WEBVTT 1 00:00:21.120 --> 00:00:25.679 Hello, and welcome to Western Sieve. Again. This week, I 2 00:00:25.760 --> 00:00:29.120 want to start out with a little imagination exercise. Imagine 3 00:00:29.120 --> 00:00:33.320 being beneath dense canopies of pine and oak along the 4 00:00:33.359 --> 00:00:37.320 slow curves of the Mississippi and the winding tributaries of 5 00:00:37.399 --> 00:00:43.240 the Tennessee and Alabama River. Reality was the Southeastern woodlands 6 00:00:43.280 --> 00:00:48.000 of North America, once thronged with life and civilization, long 7 00:00:48.119 --> 00:00:53.759 before the arrival of Europeans. Now, this was a long 8 00:00:53.799 --> 00:00:58.880 time before Jamestown, long time before his Soto and his 9 00:00:59.039 --> 00:01:03.280 armored boots bunched along the soil, long before the maps 10 00:01:03.320 --> 00:01:08.519 marked these lands with the words America Indigenous nations in 11 00:01:08.560 --> 00:01:12.799 the Southeastern United States what would become I suppose Southeastern 12 00:01:12.920 --> 00:01:18.959 United States were anything but wild. This was an incredible 13 00:01:19.159 --> 00:01:23.840 land of population density. It's one of my most fascinating 14 00:01:23.920 --> 00:01:28.439 parts in my opinion of Native American cultures, the American Southeast. 15 00:01:28.439 --> 00:01:31.200 That is, this was a land of towns, fields, and 16 00:01:31.280 --> 00:01:36.319 forests not untouched, but tended from the Gulf coast all 17 00:01:36.359 --> 00:01:39.239 the way up to the Piedmont Hills. The peoples of 18 00:01:39.280 --> 00:01:44.079 the Southeast lived in complex societies with deep historical roots 19 00:01:44.079 --> 00:01:48.719 and dynamic systems of governance, trade, and belief. Their story 20 00:01:49.120 --> 00:01:53.640 often buried unfortunately beneath the ashes of disease and conquest 21 00:01:54.040 --> 00:01:56.799 begins not with first contact with the Europeans, but with 22 00:01:56.879 --> 00:02:02.719 first cultivation. That's one of the constant mistakes actually still 23 00:02:02.760 --> 00:02:06.319 in textbooks today, that Native American history, for whatever reason, 24 00:02:06.760 --> 00:02:10.319 begins in fourteen ninety two with the arrival of Europeans. 25 00:02:10.360 --> 00:02:12.240 Maybe some a little bit before that, if you came 26 00:02:12.280 --> 00:02:16.080 back to leef Erickson, but most people don't. So why 27 00:02:16.120 --> 00:02:18.680 is that a mistake? Because it misses out on the 28 00:02:18.719 --> 00:02:22.039 reality of timing. Talked about it in a couple of 29 00:02:22.080 --> 00:02:25.879 episodes now where depending upon when Europeans arrived, if they 30 00:02:25.919 --> 00:02:29.159 would have arrived fifty hundred years earlier, they may have 31 00:02:29.360 --> 00:02:34.199 walked into a stronger civilization. Actually, because hopefully, as you've 32 00:02:34.280 --> 00:02:39.879 learned in this podcast, history isn't linear. Civilizations don't just 33 00:02:39.919 --> 00:02:42.639 get stronger over time. They ebb and they flow, and 34 00:02:42.680 --> 00:02:46.479 so what times a conqueror shows up goes a long 35 00:02:46.560 --> 00:02:51.080 way in dictating how successful they're going to be. By 36 00:02:51.120 --> 00:02:54.879 the time the sun rose over the Southeastern woodlands around 37 00:02:55.000 --> 00:02:59.080 one thousand in our Common era, a cultural transformation had 38 00:02:59.120 --> 00:03:02.520 already swept through the region in the river valleys of 39 00:03:02.599 --> 00:03:08.560 today what we call Illinois, Missouri, Mississippi, Alabama, a civilization 40 00:03:08.719 --> 00:03:11.599 emerged that would later be known as the Mississippian culture, 41 00:03:12.240 --> 00:03:16.520 a network of towns and ceremonial centers that organize life 42 00:03:16.599 --> 00:03:21.439 