Native Americans
The last ice age reached its last cold period around 17,000 BC. It was so cold that the sea level was about 120 meters lower than today. The water was bound in the form of a frozen ice sheet that reached from Alaska in North America down to about the level of the present-day state of Wisconsin and was hundreds of meters thick. This is why this last ice age in North America is called 'Wisconsin Ice Age'. In western Europe, the same ice age is called the 'Würm Ice Age'.
During this time, a large, contiguous, dry and largely ice-free area the size of Australia was created between western Alaska and eastern Siberia: Beringia. The contiguous land mass was only possible because the isthmus between Siberia and Alaska, i.e. the Bering Sea and the Chukchi Sea, is the largest shallow sea in the world with an average depth of around 80 meters. Due to the lowering of the sea level by 120 meters, the sea floor became visible and a contiguous land mass was created.
Asia and North America thus formed a large contiguous land area. Beringia stretched about 4800 km from east to west and about 1600 km from north to south. Changes in the jet stream over Alaska and Siberia could be the reason why parts of 'Beringia' had temperatures that were up to 8 °C higher than today (!). On the almost ice-free Beringia (see picture below), people lived together with woolly mammoths, steppe bisons, saber-toothed tigers, ice age camels, antelopes, woolly rhinoceroses and other animals. Animals and people would not have been able to survive on the thick ice.
People probably moved from north-eastern Siberia to Beringia at the beginning of the last cold period because there was enough food there to survive the cold spell.
Up to 10,000 people could have lived on Beringia. The latest findings show that about two thirds of Beringia's territory was in present-day Siberia and about one third in present-day Alaska.
Today, DNA sequencing can prove that the people of Beringia even came from distant areas such as the island of Hokkaido in northern Japan. Like the Native Americans, the Japanese have black hair, dark eyes and a dark skin color.
Finds in central Texas, southern Idaho, and Oregon dating back to about 20,000 BC indicate that the first humans probably traveled by boat along the west coast of North America to the mouth of the Columbia River on the border of Washington and Oregon, and from there probably traveled inland along the Columbia River. At this early time, the thick ice sheet was still there and prevented a southward march over land.
By about 11,000 BC, the first humans are believed to have marched south along an ice-free corridor roughly in the middle of the Great Ice Sheet, gradually arriving in various areas of the United States. By about 8000 BC, the Great Ice Sheet had disappeared completely.
Even the first immigrants to the American continent left us drawings on field walls or stones. Petroglyphs are created when figures are carved into rock and stone walls and are up to 12,000 years old. Many of the petroglyphs show hunting scenes.
Petroglyphs are found primarily in the southwest of the United States, such as New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada and Colorado. Idaho and can be admired in most of the well-known national parks there.
A few examples of places where petroglyphs can be admired:
Utah: Newspaper Rock, Canyonland National Park, Nine Mile Canyon, Fremont Indian State Park, Goblin Valley State Park, Parowan Gap Rockart Petroglyphes
New Mexico: Chaco Culture National Historical Park
Colorado: Mesa Verde National Park
Nevada: Valley Of Fire National Park
Petroglyphs can also be admired at the Deer Medicine Rocks in Montana. In my opinion, the most beautiful petroglyphs can be admired in the Valley Of Fire in Nevada.
In addition to petroglyphs, there are also pictures painted on field walls or stones. This rock art is called pictographs. Yellow, black or red paint was used to paint figures on field walls or stone blocks. Pictographs can also be found in some of the places mentioned above. But I have also seen beautiful pictograms at the Missouri Headwaters in Montana. Today, there may be more petroglyphs than pictograms (probably because the paint applied to pictograms has weathered over the last few millennia and is no longer visible today).
I have the best memories of the pictograms in Fremont Indian State Park in Utah. The special thing about these great pictograms is that they are yellow, black and red! Also worth seeing are the pictograms at the Carrizo Plain National Monument, about 60 miles north of Santa Barbara in California, and at the Chumash Painted Cave State Historic Park, a few miles north of Santa Barbara in California.
The first hunting weapons were the classic spears and long spears called the atlatl. The first use of which can be traced back to around 10,000 BC. The oldest atlatl in North America (-to date) has been found in Celebration Park along the Snake River in southwest Idaho.
The atlatl is a device used to throw javelins. It extends the throwing arm, allowing the spears accelerated with it to reach a much higher speed of over 150 km/h than spears thrown by hand.
The word 'atlatl' (pronounced AT-lat-uhl) comes from the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs, when the Spanish conquered the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, at the beginning of the 16th century. Tenochtitlan was located on the site of today's metropolis of Mexico City.
