No "Lost Tribes" or Aliens: What ancient DNA reveals about American Prehistory

New genetics research settles questions about the peoples of Newfoundland & Labrador – & helps highlight what genetics can’t tell us

The Guardian By Jennifer Raff
14 Feb 2018 16.33 EST

Genetics research has transformed our understanding of human history, particularly in the Americas. The focus of the majority of high profile ancient DNA papers in recent years has been on addressing early events in the initial peopling of the Americas. This research has provided details of this early history that we couldn’t access though the archeological record.

Collectively, genetics studies have shown us that the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas are descended from a group that diverged from its Siberian ancestors beginning sometime around 23,000 years before present & remained isolated in Beringia (the region of land that once connected Siberia & North America) for an extended period of time. When the glaciers covering North America melted enough to make the Pacific coast navigable, southward travel became possible, & patterned genetic diversity across North & South America reflects these early movements.

Recent ancient DNA studies indicate that approximately 13,000 years ago, two clades (genetic groups) of peoples emerged; one exclusively consisting of northern Native Americans, & one consisting of peoples from North, Central, & South America, including the 12,800 year old Anzick child from a Clovis burial site in Montana. All genetics research to date has affirmed the shared ancestry of all ancient & contemporary indigenous peoples of the Americas, & refuted stories about the presence of “lost tribes”, ancient Europeans, & !ancient aliens!

Events that occurred after people first entered the Americas – how they settled in different parts of the continents, adapted to local environments, interacted with each other, & were affected by European colonialism – have received somewhat less attention in the press, but as can be seen in the links above, there have been some very significant research papers published on these topics. One such paper...Genetic Discontinuity between the Maritime Archaic & Beothuk Populations in Newfoundland, Canada by Duggen et al. (2017), explores the genetic diversity within three different ancient groups who lived in Newfoundland & Labrador.

One reason this region is of particular interest is that it’s on the furthest northeastern margin of North America & so was one of the last areas in the Americas to be peopled. It appears to have been occupied successively by three culturally distinct groups beginning about 10,000 years before present (YBP) in Labrador & 6,000 YBP in Newfoundland: the Maritime Archaic, the Paleo-Inuit (also referred to as the Paleo-Eskimo), & the indigenous peoples that Europeans called the Beothuk. Today the region is home to several indigenous groups, including the Inuit, the Innu, the Mi’kmaq & the Southern Inuit of NunatuKavut.

The members of the Maritime Archaic tradition created the oldest known burial mounds in North America (dating to 7,714 YBP) & subsisted upon coastal marine resources. Approximately 3,400 YBP they seem to have abandoned Newfoundland, either in response to the appearance of Paleo-Inuit in the region or because of climate changes. The Paleo-Inuit’s presence on the island overlapped with the peoples referred to as the Beothuk beginning around 2000 YBP. The Beothuk encountered European settlers in 1500 AD, & in response to their presence gradually moved to the interior of the island, where their populations declined.

The last known Beothuk, Shanawdithit, died of tuberculosis in captivity in 1829. Although it remains possible that Beothuk traces of ancestry persist in contemporary residents of NL, including members of the Innu, Mi’kmaq, & European communities, it is generally accepted that the Beothuk became culturally extinct with the death of Shanawdithit.

By analyzing mitochondrial haplogroups (groups of closely related maternal lineages) present within individuals from all three populations, Dugan et al. addressed the question of whether they were genetically similar or whether all three groups were biologically as well as culturally distinct from each other. This happens to be one of the most fundamental questions that arises when studying the past: do cultural changes in the archaeological record of a region represent the arrival of new groups, or did one group of people living in the same region over time adopt new cultural practices & technologies from others?

In the case of Newfoundland, the three groups were genetically distinct; they do not share any maternal haplogroups except for haplogroup X2a, lineages of which were found in both the Maritime Archaic & Beothuk. (The presence of haplogroup X2a in North American populations has sometimes been cited as evidence for European ancestry in ancient Americans...

Apart from that single exception, the Maritime Archaic, Paleo-Inuit, & Beothuk are clearly genetically distinctive from one another. However, it’s important to note that this study was done on mitochondrial DNA, which is exclusively matrilineally inherited, & so we can only say that the three groups were not maternally related. While they indicate that the groups are genetically different from each other, does that mean that there was no shared ancestry between them at all? It’s unclear without looking at the rest of the genome whether, for example, there might have been any paternal lineages shared between the populations...

As this study shows, we can learn a lot about the past by characterizing the genomes of ancient & contemporary peoples. This paper by Duggen et al. adds to decades of study of the genomes from ancient & contemporary peoples of the Americas, which reveals a nuanced picture of their complex & remarkable history of evolution, interaction, & resilience in the face of unbelievable oppression.

But it’s also important to understand what genetics can’t tell us...

All claims that a person’s tribe or indigenous nationality can be determined from their genomes are scientifically inaccurate. First, this is because there simply are no currently known genetic markers that allow us to identify individual tribes or nations; although we see geographically patterned genetic variation throughout the Americas in ancient & contemporary populations which allows us to differentiate them (as done in this study), genetic lineages are not tribal or nation-specific.

More importantly, who is or is not a member of a particular community is determined by indigenous groups’ own standards of belonging, which are often just as much about relations & community ties as they are about biological descent...

DNA reveals new group of Native Americans: the ancient Beringians

An illustration of the Upward Sun River camp in what is now Interior Alaska.

Genetic analysis of a baby girl who died at the end of the last ice age shows she belonged to a previously unknown ancient group of Native Americans

The Guardian 14 Feb 2018 16.33 EST
by Eric S. Carlson in collaboration with Ben A. Potter

A baby girl who lived & died in what is now Alaska at the end of the last ice age belonged to a previously unknown group of ancient Native Americans, according to DNA recovered from her bones.

The child, a mere six weeks old when she died, was found in a burial pit next to the remains of a stillborn baby, perhaps a first cousin, during excavations of an 11,500-year-old residential camp in Tanana River Valley in Central Alaska. The remains were discovered in 2013, but a full genetic analysis has not been possible until now.

Researchers tried to recover ancient DNA from both of the infants but succeeded only in the case of the larger individual. They had expected her genetic material to resemble modern northern or southern lineages of Native Americans, but found instead that she had a distinct genetic makeup that made her a member of a separate population.

The newly-discovered group, named “ancient Beringians,” appears to have split off from the founding population of Native Americans about 20,000 years ago. While the ancestors of other Native Americans pushed south into the continent as the ice caps thawed, the ancient Beringians remained in the north until they eventually died out.

“This is a new population of Native Americans,” said Eske Willerslev, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Copenhagen, whose team recovered the girl’s DNA from a dense part of her skull known as the petrous bone. Details of the work are published in Nature.

Working with scientists at the University of Alaska & elsewhere, Willerslev compared the genetic makeup of the baby, named Xach’itee’aanenh t’eede gaay or “sunrise child-girl” by the local community, with genomes from other ancient & modern people. They found that nearly half of the girl’s DNA came from the ancient north Eurasians who lived in what is now Siberia. The rest of her genetic makeup was a roughly even mix of DNA now carried by the northern & southern Native Americans.

Using evolutionary models, the researchers showed that the ancestors of the first Native Americans started to emerge as a distinct population about 35,000 years ago, probably in north-east Asia. About 25,000 years ago, this group mixed & bred with ancient north Eurasians in the region, the descendants of whom went on to become the first Native Americans to settle the New World.

During the last ice age, so much water was locked up in the ice caps that a land bridge reached from Asia to North America across what is now the Bering Strait. Willerslev believes the ancestors of Native Americans travelled to the continent in a single wave of migration more than 20,000 years ago. Those who settled in the north became the isolated ancient Beringians, he said, while those who moved south, around or through the ice sheets, split into the north & south Native Americans about 15,700 years ago.

