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eingegangen am: Donnerstag, 16. Januar 2003
von: Anja B.
Download: Referat im doc-Format
(ca. 2 MB)
| 40.000 - 20.000 years ago | The first Americans, called Paleo-Indians, have probably arrived on the American continent during the last Ice Age, coming from Asia across the Bering Strait while following animal herds. They spread all over America and many different tribes developed from Alaska to Mexico because of the varying natural conditions. |
| 6000 BC | The Agricultural Revolution (= shift from hunting and gathering to domestication of plants like corn) led to the development of Mesoamerican cultures, like the Maya or Aztecs. |
| 2000 BC | It also caused the development of the Mississippi-Culture (Mound Builders) in the Southeast of North America. |
| October, 1492 | Arrival of Christopher Columbus on the Caribbean Islands. Because he believed himself to be in India, he called the native inhabitants los indios. |
| 1520 | The Spaniard Hernando Cortés invaded Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztec-Empire, causing its downfall. |
| 1607 | The Englishman John Smith established the colony Jamestown in Virginia and started a war against the Powhatan-Confederation |
| 1613 | The marriage of John Rolfe and Pocahontas, the daughter of the Powhatan-Chief, assured the peace for a short time. |
| 1620 | The English ship Mayflower with 102 Puritans (called Pilgrims) on board arrived in Plymouth. |
| 1621 | Having been helped by the Indians over the winter, the Pilgrims invited them over for a Thanksgiving meal, which is still held in the USA every autumn. |
| 1675 | The Wampanoag-Chief King Philip started a war to drive the Europeans out of his land (in New England), but lost. |
| 1680 | The Pueblo-Indians of the Southwest formed an alliance against the Spaniards and were able to keep their freedom till 1692. |
| 1756-1763 | The French and Indian War, which ended with the loss of the French against the English. |
| 1765 | The Ottawa-Chief Pontiac, who had united several tribes in the area of the Great Lakes against the British since 1754 to drive them out, had to make peace. |
| 1769 | First Christian mission (of 21) established by the Spaniards in California. |
| since 1805 | Tecumseh, a chief of the Shawnee, tried to form an alliance of all tribes in the Middle West and South against the westwards-pushing American settlers. |
| 1813 | He died in the Battle of Thames and the Indian forces lost against the Americans. |
| 1830 | The Indian Removal Act contained that all tribes living east of the Mississippi, among those the Five Civilized Tribes, had to move to the Indian Territory in Oklahoma. |
| 1830-1885 | The almost complete extermination1 of the about 50 million buffaloes withdrew the basis of existence from the Indians of the plains and prairies. |
| since 1862 | The Indians of the West resisted the committal to reservations in several wars under leaders like, Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Chief Joseph and Geronimo. |
| 1876 | Despite single victories - for example at the Little Bighorn River, where a large Indian alliance completely defeated Custer's troops - their resistance was soon broken. |
| 1890 | The massacre at Wounded Knee Creek was the last strike against the Indians. |
| after 1890 | All tribes lived in reservations managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Despite all difficulties they kept their culture alive and their number slowly increased to about 2 million people today. |
I wondered: what comes into our minds when we think of Indians? I
don't know about you, but I asked a lot of people this question,
and they all told me pretty much the same. They see the
red-painted horseback rider flying over the vast prairies, eagle
feathers on his head and bow and arrows in his hands, arriving
home at his tent and so on. This is not wrong of course. It's the
image film and TV have created by showing white heroes fight
against their red enemies. Even though films have changed and now
show history in a more realistic way, the plains-Indian on his
horse is, to Non-Indians, still the symbol of all North American
Indians. But if we speak of Europeans for instance, we don't just
think of Germans. There are French, English, Spanish, Swedish,
Norwegian people and so on. So we also need to consider that there
exist about 300-500 different Indian tribes only in North America,
all with varying language, culture, religion and way of life, and
most of them are not familiar to us.
So where did those people come from? How did their cultures develop?