As the population of large Ice Age mammals declined over time, people adapted their hunting methods to more successfully hunt the smaller, more agile animals. The deer was by far the most important game animal, accounting for 60 to 90 percent of all animals killed.
Around 9,500 BC, the large mammoths and other big game animals in North America became extinct.
However, not all big game animals fell victim to the rising temperatures at the end of the last era. The bison survived this transition. The bison of the Ice Age was much larger than the bison we know today. It could not run as fast as today's bison and had larger horns.
The people who lived in North America from around 13,000 BC (the end of the last ice age), to around 8,000 BC, are called Paleo-Indians.
The Palaeo-Indians traveled in small groups, lived on large game animals, and were constantly on the lookout for food.
Around 6,000 BC, the sea level and temperatures reached roughly the same level as today. Beringia had long since disappeared due to rising sea levels.
The Native Americans hunted bison by driving the bison over high cliffs, called 'bison jumps'. A 'bison jump' is a cliff formation that indigenous peoples of North America used to hunt and kill large numbers of bison. The "bison jump" was used to hunt other game as well, such as reindeer.
There were about 60 'Bison Jumps' in then United States. While most were found in Montana and Wyoming, they could be found also in Idaho and Texas.
Many of the 'Bison Jumps' in the United States can be visited, such as the "Madison Bison Jump" in Montana west of Bozeman. Here you learn that hunters spend days steering the bison in the desired direction without the bison realizing it.
Maybe a half mile or so before the Bison Jump, the bison at the back of the herd were panicked with fire and the bison started to run. A bison will run until it runs out of breath. The trick at this stage was to ensure that the bison did not break free during the race and ran towards the Bison Jump. To do this, people stood to the left and right of the herd and used blankets and loud shouts to ensure that the bison did not stray off course. This was dangerous work, which certainly cost people their lives time and again.
Once the bisons were driven over the cliffs, warriors killed the surviving and the women then began slaughtering the bison.
From around 500 BC, the Native Americans used bows and arrows for hunting and during conflicts. The Pictograph on the right depicts a hunting scene with arrow and ground.
Horses did not yet exist on the American continent. Horse-like animals died out after the end of the last ice age. It was not until the Spanish brought horses back from Europe to North America around the year 1500.
Carved stones made of flint, obsidian or other materials were used as tips for arrows and spears. However, this material was not available everywhere and was traded along with salt, nuts, hides and other goods. Obsidian or flints were carved with great skill. The resulting edges of obsidian can be much sharper than those of polished steel!
The first humans arrived in what is now the United States in very small groups. The groups had no contact with each other due to the vast distances. This gave rise to a wide variety of different language families in different areas of the United States.
Over the next millennia, these small groups grew larger and began to spread, and different language dialects began to develop. The core of these dialects, however, were still the same. An example is the Algonkin dialect.
It is interesting to note that these language families are not always found in contiguous areas. This is the case, for example, with the Cheyenne and Arapaho: These two tribes belong to the Algonkin language family and are found on the prairies, but the Algonkin language family is centered in the northeastern United States.
The reason for this is as follows: The Suhtai lived around 1650 in the north of Lake Superior in what is now Canada. The Tsitsistas lived in southwestern Minnesota at this time. Both tribes belonged to the Algonkin language family. These two tribes met around 1665 at the Coteau des Prairies (plateau in the flat prairie of eastern South Dakota, which extends into southwestern Minnesota and northwestern Iowa) and merged.
This group marched west together from then on, first to North Dakota, from there to the Black Hills and then further west to western Kansas and eastern Colorado, where they allied with the Lakota Indians and fought together against the U.S. Army from about 1850. This group is known to us today as the Cheyenne.
With the beginning of the end of the last ice age from around 17,000 BC, the huge ice sheets slowly began to melt. More and more, the way became clear for the first people on the American continent to march south.
Vikings, probably the sons of 'Erik the Red', left Greenland in 1022 AD. They sailed west, landed in the northernmost part of Newfoundland and established a small settlement with six houses. In other words, almost 500 years before Columbus (apparently) discovered America.
In 1961, after years of searching, Norwegian researchers Helge and Anne-Stine Ingstad finally discovered the place where the Vikings once landed in North America. In the 'Sagas' of the Vikings (diaries), it is mentioned that the Vikings landed at a second location, but this has not yet been found.
The Vikings did not stay long and left the settlement again after a few years. Why is not clear. Perhaps the Vikings went in search of a place where iron ore was in high demand? Whatever the case, in 2016 a young American researcher in southwest Newfoundland at Point Rosee found signs that Vikings may have been in the area.
