Karen Hill

Although some scholars think humans may have lived in what is now California as early as 48,000 years ago, people definitely lived there by about 8000 B.C. From that time to the arrival of non-Native Americans in about A.D. 1550, the Indian population in California grew to about 300,000. The area had the highest concentration … Read more

Despite the influences of white farmers, ranchers, and missionaries, the Tarahumara tribe of northern Mexico still live much as their ancestors did. One of the many features of their traditional culture that remains alive is the footrace. During these tests of endurance, participants might run as far as 100 miles over rough, mountainous terrain. Runners … Read more

California Indians (Native Americans) spoke about 90 languages. But even peoples who used the same one often spoke very different dialects (regional variations in a language). Two villages’ dialects could be as different as English and German. These dialects first grew up because villages had fairly little contact with one another. Once they were well … Read more

The Navajo Code Talkers used Navajo words to stand in for English words or phrases. For instance, de-he-tih-hi (Navajo for “humming bird”) meant “fighter plane” and besh-lo (“iron fish”) meant submarine. The Code Talkers memorized a special alphabet to spell out uncommon English words, like place-names. In this alphabet, a different Navajo word was used … Read more

In the marshes of northern California, Native Americans found the ideal material for house-building, a bulrush known as tule. They wove the stalks of this wild plant into large, flexible mats that, placed over a frame of saplings, created the walls of their houses. Airy and light, tule mats kept the Indians’ houses cool and … Read more

Many Native American tribes lived in central California between the great mountains of the Sierra Nevada range and the Pacific Ocean. The homelands of the Pomo, Salinan, and Chumash were along the coast, while those of the Yokut, Miwok, and Nisenan were further inland. Large groups in southern California included the Cahuilla, Gabrielino, Luisefio, and … Read more

California Indians could gather wild seeds, plums, grapes, berries, and roots; fish for trout and salmon; and hunt small birds and game such as rabbits and quail or large herds of elk and deer. Their most important food, though, was acorns. Wherever great California oak trees grew, fall was the season of the acorn harvest. … Read more

Each climate in California called for a different type of house. In the rainy northwest, families constructed large houses out of cedar planks to keep themselves dry. In the moderate north and central California, people spent the winter in pit houses, which they built by digging a round hole in the ground and roofing it … Read more

In the early 1860s, Navajo people were stealing cattle and horses from whites in what is now New Mexico. American militiamen, led by Brigadier General James A. Carleton, were sent out to stop them. After a series of bloody battles, the Navajo were defeated and forced to move to a reservation called Bosque Redondo to … Read more

The Navajo have a long history as weavers. They were introduced to weaving on an upright loom by Pueblo Indians who moved to Navajo territory after fleeing from the Spanish in the mid-seventeenth century. Inspired by designs on Spanish cloth, Navajo weavers soon began using wools colored with vegetable dyes to create brilliant and distinctive … Read more

With some 500 wild plants available to them, the Indians of California generally did not need to bother with the hard work of farming. They did, however, develop many clever ways of helping wild plants grow and flourish. For instance, at a young age, women in central California learned to keep meadows of wild hyacinths … Read more

Traditionally, the Navajo were the most skilled Indian ranchers in the Southwest. In addition to keeping large herds of horses, they raised huge flocks of sheep. (Like horses, these animals were introduced to North America by the Spanish.) Almost every Navajo had a few sheep. Even small children were given lambs to look after so … Read more

In most of California, the weather was so mild that Native Americans needed little clothing. Men usually wore a simple thong made of animal skin or nothing at all. Women generally strapped mats woven from strips of bark around their waists. The tools California Indians made were equally simple. Because plants and animals were so … Read more

Expeditions of Spanish soldiers first came to Navajo territory in the late sixteenth century. Although the Navajo sometimes traded with these intruders, more often they fought with them to protect their own territory. This pattern continued in the nineteenth century, when the Navajo lands became first a part of Mexico, then part of the United … Read more

A hogan was the type of house the Navajo built after they arrived in the Southwest. Hogans were round one-room structures made from a frame of wood poles covered with mud. Each had one entrance, which faced east, and a hole in the roof to release smoke from cooking fires set inside the house. The … Read more

Drypaintings were sacred images made by the Navajo during ceremonies such as the Blessingway. A holy man used sand, cornmeal, pollen, and pounded roots and barks to create symbols and pictures of spirit-beings on the ground. These images were thought to have great power, so after the ceremony they were always destroyed so they could … Read more

Hozho was a Navajo word that meant beauty and order. The Navajo believed that in their world, everything was where it should be and, because it was in order, it was beautiful. Through their religious ceremonies and personal behavior, all Navajo strove to maintain hozho.

