all right welcome back.
once again I'm your instructor Vernon
Creviston and we're picking up here kind
of where we left off in our in our intro
video for the
for chapter one. we're going to start
looking at
what existed here in north america
. before native Americans ran
into Europeans. we're going to look a
little bit about how native americans
came to be here in the western
hemisphere;
what happened to them while they were
here on their own before they ran into
other
parts of the world's population and of
course we're going to look at how their
societies developed
what made them so unique that europeans
when they looked at them said
that's not what we call civilization so
we're going to kind of go through that
in this
series of videos maybe one or two
components here to this i'm not sure if
we're gonna have one long video
or if we'll have a couple of shorter
ones so we'll just kind of see how we're
progressing through things as we go
through it alright
so let's go ahead and get started here
let's talk about these native americans
and how they came to be
in the western hemisphere so the first
thing i kind of want you to think about
is
this is still something that's evolving
we don't know everything about those
original
groups of people that came and settled
in the western hemisphere
the one thing we can tell you is that's
that there are no people that originated
in this area
okay all human beings came from uh
parts of africa and and migrated
out of that to the rest of the world so
eventually during this process of
settling the globe
human beings as we know them today
eventually started making their way to
the western hemisphere
now when i was a student reading that
textbook that i talked about in the
in the last video we thought that
happened about 10
15 000 years ago but there are
news stories coming out every day
archaeologists and other groups are
doing 
incredible work all the time that
continually push that
that number backwards right at this
point we're
fairly certain that native americans
existed in the western hemisphere
at least 30 000 years ago probably
closer to 40 or 50000 right so somewhere during that
long ago period before the last ice age
even started
human beings started moving across from
what today we call siberia
eastern asia into what is now the
western united states or north america
and then they moved throughout the
entire hemisphere.
this happened over a series of waves of
migration
it didn't happen with just one or two
people doing this
constantly over these 20 30 000 years of
migration
this happens over and over again where
different groups of people come in
it means that eventually as people
settle throughout the western hemisphere
they're going to become
quite diversified very different from
each other they're not
all from the same exact stock right so
there'll be some
different facial characteristics
different genomes right
different genetic markers in them
throughout this area
of the western hemisphere and of course
this is going to be one of the things
that kind of comes to complicate uh
interactions between
europeans and native americans as these
groups of people move throughout this 
entire huge hemisphere right in north
america and south America.
there was lots of room and they didn't
have to have
a lot of contact with each other they'd
have some don't get me wrong
but they didn't have to have a lot of
contact or continuous contact if you
will
which means there could be a lot of
differentiation here right?
this tribe could live essentially in the
same general way as another tribe just a
few miles away
and yet they'd have different languages.
when europeans started exploring the
western hemisphere
in the early 1500s they cataloged at
least 375 different languages
just on the eastern borders of the
western hemisphere right in places like
Brazil, north America parts of central
America
to put this another way when spanish
colonizers got to
california in the 17th and 18th
centuries
they found hundreds of native American
communities
that spoke over 50 different languages
essentially between San Francisco and
Monterey. so these are groups of people
that speak
different languages they have slightly
different customs they see the world in
slightly different ways
and that's very confusing to to
europeans when they run into them
they look at a group of people that all
essentially are doing the same thing
but see themselves as very different
groups of people
and it was just easier to kind of lump
them together for europeans right it's
hard to learn 375 different languages
what's easier forcing them to learn
yours
so again right one of the things we want
to do in these
early lectures is understand
why this process takes place how it
takes place and what are the
ramifications
of it and one of the things we can say
is as native americans came over to the
western hemisphere
started filling it up building things
doing things
they became different from each other
they saw each other as different
and those differences mean it's going to
be harder for them to work together it's
going to be harder for them to see
Europeans as a threat when they see each
other as a threat on a more
normal basis if you will
they have rivalries they have
competitions between these different
population groups.
