Two-year Course Rotation

Current Textbook Lists

ANT 3312  NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS—Spring 2005

The survey of North American Indian ethnology presents a broad comparative ethnographic treatment of cultures North of Mexico.  The class lectures are organized around two key ideas, ecological succession and culture area.  Working with the “succession” model, lectures move quickly through the continental transformation from the end of the Ice Age through historic contact and into the present.  After reviewing the archaeological foundation of North American cultures, my lectures introduce each of the major culture areas and provide a substantive expansion on the people found in each area.  The course concludes with a series of lectures on current issues. 

The class consists of reading and lectures supplemented with writing projects.  Students are required to read the following texts:

The American Indian Peoples
by Colin F. Taylor (Courage Books, 2002)

Wisdom Sits in Places

by Keith Basso (University of New Mexico Press, 1996)

The Ten Grandmothers
by Alice Lee Marriott (U. of Oklahoma Press, 1983)

You will find other study resources at: http://library.uwf.edu/eli/Social/nativeamerican.shtml

Successful students will be able to (1) explain the processes through which North America was populated during the Ice Age; (2) identify the emergent post-Pleistocene geographic zones and the human adaptations to each zone; (3) identify the culture areas of North America; (4) define each culture area in terms of technological and social paterns; (5) extend traditional patterns of culture into discussions of contemporary Native American issues.

Term Examination:  The final examination will be a scaled multiple-choice “essay” examination of 10 questions, based upon the texts and lectures.  Each question will provide several “correct” answers.  You will be asked to select the best answer for the question and write a short justification of your choice.  The examination represents 40% of the course grade.

Response Essays:  In addition, each student will respond to five take-home questions from essay prompts provided in several classes.  Response essays will be approximately 500 words each.    The value of the combined grades may never exceed 50% of the final grade.

Attendance and Participation. Attendance and participation in the discussions are very important.  Everyone begins with an “A” for attendance and participation.  This grade, which represents 10% of the course grade, will be influenced by excessive or unexcused absences.  Grades in the course will automatically be lowered one step in the grading system (Aà A-, A- à B+, etc.) for each class missed without an excuse.   Persistent absences will result in grade reductions regardless of “excused” or “unexcused” status.

Jan      5     Introduction—Native American Cultures and Anthropology

Description of course mechanics, assignments, examinations, etc.

The first class will consider how ethnography of Native American cultures helped define anthropology as a discipline.  We will also encounter some of the stereotypes about Indians, their origins, and some of the linguistic and folkloric information that help us validate the archaeological picture of Indian origins. 

Jan      10-12     The Earliest Americans and the Continental Transition

By as early as 23K years ago, and certainly by 12.5K years ago, the earliest Americans made their way into the New World via the Bering Land Bridge and the corridor through the continental glaciers of the last Ice Age.  The recession of the ice began a continent-wide succession in North America, resulting in a gradual dessication of the southwest and the establishment of climax forests in the east.  This lecture covers these processes, the ecological artifacts of the transition in the Prairie Peninsula, and the cultural adaptations marking the Paleo-Indian and early Archaic stages of technological development.

Jan      17     The North American Formative and European Contact

Population increases and stabilization of the environment led to the establishment of intensive hunting and gathering systems throughout the continent.  By the late archaic, the pressures of survival led to intensive plant collection and manipulation, especially in the Southwest and in the Prairie Peninsula.  In both these areas, though local developments and through the adoption of corn from Central America, horticultural systems evolved that persisted into historic times.  This lecture reviews the formative developments of the Desert Culture and Woodland Cultures, and subsequent larger-scale societies which were foundational to historic Indian populations.

READINGS: Essay 11 (Blu) in N. American Indian Anthropology

First Response Essay Prompt

Jan    19     Culture Areas of North America – Study the characterizations of North American culture areas to be found in “The American Indian Peoples” textbook. In addition, review the “kinship” power point which serves as a brief concept resources for kinship and larger political associations in traditional cultures.

This lecture identifies the basic characteristics of the North American Culture Areas:  Arctic/Sub-Arctic, Northwest Coast, Great Basin/Plateau, Southwest, Plains/Prairie, Northeast Woodlands, Southeast Woodlands.  We will also contrast this area to Mesoamerica, and discuss the importance of Mexico to the overall development of North America.

Return First Response Essay

Jan 24 The Artic and Sub-Arctic Cultures

Arctic and Sub-Arctic cultures form a unique mix of hunting and fishing cultures with strong connections to Northeast Asia. We will consider the general aspects of Arctic adaptations, and discuss the relatively recent movement of the Eskimo into North America.

