The Plains culture area comprises the vast prairie region between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, from present-day Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Before the arrival of European traders and explorers, its inhabitants—speakers of Siouan, Algonquian, Caddoan, Uto-Aztecan and Athabaskan languages—were relatively settled hunters and farmers. After European contact, and especially after Spanish colonists brought horses to the region in the 18th century, the peoples of the Great Plains became much more nomadic.
Groups like the Crow, Blackfeet, Cheyenne, Comanche and Arapaho used horses to pursue great herds of buffalo across the prairie. The most common dwelling for these hunters was the cone-shaped teepee, a bison-skin tent that could be folded up and carried anywhere.
Plains Indians are also known for their elaborately feathered war bonnets. As white traders and settlers moved west across the Plains region, they brought many damaging things with them: commercial goods, like knives and kettles, which Indigenous people came to depend on; guns; and disease. With settlers encroaching on their lands and no way to make money, the Plains natives were forced onto government reservations. The peoples of the Southwest culture area, a huge desert region in present-day Arizona and New Mexico along with parts of Colorado , Utah , Texas and Mexico developed two distinct ways of life.
Sedentary farmers such as the Hopi, the Zuni, the Yaqui and the Yuma grew crops like corn, beans and squash. Many lived in permanent settlements, known as pueblos, built of stone and adobe. These pueblos featured great multistory dwellings that resembled apartment houses. At their centers, many of these villages also had large ceremonial pit houses, or kivas. Other Southwestern peoples, such as the Navajo and the Apache, were more nomadic.
They survived by hunting, gathering and raiding their more established neighbors for their crops. Because these groups were always on the move, their homes were much less permanent than the pueblos.
For instance, the Navajo fashioned their iconic eastward-facing round houses, known as hogans, out of materials like mud and bark. Spanish colonists and missionaries had enslaved many of the Pueblo Indians, for example, working them to death on vast Spanish ranches known as encomiendas. The Great Basin culture area, an expansive bowl formed by the Rocky Mountains to the east, the Sierra Nevadas to the west, the Columbia Plateau to the north, and the Colorado Plateau to the south, was a barren wasteland of deserts, salt flats and brackish lakes.
Its people, most of whom spoke Shoshonean or Uto-Aztecan dialects the Bannock, Paiute and Ute, for example , foraged for roots, seeds and nuts and hunted snakes, lizards and small mammals. Because they were always on the move, they lived in compact, easy-to-build wikiups made of willow poles or saplings, leaves and brush.
Their settlements and social groups were impermanent, and communal leadership what little there was was informal. After European contact, some Great Basin groups got horses and formed equestrian hunting and raiding bands that were similar to the ones we associate with the Great Plains natives.
Before European contact, the temperate California area had more people than any other North American landscape at the time, approximately , people in the midth century. Due to underfunding, Indian Health Service facilities are crisis-driven and leave a wide gap in adequate and preventative health care for many Native Americans on the reservations.
Pharmacies and doctor's offices outside of hospitals are completely non-existent in some communities. The pressures to shift from a traditional way of life toward a Western lifestyle has dramatically impacted the health and welfare of the Native peoples and created a terrible epidemic of chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, tuberculosis, and cancer. The statistics are alarming. Cancer rates and disparities related to cancer treatment are higher than for other Americans , Native People for Cancer Control.
The facts presented are important realities about the living conditions faced by many Native Americans in this country — facts that every non-Native American needs to know. How can I help? The NAA Way. The Ojibwe people. The US Indian Agency Just a small percentage of these are documented. In , archeologists confirmed the location of Werowocomoco , the capital of the Powhatan Indians. It was the scene of earliest interaction between the leader Powhatan and leaders of the English colonists from Jamestown including Captain John Smith.
The site is positioned on an elevated piece of land on the York River which would have been advantageous for the group. The site is now permanently protected by the National Park Service and tribal governments are engaged in the planning stages to open the site to the public. In the meantime, you can take a virtual tour. Most archaeological sites are susceptible to destructive natural and man-made factors, such as development, farming practices and sea level rise.
Fortunately, preserving historic artifacts goes hand-in-hand with efforts to clean up the Bay. For example, stabilizing shorelines and using agricultural conservation practices such as conservation tillage help reduce erosion and protect areas where archaeological sites are most likely to exist.
As we preserve these lands, we must also preserve the history and heritage of Indigenous people. This means continuous examination of artifacts and historical records, as well as support for contemporary American Indian communities. Near the Mattaponi River on the Mattaponi Reservation in Virginia, women and girls were photographed by the anthropologist Frank Speck in The delegation included Chief William Russell Clark, back row center, and was lobbying for a Native American school system and official state recognition of the tribe.
Throughout the 20th century, Indigenous people in the Chesapeake region continued to fight for their rights and preserve their heritage. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, founded in , continued to hamper the relationship between the government and American Indian tribes through unfair treaties and intentional cultural assimilation. These efforts were largely unsuccessful, and in , the U. Still, a contentious relationship persisted between Indigenous people and the U.
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