so it allows europeans to exploit a lot
of these things and again because
they're so
varied Europeans are going to look at
native americans and say it's easier for
you to become me than for me to become
you
and because they just felt that
their way was superior europeans thought
that they were the civilized ones
and these groups of people that did
things differently that didn't make a
lot of sense to europeans
weren't civilized but the one thing that
i was trying to
point out in our introduction video for
this chapter
is that they were incredibly successful,
and they did have their own
versions of civilization right before
europeans ever got here we estimate
that there had to be at least 50 maybe
70 million people
maybe as many as a hundred million
living in the western hemisphere
somewhere between five and 10 million in
north America alone
so native Americans is people
transferred over from the eastern
hemisphere to the western hemisphere
tens of thousands years ago
actually were very very successful they
were good at filling up the continent
they were
good at utilizing its resources and they
were especially good at kind of
thriving right in this in this new
environment
for the human race so even though if
Europeans just kind of discount
native americans we should understand
that they were actually
very successful that they were actually
catching up and sometimes even
passing what europeans and people in
asia were doing in africa were doing
at about the same time that's kind of
what i want to kind of go through and
explain some of these differences what
what allowed native americans to catch
up to europeans pretty quickly
considering that they were kind of
isolated for a long period of time
because one thing we do want to keep in
mind is once native americans came over
here once they
once people migrated from from asia to
north america and the rest of the
western hemisphere 
by the end of the last ice age about 10
12 000 years ago
that migratory path right this path
between Siberia
and what is today Alaska that people can
move along a coastline or maybe even
walk over that's gone right
once the last once the big glaciers and
the polar caps start retreating
the sea levels rise we think that
basically the channel islands were
mountains when people first got here to
the
to the western hemisphere to california
as we know it today so you could have
walked from
Los Angeles to Catalina island 20 30
miles
right and stayed dry during that entire
time an area that is now
ocean. so there's a there are big changes
that have come along and because those
changes came because
you know the ice age ended and the sea
levels rose it meant these groups of
people had been migrating for tens of
thousands of years
were now kind of cut off from the rest
of the world right and in those 10
15 000 years that they're by themselves
they're going to do a lot
and that's kind of what we're going to
look at here in this lecture today right
so one of the things we want to look at
is what made native americans so
successful
why were they able to kind of get here
and thrive in the western hemisphere
and actually start catching up to
different groups of people in the
other parts of the world that could
actually share a lot of information if
you think about it right a lot of
information
flows from africa to asia to europe and
back and forth and back and forth native
americans didn't have that right they
they just had whatever they brought with
them and whatever they developed knew
they didn't get ideas from other groups
of people that were living in other
different places they essentially had
one
database to work from but one of the
things that helps explain
why they were able to thrive so well
right and grow so quickly and fill this
continent up so to speak
is the fact that they were found
foodstuffs just like everybody in the
entire world did
we think farming started around 12 to 15000 years ago
in in the what is today the middle
east right
but it's probably older than that and
native americans when they got here to
the western hemisphere
started realizing that there were
different foods that existed here in
the western hemisphere than existed
anywhere else and that is going to be a
bit of a game changer if you will right
one of the crops that native americans
are going to find and they're going to
cultivate and spread throughout the
entire
western hemisphere is what we today call
corn right.
and i want you to kind of stop and think
about it for a minute uh why is corn a
big deal
why would that be a determining factor
here on how successful these people are
going to be why they're going to be able
to have
big population centers why they're going
to be able to
take a few thousands of people that
migrated over here and turn them into
millions possibly 100 million
people well stop and think about it
what's good about corn
right stop for a minute and
ask yourself that why is corn valuable
what makes it a good product
so some things to think about it's
versatile
if you if you if you if you stop for a
moment and kind of analyze this
corn could be turned into a meal that
you can make right you know
cakes out of right like cornbreads it
can be stored for long periods of time
if you dry it out
if you boil it it's nutritious it has a
lot of carbohydrates in it so it's a
very filling food it's a versatile food
and it's easy to grow think about what
fresno state does
every summer how many ears of corn they
sell to the public
it tastes good it's relatively healthy
and it provides a lot of energy
and you can grow it over and over again
in a fairly short period of time when
you're talking
about crops so the fact is these native
americans when they get here to the
western hemisphere
and start kind of filling it up and
start exploring it they
find things like corn and not just corn
they find things like squash peppers
tomatoes avocados
different types of legumes beans right
think about what a diet that's like full
of these things is like for you
if every day you were eating corn squash
peppers tomatoes avocados and beans
you'd actually be pretty healthy right
you'd be living a very good lifestyle
you're getting good proteins you're
getting good nutrients you're getting
good vitamins
you're having a pretty healthy lifestyle
and that's important right it's going to
allow native americans to build these
big complex societies
relatively quickly considering that
they're kind of starting behind
everybody else while agriculture is
developing
in the middle east around 12 15 000
years ago.
well people are still migrating here to
north America at that time
but around three to four thousand years
ago,
agriculture starts here in the western
hemisphere and what we today kind of
call central mexico right right below
Mexico city
in those valleys they get plenty of rain
it's a good soil
and they have a lot of these food stuffs
that they start growing there
and it allows these complex societies to
grow it allows us
information these seeds to travel and
pretty soon people are growing corn
throughout the entire western hemisphere
and growing these other crops wherever
possible as well
and of course that means some big things
here
so think about this uh the fact that
native americans have tomatoes
and people in europe don't means
christopher columbus and italian never
had food that we today consider
italian who did native americans right
so this this world that native americans
are creating is going to be incredibly
important to other parts of the world
it's going to come to redefine what it
means to be european
why european populations are going to be
able to grow big right.