Nobody knows for sure, when and how exactly the first human foot
was placed on the American continent. But one theory is that,
during the last Ice Age, about 40000 to 20000 years ago, when
the sea-level had dropped so much to allow a land bridge between
Siberia and Alaska to appear, the so called Bering Strait, that
in this time first groups of hunter-gatherers might have
followed animal herds across it from Asia to America. These
first Americans are often called Paleo-Indians.
When the climate began to change hotter and drier, many of the larger
animals, like mammoths, died out, but the Indians were able to
adapt to the change, and, while spreading over the whole
American continent, developed many different ways of life to
cope with the different environments and living conditions.
Very gradually, they began to domesticate some seed-plants, especially
corn, and agriculture developed. This is called the Agricultural
Revolution, which took place at first in Mexico, in Middle
America, about 8000 years ago, where it led to the rise of the
great Mesoamerican empires , like the Olmecs, the Maya, and the
Aztecs. Also, in the eastern regions of today's USA, the
Agricultural Revolution, starting about 4000 years ago, caused
the development of the Mississippi-Culture, which is the common
culture of all Indians living around the big rivers, such as
Mississippi, Ohio, and Tennessee, who are called Mound Builders,
because they built thousands of high earth mounds, some as
burial mounds, others in the shape of birds, bears or snakes,
for example the Great Serpent Mountain in Ohio.
The time before the arrival of the first European invaders also saw
the development of democracy in the so called Iroquois
League. The Iroquois or Haudenosaunee, living in the area around
the Great Lakes and the Ohio River, consist of five nations, the
Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. A long time ago,
they had been at war with each other all the time, until a man
called Deganawida suggested 13 laws for a life together in peace
and democracy. The democratic and republican principles, which
the Iroquois League is based on have been an inspiration for
Benjamin Franklin and with that have had indirect influence even
on the type of government of the United States. Besides that the
Iroquois, who were farmers planting mostly corn, squash,
pumpkins, and beans, lived in large Longhouses out of wood and
bark. Those houses could be up to 50 metres long and were
inhabited by dozens of families. The Longhouse became a symbol
for the whole system of the Iroquois League, the territory of
which, running over 400 kilometres from East-West, was imagined
as a huge Longhouse, with the territories of the single nations
running parallel to each other from North to South, like the
departments for the separate families.
The undisturbed development of all the different cultures in North
America was suddenly interrupted in the 15th century. With the
arrival of the first Europeans on the American continent, a new
era began for the about 50 million people of the Western
hemisphere. The attempts to colonise the country led to the
decline and extermination of the native inhabitants by use of
weapons and by fatal diseases. The first one to start this
ever-repeating pattern, was, as we all know, Columbus.
Christopher Columbus arrived at the second largest island of the
Caribbean in October of 1492, which he called Hispaniola. And
because he believed himself to be India, he called the native
inhabitants los indios, Indians, a name which was not replaced,
but fastened to all Native Americans since then. Columbus
founded a colony for the Spanish King and was at first welcomed
very friendly by the hospitable natives. He wrote himself that
the Indians were: "so innocent and generous with all they had
that nobody would believe it who hadn't seen it with his own
eyes. Whatever you ask of them, they never say no, but urge you
to take it, and show so much kindness by that as if they would
give their hearts to you." Nevertheless, the Spaniards soon
become arrogant and felt superior, which Bartolomé de Las Casas,
a friend of the Indians, tried to explain like that: "The
natural, simple and generous kindness and the simple living
conditions of the Indians, as well as the fact that they hardly
possessed any weapons and were defenceless, led the Spaniards to
the impertinence to give them a lower value than themselves."
