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Indians and Glacier National Park (Photo Diary)

What is now Glacier National Park in Montana was an important resource and spiritual area for the Salish-speaking Pend d’Oreille and Flathead, for the Kootenai, and for the Blackfoot. The visitor center at St. Mary entrance has a small Native American display. Salish and Pend d’Oreille Salish leader Sam Resurrection drew this map of the … Continued

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Pueblo Pottery (Photo Diary)

The Pueblos are the village agriculturists of New Mexico and Northern Arizona. While the Pueblos are usually lumped together in both the anthropological and historical writings as though they are a single cultural group, they are linguistically and culturally divergent. The Pueblos speak six mutually unintelligible languages and occupy more than 30 villages in a … Continued

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Artifacts in the Sherman County Historical Museum (Photo Diary)

For tens of thousands of years prior to the European invasion of North America, American Indian people made and used many different kinds of stone tools for hunting, for gathering wild plants, and for processing foods. For the past two centuries or so, non-Indian collectors have been gathering Indian artifacts and displaying them in cabinets … Continued

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Some Arctic Artifacts (Photo Diary)

The Artic Culture Area includes the Aleutian Islands, most of the Alaska Coast, the Canadian Artic, and parts of Greenland. It is an area which can be described as a “cold” desert. Geographer W. Gillies Ross, in his chapter in North American Exploration. Volume 3: A Continent Comprehended, writes: “The North American Arctic is usually … Continued

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Traditional Government Among California Tribes

All societies have government. At the time of the European invasion, American Indian cultures differed greatly from their European counterparts in the way in which they governed themselves and, as a result, many European writers believed that Indian nations did not have governments. The government of European nations tended to be based on the peculiar … Continued

American Indian cultures

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Veracruz

Veracruz is a region in Mexico’s gulf coastal lowlands. This was the homeland for one of Mesoamerica’s earliest civilizations, the Olmec. The Olmec first emerged about 1500 BCE. Their civilization and their art styles influence many of the later Mesoamerican civilizations. In their Encyclopedia of Ancient Mesoamerica, Margaret Bunson and Stephen Bunson report: “As the … Continued

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Roman Nose, Cheyenne Warrior

While the Algonquian-speaking Cheyenne are generally considered a Plains Indian tribe, they actually moved onto the Plains from what is now Minnesota. As a result of this migration, the Cheyennes evolved from a farming people to a horse-mounted buffalo-hunting people. By the mid-nineteenth century, Cheyenne warriors were often engaging the United States military in a … Continued

Cheyenne Warrior