Inuit Cultures Northwest Coast Cultures Adena Hopewell Region Cahokia Anasazi Region Hohokam Region Mogollon Region Aztec & Mayan States Cerro Sechin Machu Picchu Inca Empire Cuzco Tiwanaku This map highlights some of the main early Native American cultures In the Ohio River valley between 700 B.C. and A.D. 500 people of the Adena and Hopewell cultures built clusters of large burial mounds such as the Serpent Mound in Ohio which survives today In the Mississippi floodplains the native peoples formed complex societies They created mud and thatch temples on top of flat earth pyramids Their largest town Cahokia in Illinois contained more than one hundred mounds and may have been home to thirty thousand people CONTACT WITH EUROPEANS Around A.D. 1500 European ships reached North America The first explorers were the Spanish Armed with guns and riding horses they took over land and forced the Native Americans to work for them The Spanish were followed by the British Dutch and French who were all looking for land to settle and for opportunities to trade When Native Americans met these Europeans they came into contact with diseases such as smallpox and measles that they had never experienced before At least one half of all Native Americans and possibly many more than that were unable to overcome these diseases and died
Guns were also disastrous for Native Americans At first only the Europeans had guns which enabled them to overcome native peoples in fights and battles Eventually Native American groups obtained guns and used them in conflicts with each other Native American groups were also forced to take sides and fight in wars between the French and British Horses too had a big Cheyenne chief Little Robe 1828 1886 photographed in 1871 He became a chief in 1863 influence in Native American lifestyles especially on the Great Plains Some groups became horse breeders and traders People were able to travel greater distances and began to hunt buffalo on horseback Soon horses became central to Plains trade and social life The Cheyennes acquired horses around 1760 The horses made their buffalo-hunting lifestyle much easier and the tribe soon became very powerful At the end of the 1700s people of European descent began to migrate over the Appalachian Mountains looking for new land to farm and exploit By the middle of the nineteenth century they had reached the west coast of North America This expansion was disastrous for Native Americans The Cheyennes were not affected by white settlers until the middle of the nineteenth century Then in 1849 many Cheyennes caught a disease called cholera from Europeans A few years later the United States began a war with the Southern Cheyennes
RESERVATION LIFE Many native peoples were pressured into moving onto reservations to the west The biggest of these reservations later became the U.S. state of Oklahoma Native Americans who tried to remain in their homelands were attacked and defeated In 1869 the Southern Cheyennes were forced to move to a reservation in Oklahoma Despite resisting for several years the Northern Cheyennes were also forced onto the reservation but some of them were allowed to move to a reservation in Montana in 1884 New laws in the United States and Canada took away most of the control Native Americans had over their lives They were expected to give up their cultures and adopt the ways and habits of white Americans It became a crime to practice their traditional religions Children were taken from their homes and placed in boarding schools where they were forbidden to speak their native languages Despite this persecution many Native Americans clung on to their cultures through the first half of the twentieth century The Society of American Indians was founded in 1911 and its campaign for U.S. citizenship for Native Americans was successful in 1924 Other Native American organizations were formed to promote traditional cultures and to campaign politically for Native American rights John Wooden Legs and President Lyndon Johnson in 1967 John Wooden Legs 1909 1981 was the tribal president of the Cheyennes from 1955 to 1968 In 1975 he founded Chief Dull Knife College in Lame Deer Montana
Ojibwe Oneida Mohawk Seminole Cherokee Creek Inuit ARCTIC SUBARCTIC Cree Ojibwe GREAT BASIN NORTHWEST COAST THE ROAD TO SELF GOVERNMENT Despite these campaigns Native Americans on reservations endured poverty and very low standards of living Many of them moved away to work and live in cities where they hoped life would be better In most cases they found life there just as difficult They not only faced discrimination and prejudice but also could not compete successfully for jobs against more established ethnic groups CALIFORNIA PLATEAU This map of North America highlights the main Native American cultural groups along with the smaller groups or tribes featured in this series of books Comanche Sioux Cheyenne Blackfoot Shoshone Nez Perce Shoshone Apache Navajo Hopi NORTHEAST SOUTHEAST GREAT PLAINS SOUTHWEST Aztec In the 1970s the American Indian Movement AIM organized large protests that attracted attention worldwide They highlighted the problems of unemployment discrimination and poverty that Native Americans experienced in North America The AIM protests led to changes in policy Some new laws protected the civil rights of Native Americans while other laws allowed tribal governments to be formed Today tribal governments have a wide range of powers They operate large businesses and run their own schools and health care 9
