Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Western Sieve. Again. This week, I
Speaker 1: want to start out with a little imagination exercise. Imagine
Speaker 1: being beneath dense canopies of pine and oak along the
Speaker 1: slow curves of the Mississippi and the winding tributaries of
Speaker 1: the Tennessee and Alabama River. Reality was the Southeastern woodlands
Speaker 1: of North America, once thronged with life and civilization, long
Speaker 1: before the arrival of Europeans. Now, this was a long
Speaker 1: time before Jamestown, long time before his Soto and his
Speaker 1: armored boots bunched along the soil, long before the maps
Speaker 1: marked these lands with the words America Indigenous nations in
Speaker 1: the Southeastern United States what would become I suppose Southeastern
Speaker 1: United States were anything but wild. This was an incredible
Speaker 1: land of population density. It's one of my most fascinating
Speaker 1: parts in my opinion of Native American cultures, the American Southeast.
Speaker 1: That is, this was a land of towns, fields, and
Speaker 1: forests not untouched, but tended from the Gulf coast all
Speaker 1: the way up to the Piedmont Hills. The peoples of
Speaker 1: the Southeast lived in complex societies with deep historical roots
Speaker 1: and dynamic systems of governance, trade, and belief. Their story
Speaker 1: often buried unfortunately beneath the ashes of disease and conquest
Speaker 1: begins not with first contact with the Europeans, but with
Speaker 1: first cultivation. That's one of the constant mistakes actually still
Speaker 1: in textbooks today, that Native American history, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: begins in fourteen ninety two with the arrival of Europeans.
Speaker 1: Maybe some a little bit before that, if you came
Speaker 1: back to leef Erickson, but most people don't. So why
Speaker 1: is that a mistake? Because it misses out on the
Speaker 1: reality of timing. Talked about it in a couple of
Speaker 1: episodes now where depending upon when Europeans arrived, if they
Speaker 1: would have arrived fifty hundred years earlier, they may have
Speaker 1: walked into a stronger civilization. Actually, because hopefully, as you've
Speaker 1: learned in this podcast, history isn't linear. Civilizations don't just
Speaker 1: get stronger over time. They ebb and they flow, and
Speaker 1: so what times a conqueror shows up goes a long
Speaker 1: way in dictating how successful they're going to be. By
Speaker 1: the time the sun rose over the Southeastern woodlands around
Speaker 1: one thousand in our Common era, a cultural transformation had
Speaker 1: already swept through the region in the river valleys of
Speaker 1: today what we call Illinois, Missouri, Mississippi, Alabama, a civilization
Speaker 1: emerged that would later be known as the Mississippian culture,
Speaker 1: a network of towns and ceremonial centers that organize life
Speaker 1: around maize, corn, agriculture, and religious hierarchy, as well as
Speaker 1: monumental earthworks. Kahokia, the great city near modern day Saint Louis,
Speaker 1: was the crown jewel of the Mississippian civilization. You have
Speaker 1: an opportunity to look up some images. It was a
Speaker 1: city of perhaps twenty thousand people, larger than London at
Speaker 1: the time, with massive mounds, wide plazas, and a radiating
Speaker 1: network of trade and tribute. The largest of these earthworks,
Speaker 1: dubbed monks Mound, rose ten stories above the floodplain, dwarfing
Speaker 1: the surrounding countryside. Wasn't a tomb place for gods and kings.
Speaker 1: The influence of Khokia and its sister cities rippled outward
Speaker 1: south and east along the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the
Speaker 1: Yazoo Rivers. New ceremonial centers rose up Moundville and Alabama,
Speaker 1: Etowah and Georgia, and Spiro in what is today Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: These were not crude constructions. They were expressions of astronomical precision,
Speaker 1: social order, and theological vision, much in the same way
Speaker 1: that the great pyramids of the Maya to the south
Speaker 1: of the Aztecs, and of course to the ancient Egyptians,
Speaker 1: societies were organized around elite lineages and priestly classes who
Speaker 1: mediated between the people the cosmos, life and death. But
Speaker 1: these cities did not stand alone. They were linked by
Speaker 1: rivers and roads, by trade and shared belief. Copper from
Speaker 1: the Great Lakes, conch shells from the Gulf, obsidian from
Speaker 1: the Rockies. We know from archaeological digs. They all found
Speaker 1: their way to these great trade center cities, and across
Speaker 1: this land corn beans and squash planted and rhythmic rotating
Speaker 1: gardens fed millions, not tens of thousands, millions of people.