And he also described the cruelty Columbus and his men were soon
treating the Indians with: "The Spaniards made bets about who
could slit up a man into two halves or cut off his hand with a
single strike; or they opened his innards. They pulled the
babies away from their mothers on their feet and threw them
head-first against the rocks. In other cases they speared the
babies, their mothers, and all who stood in front of them onto
their swords..." Because of the Europeans' greed for gold the
Indians were forced to work as slaves in gold mines and many
committed suicide. Only after the revolt of the Indian leader
Enrique, the Spaniards left them alone, but they were already so
decimated by European diseases, against which they had no
immunity, that, already in 1552, all Indians were extinct on
Hispaniola - something that would happen to many other tribes as
well in the next 400 years.
The next culture, the Spaniards had a great impact on, was the
Aztec-Empire in Mexico, which was at that time the greatest
military power of America with the capital Tenochtitlán, today's
Mexico City, on the Texcoco lake and with a King called
Montezuma. In 1519 Hernando Cortés started an expedition in
search for gold in the land of the Aztecs. He allied with all
the enemies of the Empire and attacked the capital taking
Montezuma hostage. Although the inhabitants could drive the
Spaniards out in 1520, one unwelcome guest stayed in the city:
the European disease smallpox. After the majority of people had
fallen victim to the epidemic, Cortés returned with a new army
and this time he was able to invade the city after a fierce 4
months lasting battle . This was the end of the Aztec-Empire.
The Spaniards also left their marks on the Indians of Florida and the
majority of the South East of the USA, as well as on the South
West, the land of the Pueblo-Indians. The Pueblo-Indians, short
Pueblos, were living in the valley of the Rio Grande River in
villages of multistorey houses out of hewn stones or adobes
(dried clay bricks). The Spaniards called them Pueblos because
of the Spanish word pueblo, which means village. The Pueblos
were farmers, planting especially corn, beans, and cotton. They
were also skilful potters and basket-weavers, and out of cotton
they made colourful fabrics. Since 1598, the Spaniards started
founding colonies in their territory and acted very impertinent
against the Indians, demanding food from them all the time. This
led the Pueblos to form an alliance in 1680 and start a
revolt. They were actually able to drive the colonists away, and
kept their freedom until 1692 when the Spaniards conquered the
land back.
Some time later, the Spanish invaders reached California on the West
coast, and established a series of 21 Christian missions along
the shore, the first one in 1769. Then, they forced the Native
Americans to live their and work for them. Because of the bad
living conditions epidemic diseases broke out, which killed
thousands of people, mainly because they were living together on
such little space. Many cultures were totally wiped out. It was
genocide, which continued even after the missions had been
closed down in 1834, when a stream of white gold diggers overran
the survivors, taking away their land and committing cruel
massacres. This caused the Indian population in California to
drop over 90 per cent in only 100 years.
Not only the Spaniards tried to form colonies in the New World, but
also other European countries soon laid their claims on America
as well, not even considering that it actually did not belong to
any of them but to the Native Americans. In North America the
opposing powers were mainly Great Britain and France. The
Spaniards occupied Florida and most parts of the South of the
USA. The French turned to Canada in the North, so that only the
middle part of the Atlantic coast was left for the Britons. The
first English settlement in North America, Jamestown, was
founded in 1607 by John Smith at the James River in today's
Virginia. The Indians living their formed a confederation, known
as the mighty Powhatan-Confederation. Soon, they regarded the
English colonists as dangerous and annoying invaders, because
they were demanding corn from them. Consequently, the Indians
started a war, already in the same year. But in 1613,
Pocahontas, the favorite daughter of the Chief, was captured and
she agreed to take on the Catholic faith and even married the
Englishman John Rolfe (Smith's story about being saved by her
from death was probably just invented.) securing the peace for
some time. Four years later, Pocahontas and her little son
sailed to England, where she died of smallpox at only 21
years. After that, the Powhatan tried again to drive the British
out of their country, but the Virginia-Colony was already to
large with too many white settlers, so that the Powhatan were
pushed back into small reservations.