around maize, corn, agriculture, and religious hierarchy, as well as 43 00:03:21.719 --> 00:03:28.520 monumental earthworks. Kahokia, the great city near modern day Saint Louis, 44 00:03:29.199 --> 00:03:33.479 was the crown jewel of the Mississippian civilization. You have 45 00:03:33.520 --> 00:03:36.759 an opportunity to look up some images. It was a 46 00:03:36.759 --> 00:03:41.240 city of perhaps twenty thousand people, larger than London at 47 00:03:41.280 --> 00:03:45.840 the time, with massive mounds, wide plazas, and a radiating 48 00:03:45.840 --> 00:03:50.120 network of trade and tribute. The largest of these earthworks, 49 00:03:50.199 --> 00:03:55.560 dubbed monks Mound, rose ten stories above the floodplain, dwarfing 50 00:03:55.680 --> 00:04:02.039 the surrounding countryside. Wasn't a tomb place for gods and kings. 51 00:04:03.400 --> 00:04:07.400 The influence of Khokia and its sister cities rippled outward 52 00:04:07.840 --> 00:04:12.719 south and east along the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the 53 00:04:12.800 --> 00:04:18.160 Yazoo Rivers. New ceremonial centers rose up Moundville and Alabama, 54 00:04:18.439 --> 00:04:22.480 Etowah and Georgia, and Spiro in what is today Oklahoma. 55 00:04:23.160 --> 00:04:29.680 These were not crude constructions. They were expressions of astronomical precision, 56 00:04:29.839 --> 00:04:33.680 social order, and theological vision, much in the same way 57 00:04:34.240 --> 00:04:37.680 that the great pyramids of the Maya to the south 58 00:04:37.720 --> 00:04:40.879 of the Aztecs, and of course to the ancient Egyptians, 59 00:04:42.160 --> 00:04:46.439 societies were organized around elite lineages and priestly classes who 60 00:04:46.480 --> 00:04:51.120 mediated between the people the cosmos, life and death. But 61 00:04:51.199 --> 00:04:54.480 these cities did not stand alone. They were linked by 62 00:04:54.560 --> 00:04:59.120 rivers and roads, by trade and shared belief. Copper from 63 00:04:59.160 --> 00:05:03.759 the Great Lakes, conch shells from the Gulf, obsidian from 64 00:05:03.759 --> 00:05:07.639 the Rockies. We know from archaeological digs. They all found 65 00:05:07.639 --> 00:05:11.600 their way to these great trade center cities, and across 66 00:05:11.639 --> 00:05:16.199 this land corn beans and squash planted and rhythmic rotating 67 00:05:16.240 --> 00:05:22.040 gardens fed millions, not tens of thousands, millions of people. 68 00:05:23.279 --> 00:05:26.480 By the time Kahoki had declined around the thirteen hundreds, 69 00:05:26.959 --> 00:05:32.000 its people dispersing for reasons that historians and archaeologists still debate, 70 00:05:32.680 --> 00:05:37.360 Mississippian culture had now taken firm root. Elsewhere. The southeast 71 00:05:37.480 --> 00:05:41.240 was dotted with various chiefdoms ranked societies where power was 72 00:05:41.279 --> 00:05:44.639 concentrated in the hands of hereditary elites. As it was 73 00:05:44.680 --> 00:05:49.480 in Europe at the same time. These chiefdoms like Kosa, 74 00:05:49.800 --> 00:05:54.800 Talisi and Appalachi did not rule empires, but they wielded influence. 75 00:05:55.319 --> 00:05:59.680 They could mobilize labor, wage war, and preside over rituals 76 00:05:59.680 --> 00:06:03.199 that re affirmed the cosmic balance. In towns laid out 77 00:06:03.199 --> 00:06:07.879 around central plazas and platform mounds, daily life revolved around 78 00:06:07.920 --> 00:06:12.199 the seasons and the soil. Of course, corn was king, 79 00:06:12.879 --> 00:06:16.759 as it was throughout North and Central America. Its planting 80 00:06:16.800 --> 00:06:20.639 and harvests were ceremonies onto themselves. The people of these 81 00:06:20.639 --> 00:06:25.199 societies span a wide variety of occupations. This was no 82 00:06:25.360 --> 00:06:30.040 mere subsistence farming folks. There were artisans, builders, traders, and warriors. 