READINGS: Essays 1 and 2 (Smith, Maxwell) in N. American Indian Anthropology

Jan   26     The Northeast Woodlands—The Iroquois League and the Algonquians

Working from 19^th century anthropological sources, the lecture considers the structure and operation of the Iroquois League, the relationships of these people to the Algonquian tribes of New England and the mid-Atlantic coast, and the ways these Indians became enmeshed in the conflicts among the colonial powers in North America. 

READINGS: Essays 4 and 8 (Callendar, Brown) in N. American Indian Anthropology

Jan 31 The Xingwikaon in Delaware Society and History

Based upon my research on the Oklahoma Xingwikaon community, the lecture reviews the movement of the Lenape people from the New York and New Jersey shore areas to the interior of Pennsylvania, then on to Ohio, Indiana, and a scattering of other localities including, ultimately, Oklahoma.  The establishment of the Oklahoma “Big House” community in 1868 placed the last participants in the traditional religious rites of the Delaware in association with the Osage and the Chrokee in northeast Oklahoma.  We will also see how the links of these people to relatives among the Caddo and Comanche in southwest Oklahoma led to a strong association of the “Big Moon” Native American Church in Washington County.  (power-point and provided reading)

Feb 2     The Southwest—Pueblo and Circum-Pueblo People and Spanish Contact

In the late 1950s Joe Ben Wheat proposed a dual system for understanding southwestern Indian cultures.  At the core of the southwest were the Pueblo cultures, representing a long continuity of formative horticulturalists who eventually maintained somewhat regular contacts with Mesoamerican peoples.  Surrounding these people, especially during the critical period of Spanish contact, were diverse Athapaskan and Yuman groups, mainly hunters and gatherers, but also occasional farmers.  Yet together, the Southwest peoples practiced many common elements of religion, warfare, and technology.  This lecture reviews Wheat’s key categories and relates them also to Southern California groups. 

Links: Hopi, Zuni, Rio Grand Pueblos, Apache, Navajo

Feb 7 The Navajo Indians—Development and Adaptation in the Circum-Pueblo Region

The Navajo adaptation to sheep herding and large-loom weaving in the 19^th Century offers one of the best examples of how traditional culture and outside influences of “acculturation” produce powerful and unique aesthetic and technical developments. We will draw from diverse resources on Navajo weaving while considering these people in their relationships to other Southwest groups.

READINGS: Essays 16 (Witherspoon) in N. American Indian Anthropology

Feb 9-14 The Hopi, Zuni, and Rio Grande Pueblos

The pueblo groups present a unique history among formative North American groups, mainly because of the adaptations their cultures had to make to arid lands.  The lecture compares and contrasts the Western and Eastern pueblos, and introduces the common elements of their cultures that enter the stereotypes of American Indians (kachina dolls, adobe structures, distinctive singing styles, and ceramic and weaving arts.   

READINGS: Essays 13 and 14 (Levy, Pandey) in N. American Indian Anthropology

Feb 16-21 From Opler to Basso—Ethnographic Studies of Apache Cultural Ecology, Place, and Oral Tradition

Drawing from Keith Basso’s Wisdom Sits in Places, this lecture emphasizes how Indian groups came into strong territorial associations, and how these associations inform us about some general elements of human culture.  We will also consider how “knowledge” of the landscape worked in these traditional cultures, including the intimate knowledge of plant and animal resources that grounded subsistence.  Keith Basso has begun to dominate the ethnography of Apachean cultures in the same way that Morris Opler did in an earlier era of ethnography.  This lecture looks at Apache life as a laboratory for some early anthropological theories, and reviews the significant works Basso has produced over the past 20 years.  We will also consider the importance of the Apache and Navajo Indians in our stereotypes about the American West at the end of the 19^th century, especially the mythology surrounding such figures as Geronamo and Cochise. STUDENTS SHOULD HAVE WISDOM SITS IN PLACES READ BY THIS DATE.

Feb 23 Julian Steward’s Great Basin Shoshonean Model of Hunting/Gathering Culture

Julian Steward’s work on the Great Basin bands is a classic of anthropology.  We will consider how “strategies of divided risk” worked in the vast basin and range topography of Utah, Nevada, and the Southern California and Northern Mexican deserts.  Because of their simple technology, these Indians are often poorly understood.   We will try to get some perspective on their lifeways and their dismal experience at the hands of Euro-Americans through comparisons of these people to the Bushmen of the Kalahari in South Africa and the Aborigines of Australia.

