North American Indians. Place of Indians in social and cultural life

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John Manchip White, a renowned historian, describes in detail the life and customs of the tribes of North American Indians. You will follow the difficult path of their nomadic life, learn about how they hunted and cultivated the land, trained and raised their children, said goodbye to their relatives forever. White's book is an inexhaustible source for studying the cultural heritage of a people who, despite all the difficulties, managed to preserve their national identity.

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The given introductory fragment of the book Indians of North America. Everyday life, religion, culture (D. M. White) provided by our book partner - the company Liters.

Hunters

Our excursion into the history of American Indians, dating back about 30,000 years, clearly shows the inconsistency of the simplistic popular image of the Indian, which was created by Hollywood and the show "In the Wild West." At the same time when Europe followed its historical path through the rise and fall of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome and the Middle Ages, diverse and distinctive cultures arose and developed in North America, in no way inferior to the Celtic and Saxon ones.

However, by 1500 AD. NS. the ancient Indian cultures of the east and southwest were in a state of decline and went through a stage of radical changes. The heyday of Indian culture in its original, so to speak, untouched form has passed. Europeans were surprised to find deep, deeply rooted cultural traditions among the local indigenous population, which, however, were in a state of decline. Later, the Americans will try to present the Indian only as a savage, because, firstly, his way of life was alien and incomprehensible to white settlers, and secondly, it was beneficial for them to denigrate the native inhabitants of America in order to have an excuse for ousting the Indians from their lands and the actual destruction of the Indian lifestyle. However, in our time, such tricks no longer work. It should be admitted that the invented and implanted image of the Indian had nothing to do with reality: he was not a dark nomad, but a master with a high distinctive culture, who at one time reached undeniable heights in art, crafts, architecture, and agriculture. Europeans came to America when Native American culture was at the bottom of its cycle; and who knows what new heights it would have reached in its development, when the "swing" would have gone up, had it not been for the intervention of the Europeans?

When Europeans arrived in the New World 500 years ago, it was completely impossible to get a clear picture of the life of the Indians, even if at that time they were familiar with all the modern scientific and technical achievements of anthropology. The picture was too complex and varied. If now the surviving 263 Indian tribes, including the smallest, speak 50-100 languages, then 200 years ago there were about 600 tribes that spoke at least 300 languages.

One might get the impression that the study and classification of Indian languages can serve as a good basis for the appropriate classification of Indian tribes and peoples. However, a careful study of the languages of the North American Indians only complicates the task, since in these languages communication took place between certain tribes many years ago, much has changed since then, especially since various factors related to the development of cultures are still superimposed on all this.

Nevertheless, it can be assumed that there were several main linguistic groups associated with the corresponding groups of the ancient indigenous people of the United States and Canada, which were later spread by them throughout the North American continent. Linguists do not have a single methodology for identifying the main language groups and their exact names. There are several approaches, therefore, in order not to go into the intricacies of this very complex topic, we will limit ourselves to the designation of the most common language groups (see map on p. 51).

The main linguistic groups are: Athabaskan (or Athapaskan), distributed mainly in Canada and having a branch in the southwestern United States; Algonquian, covering the entire continent from west to east; hokan Sioux, or Siwan, common in the southeastern and central regions of the United States. Three smaller groups can also be noted: the Eskimo-Aleutian, covering the Arctic regions of Canada; the Californian-Pacific, common in the West Pacific, and the Uto-Aztec, which encompasses the most remote desert regions of the western United States. This division into six language groups is, of course, very general and deliberately simplified. It cannot convey all the complexity of linguistic scatter and interweaving; in these groups, a number of subgroups are distinguished: Muskog, which includes a number of important languages found in the southwest; the Caddoan, covering the southern regions of the Plains and North and South Dakota; Shoshonskaya, common in the territory of the Uto-Aztec group. The amazing diversity of Indian languages is evidenced by the fact that the few Pueblo Indians living in New Mexico today speak three different languages: Tanoan, Keresan and Zuni. At the same time, the Tanoan language is divided, in turn, into three more: Tiva, Teva and Tova, and the Keresan language is divided into Western Keresan and Eastern Keresan.

It is not surprising that such a situation complicated verbal communication between neighboring tribes, even those related to each other. During the meetings, we had to communicate in sign language, as if a Bolivian had to communicate with a Bulgarian, and a Norwegian with a Nigerian. At the same time, Indian sign language was very fast, complex and capacious, which made a strong impression on white travelers. Linguistic diversity also influenced cultural differences, which prevented the unification of Indians in the fight against white Americans. The factor of the language barrier between them was added to the factor of the small number and fragmentation of individual tribes.

Let's leave, however, the language problem, which causes many difficulties even for specialists, and return to those five regions that we have identified as the main areas of ancient cultures. Let us remind you that these were: southwest; the forest zone of the eastern regions, which included the Great Lakes region, as well as the northeast and southeast; the Great Plains and Prairie Region; California and the Great Basin Region; northwest and adjacent plateaus. Consider how the Indian tribes developed in these areas in the period after the discovery of America by Columbus.

Again, it should be noted that there are several points of view and methods on the issue of isolating the main areas of the Indian tribes and the impact of ancient cultures on their formation and development. Thus, the outstanding anthropologist K. Wissler twice proposed various versions of his own classification: in 1914 and 1938. Such luminaries as A.L. Kroeber and H.E. Driver.

The number of the main areas of distribution of cultures, especially significant for the development of Indian tribes, varied at different times from seven to seventeen. Kroeber, in particular, believed that there were seven main regions, and they, in turn, were further subdivided into no less than 84 smaller regions, which once again indicates how diverse the Indian tribes were, how extensive in scope, although and with different densities, they were scattered throughout the continent and how complex and varied the relationship between them was. The diagram shown in this book on p. 54, simplified; its main advantage is that you can work with it and it is easily perceived by eye. I have tried to indicate some of the most important tribes, some of which no longer exist today. Of course, given that there were about six hundred tribes, this list cannot claim to be complete and exhaustive. These tribes are descendants of the ancient inhabitants of America, but it is extremely difficult to trace the direct line of communication of a particular tribe with their ancestors. Moreover, only one of the Indian languages had a written language. It was the language of the Teal tribe; thanks to the efforts of the outstanding representative of this tribe, the Sequoia, the Cheirok alphabet was created, which, along with other monuments of the Cheirok written language, became available in the early 1920s. XIX century. The sequoia was a fur and fur trader; he graduated from a missionary school. As a result of an accident, he was injured. In history, he will forever remain as one of the outstanding representatives of Indian culture.

Thus, no monuments of Indian writing have survived, with the exception of the above; this was superimposed on the constant movement of many tribes across the continent, which often led to the mixing of different tribes and made it difficult to identify the line of their cultural kinship and traditions. Only in those areas where tribes lived a sedentary life for a long time, it is possible to trace who was the direct ancestor of a particular tribe. So, if we take the southwest, which is characterized mainly by a sedentary life, it is possible with a high degree of probability to assume that the current Pima and Papago Indians are direct descendants of the ancient people of the Hohokam culture, and most of today's Pueblo Indians are descendants of the Anasazi people. However, even in the sedentary southwest, it is often very difficult to clearly trace such a connection.

So, we present the proposed scheme of the settlement of Indian tribes in the five main regions of the North American continent, excluding the Arctic regions and Mexico (but in no way underestimating the importance of the latter).

1. Southwest

Main tribes:

pima, papago, hopi, pueblo, maricopa. Later, the Navajos, Apaches and Yaki appeared here.

2. Forest zone of the east

a) Tribes of the East Algonquian language group:

Abnaki, Penobscot, Mohican, Pennacock, Massachusetts, Wampanoag, Narraganset, Pequot, Delaware, Pohatan.

b) Confederation (or Union, League) of Iroquois tribes:

seneca, cayuga, oneida, onondaga, mogauca. The Tuscarora later joined in.

c) Tribes of the Central Algonquian language group:

Ojibwe, or Chippewa, Ottawas, Menominees, Santi, Dakotas, Sauk, Foxes, Kickapu, Winnebago, Potawatomi, Illinois, Miami.

d) Tribes of the southeast ("Five civilized tribes"):

screams, chikasawas, choctavas, cherokees and seminoles; also caddo, natchez (natchi), kupava.

3. Great Plains Region

Main tribes:

Blackfoot, Piegan, Cree, Acin or Grovanthra, Assiniboine, Crow, Mandana, Hidats, Arikara, Shoshone, Jute, Gosyuts, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Pawnee, Ponky, Omaha, Iowa, Kanza, Missouri, Kiowa, Osage, Osage.

Siouxing Tribes:

a group of eastern Sioux tribes (Dakotas):

mvdecantons, vapekuts, sissetons, vapetones.

Group of Plains Sioux tribes (Tetons and Lakots):

oglala, brulee, sans-ark, blackfoot, miniconju, ohenonpy.

The Viciela Sioux or Nakota group of tribes:

yanktons and yanktonai.

4. California and the Great Basin region

Main tribes:

shushvapy, lillue, selish and kuteni (flat-headed), yakima, ker d "Alena, nepers, bannocks, payutes, shoshone, yutes, chemukhevy, valapai, havasupai, mohave, yavapai, yuma, kokopy, yurokuny, viychi, vintuy pomo, yana, maidu, patvins, mivok, kostanyu, salinan, yokut, shumashi.

5. Northwest

Main tribes:

Tlingits, Haida, Tsimshian, Haila, Bela-kula, Hilsuk, Nootka, Maka, Quinolt, Chinook, Tilamuk, Kulapua, Klamath, Karok, Shasta.

Here are about 100 tribes out of the known six hundred. Some of them were very numerous and occupied an impressive territory; others, on the contrary, are few in number and were content with a very modest territory. At the same time, direct dependence did not always exist. Often there were cases when a small number of tribes moved (roamed) over a very vast territory, while large ones led a sedentary lifestyle on a small plot of land with an area of only a few square kilometers. So, if in the Plains area there were about 100,000 Indians, that is, the average population density was about 3 people per 1 sq. km, then in the regions of the northwest a similar number was squeezed into a small strip of the Pacific coast, and the average density was 30–35 people per 1 sq. km. km. The tribes of the East Algonquian language group living on the Atlantic coast also numbered about 100,000 people, with an average density of 12-15 people per square kilometer. km. According to available data, 750,000-1,000,000 Indians lived in pre-Columbian America. Moreover, the majority avoided the barren, windswept central regions and tried to settle along the ocean coast - both in the east and in the west: after all, the waters of the oceans, like the rivers flowing into them, were full of fish, so necessary for food. Even those who lived in the central regions of the continent tried to stay, for the same reason, closer to rivers and bodies of water. One of the many communities that lived in the central regions were the Pueblo Indians of the southwest. They tried to settle along the Rio Grande and its tributaries, which were then wider and deeper than they are now. This anciently populated area was home to about 35,000 people and was recorded the highest average population density on the North American continent - 45 people per 1 sq. Km. km.

Regardless of where the Indian lived and what tribe he belonged to in terms of number, he had an occupation that captures him entirely. It was a hunt.

The life of the Indians was almost entirely dependent on the production of food, and the main source of it was hunting. The hunting instinct was passed on to the Indian from generation to generation from distant ancestors who hunted in the vast expanses of Siberia. It was this instinct that led the ancient hunters to the North American continent, where, despite climatic changes, there has always been a vast territory teeming with an inexhaustible supply of potential hunting trophies.

The Indians were not vegetarians. Although they included fish and vegetables in their diet, the main role in it was played by a high-protein food - meat, which was obtained by hunting a wide variety of animals: both large and medium and small. Although, as we will see in the next chapter, the Indians had agricultural skills, they never mastered the art of domestication and breeding of domestic animals to the same degree as the Europeans. It was only a century ago that white Americans taught them to raise goats, sheep, and cattle; True, I must say that the Indians quickly and well learned all this and today are good livestock breeders and shepherds. But in most cases, even in modern history, after the death of several agricultural crops, the life and survival of entire tribes depended almost entirely on hunting.

The Indian tribe was usually divided into several detachments, which each hunted on its own territory, so that the tribe gathered in full force either in case of war or on religious holidays. Each detachment had its own structure and its own commanders; contacts between the detachments of the same tribe were so rare that sometimes the Indians of different detachments spoke different languages and dialects. The size of the detachment was usually 100-150 people, but often it was less. When the number of the detachment began to grow and reached the considered critical point of 200 people, the detachment was divided into smaller ones, since it was difficult to feed many people. Several families, led by a young man with a strong character and leadership abilities, separated, formed their own detachment and went in search of luck. Thus, the division of the clan took place: some of the relatives remained, some left. Sometimes this happened with the blessing of elders, sometimes as a result of a quarrel or civil strife.

In the new community, hunters played a major role. Based on historical data, Wissler calculated that a community of 100 required a minimum of 1.8 kg of meat per day per person. To obtain such an amount of meat, a group of the best hunters in the community, consisting of 5-10 people, had to kill four deer or one red deer daily, or three or four elk or two bison weekly. It was a very daunting task. As Wissler notes in this regard, "the Indian had no time to chill." It is not surprising that Native American boys learned from childhood to use a miniature bow and arrow, and their first toys were knives and spears, to which they were taught from the moment they began to walk. The hunter, who had a keen eye, a steady hand, and was light on his feet, held a leading position in the community.

It was hunting that shaped the character of the American Indian and gave him a unique originality and originality. Of course, not all Indians were the same. The Indian, who led a sedentary lifestyle and was engaged in agriculture, differed from his nomadic brother, who spent most of his life in the saddle, both in outlook on life and in temperament. Ruth Benedict, in her famous work Models of Culture, applied the concept of Nietzsche and Spengler to the Indians, dividing them into two types, each of which is most associated with one of the two principles formulated by these philosophers. Those who are characterized by the "Apollo" beginning are cold-blooded, self-controlled, disciplined, independent, are "cold, sober-minded people of the classical cultural make-up." Others, characterized by the "Faustian", according to Spengler's definition (and according to Nietzsche - "Dionysian"), the beginning - hot, passionate, restless, aggressive, acting impulsively and intuitively and never leaving their world of dreams and illusions, which is for them the most important component of real life, "people of a romantic warehouse, full of hot live energy." Apollo people rarely, if ever, resort to stimulants of any kind; "Faustians", on the contrary, willingly use drugs and other stimulants to maintain the necessary ecstatic-energy level.

The life and life of the hunter affected both the carriers of the "classical" Apollo and "romantic" Faustian principles. The life of a hunter, full of difficulties and stress, feeling the constant burden of responsibility for the life support of his fellow tribesmen, had a very strong influence on the character of the Indians, developing seriousness and concentration, if not gloom and isolation. The hunt contained not only moments of joy and abundance, but also nervous and physical stress, isolation, sometimes loneliness, isolation from loved ones, work to complete exhaustion. Chasing wild animals on foot (horses, as we have already said, appeared later), and not for the sake of pleasure, but for the sake of the life support of fellow tribesmen, represented a heavy psychological burden of responsibility. It is enough to look at a photograph of any Indian taken before 1890 to be convinced of this. At the same time, hunting was not an ordinary mechanical work: it was considered a noble and highly respected business, worthy of a real man. Hunting contributed to the development of very important and useful qualities among the Indians - this is endurance, and supernatural in the eyes of others, calmness, patience and endurance, and, finally, an amazing feeling of complete unity with nature in all its complexity and diversity. For a successful hunt, it was necessary to subtly feel nature, to unravel its innermost secrets. It was the long-term pursuit of hunting throughout almost his entire life that sharpened and consolidated all the above-mentioned qualities in the Indian, developed in him truly phenomenal sensitivity, intuition and flair.

Most of the tribes chose places for camps and settlements so that it was convenient to hunt. Even those tribes that were engaged in agriculture tried to settle in those places where there were many animals that could be hunted. They usually hunted in the vicinity of their settlements, and when the number of animals in the area was significantly reduced, this became a signal that it was necessary to look for a new place of residence. Some tribes constantly followed herds or large groups of animals, just as today's Lapps follow herds of reindeer. Others made large hunting trips, leaving their permanent settlements for a while. Such expeditions were planned with the utmost care. When the harvest from the fields was collected and stored in storehouses, almost all the inhabitants of the settlement took part in this hunting trip, which could last for weeks or even months. On the march, they moved very evenly and in an organized manner, in a marching order. The roles were clearly assigned: there were scouts, porters, as well as the vanguard and rearguard. When they reached the hunting territory, where the animals rested and reproduced during the off-season, the most stringent internal regulations came into effect. Complete silence was to be observed, and anyone who frightened off an animal or tried clumsily to pursue it was severely punished by the tribal law enforcement. While the men hunted according to an elaborate plan in advance, the women and children gathered fruits, berries and roots. When a sufficient number of animals were obtained, the necessary preparations for meat and skins were made, all this was packed, like all hunting accessories, and people set off on the way back to their permanent settlement. Here, both dwellings and storage pits for food were put in order before their arrival and prepared for the winter by the part of the tribe who remained at home. Thus, conditions were created to calmly overwinter and rest during wintering.

