Prophecies, legends, community crops, pottery, tools, and ecological knowledge p
Prophecies, legends, community crops, pottery, tools, and ecological knowledge provided the basis for the founding of major cultures.
From 1200 to 1450, there were enough varied and complex human societies in the Americas to fill several books. This short essay offers several examples of what life was like back then on these two big continents. Like ducks before winter, the narrative starts in the north and works its way southward.
Haudenosaunee
There was a landmark meeting in North America traditionally dated to 1200, though some historians say it could have been later. Iroquois chiefs of the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk—who had often been in deadly conflict with each other—pledged to live in peace and to unite in a confederation. It was known in the Iroquois language as the Haudenosaunee and would also come to be known as the Five Nations. The symbolic “Great Tree of Peace” where they celebrated this agreement was inspired by a white pine, whose characteristic bundle of five needles represented the tribes. Iroquois tradition attributes the meeting and its success to a man named Dekanawida, the peace-giver, with assistance of a woman named Jigonhsasee and the orator known as Hiawatha. Each tribe in the confederation pledged not to fight, ending what had been a long cycle of conflict. The agreement was recorded in the Hiawatha wampum belt.
Haudenosaunee is sometimes translated as “The People of the Longhouse,” which members of the confederacy saw as a symbol of their unity. They envisioned the longhouse, with the Mohawks at the eastern door in the lower Mohawk Valley; the Oneidas occupied the upper Mohawk Valley near modern day Oneida; the Onondagas kept the council fire in the center in the greater Syracuse area; the Cayugas occupied the finger-lakes area; and the Seneca guarded the western door in the modern Rochester-Buffalo area. Each tribe relied on a matriarchal hierarchy and a men’s council to govern its people. Around 1720, the Tuscarora nation was admitted into the league as the sixth member.
Fort Ancient Culture(?), Great Serpent Mound, c. 1070, Adams County, Ohio (photo: Arthur T. LaBar, CC BY-NC 2.0)
A serpent 1300 feet long
The Great Serpent Mound in rural, southwestern Ohio is the largest serpent effigy in the world. Numerous mounds were made by the ancient Native American cultures that flourished along the fertile valleys of the Mississippi, Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri Rivers a thousand years ago, though many were destroyed as farms spread across this region during the modern era. They invite us to contemplate the rich spiritual beliefs of the ancient Native American cultures that created them.
The Great Serpent Mound measures approximately 1,300 feet in length and ranges from one to three feet in height. The complex mound is both architectural and sculptural and was erected by settled peoples who cultivated maize, beans and squash and who maintained a stratified society with an organized labor force, but left no w