I’m doing some research for a Sci-Fi book I intend to write, and I have a few questions about Native Americans - specifically about those tribes/nations that lived nomadic lives on the Great Plains.
1 - Did any of the North American native tribes have access to metal before Europeans set foot on the continent? Were there any tribes that either mined for metal or made use of easilt accessible surface deposits?
2 - Did the Plains tribes simply follow herds of buffalo all over the place, or did they have a set pattern of movement that was determined by other factors such as weather, grazing, water, etc? Did they ever anticipate the movements of the herds?
3 - Did they ever have any domesticated animals other than the dog and the horse? What did they use as pack animals? Did they ever use domesticated goats/sheep, etc for milk, wool, or meat?
4 - What about diet? What was their staple source of carohydrates? I assume they didn’t grop crops of corn or wheat, so did they live on gathered roots? What did they eat apart from meat and gathered berries, etc?
5 - were there ever any large rivers that crossed the prairies and provided steady supplies of fish?
6 - this is a really important question - how did thay measure time? did they use sundials or just eyeball the sun? Did they have a formal calendar with numbered years and named months? If so, how did it work?
Sorry for the barrage of questions, guys, but I need this info if I’m to create a belivable and consistent world in my book. Any answers would be appreciated, or even links to good sites where I could look up the info myself…
There were so many plains Indian tribes that you would do better to stick with one. I recommend the Oglala Lakota, a Sioux tribe about which you can easily find plenty of information.
They were nomadic, mainly following the buffalo, which was a big part of their diet and culture. Aside from buffalo, their diet consisted mainly of Indian biscuits (bannock bread), wild rice, wild oats, and popcorn; black tree moss, wild rhubarb, Indian celery, wild carrots, and wild mushrooms; squirrels, rabbits, beaver, mountain goats, fish (especially fish head soup), and birds’ eggs; and lots of berries.
For obvious reasons, they did not domesticate animals.
They had little use for metals, although they understood that gold was important to white people. (The whole Trail of Tears holocaust was all about white men wanting the gold from land the Indians occupied.)
There is, of course, the Big Sioux river that serves as the border between South Dakota and Iowa. This was a primary source of fish and clams.
They used the sun and the stars for time. The Sacred Spring Ceremonial Round, for example, began when the sun entered the constellation Dried Willow (comprised of Triangulum and some of the stars from Aries).
Pre-contact? Pre-contact, NO tribes followed Bison herds. That lifestyle didn’t become prevalent until after the spread of horses. Indeed the region was populated mainly by agriculturists before the advent of the horse ( the Blackfeet and the Comanche/Shoshoni being the main exceptions ).
Post-contact, the big herds did have a semi-set pattern of seasonal migration and I’m sure the nomadic tribes were keyed closely into that and that did involve some anticipation. But the herds were so mammoth, they would have been remarkably easy to move with, so I doubt it was a major issue ( accept when territorial conflicts came into play ).
Dogs and horses only, in NA I believe. No goats, no sheep, ( and no horses ) until after European contact. Dogs were used as light pack animals however.
Many of the Plains tribes were in fact agriculturists ( corns, beans, squash ). You just hear less about them. Some of them were at least semi-nomadic and moved as the local soil became depleted. Otherwise a variety of wild plants were gathered. Don’t have a specific list on hand I’m afraid, though I know wild turnips figured into the list ( most non-medicinal plants gathered were various nuts and berries though ).
Sure :). The mighty Missouri just for one, but there are a number of them. However, unlike, say, the Great Lakes or Pacific Northwest regions, fish would almost certainly have been very much a secondary diet item. Tribes like The Nez Perce, that straddled cultural regions ( Pacific Northwest and Great Plains ), depended more heavily on salmon runs along the Snake and Columbia, for instance.
No formal calenders that I am aware of in North America. That is a feature of literate societies, which the NA Indians were not ( Meso-America was a different story ). Certainly there was *some[i/] sense of time as related by and to oral histories. I have no idea if sundials were used, but I’m making an educated guess not.
As to Plains Indian concepts of day-to-day time - Sorry, dunno :).
Dogs and horses only, on the Great Plains, that should be, not NA period. A number of tribes took up sheep-raising after Spanish contact, including, I believe, the Navajho.
Copper Indians were the Algonkians, Chippewa, and Ojibwa primarily. They beat copper out of bedrock (a tough chore requiring much hard work). They were centered around Lake Superior and northeastern America. I’m not sure they would qualify as plains Indians.
Well, there were some bands of Plains Chippewa ( and even Cree ) on the northeastern fringe of the Great Plains :).
But you’re right most ( all ) of the metal producing tribes didn’t live in the Great Plains region. But Damascene’s question in that regard seemed more general and I’m guessing there was at least some native trade in those items before the European expansion.
