NATIVE AMERICAN INDIANS


THE NATIVE AMERICAN INDIANS

The Native Americans were the first inhabitants of the Americas. They were our first environmentalists and horticulturists. To them the spirit world was embodied in every part of the natural world, whether animal, vegetable, or mineral. Thus they treated the natural world with great respect. Native Americans first survived as big-game hunters and as fishermen. The Indians were excellent fishermen, and invented the birch-bark canoe. It was not long before they became agricultural, adapting to climate changes and the discovery of the plant maize (corn). First harvesting wild plants with edible seeds, they gradually developed hybrids to increase productivity. Soon, maize, squash, and beans became major agricultural products.

The history of the Native Americans is a fascinating subject. Did they originate here, or did they migrate with the seafarers of Phoenicia, or from Siberia across Beringia, a land mass once connecting Siberia with Alaska, or perhaps a combination of the above? The oral tradition of the Native Americans must be respected along with the archaeological, linguistic and scientific studies of pre-Columbian history. The Olmecs and Mayans of Central America, the Incans of Peru, and then the Aztecs of Mexico were likely the earliest Native American civilizations. The earliest peoples within our national borders were the Southwest Ancestral Puebloans, Hohokam, and Mogollon; and the Adena, Hopewell, and Mississippian Mound Builders of the Mississippi Valley.

The Native Americans settled in different regions in the country and formed independent tribes with distinct Indian cultures, such that by 1492 there were over 300 separate native american languages! When Christopher Columbus landed on October 12, 1492, he thought he had reached India, and called the native people Indians, a name which native americans have come to appreciate, as the term gave them a collective identity.
The following table shows Native American Indian tribes of both historical and current interest.
The table primarily lists the original geographic location of the tribe:

MAJOR AMERICAN INDIAN TRIBES OF THE USA
Southeast	MidAtlantic/ Northeast	Great Lakes	Great Plains	California/ Mountain	Northwest/ Alaska	Southwest
Cherokee	Piscataway	Chippewa	Sioux	Paiute	Spokane	Navajo
Seminole	Lenape	Fox	Blackfeet	Shoshone	Eskimo Inuit	Apache
Apalachee	Powhatan	Shawnee	Cheyenne	Cahuilla	Aleut	Pueblo
Catawba	Rappahannock	Huron	Comanche	Chemihuevi	Athabascan	Hopi
Chickasaw	Yaocamico	Kickapoo	Arapoho	Chumash	Colville	Keres
Choctaw	Algonquin	Menominee	Crow	Costanoan	Coos	Maricopa
Coushatta	Iroquois	Miami	Dakota	Diegueno	Nez Perce	Mojave
Creek	Narragansett	Oneida	Kiowa	Hupa	Puget Sound Salish	Tohono O'odham
Houma	Nipmuc	Onondaga	Mandan	Luiseno	Quileute	Pima
Lumbee	Pequot	Ottowa	Osage	Maidu	Quinault	Yaqui
Miccosukee	Pokanoket	Potawatomi	Pawnee	Pomo	Tlingit	Yuma
Timucua	Wampanoag	Winnebago	Wichita	Ute	Yakama	Zuni

Native American Indians welcomed us to these shores in Florida and Massachusetts, and eventually the entire East coast. The first Mass of Thanksgiving on American soil was actually celebrated by the Spanish with the Timucuan Indians from Seloy village in attendance on September 8, 1565 in St. Augustine, Florida.

The Pilgrims, who sought religious freedom and crossed the Atlantic in the Mayflower in 1620, were treated kindly by the Wampanoag tribe in Massachusetts. Samoset and Squanto showed the Pilgrims how to plant corn, beans, and pumpkins, and where to hunt and fish. William Bradford and the sachem Massasoit made a treaty which they honored as long as both were alive. The image of the first Thanksgiving at Plymouth in 1621 with the Pilgrims, Massasoit of Pokanoket and the Wampanoag Nation is forever etched upon the American conscience.