In New England (from Maine to Long Island), the first English people
arrived in 1620 on the ship Mayflower. They were Puritans, often
called Pilgrims, who fled religious persecution, and they called
the place where they got to land Plymouth. In a hard winter
their number was reduced by half and they couldn't have survived
if they hadn't met Indians the next spring, who taught them how
to plant and where to fish. After a rich harvest in fall, the
Pilgrims invited all Indians in the neighbourhood to a feast to
thank them for their help. This Thanksgiving has remained
tradition in the USA. But after some time had passed, the number
of the settlers grew and the friendly relations with the natives
worsened. In 1675, war broke out between the colonists and an
Indian alliance under the Wampanoag-Chief Metacom, called King
Philip. He faced about 50000 colonists with only 20000
warriors. So being clearly the minority, their war for freedom
soon turned into a fight for survival. They were hunted down
merciless and an Indian priest remarked on that: "During the
bloody fights, the Pilgrims prayed long and hard to their god
that he might give their enemies into their hands...If this is
there way of praying - to pray bullets through the hearts of
people - then I just hope that they won't pray for me." Only one
year later, with King Philip's death, the revolt was ended, and
with it, every planned Indian resistance in New England.
The 17th century was mainly formed by trade relations between the
Indians and the Whites. In the Southeast slavery was most common
and besides the epidemics one of the main reasons for the
extinction of many Indian nations. In the Northeast the English
and French were engaged in fur trade with the Indians, which had
rather bad consequences: The old life style of the Indians broke
down and their relationship to nature was transformed causing
many animal species, like the beaver, to die out almost entirely
because of over-hunting.
The competition between England and France for the possession of
colonies in North America reached its climax in the French and
Indian War, 1756 to 1763. The direct cause for the war to break
out were the forts of the French in the Ohio-region, which the
English claimed for themselves. Some Indian tribes favoured the
English, but many more the French, because they were thought of
as more tolerable. So, France formed many alliances with the
Indians, otherwise they wouldn't have had a chance against
England. Only the strong Iroquois League could hold a neutral
position between the two European powers. However, despite all
the support the French had, they were defeated by the English at
last and had to give up Canada to Great Britain. This also made
the position of the Iroquois worse, because they could not be
the balance between two powers anymore, instead they were
surrounded by the British, who were extremely arrogant, shown by
the advice, the commander of the British forces gives to his
army: "Don't think of the Indians as noble and brave enemies,
but as the most horrible race that has ever haunted the earth
and whose extinction on has to think of as a very commendable
act for the best of mankind."
While that was happening, the white settlers had begun to push further
and further to the west, taking the land away from the Indians
violently. In 1754, the Ottawa-Chief Pontiac, who was very angry
with the British, started to form an alliance of all Indian
nations and tribes in the area of the Great Lakes, with the
message that said that all tribes should take action against the
English invaders together. After the French lost in the war,
Pontiac started his rebellion in 1763 with the conquest of all
British forts in the Ohio-valley except for two. When he
besieged Fort Detroit, the English treacherously sent the
Indians blankets that were infected with smallpox. Many of the
Indians caught the disease and had to give up. Pontiac's
alliance crumbled into pieces and two years later his revolt was
ended. In 1769, he was murdered by an Indian traitor.
After the American Independence War (from 1775 to 1783), the English
were replaced by a new white force, the Americans - who were not
at all better for the Indians, though. During the Boston Tea
Party in 1773, the American colonists had made the Indian the
symbol for their resistance against England by dressing up as
Mohawk-Indians and throwing English tea into the water. But at
the same time, they expanded more and more to the west,
carelessly overrunning the Indians' land. Especially in the
1780s, many white Frontiersmen attacked Indian villages, the
Indians of course taking revenge on the white settlements. After
some time, the Native Americans refused to sign any more
contracts that took their land away from them "legally". As a
response an American army was sent into their land in 1794. In
the Battle of Fallen Timbers, on August the 20th, the Americans
defeated the Indians and forced them to sign a peace treaty in
1795 by which the tribes lost almost two thirds of their
territories in the East of the USA. In 1797, even the powerful
Iroquois League possessed only a few small, isolated
reservations in New York and Pennsylvania.