Speaker 1: By the time Kahoki had declined around the thirteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: its people dispersing for reasons that historians and archaeologists still debate,
Speaker 1: Mississippian culture had now taken firm root. Elsewhere. The southeast
Speaker 1: was dotted with various chiefdoms ranked societies where power was
Speaker 1: concentrated in the hands of hereditary elites. As it was
Speaker 1: in Europe at the same time. These chiefdoms like Kosa,
Speaker 1: Talisi and Appalachi did not rule empires, but they wielded influence.
Speaker 1: They could mobilize labor, wage war, and preside over rituals
Speaker 1: that re affirmed the cosmic balance. In towns laid out
Speaker 1: around central plazas and platform mounds, daily life revolved around
Speaker 1: the seasons and the soil. Of course, corn was king,
Speaker 1: as it was throughout North and Central America. Its planting
Speaker 1: and harvests were ceremonies onto themselves. The people of these
Speaker 1: societies span a wide variety of occupations. This was no
Speaker 1: mere subsistence farming folks. There were artisans, builders, traders, and warriors.
Speaker 1: They carved effigy pipes from soft stone, wove cloth from
Speaker 1: mulberry bark, and even played a ritual game to today
Speaker 1: we call chunky, in which players hurled spears at a
Speaker 1: rolling stone disc. Actually sounds kind of fun, both sport
Speaker 1: and spectacle watch by hundreds of people, and of course, culturally,
Speaker 1: this world is alive with meaning. The Southeastern ceremonial complex,
Speaker 1: a term coined by archaeologists, refers to a set of
Speaker 1: shared symbols and beliefs, the bird man, the great serpent,
Speaker 1: the sacred fire, the axis mundi of mound and sky.
Speaker 1: These weren't just decorative images. They were maps of existence,
Speaker 1: inscribed onto copper plates, tattooed onto human bodies, and buried
Speaker 1: with the dead. Now, of course, to the casual European i,
Speaker 1: as we talked about last time, this land probably looked
Speaker 1: wild forests stretching endlessly, meadows thick with game. But the
Speaker 1: truth is more astonishing in the Southeast, especially because what
Speaker 1: the settlers mistook for wilderness was actually a landscape shaped
Speaker 1: by generations of careful tending. The peoples of the Southeast,
Speaker 1: like elsewhere, used fire as a tool. They burned the
Speaker 1: understory of the forest to clear paths and promote the
Speaker 1: growth of edible plants, and to make hunting easier. They
Speaker 1: cultivated chestnuts, hickories, persimions, and plums. These were orchards, not
Speaker 1: accidental groves that stood at the outskirts of native towns.
Speaker 1: Game was abundant, not despite human presence, but because of it.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned before, these were not hunter gatherers roaming
Speaker 1: at random. Native societies of North America hadn't been that
Speaker 1: for thousands of years. Though most of the Southeast remained
Speaker 1: untouched by Europeans until the sixteenth century, Ramrezo strain ships,
Speaker 1: and unfamiliar diseases drifted inland long before the first encounter.
Speaker 1: Spanish expeditions had touched the coast of Florida as early
Speaker 1: as fifteen thirteen. By fifteen twenty six, a failed colony
Speaker 1: called San Miguel dis Guadalupe had been established briefly on
Speaker 1: what today was probably the South Carolina coast. But then
Speaker 1: came the game changer Hernando de Soto. In fifteen thirty nine,
Speaker 1: De Soto landed in Florida with an army of over
Speaker 1: six hundred men and began a four year march through
Speaker 1: the heart of the Southeast. He encountered complex societies at Appalachi, Cota, Fqui,
Speaker 1: and later Cosa, some of which received him as a god.