another thing another way to look at
this is
around 1300 or so right
native American populations are
absolutely thriving
there's maybe as many as a million
people living in the Aztec
capital Tenochtitlan at the time
what's happening in European countries
capitals at that moment
a thing called the black death somewhere
between a quarter to a half of europe's
populations being wiped
out in 1347. in 1347
the populations in the americas are
exploding because they have access to
these foodstuffs
they're living an incredibly healthy
lifestyle now that doesn't mean they
don't have issues it doesn't mean people
don't get sick they do but they're not
getting swept by plagues like the
Europeans are
they're not dealing with all these you
know biological
attacks on them because they're isolated
all the diseases they brought with them
these native americans have
basically grown immune to or they're
very lessened in their
in their virulence right it doesn't kill
them the way it used to
tens of thousands of years ago in part
because of this really
good diet they have and of course that's
going to allow
their populations to explode it's going
to allow them to develop
pretty complex societies and of course
because they're talking to each other
maybe not on a constant basis
this stuff's able to kind of transmit
itself throughout the
the americas throughout the western
hemisphere what starts is farming in
central mexico all the way at the bottom
of this map
within three or five hundred years is
happening everywhere
you can grow corn right wherever these
crops can be grown
native Americans are adapting they're
utilizing the resources that they find
just like people everywhere in short
they're civilized right they're
transmitting information
they're not necessarily always working
together but they are trading with each
other
and information is flowing between these
different groups of people
now one of the first groups we're going
to talk about and i'm not going to go
into much detail here
there aren't going to be a lot of
questions on exams about this
but just something for you to kind of
think about contextually right
kind of keep in mind what's going on
here one of the first uh
groups of native americans that we can
call a civilization right a distinct
group of people acting in a distinct way
that actually has a definable writing
system that helped develop
agriculture in the western hemisphere is
a group called the olmecs in what is
today central mexico
that was about two thousand three
thousand years ago
is when the olmecs existed and they were
a very complex society as i said
they were able to do great things if you
stop and look at this picture in the
lower right hand corner
that's a work of art that was actually
kind of a boundary marker for the olmecs
it's a way for them to say hey this is
our territory
we run this this spot right and that
stone that's in the in in a man's head
in the shape of a man's head is is a
work of art but it's also
huge right it's about six feet high
weighs several tons
so the fact that they're able to make
these things move them around to where
they want them
right shows just how sophisticated they
were how successful they were as a group
of people
and of course they're just one of the
first ones to really get going
one of the most famous that we all
probably have heard of is a group called
the mayans right they're also in uh
central mexico but on what we call the
yucatan peninsula
that part of mexico that kind of juts
out into the caribbean
throughout that area this group of
people called the mayans created a
variety
of different what we today call
city-states right they had individual
leaders small regional uh empires if you
will there was never a
mayan empire a in a
reasonable definition of that but a
group of people called the mayans
for thousands of years lived in that
area and after the olmecs were gone they
took some of that information from the
olmecs and they built something new
something definable as their own right
they were experts in mathematics and
they actually came up with the concept
of
zero having a number to represent
nothing in medicine they did amazing
things like
brain surgery we actually have uh skulls
from uh
mayan grave sites that show that people
had holes drilled in their head
they lived afterwards because the holes
sealed up
they did things like astronomy well
before you know europeans even really
understood
what was out there before galileo starts
finding
jupiter's moons mayans had already been
plotting these things they were able to
see them in the night sky
and they kept track of them used them in
part of their religious
orders right so native americans are
doing
amazing things and if you look at this
picture at the bottom of the slide
uh the buildings that they're creating
actually are very similar to us
to what we have today this building a
place called chichen itza one of these
big mayan
complexes as cities during their
height of their civilization about 11
1200 years ago
that's an observatory right that's where
they
plotted the course of the moon the
course of the planets
of different stars they were doing a lot
of the same things
europeans would be doing several hundred
years later right
so these these native americans are very
sophisticated
they're able to do really amazing things
if you stop and think about it
another group that was incredibly
successful in virtually the same
area as the olmecs and the mayans is the
aztecs they came along after these other
two groups
and they created an empire right what we
would today call an
empire they used military force to do it
they went out and conquered other tribes
and told those groups
you're now under our control one of the
ways they did
kind of enforce this of course was
what's shown here in the lower left
lower left-hand corner of the slide and
that is human sacrifice
they would go out conquer groups of
people bring
bring some of those captives back to
their temples in their main cities
and execute them partly for religious
purposes to thank their gods for victory
but also
kind of as a message to the people they
just conquered
if you don't listen to us if you don't
follow us we can do this to you
right so again that's a pretty
uh a rough thing to talk about
but people are doing the same well not
the same things but doing similar things
throughout the world
at about the same time the aztecs are
conquering their neighbors
you have people in europe conquering
each other wiping out whole towns
right because they're the enemy so in