The Pilgrims in Massachusetts, Roger Williams and the Baptists in Rhode Island, Leonard Calvert and the Catholics in Maryland, and William Penn and the Quakers in Pennsylvania began their religious settlements buying the land and treating the Indians with mutual respect. For example, Father Andrew White SJ, who was one of the first settlers to arrive in Maryland on March 25, 1634, worked patiently with the Piscataway Indians of Maryland and prepared a grammar dictionary and catechism in their native tongue: this was the first time an Indian language was distilled into grammatical form.



However this harmonious relationship was short-lived.

First, Native Americans had no immunologic protection against such European diseases as smallpox, typhus, and measles. For those in frequent contact with European settlers, the effects were devastating: it is estimated that up to 90% of native Americans, perhaps numbering in the millions, died during the first century of contact with the Europeans.

Second, Native Americans had different spiritual beliefs than Europeans. They saw the land as a living being, as a mother who nurtured them. The thought of buying and selling land was unthinkable to them. The Indians saw the offers from Europeans for land to build and farm as joining an existing relationship, not to transfer ownership. Misperception ensued. A few tribes resented the attempts of the Europeans to convert them to Christianity.

And third, the Indian tribes, with the exception of the Five Nation Iroquois, lacked unity, and, as most of the European nations at the time, were often rivals with each other. This made them vulnerable to the Europeans with their superior weaponry.

Atrocities were committed by both sides. Five Spanish Franciscans who attempted to introduce monogamous marriage to the Guale Indians were martyred in Darien, Georgia in September 1597. Five hundred Pequot Indian men, women, and children were burned alive in May 1637 at Mystic River, Connecticut by a vengeful Puritan militia in the name of divine retribution. Isaac Jogues and seven French Jesuits were martyred by the Mohawks at Auriesville, New York in October 1646. Metacomet, known as King Philip, the son of the Pokanoket sachem Massasoit, tried to preserve Native American presence against the unprincipled land grab of colonial expansion in New England, and led the June 1675-August 1676 King Philip's War, but died August 12, 1676. But the worst devastation began in 1702, when James Moore, the English Governor of South Carolina, wrote his own Black Legend when he, his soldiers, and Yemassee Indians swept through Georgia to Florida and annihilated the Franciscan missions and massacred the Timucua and Apalachee Mission Indians of Florida, some by impaling them on stakes or burning them alive. He then attacked St. Augustine, but the townsfolk retreated to St. Mark's Castle. Moore bombarded the castle for 50 days, but, unsuccessful, Moore finally gave up, but not before he torched most of the town. By his own writings, Moore captured several thousand Indians and reduced them to slavery. Disgraced, he stepped down as governor upon his return, not because of his extreme cruelty, but because of his failure to capture St. Augustine!

What began peacefully ended in aggression and conflict.

European settlers subsequently drove the Indians from their lands as settlers moved westward. Treaties were often drawn up after Indian leaders were plied with alcohol. Whether through intimidation, war, treachery, or outright fraud, the Native Americans were systematically dispossessed of their lands.

An Indian known as the Prophet advised the Shawnee to give up alcohol and the ways of the white men and return to their traditional ways. He founded a peaceful community in Prophetstown, Indiana. His brother Tecumseh organized surrounding Indian tribes into a Confederation to resist the incursions of white settlers. In the Treaty of Fort Wayne in 1809, William Henry Harrison negotiated with only three of the many Indian tribes and bought 3 million acres in Indiana and Illinois for less than one cent an acre! When an Illinois tribe raided a small village, Harrison took advantage of the situation and headed to Prophetstown, even though the Shawnee had nothing to do with the raid. Harrison defeated the Confederation at Tippecanoe on November 11, 1811.

The peak of disenfranchisement occurred with the enforcement of President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act of 1830. All five of the "Civilized Tribes" were driven from their lands. These acts left the once proud and resourceful Indians a dispirited, heart-broken race. The Choctaws in Mississippi and Alabama were the first to be resettled in 1832, followed by the Creeks (1836) and the Chickasaws (1837). But it was the resettlement of Cherokees by Jackson's Federal troops in 1838-1839 from Georgia to lands west of the Mississippi that left 5000 Cherokees dead on the Trail of Tears.