But there is another possibility. Ben Potter, an archaeologist on the team from the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, suspects that the Beringians split from the ancestors of other Native Americans in Asia before both groups made their way across the land bridge to North America in separate migrations. “The support for this scenario is pretty strong,” he said. “We have no evidence of people in the Beringia region 20,000 years ago.”

The families who lived at the ancient camp may have spent months there, Potter said. Excavations at the site, known as Upward Sun River, have revealed at least three tent structures that would have provided shelter. The two babies were found in a burial pit beneath a hearth where families cooked salmon caught in the local river. The cremated remains of a third child, who died at the age of three, were found on top of the hearth at the abandoned camp.

Connie Mulligan, an anthropologist at the University of Florida, said the findings pointed to a single migration of people from Asia to the New World, but said other questions remained. “How did people move so quickly to the southernmost point of South America & settle two continents that span a huge climatic & geographic range?” she said.

David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard University, said the work boosted the case for a single migration into Alaska, but did not rule out alternatives involving multiple waves of migration. He added that he was unconvinced that the ancient Beringian group split from the ancestors of other Native Americans 20,000 years ago, because even tiny errors in scientists’ data can lead to radically different split times for evolutionary lineages. “While the 19,000-21,000 year date would have important implications if true & may very well be right, I am not convinced that there is compelling evidence that the initial split date is that old,” he said.

What an ancient DNA discovery tells us about Native American ancestry

A new genome from a Pleistocene burial in Alaska confirms a longstanding model for the initial peopling of the Americas

Surprise as DNA reveals new group of Native Americans: the ancient Beringians

The Guardian By Jennifer Raff
Wed 14 Feb 2018 16.38 EST

A little over 11,000 years ago, a grieving family in Central Alaska laid to rest a six-week-old baby girl, a three-year-old child, & a preterm female fetus. According to their custom, the children were interred under a hearth inside their home & provisioned with the carefully crafted stone points & bone foreshafts of hunting lances. We don’t know their names, but the peoples who live in the region today (the Tanana Athabaskans) call one of the girls Xach’itee’aanenh t’eede gaay (sunrise child-girl) & the other Yełkaanenh t’eede gaay (dawn twilight child-girl). Their remains were discovered a few years ago at a site known today as the Upward Sun River.

These children carried the history of their ancestors within their DNA, & with the permission of their descendants they are now teaching us about the early events in the peopling of the Americas. A new paper in Nature, Terminal Pleistocene Alaskan genome reveals first founding population of Native Americans by Moreno-Mayar et al., analyzes the complete genome of one of these children. This genome gives us a glimpse of the genetic diversity present in Late Pleistocene Beringians, the ancestors of Native Americans, & confirms a decades-old hypothesis for the early peopling of the Americas.

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are descended from a group of people who crossed a land connection between Asia & North America sometime during the Last Glacial Maximum (26,500 to 19,000 years before present, or YBP).

The prevailing model for how this happened is known as the Beringian Standstill (or Pause or Incubation, depending on who you ask), which was originally conceived of based on classical genetic markers & fully developed by the analysis of maternally inherited mitochondrial genomes . This model states that the ancient Beringians must have experienced a long period of isolation from all other populations. (Estimates for the length of this isolation vary, but the lower end – roughly 7,000 years – is about as long as the period between the invention of beer brewing & the Apollo 11 landing). During this period they developed the genetic variation uniquely found in Native American populations.

This isolation likely took place in Beringia. Environmental reconstructions based on ancient plant remains taken from soil cores, as well as computer temperature models show that it was actually a relatively decent place to live during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Large regions of Beringia would have had warmer temperatures than Siberia & shrub tundra with plants & animals available to support a sizeable human population. Although we don’t have any direct archaeological evidence of people living in central Beringia during the LGM – because that region is currently underneath the ocean – we do have evidence that people were living year round in western Beringia (present-day Siberia) at the Yana Rhinocerous Horn sites by 30,000 YBP & in eastern Beringia (present-day Yukon, in Canada) by about 20-22,000 YBP at the Bluefish Caves site.

At the end of the LGM, temperatures began to rise & the glaciers that covered North America slowly began to melt. The first peoples to enter the Americas from Beringia are thought to have done so shortly after a route opened up along the west coast, about 15,000 years ago. Travel by boat would have allowed very rapid southward movement, making it possible for people to establish themselves at the early site of Monte Verde in Chile by 14,220 YBP, as well as a number of other sites in North America of similar ages. Whether there was southward travel by Clovis peoples via the ice-free corridor once it opened remains unresolved, but there is at least some evidence against it.

Today there remain a number of questions about the details of the Beringian Incubation model: 1) Which population(s) contributed to the ancestry of the earliest Native Americans? 2) When & where did their ancestors become isolated, & how long did this isolation last? 3) How did people initially enter the Americas from Beringia? 4) When & how did the patterned genetic variation that we see in Native American populations emerge?

Ancient genomes from people who lived in the Americas & in Siberia during or shortly after the LGM can help provide answers to some of these questions. But there aren’t very many burials that date to this period, so the Upward Sun River child’s genome is very significant. It strongly confirms the Beringian Incubation/Standstill model. In this region of Alaska today, we only see a subset of Native American-specific mitochondrial haplogroups: those which are uniquely restricted to the Arctic & Subarctic. But the Beringian Standstill model predicted that ancestral Beringians should have all “founder” mitochondrial lineages present in ancient & contemporary Native Americans. In the absence of any ancient DNA dating to the Late Pleistocene, this remained an unsolvable puzzle.

But when the first genetic data from two of the Upward Sun River children was successfully recovered by Justin Tackney et al. in 2015, we discovered that they had mitochondrial lineages (C1b & B2) not typical of contemporary peoples of the region. We hypothesized that they might represent the descendants of a remnant ancient Beringian population, but it was impossible to test this hypothesis without additional data from the nuclear genomes. Moreno-Mayar et al.’s nuclear genome results from one of the children (the other didn’t yield enough nuclear DNA for analysis) confirm that she belonged to a group that had remained in Beringia after Native Americans began their migration southward into the Americas. We know that because this child is equally related to all indigenous populations in the Americas. She did not belong to either of the two major Native American genetic groups (Southern & Northern), but was equally related to both of them. One interpretation of this result is that her ancestors must have remained in Alaska after splitting from the ancestors of Native Americans sometime around 20,000 YBP. Her genome, provides new insight into the genetic diversity present in the ancestral Beringian population. One important component of that is that it gives us new estimates of the approximate dates of key events:

~36,000 YBP: The ancestors of the ancient Beringians began to separate from East Asians, but gene flow between them continues until about 25,000 YBP

~25-20,000 YBP: This population experienced gene flow with the ancient North Eurasian population (to which the Mal’ta boy belonged)

~20,000 YBP: The ancestors of the Upward Sun River child diverged from the ancestors of other Native Americans.

~17,000-14,600 YBP: The two major clades (genetic groups) of Native Americans differentiate from one another.

 We still have a tremendous amount to learn about the origins & evolution of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Rejecting the Solutrean hypothesis: the First Peoples in the Americas were not from Europe

A recent Canadian documentary promoted a fringe idea in American archaeology that’s both scientifically wrong & racist

The Guardian Jennifer Raff
 22 Feb 2018 04.26 EST

The recent release of The Ice Bridge, an episode in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation series The Nature of Things has revived public discussion of a controversial idea about how the Americas were peopled known as the “Solutrean hypothesis.” This idea suggests a European origin for the peoples who made the Clovis tools, the first recognized stone tool tradition in the Americas...

First, in addition to the scientific problems with the Solutrean hypothesis which, it’s important to note that it has overt political & cultural implications in denying that Native Americans are the only indigenous peoples of the continents. The notion that the ancestors of Native Americans were not the first or only people on the continent has great popularity among white nationalists, who see it as a means of denying Native Americans an ancestral claim on their land. Indeed, although this particular iteration is new, the idea behind the Solutrean hypothesis is part of a long tradition of Europeans trying to insert themselves into American prehistory; justifying colonialism by claiming that Native Americans were not capable of creating the diverse & sophisticated material culture of the Americas. Unfortunately, the producers of the documentary deliberately chose not to address this issue head-on, nor did they include any critical perspectives from indigenous peoples...