Speaker 1: Others he demanded food, porters and gold. He burned villages,
Speaker 1: he captured chief in return. His army was constantly harried
Speaker 1: by ambushes, ravaged by its own diseases, and ultimately lost
Speaker 1: itself in a land that it couldn't understand. What De
Speaker 1: Soto left behind was more devastating than fire or steel. Smallpox, measles,
Speaker 1: influenza germs that spread well beyond his path of destruction,
Speaker 1: igniting pandemics and towns and villages that he never saw.
Speaker 1: By the time that the French and English arrived a
Speaker 1: century later, the great Mississippian chiefdoms had shattered, their populations, decimated,
Speaker 1: their towns abandoned, and reorganized. The survivors remembered the old
Speaker 1: cities as myths, their mounds as haunted places were gods
Speaker 1: once walked. By sixteen hundred, the southeastern landscape still bore
Speaker 1: the fingerprints of the original caretakers, but the people had changed.
Speaker 1: New confederacies emerged from the fragments of the older polities.
Speaker 1: The Musgogie will become the Creek, the Chickasaw, the Choctaw,
Speaker 1: and the Cherokee, whose ancestors had lived in the region
Speaker 1: for millennia, but now moved in new ways, forming new alliances.
Speaker 1: They traded with the Spanish, sometimes and sometimes resisted them.
Speaker 1: They adopted the horse and adapted to new patterns of power.
Speaker 1: Their societies were no less rich, no less complex, but
Speaker 1: they stood at the edge of a coming storm. European
Speaker 1: empires would soon carve the land into pieces. Missionaries would
Speaker 1: press new gods into their tongues, and the trails worn
Speaker 1: smooth by generations of native feet would give way to
Speaker 1: rhodes pathed for conquest. But in the soil, in the stone,
Speaker 1: in the whisper of the pine trees, over old mounds,
Speaker 1: the past remained. The Southeastern peoples had not vanished. They
Speaker 1: had remembered, rebuilt, and reimagined themselves again and again, as
Speaker 1: they would continue to do so long after sixteen hundred.
Speaker 1: Now let's turn our attention to the American Southwest that
Speaker 1: will be right after this. If you've ever been to
Speaker 1: the American Southwest, then you would know that the conditions
Speaker 1: there for growing crops are not particularly great. It's not
Speaker 1: waving waves of grain exactly now. It's more like arid
Speaker 1: desert and step. So the native peoples that lived in
Speaker 1: this region didn't have the opportunity to wait for the rain. Instead,
Speaker 1: they built canals. Instead of depleting the earth, they worked
Speaker 1: with what they had Across the desert plateaus and river valleys.
Speaker 1: Indigenous engineers created systems of irrigation so advanced, so attuned
Speaker 1: to their environments that they rivaled and often actually exceeded
Speaker 1: the ingenuity of later colonial technologies. A walk through one
Speaker 1: such location, Chaco Cannon, reveals the traces of this mastery.
Speaker 1: Here there are stone lined canals that are ancient as
Speaker 1: anything in America that stretch toward the horizon, water works
Speaker 1: that were designed to channel the seasonal runoff that does
Speaker 1: happen in the spring and in the fall into productive fields.
Speaker 1: These weren't accidental. They were acts of intense observation, rooted
Speaker 1: in a worldview that water was not merely a utility,
Speaker 1: it was a presence. Modern society, in contrast, often flips
Speaker 1: this wisdom on its head to its own detriment, as
Speaker 1: I think we're seeing nowadays. As one critic I've read
Speaker 1: puts it, quote in California, water flows uphill toward money
Speaker 1: end quote. Not exactly positive. It's a haunting commentary on
Speaker 1: how political and economic power has now dictated the flow
Speaker 1: of rivers, the workings of water itself in the United States.
Speaker 1: And we've seen the consequences of this over and over again,
Speaker 1: and we will likely continue to see the consequences of
Speaker 1: this over and over again. Groundwater today vanishes beneath almond
Speaker 1: groves and suburban lawns, while aquifers that took a millennia
Speaker 1: to fill by the indigenous peoples that lived here once
Speaker 1: were drained in one generation. But such a mindset would
Speaker 1: have been unthinkable to those who first shaped this land.