The Blessingway was a ceremony held by the Navajo to ensure that a person would live long and well. It was usually performed when a person reached a milestone in his or her life. For instance, a Blessingway might be held to celebrate a marriage, a birth, or a girl’s initiation into womanhood. During the … Read more

Before the Navajo came to the Southwest, they lived by hunting game and gathering plants. Few wild animals and plants, however, lived in their new hot, dry homeland. To survive, they looked to the Pueblo Indians and learned by their example how to farm corn and squash. Pueblo people who moved to Navajo lands to … Read more

Yes, the Pueblo Indians still live in their homelands. In 1821, the Spanish surrendered their lands to Mexico, which in turn gave them to the United States in 1848. But no matter which group of non-Indians, Spaniards, Mexicans, or Americans, claimed to have control over the Pueblo, they worked to retain their traditional territory and … Read more

Because they relied on wild plants for so much of their diet, California Indians had to know how to make light, strong, and durable baskets. When gathering nuts, berries, and roots, women carried large, cone-shaped baskets fitted with shoulder straps. They used larger baskets to hold the foods they gathered, particularly acorns, which, if properly … Read more

Dine is the name the Navajo call themselves. It means “people” in the Navajo language. Now the largest southwestern tribe, the Navajo’s ancestors originally lived farther to the north, possibly in Canada. Starting in about 1000, they moved south, eventually settling near the Pueblo in what is now northwestern New Mexico and northeastern Arizona. Modern … Read more

Maria Martinez (c. 1887-1980) was a potter from San Ildefonso Pueblo. As a girl, she learned from her aunt how to make clay pottery just as her ancestors had. But Martinez, with her husband, Julian, developed a new way of decorating Pueblo pots. To harden a finished pot, the Pueblo potters fired it by placing … Read more

In 1848, gold was discovered in California. The next year, thousands of hopeful non-Indian miners, nicknamed Forty-Niners, traveled west to seek their fortunes. The trip was difficult, particularly for those on the southern wagon route that passed through the hottest, driest lands in the Southwest. Many hungry, thirsty forty-niners found relief in the lands of … Read more

Kachinas were spirit beings revered by the Pueblo Indians. There were several hundred kachinas, each with a different name and appearance. They were thought to have the power to make rain. Because rain was needed to grow the crops on which the Pueblo depended, the kachinas had control over their very lives. To ask the … Read more

The Kachinvaki was the first ceremony attended by a Hopi child. Its purpose was to initiate girls and boys into Hopi society and tell them what would be expected of them as adults. Children were deemed ready for the Kachinvaki usually sometime between the ages of six and nine. Each was assigned a sponsor, a … Read more

The Koshare were a group of men who acted like clowns during Pueblo religious ceremonies. With their legs and bodies painted in broad black-and-white stripes, they shouted out jokes, teased onlookers, made fun of sacred rituals, and generally did everything the Pueblo people would normally frown upon. The Koshare worked hard to entertain their audience, … Read more

Drawn by rumors of the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola, which were supposedly full of gold, a small group of Spanish explorers led by Marcos de Niza traveled north from Mexico. In 1539 they came upon a group of Zuni, who killed one of the men, de Niza’s black slave Estevan, and drove off the … Read more

A kiva was an underground chamber where the Pueblo people held religious ceremonies and their men gathered to socialize. The chamber represented the underworld where they believed human beings once lived. The ladder they used to climb into the chamber symbolized the link between the real world and the underworld. To teach children about the … Read more

By about 500, early Pueblo Indians had learned how to grow corn from Mesoamerican Indians. The strain of corn they planted was very hearty, it could survive in the dry Southwest. The Pueblo peoples later began growing beans and squash as well. But even with plants well adapted to their harsh environment, keeping the crops … Read more