Bruce Bradley & Dennis Stanford, proponents of the Solutrean hypothesis, base it on the claim that the North American Clovis stone spear points are the technological descendants of a subset of those made by the Upper Paleolithic southwestern European Solutrean peoples. Specifically they cite fact that both are made by a technique known as “overshot” flaking as evidence for their common origin. From this starting point, Bradley & Stanford propose a scenario in which a group of Solutreans migrated across the Atlantic Ocean to North America via an “ice bridge” approximately 20,000 years before present (YBP).

Although they don’t deny that the majority of Native American ancestry comes from a group of Siberians who lived in Beringia during the Last Glacial Maximum (~23,000 YBP-13,000 YBP), they claim that “great numbers” of Solutreans must also have migrated to North America.  Archaeologists have...dismissed it on the basis of insufficient evidence...

1. There’s a serious time gap between when the Solutreans could have crossed the Atlantic via the ice bridge (~20,000 YBP) & when Clovis tools begin to show up in the archaeological record (~13,000 YBP). This means that they would have made the points in exactly the same way for 7,000 years. Nowhere else in the Americas do we see technologies & cultures existing unchanging for that length of time.

2. There is no evidence of boat use, or tools used for making boats at Solutrean sites. Although the Ice Bridge documentary makes much of an image of a fish & an auk in a French cave, it is a bit of a stretch to claim that this is sufficient to demonstrate a sophisticated seafaring culture, capable of crossing the Atlantic. The existence of a year-round “ice bridge” across the Atlantic during the Last Glacial Maximum is not supported by paleoclimate data. Instead, sea ice in the Atlantic would most likely have been seasonal, with a connection between North American & Europe only a few months out of the year.

3. The notion of overshot flaking technique as evidence of a link between Clovis & Solutrean has been challenged by many archaeologists, who think it far more plausible that the two cultures arrived at the same technology independently. As Strauss (2000) puts it, “One or two technical attributes are insufficient to establish a cultural link or long-distance interconnection.”

4. Radiocarbon dates of Clovis sites do not show a pattern one would expect if people diffused into North America from the east coast, as postulated by Stanford & Bradley.

Geneticists, too, have tested the Solutrean hypothesis. If it were true, we would expect to see ancestry from non-Siberian descended populations present in the genomes of ancient Native Americans. We don’t. All contemporary & ancient Native Americans, including the only known ancient individual buried in association with Clovis tools, show descent from an ancestral population with Siberian roots. There is a very clear pattern of evolutionary history recorded in ancient genomes from Siberia, Beringia, & North America, & no evidence for trans-Atlantic gene flow.

This is where the Ice Bridge documentary runs into great problems. It ignores all genomic evidence & instead relies upon an old idea that a particular mitochondrial haplogroup (a group of closely related maternal lineages) known as X shows a connection between North America & Europe. In the documentary, pediatrician/popular science writer Stephen Oppenheimer asserts that the presence of haplogroup X in an ancient North American population is a priori evidence for a European connection. The documentary makes this case persuasively with graphics & maps showing the presence of this haplogroup in both Europe & North America. But look below the surface & the entire argument falls apart. First of all, Standford, Bradley, & Oppenheimer simply assume that Solutreans would have had X because it’s seen in contemporary European populations. But in fact, the contemporary European gene pool was formed only within the last 8,000 years, & it’s unknown whether earlier peoples would have had haplogroup X in the same frequencies (or at all). No genomes from Solutren peoples have ever been sequenced...

Today, lineages of haplogroup X are found widely dispersed throughout Europe, Asia, North Africa, & North America. We can reconstruct their evolutionary relationships – much like you can reconstruct a family tree – by looking at patterns of shared & derived mutations. Lineages found in the Americas, X2a & X2g, are not descended from the lineages (X2b, X2d, & X2c) found in Europe. Instead, they share a very ancient common ancestor from Eurasia, X2...

X2a is of a comparable age to other indigenous American haplogroups (A,B,C,D), which would not be true if it was derived from a separate migration from Europe. Finally, the oldest lineage of X2a found in the Americas was recovered from the Ancient One (also known as Kennewick Man), an ancient individual dating to ~9,000 years ago & from the West Coast (not the East Coast as would be predicted from the Solutrean hypothesis). His entire genome has been sequenced & shows that he has no ancestry from European sources. There is no conceivable scenario under which Kennewick Man could have inherited just his mitochondrial genome from Solutreans but the rest of his genome from Beringians. Thus, without additional evidence, there is nothing to justify the assumption that X2a must have evolved in Europe.

The Ice Bridge unfortunately relied on cherry-picking of data to support the ideas of Bradley & Stanford...You must build your models based on evidence you have, not evidence you wish you had, & the Solutrean hypothesis is lacking sufficient evidence to be considered seriously.

References & further reading

Raff J, & Bolnick D. (2015) Does Mitochondrial Haplogroup X Indicate Ancient Trans-Atlantic Migration to the Americas? A Critical Re-Evaluation.

O’Brien, Michael J., Matthew T. Boulanger, Mark Collard, Briggs Buchanan, Lia Tarle, Lawrence G. Straus & Metin I. Eren (2014). “On thin ice: problems with Stanford & Bradley’s proposed Solutrean colonisation of North America”. Antiquity. 88: 606–624.

Stanford, Dennis J. & Bruce Bradley (2012). Across Atlantic Ice: The Origin of America’s Clovis Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Archaeologists Say Humans May Have Come to Texas Earlier Than Previously Thought

1590 North American Atlantic Coast Natives by John White (c1540 – c1593). The village of Pomeiooc (Pomeiock) was a Native America settlement, designated on de Bry’s map of Virginia, Americae Pars Nunc Virginia Dicta, between today’s Wyesocking Bay & Lake Landing, North Carolina. John White designates the settlement as Pomeyoo.

New evidence pushes back previous estimates of arrival by 3,000 years

Texas Standard by Kevin Wheeler
July 20, 2018 2:48 pm| 

In the 1920s, archaeologists dug up a trove of ancient artifacts near Clovis, New Mexico. What humans had known about their past was changed forever. These artifacts were the oldest man-made objects found on the Western Hemisphere, & the discovery led to a theory that the first humans to set foot in the Americas did so around about 13,000 years ago, & that they made & used tools like the ones found near Clovis.

Now a group of archaeologists from Texas State University are offering some of the most convincing evidence yet to challenge this “Clovis First” theory.  They’ve recently discovered about 150,000 artifacts near at the Gault Archaeological Site near Killeen, Texas. What they’ve found could change what we know about the timeline of human history.

Tom Williams is one of the archaeologists who has been working at Gault, & he doesn’t mince words when he talks about the significance of this research.  “It really is changing the paradigm that we currently consider for the earliest human occupation in the Americas,” Williams says.

The search for artifacts older than the Clovis ones began at the Gault site in 2007, & since then, Williams & his team have found about 150,000 technological tools that range from hide-scrapers, to blade cores, which were used to create long knives out of flint, to projectile points.

“These projectile points are particularly interesting because they don’t look like Clovis,” Williams says. “And at the moment they appear to be unique in the archaeological record in the earliest part of prehistory in North America.”

Williams conservatively estimates that these artifacts could be 16,000-20,000 years old, which would put them at about 3,000 years older than any Clovis artifact. The age of the tools found at Gault suggests that humans arrived in North America much earlier than what was previously thought. They’re utterly unique.  “Right now we find no other technology that looks like this assemblage,” Williams says.

For Williams, finds like this illuminate one of archaeology’s great appeals. “One of the things with archaeology is you never know what’s down beneath the earth,” Williams says.