Speaker 1: To quote historian Stanley Rice quote, the Natives could not
Speaker 1: have settled America with that kind of attitude end quote.
Speaker 1: Survival for them meant harmony building within the constraints of nature,
Speaker 1: not despite them. This respectful relationship with the environment extended
Speaker 1: far beyond irrigation. Next time, we'll talk about the far east,
Speaker 1: the forests at east the Great Lakes, and beyond there
Speaker 1: on the fringes of lakes Michigan Lake, Superior Lake, Erie,
Speaker 1: and so on and so forth, and deep into the
Speaker 1: Appalachian Hills, Native communities were quietly cultivating the land in
Speaker 1: ways that settlers would continue to misinterpret for centuries. As
Speaker 1: we've talked about before, would look like wild forces where
Speaker 1: actually carefully manage orchards and groves and so on and
Speaker 1: so forth. But going back for a moment to the
Speaker 1: American Southwest, archaeological evidence places human habitation in the Southwest
Speaker 1: as far back as twelve thousand years ago, with Paleo
Speaker 1: Indians following the Last Ice Age megafauna through grassland corridors
Speaker 1: and high land plateaus. Over time, these nomadic groups adapted
Speaker 1: to a changing climate, exchanging chase for settlement, as I
Speaker 1: talked about before, they had done in the American southeast
Speaker 1: and beyond. By the year two thousand BCE, corn maze,
Speaker 1: originally domesticated in meso America, had reached the Southwest, altering
Speaker 1: indigenous lifestyles. The cultivation here as in the southeast, of
Speaker 1: corn beans and squashed the so called Three Sisters, allowed
Speaker 1: for a gradual shift from foraging to farming and gave
Speaker 1: rise to desert civilization that would later on astound Spanish explorers.
Speaker 1: The land was not easy. Water, as I mentioned previously,
Speaker 1: was scarce rain unpredictable, but early peoples used how to
Speaker 1: use canals and irrigation and developed techniques of dry farming
Speaker 1: as well as floodplain irrigation to keep their lands abundant
Speaker 1: and keep their civilizations growing. By the first millennium of
Speaker 1: the Common era, three major cultural traditions emerged in the Southwest,
Speaker 1: each one unique but interconnected. The ho Coam, the Mogolan,
Speaker 1: and the ancestor of Pulbloins, often referred to as the Anasi,
Speaker 1: though that term is actually increasingly avoided due to some
Speaker 1: negative connotations in native languages. The ho Coam, centered around
Speaker 1: what is today southern Arizona, became the great canal builders.
Speaker 1: Along the Salts and Gila Rivers, which today formed the
Speaker 1: basis of Arizona's capital city, Phoenix, they created hundreds of
Speaker 1: miles of irrigation ditches capable of supporting large agricultural towns.
Speaker 1: They built ball courts that were actually reminiscent of those
Speaker 1: of the Maya in ancient Mexico. They traded for turquoise
Speaker 1: and parrots from far to the south, and crafted intricate
Speaker 1: shell jewelry from goods brought from the Gulf of California.
Speaker 1: Their villages were laid out the surprising regularity marked by
Speaker 1: plazas and ceremonial spaces. The Mogolan inhabited the rugged mountains
Speaker 1: and canyonlands of southwestern New Mexico. In southeastern Arizona, they
Speaker 1: maintained a more dispersed settlement pattern. Early on, they lived
Speaker 1: in pitt houses, later transformed into surface pueblos with masonry walls.