83 00:06:30.720 --> 00:06:34.399 They carved effigy pipes from soft stone, wove cloth from 84 00:06:34.480 --> 00:06:38.360 mulberry bark, and even played a ritual game to today 85 00:06:38.399 --> 00:06:41.040 we call chunky, in which players hurled spears at a 86 00:06:41.120 --> 00:06:44.720 rolling stone disc. Actually sounds kind of fun, both sport 87 00:06:44.759 --> 00:06:49.600 and spectacle watch by hundreds of people, and of course, culturally, 88 00:06:49.680 --> 00:06:53.720 this world is alive with meaning. The Southeastern ceremonial complex, 89 00:06:53.759 --> 00:06:56.920 a term coined by archaeologists, refers to a set of 90 00:06:57.000 --> 00:07:01.519 shared symbols and beliefs, the bird man, the great serpent, 91 00:07:01.800 --> 00:07:05.319 the sacred fire, the axis mundi of mound and sky. 92 00:07:06.199 --> 00:07:10.279 These weren't just decorative images. They were maps of existence, 93 00:07:10.600 --> 00:07:15.040 inscribed onto copper plates, tattooed onto human bodies, and buried 94 00:07:15.079 --> 00:07:19.399 with the dead. Now, of course, to the casual European i, 95 00:07:19.600 --> 00:07:22.319 as we talked about last time, this land probably looked 96 00:07:22.319 --> 00:07:27.439 wild forests stretching endlessly, meadows thick with game. But the 97 00:07:27.480 --> 00:07:30.959 truth is more astonishing in the Southeast, especially because what 98 00:07:31.040 --> 00:07:34.480 the settlers mistook for wilderness was actually a landscape shaped 99 00:07:34.519 --> 00:07:39.000 by generations of careful tending. The peoples of the Southeast, 100 00:07:39.040 --> 00:07:42.079 like elsewhere, used fire as a tool. They burned the 101 00:07:42.160 --> 00:07:44.759 understory of the forest to clear paths and promote the 102 00:07:44.759 --> 00:07:48.360 growth of edible plants, and to make hunting easier. They 103 00:07:48.399 --> 00:07:54.240 cultivated chestnuts, hickories, persimions, and plums. These were orchards, not 104 00:07:54.439 --> 00:07:57.720 accidental groves that stood at the outskirts of native towns. 105 00:07:58.680 --> 00:08:02.000 Game was abundant, not despite human presence, but because of it. 106 00:08:03.079 --> 00:08:06.480 As I mentioned before, these were not hunter gatherers roaming 107 00:08:06.519 --> 00:08:09.360 at random. Native societies of North America hadn't been that 108 00:08:09.399 --> 00:08:14.240 for thousands of years. Though most of the Southeast remained 109 00:08:14.279 --> 00:08:18.560 untouched by Europeans until the sixteenth century, Ramrezo strain ships, 110 00:08:18.560 --> 00:08:22.519 and unfamiliar diseases drifted inland long before the first encounter. 111 00:08:23.439 --> 00:08:26.639 Spanish expeditions had touched the coast of Florida as early 112 00:08:26.639 --> 00:08:31.040 as fifteen thirteen. By fifteen twenty six, a failed colony 113 00:08:31.079 --> 00:08:34.600 called San Miguel dis Guadalupe had been established briefly on 114 00:08:34.600 --> 00:08:38.600 what today was probably the South Carolina coast. But then 115 00:08:38.679 --> 00:08:43.799 came the game changer Hernando de Soto. In fifteen thirty nine, 116 00:08:43.799 --> 00:08:46.320 De Soto landed in Florida with an army of over 117 00:08:46.399 --> 00:08:49.159 six hundred men and began a four year march through 118 00:08:49.200 --> 00:08:55.240 the heart of the Southeast. He encountered complex societies at Appalachi, Cota, Fqui, 119 00:08:55.399 --> 00:08:58.679 and later Cosa, some of which received him as a god. 120 00:08:59.360 --> 00:09:04.559 Others he demanded food, porters and gold. He burned villages, 121 00:09:04.960 --> 00:09:09.039 he captured chief in return. His army was constantly harried 122 00:09:09.080 --> 00:09:13.519 by ambushes, ravaged by its own diseases, and