Archaeology Magazine - A publication of the Archaeological Institute of America
Unique Assemblage of Stone Tools Unearthed in Texas

Texas stone tools (Produced by N. Velchoff, The Gault School of Archaeological Research) Killeen, Texas

According to a Texas Standard report, some 150,000 stone artifacts have been found at the Gault archaeological site in central Texas, in the layers below the sediments that contained Clovis artifacts. First discovered in the 1920s in Clovis, New Mexico, Clovis-style tools were thought to have been made by the earliest Americans some 13,000 years ago. The sediments surrounding the newly discovered artifacts were dated with optically simulated luminescence, which measures the amount of time that has lapsed since the sediments were last exposed to heat or sunlight. Archaeologist Tom Willliams of Texas State University said the tests suggest the projectile points in the Gault site’s lower layers are between 16,000 & 20,000 years old. “Right now we find no other technology that looks like this assemblage,” he added. The research team therefore suggests that the people who made Clovis-style tools migrated into a region that already had an established population.

A Brief Traditional View of Natives in the Early America

At the height of the Ice Age, between 34,000 & 30,000 B.C., much of the world's water was locked up in vast continental ice sheets. As a result, the Bering Sea was hundreds of meters below its current level, & a land bridge, known as Beringia, emerged between Asia & North America. At its peak, Beringia is thought to have been some 1,500 kilometers wide. A moist & treeless tundra, it was covered with grasses & plant life, attracting the large animals that early humans hunted for their survival.

The first people to reach North America almost certainly did so without knowing they had crossed into a new continent. They probably would have been following game & agreeable weather, as their ancestors had for thousands of years, possibly along the Siberian coast & then across the land bridge.  Genetics studies have shown that the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas are descended from a group that diverged from its Siberian ancestors beginning sometime around 23,000 years before present & remained isolated in Beringia (the region of land that once connected Siberia & North America) for an extended period of time. When the glaciers covering North America melted enough to make the Pacific coast navigable, southward travel became possible, & patterned genetic diversity across North & South America reflects these early movements.

Once in Alaska, it would take these first North Americans thousands of years more to work their way through the openings in great glaciers south to what is now the United States. Evidence of early life in North America continues to be found. Little of it, however, can be reliably dated before 12,000 B.C.; a recent discovery of a hunting lookout in northern Alaska, for example, may date from almost that time. So too may the finely crafted spear points & items found near Clovis, New Mexico.

Similar artifacts have been found at sites throughout North & South America, indicating that life was probably already well established in much of the Western Hemisphere by some time prior to 10,000 B.C.

Around that time the mammoth began to die out & the bison took its place as a principal source of food & hides for these early North Americans. Over time, as more & more species of large game vanished — whether from overhunting or natural causes — plants, berries, & seeds became an increasingly important part of the early American diet. Gradually, foraging & the first attempts at primitive agriculture appeared. Native Americans in what is now central Mexico led the way, cultivating corn, squash, & beans, perhaps as early as 8,000 B.C. Slowly, this knowledge spread northward.

By 3,000 B.C., a primitive type of corn was being grown in the river valleys of New Mexico & Arizona. Then the first signs of irrigation began to appear, and, by 300 B.C., signs of early village life.

By the first centuries A.D., the Hohokam were living in settlements near what is now Phoenix, Arizona, where they built ball courts & pyramid-like mounds reminiscent of those found in Mexico, as well as a canal & irrigation system.

Yaudanchi Creation Story

Tales Around the Campfire -  Robert Hood, designer, and Edward Francis Finden, engraver, Interior of a Cree Indian Tent. March 25th. 1820, 1823 

 Yaudanchi Creation Story

Everything was water except a very small piece of ground. On this were the eagle and the coyote. Then the turtle swam to them. They sent it to dive for the earth at the bottom of the water. The turtle barely succeeded in reaching the bottom and touching it with its foot. When it came up again, all the earth seemed washed out. Coyote looked closely at its nails. At last he found a grain of earth. Then he and the eagle took this and laid it down. From it they made the earth as large as it is. From the earth they also made six men and six women. They sent these out in pairs in different directions and the people separated. After a time the eagle sent the coyote to see what the people were doing. Coyote came back and said: “They are doing something bad. They are eating the earth. One side is already gone.” The eagle said: ” That is bad. Let us make something for them to eat. Let us send the dove to find something.” The dove went out. It found a single grain of meal. The eagle and coyote put this down on the ground. Then the earth became covered with seeds and fruit. Now they told the people to eat these. When the seeds were dry and ripe the people gathered them. Then the people increased and spread all over. But the water is still under the world. 

(From Cabrillo.edu and written by C. Smith)

Apache Myths of Creation

Tales Around the Campfire - Robert Hood, designer, & Edward Francis Finden, engraver, Interior of a Cree Indian Tent. March 25th. 1820, 1823

Apache Creation Myth 1

In the beginning was only Tepeu & Gucumatz (Feathered Serpent) who also wintry the name Quetzalcoatl . These two sat together & thought, & whatever they thought came into being. They thought Earth, & there it was. They thought mountains, & so there were. They thought trees, & sky, & animals etc, & each came into being. But none of these things could praise them, so they formed more advanced beings of clay. But these beings fell apart when they got wet, so they made beings out of wood, but they proved unsatisfactory & caused trouble on the earth. The gods sent a great flood to wipe out these beings, so that they could start over. With the help of Mountain Lion, Coyote, Parrot, & Crow they fashioned four new beings. These four beings performed well & are the ancestors of the Quiché In the beginning was only Tepeu & Gucumatz (Feathered Serpent).

These two sat together & thought, & whatever they thought came into being. They thought earth, & there it was. They thought mountains, & so there were. They thought trees, & sky, & animals etc, & each came into being. But none of these things could praise them, so they formed more advanced beings of clay. But these beings fell apart when they got wet, so they made beings out of wood, but they proved unsatisfactory & caused trouble on the earth. The gods sent a great flood to wipe out these beings, so that they could start over. With the help of Mountain Lion, Coyote, Parrot, & Crow they fashioned four new beings. These four beings performed well & are the ancestors of the Quich.

 In the beginning there was only darkness. Suddenly a small bearded man, the One Who Lives Above, appeared rubbing his eyes as if just awakened. The man, the Creator, rubbed his hands together & there appeared a little girl, Girl-Without-Parents. The creator rubbed his face with his hands & there stood the Sun-God. Again Creator rubbed his sweaty brow & from his hands dropped Small-boy. Now there were four gods.Then he created Tarantula, Big Dipper, Wind, Lightning-Maker & Lightning-Rumbler. All four gods shook hands so that their sweat mixed together. Then Creator rubbed his palms together from which fell a small round, brown ball. They took turns kicking it & with each kick the ball grew larger. Creator told Wind to go inside the ball & blow it up. Then Tarantula spun a black cord which he attached to the ball & went to the east pulling as hard as he could.

 He repeated this exercise with a blue cord to the south, a yellow cord to the west & a white cord to the north. When he was done the brown ball had become the earth. The Creator again rubbed his hands & there appeared Hummingbird. "Fly all over this earth," said Creator to Hummingbird, "and tell us what you see." When he returned Hummingbird reported that there was water on the west side. But the earth rolled & bounced, so Creator made four giant posts one each black, blue, yellow & white & had Wind place them at the four cardinal points of the earth. The earth was now still. The creation of the people, animals, birds, trees, etc takes place hereafter.

Apache Creation Myth 2

In the beginning nothing existed, only darkness was everywhere. Suddenly from the darkness emerged a thin disc, one side yellow & the other side white, appearing suspended in midair. Within the disc sat a small bearded man, Creator, the One Who Lives Above. When he looked into the endless darkness, light appeared above. He looked down & it became a sea of light. To the east, he created yellow streaks of dawn. To the west, tints of many colors appeared everywhere. There were also clouds of different colors. He also created three other gods: a little girl, a Sun-God & a small boy.