I shouldn’t have said that they did not domesticate animals. They did use them as beasts of burden, mainly to drag loads on their travois. Your source is wrong about bison hunting. The Sioux, Crow, and Cheyenne were great hunters. The greatest chiefs, all the way up to Sitting Bull, were renowned hunters.
I haven’t got much to add here, but I just thought I’d offer up some links in case they help.
Firstly, to expand on the site kindly supplied by Tamerlane, the root of http://nativetech.org offers a whole range of information. It also has a message board that may provide an even greater source of knowledge.
Finally, regarding the Native Americans having horses before the Europeans arrived, this recent thread could prove of interest.
Libertarian: You’re referring to me? I just said that pre-contact no Plains tribe followed ( as in, migrated with ) the Bison herds, as they lacked the mobility.
The Sioux, Crow, and Cheyenne all migrated into the Great Plains after they acquired horses or split off from agricultural groups. The Crow were offshoots of the agricultural Hidatsa. The Cheyenne ( and Arapaho ) migrated from Minnesota and just north of Lake Superior. The Sioux ( partially driven by their adversaries the Chippewa ) from a region a little south of there ( Wisconsin/Minnesota/Iowa ). Great hunters all, but not primarily Plains nomads before 1750 ( generally much later even than that - the Crow separated out no earlier than 1800 ).
Thanks for all the excellent info, guys. Some very thorough (and speedy!) responses here. Many thanks to you all, but a special note to Tamerlane if I may - your knowledge of Native American History is as impressive as your knowledge of Islamic History - I really appreciate your expertise on both.
Another question for you all - If I had vast herds of large and tasty flightless birds roaming the plains (similar to ostriches, or larger) instead of the standard buffalo, would this be a viable and stable source of meat for my fictional tribe? Is there anything about the real-life biology or habits of such birds that would make such a proposition unrealistic or unfeasible?
There were plans and proposals to relocate the eastern tribes west of the Mississippi before gold was ever found in Georgia. Thomas Jefferson first raised the idea, IIRC.
Andrew Jackson made a specific proposal to this effect following the Creek War (more than a decade prior to the Georgia gold rush). Jackson’s motive at the time was not greed for gold or land, but his belief that Indian tribes along the southern frontier posed a threat to national security. He feared that the southern tribes might be encouraged by the English and the Spanish to rise up against American settlers along the frontier (a la the Creek War) and wanted to eliminate this threat by removing the tribes to the west. The land to be ceded to the US would be icing on the cake.
The later discovery of gold in Georgia just provided an added impetus to the notion of removal, which had already been fixed in Jackson’s mind.
Back to the OP:
As for domestic animals, did the Indians domesticate the turkey? I seem to recall artists’ depictions of turkeys wandering around Indian settlements. Anyone know?
As far as question six, look up “medicine wheel”. Large circular arrays of rocks. With radial lines pointing to the rising pts of stars. The date of a star first being visible just before sunrise could then be ascertained. Found mainly on the eastern fringe of the Rockies. (Unfortunately, much of the online material on medicine wheels has been polluted by new age silliness.)
For months, they probably used a lunar based system. There are a lot of “name of the moon” lists out there. Since there were many tribes there were many different lists and none is “official” (despite what the local TV weather idiots state). My favorite has the March/April moon called “the moon of watery eyes” (which I can relate to).
I want to stress the information of the others. Before the coming of the horse to the plains, there were many successful plains tribes living along riverbanks who grew a variety of crops, including corn. The nomads of the region were a relatively small problem. Once the horse came, the balance of power tipped in favor of the nomadics. So what the first explorers found was an abberation from the historical situation.
I’m not sure about the plains people, but the NW people raised “wooly” dogs, whose fur was then used for cloth. Dogs were of course just another source of meat.
Many tribes domesticated turkeys and used their feathers for headdresses. As to the Trail of Tears, the Creek were gone by the gold rush, but the Cherokee were still around in 1828. From North Georgia:
You may also want to distinguish between the settled and unsettled peoples of NA. Many, if not most did have villages and agriculture of one form or another.
The SouthWest was home to a few large (for the time) cities, even. Mexico ditto.
Andrew Jackson made a specific removal proposal to the Cherokee following the Creek War. This was well prior to the discovery of gold in Georgia.
I don’t recall the precise details of the proposal, but I do remember that under its terms, each Cherokee would have been given the option of removing to the West, or remaining in the East as a citizen of the US. If they had taken the latter option, each would have received 600-some-odd acres of land.
Anyhow, the point is that removal of the Cherokee was on the table years before the discovery of gold on their land. The discovery of gold added impetus to the idea (and yes, spurred the Georgia legislature to action), but it was not the original reason or the sole reason for removal.