Before the appearance of the horse, all such transitions were carried out on foot. But even with its appearance, not every Indian had a horse: only wealthy tribes had large herds of horses. In most tribes, horses were used in turn. However, even before the advent of the horse, the Indians invented a number of convenient devices that greatly helped along the way. Ever since the days of Siberian hunters, who had to hunt in the arctic regions with a harsh winter climate, the ancient Indians used sleds and sleds, toboggans and snowshoes, which were made either from a single piece of wood, or attached the upper part with leather straps to a base made of wood or bone. The sled was moved either by dragging or with the help of several dogs harnessed to a team. Dogs were the only pets domesticated by the Indians. However, the statement that they were tamed is most likely an exaggeration: most likely, wild dogs themselves came to a man and, figuratively speaking, tamed him themselves. On cold winter nights, seeing the lights of the Indian camp, they went to the people in search of warmth, food, shelter and companionship. In the countries of the Old World, dogs have been known to man since ancient times (for example, several breeds were bred by the Egyptians and Assyrians); in the New World, they have been serving man since 5000 BC. NS. The largest and most powerful breeds are found among the Eskimos and northern Algonquian tribes; these are, in particular, huskies and other breeds of sled dogs of the Arctic regions. The further south you go, the finer the breed was. For example, the Mexican chiaua and the hairless Mexican are almost dwarf dogs. The hairless Mexican has, for some reason, a very high body temperature, so in Mexico it is specially fattened and used as food as a delicacy. There is no doubt that North American dogs are mixed breeds with wolves and coyotes, with Indians often deliberately keeping wolves and dogs together from an early age to improve the breed. Indian children were often given wolf and coyote cubs so that the children would grow up with them and tame them.

Like the ancient Mexicans (as well as the Romans and Greeks), the North American Indians used dogs for food, although usually for ritual purposes. Sometimes dogs acted as an object of religious worship; they were solemnly sacrificed and buried, observing all the rules of the religious ceremony. In most cases, however, the dog was a working animal. It was often used as a draft force: it was harnessed either into a sled with a load, or into a drag - a device for transporting cargo made of wooden poles.

Later, a horse was harnessed to this device; the French, when they first saw this device, gave it the name travois. The wheel was brought to America by Europeans; active use of this most important technical innovation, along with others, greatly helped them in the conquest of the entire continent. The principle of the wheel was also discovered in ancient Mexico by some unknown genius inventor; however, the significance of this discovery was not understood and it was used only in the manufacture of children's toys.

Before the advent of the horse, lifting and carrying loads was carried out by people themselves. The Indians were familiar with the devices for carrying weight on the back; they also knew how to carry a load on their heads and used a special lining made of a piece of cloth or a piece of clothing that they put on their heads under a jug of water. The load was tied with a special twine at the base, and a ribbon of cloth was wrapped around the forehead - this supporting device has been known in the southwest since the days of the "basket-makers" period; it subsequently became ubiquitous throughout the continent.

One of the methods of transportation used by the Indians can really be called their "highlight" or, as athletes say, "crown" - is to move on the water using canoes, various fishing boats and many other varieties of small boats and boats. And on the lakes, and on the rivers, and on the waters of the ocean, one could see whole flotillas of skillfully made and decorated oar boats on which the Indians moved. Some of them were made of reed, like the ancient Egyptian papyrus ships. Others were sewn from leather, or hollowed out from the trunk of a tree, or made through an elaborate and artful process. However, the best boats of their kind were the Eskimo kayaks and umyaks made of skins. The Ojibweys, who lived on Lake Superior, built a 4.5 m long canoe in two weeks of hard work; men performed the main and most difficult work with wood, and women - related to sewing structures and cladding. The top of the canoe was covered with birch bark; the ribs, supports, rowers' seats and gunwales were made of white cedar, the floor was lined with pieces of cedar; the seams were sewn with pine roots, and the gaps were filled with pine resin. These boats were light enough - they could be carried from river to river or across rapids. Men sometimes had to carry the canoe to the water long distances. So, in the upper part of the state of New York, the famous Great Way passed, which consisted of two main routes along which boats were dragged between the Hudson Bay, the Atlantic coast and the Great Lakes region. These light boats could be used for other purposes as well. For example, they were placed above the smoke hole of the dwellings so that rain did not get inside. Nevertheless, these boats pale in comparison to the creations of the masters of the northwest, who were considered one of the most prominent shipbuilders of the ancient world. The Haida Indians built ships 21 meters long, which could carry up to 3 tons of cargo and up to 60 people. They were cut from one huge trunk of red cedar, decorated with both carved and painted drawings; they were controlled with the help of graceful ornamented oars.

Two such powerful ships could be connected by a wooden deck-flooring; in this case, they were used as a single combat ship. A flotilla of such ships, going at full speed, was a very impressive sight.

Canoes were used not only for travel, trade and fishing, but also for hunting to get closer to prey. In those areas where marals, elks and deer were found, they often had to be chased by moving on the water. Even the bison hunters in the southwest tried to swim closer to the herds using the wide rivers.

Maral, elk, Canadian deer, reindeer and bison were the largest of those animals that were hunted at that time, and their meat was also the most delicious and juicy. However, only the Indians who lived in the northern regions bordering the glacier could hunt them. It was very difficult to kill these large, under 2.5 m tall, animals, although the Indians owned the techniques of the ancient hunters, who had to deal with the woolly mammoth and mastodon twice as large in size. As for the abundant but now extinct bison (Bison antiquus), it was a giant, almost as large as a mammoth, and in fact, the bison that has survived to our days, belonging to the species Bison bison, is taller in height than the average Indian and possesses the same powerful and massive build as a related bull. These large animals could move quickly and tirelessly across ice, snow and the vastness of the tundra, and it took a lot of perseverance and endurance to catch up with them.

We will conclude our consideration of large animals with a bear - an animal even more wild and dangerous than those mentioned above. All Indians treated the bear with great respect. The grizzly bear (Ursus Ferox), who lived in the Rocky Mountains, was a giant, under 3 m tall and weighing 360 kg. He was able to drag a 450-kilogram bison carcass into his cave. The polar bear living in the Arctic regions had the same impressive dimensions. Although the other two species of copper - brown and black - were almost in size compared to the previous ones, they also possessed such qualities as resourcefulness and quick wit, constant readiness to fight, and also tremendous strength. After killing a bear on a hunt, the Indian performed a whole ritual over the slain beast: he asked for forgiveness from him, inserted a pipe with tobacco into his mouth, called him (or her) grandfather or grandmother, and tried in every possible way to appease the spirit of the dead animal. Hunters for large animals were completely dependent on the movement of herds of these animals and were forced to relentlessly follow them. At the same time, smaller animals were also hunted, including deer, antelope and wild goat. If today a hunter-athlete, armed with a rapid-fire rifle with a telescopic sight, considers these animals an almost elusive target, then it may seem simply incredible that an Indian of those times could catch up and defeat them, moving only on foot. In North America, there were three species of deer that lived in large numbers in Canada and the United States, and none of them was large in size. This is a common, or Virginian, deer; deer of mixed (hybrid) type; black tailed deer. Among the antelopes, there is an antelope with straight horns, resembling prongs or pitchforks in shape; and the most famous species of wild goat is the big-horned goat argali, the horns of which reach a length of about 2 m each and are wrapped in tight circles on both sides of the head.

The Indians also hunted other animals necessary for life support. Some went for meat, others were prized for their fur and were used to make clothes and various household items. For these purposes, wolves were mainly used (in North America there were five main types of them: gray, white, variegated, or spotted, marsupial and black); coyotes, or steppe wolves, foxes, including northern (polar) ones, wolverines, raccoons. Many other animals have also been used - you cannot list all of them. Let us name at least a hare, a wild rabbit, a weasel, an ermine, a mink, a marten, a badger, a skunk, a squirrel, a baggy rat, a prairie dog, a marmot, a beaver, a porcupine, as well as a rat and a mouse. Many different fragments of the famous Indian outfits were performed from them. Also, one cannot fail to mention the marine mammals that were caught by fishermen of both the Atlantic and the Pacific coast: whales, walruses, killer whales, sea lions, dolphins and sea otters.

Types of hunting weapons

What weapon did the Indians hunt? Considering the fact that we are talking about the period of the Stone Age, when all the tools were made by hand, we can say that the Indians created a very diverse arsenal, consisting of fairly skillfully made samples.

The Indians were originally able to skillfully handle a stone. It was used to make arrowheads and spearheads, axes and clubs (clubs). In ancient times, types of stone suitable for this purpose were in great demand, and trade in such types of stone was carried out on very large territories. Black obsidian, which was only mined in the southwest, was transported to the Mississippi Valley; brown flint from western Tennessee was transported thousands of kilometers from the mining site; flint from the Amarillo area of Texas was also delivered to locations far away in both the west and east.

The art of making flint tools is one of the oldest in the world. Throwing points used by hunters of the Clovis, Folsom and Scottsbluff cultures are in no way inferior in quality to those made in the 19th century: there is a tradition of 30,000 years. Flint tools were made all over the world at all times: they came to this both independently and as a result of the contact of different cultures. In any case, the North American Indians have achieved a high level of skill in this. They knew how to break a few fragments from the main body of the stone using another stone or a staghorn hammer. They also knew how to give these fragments the desired shape and how to process the working edge of the products even more delicately by gentle pressure using softer bone devices. At the final stage, sharpening and grinding were carried out, for which sand, sandstone and other grinding materials were used. In the northwest, shark skin was used in large quantities, which was a kind of analogue of today's sandpaper.

When points, scrapers, axes with and without notches (the latter are called Celts by archaeologists) were ready, they were either put on the shaft and the handle using a specially prepared hollow, or simply attached with belts made of leather or sinew. Sometimes the tips were also fixed with resin. Each tribe had its own favorite way of making tools. In the north, for example, in addition to stone, the bones of fish and seals or the antlers of deer, red deer and Canadian deer were used; after soaking this raw material in water, it became more pliable and easier to work with.

The main weapon of the Indian were spears of various types. A tip made of flint or bone was carefully sharpened and then burned on the fire of a campfire. Of great importance was the discovery of the possibility of using a spear as a throwing weapon: for this they began to use a smaller dart, as well as a spear thrower - atlatl, with the help of which the dart could be thrown with greater force and at a greater distance. Atlatl (this word is Aztec) was a short piece of wood with a flint or bone socket at the end, into which a spear or dart was inserted; he played the role of a lever that gave the spear and dart significant acceleration. Of course, it took a lot of time and effort to learn how to skillfully wield such weapons, but the Indians mastered and improved their weapons with no less persistence than the whites - their Colts and Derringers.

No one knows for sure when the bow and arrow began to be used in the New World. They were known in the Old World around 5000 BC. e., but appeared in America not earlier than 500 AD. NS. How the bow got here and which tribes were the first to use it remains a mystery, which, apparently, remains insoluble. In any case, the invention of the bow was of great importance and represented the same leap in the development of weapons as the transition from horse to tank. The "firepower" of the Indian, which for 30,000 years was reduced to a spear and a javelin, was greatly enhanced. Soon the Indians, like their "counterparts" in the Old World, were already skillfully making bows from the hardest and at the same time flexible types of wood, such as ash, yew and mulberry, using hot fire ash to shape the bow. Again, in different regions, onions were made with their own specificity, characteristic of the area. In many places, the bow was strengthened by inlaid fragments of bone or sinew; tendons or twisted fiber were used both as a material for the bowstring, and also in order to strengthen the bow both in the places where the bowstring was fastened and in the middle. Each tribe made arrows in its own way, using wood or reed and adding feathers of an eagle, hawk, buzzard or turkey to the plumage of arrows. A skilled archer could hit a moving target at a distance of 46 meters; One white American saw with his own eyes how, during an archery competition, an Indian fired eight arrows in a row at such a speed that the first of them had not yet had time to fall to the ground by the time the last was fired. The Plains Indians, racing at full gallop on the left side of the bison, hit him with their small, less than 1 m in height, bows right in the heart, while holding on to the horse only with the help of their legs.

A number of tribes also used other methods of hunting. For example, teal and mohawks used a tube about 2.5 m long to hunt in the forest and in the swamps, from which a small poisoned arrow with a Tartar plumage was blown out; tribes from Louisiana used a device called bola, which was a string or twine with pear-shaped "weights" fixed on it. Some hunters knew how to catch aeronautical birds, swimming up to them under water and breathing at the same time through a reed sticking out of the water or swimming among them, wearing a model with a bird image made of a pumpkin on their heads.

In some cases, almost the entire tribe took part in the hunt. For example, in the Great Basin region, women and children took an active part in hunting American hares with nets when too many of them bred. The hunters of the basket-maker period were skilled at weaving such nets. One of the nets found in the White Dog Cave (Black Mesa Mountain) was 73 m long, about 1 m wide and weighed about 13 kg. If we unraveled the twine skillfully knotted, then its length would be 6.5 km. Such a net was pulled along the mouth of the canyon, driving prey into it with the help of dogs. The "basket makers" mummified the dog and buried it together with the owner, so that she would accompany him and serve him in the other world as well as in this one.

The Indians very skillfully used all kinds of hunting traps and baits. They dug camouflaged pit traps and hung bait traps on tree branches. The tribes joined forces to drive a large herd of animals to where they became easy prey. In the previous chapter, we already talked in detail about how the hunters of the Stone Age drove the buffalo to the edge of the gorge and forced them to jump down. The Indian hunter learned to sense the terrain as well as the animal he hunted. In pursuit of a deer, the hunter put on his skin and "put on" his head with horns to mix with the herd. He did the same when hunting a bison, and in a similar way he masked a horse if he hunted on horseback. The Indians were also adept at reproducing sounds made by animals and birds, including calls for mating and the calls of babies and chicks.

The Indians were not only excellent hunters, but also skillful fishermen. Like today's fishermen, they often fished just for fun, which allowed them to focus, be alone with themselves, and feel a special connection and closeness to nature. For a long time, anglers in the Great Lakes have used rods and lines very similar to those of today; they made beautiful floats and spinning rods that would decorate any shop selling fishing tackle and accessories today. The Indians also used a technique known to all boys today: they lowered their hand with an open palm into a mountain river and held it motionless until a fish crashed into it, and then they could catch it. Both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts were regularly caught and feasted on lobsters, crabs, oysters, shellfish and sea anemones.

For large-scale fishing, the Indians skillfully built dams, dams, artificial shoals; they also expertly made reed and willow fish pens. The trapped fish were struck with spears, clubs and arrows, and were also caught with the help of baskets. A purse seine made of climbing plants was used; it took a lot of people to fish in this way. Some tribes of the southeast used a special plant that was non-poisonous, but had a narcotic effect on the fish; the roots of the plant were thrown into the water to "lull" the fish.

In any hunt, the process of dividing the prey played a very important role, no less than the hunt itself. This was taken very seriously, and here tribal and clan traditions played an important role. The carcasses of smaller animals were delivered to the settlement - and there they were divided, and the carcasses of large animals were divided and cut right on the spot. The best parts of the carcass went to the one who killed the animal, which was determined by a special mark on the arrow in the animal's body, and the rest of the parts went to those who helped him. Part of the booty was set aside for people who held a special position in the tribe, as well as for religious ceremonies. The animals were skinned, and the cut meat was placed in special bags of skins, reminiscent of today's tarpaulin sacks - the early French settlers gave them the name parflesh. Hunters delivered parfleshes (on their backs or on drags) to the intermediate camp, and from there to the main settlement. Often, women and children came to the place where the prey was originally formed to help deliver it faster. Both the processing of carcasses and the delivery of meat had to be done skillfully and quickly so that the meat would not spoil. If there was too much meat, then a tribal feast was arranged, and the remaining meat was dried and a food concentrate was made, a kind of "canned food" that was called pemmican.

