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
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
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
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
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
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
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
As Grandmother Taught: Women, Tradition and Plateau Art was a special exhibit at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane, Washington. The Plateau Culture Area is basically the area between the Cascade Mountains and the Rocky Mountains. The Columbia River Plateau is shown above. According to the Museum display: “Women have been the … Continued
The North Lincoln County Historical Museum in Lincoln City, Oregon has two floors of displays relating to local history. The region was originally the homeland for the Siletz and Alesa Indians and the museum has a small display of American Indian basketry. For thousands of years prior to the European invasion, American Indians occupied the … Continued
In providing a broad overview of the hundreds of distinct American Indian cultures found in North America, it is common for museums, historians, archaeologists, and ethnologists to use a culture area model. This model is based on the observation that different groups of people living in the same geographic area often share many cultural features. … Continued