During World War II, the U.S. Marines were searching for a way they could send top secret messages that their Japanese enemies could not understand. A Navajo engineer, Philip Johnston, suggested that they employ Navajo soldiers as messengers. Using their native language, they could tell each other the sensitive information. Even if the Japanese intercepted … Read more

About 1,700 years ago, ancient Native Americans of the Hohokam, Mogollon, and Anasazi cultures began establishing farming villages in the Southwest. Many of the Native Americans who live there today are these early peoples’ descendants. The Pueblo Indians of New Mexico were probably descended from the Anasazi, while the Akimel O’odham (also known as the … Read more

In the early 1970s, older traditional Lakota on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota were being harassed by the reservation’s police force. To bring attention to their plight, a group of young activists (calling themselves the American Indian Movement) joined with the elders in 1973 to take over the site of the Wounded … Read more

The Pueblo Indians are a group of peoples who had lived in the Southwest for almost 1,000 years before non-Indians began arriving in their lands in the mid-sixteenth century. The early Spanish explorers believed that the Pueblo Indians were all members of the same group because they lived in similar houses. They called these houses … Read more

In 1991, on a chilly day in February, leaders from 19 tribes came together in the Black Hills of South Dakota to discuss what they could do to bring back the buffalo. During the meeting, the Inter-Tribal Bison Cooperative was formed. This group helps tribes raise their own buffalo herds, which now include more than … Read more

Today, the Navajo are the second-largest Native American tribe in the United States, but they live on the largest reservation. Through many negotiations with the U.S. government, the Navajo have been able to triple the size of the reservation granted to them in 1868. Located in northeastern Arizona and northwestern New Mexico, the Navajo Indian … Read more

A pueblo is the type of house built by the Pueblo peoples in the Southwestern United States of America. This dwelling was like an apartment building, providing living space for many different families. It had several stories built in tiers so that the roof on one story could be used as a balcony by the … Read more

The Pueblo Indians were peaceful peoples who rarely attacked other peoples. But often they did need to fight to protect themselves from Apache, Navajo, and other groups who raided their villages to steal the stores of corn the Pueblo people worked so hard to grow. To keep these invaders out of their homes, they built … Read more

In her autobiography Me and Mine (1969), Helen Sekaquaptewa, who grew up as a traditional Hopi, wrote of what water meant to her people: “Every drop of water was precious, and there was never enough. From infancy we were taught to drink sparingly; even then, there were times when we were always thirsty. You never … Read more

Trained as a Lakota holy man, Black Elk became upset by the effect reservation life was having on his people. Government agents outlawed the Lakota’s religious ceremonies, such as the Sun Dance. White missionaries also tried to make Indians forget their own religion and become Christians. Black Elk was afraid that soon the Lakota would … Read more

In late December 1890, a group of Ghost Dancers, led by Big Foot, set off for the Pine Ridge agency. By voluntarily settling near the agency, Big Foot’s Sioux Indian followers hoped to avoid an encounter with the U.S. Army. During their journey, the Lakota Sioux camped along Wounded Knee Creek. There they were confronted … Read more

In Wovoka’s vision, God said that Indians should make peace with whites. But the version of his religion practiced by Plains Indians guaranteed that if the Indians performed the Ghost Dance, one day all whites would die. The Ghost Dancers’ dead relatives would then come back to life, and all Indians would return to their … Read more

In 1875 U.S. soldiers arrested 72 Indian warriors, mostly Kiowa, Cheyenne, and Arapaho, whom the army thought were the most dangerous Indians of the southern Plains. To keep these men from influencing other Indians, the government sent them to Fort Marion, a prison in St. Augustine, Florida, thousands of miles from their homelands. During their … Read more

The Ghost Dance religion was founded in 1899 by Wovoka, a Northern Paiute prophet living in western Nevada. Wovoka told his followers that one day while chopping wood he fell dead and traveled to heaven. There he talked to God, who told him that Indians should live peacefully and perform the Round Dance, a ceremonial … Read more

Settling on reservations, some Native Americans tried to farm and adopt other non-Native Americans ways as whites wanted them to do. Others fell into a deep depression or in desperation turned to alcohol. Still others, though, looked for comfort in new Native Americans religions. The most popular of these revolved around the Ghost Dance.