We must not forget about one more factor that played an important role in the life of the Indians: about rain. In Hollywood films, the weather is always clear and sunny, as if the Indians and cowboys live in some idyllic country, but in real life, the rains were a real curse for both Indians and cowboys. The latter especially suffered from them, since they had to be in the open air in any weather. To avoid diseases (and many cowboys suffered from a "professional" disease - inflammation of the joints due to dampness), they constantly had with them improvised raincoats, capes, and sometimes large umbrellas. As for the Indians, the rain could spoil fresh supplies of meat, as well as the bowstring, make the spear slippery, leather clothing hard and tough, spoil the skins, and also soak the tent dwellings and belongings through and through, as a result of which they become moldy. Therefore, in order to have a complete picture of the life of the Indians, one should be able to imagine their life not only in clear, but also in bad weather.

The appearance of the horse

The advent of the horse made not only hunting and everything connected with it more successful, but also greatly facilitated their whole life for the Indians in general.

The times when people washed their feet before they bleed during tedious long journeys are a thing of the past. K. Wissler wrote in this regard: “The appearance of this new means of transportation made more changes in the life of the Indians than the invention of the automobile today ... Their horizons expanded, life became much more diverse and interesting, brought new experiences and impressions; there is more free time; finally, the spread of sedentary activities has slowed down ”.

Unfortunately, although this event made it possible to obtain food on a much larger territory than before, and also brought a fresh stream to life and made it more interesting and varied, it also had serious negative side effects. Now, during one hunting season, the tribe easily covered the distance of 800 km, while earlier it was able to cover the distance 10 times less. This mobility led to an increase in invasions on the territory of neighboring tribes and, as a result, to an increase in hostility and civil strife. The tribes, which were already belligerent and plundered, have now become even more aggressive. This event prompted a number of tribes engaged in agriculture to abandon this laborious and caring occupation; gripped by the rage of "horse fever", they took to the high road and took the path of robbery and robbery. However, the worst thing was that the most licentious and unbridled tribes, in which the destructive, "Faustian" principle prevailed, began to fiercely and furiously exterminate the buffalo just in order to give vent to their destructive energy, so to speak, for pleasure. This senseless slaughter severely reduced livestock and severely undermined a vital source of food for the Indians.

It really was a fever, one might even say a kind of insanity! The Indians, especially those living on the plains, literally lost their heads because of the horses. And if in 1650 they had only a very small number of these animals, then twenty years later it has increased dramatically. Horses were brought to North America by the Spaniards: in 1540, the Viceroy of New Spain allowed Vasquez de Coronado with his detachment to cross the Rio Grande and make an armed raid across uncharted territory north of Mexico. Coronado hoped to find the fabulous "seven cities of Cibola", where palaces and even houses were supposedly made of gold, and their wealth could be compared with the wealth of the Inca empire recently conquered by the Spaniards. Coronado did not find Cibola, as she simply did not exist.

The campaign of Coronado was accompanied by heavy fighting; he and his party had to endure all the hardships of the strenuous and difficult transitions until they reached the territory of modern Kansas. From there, Coronado returned to Mexico City, fatally injured by being kicked by a horse.

Perhaps some of the horses from Coronado's squad escaped and remained on the prairies. The same probably happened during the new campaigns of the Spaniards, who led respectively Camuskado in 1581, Espeio in 1581-1582. and Castagna de Coca in 1590-1591. But most of the horses in North American territory were the result of a major campaign by Juan de Onate in 1598, during which the province of New Mexico was finally formed with the capital in Santa Fe.

End of introductory snippet.

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MINISTRY OF BRANCH OF RUSSIA

Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Professional Education

"Kostroma State Technological University"

(FGBOU VPO "KSTU"; KSTU)

Test

on Cultorology

on the topic: "The way of life of the ancient Indians: traditions, ceremonies, rituals and holidays"

Performed

Mochalova Olga Radmirovna

1st year student

Kostroma 2014-2015

Work plan

Introduction

1. Indians and their way of life

2. Traditions of the ancient Indians

2.1 Household traditions

2.2 All children are our children

2.3 Natural Native American parenting

3. Rites of the American Indians

4. Rituals-customs of the ancient Indians of the Mayan tribe

4.1 Cruel Indian customs

4.2 Bath rituals of the Indians

5. Indian holidays

Conclusion

Bibliography

Vconducting

Of course, the theme of Indians and cowboys has attracted boys at all times! Their traditional battle cry could be heard at one time in every courtyard. Bright coloring, serious confident faces of Indian warriors, beautiful strong horses - this is the atmosphere that beckons with its exoticism. And of course, the Indian theme is firmly established on the wide screen! Goiko Mitic is a legend of cinema, thanks to this outstanding actor, the world learned many stories from the life of the Indians, about the enmity between the red brothers and the pale-faced!

And if we talk about culture, then there is no doubt that the Indians have always been distinguished by unity with nature, a deep understanding of the laws of the universe and harmony ... It is not for nothing that the legends of the Mayan tribe still live on. Modern man, despite all his progressive adaptability, has not been able to approach the level of understanding the processes occurring in nature, as much as these patterns were understood by the ancient tribes.

And what do the children of the whole world have in common with the Indians? Chocolate, popcorn, gum and the ability to run freely with war cries in any space! All of these delicacies were invented by the Indians: popcorn - having discovered the ability to "explode" in the grains of maize, chewing gum from the juice of hevea (rubber), and the word "chocolate" was first heard from the Mayan tribe.

Despite such amusing inventions, the eyes of the Indian are always sad, they are sad people, and even when looking at photos in search engines, you will rarely find a smiling indigenous American. But incredible natural depth and an amazing desire to preserve their history - this can be found in any Indian.

Many nationalities in the modern world are gradually losing their traditions. Many of us do not know the history of our families. The efforts of folklorists to restore bit by bit the scripts of the holidays, songs, epics, legends, folk recipes "go into the sand": nothing goes further than writing books and talking, traditions do not return to everyday life.

And the look of an Indian from any portrait or photograph speaks of his pride in his great people, because his greatness lies in knowledge, in that they, in spite of everything, pass on to their grandchildren and thus preserve every action and skill.

1. Indians and their way of life

Indians are the common name for the indigenous population of America (with the exception of the Eskimos and Aleuts). The name arose from the erroneous idea of the first European navigators (Christopher Columbus and others) at the end of the 15th century, who considered the transatlantic lands discovered by them to be India. According to the anthropological type, the Indians belong to the Americanoid race. The total approximate number of Indians in America is over 30 million people. (mid-1960s estimate).

About history: According to genetic studies at the University of Michigan, the ancestors of modern Indians and Eskimos moved to America from Northeast Asia through the so-called "Beringian Bridge" - an ancient wide isthmus between America and Asia on the site of the present Bering Strait, which disappeared more than 12 thousand years ago. years ago. Migration continued between 70 thousand years BC. NS. and 12 thousand years BC. and had several waves independent of each other. The level of culture of the first settlers corresponded to the Late Paleolithic and Mesolithic cultures of the Old World. The settlement of the Indians on both continents and the development of new lands by them dragged on for many millennia.

Before European colonization (began in the 16th century), most of the tribes of North and South America were at various stages of the communal-clan system: some were dominated by the maternal clan (Iroquois, Muskogi, Hopi, many tribes of the Amazon River basin, etc.), while others formed a paternal clan (tribes of the northwest and southwest of North America, many tribes of South America). Some peoples were at various stages of the transition from a generic to a class society. The Indians of Central and South America (Aztecs, Mayans, Incas) already lived in class societies.

2. Ancient Indian traditions

Indians are settled throughout South and North America, from Alaska to Argentina, some of them live on reservations (example: the Navajo tribe), some are a full-fledged citizen of the country (Maya, 80% of Guatemala's population), and others still since then they live in the Amazon jungle (Guarani) and have no connection with civilization. Therefore, the way of life is different for everyone, but the traditions of raising children and attitudes towards adults are preserved in an amazing way.

The Indians of North America are mainly Catholics and Protestants, the Indians of Latin America are mainly Catholics. For most of the Indians of South and Central America, pre-Hispanic beliefs are inextricably merged with Christianity. Many Indians have traditional cults. Now these are, as a rule, theatrical performances, accompanied by mask dances, including during Catholic and Protestant holidays.

Each tribe has its own dialects, many speak two languages, their own and English, but some tribes do not even have their own script, therefore the elders are the most respected adults and beloved children in the tribe. They teach wisdom, preserve and tell stories and legends, know the subtleties of any skill - weaving carpets, making dishes, fishing and hunting. They monitor the observance of all rituals, and in wild tribes even the daily routine.

2.1 Household traditions

The Indians have preserved the tradition of sitting down in a circle and sharing with everyone what is in their hearts. Some tribes gather in a circle on certain days, while others daily share everything that happened during the day, ask for advice, tell stories and sing.

A song for an Indian from childhood is like air, they can talk to nature through songs, express their emotions and convey the history of a whole nation. There are ritual songs, holiday songs, and the Kofan tribe has its own song for everyone.

The same "figVam" that drew Sharik from the cartoon "Prostokvashino" on the stove and that we build by playing Indians is not actually a wigwam, but a portable tipi dwelling used by the steppe nomads.

A wigwam is a hut on a frame, covered with straw. Visually, this dwelling looks like a large haystack and is traditional for the Indians of North America. The tribes of the Amazon live in such wigwams or houses on stilts covered with thatch or leaves. The peoples of the Indians on the US reservations, for example, the Navajo tribes, who are closer to civilization, live in houses similar to our ordinary Russian log cabins or huts.

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that women and children usually build wigwams. In the wild tribes, almost all work in the village is considered female - cooking, sewing, raising children, all agricultural work, finding firewood. The male task is to hunt, to train daily in military affairs in order to confidently use a spear, a bow and a tube with poisonous arrows. Because the jaguar fang necklace is a document, the only document of the Indians living in the jungle, attesting to his fearlessness. Only boys become shamans, the shaman teaches many in the village and transfers his knowledge, but after his death, one of his young patients becomes a shaman, and not a student, because it is believed that together with the energy of treatment, all the shaman's knowledge is transferred to the patient.

The main food is that obtained from hunting, and in families who are engaged in agriculture, the main dishes are potatoes, cereals, rice, chicken, turkey and, of course, all types of legumes, favorite dishes of pumpkin and corn. Sweet maple syrups and dried wild berries occupy a special place in the diet of the Indians.

indian life ritual tradition

2.2 All children are our children

The attitude towards strangers in the tribes differs, only "white" for all Indians are definitely undesirable guests. And as for intertribal and clan relations, for example, for kofans there is no concept of their own and other people's children at all. Kofan parents take the name of their firstborn and use it until their wedding. Then they take the name of the next unmarried children. The study of family relationships in this case becomes quite difficult.

2.3 Natural Native American parenting

Even those Indian women who live in large cities adhere to the natural course of childbirth. More often they give birth at home, sometimes in the presence of an obstetrician or in a hospital, observing the basic principles of natural childbirth - without a cesarean section, stimulants and anesthesia. Tribes in which the standard of living does not allow giving birth with the help of an obstetrician, and even more so in a hospital, childbirth takes place in sand or water, often a woman gives birth alone. The Indians feel a great affection for children and take great care of them. According to people who have studied Indian manners and customs for a long time, "in the attitude of parents to children, the best traits of the character of the Indians are manifested."

From birth, children are present at any activity of their parents, the baby is worn in a scarf, a mantle (a special sling for wearing not only children, but also food, any things), or in a portable crib made of wood or cane made by the father.

According to the researchers, some tribes did not allow children to drink colostrum and gave the breast only when a steady stream of milk appeared. Children always have access to milk, at any time of the day or night they are not denied feeding and they drink the mother's milk until the milk runs out. Even if an Indian woman has given birth to several children in a few years, the older ones are not weaned.

Indian women rarely punish children, but they early involve them in work, believing that there is no better way to learn about life. From an early age, children are taught that being noisy and noisy is very bad, that they must respect their elders. Therefore, the children of the Indians are not capricious, not loud and not crying, very independent and friendly.

Nothing is forbidden to children, and adults are so confident in them that nothing happens to children. The relationship between parents and children is so close that they really are one. The kids themselves know what they need, and Indian parents allow them to receive and taste life, to live in unity with nature and its laws.

Now Indian "natural parenting" is a whole science that gained popularity in America and Europe in the 70s. Jean Ledloff, who made an expedition to the Indian tribes, was so amazed by what she saw that she devoted her whole life to studying the Indian “methods” of raising children, wrote the book “How to Raise a Happy Child” and became the founder of the so-called “natural parenting”.

Before Ledloff, Dr. Benjamin Spock reigned in the world of pedagogy, everyone read his work and "raised the children according to Spock" - fed by the hour, talked about the lack of connection between the health of the child and the type of feeding, did not spoil, observed the daily routine, much prohibited and restricted the child believing that the child should have authority. The new theory, Jean Ledloff, turned the idea that with a child you need to be strict and restrained, wean you early, not indulge in whims and set your own adult rules. Ledloff, on the other hand, watched the Indians and saw that they had the opposite, and there were no happier children.

3. American Indian rites

The origins of American Indian holidays are lost and come down to us in scattered representations.

Most of the holidays celebrated by the Indians were directly related to religious rites and traditions. Among the American Indians, animalism and totemism were widespread, that is, belief in the animality of the surrounding world and natural phenomena and the worship of a sacred totem animal - for each tribe.

That is why all the holidays were timed to coincide with some special state of nature. Most often, these states were the days of the spring and autumn equinox, the days of the solstice, full moon and new moon. So, it is known that the Indians celebrated the holiday of the revival of the world, similar to the Christian Nativity of Christ - December 25, after the end of the solstice days, when the sunny day increases. Such a countdown of the new year was associated with the "living" sun, which, dropping low to the ground, could be eaten by spirits.

Each tribe had its own totem animal - a patron. Celebrations were also held in honor. Each such holiday had a structure, rituals, traditions.

In fact, this is not even a holiday, but a day when the necessary rituals were performed.

The main protagonist of any ritual was the shaman. He conducted ceremonies, communicated with spirits, expelled evil forces. He was also a doctor: it was believed that human disease is the result of bad thoughts, actions that attract evil beings to themselves, into the human body.

To heal a sick person means to expel malice from the body along with those evil spirits that have settled there.

Unfortunately, American Indian culture, along with holiday traditions, did not reach us in full.

The Spanish conquistadors, who in 1700 began the conquest of America, introduced violent changes to it.

Over time, traditions were increasingly exposed to the influence of other cultures - English, Dutch, Spanish.

Until our time, those miserable remnants of the once integral and beautiful culture of the indigenous population of America have survived only thanks to recreations - territories assigned to the former masters of the continent.

4. Rituals-customs among the ancient Indians of the Mayan tribes

Despite the fact that the Mayan civilization disappeared centuries before the arrival of the conquistadors, information about some of the Mayan religious customs still survived to this day. This happened thanks to the Yucatan Indians, close Mayans and who managed to preserve the most important customs of the Indians. The information recorded by pioneers in the middle of the 16th century allowed scientists today to get an idea of all the major customs of the ancient Maya and other tribes of America, such as the Aztecs and Incas. Most of the ancient customs of America that have survived to this day are religious in nature. For example, it is known that the beliefs of the late Maya contained "baptism".

Imagine how surprised the Catholic missionaries were when they witnessed these Indian customs with their own eyes. As in the customs of the Old World established thousands of years ago, the Indians sprinkled water on the child, giving him a name. Diego de Landa, in his works "People and Gods of the Maya," wrote that the priest held a child in his arms, like a Catholic bishop. In addition, the Mayan customs contained the ceremonies of absolution and the sacrament. During such services, bread was shared between all the participants in the ceremony. The Spaniards, who were the first to arrive in America, were also surprised by the presence of crosses in the attributes of the Maya religion and their descendants. Weddings were blessed with such crosses. By the way, a man and a woman were not allowed to live without a blessing, the only exceptions were widows and widowers. The modern Maya inherited much of the culture of the Old World. The Spaniards, who settled side by side with the descendants of the ancient Mayans, saw with their own eyes the customs of the Indians, described some of the most significant celebrations. So, May 16 is the day of the blessing of water. In Catholic Europe, St. John, who was the patron saint of the water element. March 8 in the religion of the Indians is the birthday of the mother of the White God.