ultimately lost 123 00:09:13.559 --> 00:09:17.240 itself in a land that it couldn't understand. What De 124 00:09:17.320 --> 00:09:23.080 Soto left behind was more devastating than fire or steel. Smallpox, measles, 125 00:09:23.440 --> 00:09:27.679 influenza germs that spread well beyond his path of destruction, 126 00:09:28.360 --> 00:09:32.320 igniting pandemics and towns and villages that he never saw. 127 00:09:33.240 --> 00:09:35.440 By the time that the French and English arrived a 128 00:09:35.480 --> 00:09:41.240 century later, the great Mississippian chiefdoms had shattered, their populations, decimated, 129 00:09:41.519 --> 00:09:47.320 their towns abandoned, and reorganized. The survivors remembered the old 130 00:09:47.320 --> 00:09:50.919 cities as myths, their mounds as haunted places were gods 131 00:09:50.960 --> 00:09:55.759 once walked. By sixteen hundred, the southeastern landscape still bore 132 00:09:55.799 --> 00:09:59.080 the fingerprints of the original caretakers, but the people had changed. 133 00:10:00.080 --> 00:10:03.279 New confederacies emerged from the fragments of the older polities. 134 00:10:03.799 --> 00:10:07.279 The Musgogie will become the Creek, the Chickasaw, the Choctaw, 135 00:10:07.360 --> 00:10:10.639 and the Cherokee, whose ancestors had lived in the region 136 00:10:10.639 --> 00:10:14.600 for millennia, but now moved in new ways, forming new alliances. 137 00:10:15.360 --> 00:10:18.720 They traded with the Spanish, sometimes and sometimes resisted them. 138 00:10:19.000 --> 00:10:22.159 They adopted the horse and adapted to new patterns of power. 139 00:10:23.000 --> 00:10:26.679 Their societies were no less rich, no less complex, but 140 00:10:26.720 --> 00:10:30.200 they stood at the edge of a coming storm. European 141 00:10:30.240 --> 00:10:34.960 empires would soon carve the land into pieces. Missionaries would 142 00:10:35.000 --> 00:10:38.320 press new gods into their tongues, and the trails worn 143 00:10:38.360 --> 00:10:40.919 smooth by generations of native feet would give way to 144 00:10:41.000 --> 00:10:45.200 rhodes pathed for conquest. But in the soil, in the stone, 145 00:10:45.480 --> 00:10:48.000 in the whisper of the pine trees, over old mounds, 146 00:10:48.039 --> 00:10:52.519 the past remained. The Southeastern peoples had not vanished. They 147 00:10:52.559 --> 00:10:56.440 had remembered, rebuilt, and reimagined themselves again and again, as 148 00:10:56.440 --> 00:10:59.200 they would continue to do so long after sixteen hundred. 149 00:11:00.440 --> 00:11:04.600 Now let's turn our attention to the American Southwest that 150 00:11:05.080 --> 00:11:21.200 will be right after this. If you've ever been to 151 00:11:21.240 --> 00:11:25.200 the American Southwest, then you would know that the conditions 152 00:11:25.240 --> 00:11:29.639 there for growing crops are not particularly great. It's not 153 00:11:30.519 --> 00:11:34.559 waving waves of grain exactly now. It's more like arid 154 00:11:34.919 --> 00:11:39.559 desert and step. So the native peoples that lived in 155 00:11:39.600 --> 00:11:43.679 this region didn't have the opportunity to wait for the rain. Instead, 156 00:11:43.679 --> 00:11:47.320 they built canals. Instead of depleting the earth, they worked 157 00:11:47.320 --> 00:11:51.279 with what they had Across the desert plateaus and river valleys. 158 00:11:51.759 --> 00:11:56.159 Indigenous engineers created systems of irrigation so advanced, so attuned 159 00:11:56.159 --> 00:11:59.919 to their environments that they rivaled and often actually exceeded 160 00:12:00.360 --> 00:12:05.120 the ingenuity of later colonial technologies. A walk through one 161 00:12:05.200 --> 00:12:10.120 such location, Chaco Cannon, reveals the traces of this mastery. 