Then he created celestial phenomena, the winds, the tarantula, & the earth from the sweat of the four gods mixed together in the Creator's palms, from a small round, brown ball, not much larger than a bean. The world was expanded to its current size by the gods kicking the small brown ball until it expanded. Creator told Wind to go inside the ball & to blow it up.

 The tarantula, the trickster character, spun a black cord and, attaching it to the ball, crawled away fast to the east, pulling on the cord with all his strength. Tarantula repeated with a blue cord to the south, a yellow cord to the west, & a white cord to the north. With mighty pulls in each direction, the brown ball stretched to immeasurable size--it became the earth! No hills, mountains, or rivers were visible; only smooth, treeless, brown plains appeared. Then the Creator created the rest of the beings & features of the Earth.

From Arizona Native Culture

The Apache Diet

Preparing shelter & Food Lipan Apache encampment in Texas Hill County, by George Nelson 

The Apache Diet

The Apaches were nomadic hunter-gatherers - hunting of wild game and gathering of cactus fruits and other wild plant foods. . They chased any wild game located within their territory, especially deer and rabbits. When necessary, they lived off the land by gathering wild berries, roots, cactus fruit and seeds of the mesquite tree. They planted some corn, beans, and squash as crops. They were extremely hardy prior to the arrival of European diseases, and could live practically naked in zero temperature.

Hunting is a part of daily life - for food, clothing, shelter, blankets. Apache hunted deer, wild turkeys, rabbits, buffalo, bears, mountain lions. There was no fishing. Eagles were hunted for their feathers.

They exchanged buffalo hides, tallow and meat, bones that could be worked into needles and scrapers for hides, and salt from the desert with the Pueblos for pottery, cotton, blankets, turquoise, corn and other goods. But at times they simply saw what they wanted and took it. They became known among the Pueblo villages by another name, Apachu, "the enemy."  Text from Ellie Crystal 

Apache Social Structure

 

Apache Social Structure

All Apachean peoples lived in extended family units (or family clusters); they usually lived close together, with each nuclear family in separate dwellings. An extended family generally consisted of a husband and wife, their unmarried children, their married daughters, their married daughters' husbands, and their married daughters' children. Thus, the extended family is connected through a lineage of women who live together (that is, matrilocal residence), into which men may enter upon marriage (leaving behind his parents' family). When a daughter was married, a new dwelling was built nearby for her and her husband. Among the Navajo, residence rights are ultimately derived from a head mother. Although the Western Apache usually practiced matrilocal residence, sometimes the eldest son chose to bring his wife to live with his parents after marriage. All tribes practiced sororate and levirate marriages.

All Apachean men practiced varying degrees of "avoidance" of his wife's close relatives, a practice often most strictly observed by distance between mother-in-law and son-in-law. The degree of avoidance differed in different Apachean groups. The most elaborate system was among the Chiricahua, where men had to use indirect polite speech toward and were not allowed to be within visual sight of the wife's female relatives, whom he had to avoid. His female Chiricahua relatives through marriage also avoided him.

Several extended families worked together as a "local group", which carried out certain ceremonies, and economic and military activities. Political control was mostly present at the local group level. Local groups were headed by a chief, a male who had considerable influence over others in the group due to his effectiveness and reputation. The chief was the closest societal role to a leader in Apachean cultures. The office was not hereditary, and the position was often filled by members of different extended families. The chief's leadership was only as strong as he was evaluated to be no group member was ever obliged to follow the chief. The Western Apache criteria for evaluating a good chief included: industriousness, generosity, impartiality, forbearance, conscientiousness, and eloquence in language.

Many Apachean peoples joined together several local groups into "bands". Band organization was strongest among the Chiricahua and Western Apache, while among the Lipan and Mescalero, it was weak. The Navajo did not organize local groups into bands, perhaps because of the requirements of the sheepherding economy. However, the Navajo did have "the outfit", a group of relatives that was larger than the extended family, but not as large as a local group community or a band.

On the larger level, the Western Apache organized bands into what Grenville Goodwin called "groups". He reported five groups for the Western Apache: Northern Tonto, Southern Tonto, Cibecue, San Carlos, and White Mountain. The Jicarilla grouped their bands into "moieties", perhaps influenced by the example of the northeastern Pueblo. The Western Apache and Navajo also had a system of matrilineal "clans" that were organized further into phratries (perhaps influenced by the western Pueblo).

The notion of "tribe" in Apachean cultures is very weakly developed; essentially it was only a recognition "that one owed a modicum of hospitality to those of the same speech, dress, and customs."[ The seven Apachean tribes had no political unity (despite such portrayals in common perception) and often were enemies of each other - for example, the Lipan fought against the Mescalero just as they did against the Comanche.  Text from Ellie Crystal 

Apache Religious Ceremonies

Apache Devil Dance

Apache Religious Ceremonies

The ceremonies are invariably called "dances. Among these are the rain dance, a puberty right, a harvest and good crop dance, and a spirit dance.

The Apache are devoutly religious and pray on many occasions and in various ways. Recreated in the human form, Apache spirits are supposed to dwell in a land of peace and plenty, where there is neither disease or death.

To celebrate each noted event a feast and dance is given. The music for our dance is sung by the warriors, and accompanied by beating the esadadedne (buck-skin-on-a-hoop). No words are sung - only the tones. When the feasting and dancing are over they have horse races, foot races, wrestling, jumping, and all sorts of games (gambling),

There are no formal churches, no religious organizations, no sabbath day, no holidays, and yet they worship. Sometimes the whole tribe assembles to sing and pray; sometimes a smaller number, perhaps only two or three. The songs have a few words, but are not formal. The singer will occasionally put in such words as he wished instead of the usual tone sound. Sometimes they prayed in silence; sometimes each one prays aloud; sometimes an aged person prays for all of us. At other times they rise and speak to us of our duties to each other and to Usen. The services are short.

When disease or pestilence abound we assemble and are questioned by our leaders to ascertain what evil we had done, and how Usen - a god - could be satisfied. Sometimes sacrifice is deemed necessary. Sometimes the offending one is punished.

If an Apache has allowed his aged parents to suffer for food or shelter, if he has neglected or abused the sick, if he has profaned our religion, or has been unfaithful, he can be banished from the tribe.

The Apaches have no prisons as white men have. Instead of sending their criminals into prison they send them out of their tribe. These faithless, cruel, lazy, or cowardly members of the tribe are excluded in such a manner that they cannot join any other tribe. Neither can they have any protection from our unwritten tribal laws.

Frequently these outlaw Indians band together and commit depredations which were charged against the regular tribe. However, the life of an outlaw Indian is a hard lot, and their bands never become very large; besides, these bands frequently provoke the wrath of the tribe and secured their own destruction. Text from Ellie Crystal.

Apache Homes

Apache Homes

The Apache dwellings consisted of a dome shaped frame of cottonwood or other poles, thatched with grass. The house itself was termed, "Kowa" and the grass thatch, "Pi".  

The wickiup was the most commonly used style for apache houses. The frame of the wickiup was made from thicker branches and covered in brush. Sometimes the brush was also covered with a buffalo hide. Wickiups were small dwellings, often the size of a modern camp tent, and an Apache woman could build a new wickiup in two hours if there was enough brush available. It contained a fire pit and a smoke hole for a chimney. 

The Jicarillas and Kiowa-Apaches, which roamed the Plains, used buffalo hide tepees. The basic shelter of the Chiricahua was the dome-shaped wickiup made of brush.   Text from Ellie Crystal 

The Apache Language

 The Apache Language

The Apache and Navajo (Dine) tribal groups of the American Southwest speak related languages of the language family referred to as 'Athabaskan.' Southern Athabaskan peoples in North America fan out from west-central Canada where some Southern Athabaskan-speaking groups still reside. Linguistic similarities indicate the Navajo and Apache were once a single ethnic group. Archaeological and historical evidence suggests a recent entry of these people into the American Southwest, with substantial numbers not present until the early 1500s.     From Ellie Crystal 

Fremont People

Reconstructed Pithouse - State Park, Boulder, Utah

 Fremont People

The Fremont culture or Fremont people, named by Noel Morss of Harvard's Peabody Museum after the Fremont River in Utah, is an archaeological culture that inhabited what is now Utah and parts of eastern Nevada, southern Idaho, southern Wyoming, and eastern Colorado between about 400 and 1300 AD.