4.1 The cruel customs of the Indians

While in Christian beliefs it is the birthday of the Virgin Mary. The Mayan religion says that the White God was born on December 25, which needs no explanation. The first settlers and researchers of the Mayan civilization noted the addiction of the descendants of the ancient Indians to purity and incense. So in Mayan cities and villages, almost every day was accompanied by an abundance of all kinds of smells, from fragrant herbs to exotic fruits and flowers. And important Indian customs and ceremonies were always accompanied by preliminary cleanings, symbolizing the purification and preparation of the soul for the celebration.

4.2 Bath rituals of the Indians

Hygiene was no stranger to the ancient Indians. Moreover, various Indian tribes (sometimes even neighboring ones) were at completely different stages of cultural and social development. However, the culture of one form or another of the steam bath existed in almost all the indigenous peoples of Central and North America: the highly developed Maya and Aztec tribes, the slightly less developed Mixtecs and Zapotecs. The first mention of ancient Indian baths dates back to 900 BC.

The Indians used these baths not only for direct washing, but also for ritual sacraments and consecrations, as well as therapeutic and prophylactic procedures: in the steam baths, the sick were healed, childbirth was carried out, etc.

Baths for Indian tribes have become a fairly common social phenomenon. During the construction of palace complexes, Indian architects necessarily allotted space for the arrangement of baths. Also, almost every Indian settlement had a "city public bath", and sometimes mini-baths were equipped by individual families for private use.

After Columbus discovered a new continent and the active expansion of the Spanish conquistadors to uncharted lands, the colonialists began to actively plant their cultural values on the indigenous population of America. The changes also affected the baths - the newcomers from the old continent could hardly understand the craving of the tribes for bathing rituals. Yes, and in Europe itself in the Middle Ages, they did not actively monitor their own hygiene, on the contrary, they practically refused to bathe (the Spanish queen was proud of the fact that she allowed her body to be “desecrated” with water only twice in her life - the first time at birth, the second time before own wedding). And bodily joys were not approved in a society that cultivated, first of all, the purity of the soul, and not of the flesh.

In addition, the active imposition of Christianity presupposed a struggle against all manifestations of paganism, and the colonialists believed that the baths were one of the places of worship of the aborigines for local gods and idols. The Indians, in their bath rituals and sacraments, often used incense, special "sounding shells", healing herbs. There were also special prayers and chants.

All this led to the fact that the conquistadors introduced the strictest ban on baths (up to the death penalty), but they did not succeed in completely eradicating these rituals and customs. After some time, baths again became a normal phenomenon in colonial America, and Europe, which had grown wiser in terms of cleanliness and hygiene, even began to adopt bath traditions.

In the language of the ancient Mayan Nahuatl Indians, the word "temazcal" means "hot stones" ("hot steam from stones"). It should be noted that the indigenous patroness of treatment and health was also called Temascaltietl by the natives.

The Indian bath was built of rough volcanic stones and, as a rule, had the shape of a smooth truncated cone with a diameter of about 3 meters at the base, so that several people could freely fit in it. The height of the cone was at the level of average human height. A narrow window was left in the roof for the draft of smoke. The entrance to the bathhouse was usually located on the south side, and it was rather narrow and was closed by a reed "door" in order to economically use the blowing heat.

Inside, at the opposite end from the entrance, there was a stove, which gave quite an acceptable heat. Steam, similar to the Russian bathhouse, was formed after splashing a small amount of water from a special jug onto the stove or glowing stones of the wall near which the stove stood. The water in the jug was infused with medicinal herbs.

Over time, exposure to the steam resulted in profuse sweating. Used Indians and corn-leaf brooms. Wealthy Indians and leaders often used the services of special bath attendants: often they were dwarfs or hunchbacks, who, due to their small stature, could freely wield brooms and other attributes of bath rituals in a fairly low room. It was also considered chic of those times to use persons of the opposite sex as vapers (and mostly only men were steamed). Sweat was washed off with water from jugs, and ablution took place on a special mat.

The Indians believed that the unification of the spiritual energies of all participants in the bath ceremony contributed to the creation of a single powerful energy channel for communication with the gods. Through this channel, an exchange of energies took place - everything negative was given, positive and positive turned out, secret knowledge and secrets of the gods were revealed.

Visited Temazcal was considered reborn. Indeed, three conditions inherent in the womb are preserved there: it is dark, warm and humid in the temazcal.

5. HolidaysIndians

Ritual holidays of the American Indians are associated with the most important events in the life of each member of the tribe (birth, maturity, wedding and death), with animals and birds, as well as dedicated to agriculture and various agricultural crops.

Celebrations associated with puberty and initiation into men and women are especially solemn and impressive. For modern Navajos and Apaches, the procedure for boys and girls entering adulthood lasts for four days. The girls are specially dressed up so that they look like the beautiful Turquoise Woman. They cook cornmeal and take part in equestrian competitions. Both boys and girls dance along with the characters in the masks of the gods, at the end of the festive dance, they themselves put on masks. Throughout the fourth day of the festival, the entire tribe participates in non-stop chants that continue throughout the day.

Of all the ritual celebrations for the Indians, the most important were those related to animals and birds. If during the ritual dance the Indian was decorated with feathers or fur of a bird or animal, considered sacred to his family, then he, in contact with this sacred creature, as if let his spirit in and thus strengthened his inner strength.

Unlike the whites, the Indians, like all primitive peoples, considered themselves inferior creatures in comparison with animals and birds, since they are faster and more vigilant, they have a sharper hearing and a more developed sense of danger.

Holidays associated with agriculture and various agricultural crops are characterized by the fact that the Indians considered the plant world to be as much a part of nature as the animal. Like people, nature around was born, flourished, faded and died. These phases corresponded to spring, summer, autumn and winter. Each of them was marked by holidays dedicated to it.

Special rituals were dedicated to plowing the land, sowing it with seeds, their successful ripening and harvesting. Special rituals were carried out to induce rains, ward off drought, ensure a rich harvest and minimal losses during harvest. Typically, each major crop had its own festival: Pumpkin Festival, Bean Festival, Acorn Festival, Strawberry Festival.

The most important of all agricultural rituals was the Corn Festival, followed by the Corn Dance. The Indians deified corn. When referring to her, she was called "mother" and "father". A number of holidays were dedicated to her: Festival of freshly harvested corn, Festival of green corn, Festival of young corn, Festival of ripe corn.

If the Dance of the Corn was the main ritual of the agricultural tribes, then among the hunters of the region of the plains, the Dance of the Sun was the main and obligatory ritual. It was a very spectacular and complex ritual, carried out all over the place from Manitoba (a province in Canada) in the north to Texas in the south.

Very often it not only lasted four days, but it was also preceded by four days of preparation. In most cases, the Dance of the Sun was combined with the Dance of the Bison, since it was the hunt for the bison that was the main source of food for the Indians.

And the North American Indians have a New Year's tradition of celebrating this holiday with a large company, with a huge fire in the center of the village. All residents dance with sticks with feathers in their hands. At some point, the feathers are set on fire, and there is general jubilation. Immediately thereafter, 16 men carry out a large red ball and lift it to the top of the pillar. This is considered a symbol of the birth of a new sun - the beginning of the New Year.

Conclusion

We see that the ancient tribes of the Indians have existed since ancient times. They do not betray their customs and traditions, which do not allow their unusual life to fade away. Even in our real life, there are some traditions of everyday life, such as raising children and celebrating the New Year. I know that the ancient Mayan tribes that have survived to this day still live in wigwams and food preferences remain unchanged.

Bibliography

1.http: //indianculture.ru/

2.https://ru.wikipedia.org/

3.http: //www.liveinternet.ru/

4.http: //holidays-mira.rf /

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Culture and life of the ancient population of North America.

About 15-10 thousand years ago, during the Ice Age, life was in full swing around the centers. Here archaeologists find tools made of stone and bone, as well as the bones of animals that these people used for food. The "first Americans" were hunters for large, now fossil animals: first a mammoth, a woolly rhinoceros, then a deer, a bison. The gathering of edible plants supplemented their diet.

They had throwing weapons - javelins and spears, bows and arrows. They knew how to use fire, build round, hide-covered temporary dwellings. They hunted mammoths, musk oxen, elk, bears, bison and elephants. To create tools, like their counterparts in Western Europe, they widely used bone. It was from bone that they made arrow shafts straighteners, throwing tips, needles. They sewed fur with such needles. From fur, they sewed practical and comfortable fur overalls, as well as suits consisting of several items: pants, parka boots with a rounded bottom edge - "tail". It is this detail of the cut of the park - a long cape, or "tail", which testifies to the connection of the ancient Americans with the population of ancient Eurasia, in particular, the population of the Siberian taiga - the tungus.

In Folsom in southwestern North America, archaeologists have found the bones of 23 fossil bison and stone laurel throwing points. These items belonged to people who lived in North America about 15 thousand years ago. Traces of hunters of large fossil mammals - bison, horses, sloths - have been found throughout the present United States.

About 4 thousand years ago, the first farmers appeared in the southwestern United States - cochis. The first experiments in the cultivation of corn, beans and vegetable marrows date back to this time. At the same time, a man of the American archaic used fish resources and edible aquatic plants. Among the household items of cochis, baskets for collecting edible plants, grain graters, knives, drills, scrapers are known.

About 2 thousand years ago, Cochizi farmers were replaced by people from Mexico Hohokam and Mogollon. The creators of these cultures were not only industrious farmers, but also manufacturers of magnificent ceramics, varied in shape and skillfully decorated with geometric decor.

The utensils used in everyday life were very simple. These are bowls and vessels with a flat bottom, varying in size and shape. The painting is located on the outside along the walls of such vessels. But many ceramic vessels were made for cult purposes. For example, bowls in which sacrificial food made from cornmeal and other gifts were offered to the deities were often decorated with intricate geometric patterns from the inside. These bowls and vessels were placed in the graves with the dead.

Ornamental compositions on ceramic vessels consisted of complex geometrized images of sacred animals and birds. Scientists have suggested that these birds and animals were worshiped as totems. The compositions on the inner parts of the vessels were often inscribed in a circle or triangle and were usually placed in the central part at the bottom of the vessel. The drawings were applied mainly in black and red paints, which, perhaps, symbolized the idea of life and death.

Representatives of these cultures built irrigation structures in their fields, erected places of worship on earthen platforms and lived in houses buried in the ground, the walls of which were lined with bricks made of unbaked clay, and the floors were wooden planks.

Around 200 AD, basket-makers replaced the Hohokam and Mogollon culture in the Southwestern United States. They were called so because they made waterproof baskets that were shaped like a pot. In such vessels, the basket-makers cooked food on hot stones. The basket makers lived in caves.

In the canyons of Arizona, in the valleys of the Mencos and Rio Grande del Norte rivers, in the Colorado canyon, famous for its archaeological monuments, there lived people who were called cliff-dwellers (in translation from the English. Inhabitants of cliffs, rocks). Like their predecessors, the basket-makers, the creators of the cliff-dwellers culture lived in rock crevices, under rock canopies and in caves. But there they built entire cities. Their houses of adobe brick were created not only by people, but also by nature itself, they squeezed into rocky depressions, grew in breadth and depth, piled on top of each other. In fact, it was one large house in which a community lived, consisting of several large families - clans. Each family had its own sanctuary, which was a round structure and resembled a well. The Indians called such ancestral shrines kiva.

In the period of 300 BC. NS. - 800 AD NS. In the valleys of the Ohio and Illinois rivers, people lived who learned how to find native copper and process it in the cold way. They created a culture that scientists call the Aden and Hopewell cultures. In the middle reaches of the Mississippi, pre-state associations and pre-urban culture arose. A feature of this culture was temple architecture in the form of pyramids, highly artistic products made of metal and ceramics.

Aden culture and hopewell ceased to exist. Archaeological finds of these cultures taken from the ground are kept in the most famous museums in the world, one of which is the Museum of Natural History in New York. But as a reminder of the former greatness of these cultural traditions of ancient America, numerous burial mounds, temples, have been preserved. They are very different in appearance and structure. Archaeologists have created a typology of the Adena Hopewell temple mounds.

Mounds - mounds used to be called mounds with coffins. These are original burial grounds in which numerous burials have been excavated. The height of such mounds does not exceed 10 meters. They are most numerous in the northern part of the Mississippi River basin. Archaeologists consider them to be the most ancient form of burial structures in the Aden Hopewell cultural tradition.

Pyramidal Mounds are geometrically shaped structures on earthen platforms. Obviously, the idea of erecting such burial structures was born in the neighborhood, in Mexico. The deceased were rarely buried inside such pyramidal architectural structures. The burials were located on the territory of special cemeteries next to them.

Garbage Mounds are a special kind of "shell heaps" known in the culture of the Bronze Age of Europe as places of accumulation of food waste and household waste. In Chaco Canyon, these trash mounds are located near settlements and mark the start of the road southeast of Pueblo Bonito. They consist of stones, shards, ceramics and other inorganic waste. At the same time, they are burial grounds. They are rectangular and platform-like.

Mounds in the form of animals and birds are the most mysterious and interesting form of iconic architecture in North America. Such mounds began to be erected after 700 by the creators of the hopewell culture. They survived in the states of Wisconsin and Ohio. Some have the outlines of a snake (405 m in length), an eagle, a bear (17 m), a fox, an elk, a bison, a jaguar, a toad (46 m); inside these structures, archaeologists have found secondary burials with poor inventory. It is possible that the symbolic figures of the Mounds were considered as images of totemic ancestors, in the womb of which the deceased were placed with the aim of their subsequent resurrection.

The dead were buried in mounds, accompanied by tools and weapons. Burial wooden masks with deer antlers were placed on the faces of the deceased. The clothes of the deceased were literally strewn with river pearls and decorated with metal plates and figurines of animals and birds.

Unlike the burial mounds of the Aden culture, hopewell burial complexes were built in two stages. Earthen fences were erected around the mounds, which had a round, rectangular or octagonal shape. Such fences could be up to 500 m across. Two or more of these burial complexes could be connected by paths. Fencing structures of a rectangular shape contained dozens of mounds. Like all monuments of this type, these were not just burial grounds, but also special tribal sanctuaries that had cult and ritual significance.

The Hopewells (creators of the Hopewell culture) had several types of burial rites, among which the most common was cremation - the incineration of corpses. But for people who had a particularly high social status, there was another custom of burial. For them, special burial houses were built in specially selected places. They were buried in shallow graves or log tombs. The floor of such a burial was tamped down and an adobe platform was erected. On the site, a rectangular bed was erected from clay, on which the body of the deceased was placed. Nearby were objects that were subject to a special procedure of "killing" or destruction. These items were supposed to follow the deceased to the next world. Among these items were obsidian, volcanic glass brought by traders from the far west; obsidian served as an ideal material for making ritual knives. There were also jewelry made of copper, river pearls, which literally showered the bodies of the deceased. Smoking pipes were placed in the graves. The tube itself was made in the form of a flat platform on which the image of the animal was located.

Distant descendants of the "first Americans" eventually became the ancestors of three large groups of the indigenous population of North America - Indians, Eskimos, and Aleuts.

Aleuts.

The Aleuts are the insular people of the Pacific North - sea mammal hunters, fishermen, and gatherers. Their life is inseparable from the sea.

Hunting.

The sea near the islands of the Aleutian archipelago does not freeze. The Aleuts hunted sea otters and seals, northern fur seals and sea lions, large and small whales, dolphins, sea urchins, as well as foxes, cormorants, ducks, geese. In addition, they caught fish - cod, halibut, salmon.

As a rule, hunters were united by 15-20 people. The Aleuts went out to sea each in his own kayak. Its frame consisted of an elastic wooden frame - a lattice. Parts of the lattice were fastened together with a whalebone. Such a frame did not bend or break under the impact of ocean waves. Outside, the kayak was covered with the skin of sea lions. High-speed kayaks could reach speeds of up to 10 kilometers per hour, while the kayak moved silently through the water. The carrying capacity of the kayak is up to 300 kg.

The hunter who went fishing was carefully equipped. His body was kept from the cold by a park made of bird skins. A waterproof kamlea from the intestines of a seal was poured onto the park, into the seams of which miniature bunches of red bird feathers were sewn into the seams - amulets protecting the hunter from the forces of evil during the hunt and attracting prey. To hunt marine mammals, the Aleuts used harpoons with throwing boards, spears, which were called "beaver shooters".

Dwellings.