162 00:12:10.759 --> 00:12:13.639 Here there are stone lined canals that are ancient as 163 00:12:13.679 --> 00:12:18.399 anything in America that stretch toward the horizon, water works 164 00:12:18.399 --> 00:12:21.080 that were designed to channel the seasonal runoff that does 165 00:12:21.159 --> 00:12:24.600 happen in the spring and in the fall into productive fields. 166 00:12:25.360 --> 00:12:30.080 These weren't accidental. They were acts of intense observation, rooted 167 00:12:30.080 --> 00:12:33.840 in a worldview that water was not merely a utility, 168 00:12:34.039 --> 00:12:39.600 it was a presence. Modern society, in contrast, often flips 169 00:12:39.600 --> 00:12:41.840 this wisdom on its head to its own detriment, as 170 00:12:41.879 --> 00:12:45.559 I think we're seeing nowadays. As one critic I've read 171 00:12:45.559 --> 00:12:50.200 puts it, quote in California, water flows uphill toward money 172 00:12:50.360 --> 00:12:55.679 end quote. Not exactly positive. It's a haunting commentary on 173 00:12:55.720 --> 00:12:59.320 how political and economic power has now dictated the flow 174 00:12:59.360 --> 00:13:03.399 of rivers, the workings of water itself in the United States. 175 00:13:03.440 --> 00:13:06.399 And we've seen the consequences of this over and over again, 176 00:13:06.440 --> 00:13:08.679 and we will likely continue to see the consequences of 177 00:13:08.720 --> 00:13:15.879 this over and over again. Groundwater today vanishes beneath almond 178 00:13:15.919 --> 00:13:20.799 groves and suburban lawns, while aquifers that took a millennia 179 00:13:21.080 --> 00:13:23.960 to fill by the indigenous peoples that lived here once 180 00:13:24.360 --> 00:13:29.440 were drained in one generation. But such a mindset would 181 00:13:29.440 --> 00:13:33.720 have been unthinkable to those who first shaped this land. 182 00:13:34.039 --> 00:13:37.000 To quote historian Stanley Rice quote, the Natives could not 183 00:13:37.039 --> 00:13:40.759 have settled America with that kind of attitude end quote. 184 00:13:41.679 --> 00:13:45.720 Survival for them meant harmony building within the constraints of nature, 185 00:13:46.159 --> 00:13:51.519 not despite them. This respectful relationship with the environment extended 186 00:13:51.559 --> 00:13:56.399 far beyond irrigation. Next time, we'll talk about the far east, 187 00:13:56.600 --> 00:13:59.759 the forests at east the Great Lakes, and beyond there 188 00:13:59.840 --> 00:14:04.000 on the fringes of lakes Michigan Lake, Superior Lake, Erie, 189 00:14:04.080 --> 00:14:05.720 and so on and so forth, and deep into the 190 00:14:05.759 --> 00:14:10.159 Appalachian Hills, Native communities were quietly cultivating the land in 191 00:14:10.240 --> 00:14:14.720 ways that settlers would continue to misinterpret for centuries. As 192 00:14:14.720 --> 00:14:17.480 we've talked about before, would look like wild forces where 193 00:14:17.639 --> 00:14:21.639 actually carefully manage orchards and groves and so on and 194 00:14:21.679 --> 00:14:24.799 so forth. But going back for a moment to the 195 00:14:24.799 --> 00:14:29.639 American Southwest, archaeological evidence places human habitation in the Southwest 196 00:14:29.639 --> 00:14:33.240 as far back as twelve thousand years ago, with Paleo 197 00:14:33.279 --> 00:14:37.840 Indians following the Last Ice Age megafauna through grassland corridors 198 00:14:37.879 --> 00:14:42.200 and high land plateaus. Over time, these nomadic groups adapted 199 00:14:42.240 --> 00:14:46.279 to a changing climate, exchanging chase for settlement, as I 200 00:14:46.360 --> 00:14:48.879 talked about before, they had done in the American southeast 201 00:14:49.279 --> 00:14:54.480 and beyond. By the year two thousand BCE, corn maze, 202 00:14:54.679 --> 00:14:58.720 originally domesticated in meso America, had reached the Southwest, altering 203 00:14:58.759 --> 00:15:04.440 indigenous lifestyles. The cultivation here as in the southeast, of 204 00:15:04.559 --> 00:15:07.919 corn beans and squashed the so called Three Sisters, allowed 205 00:15:07.919 --> 00:15:11.320 for a gradual shift from foraging to farming and gave 206 00:15:11.440 --> 00:15:16.039 rise to desert civilization that would later on astound Spanish explorers. 