Is this the second place where Vikings went ashore?
After 1000 AD, the climate in North America began to change and became warmer. This warm period led to larger harvests that could feed more people and lasted from around 1050 AD to around 1200 AD.
At times, high cultures developed in two places in particular: At the site of present-day St. Louis in the state of Illinois, the Native Americans living there built the city of Cahokia seemingly out of nothing. Where previously around 1000 people lived, Cahokia was now home to 10,000 people, and with the surrounding villages probably around 20,000 people. The most impressive buildings were mounds. Mounds are mounds of earth built from millions of baskets of plant fibers filled with clay and earth. 'Monks Mound', the largest mound, is still around 34 meters high today and originally had a volume that came close to the small pyramid in Giza (Egypt)!
In Chaco Canyon in the state of New Mexico, the Pueblo Bonito, a multi-story, "D"-shaped stone house with around 700 rooms, also appeared out of nowhere. Around 10,000 gardens were cultivated in the Chaco Canyon valley, growing corn, pumpkins and sunflower seeds, among other things. In the cities of London and Paris at that time, there were no multi-story buildings and certainly no buildings with so many rooms!
Around the year 1200 AD, people began to leave Cahokia and Chaco Canyon again. By around 1400 AD, there were no more people living in Cahokia and Chaco Canyon.
In 1492, Christopher Columbus disembarked on what is now the island of San Salvador in the Caribbean. From there he sailed to Cuba and then to the east, where he landed on Haiti (Hispanola). Here, with the help of the local Native Americans, he built 'Navidad', the first European settlement in the New World.
Columbus thought he had arrived in India and therefore called the local Native Americans 'Indians'. This name is still used today, but is of course incorrect. Today, the term 'Native Americans' or 'First Nations' is more appropriate. The latter name is mainly used in Canada.
With the three ships, Columbus also brought European civilization diseases to the New World. The bodies of the Native Americans knew no defense mechanism for these diseases and were severely decimated by the diseases. Before the arrival of the Europeans, 400,000 to 1 million people lived on Hispaniola; in 1542 there were still a few hundred.
The civilizing diseases of the Europeans had a devastating effect on the Native Americans. In the following centuries, tribes that had a lot of contact with Europeans (French, English, Americans ...) were considerably reduced in their population. Example: The Mandan were living in North Dakota when they first came into contact with French missionaries in 1780. Over the next few decades, the Mandan would repeatedly suffer pandemics because they built their villages of earth houses along the Missouri River, an important trade route for both the Indians and the Europeans. SO the Mandan repeatedly came into contact with Europeans and contracted the European diseases of civilization, especially pox and measles. In 1833, after the outbreak of the last major pandemic among the Mandan, 84 of the original 10,000 Mandan were still alive.
This corresponds to a death rate of 99.16%! In comparison, about 1.1 million Americans died during the Covid pandemic from 2020 to 2022, which corresponds to a death rate of about 0.33%.
For the Mandan, this meant that they could no longer defend themselves independently against attacks by the Lakota Indians living in the area and normal cultural life collapsed. The traumatized Mandan joined the Hidatsa living with them. The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara now lived on the 'Three Affiliated Tribes' Reservation near New Town in western North Dakota.
After Columbus, the Spaniards were the first Europeans to set out to conquer the New World. They followed rumors of gold treasures, silver, precious gemstones and water that promised eternal life, and spared no expense in their incredible expeditions to get their hands on the riches:
In 1539, Hernando de Soto landed in Tampa Bay in Florida with 600 soldiers. He marched on foot through the north of Florida, then through Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi to the area of Little Rock in Arkansas, where De Soto died. From there, the Spaniards marched further south to Texas as far as Austin. Using boats they had built themselves, they traveled on the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico and from there to Veracruz in present-day Mexico, where they met other Spaniards. Behind them lay a journey of over 6000km! De Sota's march had devastating consequences for the Indians: It is believed that the diseases introduced resulted in the death of many Indians, causing the entire balance of power and cultures east of the Mississippi River to collapse.
In April 1540, Francisco de Coronado set off from Mexico on another expedition to find the legendary seven cities of Cibola. Cibola, it was said, consisted of houses with golden roofs and walls studded with precious stones. Coronado marched as far as Arizona with 600 men, conquered pueblos of the Zuni and conquered almost the entire southwest of the USA. He crossed the north of Texas and marched to Kansas. In the area of Wichtia, Coronado realized that he would not find any gold or precious stones and returned.
In the spring of 1542, Coronado arrived back in Mexico City with around 300 men and a march of around 3500 kilometers.