Fleeing from the bad weather, the Aleuts built dwellings buried deep in the ground. The traditional Aleut dwelling is a dugout with an entrance through a smoke hole. Inside the dwelling, they descended along a log with notches.

Before the arrival of the Russians, such structures were erected from the bones of a whale; later, fins were also used as building material. 10-40 families lived inside such a dugout. In ancient times, the Aleuts settled in large houses that could accommodate even more people.

Crafts.

Stone, bone, fin (a tree nailed to the shore by the sea), grass served as the material for the manufacture of fishing tools, weapons and utensils. Men used stone, later iron daggers, women - wide, short horizontal, slightly curved slate knives ("pecula" or "ulu").

With the help of needles made from the bones of birds, Aleutian craftswomen sewed clothes, covers for kayaks, made leather wallets for sale, waterproof clothes from the intestines of marine mammals.

The Aleutian women were very skilled at weaving mats and baskets. As early as the beginning of the 20th century, Aleutian women made baskets out of grass and willow twigs, made using the circular weaving technique. In ancient times, such baskets were used as bags along with bags made of marine mammals' skins. They were woven from multi-colored grass fibers, mostly yellowish and brownish. Using a variety of colors of herbal fibers, the craftswomen created a geometric ornament based on symbolic figures: rhombus, rectangle, triangle, zigzag.

Clothing.

The Aleuts - both men and women - wore long, deaf robes with sleeves without a hood. Men's parkas were sewn from bird skins, women's - from the skins of sea beavers and cats, with wool inside. The Aleuts wore boots made of the skin of sea animals on their feet. The clothes were perfectly adapted to life in the conditions of the ocean tundra - the Aleutian Islands.

Since ancient times, the Aleuts have been making unique clothes from bird skins - parkas from axes. It took 300 - 400 skins to make the parka. The skins were removed with a stocking from the bodies of the axes, dressed and sewn with tendon threads. Parkas made of bird skins were sewn with two sides. They could be worn outside both with feathers (in the rainy season) and dressed leather (the feathers pleasantly cooled the body in the summer season). The skins were laid out in tiers and sewn neatly. Between the horizontal rows of skins, strips of red-dyed leather were laid. Embroidery was done over the strips of leather. Clothes were embroidered with reindeer hair. Now this technology has been lost, but before the craftswomen worked so skillfully with bone needles that there were no traces of embroidery on the inside of the leather strip. White long deer hair, taken out from under a deer's neck earring, was considered sacred and was considered a talisman.

One of the main elements of the Aleut hunting costume were wooden visors decorated with a sea lion's mustache and conical headdresses, also made of wood, worn by members of the tribal elite.

Beliefs.

The Aleuts worshiped the spirits of nature in the form of animals. One of these animals was the whale. In general, the whale played a special role in the life of the Aleuts. Whale ribs and skulls are often found in ancient Aleutian burials. Often the skull of a deceased hunter lay between two whale ribs.

The Aleuts made mummies from the bodies of the revered dead and buried them in caves. This method of burial has been known to the Aleuts since ancient times.

American Eskimos.

Eskimos live in the American Arctic and Subarctic. They inhabited a vast area from the Bering Strait to Greenland. A small group of Eskimos lives in northeast Asia.

The languages of the Eskimos are Yupik, Inupiaq, Inukicut.

Hunting.

A special place in the life support system was played by whale hunting. In the hunt for marine mammals, the Eskimos used two types of boats, the kayak and the umiak.
The kayak is silent and fast. Its carrying capacity reaches 300 kg. The hunter, sitting down in it, tightly fastened the belt around the waist. If the boat overturned, colliding with an ice floe, the hunter could turn it back with a blow of the oar without taking water.

The main hunting tool of the Eskimos was a harpoon with a shooting tip.

Dwellings.

The Eskimos settled in small groups with weak ties between them. In the summer, the dwellings of the Eskimos were cone-shaped structures made of poles, covered with birch bark and bark. Winter dwellings are dugouts with one or two living quarters and a storage room at the entrance. There were special sleeping places inside the dwelling.

During hunting expeditions to the center of the American Arctic, the Eskimos built snow dwellings, which were called igloos. Inside the igloo, a canopy of skins was built, which served as a living chamber. In the event of a sudden blizzard, the Eskimos buried themselves in the snow along with the dogs and waited out the bad weather.

Two families often lived in the igloo, the inner space was heated with grease - bowls of soapstone with a wick floating in seal fat. The food was cooked on fat.

Clothing.

The Eskimos' clothing was well adapted to the cold Arctic climate. Summer clothes were sewn from fur in one layer, and always with fur to the body. Winter in two layers, with one layer turned with the fur to the body, the other with the fur outside. The clothes were made of deer fur. Men walked in a short kuhlyanka with a deer or seal skin hood facing the body with the fur.

Crafts.

In the craft, a special branch of art was bone carving, and only on walrus tusk. Handles of tools were made of it, giving them the shape of animals and people, household and cult objects. Master carvers created very realistic sculptural compositions with the participation of people and animals, as well as images of spirits. Such figures were called pelikens. Pelikens are the spirits of wealth and contentment, these figures were worn by the Eskimos as talismans.

North American Indians.

By the time of the arrival of the Europeans, more than two thousand Indian tribes lived on the territory of the North American continent. Let's talk about a few.

Athapaski.

Athapaski is the collective name for the Indians of this vast area, who belong to various tribes: the Kuchin, the Tanaina Koyukon, the Inalik and many others. Athapaski are hunters and fishermen. The fauna of the region is quite diverse. There were deer, caribou, elk, and many other animals, so hunting prevailed over fishing.

Dwellings and everyday life.

The entrance to the house, as a rule, was facing the river, so the settlements, as a rule, stretched along the coast. Houses were cut from logs. The winter dwelling had a domed vault, sunk into the ground, and was covered with animal skins, in the center of the house there was a hearth. The floor was covered with branches, and the entrance was through a short dug tunnel. Beds were the main element of the interior decoration of the dwelling. They sat, slept, ate on them. The dishes were made of wood, horn, grass and birch bark.

Clothing.

The Athapaski wore clothes of well-dressed suede made from deerskin devoid of fur. Suede shirts were decorated with suede fringes and reindeer hair embroidery. The cut of men's and women's shirts was the same. The hem most often had pointed outlines, the hem of the hem was decorated with a fringe, the edges of the clothes were ornamented, they left fur or fringe there, these were amulets. The costume was complemented by suede pants and special shoes - moccasins.

Prairie Indians

The territory occupied by the Indians of the Great Plains is located in the heart of North America. It stretches from the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan to Texas.

Teton-Dakota, Sioux, Comanches, Kiowa, Mandans - American traders and hunters were the first to meet representatives of these Indian tribes in the developed expanses of the Great Plains.

All the tribes spoke different languages and did not understand each other. In order to communicate, they invented sign language and drawing, the signs of which were understood by all the Prairie Indians.

Hunting was mainly a man's occupation. The men hunted down deer and elk, hiding in the thickets of bushes or in small forests. Most often it was an individual hunt. Collective bison hunt in the summer.

The hunters' camp consisted of several groups, the members of which were related to each other. Marriages were concluded between members of more or less distant groups from each other. The tribe united several camps. The inhabitants of such camps set up their portable dwellings - tipi - in a circle. Each family erected its own tipi in a specific place in this ring, which was determined by the degree of family participation in public life.

Power was exercised by the leaders of the lower and higher echelons. Decision making was determined by agreement among the highest leaders. Leaders and deserved wars formed communities called men's unions. The male unions were admitted on the basis of the military merit of the candidate. Military valor and generosity were highly valued.

The Prairie Indians were excellent warriors. For example, the warlike disposition and the possession of horses made the Dakota tribe an aggressive people. The warriors were armed with bows and arrows.

After the arrival of the Europeans, the Prairie Indians quickly mastered horse riding. The horse has become an integral part of military equipment. Mobility and the associated speed of movement were the most important features of their culture, as it was mobility that determined their opportunity for them in the vast expanses of the Great Plains.

The feats of men were considered especially prestigious. The Indian could accumulate the military>. It was considered prestigious to boldly look into the eyes, to the enemy to pick up a rifle from an enemy who had fallen from the saddle, to steal the enemy's horse, sneaking into his village unnoticed, to scalp the head of a defeated enemy.

Tomahawk

The stag antler tomahawk has served as a symbol of the valor of the war man throughout the history of the Indians. The tomahawk is a long-handled hatchet. The design of the tomahawk has undergone evolution. The most ancient form of this melee weapon was the caribou antler tomahawk. A flint point or a metal blade was inserted into a short sawn-off process of such a horn. A long process served as a handle. The lower part of the handle was decorated with suede fringe. Later, the handle was made of wood, decorated with fringe according to tradition, and a metal blade was inserted into the upper end. This is how the tomahawks of the steppe Indians looked. Later, when the Prairie Indians met the Europeans, they began to present tomahawks combined with a pipe of peace as a gift to the Indian leaders.

PIPE OF PEACE

The pipe of peace is a sacred item adorned with eagle feathers, which symbolized prosperity and well-being.

The most ancient rituals that used the pipe of peace were dedicated to the cult of fertility. The Indians gathered together and sat in a circle. The most revered person - a military leader, chieftain, or elder - would light a sacred pipe, take a few puffs, and hand it over to the soldier sitting next to it. He took a few puffs and passed it on to a neighbor. So the pipe went around all the participants in the ceremony in a circle, uniting them. Smoke rose to the sky, symbolizing thunderclouds. The ceremony participants urged them to rain down. Rain, well-being, and peace were closely related concepts. Therefore, when the Indians concluded peace agreements, ceased hostilities, they performed a ritual similar to the ritual of making rain: they sat in a circle and lit a pipe of peace. Europeans, who fought with the Indians and more than once observed the rituals during the armistice ceremonies, called the sacred pipe of the Indians ->.

Dwellings and everyday life

Indians lived in practical little tipis. The teepee is a single-family dwelling designed to be used all year round. In the center of the tipi there is a hearth, the smoke from which came out through the smoke hole. This hole could be closed with a skin in case of bad weather. The bottom edge of the tire was often stoned or pinned to the ground with bone or wooden pegs. In the summer they lifted him up to check the premises. The teepee is cozy and warm in winter, sometimes it is a little stuffy from the smoke. Tipi is a conical structure of poles covered with 8-12 bison skins. The skins are elaborately crafted and sewn.

The outside of the teepee tire was usually decorated with painting. It was a special form of mnemonic writing.
The drawings that covered the bottom edge of the teepee were drawn by women. This form of art was passed down from mother to daughter and was very ancient. The archaic style of drawings itself testifies to the antiquity of the idea of drawing images on the leather covers of hut-like dwellings. The drawings are flat, there is no perspective in the compositions, the most significant images were distinguished by larger sizes. Figures of riders with lances galloping on horses, dressed in luxuriant feathers, images of foot soldiers, animal dogs are so generalized that they resemble symbolic signs. These are indeed signs like the letters of the alphabet. The tire painting itself was also a special form of drawing.

For example, the drawings could be read as follows:>. During migrations, the stakes were folded onto a V-shaped drag, which was dragged by a dog or horse.
Pottery was too heavy for the nomadic life of the Indians, so animal skins or stomachs were used for cooking. The skin was stretched on sticks, water was poured and hot stones were thrown inside. Pieces of fresh meat were placed in boiling water, which did not need to be cooked for a long time. Spoons were made from the horn of bison, which was previously steamed in water, and then shaped into an appropriate shape. Such spoons were used exclusively for pouring food, as they ate with their fingers. Plates were made from growths on the trunks of elms.

Writing material

The Prairie Indians used the white surface of well-dressed bison skins as their writing material. On the surface of the skin, they applied multi-figured compositions telling the military history of the tribe.

clothing

The art of leather dressing, which was used to make clothes, was inherited through the female line. Fresh bison skin was stretched on the ground with fur downwards. With the help of elk antler scrapers, with a blade made of iron or stone, women cleaned the surface of the flesh. If the skin was intended for making clothes, the fur was removed. Then the hide was soaked in water or buried in damp earth. After that, it was softened with oil or the surface to be treated was smeared with the brain of a bison. Further, the remnants of the flesh were removed from the skin and hung over the smoke in order to smoke it. The smoked skins took on a brown tint.

The Indians knew how to make deliciously white skins that were used for ceremonial purposes. Softer moose skins were used for sewing clothes. Some skins were used unprocessed. Rawhides were used to make some tools: for example, the blades of axes were fastened to the shafts with rawhide straps.

The men's costume of the Indians consisted of a leather turban, sleeveless jacket, suede leggings, moccasins and a bison-skin shirt. The men's costume was complemented by a bib made of falcon wing bones, fastened with pieces of bison skin. This breastplate was considered a ceremonial adornment.

Women wore straight-cut shirts to the knee, leggings, and moccasins. Shirts were sewn by folding two bison skins with their tails down. Therefore, a characteristic cape was formed in the lower part of women's shirts. The lower part of such shirts and the seams were decorated with a fringe made of suede, which symbolized the fur of a bison.

The leader could be recognized among his fellow tribesmen. On his shoulders is a bison hide with a magnificent winter coat. The cape is decorated with owl feathers and rustling pendants. On the neck is an ornament of sixty grizzly bear claws.

The eagle feather was considered to be endowed with magical powers and was regarded as a powerful amulet. In the headdress of the leader, the length of the feathers of which reached 68 cm, there were several dozen of such feathers. The chief's hair was slicked down and covered with red paint, and the cases from cartridges to the rifle were woven into them. The leader's face was painted with red paint.
Clothes were decorated with embroidery with porcupine needles. Personal ornaments made from bird feathers are widespread.

Prominent warriors and leaders wore high feather headdresses, which were often adorned with bison horns, a symbol of power.

Beliefs and Rites

The supernatural world of the Prairie Indians consisted of what they called>, that is, everything that was sacred.

Wakan is the Greatest Secret that humanity can only cognize. The contact between the world of people and the world of the elements of beings is carried out by professionals - shamans. Shamans have special knowledge that they can only convey through their own language, which is poorly understood by their fellow tribesmen.

Kamali is to perform a rite, that is, communication with their spirits-assistants, they put on a costume made of animal skins.

The beliefs of the Indians were embodied in rituals and ceremonies, which were theatrical in nature.

The Prairie Indians led a free life in the Great Plains.

Tlingtites

The northwestern coast of North America from Yakutat in the north to the Columbia River in the south was inhabited by numerous Indian tribes who led the way of life of hunters and fishermen.

In addition to the Tlingits, the Chugachi, Kwakiutl, Tsishman and other Indian tribes lived on the coast. Their villages were located along the shores of lagoons, on the shores of lakes or rivers. The houses faced with entrances to the water and lined up in one line.

The Tlingits were skillful warriors. They dressed in armor, put on helmets made of wood on their heads, which covered the lower part of the face.

Hunting tools and weapons were made of stone, bone, shells. The Tlingits knew about cold working of metal - forging native copper. Mainly jewelry and daggers were made of copper. They hunted with harpoons, arrows, spears.

Religious views

Religious ideas were based on the concept of helper spirits. The Indians believed in the existence of patron spirits of various crafts, spirits - patrons of individual hunters, personal spirits - assistants to shamans. The Indians believed that after death, the soul of the deceased moves into the body of an animal, which was revered as a totem.

Totem is an Indian concept that comes from the word of the Ojibwe ideologists, recorded by European missionaries.

Crafts and arts

The Indians masterfully mastered the technique of woodworking. They had drills, adzes, stone axes, woodworking and other tools. They knew how to saw boards, cut curly sculptures. From wood they made houses, canoes, working tools, sculpture totem poles. The art of the Tlingits is distinguished by two more features: multi-figuredness - the mechanical connection of different images in one object, and polyeiconicity - the overflow, sometimes encrypted, hidden by the master, the smooth transition of one image into another.

Living in the rainy and foggy seaside climate, the Tlingits made special capes from grass fibers and cedar bark that resembled ponchos. They served as a safe shelter from the rain.

The works of monumental art included rock paintings, paintings on the shadows of houses, totem poles.

The images on the pillars are created in a style that is called bilateral (two-sided). The Indians of North America used the so-called skeletal style to apply drawings on ritual objects, ceramics, and also when creating rock paintings.

