Indicator Explained
I.E.
SS.5.4.1.1k explains how various American Indians adapted to their environment in relationship to shelter and food (e.g., Plains, Woodland, Northwest Coast, Southeast and Pueblo cultures in the period from 1700-1820).
The information on shelters comes from the Native American Homes website at http://www.native-languages.org/houses.htm Photos of each the types of houses can also be found at this website. Information on food comes from Native Americans of North America at http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761570777_31/Native_Americans_of_North_America.html
There were many different types of American Indian houses in North America. Each tribe needed a kind of housing that would fit their lifestyle and their climate. Since North America is such a big continent, different tribes had very different weather to contend with. In the Arizona deserts, temperatures can hit 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and in the Alaskan tundra, -50 is not unusual. Naturally, Native Americans developed different types of dwellings to survive in these different environments. Also, different American Indian tribes had different traditional lifestyles. Some tribes were agricultural-- they lived in settled villages and farmed the land for corn and vegetables. They wanted houses that would last a long time. Other tribes were more nomadic, moving frequently from place to place as they hunted and gathered food and resources. They needed houses that were portable or easy to build.
The foods Native Americans ate, and the methods they used to acquire them, depended on where they lived. The land and its resources determined whether Indians foraged, fished, hunted, or farmed. But no group ever relied on only one type of food. Even those who practiced agriculture still relied on game and wild plants to supplement their harvests. The ease or difficulty with which North American Indians could obtain food directly influenced how they lived. The more time that was required to hunt, gather, or fish, the less time there was for other cultural activities. In the barren environment of the Great Basin, for example, Indians adopted a nomadic lifestyle because they constantly needed to search for food. But on the Northwest Coast, where rivers and oceans teemed with life, there was enough food for people to live a settled village lifestyle.
After the large mammals died out, the most important game animals in North America were grazing and foraging mammals such as caribou, moose, elk, bison, pronghorns, deer, and bighorn sheep; scavengers and carnivores such as bears, coyotes, wolves, foxes, and pumas (mountain lions); sea mammals such as seals, sea lions, and whales; and smaller game such as ducks, geese, turkeys, rabbits, beavers, raccoons, opossums, and squirrels.
Plains Indians
Tepees (also spelled Teepees or Tipis) are tent-like American Indian houses used by Plains tribes. A tepee is made of a cone-shaped wooden frame with a covering of buffalo hide. Like modern tents, tepees are carefully designed to set up and break down quickly. As a tribe moved from place to place, each family would bring their tipi poles and hide tent along with them. Originally, tepees were about 12 feet high, but once the Plains Indian tribes acquired horses, they began building them twice as high. Tepees are good houses for people who are always on the move. Plains Indians migrated frequently to follow the movements of the buffalo herds. An entire Plains Indian village could have their tepees packed up and ready to move within an hour. There were fewer trees on the Great Plains than in the Woodlands, so it was important for Plains tribes to carry their long poles with them whenever they traveled instead of trying to find new ones each time they moved.
Centuries before the arrival of Europeans, Plains hunters lived in nomadic bands that hunted the American bison, commonly called the buffalo, on foot. Living with the constant threat of starvation, Plains Indians survived by driving bison herds over cliffs. Men dressed in bison skins positioned themselves at the head of the herd to lead the chief bull bison. Snorting and rolling in the dust, they lured the herd toward the edge of the cliff before disappearing into the brush. Other hunters then used fire to incite a stampede over the cliff. Another Plains hunting method used fire to encircle a herd of bison. Hunters stationed themselves at a single opening in the circle, where they killed the frightened animals with bows and lances. The arrival of the horse, widespread among Native Americans by the mid-1700s, completely changed the bison hunt. Instead of stampeding an entire bison herd over a cliff, hunters raced after bison on horseback and shot them with bows and arrows, and later, rifles.