In the mid-1800s, white hunters started using rifles to kill buffalo for their hides, which could be sold for a high profit. Soon whites were killing many more buffalo than Indians were. And unlike the Indians, who used virtually every part of the buffalo, whites took only the skin and left the rest of the … Read more

One of the greatest legends of the West is the story of Cynthia Parker. In 1836, when she was only nine, the white pioneer girl was taken captive by Comanche warriors who raided her family’s settlement in Texas. Following Comanche custom, she was adopted into the tribe. Her new Comanche parents renamed her Preloch. As … Read more

The Pueblo peoples were willing to coexist with the newcomers, but the Spanish were not so giving. They angered the Pueblo peoples by trying to force them to become Christians. To discourage the Indians from practicing their own religion, Spanish priests destroyed masks and other ceremonial objects and filled their kivas with sand. They also … Read more

Crazy Horse (1842-1877) was considered one of the Lakota Sioux’s bravest and most intelligent warriors and raiders. He may have earned his name because he sometimes rammed his horse into that of an enemy to make his opponent fall to the ground. Widely respected by the young warriors of his tribe, he led them to … Read more

After 80 years of mistreatment, the Pueblo had had enough. Leaders from various villages held secret meetings and decided that they had to drive the Spanish from their lands. Led by a man named Pope, their rebellion began on August 10, 1680. They first told the Spanish to leave and allowed everyone who did to … Read more

In Plains Indian culture, a warrior’s greatest honor came from counting coup. He scored a coup by touching an enemy but otherwise leaving him unharmed. The Indians believed that a coup robbed an enemy of his spirit by shaming him. The more coup a warrior could claim, the more respect he commanded from his people.

Although most Plains warriors were men, some women broke tradition by earning fame and honor on the battlefield. Brown Weasel Woman of the Blackfeet was such a successful horse raider and war-party leader that she was called Running Eagle, a name given to only the greatest Blackfeet fighters. Woman Chief of the Crow was educated … Read more

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show was an elaborate spectacle of sharpshooting, trick riding, and dramatic re-creations of events in American history, particularly well-known battles between the U.S. Army and Plains Indians. Buffalo Bill (the stage name for William F. Cody) was a former U.S. Army scout and Indian fighter who found his true calling as … Read more

Twelve years after the Pueblo Revolt, Spanish colonists once again moved onto Pueblo land. With the drop in the population, the Pueblo Indians were so weakened they were not able to fight off the intruders this time. For their part, the Spanish, scared of another rebellion, treated the Indians with a somewhat more even hand. … Read more

Born in about 1831, Sitting Bull was perhaps the most respected leader of the Lakota Sioux during their war with the U.S. Army in the late nineteenth century. His people’s faith in his courage and judgment was clear in their decision to name him head chief of all the Lakota in 1867, when he was … Read more

Quanah Parker (c.1853-1911) was one of the Comanche’s greatest leaders. Born in about 1853, he first made his mark as a warrior in the Comanche’s campaigns against the U.S. Army, which wanted to confine his people to a reservation. Outnumbered, Parker and his followers surrendered in 1875. On the reservation, Parker emerged as a shrewd … Read more

Many Lakota Sioux refused to stay on their reservation and, angry at their treatment by whites, some raided non-Indian settlements. In 1876 the U.S. Army sent troops to subdue any Lakota bands who refused to live within reservation borders. On June 25, soldiers again led by Custer attacked a group of Lakota and Cheyenne camped … Read more

Young men on the Plains were eager to go to war. Battles were exciting, and they gave men the opportunity to prove themselves. A brave fighter, like a talented hunter, earned the respect of his people. On special occasions, warriors were expected to boast of their war exploits to remind others about their achievements. To … Read more

A sweat lodge was a small dome-shaped structure made out of bent poles covered with hides. Men gathered in these structures as part of a religious ceremony. In the center of the sweat lodge they placed a pile of stones that had been heated in a fire. Pouring cold water over the stones, the participants … Read more