Ministry of Education of the Republic of Belarus

Minsk State Linguistic University

abstract

In the discipline "Culturology"

On the topic

American Indian culture

Performed:

Student of group 207z

Lapshina Anna Sergeevna

PLAN

Introduction …………………………………………………………………… .3

1. The origins of Indian culture ………………………………………… 4

2. Indian Mounds …………………………………………………… 8

3. Prairie Indians ………………………………………… .................. 12

4. Indian groups from Alaska to Florida ………………………… ..16

5. Languages of North American Indians …………………… ................... 31

Conclusion ………………………………………………… ................... 25

List of used sources and literature ………………… .29

INTRODUCTION

Indians are the common name for the indigenous population of America (with the exception of the Eskimos and Aleuts). The name arose from the erroneous idea of the first European sailors, who considered the transatlantic lands discovered by them to be India.

Scientists began to interest the Indians as soon as they first came into contact with the Europeans. Around the middle of the 19th century, a new scientific discipline was born - American studies - the science of history, as well as the material and spiritual culture of the Indians.

The object of this work is the American Indians, the subject is their culture.

The purpose of this work is to study the culture of the American Indians. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to solve a number of tasks:

Explore the origins of Native American culture;

Study such a phenomenon of Indian culture as Mounds;

Explore the culture of the Prairie Indians;

Study the peculiarities of the culture of Indian groups from Alaska to Florida;

Explore the languages of the North American Indians, and also show what role they played in the development of modern languages.

While working on a topic, I ran into the problem of literature on this topic. There is very little material in Russian. Of course, most of the material has not been translated from English. This indicates that domestic cultural studies have little interest in the culture of the American Indians (there is much more literature on contemporary US culture). The greatest help in the preparation of this work was provided to me by the historical and ethnographic reference book "Peoples of the World" edited by Yu.V. Bromley, and also the book of the researcher of Indian culture Miroslav Stingle "Indians without tomahawks".

1. The origins of Indian culture.

The high cultures of Native Americans and all their remarkable successes, both materially and spiritually, arose out of original development.

The first culture that has already developed in America (which existed for about 15 thousand years BC) - the Folsom culture, so named after the place where its traces were found, does not differ too noticeable progress in comparison with the Late Paleolithic culture of the inhabitants of the Sandia cave. The center of Folsom culture was the North American Southwest (New Mexico). However, traces of this culture have been found throughout almost the entire territory of the present United States. These are mostly the flint spearheads with which the Folsom hunters used to kill buffalo.

The first agricultural crop in America was the Cochisi culture. At this time, three or three and a half thousand years ago, they first began to grow corn. She compensated the Indians of pre-Columbian America for the absence of all other types of grain that the Old World possessed. And at the same time, the inhabitants of another part of North America, the edge of the Great Lakes, for the first time, so far in a cold way, are trying to work metal. First, it is copper, which the Indians found in its purest form. Meanwhile, the Indian population of the subarctic regions of North America (present-day Canada and Alaska) still remains at the level of a primitive culture, the basis of which is exclusively hunting for large animals (now it is mainly caribou) and fishing.

Following the first North American agricultural culture, the Cochisi culture, on both coasts of North America, the culture of shell heaps, or rather kitchen heaps, entered the history of this part of the New World. Indian fishermen, who lived here many, many hundreds of years ago, threw remnants of food, bone needles, knives and other tools, often made from shells, into this landfill (hence the second name of the culture). And now such heaps of shells for Americanists are a rich, valuable testimony to the life of the then Indians.

Directly beyond the cochis in the southwest of North America, a new agricultural culture is emerging, which was also based on the cultivation of corn - the culture of basket makers - "basket makers" (about 200 BC - 400 AD). It got its name from a special type of watertight pot-shaped baskets that the basket-makers wove to cook mushy food in them. The "basket makers" still lived in caves. But inside these caves, they were already building real houses. The main habitat of these Indians was Arizona. Here, especially in the Canyon of the Dead Man, numerous traces of them have been found in various caves. The basket-maker tree near Fall Creek in southern Colorado can be traced (subject to some deviations) to AD 242, 268, 308, and 330. NS.

In an era when the culture of "basket-makers" was living out its age in the North American Southwest, a new culture was emerging, the culture of the inhabitants of rocky cities who built their "cities" under the natural steep walls of sandstone or tuff, or in the deep canyons of the rivers of the North American Southwest, or, finally, right in the rocks, Their houses, in the construction of which caves created by nature itself were widely used, grew horizontally and vertically, squeezed into the recesses of the rocks and piled on top of each other. For the construction of the walls, as a rule, adobas were used - bricks dried in the sun. We find such settlements in the North American Southwest in the canyons of several large rivers. In these Indian cities, we always find circular structures next to rectangular living quarters. These are the sanctuaries that the Indians used to call beer. They were also a kind of "men's clubs". Although they were built exclusively by women, they were forbidden to enter these temples.

The builders of these settlements in the rocks and deep Colorado canyons did not build a city, but one large house. Each room was molded close to another, cell to cell, and all together they were a gigantic structure, similar to a honeycomb and numbering several dozen or even hundreds of living quarters and sanctuaries. For example, the house-city of Pueblo Bonito in the Chaca Canyon had 650 dwellings and 20 sanctuaries, or kiv. This semicircular house-city, within the walls of which all the inhabitants of a small Czech town could be accommodated, was the largest building in all of pre-Columbian North America.

The large number of sanctuaries (kiv) in each of these house-cities testifies to an important fact: the development of agriculture here went hand in hand with the development of religion. None of the rocky cities has its own agora, a kind of gathering point for solving social issues. However, in each of them there are dozens of temples.

Several centuries later, these people leave their amazing cities, carved in the rocks or sheltered under the cliffs of the southwestern canyons, and move - literally - closer to the sun. They build their new settlements (we now call them pueblo, as well as house-cities in river canyons) on flat, steeply abrupt hills, called mesas (mesa - in Spanish "table"). New pueblos also grow like a honeycomb. The inhabitants of such pueblos, regardless of their linguistic affiliation, we usually call the Pueblo Indians by a common name. This is the last, highest stage in the development of the pre-Columbian cultures of North America. The Pueblo Indians are the indirect heirs of the inhabitants of the rock towns, as well as representatives of much less known agricultural cultures - Hohokam and Mogoljon.

However, the level of development of agriculture among the Pueblo Indians is immeasurably higher than that of their predecessors. They built extensive irrigation systems, which were of great importance in this rather arid region. The main agricultural crop was all the same corn (they grew more than ten varieties of it), in addition, pumpkin, paprika, lettuce, beans, and tobacco were grown. The fields were cultivated with a wooden hoe. Along with this, the Pueblo Indians domesticated dogs and bred turtles. Hunting became for them only an additional source of food. They hunted deer, and more often on completely extinct nowadays animals, a bit like the South American llama. Hunting was one of the male occupations. Men also weaved and made weapons. The women cultivated the fields. The construction of dwellings was also exclusively a woman's business. The Pueblo Indians were remarkable potters, although, like all other groups of the American Indian population, they were not familiar with the potter's wheel before the arrival of the first Europeans. Men and women worked together to produce ceramics.

In the pueblo, women played a significant role. In the era of the appearance of the first Spaniards, matriarchy completely prevailed in almost all Indian tribes. The cultivated land was shared and distributed equally among the female heads of families. After the wedding, the husband moved to his wife's house, but only as a guest. The "divorce" was carried out without any difficulty. After the marriage was broken, the husband had to leave the house. The children remained with their mother.

The inhabitants of each pueblo were divided into a number of genus groups. They were usually named after some animal or plant. And all members of the clan considered this totem to be their ancient ancestor. Several genus groups made up a phratry - a generic association that also bore the name of an animal or plant. Gathering in phratries, the inhabitants of the pueblo performed religious rites, during which they usually depicted the entire life cycle of a particular totem animal, for example, an antelope. Religion occupied an exceptional place in the life of the Pueblo Indians. Religious beliefs were inextricably linked to agricultural skills. When the mother had a child, the first thing she did was to smear the mouth of the newborn with cornmeal gruel. Father used the same gruel to paint sacred signs on all the walls of the dwelling. In the same way, all other major life events in the minds of the Pueblo Indian were associated with corn. The main deities were the sun and mother earth. A significant role was played by the jointly performed religious ceremonies - ritual dances. The most important of them was the so-called snake dance - a ritual act of worship of snakes - the legendary ancestors of the Indians. The priests danced with a rattlesnake in their teeth. At the end of the ceremony, the women sprinkled the rattlesnakes with corn grains.

Of particular importance for the Pueblo Indians was and still is the so-called kachina. This is something like a dance drama, which was performed in ritual masks depicting certain deities. Miniature reproductions of these deities are "baby kachin" - dolls. Receiving such dolls as a gift, Indian children had to learn in advance to recognize the characters of ritual dances.

All religious rites were performed either in the pueblo square or in the kivu. Inside the sanctuary there was a kind of altar with images of totem animals of one or another phratry. For example, in the "serpentine kiva" the main decoration was a curtain with hollow bodies of snakes made of fabric sewn to it. During the ceremony, the priest, who was behind the veil, thrust his hand into the body of such a snake, forcing it to move.

Until the middle of the 19th century, the inhabitants of the Pueblo of the North American Southwest did not come into close contact with the whites and thus retained without significant changes the characteristic features of their culture, which had not undergone any qualitative transformations over the past six to eight centuries.

2. Indian Mounds.

In eastern North America, we are faced with one of the most important and at the same time most striking problems in the history of the North American Indians. In the scientific literature, she received a laconic designation of maunda, which some of our translators try to convey with the word "mounds".

In general terms, mounds are very heterogeneous earth mounds and the ruins of various structures made of clay or stone. Some of the mounds were indeed mounds. These ancient burials are circular, sometimes elliptical. But their height is very different. We find such burial mounds, for example, in North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky and other states.

Other mounds are simply earthen embankments on which a wooden temple or sanctuary was erected. These temple mounds include probably the most famous group of mounds, discovered by archaeologist Warren Moorheed in 1925 near the town of Etova in Georgia.

Another type of mounds is a stepped earthen pyramid. This is the largest Cahokia Mound near the Mississippi River. This largest pyramid in North America has a base area of 350 X 210 meters and reaches 30 meters in height.

But perhaps the most interesting group is made up of curly mounds, which we meet in the states of Wisconsin, Ohio and a number of other places in the USA. These are the remains of very extensive embankments, the outlines of which reproduce in a huge increase the contours of the body of any animal. So, in Ohio, we know two munds that resemble the body of a snake. One of them is over 300 meters long. The "body" of this structure-snake bends several times and ends in a giant spiral.

"Crocodile Mound", found near the village of Licking in Wisconsin, up to 60 meters long, depicts, as its name implies, an American crocodile (alligator). The Large Mound in South Dakota reproduces the shape of a turtle. And near Crawford in the same "Wisconsin" more than a hundred years ago a group of six munds was discovered, depicting giant birds with outstretched wings.

It can be assumed that the state of Wisconsin was the birthplace of the builders of these amazing curly mounds. In Ch. Pay's dissertation "Figured Mounds of Wisconsin Culture" we find a complete list of all known mounds of this type. Among them, 24 bird-shaped mounds, 11 deer-shaped mounds, 16 rabbit-shaped, 20 bear-shaped mounds, etc. are mentioned. Pay has registered 483 mounds in total in Wisconsin alone! Obviously, constructing curly maunds, the ancient inhabitants of America reproduced in them the image of their totemic ancestors.

But the researchers, and not only of them, were very interested in the question of what was the purpose of all these gigantic structures. Indeed, to create many of them, a huge number of working hands were required. So, for example, for the construction of the already mentioned Cahokia Mound in the state of Illinois it took - according to exact calculations - at least 634 355 cubic meters of land. And this is in an era that did not even know a simple shovel.

It is impossible to give a single answer to the question of the purpose of the mounds, if only because, as we can see, they cannot be brought to one common denominator. The grave mounds were simply the graveyards of the ancient North Americans. Mounds depicting birds, deer, and bison apparently served religious purposes. Others (for example, the Ohio Mound Enshent, which is a five-kilometer rampart), very likely were fortresses.

The oldest types of mounds are, of course, grave mounds. In North America, they first appear about three thousand years ago. Their creators were the bearers of the so-called Aden culture, which got its name from one of the most famous burial mounds, which was discovered in the "Aden" place of the major landowner and governor of Ohio T. Worthington, located near the city of Chilikote. The people of the Adena culture were literally obsessed with worshiping their dead. In their honor they built these mounds, some of them quite tall; for example, Grave Creek Mound in the Virginia city, now even called Moundsville, reaches 25 meters in height. However, we know very little about the Aden culture. Agriculture in North America was just in its infancy; social stratification among the carriers of the Aden culture was also in its infancy.

The traditions of the Aden culture are being developed by a new culture - the Hopewell culture, whose representatives not only build giant tombstones, but also erect mounds that are clearly intended for religious rites. Such is at least the eight-sided Mound in Newark, Ohio, which the locals turned into a golf course.

Hopewell society is gradually stratifying into privileged and non-privileged. Religion plays an important role, as evidenced by ritual mounds, in this culture, and those who lead religious rites - the priests - stand out.

Hopewell culture disappears from the history of ancient Mississippi and Ohio in the middle of the first millennium AD. It is being replaced by a new, strong, incomparably more progressive culture, which we call after the river, in the basin of which we meet with its traces especially often, the Mississippi culture. It is this culture that builds in this part of North America, on the one hand, giant temple mounds, on the other - earthen stepped pyramids. The Mississippi culture is unquestionably the pinnacle of the cultural development of the pre-Columbian Indians of North America in the eastern and central parts of the present United States. In the southwest, in the area of the Pueblo culture, an independent, unique and equally important process of the formation of secondary cultures is taking place at the same time for understanding the nature of individual stages of development.

After all, the people of the Mississippi culture erected not only individual - even gigantic - mounds, but also located them in real cities, the most famous of which - Cahokia - was located in the neighborhood of present-day St. Louis. This city had at least 30,000 inhabitants, that is, it was the largest settlement of the pre-Columbian Indians of North America known to us. Cahokia (like other cities of this culture) was surrounded by a five-meter-high wooden fence. A huge earthen maund towered over the city, on top of which stood the main sanctuary of Cahokia. There were a hundred other mounds in the whole city. Some also had temples, others were built luxurious dwellings of the rulers of the city. Those who were not honored to live on mounds, ordinary Kahokians, lived in countless huts in the city itself and outside its walls. In the gardens near their homes, they grew corn and beans. They caught fish and hunted water birds - swans, geese and ducks. The Cahokians also created excellent examples of ceramics, and made knives and spear points from copper.

Governance of the city required good organization. To build giant mounds, of course, it was necessary to collect thousands, and possibly tens of thousands of workers and purposefully direct their work. In society, here already clearly stood out the nobility - secular and spiritual - who settled in the literal sense of the word higher than the common people who huddled at the foot of the master's mounds. This already proper class stratification of Mississippi society extended to the afterlife. In one of Cahokia's mounds, the skeleton of a high-ranking deceased was found, resting on a bed of 12,000 pearls and shells. The dead were accompanied on his last journey by innumerable gifts, especially beautifully polished stones, and in addition - six men, apparently his servants. They were killed when their master died. Not far from the grave of this high-ranking person in a common pit lay the skeletons of fifty-three women, probably the wives of the buried, also apparently killed when their husband died.

Inhabitants of Cahokia and other similar "mound cities" of the center, east and especially southeast of North America, in all likelihood, very soon would come to the creation of real city-states. The appearance of whites and other reasons, which we do not yet know for sure, prevented this. In any case, these cities and the entire culture of the Mississippi are the highest stages of cultural development achieved in pre-Columbian times in this part of North America.

We find bronze tools and weapons in mounds only as an exception. In the more ancient mound tombs, stone tools (arrowheads, stone axes, clubs, hammers) are more common. The ceramics that we find in individual mounds is unique in each of them. But nowhere does it reach the level known to us from the pre-Columbian pueblos or from the products of the inhabitants of rock towns.

Of the metals, the builders of the mounds used copper, and later, occasionally, gold. Typical finds in mounds are also stone, and sometimes clay pipes, very similar to modern ones. In each group of mounds, discs of large shells and memorial plaques decorated with shells are just as common. On these plaques, as well as on rare copper plaques (belonging to the so-called Etova culture in Georgia), we find stylized images very reminiscent of Mexican ones.

3. Prairie Indians.

Many Indian tribes lived in the vast territory of North America. North American Indians are often classified according to their language group.