Woodland Indians
Wigwams (or wetus) are Native American houses used by Algonquian Indians in the woodland regions. Wigwam is the word for "house" in the Abenaki tribe, and wetu is the word for "house" in the Wampanoag tribe. Sometimes they are also known as birchbark houses. Wigwams are small houses, usually 8-10 feet tall. Wigwams are made of wooden frames which are covered with woven mats and sheets of birchbark. The frame can be shaped like a dome, like a cone, or like a rectangle with an arched roof. Once the birchbark is in place, ropes or strips of wood are wrapped around the wigwam to hold the bark in place. Wigwams are good houses for people who stay in the same place for months at a time. Most Algonquian Indians lived together in settled villages during the farming season, but during the winter, each family group would move to their own hunting camp. Wigwams are not portable, but they are small and easy to build. Woodland Indian families could build new wigwams every year when they set up their winter camps.
Longhouses are Native American homes used by the Iroquois tribes and some of their Algonquian neighbors. They are built similarly to wigwams, with pole frames and elm bark covering. The main difference is that longhouses are much, much larger than wigwams. Longhouses could be 150 feet long, 20 feet wide, and 20 feet high. Inside the longhouse, raised platforms created a second story, which was used for sleeping space. Mats and wood screens divided the longhouse into separate rooms. Each longhouse housed an entire clan-- as many as 60 people! Longhouses are good homes for people who intend to stay in the same place for a long time. A longhouse is large and takes a lot of time to build and decorate. The Iroquois were farming people who lived in permanent villages. Iroquois men sometimes built wigwams for themselves when they were going on hunting trips, but women might live in the same longhouse their whole life.
Native Americans gathered a wide range of plant foods, including many varieties of edible wild nuts, berries, seeds, and grasses. Almost all Native Americans relied on some wild plant foods. Wild rice—a type of seed-bearing grass that grows naturally along the muddy shores of marshes and streams—was such a staple for the Menominee people of present-day Wisconsin that they derived their tribal name from the Ojibwa word for wild rice: manomin. Among peoples like the Iroquois, for whom farming was the main source of food, wild plant foods served as an important dietary supplement, especially if crops failed.
Northwest Coast Indians
Plankhouses are Native American homes used by tribes of the Northwest Coast (from northern California all the way up to Alaska.) Plank houses are made of long, flat planks of cedar wood lashed to a wooden frame. Native American plank houses look rather similar to old European houses, but the Indians didn't learn to build them from Europeans-- this style of house was used on the Northwest Coast long before Europeans arrived. Plank houses are good houses for people in cold climates with lots of tall trees. However, only people who don't need to migrate spend the time and effort to build these large permanent homes. Most Native Americans who live in the far northern forests must migrate regularly to follow caribou herds and other game, so plank houses aren't a good choice for them. Only coastal tribes, who make their living by fishing, made houses like these.
In some areas of the Northwest Coast, more than 40 kinds of berries and fruits were available. Women in this region also gathered ferns with edible roots, lilies with edible bulbs, such as riceroot and camas, and starchy tubers. Native Americans who lived along rivers or in coastal areas depended on fishing for a major portion of their diets. They caught fish using spears, hooks and lines, lures, harpoons, barbed arrows, nets, traps, and even poisons.
Fishing provided the basis for the affluent way of life enjoyed by the Nootka and other Northwest Coast peoples. Although they ate many different kinds of fish, salmon was especially important because of its predictable and distinctive life cycle. The Nootka knew that salmon returned every spring and summer from the sea to their spawning grounds in freshwater streams. Fishermen erected latticework fences called weirs across the entire width of a river to prevent continued upstream swimming by the salmon. The current then swept many of the salmon back into traps while others were harpooned. Fishermen also used dip nets—bags of netting suspended from wooden frames—and boxlike or cylindrical traps. The salmon swam back in such densely packed schools that the Nootka could catch five months’ food supply in the course of several weeks. By supplementing smoked and dried salmon with berries, deer, and clams, as well as other types of fish, the Nootka had enough food to last them until late February, when the herring returned. The Nootka and some other Northwest Coast peoples also practiced whaling, which they considered the noblest of all occupations. Paddling dugout canoes, they ventured into open seas between March and August to hunt California gray whales with harpoons.