Speaker 1: Their distinct brown paste pottery, often adorned with black geometric designs,
Speaker 1: provides a vivid record that can be seen today in
Speaker 1: museums across the American Southwest. And beyond. Of their esthetic
Speaker 1: sensibilities and their spiritual world, the Ancestral Plebloans are probably
Speaker 1: the most well known, and they spread across the Four
Speaker 1: Corners region. These are the most visibly dramatic of all
Speaker 1: the Southwestern cultures. By nine hundred CE, they had begun
Speaker 1: constructing these massive, multi story stone dwellings in cliff alcoves
Speaker 1: above canyon walls. Chico Canyon, which I mentioned before, in
Speaker 1: present day New Mexico became a ceremonial trade center unparalleled
Speaker 1: in its scale and size. At its height between eight
Speaker 1: fifty and eleven hundred CE, AD boasted monumental architecture, including
Speaker 1: the so called great houses like Pueblo Bonito. Aligned with
Speaker 1: the lunar and solar cycles. As Europeans had done, the
Speaker 1: Ancestral Plebloans were not isolated desert dwellers. They had wide
Speaker 1: reaching trade networks we know today, importing, in fact, as
Speaker 1: one example, macaws all the way from Central America and
Speaker 1: turquoise from hundreds of miles away. Yet the height of
Speaker 1: these civilizations was followed by abrupt change between one thy,
Speaker 1: one hundred and thirty and thirteen hundred, a series of
Speaker 1: serious droughts struck the Southwest. Then came with those societal transformations.
Speaker 1: Jack O'canyon was abandoned, and the Great Cliff dwellings at
Speaker 1: places like me Severity were soon emptied of all their populations.
Speaker 1: Scholars continued to debate the causes environmental collapse, social upheaval, warfare,
Speaker 1: maybe all of them. Rather than vanishing, these cultures continued
Speaker 1: to evolve. Many of the ancestral Puebloans moved southward, forming
Speaker 1: new communities along the Rio Grande in what is now
Speaker 1: Mexico and Arizona. These new pueblos were smaller and more compact,
Speaker 1: better suited to a changing climate and more defensive posture.
Speaker 1: The Magolan and Hakoam cultures similarly disbursed and emerged into
Speaker 1: to a tribal identity that was forming across the Southwest.
Speaker 1: By fifteen hundred, the cultural landscape of the Southwest had
Speaker 1: been reshaped into a mosaic of distinct but interrelated peoples.
Speaker 1: Among them were the Pavoan peoples such as now the Hope, Zuni, Acoma,
Speaker 1: and Taos, who maintained many of the traditions of their ancestors,
Speaker 1: including communal agriculture, religious ceremonies, and oral histories. Tracing their
Speaker 1: migrations to the west and north were the Humans speaking
Speaker 1: people along the lower Colorado River and then to the
Speaker 1: south where the Tahono dej the descendants of the hocoam
Speaker 1: They adapted to the desert with seasonal mobility and followed
Speaker 1: Swagaro food ceremonies that honored the land's rhythms. Meanwhile, the
Speaker 1: Apache and Navajo, these were different types of linguistic groups
Speaker 1: who had migrated from the north during the late Prehistoric period,
Speaker 1: began to establish themselves in the region, bringing with them
Speaker 1: new traditions of raiding, mobility, and pastoral as. Now was
Speaker 1: into this new world that the Spanish finally arrived. In
Speaker 1: fifteen thirty nine, the Moorish scout Esponanzo entered Zuni territory,
Speaker 1: only to be killed soon thereafter. A year later, Francisco
Speaker 1: Vasquez de Coronado led a grand expedition northward in search
Speaker 1: of the fabled seven Cities of Gold. He never found them.
Speaker 1: What he found were pueblos, impressive, yes, but not made
Speaker 1: out of gold, made of adobe and stone. The expedition
Speaker 1: brought horses, steel, and disease into a fragile ecosystem and
Speaker 1: a resilient, deeply rooted network of communities. Bough Coronado's expedition
Speaker 1: failed to find riches, it marked the beginning of sustained
Speaker 1: European interest in the region. The peoples of the Southwest, adaptable, spiritual,
Speaker 1: and yes fiercely tied to their lands and traditions, would
Speaker 1: soon face an era of colonization, missionaries, and resistance, But
Speaker 1: as of the year sixteen hundred, they remained firmly in
Speaker 1: control of them their ancestral homelands, their history already long
Speaker 1: and complex, and their future remaining to be written. Next time,
Speaker 1: we finish our story of the Native American cultures of
Speaker 1: the early New Americas before turning back to Virginia to
Speaker 1: talk about continued onrest in colonial America.