For thousands of years, American Indian people in the Southwest farmed the land and built their villages, called pueblos by Spanish, with multi-story houses, plazas, and underground ceremonial chambers known as kivas. While the Pueblos are usually lumped together in both the anthropological and historical writings as though they are a single cultural group, they … Continued
John Gerbrand Wyers (1871-1960) lived in White Salmon, Washington, where he had a hardware and general merchandise store. He purchased basketry, particularly works by the local Klikitat people and encouraged Indian weavers. His interest in Native art was the result of his relationship with Margaret “Maggie” Underwood Howell (Klickitat). The two were domestic partners, but … Continued
One of the displays in the San Bernardino County Museum in Redlands, California, is entitled Sacred Earth and subtitled Understanding our past and honoring cultures that thrive today. The first section of this display looks at American Indian cultures between 16,000 years ago and 8,000 years ago. According to the Museum display: “Some archaeologists believe … Continued
The Great Plains is the huge area in the central portion of the North American continent which stretches from the Canadian provinces in the north, almost to the Gulf of Mexico in the south, from the Rocky Mountains in the west to the Mississippi River in the east. This is an area which contains many … Continued
The Northern Plains include what is now North and South Dakota, Eastern Montana, northeastern Wyoming, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. This was an area which was the traditional homelands for the buffalo-hunting peoples, such as the Blackfoot, Assiniboine, Gros Ventre (Atsina), Sioux, Crow, Northern Cheyenne, Plains Chippewa (Ojibwa), and Plains Cree. It … Continued
The Maya flourished in the area south of the Valley of Mexico. The Maya reached their peak of urban development during the period which archaeologists call the Classis Period which dates from about 250 CE until about 900 CE. On the Maya calendar, the Classic Period begins in baktun 8 (a baktun is a period … Continued
What might be “the largest forced removal of rural Americans since that of Japanese Americans during the Second World War?” It never is a good time to try to tell people about these issues; however, I had occasion this summer to meet a couple Navajo Elders from Big Mountain on the Navajo reservation, in which … Continued
The Presby House Museum in Goldendale, Washington, has three display cases filled with Indian artifacts. These included beaded items (moccasins, gloves, bags), baskets, and a variety of stone artifacts (pestles, mortars, projectile points). The items are displayed with no explanation of tribal histories or aboriginal use. Most of the items were probably trade items made … Continued
During the first part of the twentieth century, one of the primary concerns of the United States government, as well as state and local governments, was the suppression and eradication of American Indian religions. As a Christian nation, a fact expressed in a number of court cases, one of the goals of the federal policies … Continued
Before the European invasion, led by the Spanish in the eighteenth century, Southern California Native Americans lived in small villages of up to 200 inhabitants. In general, California Indians have been classified as hunters and gatherers, meaning that they tended to obtain food from hunting and from gathering wild plants. Often evidence of agriculture—the deliberate … Continued