Southeast Indians
Wattle and daub houses (also known as asi, the Cherokee word for them) are Native American houses used by southeastern tribes. Wattle and daub houses are made by weaving rivercane, wood, and vines into a frame, then coating the frame with plaster. The roof was either thatched with grass or shingled with bark. Wattle and daub houses are permanent structures that take a lot of effort to build. Like longhouses, they are good homes for agricultural people who intended to stay in one place, like the Cherokees and Creeks. Making wattle and daub houses requires a fairly warm climate to dry the plaster.
Chickees (also known as chickee huts, stilt houses or platform dwellings) are Native American homes used primarily in Florida by tribes like the Seminole Indians. Chickee houses consisted of thick posts supporting a thatched roof and a flat wooden platform raised several feet off the ground. They did not have any walls. During rainstorms, Florida Indians would lash tarps made of hide or cloth to the chickee frame to keep themselves dry, but most of the time, the sides of the structure were left open. Chickees are good homes for people living in a hot, swampy climate. The long posts keep the house from sinking into marshy earth, and raising the floor of the hut off the ground keeps swamp animals like snakes out of the house. Walls or permanent house coverings are not necessary in a tropical climate where it never gets cold.
Fish and waterfowl were easy to catch in the Southeast, a region of meandering rivers and vast swamps of cypress and cane. In subtropical south Florida, the Calusa had such an abundant supply of fish and shellfish that they flourished without the need for agriculture. The Delaware (Lenni Lenape), Montauk, and Powhatan enjoyed the flat, fertile coastal plains of the East Coast, one of the world’s richest fishing areas. The clam beds of Long Island were an asset to those who lived there.
Pueblo Indians
Adobe houses (also known as pueblos) are Native American house complexes used by the Pueblo Indians of the Southwest. Adobe pueblos are modular, multi-story houses made of adobe (clay and straw baked into hard bricks) or of large stones cemented together with adobe. Each adobe unit is home to one family, like a modern apartment. The whole structure, which can contain dozens of units, is often home to an entire extended clan. Adobe houses are good homes to build in a warm, dry climate where adobe can be easily mixed and dried. These are homes for farming people who have no need to move their village to a new location. In fact, some Pueblo people have been living in the same adobe house complex, such as Sky City, for dozens of generations.
The people of the arid Southwest harvested agaves, cactus, acorns, piñon nuts, and juniper berries, which ripened at different times of year and at different elevations. The development of agriculture marked a turning point for Native Americans. By producing enough food to feed the population year-round, agriculture made it possible for groups to establish settled villages and sedentary lifestyles. They no longer had to live a nomadic foraging existence, although many continued to do so. The ancestral Pueblo, or Anasazi, culture developed from groups of gatherers who supplemented their diet by growing maize and pumpkins.
The exact origins of agriculture in the Americas are uncertain. By 4000 bc inhabitants of Mesoamerica were cultivating maize (corn); at roughly the same time, beans and squash were being cultivated in Peru. The cultivation of maize spread from Mesoamerica into the Southwest by about 3000 bc; beans and squash were planted there later. These three foods—maize, beans, and squash—would remain, for thousands of years, the primary crops for Native Americans north of Mexico. Other food crops included tomatoes, chili peppers, pumpkins, vanilla, and avocados. Of all crops in the Americas, maize was the most important. At the time of European contact, maize probably provided more food than all other cultivated plants combined. For centuries, the Hopi Indians of the Southwest have practiced some of the most remarkable farming techniques in North America. They developed drought-resistant strains of corn that are particularly hardy, mature quickly, and are not harmed by extreme desert temperatures. By planting the corn some 30 to 40 cm (12 to 16 in) deep, the seeds receive the benefit of all the moisture in the soil, and shoots develop a strong root system that anchors the plant so that it will not be blown away by the wind or washed out by flash floods.