The fifth tribe, the only one to maintain presence in their native territory, were the Seminoles of Florida.

The Indians of the Great Plains and those resettled from the East faced a similar fate from the Western expansion of the Nation. The Lewis and Clark Expedition from 1804 made it to the Pacific Ocean because of the hospitality of the Mandan Indians and their Shoshone guide Sacajawea.

Once again, this kindness was not returned.
Federal agents would sign treaties such as the Fort Laramie treaties of 1851, granting extensive territory to the Indians, only to have other Federal agents break the treaties in support of the Homestead Act of 1862, which granted land to predominantly white settlers from the East. Using justified resistance as an excuse, Federal troops ruthlessly drove the Nez Perce, Crows, Apache, Sioux, and other Plains Indians from their lands. The final defeat occurred at Wounded Knee in 1890, with the death of Sitting Bull, Big Foot, and a band of Lakotas.

The ultimate absurdity occurred in 1924 when the American Indians, the natives of America,
were granted citizenship by the very people that drove them off their lands.




The Navajo Nation played an invaluable role in the Pacific theater during World War ll. When the Japanese had broken American codes and launched the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the U. S. Marines turned to the Navajo nation to develop a code based on their language, a code which the Japanese never could decipher. The Navajo code talkers were instrumental to our victory in Iwo Jima in March of 1945.

Fortunately, during the latter half of the twentieth century, beginning with President Eisenhower, long-overdue respect and concessions have been given to our Native Americans.

A Franciscan priest founded the Southwest Indian Foundation in Gallup, New Mexico in 1968. A memorial to the Navajo Code Talkers has been completed and is situated in the Gallup Cultural Center.

There has been a fluorishing of the Native American population, which has seen a dramatic increase over the past few years. According to the 2010 U. S. Census, the Native American population has risen to 3,151,000 American Indian and Alaskan Natives! An additional 1,810,000 reported American Indian and at least one other race.

43% of American Indians live in the West, and 30% in the South. The 2000 Census Bureau noted that 25% of the total Native American population live in California and Oklahoma. The five states with the largest American Indian population are California, Oklahoma, Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico.

The following chart lists the Top 25 American Indian Tribes by population in the year 2000. These are the original U. S. Census Bureau figures, which indicate those listing one tribe only.

2000 TOP 25 AMERICAN INDIAN TRIBES
Rank	Tribe	Population
1	Cherokee	281,069
2	Navajo	269,202
3	Sioux	108,272
4	Chippewa	105,907
5	Aztec/Latin American	104,354
6	Choctaw	87,349
7	Pueblo	59,533
8	Apache	57,060
9	Lumbee	51,913
10	Alaskan Eskimo	45,919
11	Iroquois	45,212
12	Creek	40,223
13	Blackfeet	27,104
14	Chickasaw	20,887
15	Tohono O'odham	17,466
16	Potawatomi	15,817
17	Yaqui	15,224
18	Alaskan Tlingit	14,825
19	Alaskan Athabascans	14,520
20	Seminole	12,431
21	Alaskan Aleut	11,941
22	Cheyenne	11,191
23	Puget Sound Salish	11,034
24	Comanche	10,120
25	Paiute	9,705

REFERENCES
1 Doyle RC. American History. Class Lectures & Notes, Franciscan University, Steubenville, Ohio, 2001.
2 Berkin C, Miller CL, Cherny RW, Gormly JL. Making America. Fourth Edition, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 2007.
3 Waldman C. Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes. Checkmark, New York, 2006.
4 Morison, Samuel Eliot. Oxford History of the American People. Oxford University Press, New York, 1965.
5 Waldman C, Braun M. Atlas of the North American Indian. Checkmark Books, New York, 25-50, 2000.
6 2000 and 2010 Census, United States of America.
7 Gannon M. Florida - A Short History. University Press of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, 2003.

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