Power Point on Great Basin subsistence.

CURRENT EVENTS: For those who may be interested in the essay of Ward Churchill that brought about his resignation as Head of the Ethnic Studies Program at University of Colorado, here is a link to both the essay and its aftermath. Ward Churchill is an outspoken Native American critical theorists whose work is grounded in the broad experience of oppressed and suppressed cultures, especially Native American cultures. The controversy and institutional reactions to the “On the Justice of Roosting Chickens” essay should be a cause for concern to people who want to support diversity in our society. While we all need to understand the power of our metaphors, one also has to question the wisdom of institutions that “authorize” popular opinion and take recriminations against unpopular expressions of opinion. I suspect Thomas Jefferson would find this controversy needless, if understandable, and yet another bit of evidence justifying the kind of “republican” government he advocated. If you want to pursue that line of thinking, see: The Radical Politics of Thomas Jefferson: A Revisionist View. Richard K. Matthews. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1984.

Second Response Essay Distributed

Feb 28 California Adaptations and Kroeber’s idea of “Culture Climax”

Most people today do not realize that Central California supported the highest population density of any North American area, even though the region lacked horticulture.  The secret to the high population was the acorn, which provided a staple food source far in excess of anything prehistoric horticulture could have provided.  As a result, here we also encounter some unusual property concepts, sedentary population, and other quite unusual cultural patterns.  In coastal regions, especially north of San Francisco Bay, salmon fishing provided another rich source of food which prompted some unusual property concepts.   We willalso consider the diversity and continuities of California culture. Southern California offers some of the best documentation of coastal shellfish adaptations and semi-sedentary seasonal adjustments of subsistence.  Using examples of the “Diegueno” and “Luiseno” as compared to the Chumash of the Santa Barbara coast, and the Colorado River Yumans to the immediate east, we encounter some of A. L. Kroeber’s key examples of “culture climax.”    These Indians represent patterns that run counter to almost every stereotype of “American Indians” in our popular culture. 

Return Second Response Essay

Mar 2     People of the Northwest Coast—Totem Poles, Fishing, Hunting, and Exchange

Today’s Native American art markets are filled with Northwest Coast styles, authentic and imitative, which hearken to the graphically totemic complexity of Northwest Coast maritime adaptations, and the adjacent interior area of the Salish and other “Plateau” groups.  The lecture will consider some of the social complexity of the groups stretching from extreme Northern California to the south Alaska shore.  We will also consider why these groups were to important to early anthropologists like Franz Boas. 

READINGS: Essay 3 (Collins) in N. American Indian Anthropology

Mar 7-9 Southeast Culture Area—The Southern Cult Interaction Sphere & Muskogeans

Although the “Muskogean” people are well known by such terms as “Creek” and “Choctaw,”  they in fact represent a much more complex association of tribes, most speaking related languages, and most sharing in confederations of common political interest.  Yet the southeastern groups present a high diversity of social structures.  What is most interesting is the continuity of these cultures with the late prehistoric moundbuilders and the religious ideas that bound them together.  The lecture is based on James Howard’s work on the Southern Cult and Southeastern Indians, and on articles on the Southeast dedicated to Fred Eggan of the University of Chicago.

READINGS: Essay 7 (Urban) in N. American Indian Anthropology

 Mar    14 The Prairie Peninsula—Ecological Diversity and Continuities from the Late Prehistoric Formative

The Prairie Peninsula is another important archaeological area, especially from about 500 B.C.E. to the contact period in the 1700s.  The region is also the home region of diverse Siouan-speaking groups who eventually became prominent in Indian communities of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska in the 19^th century.  This lecture will discuss why the Prairie Peninsula repeatedly became a source for Indian “climax” cultures, and ultimately became the prime ground for Indian displacement in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. 

Mar 16 The Osage, Pawnee, Wichita, and Proto-Historic Changes on the Prairie Peninsula

The Wichita in north Texas and Oklahoma, the Pawnee in Kansas and Nebraska, and the Osage (who dominated Missouri and the surrounding region in the 18^th century) all became important “Prairie” tribes on pre-Civil-War 19^th Century frontier.  The Wichita and Pawnee share linguistic roots with the Caddo, much more “Southeastern” oriented Indians of Louisiana, Arkansas, and eastern Oklahoma and Texas; these so-called “Plains-Caddo” people pursued horticultural/hunting pattern involving seasonal movements along the line separating the more-arid “Plains” from the “Prairie Peninsula.”  As such, they provide ethnographic analogs for interpreting post-1400 archaeological remains of the region and significant groups in the earliest documents on European travels onto the plains.  The lecture will cover the late prehistory and ethnohistory of these groups through the mid-19^th century. 