The main linguistic groups of North America can be considered: Athabaskan (or Athabaskan), whose tribes now live mainly in the northwest, mainly in Canada; the Algonquian - probably the most numerous (eastern part of North America), and the Iroquois, which, in addition to the six Iroquois peoples, also included the Cherokee, Hurons and other tribes. In the southeast of the present-day United States, tribes belonging to the Muskoge language group coexisted with representatives of the Iroquois language group (for example, the Choctaws, Chika-Sawas, Florida Seminoles, etc.). In the west, in Oregon, Wyoming, Montana and partly in Colorado, Texas and New Mexico, many tribes of the Shoshone language group lived. But the most famous linguistic group consists of 68 tribes speaking the Sioux languages - languages that were the native speech of most Indian tribes who lived on the American prairies.

At the beginning of the 16th century, when the first Europeans appeared in North America, there were approximately 400 Indian tribes. Oddly enough, the Prairie Indians, about which we will talk, did not live on the prairies then. The boundless, boundless steppes were inaccessible to a foot Indian. The Indians lived only in the far east of the prairies, in the modern American states of Nebraska, North and South Dakota, along large rivers, where it was possible to cultivate corn and beans. There were no Indians in the rest of the prairie at that time. Only after the Indians who lived outside the prairies until the 16th century and earned their food either by hunting (for example, the Kiowa, Comanche tribes), or by primitive agriculture (the Cheyenne on the Red River in North Dakota) received the first horse from the white, the prairies opened their expanses to them.

The word "prairie" means "great grassy plain." The French word aptly conveys the character of the prairie. Indeed, these endless hilly plains were covered with one type of vegetation, the real queen of the prairies - the so-called "buffalo grass". The North American prairies stretch between the Mississippi River in the east and the Rocky Mountains in the west. In the north, the prairies extended to the middle of what is now Canada, and in the south, almost to the Gulf of Mexico. And this huge space was populated by the Indian, who possessed a horse, in just a few years already in the post-Columbian era. Only then was the prairie, or, as it is also called, steppe, Indian, was born. Consequently, the Prairie Indian culture is the youngest Indian culture in North America.

What Indian tribes can be considered real steppe nomads? First of all, the tribes of the Sioux language group. By the way, Sioux is an abbreviation for the word nedowessioux, which arose from the warped Ojibwe Nadowe-Is-Iw, which meant "snakes", "reptiles". This abusive nickname was given to the Ojibwe for the warlike Prairie Indians. In the northern part of the prairies, the Sioux belonged to the large linguistic family, along with other tribes of the Mandan and Hidatsa, the Raven Indians and the Assin-Noboins, then the Iowa, Missouri, Oto, Osage, and especially the famous Dakotas. It should be borne in mind that not a single Indian tribe of North America called itself "Sioux". Those whom the Europeans awarded this name, distorted by the French, called themselves Dakota - "allies". In addition to the Sioux-speaking tribes, many other tribes belonging to other linguistic groups lived on the prairies, for example, the Cheyenne, Acina, Arapaho and three tribes of the so-called "Blackfeet" (Siksika, Kainakh and Piegan), belonging to the Algonquian language group, famous Comanches - to the Shoshone language group, etc.

The entire life of the Prairie Indians was associated with two animals. First, with the bison. He gave them meat, from which they also prepared a kind of "canned food" (pemmikan). From buffalo skins, the Indians made cone-shaped tents - tipi, sewed clothes and shoes.

While the Indians did not have horses, the bison was a desirable, but very difficult prey for them. They hunted bison in the following way: in the middle of summer, large corrals were built, where they drove the bison, and already there they were killed. The main weapon of the Indians of the pre-Columbian era was a bow made of horn or hard wood. In addition, the Prairie Indians used long, stone-tipped spears to hunt.

In 1541, when the first Spanish expedition, the expedition of de Soto, appeared in what is now eastern Arkansas, the Indians were impressed not so much by the amazing white people as by the horses. The Indians immediately realized how useful they would be for hunting buffalo. Indeed, soon the Indians acquire horses: they either buy them, or exchange them, or kidnap them. Many horses have escaped from Spanish cattle farms and run wild on the prairie. They began to be called mustangs. The horse has increased the productivity of bison hunting. The Indians overtook herds of buffalo on horseback, those prairie tanks. They surrounded and killed. As a result, the Indians are gradually abandoning their former way of life and becoming nomads. When at the beginning of the 19th century whites "discover" the prairie Indians, they already own herds of horses in the thousands and all the prairies.

Already at the first meeting, the steppe Indians amazed the whites with their dress. All clothing for men and women was made from dressed buffalo skins. The main everyday attire of a man was a loincloth and special "leggings" - leggings covering the legs above the ankles. Men and women wore moccasins richly decorated with porcupine quills. The legs, connected to the moccasins, resembled leg-fitting high boots to the waist. Women wore long, straight suede robes. Battle shirts decorated with scalps were worn only by the leaders and the most famous warriors of the tribe. This solemn outfit also included a cloak, on which the exploits of its owner were often depicted. But the most magnificent decoration of the prairie Indians was the headband with eagle feathers. Each bird feather in the bandage signified some courageous act of the wearer. The feathers were differently colored and cut in a special way. Each shade of color, each notch had its own strictly defined meaning. So in those days, headbands were a kind of order ribbons. The warriors also adorned themselves with grizzly claw necklaces.

If the leaders, as a rule, did not possess any significant power, then sorcerers and shamans were highly respected. Their main duty was to communicate with spirits, which allowed them to heal the sick, lead religious rituals, predict the future, ward off bad weather, etc. Their main "working tools" were, as usual, a shaman tambourine and a rattle. The sorcerer prepares for his "profession" even before he is born. So, for example, the Dakotas believe that before birth, the sorcerer lives in heaven among thunders, from which he acquires his knowledge. Thunder gives the chosen one of the spirits an indication of when, at what time he should become a shaman.

On the basis of a dream or a vision of the sorcerer, it was also determined which substances should enter into the "witch's bundle" - the "sacred knot". The "witch's bunch" that accompanied the prairie Indian literally all his life consisted of a bird's skin, colored stones, tobacco leaves and many other, sometimes very unusual items, for which the shaman recognized magical properties. These amulets, hidden in a leather pouch, were constantly carried by the Prairie Indian. The Indians believed that the shaman is the bearer of that all-encompassing supernatural magical power, which was called ksupa in the Hidatsa language, wakonda among the Dakotas, and Manito (Manido) among the tribes of the Algonquian language group. Some of the authors of "novels about the Indians" made him the supreme god of the prairie Indians or some kind of "Great Spirit". The Indians, of course, did not know any supreme god and did not call for help. The messages about him in the writings of the first Europeans who visited the prairies are erroneous and reflect the monotheistic ideas of Christianity. The Prairie Indians revered mother earth, mighty thunder and especially the sun. The greatest religious celebration of the Prairie Indians was dedicated to the sun - the "dance of the sun", for the performance of which the whole tribe gathered every summer.

Magic power (for example, manito), according to the ideas of the Prairie Indians, could be found in a bird, fish, tree, grass, flower or blade of grass. Communication with this mysterious force could be realized either in complete solitude or in a dream. For such communication, it was necessary to cleanse bodily - for this, the Indian bathed for a long time and fasted for a whole week - and spiritually, which was achieved by complete detachment from people. Prairie Indians were most often seen by visions during puberty. In the life of an Indian, dreams played an exceptional role. Women, seeing ornaments in a dream, decorated tipn and elegant belts with them. For young men, future prairie warriors (for example, at Omaha), the "divine dream" often foreshadowed a change in their entire previous life.

This is how the Prairie Indians lived - between sleep and reality. However, they did not live long. Prairie culture proper is born - we repeat - only when the Indians, who until then lived only on the outskirts of the endless green grassy plains, acquire a horse, that is, at the beginning of the eighteenth century. And by the end of the next century, this youngest of the North American Indian cultures is dying. It is being replaced by a completely new culture - the culture of the "white man".

4. Indian groups from Alaska to Florida.

Northwest Indians. In northern Canada, in a very vast area of the American Subarctic, we find Indian tribes belonging to two large linguistic families - the Algonquian and the Athapaskan, and the Athapaskan tribes wander mainly in the western half of this wide subarctic zone between the Yukon and Mackenzie rivers; Algonquian tribes, who came here earlier, inhabit the eastern half of this area, the lands lying to the east and southeast of Hudson Bay.

Both those and others, subarctic Algonquins and Athapascans, were engaged in hunting. Before the arrival of the Europeans, they were not at all familiar with agriculture. They lived in tents, usually made of bark. As a rule, they did not stay in one place for long. In canoes made of bark, they sailed along large rivers and Canadian lakes. In winter, they moved on a sleigh (which they call a toboggan), pulled by dog sleds, or on wide skis. They hunted with bows and arrows. The pride of the North Indians was their skillful traps. In addition to hunting caribou and fur animals, they fished in the countless rivers and lakes of their cold country. Despite the unfavorable natural conditions, some tribes of the American North and especially tribes related to them that lived on the shores of the American Great Lakes (for example, the Chippewaia) were quite numerous. Chippewaia was one of the first to receive firearms from European traders. With his help, they forced their Indian neighbors - the tribes known as dog ribs and hares - to leave their original homeland and go far from it. Now dog ribs live in the area between the Big Slave and Big Bear Lakes. The Slave Lake area is also home to excellent fishermen and excellent caribou hunters - the slave Indians. Their dwellings, like those of most northern Indians, are cone-shaped bark tents. A tent made of caribou skins could only be afforded by a particularly wealthy Indian. Indian tribes also live here - beavers, takulli and talans. The similar natural conditions in which the Subarctic Indians and Eskimos live, contributed to the fact that in some features of their lives these Indians are very reminiscent of the Eskimos.

In their culture, the tribes living on the American-Canadian border in the area of the Upper Lakes, Michigan, Huron and others are also close to the Indians of the American Subarctic. We could call them "Rice Indians" because wild water rice played a significant role in the economy of the Great Lakes Indians. Many tribes, especially the Menomines, gathered rich harvests from the rice lakes. The Sioux, who also once lived near the rice lakes, have put their designation for water rice (sin) in several local names (for example, in the name of the local state of Wisconsin). Algonquian-speaking tribes penetrated further east, beyond the Great Lakes, reaching the ocean coast. Let us mention at least the Canadian Micmack fishermen living on the Atlantic coast in Nova Scotia.

On the opposite, Pacific coast of North America, in the northwest of the present United States, in the Canadian province of British Columbia and in the southwest of Alaska, lived and still lives the third main Indian group of North America, which we will simply call the Northwest Indians. They inhabited the Pacific coast of Alaska, Canada and the United States, distinguished by its special northern beauty, its countless islands and islets, the shores of its fjords and sea straits. More than fifty different Native American tribes have lived and live against the backdrop of these magnificent natural scenery. In the north - in southwestern Alaska - mainly Indians from the Tlingit tribe, in British Columbia - Bela Kula, Tsimshiyan and especially - the best woodcarvers in America - the Haida Indians inhabiting the Queen Charlotte Islands. Then we meet here the whale hunters - the Nootka tribe, and in the south, on the border of the American states of Washington and Oregon, the Chinook tribe, endowed with remarkable commercial abilities, which first began to exchange goods with whites, who had sailed here quite often and for quite a long time on their large ships.

Fifty northwestern tribes are not linguistically related. These tribes belong to several different linguistic groups. For example, the Haida and Tlingit Indians belong to the Athapaskan language family. Common to all these tribes is the main source of food - fishing. Especially offshore fishing. Of all the Indians of the three Americas - North, Central and South - the Northwest Indians are most closely associated with the sea. They fished for cod, flounder and above all the fish they value - salmon. They caught him both with nets and with tops. In addition, the Northwest Indians hunted sea otters, seals and even whales in large boats. They compensated for the lack of plant food by collecting algae, berries, and root crops. Agriculture, except for the cultivation of tobacco, was unknown to them. In addition to the sea and rivers, these Indians had another wealth - forests. These Indians knew how to perfectly handle wood. They not only built wooden houses and boats, but also carved ritual masks and other ritual objects from wood, including totem poles, whose homeland is here. On the many hundreds of carved pillars that the Northwest Indians dug into the ground in front of houses, they depicted their "totem ancestors" - ravens, eagles, whales and departed leaders.

The Indians of the northwest are also famous for their fabrics. The raw material was dog wool (in the south) or wool of mountain goats (in the north). The most famous products of the Tlingit and Kwakiutla weavers are capes - the so-called chilkats. Samples of the drawing were made for Indian women by their husbands. Women only transferred these designs to fabric. On these capes, as a rule, totem animals were also depicted.

With their chilcat capes and totem poles, the Northwest Indians erected an eternal monument not only to their original art, but also to the social order. Recall that the Northwest Indians were richer than the vast majority of other Indian groups in North America. But this wealth no longer belonged to everyone. For the first time in North America, a private owner appears here, whose property is inherited only by his own descendants, and not by the tribe as a whole. This is how the hereditary nobility is gradually formed - the leaders and shamans. In the midst of this clan elite, marriages are already concluded only between the nobility. Wealth leads to exchange. Among the Northwest Indians, it is widely developed. Even "money" is invented (plates of pure copper become the means of payment). Finally, another characteristic feature of the already decaying tribal society was the existence of primitive slavery. For the sake of acquiring slaves, wars were fought, and very bloody, although the main goal was to capture the enemy and turn them into a slave. The main weapons were a bow, arrows and a wooden spear with a copper tip. A wooden helmet covered his head. Sometimes wooden armor protected other parts of the body as well.

Californian Indians. Further to the south we find an independent group of the population different from the Northwest Indians. Let's call it the Californian Indians. These same "Californians" live in the North American state of Oregon and even in the northwest of Mexico. This group is made up of many numerically small Indian tribes. The Californian Indians were and still belong to the least developed part of the North American aboriginal population.

More than five dozen different tribes live in California, belonging to many language families. With the exception of a few of the southernmost tribes, none of the Californian groups knew agriculture. Most of them were gatherers. During the long, hot Californian summer, they gathered chestnuts, pine nuts, roots, various forest fruits, wild oats. Hunting was of much lesser importance to these Indians. On the coast of the ocean, Californians collected shellfish, of course, they also caught fish. However, the common acorn was the staple food for the Californian tribes.

While the Indians of central and southern California lived off the collection of acorns, the inhabitants of northern California and Oregon, belonging to the Klamath and Modoc tribes, collected the seeds of yellow lilies, from which they also made flour. The collection of lilies, which women engaged in in these tribes, was carried out directly from boats.

In the pre-Columbian era, Californian Indians lived mostly in dugouts. Their clothing was also simple. Before contact with the first white men of many local tribes went completely naked, others wore a short loincloth made of buckskin. Women were satisfied with the same bandage. These Indians also cooked food very simply. They warmed porridge and soups in waterproof baskets, dropping hot stones in them. The Indians are the best basket makers in all of America, and the Pomo Indians are considered particularly valuable souvenirs. Pottery flourished here. The Californian Indians also processed stone, plant fibers, bird feathers, and especially sea shells, which were legal tender in California.

Californians are among those North American Indians most affected by the white man's penetration. Since they lived on the coast or not far from it, they met Europeans much earlier than other tribes of the American West. Formally, California during the colonial era belonged to Spain, but the main role here was played by missionaries, first the Jesuits, and then the Franciscans. The latter established a number of permanent missions in California, subordinate to which were tens of thousands of Indians living as semi-slaves and working on plantations.

Southwest Indians. The American state of Arizona is adjacent to California, and the state of New Mexico is adjacent to Arizona. Both states are inhabited by the so-called Southwest Indians. This geographically unified territory is home to two culturally significantly different Native American groups. The first includes, first of all, the Navajo tribe - now the most numerous, one hundred thousandth Indian people of the United States, living more or less isolated in the largest of modern Indian reservations. Their neighbors, the Apaches, are close relatives of the Navajs. As early as the 12th century, these Athapask-speaking tribes lived in the northwestern part of what is now Canada. Under the pressure of more and more waves of immigrants, they retreated and were pushed back several thousand kilometers to the south.

East American Indians. Let's move on to the inhabitants of the east of the modern United States. At the time of the arrival of the first Europeans, these were, as in Canada, mainly various tribes of the Algonquian language group Penobspots, Illinois, Miami, pickupu, distinguished during the Tekumse rebellion, and, finally, the Mohicans.

