Were there Native Americans, or were they First Americans?
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Until recently most archaeologists (people who study history using things left in the ground from former cultures) believed that people traveled from present day Russia to North America about 40,000 years ago using the ice covered Bering Strait which was not under water like it is today. These first arrivals to North America are known today as Paleo-Indians. Paleo Indians were nomadic, which means they did not settle down in permanent settlements but relied on constant movement to follow food sources such as wooly mammoths. Paleo-Indians did not have a written language, complex tools, or pottery. The first distinct culture of Paleo-Indians was the Clovis, they mainly hunted with spears with long stone blades that were fluted and hafted to a spear shaft (called Clovis points).
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Clovis Spear Point (fluted part is the middle part that is thinner than the outside edges of the point).
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As time on and Paleo Indians began to learn more and more about survival, they developed new weapons and tools that helped to feed their people better and thus expand their population. After thousands of years of being completely nomadic, ancient Indians began to experiment with agriculture. Agriculture is the growing of plants and animals for human use or consumption. When the Indians began raising crops, such as an early form of corn, called maize, this allowed the Indians to live better lives which led to a longer lifespan and eventually a more developed culture.
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Eventually the Indians of North America became a complex agricultural society that built huge mound cities and had complex religious practices. Called the Mississippian Indians, these were the last Indians before the Europeans arrived. Their largest city was Cahokia (present day Illinois just opposite of St. Louis). Thousands of people lived in the fortress mound city of Cahokia. The Mississippi Indians invented the bow and arrow, elaborate pottery, and were located all throughout the Mississippi River Valley, including all throughout Southeast Missouri. They built burial mounds to mark ther resting places of the most important people to their communities. These mounds are still found throughout our region. Inside them were large collections of pottery and stone tools.
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Cahokia
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Mississippian site near New Madrid school.
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Mississippian points used on arrows.
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Elaborate Mississippian head pot, each one was unique.
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Mississippian Frog effigy bowl.
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Eventually the Native people of North America would form various tribes or groups of people that were linked with similar cultural practices and beliefs. Examples of tribes are: Cherokee, Choctaw, Iroquois, Sioux, and Cheyenne, among many others.
The Maya and Aztec
About 1500 BC (3,500 years ago), farming towns appeared in present day Mexico. Complex communities with large stone pyramids, palaces, bridges, and temples sprang up. This was developed into the Mayan civilization, which ruled Central America for 600 years. They had a written language, complex religion, art, terraced farms, priests, and many other elements of complex society. About 1,100 years ago, the Mayans began to disappear and archaeologists are not for sure what happened. Most believe that over population caused food shortages which led to the downfall of the Mayan Empire in Central America.
The Aztec
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Sometime in the 1100s, a new civilization emerged called the Aztecs. By 1325, they controlled central and northern Mexico. Their large capital city of Tenochtitlan was located where present day Mexico City is. Tenochtitlan was a complex city that was located in the middle of a large lake on an island. Stone draw bridges protected the city from attack from outsiders. The city got its water from the mountains (the lake water was dangerous to drink) through stone aqueducts. The ruler of the Aztecs was divine king (power from gods) Montezuma. The Aztecs were ruled by the emperor and two distinct groups, the noble warriors and the priests.
There were over 370 cities linked to the Aztecs. They had elaborate temples in which they practiced many different types of human sacrifice to pay tribute to various gods they worshipped. In the 1500s, a Spanish conquistador named Hernan Cortez explored Mexico and found the Aztec Empire. The Aztec at first believed that Cortez and his men were gods because they had never seen horses or dogs (Cortez brought military attack dogs). Spanish conquistadors like Cortez were after gold, glory, and God (converting natives to christianity). |
Tenochtitlan, the Aztec Capital
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Spanish Conquistador Armor
Once Montezuma realized that Cortez and his conquistadors were not gods, but humans who were determined to attack his people, take what they had, and make some of them into slaves, it was too late. Cortez had brought something far more deadly than weapons and war dogs, small pox. Small pox was a common European virus that had been around for centuries, many Europeans had built up an immunity to the virus and were impacted far less than those cultures who had not. The Aztecs had never suffered from Small Pox, so when the virus jumped from Cortez and his men, it killed Aztec Indians by the hundreds of thousands until very few were left to defend the city, which Cortez conquered.