the end native americans are doing
virtually the same thing europeans are
but they're just going about it a
different way right their modes of
conduct are a little bit different right
again they're performing human
sacrifices where europeans might just
put everybody to death in a town right
the same
exact end result is happening here it's
just they're getting to that
point by different ways but one of the
things to kind of keep in mind here
is that these native american societies
were quite successful
uh the city of tenochtitlan the aztec
capital was a massive a massive
complex if you will right it was a
virtual
city right just like anything we would
see today as a matter of fact the aztecs
used what we would kind of call a grid
pattern
to lay out their city right most
european cities didn't look like this
five six hundred years ago they had just
various
pathways going in all kinds of different
directions but the aztecs kind of laid
things out they grew
things out logically if you will so
again you can see in some ways
native americans were actually ahead of
different groups of people especially
europeans
and yet when europeans look at them they
say you're not the civilized
one there's something you're not doing
things right even though this picture of
tenochtitlan that i'm showing you
is actually done by spanish
conquistadores right soldiers that are
with hernan cortes the leader of this
expedition
that's going to destroy the aztec empire
when they stop and
see this city in the distance they're
amazed at what they see they know there
has to be at least a quarter of a
million people living there
which is way more than the populations
of places like paris or london at the
time
and they're going to marvel at it these
spanish soldiers they're going to
look at how amazing this city is and
then they're going to march in there and
take the place over
and tear down a lot of these structures
to reinvent it to rebuild it in an image
that they see
as the right way so it's just kind of
some of the themes here that we're
talking about in this in this first
chapter right
native americans are successful they're
civilized they're doing all the things
you're supposed to be doing and yet
europeans are going to look at it
sometimes be amazed at what they see and
then just discount it and move on
and that's kind of the theme that we're
looking at here
and of course the ones i mentioned
aren't the only ones you have groups
like the inca down in south america
what is today places like peru and
bolivia right they're doing something
very similar to the aztecs going out
conquering other groups of
native americans and making them part of
their empire building cities all over
the place
in in the highlands of peru and uh and
bolivia
they're exceptionally great craftsmen
the little idol i showed you at the
first video
was made by an inca goldsmith so there's
a lot of a lot of creativity going on
here a lot of diversity in these uh
in these civilizations but if you're the
europeans if you're the spanish that
come into these areas
you look at them and you go
they're all kind of the same to you
whether it be an aztec a mayan or an
inca
you treat them the same because you can
because it's easier to do that
you discount their civilization pretty
readily
because it allows you to do the things
that you want to do take over
gain this wealth increase your power in
the world
that is a theme we're going to come to
over and over again in the next couple
of chapters
now moving a little bit closer to home
here right for native american societies
uh in north america they're not going to
be able to build as big complex
societies
as existed in like central mexico the
growing seasons are shorter
uh there may be too little water too
much water as you get into
parts of north america so they have to
get to be kind of smaller
units if you will but still they're
going to be able to do some pretty
amazing things what we today call the
pueblo indians in america southwest
they build things like i showed you that
wakapure right these big apartment
complexes or
mesa verde in in colorado
these big complexes of
of masonry where hundreds
of native americans would live for
hundreds of years actually from about
you know 500
a.d to about 1300 a.d these
civilizations thrived in what we today
call the
southwest farming going out hunting some
animals
living in comparative peace with each
other although there's always going to
be conflict between different groups of
people
but for the most part they were pretty
uh pretty successful living in one
area having defined territories and yet
native
when native americans run into europeans
europeans are just going to come in and
say
none of this counts this isn't your land
we're taking it over
kind of a theme that we'll come back to
over and over again
and again to show you even though things
are different in north america than they
are kind of in central america or south
america
uh they're still doing a lot of the same
things these native americans right
uh in in the ohio mississippi valleys
because they don't have these big stone
deposits that they can build these
massive cities like the aztecs and the
mayans can
they work in earth and wood right
but they still make things that last
just like places like tenochtitlan
or chichen itza the mound cultures built
this thing
this picture in the lower right is
actually a picture of a snake
and it's about 15-20 feet high now
hundreds of years after it's built and
that means it was probably about
double the size when it was first
created right
at least probably about double the
height so maybe around 15
20 feet high about a quarter of a mile
long
all told of a snake eating an egg so
they're able
even in north america where it's colder
it's harder to
farm right you just don't you have more
space
even there native americans were able to
do some pretty
amazing things one of the most
successful of these groups that we call
the mound cultures is in a place that is
today kind of near
st louis missouri it's called cahokia
that city had a population its heyday
about 900 a.d so about 1200 years ago
it had a population of about 30 000 we
estimate
and it's laid out very similar to the
way the the aztecs were doing things
right you have kind of a central plaza
area where you kind of do your
administrative social gatherings
and then you have homes in the outlying
areas surrounded by farming in that area
so again native americans are kind of
living exactly like we do today if you
stop and think about it
there's kind of the governmental