The Sun Dance was a religious ceremony held by many Plains Indian tribes. It lasted for three or four days, during which young men sang and danced to the sound of drums. The dancers did not eat or drink. Exhausted and hungry, they began to see visions. The ceremony got its name from one part … Read more

Before they encountered non-Indians, young males of different tribes fought one another largely as a way of getting out their aggression. When non-Indians arrived on the Plains, however, warfare became more important. As non-Indians took over Indian land, they pushed out the tribes that lived there. These tribes then had to move into the lands … Read more

Before they obtained guns from whites, Plains warriors fought their enemies in close combat with heavy war clubs or from a distance with bows and arrows tipped with stone points. Another popular weapon was the lance, a spear with a shaft as long as ten feet that a man on horseback could use to stab … Read more

In the early 1800s, non-Indian traders and trappers began arriving in the Plains. Indians generally welcomed these men, who supplied them with metal tools, guns, and other manufactured goods in exchange for animal hides. The Plains Indians were less hospitable toward whites who in the 1840s started traveling through the Plains on their way to … Read more

Four days after the Wounded Knee Massacre, crews arrived to bury the dead and search for survivors. Wandering through the woods, they heard a muffled wail. The cry came from a baby girl wrapped in the arms of her dead mother. On the infant’s head was a tiny cap decorated with red, white, and blue … Read more

Before Plains Indians had horses, they hunted buffalo on foot. A hunter often draped himself in the skin of a wolf to trick a buffalo into letting him get close enough to stab the animal with a spear. Hunting on horseback was much easier. Traveling with their families in small bands, hunters with horses could … Read more

The horrible slaughter at Wounded Knee on December 29, 1890 marked the end of the wars between Native Americans and the U.S. Army on the Plains. One of the most tragic events in all of American history, the massacre has been seen by Native Americans for the past 100 years as a symbol of the … Read more

A tipi, which consisted of a hide cover placed over a wooden frame, was the dwelling favored by the Plains Indians. For a people who spent most of their time on the move, the tipi was a perfect type of house, light to carry and easy to assemble and disassemble whenever necessary. The hide tipi … Read more

One of the last chiefs to surrender to the U.S. government was Chief Joseph. Joseph was the leader of a band of Nez Perce, a plateau Indian tribe native to western Idaho and eastern Oregon. Rather than settle on a reservation, Joseph’s band ran off toward Canada pursued by U.S. troops. Captured just 40 miles … Read more

Small prehistoric horses once lived in North America, but they died out about 10,000 years ago. The Plains Indians did not have the type of horse we know now until Spaniards brought them to America from Europe in the sixteenth century. Spanish horses that escaped their keepers formed wild herds. By 1780, Plains Indians were … Read more

By riding horses, Plains Indians could travel from place to place faster than ever before. A mounted hunter or warrior had an enormous advantage over slow-moving prey or an unmounted enemy. He could even pursue stampeding buffalo and follow herds of these beasts wherever they roamed in any kind of weather. By allowing them to … Read more

Except in rare cases, women were not chiefs, warriors, or hunters. But women’s work was very important to their tribes. When their men killed buffalo, women took over the task of skinning the huge animals. They were responsible, too, for the hard work of cooking and preserving the meat and preparing and sewing the hides … Read more

The buffalo gave Native Americans far more than just meat. In fact, the animal provided them with almost everything they needed to live. The list below includes some of the many uses Native Americans had for the animal’s different parts. hides: tipi covers, clothing, storage bags, blankets, shield covers fat: candles, soap horns: spoons, bowls … Read more

Although warriors were highly respected, the most important leaders on the Plains were chiefs. Chiefs were usually older men distinguished by their wisdom, fairness, and sense of honor. Each tribe had several chiefs who gathered together in council to make major decisions, such as whether to go to war. Chiefs also dealt with the day-to-day … Read more

The Bozeman Trail was a route through Plains Indian territory that non-Indians followed to gold fields in present-day Montana and Colorado. To protect Americans traveling on the Bozeman Trail, the U.S. Army built three forts in Lakota territory. The Lakota Sioux, especially a young war chief named Red Cloud, were furious. Red Cloud and his … Read more