A last attempt to get the East (especially the area between Ohio River
and Great Lakes) back from the Whites, was made by the Shawnee
leader Tecumseh. When his brother Tenskwatawa had a vision one
day, where the creator told him all Indians should go back to
their old ways of life, Tecumseh took that religious message and
made a political and military out of it, saying that the Indians
should defend the rest of their land altogether. He founded a
village, called Prophetstown in 1808, where members of different
tribes lived together. But Tecumseh knew that, before he could
start an attack on the Americans, he needed the support of the
British. When Prophetstown was destroyed in 1811 by the
Americans, Tecumseh took his last chance and allied with the
British as another war broke out between them and America in
1812. One year later, though, in the Battle of Thames, the
English and Indian forces lost against the American ones and
Tecumseh was killed. With that, the long fight of the tribes for
their land in the East was finally lost.
Meanwhile, in the South of the USA, the so-called Five Civilized
Tribes (the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminols)
were more and more pressured to give up their land. Finally, in
1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act,
which contained the resettlement of all Indians of the Southeast
to the west of the Mississippi, into the Indian Territory in
Oklahoma. The Creek and Seminols (those under the leader
Osceola) resisted at first, but it was no use. All nations were
forced to leave their land, and on the way, almost 45 per cent
of the Creek, over 4000 of 13000 Choctaw, and one quarter of the
Cherokee population, died.
When the white men were finished with the East, having pushed all
Indians into small reservations, they directed their attention
to the West to repeat there what they had done in the exact same
way. In the area of Arizona and New Mexico, there lived an
Indian tribe called Diné or Navajo. In 1860, they were supposed
to leave their home land for the white settlers, but of course
didn't agree with that. The result was a war, and thousands of
Diné had to escape into the Canyon de Chelley, where they were
chased by the American soldiers, and finally had to give up in
the winter of 1864. Then they were forced to a march over 500
kilometres to the distant reservation. The soldiers showed no
consideration for children, old or sick people, and just shot
them if they were too slow. An eyewitness reports: "It was
dreadful how they treated our people. Some disabled old people
and children who couldn't make the journey were shot on the spot
and their bodies were left behind for the crows and
coyotes... My daughter became tired and weak and because of her
pregnancy, she couldn't keep pace with the others. So we asked
the army to stop for a while, so that she could give birth to
her child. But the soldiers forced us to go on... We were not
long on our way again, that we heard a shot behind us..." But
the Navajo were still lucky, because, after four years in the
reservation, they could sign a contract about their return home
and got the biggest reservation of the whole USA.
The Great Plains or the prairies are a seemingly endless grass land
from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains. Tribes like the
Cheyenne, Comanche, Apache, and Sioux were living there, who had
formerly been seasonal farmers, but already before the direct
contact with Europeans, there life-style had been changed
completely with the arrival of the horse. Horses were adopted by
the Indians very fast, because they were really very practical:
they could carry heavy loads, they made journeying over great
distances much faster and hunting much easier, especially the
buffalo-hunt. Buffaloes were the basis of life for the
plains-Indians. Millions of these animals used to roam the
prairies and everything of their bodies was used: the flesh for
food, the skin and fur for clothes, blankets and tents, the
horns for drinking mugs, the bones for knifes, and other tools,
and so on. With the horse now, the plains-Indians became nomadic
hunter-gatherers, who lived in cone-shaped tents out of buffalo
hides, called tepees. In 1871, when the demand for buffalo hides
suddenly increased, buffaloes were shot down in millions, and
the new routes of the transcontinental train disturbed their
normal ways as well, withdrawing the basis of existence from the
natives. Besides, the Indians were supposed to go into the small
reservations between North Platte River and Black Hills, until
January 31st 1876 at the latest. But the great Sioux-Chiefs Red
Cloud, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull were determined to fight
for their land. Although Red Cloud finally went into the
reservation, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were not willing to
give up, yet. In July of 1876, they assembled a huge camp with
members of many different tribes at the Little Big Horn
River. When General Custer tried to attack them, the Indians
were such a majority that they totally defeated Custer's troops
and left only one survivor. Now, of course, the Americans were
very shocked and angry, and a merciless pursuit of the tribes by
the American soldiers followed. During the extremely cold and
harsh winter, many groups had to give up and till March of 1877
most of them had arrived in a reservation, even Crazy Horse, who
was injured there by soldiers and died. Only Sitting Bull could
escape to Canada.