business center then there's residential
then there's kind of the the food
producing regions
10 octane was set up that way cahokia
was these are things that are very
similar to what we do today
europeans are going to look at it be
marveled and then say tear
it down and replace it with what we know
these artists renderings of cahokia show
you what it might have looked like at
its time
again they're building pyramids uh sort
of like what the mayans and the aztecs
are doing
only they're doing it in earth because
it's easier
it's a supply of a material that they
have ready access to
there just aren't any big stone deposits
for them to use
another group that we're going to come
to a couple times over the next
few weeks here that i want to speak
about as far as native americans and
their ability to do things is a group
called the iroquois
right now technically there is no such
thing as an iroquois
right the the iroquois name is a name
given to a group of tribes working
together
right it is located in what is today
upper new york right around the great
lakes region between the united states
and canada's border today
and these five different tribes had
originally been groups of native
americans that settled in that region
and competed with each other for
resources and territory right
but eventually they were able to work
out a series of
treaties with each other what eventually
would be called the great law of peace
between them
these the mohawk the oneida the onondaga
the cayuga and the seneca
originally were all competitors but they
realized that
actually they had a lot more in common
with each other than they did with other
neighboring tribes
so they decided since land was at a
premium it's hard to grow
up there uh they're small scale farmers
that means that they live in smaller
groups they're not building big huge
cities like 10 octatelyn
that have somewhere between a quarter
million and a million people in
them the area just can't support that
kind of population
so they live in much smaller units a
small kind of
extended family groups maybe 50 300
people in a village
you know maybe at most a thousand
so it's very important to them that they
be able to have enough land to grow food
to support their groups of people the
growing season is
way shorter in north america than it is
in central or south america
they need to move around a lot to be
able to hunt and supplement that food
supply
so territory is very important to them
well of course it's important to
other neighboring tribes as well and
eventually what these five tribes
decided
was it would be better for us to define
our area say this is ours
and work together to keep other groups
out from taking it from us
and they did they created a council it's
not really a national government the way
we would understand it these different
tribes are all
independent of each other but they work
together they they have a way of
coordinating
so in a real way it's kind of a
confederation is what we would call it
in kind of our governmental terms today
each of these tribes sends
representatives they come together in a
great council they make decisions
and then they go back to their tribes
and kind of ratify those decisions
right and one of the big things that
this great council would do
is if one tribe say the seneca was being
attacked by some
neighboring tribe they could go to the
other tribes and say hey we need help
come and help us defend our territory
and the understanding is that someday
the mohawk might be the ones that are in
trouble and then the seneca would come
and help them
so stop and think about that for a
minute right here's a group
of people they have a unique language
they have defined territories
they have a system of government that's
working for them right
they're actually going to be incredibly
successful
the iroquois are still there today in a
limited sense right especially in canada
they have
big reservations of that land that they
controlled
a thousand years ago and yet when
europeans run into them europeans will
keep saying that this is not a civilized
group of people
is this remarkable how that that keeps
happening
all the way right all the way up until
my textbook in the 1980s right
another group that we'll talk a little
bit about uh in the future weeks is a
group called the cherokee they're kind
of similar to the
iroquois in that the cherokee are a
group of smaller tribes
working together one identifiable unit
though right so they have one language
between these different tribes they
settle along rivers
again they have to kind of farm part of
the year but move around
to supplement their food supplies to
keep going but they have small
kind of family villages extended
families maybe a few hundred people
living along these rivers but they're
organized to protect each other right
again when one village comes under
attack the rest of the cherokee nation
will come to its defense
so they're going to be incredibly
successful they're going to hold on to
their territory for several hundred
years as europeans move in
but eventually they just like the
iroquois just like the aztecs and
everybody else
will be kind of dispossessed forced out
of their area
and told that they're just not
powerful enough right that they're not
civilized if they need to leave and get
out of the way
for another group of people so very
similar story being told over and over
and over again
i think what we're going to do is go
through this next part a little bit
quicker
and kind of wrap this up in one video
instead of multiple videos for you okay
so uh to kind of move into how these
native americans lived especially
groups like the cherokee or the iroquois
let's kind of take a look at their their
lifestyles if you will
right so uh one of the things we could
kind of say one of the things we did say
that you kind of need to be civilized is
have some kind of you know
customs mores right religious ceremonies
whatever they might be
well native americans absolutely had
that right
so while europeans are going to say hey
we're civilized because we believe in
god and we have these religious
practices
well native americans could have said
and did say the same exact thing right
but their religion kind of revolved
around their day-to-day activities their
day-to-day life
especially to producing food that the
community needed to survive in
on right so the native americans
practice the type of religion that we
today call animism right
which means giving kind of uh the
natural world
things that happen like the wind rivers