In 1521, Hernan Cortes conquered Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztecs near present-day Mexico City, at the second attempt. Cortes was actually only tasked with searching for areas where Spanish colonies could be founded. However, when he heard from Indians in the Veracruz region about the legendary wealth of a city in the hinterland, he forgot his mission and set off in search of this city. During the conquest, he was supported by thousands of Indians who had been subjugated by the Aztecs and hoped for freedom if Tenochtitlan was conquered. During the conquest, Cortes had almost 1000 Spanish soldiers under his command.
Up to 25 million indigenous people could have lived in Mexico before the arrival of the Spaniards. 80 years later, after several epidemics, around one million indigenous people were still living in Mexico!
Other Spanish conquerors were:
- Ponce de Leon (1513 and 1521, Florida)
- Panfilo de Narvaez (1527, Florida)
- Cabrillo (1542, California)
- Juan de Onate (1598, Mexico, New Mexico, Arizona)
After Columbus at the beginning of the 16th century, the Spanish came to Florida in particular for cheap labor. The people living there from the tribes of the Calusa, Tekesta, Tocobago, Ais, Timucua and Apalachi were forcibly loaded onto ships and taken to Hispaniola (today's Dominican Republic and Haiti).
On Hispaniola, the Native Americans were used for all kinds of forced labor because the Native Americans living there were infected with European civilization diseases such as pox and measles were already largely extinct.
The non-removed Native Americans in Florida also suffered the same fate. Gradually, the local population was decimated.
The only evidence of the original presence of these Native Americans in Florida were their structures, such as mounds (earth mounds or mounds with shells).
The English were the first non-Spaniards to successfully establish themselves on the American continent. In 1607, an English ship landed in the Chesapeake Bay in what is now the state of Virginia.
The English founded the settlement of Jamestown and successfully asserted themselves against the Powhatan and other tribes in the following years.
The 105 people consisted of 35 gentlemen, 40 soldiers, a doctor, a clergyman and a number of craftsmen and workers. In the first year, the English were only able to survive thanks to the help of the Indians, because too few fields had been cleared and planted with grain. Despite this, only 35 Englishmen survived the first winter.
The settlement was repeatedly attacked by Native Americans who belonged to the Powhatan Confederacy. The English then began to surround their huts with a protective palisade and finished building the fort.
The Frenchman Samuel de Champlain began building wooden houses on July 3, 1608 near what is now the town of Quebec. On July 3, 1608, Samuel de Champlain began building wooden houses near the present-day city of Quebec on the site where the Iroquois village of Stadacona once stood. Champlain found many walnut trees on this site, which he first had to cut down.
The Quebec settlement consisted of 3 wooden houses. The houses were surrounded by a wooden pallisade. 3 small cannons were intended to protect the fort from attacks from the river.
Under the leadership of Samuel de Champlain, the French managed to survive, develop steadily and expand the fur trade with surrounding tribes such as the Montagnais, Algonkin, Huronen and Abenaki. 16 of the 24 men did not survive the first winter and died of Skorbut and other diseases.
Just one year later, the few Frenchmen fought together with the Hurons, Montagnais and Algonquins against around 200 Mohawks (Iroquois) in the Battle of Ticonderoga in what is now New York State.
As a result, the Iroquois were the fierce opponents of the French for decades.
The Dutch also managed to gain a foothold in the New World. In 1614, the Dutch built a fort near present-day Albany in the state of New York Fort Nassau, in 1624 Fort Oranje was built on the same site. Around May 1624, a first small colony of 30 settlers was established in the south of what is now Manhattan on behalf of the Dutch West India Company. From 1625, Peter Minuit was governor of the colony.
Minuit probably traded with the Canarsie (Lenni Lenape), who lived in southern Manhattan at the time, took the island in exchange for about 60 guilders worth of goods (about $1200 today).
During the war with the English, the colony temporarily came under British rule from 1664 to 1673, before finally becoming British in 1674. From then on, the Dutch no longer played a role in the colonization of the area that is now the United States.
Photo credits
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beringia
https://www.derstandard.at/story/1319181798328/aussterben-sechs-grosse-eiszeit-tiere-sechs-unterschiedliche-schicksale
https://64parishes.org/entry-image/hunting-with-an-atlatl
https://theconversation.com/forensic-evidence-suggests-paleo-americans-hunted-mastodons-mammoths-and-other-megafauna-in-eastern-north-america-13-000-years-ago-205556
https://billingsgazette.com/outdoors/article_4e999565-721d-5d5c-b004-1fb35164b47b.html
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https://www.britannica.com/biography/Peter-Minuit
https://www.vizettes.com/kt/native-americans/languages.htm
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