Mar 21-25 SPRING BREAK

Mar 28 The Horse and Plains Indian Culture—Basic Patterns of Equestrian Hunting

Although the Plains Indians offer the strongest stereotype of “Indian-ness” for most people, non-settled equestrian bison hunters existed on the plains only from about 1690 through the 1880s.  Indeed, the whole pattern of Plains life was a response to Colonial expansions in the East and Southwest, crowding and conflict in other areas, and an absence of competition in the region.  Thus, Plains Indian culture is a superb example of cultural adaptation by groups of vastly different background to produce a culture of uncommon similarity.  The lecture will consider the importance of the horse in Plains Indian life, and the underlying differences among Plains groups.

READINGS: Essays 5 and 6 (DeMallie, Straus) in N. American Indian Anthropology

Mar 30 Tribes vs. Bands—The Comanche and the Kiowa as Social Exemplars of the Plains

Though the Comanche are more well-known in popular representations of Indians, the Comanache and Kiowa share the distinction of dominating the south Plains for two centuries.  This lecture will discuss the differences of the Comanche and Kiowa (as band and tribal cultures), shared traditions of horse raiding, shared religious ideas, the details of ecology on the south Plains, and late historical developments relating to reservation life, the Ghost Dance, Native American Church, and the settlement of Southwest Oklahoma. 

Third Essay Assignment Distributed

Apr 4 Vision Quest, Native American Religions, and Social Organization

White people use the term “vision” as an “other-worldly” or “unreal” experience.  Vision quest among Native Americans is very much about “real” experiences.  This lecture discusses how the general theme of “natural” experiences occurs in Native American cultures of vastly different orientation, from the settled peoples of the Northeast, to the desert people of Southern California, to the Plains Indians, to the Pueblo communities of the Southwest.  We will concentrate especially on the way animism (recognition of animate forces in nature) connects to these experiences outside “ordinary consciousness,” and also how such experiences are interpreted as “power” or “social revenue” in the community structure.

Apr 6 “Traditional” vs. “Progressive” in Indian Life

As Christian missionaries encountered and converted Indians, the converts often found themselves in conflict with those who followed the old religions.  At first, such converts became the victims of non-accepting powerful groups within Native American communities.  Ultimately, the converts became the oppressors, preaching against the old ways as “primitive” or “evil.”  The “Traditional” and “Progressive” split, then, has dominated Native American consciousness in many communities.  This lecture looks at this breach and the kinds of problems it has produced.

Return Third Response Essay

 Apr 11-13 Health and Welfare in Native American Communities

A heavy sugar and starch diet contributes to obesity, and in turn to diabetes, in Native American communities throughout North America.  Poor ability to process alcohol through the system (coupled with social conditions) contributes to high rates of alcoholism.  Poor education and lack of jobs or opportunity contributes to various other social problems, including high rates of teen pregnancy, displacement of families from the community, and adherence to socially conservative cultural allegiences (such as military service) which further fragment families without necessarily providing acceptance in the broader culture.  Indians are often invisible within the larger communities in which they make their homes, and Indians of the “community” often find themselves politically subordinated to Indians who have adopted their “heritage” without understanding of Native American community life. 

 April 18-20        Lecture: Art, Dress, Language, and other Native American Ethnic Markers

How do Indians dress, speak, or create?  Should Native Americans need ethnic markers to be “authentic”?   This lecture will consider the “Native American” world as a very small community, a very large population, and a very conflicted set of circumstances.  Is there an Indian “avante garde”?  If so, what would it be?  Overall, the lecture will consider how ethnic stereotypes work for and against a “positive” identity for Native American cultures, general or specific.  We must reconsider stereotyping as we conclude the course.  Among the many recent films on Indian life, few have moved far from “Plains” ideals.  Nonetheless, we can encounter mainstream films and art which captures Indian life from the Southeast, Northeast, Northwest Coast, Southwest, and Arctic.  Using short clips from Never Cry Wolf, Blackrobe, Dead Man, and several other films, we will pursue the “images” of Indians, and reflect upon discourses of Indian-ness that shape our popular understanding. 

TAKE HOME FINAL EXAMINATION (10 SCALED MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS – 40% of grade)

DUE NO LATER THAN 2:00 PM APRIL 27