flooding
different animals and plants a kind of a
supernatural spiritual
aspect right so that the the wind when
it blows if it's a it's an east wind and
it's particularly strong
they would say that that there's a
spirit that's making it blow
stronger than it did yesterday if it's
rains too much they would say there's a
spirit there's some kind
of motivational force there that's
making it rain more
this year than it did last year making
it rain less this year than last year
right
so again they kind of add these
supernatural aspects to to things
they could say that this particular rock
is is is important right that it's a
defining feature of the land
and give it some kind of supernatural
aspect
and one of the things that native
society kind of did especially in north
america
is it gave a lot of authority to people
who seem to have a connection to that
spirit world right
if you were particularly good at
swimming they said you had some they
would think you have some kind of
connection to that spirit that's in that
water
and because of that we're going to put
you in charge of things that have to do
with that water right
so if you're particularly good at
swimming maybe you'll be the one that
teaches
the kids how to swim if you're
particularly good at fishing you'll be
the one that teaches how to fish
if you stop and think about it that's a
merit system right they're actually
doing a merit system like what we do
today if you're the best at something
we're gonna pay you to go do that right
well native americans are doing the same
thing
so again native americans are actually
kind of ahead of the curve here
right they're living a lot more like
what we do today than europeans were
and yet when europeans run into them
this is going to be all too confusing
for them right
they can't tell who the religious leader
is because there's one guy that seems to
be kind of in charge of religion but
then there's a whole bunch of other
people
they're in charge of other things right
and europeans
seem so chaotic to them that it's easy
easier if they just kind of either
ignore
the leadership of the tribes and just
push them out of the way
or they only deal with one tribal member
and say okay you're the leader
you're the one we're going to make a
deal with went to the natives they're
going hey look that's not the guy that's
in charge of that right you can't talk
to him he can't make deals for us that's
not his job
so again it is very chaotic for for
outsiders but for native americans this
helped kind of
explain your place in the community if
you're the good fisherman
that was what you did right if you were
good at making baskets that's what you
did if you were good at hunting that's
what you did
and you helped others become good at it
as well because after all
everybody needs to be successful here in
order for the tribe
the group to succeed as well right
which brings us to maybe the area where
native americans and europeans had their
biggest
differences in some ways right and that
of course is the idea of land ownership
now again as i've been kind of
describing with native americans
they because they need the land
to produce food to survive it was their
most critical resource they'd be willing
to go to war to defend it
and and everybody had a part in making
the land
produce for them right men would go out
and clear forest land
so that women could come in and grow the
food and then the men would come in and
harvest it right
so they broke up a lot of the workload
between them the different members of
the community
and their villages their their their
groups
were were built around these lands that
they held
but because everybody depended on these
lands on the food produced by them
it meant that the land was not owned by
any one
individual it was owned by that tribe
this area
this tribe that area that tribe right
maybe they're all part of one big
giant unit like the cherokee or the
iroquois or maybe they're
independent small tiny little tribes
that just have a few you know 50 60
square mile
area that's their own but they own this
stuff
as a community now don't get me wrong
they do have personal wealth right
they might own their own homes they
might own the items in the homes
but anything that produced for the
community
was belonging to the community right so
you may have your own home
may have your own utensils work tools
weapons what have you but everybody was
expected to kind of do their part
everybody was expected to help produce
for the community on their land from
their natural resources
those were given to everybody and it was
everybody's responsibility
now contrast that with what europeans
are doing
and even people in africa and asia right
they
often would have europeans especially
have this ideal ideal of individual
ownership
that this is mine and nobody else's and
everything i get off of this land
belongs to me
that that's completely foreign idea to
native americans
but it was how european society work and
it's why when europeans come over and
they want to get land
they don't understand why the native
americans say well sure you can
you can use this land we're not using it
right now but that didn't mean the
native americans were giving it away
permanently they were just saying hey
you can use that land to grow food there
but you'll have to share it with us
because we're letting you use the land
right
so again that's going to cause a lot of
conflict for
for europeans this system just doesn't
make sense
there's there's no record keeping
there's no uh deeds and titles all the
things that we have today that tells us
this is mine right native americans
don't have
and it's not just that that's kind of
confusing to europeans when they run
into native americans
it's also the way native american
society is structured
there there are social classes
especially in places like the mayans the
incas and the aztecs
but in north america it very hard to
tell who was
wealthy and who wasn't right because
they didn't think about things that way
there wasn't a big emphasis on material
wealth in north american tribes
so leadership's fluid and
everybody kind of dresses the same
everybody lives in about the same size
buildings right you couldn't guarantee
that because
some family member was a leader that
their children would be leaders
very often again the merit system is
what mattered to native americans
we need to survive we need the people
that are best suited to help us survive
in charge and if you can't do it just
because your dad was in charge doesn't