The Algonquian tribes have always played a prominent role in the history of the northeastern part of the North American continent. Indeed, to this day, the names of Algonquian tribes and others, Algonquian names are worn by dozens of cities and even states of the United States, from Manhattan in New York to the most famous resort - Miami in Florida. The names of Chicago, Mississippi, Missouri, etc. are also taken from the Algonquian languages.

Algonquin origin and most of the Native American words that people usually know, from tomahawk to wampum, wigwam, squaw, moccasins, toboggan, etc.

Of the Algonquian tribes of the American East, living south of the Iroquois, the Delaware deserve special attention. The Algonquian Delawares were also among the first North American Indian tribes who, even before the arrival of the whites, created their own writing system. This letter was pictographic. Of the Delaware literary works, the "Valam Olum" ("Red Record") stands out, containing a presentation of the main Algonquian legends from the creation of the world and the flood (with a story about it we meet in many Indian tribes of all the Americas) to the arrival of the Indians to the Delaware River. The chronicle is written in 184 characters on a tree bark.

Along with the Delawares, the most important role in the post-Columbian period in the history of the Algonquian tribes of this part of eastern North America was played by members of the so-called Povhatan Confederation, which united the Algonquian tribes of present-day Virginia in the 16th and 17th centuries. Americanists named this confederation after the supreme leader of the alliance of Virginia tribes, Povhatan, during the years of his reign, for the first time wide relations were established between the Algonquian Indians of Virginia and British settlers. The Povhatan confederation was then so strong that the British themselves, on their own initiative, were forced to recognize (a completely exceptional case in the history of colonial America) Povhatan's right to own Virginia and even sent him a royal crown from London as a symbol of recognition. Later, London adopted Povhatan's daughter, the beautiful Pocahontas, whom the Indian ruler passed off as a British nobleman. The charming "princess" Pocahontas has aroused admiration in the secular circles of London. A few years later, the Indian princess contracted tuberculosis and died. With the death of the beautiful Pocahontas, the truce between the Virginian Algonquian tribes and the British ended. The warriors of the confederation, now led by the new ruler, the Opekankanuh, participated in many battles, but ultimately the alliance of the Algonquian tribes was defeated, and the Powhatan Confederation disintegrated.

Another Algonquian tribe inhabiting this part of the present-day United States, the Shawnee, distinguished itself in the struggle against the colonialists. From the Shawnee tribe came the illustrious leader Tekumse, probably the most outstanding hero of the liberation struggle of the North American Indians.

In the southeast, off the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, and inland, mainly along the lower Mississippi, we find an important group of Indian tribes, sometimes referred to by Americanists as the Southeast Indians. These tribes, which belonged predominantly to the Muskoge language group (the Krik, Choctaw, Chikasav and others), were first met by the French and British, who visited the American southeast. They attracted the attention of the first Europeans not by accident. The Southeast Indians were fed by well-cultivated fields in which they cultivated corn, beans, pumpkin and tobacco. They collected mushrooms and chestnuts, turtle and bird eggs. They lived in large, well-built villages surrounded by fences. In the center of such a “city” (which consisted of several dozen so-called “long houses”) there was a square where the “town hall” and three more “administrative buildings” were located. This central square, "a kind of Indian" agora ", played a significant role in the life of the" city "of the Southeast Indians. All important meetings took place here, public religious ceremonies were performed, and above all the ritual festival called" Dance of the Green Corn "and lasting four, and sometimes even eight days.

In addition to the agricultural tribes of the Muskoge language group, the first whites who appeared in the southeast found other, linguistically different tribes, for example, the Timukwa tribe in Florida, the Chitimacha in modern Louisiana and others. east, which was defeated by the Muskog invaders.

The Natchi were in stark contrast to the rest of the North American Indians. They were seen as the embodiment of the ancient ideal of beauty, transferred to the New World. Natchy really cared about their appearance, about the harmonious development of the body. The babies' heads were skillfully deformed, the hair was followed, etc.

The inhabitants of Nachi cities lived in beautiful quadrangular houses. The carefully cultivated fields of these remarkable farmers were located in the neighborhood of the cities. Each city was dominated by two artificial earthen mounds, which Americanists call munds. On the first of them was the main city sanctuary, where the sacred eternal flame was maintained, on the other - the luxurious dwelling of the "Big Sun". He was the ruler of the Natchas, his worship, his exclusive rights - all this especially interested the first French settlers. No other group, no other tribe of North American Indians, do we find such "kings" or "rulers". The big sun reminds us much more of the Inca of the South American Tahuantinsuyu. According to the views of the Natchas, their supreme ruler was the blood brother of the Sun. Therefore, every day before dawn, the ruler left the luxurious house on the mound to show his divine brother the way he should march across the sky, from east to west. However, the Big Sun, in fact, was himself a god for the Indians. His cult was supported by the priests. There are already real priests, not sorcerers or shamans. After death, the Big Sun returned to heaven in order to take care of the well-being of his people from there. And yet the death of every Big Sun was a true "national tragedy." Many Indian men killed their wives and children, and often themselves, to accompany the Great Sun on the way to the afterlife and serve him there as on earth. And vice versa - if an heir was born to the ruling Big Sun, all Nachs began to look for babies of the same age among their children, so that when they grow up, they can serve their highly esteemed peer. During his lifetime, the Big Sun directed all the activities of the Natchas. He - and no longer the tribal council - issued laws and was, in fact, the owner of all movable and immovable property of the Natchas, the master over their life and death. True, he was assisted by a certain advisory body made up of local leaders. In addition, the Big Sun appointed all the main leaders of the tribe: two generals, two ambassadors who, at the behest of the Big Sun, declared war and made peace, four organizers of festivities and, finally, two kind of "ministers of public works".

The ruler of the Natchas differed from the rest of the dignitaries with a real "royal crown". It was made from the finest feathers of the best swans. The Big Sun received its subjects, reclining on a bed covered with reindeer skins and drowning in pillows of bird down. In addition to the reigning Big Sun, in the country of the Natchas this title was also held by the sons of his sister. The rest of the members of the royal family were called Small Suns ... Finally, the Natchas had two more social groups - the middle and lower nobility. On the other side of the public barrier were ordinary members of the Natch tribe. Compared to the nobility, the midshipmen were in an unenviable position. For example, not only the Great Sun, but any of the group of Lesser Suns could pass a non-appealable death sentence to any "stinking" person, which was immediately carried out, even if the unfortunate convict was completely innocent. This extended to their own wives or husbands of the "suns", with the exception of those cases when these women themselves belonged to the sacred family.

In the first quarter of the 18th century, as a result of three so-called Natchi wars, the French completely exterminated this tribe. Still, one can make an assumption: probably, the Natch inherited the traditions of the mysterious "mound builders", primarily the bearers of the famous Mississippi culture. However, since the eighteenth century, the “mounds” of the natches, on which the palaces of the Great Sun and the sanctuaries of the eternal flame stood, belong to the past, just like the mounds of the Mississippi culture.

The next, the most numerous southeastern tribe survived the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries so unfavorable for the Indians. Neither the Europeans nor the white Americans managed to completely destroy it. We will, however, speak separately about these Cherokee Indians and their fates. For now, let's just recall that the Cherokee originally inhabited what is now Virginia, both Carolina, Georgia, eastern Tennessee and northern Alabama, and belonged to the Iroquois language group.

The Iroquois are one of the most significant groups of Indian tribes living in the east of North America, but also as an Indian group, on the example of which the prominent ethnographer, the largest researcher of the social system of the Indians Lewis Henry Morgan showed the history of the development of social relations in primitive society. That is why for us, for our book, the Iroquois will be an example of the social organization of the North American Indians.

In the pre-Columbian era, the Iroquois lived in a number of the current states of the United States - in Pennsylvania, Ohio and in the state of New York, around the Great Lakes - Ontario and Erie - and along the banks of the St. Lawrence River. They were sedentary farmers, cultivated corn, tobacco, legumes, pumpkins, sunflowers, and also engaged in fishing and hunting. Iroquois hunted deer, elk, otters and beavers. They sewed clothes for themselves from animal skins. They were familiar with the processing of copper that went into making knives. The potter's wheel was unknown to them, but the Iroquois pottery art can be called developed. The Iroquois lived in villages surrounded by front gardens. The village consisted of several dozen so-called "long houses". The household was the basic unit of the social organization of the Iroquois. Individual families lived in the premises of these houses.

The highest form of social organization was the Union (League) of the Iroquois - a confederation of five Iroquois tribes: Onondaga, Cayuga, Mogauki, Oneida and Seneca. Each tribe within the confederation was independent. The Confederation was led by the Council of the League of 50 Sachems - representatives, a kind of deputies of all the tribes of the League. She did not have any supreme and even more so hereditary ruler, but there were two equal military leaders. In the Council of the League, all the most important issues were resolved on the basis of unanimity.

The smallest social unit of the Iroquois was the Ovachira, whose members - the inhabitants of one "long house" - traced their descent from one progenitor. Women played a more important role in the life of the “long house” than men. At the head of each ovachira was the eldest of the women. She chose a new sechem among the men of the "long house" when the old one was dying. After her choice was approved by all women, the name of the new set was announced. After the presentation of the antlers, a symbol of power, the new sachem officially assumed his "office". The role of women in Iroquois society was also explained by the fact that the fields were cultivated almost without the participation of men. Several Ovachir made up the Iroquois clan. The tribe consisted of three to eight clans. Several clans of one tribe united in a phratry. The clans of one phratry were called fraternal, clans of different phratries of the same tribe were considered cousins. Marriage between members of the genus and the phratry was strictly prohibited.

Each clan had its own name, derived from a totem animal (for example, the Tuscarora tribe had eight clans: Gray wolf, Bear, Big turtle, Beaver, Yellow wolf, Sandpiper, Eel, Little turtle). These eight clans, united in two phratries, formed a tribe. And this scheme of social organization was typical for almost all American Indians.

5. Languages of the North American Indians.

The languages of the North American Indian tribes, especially those belonging to the Algonquian language family, have enriched our vocabulary with many expressions. Most of them, of course, entered the English language. For example, a number of place names in the present United States and Canada are of Native American origin. Of the 48 states (excluding Alaska and Hawaii), half - exactly 23 - have Native American names: for example, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Dakota, Nebraska, Oregon, Utah, Idaho, Alabama, Delaware, Kansas, Oklahoma, etc. All the most important North American lakes also bear their original, pre-Columbian names to this day: Huron, Erie, Ontario, Oneida, Seneca, Winnipeg, the famous Michigan and others. And the rivers too. The Potomac River, which flows right under the windows of the White House, and Ohio, and Wabash, and the "father of waters" - the Mississippi, are also called Indian names.

Now let us open the "dictionary" of the most famous Indian words.

The word "tomahawk", like most other names for "Indian objects", comes from the Algonquian languages. The tomahawk entered the world dictionary clearly through the first English colonists in Virginia (at the beginning of the 17th century. The predecessor of the real tomahawk, as the first Europeans recognized it, even in the post-Columbian era was a wooden club with a stone head. However, soon, after the first contacts with whites, these stone weapons were replaced by real "tomahawks", which had a bronze or, more often, an iron hat.

Wampum. Wampums were called strings with bone or stone beads strung on them, but more often by "wampums" we mean wide belts to which such strands of multicolored beads were attached. Belts among the Algonquins and especially among the Iroquois decorated clothes, served as a currency unit, and most importantly, various important messages were transmitted with their help.

The next famous piece of Indian life is the pipe of peace, or calumet. This name was given to the pipe of peace by French travelers, who noticed its resemblance to a pipe or reed pipe. The peace pipe has played an important role in the social life of many Native American groups in North America. It was smoked by the members of the "parliament" - the tribal council, smoking the pipe of peace was the basis of many religious rites, especially among the Prairie Indians, etc.

Peyote, or peyote, is a small cactus. It was used during ritual, ecstatic dances. The "dance of the spirits" was entirely related to the prior use of the drug peyote. This is how the new Indian religion, the Ghost-Dance Religion, was born. The former Ghost-Dance Religion of North American Indians is now called the National American Church or the Church of American Natives. The teachings of this Indian religious society are a mixture of Christian beliefs and beliefs in various supernatural beings of ancient Indian beliefs.

Pemican is also a product of the culture of the American Indians. The word itself comes from the language of shouts and roughly means "processed fat". Pemican serves as a high-calorie and surprisingly long-stored food supply, that is, as some kind of Indian "canned food".

Scalp. The Indians had a cruel military custom, according to which the skin and hair were removed from the head of a slain enemy (and sometimes even from the head of a living prisoner). Thus, the scalp served as proof that the enemy was killed or rendered harmless, and therefore it was considered a highly respected testament of courage, a valuable trophy of war. In addition, the scalper was convinced that by removing the scalp from the enemy, he also robbed him of that “general magical life force”, which, according to legend, was in the hair.

The next widely known word is squaw. It comes from the Narra-Ganset language and simply means "woman." For example, the very popular combination of Native American and English words Squaw-valley together means "Valley of Women." Americans clearly love such compounds, and we find in their language Squaw-flower (flower), Squaw-fish (fish), etc.

Tipi (the word comes from the Dakota language) is a pyramidal tent of buffalo skins found in all prairie tribes. The teepee is the usual home of a prairie Indian. Several dozen conical tipis made up the village. The teepee's leather walls were decorated with drawings. The tent had special devices with which it was possible to regulate the air circulation and, above all, remove smoke from the tent. Each tipi also had a hearth. Tipi is often confused with another dwelling of the North American Indians - wigwam. This word comes from the Algonquian languages of the Indian population of the east of the present United States and simply means "building". While the tipis were not very different from one another, the wigwams of the individual Algonquian tribes were quite heterogeneous. Various climatic conditions of the North American East played a role here, the availability of various building materials, etc. The basis of the wigwam was a frame cut from wooden poles and covered with the material that was at hand for the builders.

Sign language. The Indians of the North American prairies, who spoke dozens of different dialects and even belonged to different language groups (not only to the so-called Sioux family of languages), he allowed to understand each other. The message that the Prairie Indian wanted to communicate to a member of another tribe was communicated by gestures of one or both hands. These gestures, movements, the exact meaning of which every Indian knew, not only on the prairies, but also in their neighborhood, helped to convey rather complex information to the partner. Even agreements between individual tribes, whose representatives did not understand each other, were concluded through sign language.

CONCLUSION

Indians are the only native inhabitants of the entire western half of our planet. When the first Europeans appeared in the New World in 1492, this giant continent was by no means uninhabited. It was inhabited by peculiar, amazing people.

In Central America and in the Andes, at the time of European colonization, there was a highly developed artistic culture destroyed by the conquerors (see Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Aztecs, Incas, Maya, Mishtecs, Olmec culture, Zapotecs, Toltecs) ...

The art of numerous tribes, which were at the stage of the primitive communal system, was closely connected with everyday life and material production; it reflected the observations of hunters, fishermen and farmers, embodied their mythological ideas and the richness of ornamental fantasy.

There are various types of Indian dwellings: awnings, barriers, domed huts (wigwams), conical tents (tipi of the Prairie Indians of Canada and the USA) made of poles covered with branches, leaves, mats, skins, etc .; clay or stone huts in the highlands of South America; communal dwellings - clapboard houses in the northwest of North America; bark-covered frame "long houses" in the Great Lakes region; stone or mud houses-villages (pueblo) in the southwest of North America. Wood carving, especially rich on the northwestern coast of North America (polychrome totem and grave pillars with interweaving of real and fantastic images), is also found in a number of South American tribes. Weaving, weaving, embroidery, making ornaments from feathers, ceramic and wooden utensils and figurines were widespread. In the murals, fantastic images are known, and a rich geometric ornament, and military and hunting scenes (drawings of prairie Indians on teepees, tambourines, shields, bison skins).

Studying Indian life helps us take a fresh look at America's present and future. Because it is with the Indians that the most distant past meets the most remarkable and rosy future of the continent.

LIST OF USED LITERATURE

1. Culturology. Textbook for students of higher educational institutions. Rostov-on-Don: Phoenix publishing house, 1998. - 576 p.

2. Peoples of the world: a historical and ethnographic reference book / Ch. ed. Yu.V. Bromley. Ed. board: S.A. Arutyunov, S.I. Brook, T.A. Zhdanko and others - M .: Soviet encyclopedia, 1988 .-- 624 p.

3. Stingle. M. Indians without tomahawks / http://www.bibliotekar.ru/ maya / tom / index.htm

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