The Nez Percé in the Northern plateau region and the Apache in the
South West were the last Indian tribes to fight the
Americans. When the Nez Percé were supposed to move onto
extremely small reservations in 1863, Chief Joseph and his
people resisted the expulsion for about six years. Because he
was fooling the American military again and again, Joseph is
sometimes called an Indian Napoleon. However, in 1877, they were
defeated by General Howard and tried to flee to Canada and to
Sitting Bull, but only 65 kilometres away from the border, they
were caught and had to surrender. In the same year all Apache
were brought to the San Carlos reservation at last. The chief
Goyathley or Geronimo broke out with his group several times for
almost ten years. He was the last Indian chief, who fought the
fierce battle against the American troops. But he too had to
surrender in 1887 after long years of pursuit and was banished
into exile, where he died in 1909.
Now, the Americans had won after all. After 1890 the last free-living
Indians were forced onto reservations, which were like prisons
to them, managed by agents of the government. They were most
often the worst piece of their land with infertile and dry soil,
where agriculture and animal breeding was nearly impossible. So,
the Indians were dependent on the food rations they got from the
agencies, which were either bad quality or too little, and in
this and the bad water they had to drink, diseases resulted and
hopelessness and depression were drowned by alcohol. As if that
was not enough, the Indians were forced to take on the white way
of life. Their own traditions, beliefs and life-styles were
regarded as immoral and wrong were strictly forbidden, even
speaking in their own language. And the children were taken away
from their parents by force and put into Indian boarding
schools, where they lived under strict discipline and often lost
their old identity.( It was like a nightmare for the Native
Americans and they couldn't understand why they were treated
like this. An Indian woman tried to explain it the following
way: "We think that the true reason, why our property has been
taken away from us, is that we are humans and not wolves or
bears. In Washington many millions of acres of land have been
declared safety zones, so that wolves and bears can live
undisturbed, and nobody has anything against it. Maybe, if we
were wolves or bears, we could also expect that much
protection. But we are just humans.")
In 1888, the Ghost Dance reached the desperate Indians of the West,
offering a possibility to let the dead ancestors and buffaloes
rise again, by special dances and songs. But the Americans were
afraid it was a War Dance and forbade it. In 1890 they even
accidentally killed Sitting Bull because they thought he was a
leader of the movement, which he wasn't. Shortly after that, in
December, a little group of Sioux-Indians with their sick chief
Big Foot were chased by the military because they practised the
Ghost Dance. At Wounded Knee Creek they were surrounded and the
next morning, somebody must have started shooting and all of a
sudden, panic broke out, and all soldiers began to fire on the
defenceless Indians. Big Foot and 250 people of his little group
were slaughtered.
This was the last cruel deed the Whites had done to the
Indians. Around the turn of the century, all Indian nations were
strongly reduced or totally wiped out and the survivors were
kept as prisoners on their own land. Despite all difficulties
their number slowly increased again from 250.000 to about 2
million people nowadays. After many conflicts without weapons in
the 20th century, the Indians have made great steps in the
direction of sovereignty self-determination and have become
citizens of the United States in 1924, while still keeping their
Indian identity and traditional cultures by arranging Pow Wows,
Rodeos, and other ceremonies, just like Sitting Bull had once
advised them: "Take the best of the way of the white man, pick
it up and take it with you. Leave the bad behind, throw it
away. Take the best of the old Indian way of life - always
preserve it. It has proved itself in thousands of years. Don't
let it go to waste."
1 extermination: Ausrottung
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