The Fremont culture unit was characterised by small, scattered communities that subsisted primarily through maize cultivation. Archaeologists have long debated whether the Fremont were a local Archaic population that adopted village-dwelling life from the neighboring Anasazi culture to the south, or whether they represent an actual migration of Basketmakers (the earliest culture stage in the Anasazi Culture) into the northern American Southwest or the area that Julian Steward once called the "Northern Periphery".

The Fremont have some unique material culture traits that mark them as a distinct and identifiable archaeological culture unit, and recent mtDNA data indicate they are a biologically distinct population, separate from the Basketmaker. What early archaeologists such as Morss or Marie Wormington used to define the Fremont was their distinctive pottery, particularly vessel forms, incised and applique decorations, and unique leather moccasins. However, their house forms and overall technology are virtually indistinguishable from the Anasazi. Their habitations were initially circular pit-houses but they began to adopt rectangular stone-built pueblo homes above ground.

Marwitt (1970) defined local or geographic variations within the Fremont culture area based largely on differences in ceramic production and geography. Marwitt's subdivisions are the Parowan Fremont in southwestern Utah, the Sevier Fremont in west central Utah and eastern Nevada, the Great Salt Lake Fremont stretching between the Great Salt Lake and the Snake River in southern Idaho, Uinta Fremont in northeastern Utah, and arguably the San Rafael Fremont in eastern Utah and western Colorado. (The latter geographic variant may well be indivisible from the San Juan Anasazi.)     From Ellie Crystal 

George Catlin (1796–1872) - Apache Men's & Women's Traditional Clothing

George Catlin (1796 –1872) Four Apache Indians

Apache Men's & Women's Traditional Clothing

The primitive dress of the men was deerskin shirt, leggings, and moccasins. They were never without a loin-cloth. A deerskin cap with attractive symbolic ornamentation was worn. The women wore short deerskin skirts and high boot top moccasins.     

George Catlin (1796 –1872) Two Apache Warriors and a Woman

George Catlin (1796–1872) - Apache Warriors & Cochise

George Catlin (1796 –1872) Battle between the Jiccarilla Apachees and Camanchees

Apache Warriors

The Apache's gorilla war tactics came naturally and were unsurpassed. The name Apache struck fear into the hearts of Pueblo tribes, and in later years the Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American settlers, which they raided for food, and livestock.

The Apache and the Pueblos managed to maintain generally peaceful relations. But the arrival of the Spaniards changed everything. A source of friction was the activity of Spanish slave traders, who hunted down captives to serve as labor in the silver mines of Chihuahua in northern Mexico. The Apache, in turn, raided Spanish settlements to seize cattle, horses, firearms, and captives of their own.

The prowess of the Apache in battle became legend. It was said that an Apache warrior could run 50 miles without stopping and travel more swiftly than a troop of mounted soldiers.  

Cochise

Cochise (c. 1812- 1874) was a chief of one of the bands of the Chiricahua Apache and the leader of an uprising that began in 1861. Cochise was a chief of central Chiricahua in the southwestern United States. Cochise was the most famous Apache leader to resist intrusions by whites during the 19th century. Cochise was born in the area that now contains the border between Mexico, New Mexico and Arizona. That area had experienced significant tension between the Apache and European settlers from about 1831 until the greater part of the area was annexed by the United States in 1850, which ushered in a time of relative peace. Cochise worked as a woodcutter at the stagecoach station in Apache Pass for the Butterfield Overland line.

The peace was shattered in 1861 when an Apache raiding party drove away a local rancher's cattle and kidnapped his 12-year-old son. Cochise and five others of his band were falsely accused of the incident (which had actually been done by the Coyotero band of Apaches), and were ordered by an inexperienced Army officer (Lt. George Bascom) to report to the fort for questioning. When they went there and maintained their innocence the group was arrested and imprisoned.

The five soon mounted an escape attempt; one was killed and Cochise was shot three times but managed to slip away. He quickly took hostages to use in negotiations to free the other four Chiricahua. However, the plan backfired and both sides killed all their hostages in what was later known as "The Bascom Affair."

Cochise then joined with his father-in-law Mangas Coloradas (Colorado), a Mimbre–o Apache chief, in a long series of retaliatory skirmishes and raids among the settlements. Many were killed on both sides, but the Apaches began to achieve the upper hand, which prompted the United States Army to send an expedition (led by General James Carleton).

At Apache Pass in 1862, Cochise and Colorado, with 500 fighters, held their ground against a force of 3000 California volunteers under Carleton until artillery fire was brought to bear on their position. Colorado was later captured and subsequently killed while imprisoned leaving Cochise in sole command of the insurrection.

He and his men were gradually driven into the Dragoon Mountains but were nevertheless able to use the mountains as cover and as a base to continue significant skirmishes against white settlements from. This was the situation until 1871 when General George Crook assumed command and used other Apaches as scouts and informants and was thereby able to force Cochise's men to surrender. Cochise was taken into custody in September of that year.

The next year the Chiricahua were ordered to Tularosa Reservation in New Mexico but refused to leave their ancestral lands, which were guaranteed to them under treaty. Cochise managed to escape again and renewed raids and skirmishes against settlements through most of 1872. A new treaty was later negotiated by General Oliver O. Howard and Cochise retired to an Arizona reservation where he died of natural causes.      Text from Ellie Crystal 

History of The Apaches

 

History of the Apaches - Chief Geronimo - Medicine Man - ShamanJune 16, 1829 - February 17, 1909
Early Apache inhabitants of the southwestern United States were a nomadic people; some groups roamed as far south as Mexico. They were primarily hunters of buffalo but they also practiced limited farming. For centuries they were fierce warriors, adept in desert survival, who carried out raids on those who encroached on their territory.

The primitive Apache was a true nomad, a wandering child of Nature, whose birthright was a craving for the warpath with courage and endurance probably exceeded by no other people and with cunning beyond reckoning. Although his character is a strong mixture of courage and ferocity, the Apache is gentle and affectionate toward those with his own flesh and blood, particularly his children.

The Apache people (including the Navajo) came from the Far North to settle the Plains and Southwest around A.D. 850. They settled in three desert regions, the Great Basin, the Sonoran, and the Chihuachuan.

They were always known as 'wild" Indians, and indeed their early warfare with all neighboring tribes as well as their recent persistent hostility toward our Government, which precipitated a "war of extermination," bear out the appropriateness of the designation.

The first intruders were the Spanish, who penetrated Apache territory in the late 1500s. The Spanish drive northward disrupted ancient Apache trade connections with neighboring tribes.

When New Mexico became a Spanish colony in 1598, hostilities increased between Spaniards and Apaches. An influx of Comanche into traditional Apache territory in the early 1700s forced the Lipan and other Apaches to move south of their main food source, the buffalo. These displaced Apaches began raiding for food.

Apache raids on settlers accompanied the American westward movement and the United States acquisition of New Mexico in 1848. The Native Americans and the United States military authorities engaged in fierce wars until all Apache tribes were eventually placed on reservations.

Most of the tribes were subdued by 1868, except for the Chiricahua, who continued their attacks until 1872, when their chief, Cochise, signed a treaty with the U.S. government and moved with his band to an Apache reservation in Arizona. The last band of Apache raiders, led by the Chief Geronimo, was hunted down in 1886 and was confined in Florida, Alabama, and finally Oklahoma Territory.