207 00:15:16.840 --> 00:15:20.240 The land was not easy. Water, as I mentioned previously, 208 00:15:20.320 --> 00:15:24.679 was scarce rain unpredictable, but early peoples used how to 209 00:15:24.799 --> 00:15:29.000 use canals and irrigation and developed techniques of dry farming 210 00:15:29.240 --> 00:15:33.240 as well as floodplain irrigation to keep their lands abundant 211 00:15:33.440 --> 00:15:37.600 and keep their civilizations growing. By the first millennium of 212 00:15:37.639 --> 00:15:41.639 the Common era, three major cultural traditions emerged in the Southwest, 213 00:15:42.039 --> 00:15:45.799 each one unique but interconnected. The ho Coam, the Mogolan, 214 00:15:46.279 --> 00:15:49.919 and the ancestor of Pulbloins, often referred to as the Anasi, 215 00:15:50.320 --> 00:15:53.279 though that term is actually increasingly avoided due to some 216 00:15:53.559 --> 00:15:58.080 negative connotations in native languages. The ho Coam, centered around 217 00:15:58.080 --> 00:16:02.399 what is today southern Arizona, became the great canal builders. 218 00:16:02.480 --> 00:16:05.159 Along the Salts and Gila Rivers, which today formed the 219 00:16:05.159 --> 00:16:09.840 basis of Arizona's capital city, Phoenix, they created hundreds of 220 00:16:09.879 --> 00:16:14.440 miles of irrigation ditches capable of supporting large agricultural towns. 221 00:16:14.879 --> 00:16:17.919 They built ball courts that were actually reminiscent of those 222 00:16:18.240 --> 00:16:21.720 of the Maya in ancient Mexico. They traded for turquoise 223 00:16:21.960 --> 00:16:25.159 and parrots from far to the south, and crafted intricate 224 00:16:25.200 --> 00:16:28.279 shell jewelry from goods brought from the Gulf of California. 225 00:16:29.039 --> 00:16:33.679 Their villages were laid out the surprising regularity marked by 226 00:16:33.679 --> 00:16:38.519 plazas and ceremonial spaces. The Mogolan inhabited the rugged mountains 227 00:16:38.519 --> 00:16:43.360 and canyonlands of southwestern New Mexico. In southeastern Arizona, they 228 00:16:43.440 --> 00:16:46.840 maintained a more dispersed settlement pattern. Early on, they lived 229 00:16:46.879 --> 00:16:50.960 in pitt houses, later transformed into surface pueblos with masonry walls. 230 00:16:51.519 --> 00:16:55.960 Their distinct brown paste pottery, often adorned with black geometric designs, 231 00:16:56.399 --> 00:16:58.720 provides a vivid record that can be seen today in 232 00:16:58.799 --> 00:17:02.840 museums across the American Southwest. And beyond. Of their esthetic 233 00:17:02.879 --> 00:17:08.039 sensibilities and their spiritual world, the Ancestral Plebloans are probably 234 00:17:08.400 --> 00:17:11.079 the most well known, and they spread across the Four 235 00:17:11.160 --> 00:17:15.400 Corners region. These are the most visibly dramatic of all 236 00:17:15.480 --> 00:17:19.599 the Southwestern cultures. By nine hundred CE, they had begun 237 00:17:19.640 --> 00:17:24.400 constructing these massive, multi story stone dwellings in cliff alcoves 238 00:17:24.440 --> 00:17:28.880 above canyon walls. Chico Canyon, which I mentioned before, in 239 00:17:28.920 --> 00:17:34.240 present day New Mexico became a ceremonial trade center unparalleled 240 00:17:34.240 --> 00:17:37.000 in its scale and size. At its height between eight 241 00:17:37.119 --> 00:17:42.519 fifty and eleven hundred CE, AD boasted monumental architecture, including 242 00:17:42.720 --> 00:17:46.880 the so called great houses like