct in less than a half-day.
They invented religion that was similar in ways to that of other ancient people. The Inuits saw spirits in sticks and stones, in the wind and snow, and among them were shamans. Thunderstorms were not as common in Inuit country as they were in Mesopotamia or in the east of what is now the United States, and they had no angry god of the sky. Nor did they have a lot of sunshine and a sun god as did the Maya, the Aztec, Inca or the Egyptians. Character of the gods was influenced by geography.
Generally the Inuits were cheerful. They had no fear of post life torments in hell. But like everyone else they had their conflicts and quarreling. They were as impulsive, free from authority and close to nature as the original Taoists of China wanted to be. Responding to impulse, murder occurred from time to time as it did with other people. Before an Inuit man was thirty it was common to have killed at least one other Inuit man in a quarrel - even if he were generally peace loving. The women were less violent.
The disputes between men were often over women. A man might have more than one wife, or a woman might have more than one husband. The Inuit had not gone through the stage of land ownership or women as property that aristocracies in Eurasia had gone through. As in the Pacific islands, the view of non-virgins as damaged goods had not become well developed. Neither was celibacy highly prized. A host often offered his wife to a visitor who was alone. Sometimes a wife stayed for a day or more with another man. But if a man decided to keep another man's wife, the husband was likely to turn violent.
There was no police force or court system during these times. People enjoyed the freedom of expressing their wrath rather than having to wait for a bureaucracy or the gods to move on their behalf. They could not be accused of taking the law into their own hands. They were the law - judge, jury and executioner. The system of justice was as it had been among the ancient Hebrews and others: revenge. But if a man killed unusually often, the community became concerned and might in some way constrain him.
Elsewhere in North America and north of the Rio Grande (which now separates Texas from Mexico) were groups of people who varied in looks, language and habits. And they lived in different kinds of terrain: some in mountains, some in desert, or on grassland or woodland. In some places game was plentiful, or the soil was suitable for growing crops, or fish were available.
This part of the North American continent was less densely populated than were the rich, agricultural regions of Central America. The denser parts north of the Rio Grande were along the Pacific Coast in what are now California, Oregon, Washington and Vancouver Island, and spots along the Atlantic Coast in what are now Georgia and North Carolina. Some other areas in the east, including Florida, and places such as Wisconsin, the Dakotas, Nebraska and Kansas, were as sparsely populated as Baja California.
Some have estimated the whole of the Americas to have been around 100 million at the time of Columbus' arrival in the Caribbean in 1492. Some have put the number as low as 8 million. For this time and the area that today is the United States, 5 million people have been estimated - more than 20 times the number of people of Indian ancestry that would be living in 1900. [note]
Among the North American Indians were the Hopewell. They depended on hunting, fishing and perhaps gathering shell fish, but they also grew corn, squash and perhaps beans. They lived alongside rivers, around their ceremonial centers, in semi-permanent homes constructed of bent saplings covered with skins, mats and sheets of bark. Hopewell culture is believed to have been at its peak around the year 400 and centered in the woodlands of what are today Ohio and Illinois.
The Hopewell people traded, and their trade was linked to places as far away as the Pacific Coast, the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Coast. Their tools were stone, bone or antler and some cold pounded copper that they had acquired from around the Great Lakes. They had bead necklaces, armbands and pendants. They used pottery and wooden spoons. They made clothing from the woven fibers of the soft inner bark of certain trees, and they made finely carved tobacco pipes and musical instruments such as panpikes, rattles and perhaps drums.
Illinois Hopewell migrated to the Upper Great Lakes and across the Missouri River to what is now Kansas City. But by the year 500 the Hopewell were already in decline. The unique Hopewell ways vanished, including their artistry in wood carving and Hopewell-style burial mounds.
According to archaeologists, Hopewell Culture was replaced by Mississippi Culture, which had appeared around the Middle Mississippi river, the lower Ohio river and the Illinois and Tennessee rivers around the year 700. By the 900s, people belonging to this culture were involved in agriculture. From 1000 to 1500 Mississippi Culture spread, accompanied by an increased involvement in agriculture and a growth in population. Farming towns developed around ceremonial centers. New and more productive strains of corn were grown. The largest farming center was at Cahokia, Illinois. Other centers were at what is today Spiro in Oklahoma, Moundville in Alabama, and Etowah in northern Georgia.
In southern Florida was the Glades Culture, which remained independent from Mississippi Culture and without agriculture. On the plains were people who came to be known as the Blackfoot and the Crow, and others. They hunted buffalo on foot. Horses were to arrive with Europeans.