Geronimo was born in what is now the state of New Mexico and according to the maps of the time was part of Mexico, but which his family considered Bedonkohe Apache land. Geronimo himself was a Chiricahua Apache. He grew up to be a respected medicine man and an accomplished warrior who fought frequently with Mexican troops. Mexican bandits massacred some of his relatives in 1858, and as a result he hated all Mexicans for the rest of his life. His Mexican adversaries gave him the nickname of "Geronimo", the Spanish version of the name "Jerome".

Geronimo fought against ever increasing numbers of both Mexican and United States troops and became famous for his daring exploits and numerous escapes from capture. His forces became the last major force of independent Indian warriors who refused to acknowledge the United States Government in the American West. This came to an end on September 4, 1886, when Geronimo surrendered to United States Army General Nelson A. Miles at Skeleton Canyon, Arizona.

Chief Geronimo - Medicine Man - Shaman  -  June 16, 1829 - February 17, 1909

Geronimo was sent in as a prisoner to Fort Pickens, Florida. In 1894 he was moved to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. In his old age Geronimo became something of a celebrity, appearing at fairs and selling souvenirs and photographs of himself, but not allowed to return to the land of his birth. He rode in President Theodore Roosevelt's 1905 inaugural parade. He died of pneumonia at Fort Sill.

   From Ellie Crystal 

The 6 Regional Groups of the Apache Nation

 The Apache Nation is composed of six regional groups:

• Jicarilla - Tinde - an Apache people currently living in New Mexico and to the Southern Athabaskan language they speak. The term jicarilla comes from Mexican Spanish meaning 'little basket'. During their zenith in the SouthWest, two divisions of the Jicarilla Apache were known: the Llanero, or "plains people," and the Hoyero, the "mountain people." They roamed from central and eastern Colorado into western Oklahoma, and as far south as Estancia, New Mexico. As a result of their eastern contacts, the Jicarilla adopted certain cultural traits of the Plains Indians, as did the Mescalero who also ranged the eastern plains. The Jicarilla of northeastern New Mexico hunted buffalo in the plains, and planted corn in the mountains.

• Mescalero - Faraon - Native American tribe of Southern Athabaskan stock currently living on the Mescalero Apache Reservation in southcentral New Mexico where they live with other Chiricahua and Lipan Apaches. The Reorganization Act of 1936 consolidated the tribes onto this reservation, which currently has an Apache population of approximately 4,000. The population is integrated with the rest of Lincoln county, which includes ranching and tourism as major sources of income.

  The Mescalero to the south were originally hunter-gatherers who developed an appetite for the roasted heads of wild mescal plants. The Mescalero band consisted of followers and a headman. They had no formal leader such as a tribal chief, or council, nor a decision making process. The core of the band was a "relative group", predominantly--but not necessarily kinsmen. They were named by the Spanish for the mescal cactus the Apaches used for food, drink, and fiber.

  They moved freely, wintering on the Rio Grande or farther south, ranging the buffalo plains in the summer, always following the sun and the food supply. They owned nothing and everything. They did as they pleased and bowed to no man. Their women were chaste. Their leaders kept their promises. They were mighty warriors who depended on success in raiding for wealth and honor. To their families they were kind and gentle, but they could be unbelievably cruel to their enemies - fierce and revengeful when they felt that they had been betrayed.

• Chiricahua - southwestern New Mexico, southeastern Arizona, and adjacent Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora. They were the fiercest of all tribal groups, raided along the Mexican border. The band was the informal political unit, consisting of followers and a headman. They had no formal leader such as a tribal chief, or council, nor a decision making process. The core of the band was a "relative group," predominantly, but not nessarily, kinsmen. Named by the Spanish for the mescal cactus the Apaches used for food, drink, and fiber. The basic shelter of the Chiricahua was the domeshaped wickiup made of brush. Similar the Navajo, they also regarded coyotes, insects, and birds as having been human beings; the human race, then, but following in the tracks of those who have gone before.

• Lipan - Lipan Apache are also known as Nide buffalo hunters, called by anthropologists and historians for many years as Eastern Apache, Apache de los Llanos, Lipan, Ipande, and other names. Today it is known that the Cuelgahen Nde Lipan Apache of Texas comprise the descendents of the Tall Grass People known as Lipan Apache - Apache following Chiefs Cuelga de Castro, John Castro, and Ramon Castro. Lipan Apache is also an Southern Athabaskan language spoken by Meredith Begay, Ted Rodriguez, and others on the Mescalero Apache Reservation. The general consensus of the Lipan Apache Committee on the same reservation is that linguistic and anthropological considerations of their cultural extinction are mistaken and incorrect.

• Kiowa - Gataka Nation of Native Americans who lived mostly in the plains of west Texas, Oklahoma and eastern New Mexico at the time of the arrival of Europeans. Currently the Kiowa Nation is a registered tribe, with about 6000 members living in southwestern Oklahoma in 1989. The Kiowas originated in the northern basin of the Missouri River, but migrated south to the Black Hills around 1650 and lived there with the Crow. Pushed southward by the invading Cheyennes and Sioux who were being pushed out of their lands in the great lake regions by the Objiwe tribes, the Kiowas moved down the Platte River basin to the Arkansas River area. There they fought with the Comanches, who already occupied the land. Around 1790, the two groups made an alliance and agreed to share the area. From that time on, the Comanches and Kiowas formed a deep bond; the peoples hunted, travelled, and made war together. An additional group, the Plains Apache (also called Kiowa-Apache), also affiliated with the Kiowas at this time.The Kiowas lived a not atypical Plains Indian lifestyle. Mostly nomadic, they survived on buffalo meat and gathered vegetables, living in tipis, and depended on their horses for hunting and military uses. The Kiowa were notorious for long-distance raids as far north as Canada and south into Mexico. After 1840 the Kiowas joined forces with their former enemies, the Cheyennes, as well as the Comanches and the Apaches, to fight and raid the Eastern natives then moving into the Indian Territory. The United States military intervened, and in the Treaty of Medicine Lodge of 1867 the Kiowa agreed to settle on a reservation in southwestern Oklahoma. Some bands of Kiowas remained at large until 1875. On August 6, 1901 Kiowa land in Oklahoma was opened for white settlement, effectively dissolving the contiguous reservation. While each Kiowa head of household was alloted 80 acres, the only land remaining in Kiowa tribal ownership today is what was the scattered parcels of 'grass land' which had been leased to the white settlers for grazing before the reservation was opened for settlement.

• Western Apache - Pinal Coyotero - most of eastern Arizona which include the White Mountain, Cibuecue, San Carlos, and Northern and Southern Tonto bands. They are reputed by tradition to have been the first of the Apache to have penetrated below the Little Colorado among the Pueblo peoples, with whom they intermarried (Bourke in Jour. Am. Folklore, III, 112, 1890). They possessed the country from San Francisco mountains to the Gila until they were subdued by Gen. Crook in 1873. Since then they have peaceably tilled their land at San Carlos.

The Apaches are well-known for their superior skills in warfare strategy and inexhaustible endurance. Continuous wars among other tribes and invaders from Mexico followed the Apaches' growing reputation of warlike character. When they confronted Coronado in 1540, they lived in eastern New Mexico, and reached Arizona in the 1600s. The Apache are described as a gentle people; faithful in their friendship.     From Ellie Crystal 

The Apache Nation

 

Apache Nation

Apache is the collective name for several culturally related tribes of Native Americans, aboriginal inhabitants of North America, who speak a Southern Athabaskan language. The modern term excludes the related Navajo people.The origin of the name Apache is uncertain. It may derive from the Yavapai word epache, meaning "people". The origin has also been claimed to be the Zuni word apachu, meaning "enemy" (but this may have been the Zuni name for the Navajo people) or an unspecified Quechan word meaning "fighting-men".