If Native Americans were confined to a reservation, government officials could keep an eye on them more easily. The government also wanted to encourage Plains Indians to settle permanently on reservation lands and take up farming. Indians who farmed needed much less land than those who moved from place to place hunting buffalo. Plains Indian … Read more

After the Civil War, many Indian leaders wanted it to make Indian Territory a state. They proposed that it join the Union as an Indian state called Sequoyah, after the famous inventor of the Cherokee writing system. The U.S. government ignored the request. It now wanted to open the Indian Territory for white settlement. In … Read more

The Civil War was a disaster for the Indians of Indian Territory. Some 10,000 of them were killed during the war. So many homes and fields were looted and burned that many survivors were left with nothing. Adding to these Indians’ troubles, the United States pushed the Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, Choctaw, and Chickasaw, the tribes … Read more

Native Americans in the same tribe often disagreed about how to deal with land-hungry Americans moving onto their lands. Among the Creek, a large southern tribe, one group, called the Upper Creek, wanted to fight the Americans. Another group, called the Lower Creek, believed they could not possibly win a war with the United States. … Read more

The Civil War began in 1861 when the states in the South (called the Confederacy) declared their independence from the states in the North (called the Union). Although Indians were not then citizens of the United States, the Confederacy pressured the Five Civilized Tribes to become its allies. Because they had originally lived in the … Read more

Some Indians from removed tribes pledged to stay in the Southeast no matter what. Determined Seminole hid in the swamps, while Cherokee ran off into the mountains to avoid U.S. troops who wanted to force them off their land. The land of some of the smaller southeastern tribes had already been so overrun by whites … Read more

“Trail of Tears” is the English translation of Nunna Daul Tsunyi, the name the Cherokee gave to their long journey to Indian Territory in 1838. This disaster began when U.S. troops stormed Cherokee villages and destroyed their crops, property, and homes. The soldiers then forcibly rounded up the Cherokee people and placed them in concentration … Read more

In 1851 the Dakota Sioux of what is now Minnesota signed a treaty in which they agreed to settle on a reservation. But soon they regretted the decision. The United States made the Dakota many promises in the treaty but kept none of them. Without the food and supplies the U.S. government was supposed to … Read more

The Native Americans of the Southeast hated the idea of removal. Their entire way of life and religion was tied to their homelands, the places where their ancestors had lived and were buried. They knew little about Indian Territory, except that it was already occupied by Native Americans, such as the Kiowa and Pawnee, with … Read more

The Black Hills are a group of rugged mountains along the border of South Dakota and Wyoming. The area was sacred to several Native American Plains tribes, including the Lakota Sioux and the Cheyenne. According to Lakota legend, human beings lived under the mountains before they emerged to the surface of the earth. Because of … Read more

Originally part of the Creek, the Seminole fled their homeland in present-day Georgia and Alabama when settlers began overtaking their lands in the 1700s. Along with Indians from other tribes, such as the Yamasee, and some escaped African American slaves, the Seminole formed a new tribe in what is now Florida. The Seminole strongly opposed … Read more

Indian Territory was the name given to the western lands where the United States wanted to resettle the southeastern Indians. Originally, it did not have exact boundaries, but by the late nineteenth century the area was defined roughly as what is now the state of Oklahoma.

By the early nineteenth century, non-Native American settlers were clamoring for the rich, fertile lands where Southeast Native Americans lived. With the support of President Andrew Jackson, they demanded that the U.S. government force the Native American to leave the region once and for all. The result was a policy called removal, defined in the … Read more

Sequoyah’s writing system was so simple that a Cherokee speaker could master reading and writing in a few days. Almost overnight, the Cherokee became a literate people. Suddenly, they could write down their laws and history, record information about medicines, healing techniques, and business transactions, and communicate with friends and relatives who were far away. … Read more

The three branches of the Sioux (Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota), Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Pawnee lived in the central plains. To the south were the Comanche, Kiowa, and Apache. To the north were the Blackfeet, Hidatsa, and Mandan. More than 150 years after they were created, George Catlin’s paintings provide glimpses into Native American life. The … Read more