Spanish Exploration of the New World
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In the 1400s, Europe experienced a change in its way of thinking. Events such as the Black Plague made Europeans question their ideas of about God and religion. Many began to have more secular, or nonreligious, explanations toward questions they had about the world. This time period is known as the Renaissance, which began in Italy but spread to other parts of Europe. Instead of relying on religion, the Renaissance emphasized humanism, or the power of humans to command over nature. The Renaissance led to knew inventions such as the printing press and led to the Age of Exploration. The Age of Exploration used knew knowledge and technology to start an explosion in exploration of unknown lands. Countries like England, France, Spain, and Portugal paid for explorers to search for new lands to find wealth such as gold and silver and spread Christianity. In 1492, the Spanish king hired Italian explorer, Christopher Columbus to take three ships (the Santa Maria, Pinta, and Nina) to explore a new route to the East Indies (Asia) where many finer things such as spices and silk came from. Whomever found the western route to the East Indies would be rich.
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Christopher Columbus
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Setting off from Europe on August 3, 1492, by October, the sailors with Columbus began to question whether or not their captain knew what he was doing. With tempers flaring, Columbus told his men that if they didn't see land in the next three days, they would turn around and go home. On October 12, 1492, land was sighted. The land that Columbus found was in the present day Bahamas east of Florida, Columbus named this new land, San Salvador (Blessed Savior). Columbus thought he was on an unknown island near the East Indies so he called the people he saw there, Indios, known as Indians today.
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Route Columbus took
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Columbus's discovery was made an overnight sensation in Europe due to the knew invention of the printing press which allowed information to spread quickly for the first time in history. It also allowed people to learn to read the Bible which led to new interpretations of the Bible and caused problems with current Catholic teachings. Other explorers caught wind of the new land across the Atlantic Ocean. Even though Columbus would not admit that the land he found was new and not part of the East Indies, other explorers realized that the a New World had been found. Amerigo Vespucci sailed to the New World under the flags of Portugal's king. In 1499 he landed in South America and mapped the coastline all of the way up through Central America and the Gulf of Mexico. Later when a German mapmaker was copying Vespucci's maps, he decided to name the land that he had mapped, America in honor of Amerigo Vespucci.
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Amerigo Vespucci
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This new Spanish exploration led to new plants and foods from the New World to Europe. Plants such as peanuts, squash, peppers, tomatoes, pumpkins, pineapples, avocados, and most important, chocolate.
In 1513, Spanish explorer, Juan Ponce de Leon, made the earliest known Spanish exploration of Florida. He founded the first Spanish city in Florida called, St. Augustine, which continues to be the oldest continuously settled town in North America. In 1539, another Spanish explorer, Hernando de Soto, took over 600 conquistadors and explored north to North Carolina and then turned west crossing through Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, before crossing the Mississippi River at Memphis. After killing and pillaging through Arkansas, de Soto died of illness while the rest of the crew blindly moved south searching for land inhabited by the Spanish. After nearly a year of traveling, 311 of the original 650, arrived hungry and weak at a Spanish settlement in Mexico. De Soto's men were the first Europeans to see the interior of North America.
John Cabot
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The first European explorer to actually see the mainland of North America was John Cabot of England. In 1497 he discovered land in present day Canada that he called, New Foundland. Of course the English were unaware that the Vikings had been there long before that, but no records had survived of that time period, it wasn't until archaeologists found Vikings relics in present Canada that we knew they'd been there.
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The Reformation
In the 1500s there was religious turmoil in Europe with the Catholic Church. For centuries the Catholic Church had been the dominant form of ruling in regards to Europe and religion. In 1517, Martin Luther, a German monk, revolted to the ideas of the Catholic Church by nailing his "95 Thesis" which were a collection of reasons why he believed the Catholic Church was a corrupt religion. His stand against the bad things the Catholic Church had done caused a lot of people to question Catholicism and look at starting different religions, or at least reform the Catholic Church. This movement was called the Protestant Reformation. Many of the new religions started during the Reformation: Mennonites, Amish, Baptists, and Quakers. A theologian named John Calvin, developed a new strict way of life for Protestants to follow (trying to make life more like the Bible said it should be and not like the Catholics had preached). Calvin argued that Christians did not need popes or kings to dictate their search for salvations, he said that each church could elect its own elders and ministers to guide them in worship.
The English in the New World
In 1584, the English decided to get in the game and start a colony in the New World when they sent Sir Walter Raleigh to organize a new colony in present day North Carolina. He landed in the Outer Banks of North Carolina on present day Roanoke Island. After several failed attempts, in 1587, and expedition of one hundred settlers, including twenty-six women and children launched a settlement on Roanoke Island under Governor John White. After a month, White returned to England to get supplies for the new colony, leaving behind his daughter, Elinor and his granddaughter, Virginia Dare, the first English born child in the New World. His journey back to Roanoke was delayed by a war between England and Spain. When he finally returned to Roanoke in 1590, the colony had vanished, only the word CROATOAN was left carved on the fort wall. He assumed the settlers had moved inland for help from local friendly Indians. To this day, no one knows for sure what happened to them.