The Apaches formerly ranged over southeastern Arizona and north-western Mexico. The chief divisions of the Apaches were the Arivaipa, Chiricahua, Coyotero, Faraone Gileno, Llanero, Mescalero, Mimbreno, Mogollon, Naisha, Tchikun and Tchishi. They were a powerful and warlike tribe, constantly at enmity with the whites. The final surrender of the tribe took place in 1886, when the Chiricahuas, the division involved, were deported to Florida and Alabama, where they underwent military imprisonment. The U.S. Army, in their various confrontations, found them to be fierce warriors and skillful strategists. The Apaches are now in reservations in Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma, and number between 5000 and 6000.

The word "Apache" comes from the Yuma word for "fighting-men". It also comes from a Zuni word meaning "enemy". The Zuni name for Navajo was called "Apachis de Nabaju" by the earliest Spaniards exploring New Mexico. They called themselves Inde, or Nide "the people."     From Ellie Crystal 

Ancient Timbers Reveal Secrets of Anasazi Builders

 Ancient Timbers Reveal Secrets of Anasazi Builders

National Geographic - September 28, 2001

Some of America's earliest high-rise architects lived in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, between the tenth and twelfth centuries. Here these Anasazi designers and engineers built 12 great houses up to five stories high with hundreds of rooms. However, where the Chaco residents harvested the lumber for these enormous buildings is a question that has stumped archaeologists. Now scientists have found a way to let ancient timbers tell their secrets. Geochemist Nathan English, of the University of Arizona, has developed a chemical test to determine the origin of these trees.

In the same way that human bones absorb and store calcium from food, trees take up the element strontium. Exactly how much is absorbed depends on the quantity in the surrounding soil and rock where the tree grows. The test is based on comparing ratios of two strontium isotopes from wooden construction beams in the Chaco houses with measurements taken from modern trees in the surrounding mountain ranges.     From Ellie Crystal 

The 12 Chaco dwellings together contain about 200,000 wooden beams that were used to construct the roofs. But the Chaco Canyon is an almost treeless landscape that was certainly never the source of the timber. When English analyzed the strontium ratios from the timber used to construct the houses, they matched those from spruce and pine trees located on mountaintops up to 60 miles (100 kilometers) away in the Chuska and San Mateo mountain ranges.It is amazing that the Chaco dwellers carried thousands of these enormous logs most of which measured about 5 meters (15 feet), about 22 cm (9 inches) in diameter and weighed about 275 kilograms (600 pounds) for up to one hundred kilometers, said English."

These findings amplify our suspicions that these people were tremendously well organized and socially powerful," says archaeologist Jeffrey Dean, also of the University of Arizona. It takes a lot of determination and coordination to harvest logs from up to 100 kilometers away and bring them back to the village, he added. English's team also found wood within single rooms that came from both the Chuska and San Mateo mountains, and that trees from different great houses were harvested in the same year.

Secret Ruins Unveiled in Utah Canyon

 Secret ruins unveiled in Utah canyon -Arizona Republic - June 2004

Range Creek area southeast of East Carbon City, Utah Archaeologists led reporters into a remote canyon to reveal an almost perfectly preserved picture of ancient life: stone pit houses, granaries and a bounty of artifacts kept secret for more than a half-century. Hundreds of sites on a private ranch turned over to the state offer some of the best evidence of the little-understood Fremont culture, hunter-gatherers and farmers who lived mostly within the present-day borders of Utah. The sites at Range Creek may be up to 4,500 years old.

A caravan of news organizations traveled for two hours from the mining town of East Carbon City, over a serpentine thriller of a dirt road that topped an 8,200-foot mountain before dropping into the narrow canyon in Utah's Book Cliffs region. Officials kept known burial sites and human remains out of view of reporters and cameras, but within a single square mile of verdant meadows, archaeologists showed off one village site and said there were five more, where arrowheads, pottery shards and other artifacts can still be found lying on the ground. Archaeologists said the occupation sites, which include granaries full of grass seed and corn, offer an unspoiled slice of life of the ancestors of modern American Indian tribes. The settlements are scattered along 12 miles of Range Creek and up side canyons.

The collapsing half-buried houses don't have the grandeur of New Mexico's Chaco Canyon or Colorado's Mesa Verde, where overhanging cliffs shelter stacked stone houses. But they are remarkable in that they hold a treasure of information about the Fremont culture that has been untouched by looters. The Fremont people were efficient hunters, taking down deer, elk, bison and small game and leaving behind piles of animal bone waste, Jones said. They fished for trout in Range Creek, using a hook and line or weirs. In their more advanced stage they grew corn.

Waldo Wilcox, the rancher who sold the land and returned Wednesday, kept the archaeological sites a closely guarded secret for more than 50 years. The San Francisco-based Trust for Public Land bought Wilcox's 4,200-acre ranch for $2.5 million. The conservation group transferred the ranch to the Bureau of Land Management, which turned it over to Utah. The deal calls for the ranch to be opened for public access, a subject certain to raise debate over the proper stewardship of a significant archaeological find.

Artifacts found in the Wilcox collection include a wide array of bone needles, stone awls, bone and shell beads, projectile points, knives, scrapers and other stone tools from an interesting variety of cherts -- obsidian, pink agate and what resembled Llano Estacado alibate.     From Ellie Crystal 

Cultural Divisions in the Native Peoples of the American Southwest,

 Cultural Divisions

Archaeological cultural units such as "Anasazi", Hohokam, Patayan or Mogollon are used by archaeologists to define material culture similarities and differences that may identify prehistoric socio-cultural units which may be understood as equivalent to modern tribes, societies or peoples. The names and divisions are classificatory devices based on theoretical perspectives, analytical methods and data available at the time of analysis and publication. They are subject to change, not only on the basis of new information and discoveries, but also as attitudes and perspectives change within the scientific community. It should not be assumed that an archaeological division or culture unit corresponds to a particular language group or to a socio-political entity such as a tribe.

When making use of modern cultural divisions in the American Southwest, it is important to understand three limitations in the current conventions:

• Archaeological research focuses on items left behind during people's activities; fragments of pottery vessels, human remains, stone tools or evidence left from the construction of dwellings. However, many other aspects of the culture of prehistoric peoples are not tangible. Languages spoken by these people and their beliefs and behavior are difficult to decipher from physical materials. Cultural divisions are tools of the modern scientist, and so should not be considered similar to divisions or relationships the ancient residents may have recognized. Modern cultures in this region, many of whom claim some of these ancient people as ancestors, contain a striking range of diversity in lifestyles, social organization, language and religious beliefs. This suggests the ancient people were also more diverse than their material remains may suggest.

• The modern term 'style' has a bearing on how material items such as pottery or architecture can be interpreted. Within a people, different means to accomplish the same goal can be adopted by subsets of the larger group. For example, in modern Western cultures, there are alternative styles of clothing that characterized older and younger generations. Some cultural differences may be based on linear traditions, on teaching from one generation or 'school' to another. Other varieties in style may have distinguished between arbitrary groups within a culture, perhaps defining status, gender, clan or guild affiliation, religious belief or cultural alliances. Variations may also simply reflect the different resources available in a given time or area.

• Defining cultural groups, such as the Ancient Pueblo peoples, tends to create an image of territories separated by clear-cut boundaries, like modern state lines. These simply did not exist. Prehistoric people traded, worshipped and collaborated most often with other nearby groups. Cultural differences should therefore be understood as 'clinal', "increasing gradually as the distance separating groups also increases." (Plog, p. 72.) Departures from the expected pattern may occur because of unidentified social or political situations or because of geographic barriers. In the Southwest, mountain ranges, rivers and, most obviously, the Grand Canyon can be significant barriers for human communities, likely reducing the frequency of contact with other groups. Current opinion holds that the closer cultural similarity between the Mogollon and Ancient Pueblos and their greater differences from the Hohokam and Patayan is due to both the geography and the variety of climate zones in the Southwest. From Ellie Crystal    See:Wikipedia...