mean or your mom was in charge
doesn't mean we're gonna leave you in
charge if you can't get the job done
we'll find somebody else so again
uh it is not always about family
connections right it's not generational
like in europe
or even asia where just because you know
the grandson of a king is automatically
a king or the granddaughter
of a king or a queen is automatically a
king or a queen or a princess
to native americans that doesn't make a
lot of sense because that doesn't help
the community survive at
all right you need to prove your worth
in that society
and of course another thing is that
these communities were based around
family so there was kind of an internal
hierarchy if you will right
the oldest members of the family were
the ones that were kind of in charge and
everybody kind of gave them the respect
that their age kind of entitled them to
and they listened to them for advice
and kind of went about it about things
in that way very different than what
europeans are doing
now one thing i do kind of want to
dispossess you of
is i kind of speak about this as almost
an idyllic system right
and in some ways it actually was it
worked very well for a lot of native
americans
uh but obviously they're human beings
like anybody else and they're gonna have
conflict they're gonna fight over each
other as i mentioned with the iroquois
one of the reasons they created the
iroquois nation these group of five
tribes working together
was to actually fend off other tribes
to conquer other tribes if they needed
to take more territory from other groups
if they needed to
so there is conflict there are wars from
native americans
but they're different one of the things
to kind of keep in mind is
uh that when native americans went to
war with each other it wasn't just to
wipe each other out because they
prayed differently or spoke differently
that was kind of the norm right they all
spoke a different
a slightly different dialect or a
different language entirely
had different customs what made them
what made them fight was often for the
resources
we need that land to grow food we need
that river to get
fish right whatever it might be but in
the end most of the time their wars
even for the aztecs wasn't about the
human sacrifices
it was really about controlling the
resources
so tribes would conquer other tribes and
slowly but surely bring those tribes in
and make them a part of themselves
very different than what we might see in
europeans right
uh one story in the in the mid 17th
century during the english civil wars
right
one religious leader a person by the
name of oliver cromwell
we'll talk about in in a few chapters uh
he's
the head of of england's government at
the time
and part of their empire ireland
is in rebellion oliver cromwell takes an
army from england over to ireland
and utterly destroys two irish towns
to tell the irish people you can't rebel
he puts every man woman and child in the
in the
these two villages wexford and drogida
to
death he gave him a chance to surrender
they didn't surrender
so when he conquers the cities he just
kills everybody there
native americans aren't doing anything
like that right there
there's more there's purpose behind both
of these things
but for native americans it isn't about
destroying your enemy
it's about kind of controlling your
enemy for a lot of nato
for a lot of europeans it's about
destroy the enemy
get them out of the way then what's
theirs is yours
and these two very different ways of
looking at the world are about to come
crashing into each other right
now one of the last things i want to
talk about here with these native
americans
is something else that's going to become
very confusing for
europeans when they find native
americans and that is the fact that
native americans have a different social
structure entirely
their gender relations are incredibly
different than what europeans are used
to
first of all especially in north america
a lot of
tribal leadership goes through the
mother
right because you can always tell
exactly who your mother was right she
gave birth to you that
is definable you didn't always know who
your father was
because women chose who their partners
were
and if a woman said hey look i'm not
happy with you anymore
that guy had to get out and leave
essentially a divorce
right so so women had a lot of power
they they are the ones that actually own
the homes the men didn't
the men own their own tools their
weaponry right clothing
but women own the kind of the day-to-day
mundane features of life the baskets the
the cookware
all of that the clothing and the the
blankets
those are all owned by the women they
often had
a big say on what the society did
what the tribe did because their input
was absolutely critical
who's going out growing a lot of the the
community's food
women are right who's helping harvest it
and cook it
women are who gets to decide if we're
actually going to war
well sure men are going to do the
fighting in this society
but by the same token women because
they're going to have to feed those
troops they're going to have to
be the ones holding down the community
when the men are away fighting
they could say no we're not doing it and
they're they could essentially
veto going to war so think about kind of
that as well right when when europeans
run into native americans
here here are native american women that
actually
own the home they're the ones that the
men seem to be looking to for leadership
sometimes
the women seem to be in charge the women
are out working in the fields
europeans can't make sense of that
can you think about those stories you
know things that you should have read in
the textbook
about women in europe at this time right
in the 15th and 16th centuries
women don't get to tell their husbands i
want a divorce
uh even if their husband's cheating on
them doing horrible things
they can't divorce their husbands it's
just not allowed
they have to just accept whatever's
happening to them right
women can be sold off by their parents
in european culture
to help further the family gain can't
happen in a native american society
the woman gets to decide who her sexual
partner is who she's going to be married
to
right so it's it's amazing if you stop
and think about it once again
native americans are living much more
like what we expect to be normal today
and yet when europeans run into them
they're going to say this is all wrong
it makes no sense to us
that just isn't the way things should be
but yet some europeans could recognize
this system worked