After the year 1000, hunting, gathering and fishing societies in the Northeast of what is today the United States and Canada began to increase their planting of crops, and the size and numbers of their settlements began to increase.
From the forests of New England and across the Great Lakes to Minnesota, were people of related cultures whose language was Siouan, Algonquian or Iroquoian. By the year 1200 some Iroquois were still doing little more than hunting, gathering wild food and fishing. They lived in "wigwams," similar to what has been called a "teepee." But other Iroquois were living in rectangular cabins, today referred to as "longhouses," and some were growing squash and beans in gardens next to their settlements or were cutting down trees, using the ancient slash and burn method of agriculture.
In what are now Arizona, New Mexico, southeastern Utah and western Texas were Navahos, Pueblo (Zuni and Hopi), Manso and others. In this relatively treeless area, people tapped into seasonal rivers and grew corn, beans and squash. They hunted rabbits, and they used rabbit fur and wove vegetable fibers for clothing and blankets. For tools and utensils they used chipped stone and wood. And they were skilled at making baskets and sandals. From 1276 to 1299 a decline in rainfall and a lower water table made agriculture more difficult, and the Pueblo dispersed to new areas in the southwest. They built new towns where water was available, grew corn, beans and squash and prospered.
Meanwhile along the misty Pacific Coast, between mountains and sea, from what is now Canada to northern California, people were thriving without corn. Agriculture was undeveloped in these areas, but they hunted an abundance of game and gathered wild berries from their woods. Fish were available, and occasionally they took a whale from the sea. Their winters were mild. Woodland was abundant. They lived in log cabins, made their clothing from shredded bark and they had plenty of time to develop an artistry in woodworking.
People in what today is the United States were without draft animals for pulling carts and had no use for wheels. Their use of the bow and arrow was increasing, giving them a greater range than the spear, which would no longer be in use by the year 1500.
Like other ancient peoples, the people north of the Rio Grande saw the world as occupied by numerous spirits, and some believed in a spirit that was most powerful. People sought contact with the supernatural through dreams. Shamans were common, with their performances of magic. In religion, people north of the Rio Grande were more like the Australian aborigines than they were like those who had long been dependent on agriculture for food - for whom a failed harvest meant starvation. Among those who were predominately hunters, such as the Australian aborigines, sacrifice was rare. People north of the Rio Grande did not practice human sacrifice as did the more densely populated Aztecs and Incas. But among some tribes north of the Rio Grande, human sacrifices did exist. Evidence exists that the Pawnee (in what is now Nebraska) occasionally sacrificed someone. The Iroquois are said to have occasionally sent a maiden and white dog to the Great Spirit. And human sacrifice and cannibalism are believed to have existed among people along the coast between Louisiana, Florida and up the coast to Virginia, where people experienced the wrath of the gods more frequently in the form of extremely violent storms than did people in other parts of the country.
People north of the Rio Grande had their conflicts and feuds. Small parties of four or as many as fifty men raided neighboring societies - larger armies among the Indians not appearing until after the arrival of the Europeans. In warfare surprise attacks were used, and the supernatural was called upon. Feuds were common between societies that lived near each other but did not speak the same language. And sadism occurred, as in the story that was passed to the Spanish priest Le Jenune about the torture by Hurons of a male Iroquois prisoner. [note]
In the northwest, raiding was done for revenge, plunder and for personal glory - the plunder sometimes for a canoe or two, for food, fur or clothing. And in the northwest they fought over hunting territory. From Alaska south to the Klamath River of southern Oregon, raiding might include the taking of captives as slaves. Someone made a slave might later become free, perhaps by marrying a member of the group that had captured him or her. A slave might be ransomed to a relative. And in some instances in this part of the continent slavery was hereditary, the child of a slave becoming himself a slave.
Some north of the Rio Grande favored peace. The anthropologist Ruth Benedict, in her book The Patterns of Culture, described the Pueblo as unemotional, cooperative and peaceful, but she is accused of having overstated her case. The Pueblo are now thought to have been less warlike than their neighbors, but they had to fight to defend against predators. Pueblo villages had a war priest, and it was the war priest or his lieutenant who frequently led the Pueblo warriors into battle. [note]
Recommended Books
The Aztecs, by Michael E Smith, Blackwell, 1996
The Indian Heritage of America, by Alvin M Josephy, Alfred A Knopf, 1969
Indians of North America, by Harold E Driver, University of Chicago Press, 1961
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