this picture here in on this slide is
done by
a protestant settlers in the
northeastern part of what is today the
united states
right in new england colonies this guy's
name is roger williams he's one of these
puritans that comes over to set up these
religious communities in the new world
and when he goes out and meets these
native americans he realizes something
yeah they're doing things different
right back home in europe women don't go
out and work in the fields that's men's
work right
but he does realize it works for them
these native americans have a system
that works
he said in one of his uh journals that
there are no beggars among them
and stop and think about what he means
there what is what does it mean to be a
beggar what is somebody
that begs for things right
let's think about that for a second
in our society if somebody's a beggar it
means that somebody that doesn't have
food doesn't have shelter
maybe doesn't have any way to do those
things they're disabled something
on those lines right but roger williams
is saying they just don't have it
there's nobody like that in their
communities they take care of each other
their system is successful and yet
roger williams is going to be one of the
few europeans
that are going to acknowledge this for
the most part europeans are going to
look at this and say
these men are lazy they clear the land
and then they make their women
grow the food while they go off and hunt
and fish and have a fun time
well to europeans hunting and fishing is
a recreation
but to native americans it's absolutely
essential for their
for their food supply so the men are
clearing the land
getting it ready for cultivation then
going and supplementing that food
that the women are going to grow on that
land with other foodstuffs
once again working together but to
europeans it just seems chaotic it seems
wrong
and the opposite is true here as well
sometimes native americans are going to
go to europe
one group of native americans that goes
to paris france
they go to the capitol they go to the
king
of france and they they see his
his palace they see all the foods that
europeans have they see these huge
cities that europeans are making
and what the native americans noticed
was something that was obvious to almost
everybody in europe but they never
talked about
native americans said we noticed among
us some men
gorge to the full excuse me
we noticed among us some men gorge to
the full with things of every sort
so if you were rich you had all the food
you could possibly want
while there are other halves poor people
were beggars at their doors emaciated
with hunger and poverty
to native americans this made no sense
here are your people they're starving
and you who have everything give nothing
and yet europeans are going to look at
native americans and say you're the ones
that aren't civilized you're not doing
things the right way
today we would say what europeans are
doing 500 years ago
was incredibly wrong right we wouldn't
allow that to happen
at least on the the scale that it was
happening during that time
so what i kind of want to
think about here as we wrap this up is
this
if we didn't know what's about to happen
right after europeans and native
americans come crashing together
i want you to think about which one do
you think is the more successful society
which one is actually more civilized to
you
europeans who fight constantly with each
other
put you know wipe each other out
sometimes
have these rigid hierarchies that allow
some to have everything and
others to have nothing or native
americans who
try to give as much freedom as possible
to different groups of their society
that seem to be pretty successful
uh with limited personal wealth with uh
with limited uh resources in some cases
but seem to be thriving in this in this
new new world right
which one would you have thought was
going to do better here
which one would you think is actually
going to survive this encounter
honestly we would have said the native
americans if you stop and think back to
any of the early stories we remember
from our grade school days of first
second third grade right
the pilgrims only survived because
native americans helped them
the settlers at jamestown only survived
because they were able to get resources
from the native americans
so on its surface you would have thought
well these native americans really have
it going on
and they're going to be able to control
this situation and yet
the exact opposite happens and that's
kind of what we need to get into in the
next chapter is
why are europeans going to be able to
discount native americans so
so completely and push them out of the
way
so efficiently it doesn't look like it
should be that easy
so uh kind of in a recap here right
what we kind of want to remember going
forward especially in this part of
what's going to eventually become the
eastern portion of north america
a native american society is very
different than what europeans
are expecting any use to right lands
owned by the community
not individuals makes it hard to get
land from native americans because they
don't understand that concept of
ownership
of self-ownership right women in native
american societies
have a lot of different roles to play
and have a lot more authority than women
do
in european societies at the time right
which is also going to be confusing for
for for europeans it's going to make it
easier for them to say this group of
people is uncivilized right they're lazy
they don't know what they're doing and
we
really need to show them the right way
to do things
but also keep in mind and this will be
important going forward
it's not a paradise in and of itself
here in north america
there is conflict there is war uh native
americans
see each other sometimes as a
potential threat these europeans that
are showing up in small numbers at first
dying from starvation don't seem like
much of a threat
when the neighboring tribe has hundreds
of people that they could come and try
and take your land from you
so those issues those differences
between native americans are going to
have huge consequences down the road
and it's going to allow europeans who
are sometimes outnumbered
really be able to kind of control the
situation
and take advantage of that division
between native american tribes
and exploit them for their own benefits
all right
we're going to leave it there that's it
for you today right i gave you enough to
think about in these two videos
and we'll pick it up from there in our
next video on chapter 2. thank you