Pueblo Bonito. Aligned with 243 00:17:46.960 --> 00:17:50.680 the lunar and solar cycles. As Europeans had done, the 244 00:17:50.720 --> 00:17:54.920 Ancestral Plebloans were not isolated desert dwellers. They had wide 245 00:17:55.039 --> 00:17:58.359 reaching trade networks we know today, importing, in fact, as 246 00:17:58.400 --> 00:18:02.359 one example, macaws all the way from Central America and 247 00:18:02.440 --> 00:18:07.079 turquoise from hundreds of miles away. Yet the height of 248 00:18:07.119 --> 00:18:11.640 these civilizations was followed by abrupt change between one thy, 249 00:18:11.759 --> 00:18:14.960 one hundred and thirty and thirteen hundred, a series of 250 00:18:15.000 --> 00:18:20.759 serious droughts struck the Southwest. Then came with those societal transformations. 251 00:18:21.319 --> 00:18:24.720 Jack O'canyon was abandoned, and the Great Cliff dwellings at 252 00:18:24.720 --> 00:18:28.079 places like me Severity were soon emptied of all their populations. 253 00:18:28.680 --> 00:18:34.119 Scholars continued to debate the causes environmental collapse, social upheaval, warfare, 254 00:18:34.559 --> 00:18:38.920 maybe all of them. Rather than vanishing, these cultures continued 255 00:18:38.920 --> 00:18:43.640 to evolve. Many of the ancestral Puebloans moved southward, forming 256 00:18:43.640 --> 00:18:46.279 new communities along the Rio Grande in what is now 257 00:18:46.359 --> 00:18:51.440 Mexico and Arizona. These new pueblos were smaller and more compact, 258 00:18:51.880 --> 00:18:54.920 better suited to a changing climate and more defensive posture. 259 00:18:55.640 --> 00:19:00.000 The Magolan and Hakoam cultures similarly disbursed and emerged into 260 00:19:00.079 --> 00:19:03.640 to a tribal identity that was forming across the Southwest. 261 00:19:04.680 --> 00:19:08.200 By fifteen hundred, the cultural landscape of the Southwest had 262 00:19:08.200 --> 00:19:11.960 been reshaped into a mosaic of distinct but interrelated peoples. 263 00:19:12.640 --> 00:19:17.440 Among them were the Pavoan peoples such as now the Hope, Zuni, Acoma, 264 00:19:17.559 --> 00:19:21.319 and Taos, who maintained many of the traditions of their ancestors, 265 00:19:21.359 --> 00:19:26.920 including communal agriculture, religious ceremonies, and oral histories. Tracing their 266 00:19:26.960 --> 00:19:30.440 migrations to the west and north were the Humans speaking 267 00:19:30.480 --> 00:19:33.960 people along the lower Colorado River and then to the 268 00:19:34.000 --> 00:19:37.400 south where the Tahono dej the descendants of the hocoam 269 00:19:37.759 --> 00:19:41.400 They adapted to the desert with seasonal mobility and followed 270 00:19:41.599 --> 00:19:46.519 Swagaro food ceremonies that honored the land's rhythms. Meanwhile, the 271 00:19:46.559 --> 00:19:50.839 Apache and Navajo, these were different types of linguistic groups 272 00:19:50.839 --> 00:19:54.279 who had migrated from the north during the late Prehistoric period, 273 00:19:54.640 --> 00:19:57.519 began to establish themselves in the region, bringing with them 274 00:19:57.519 --> 00:20:01.440 new traditions of raiding, mobility, and pastoral as. Now was 275 00:20:01.480 --> 00:20:04.960 into this new world that the Spanish finally arrived. In 276 00:20:05.000 --> 00:20:09.839 fifteen thirty nine, the Moorish scout Esponanzo entered Zuni territory, 277 00:20:09.880 --> 00:20:14.079 only to be killed soon thereafter. A year later, Francisco 278 00:20:14.160 --> 00:20:18.440 Vasquez de Coronado led a grand expedition northward in search 279 00:20:18.480 --> 00:20:21.960 of the fabled seven Cities of Gold. He never found them. 280 00:20:22.559 --> 00:20:25.319 What he found were pueblos, impressive, yes, but not made 281 00:20:25.319 --> 00:20:28.799 out of gold, made of adobe and stone. The expedition 282 00:20:28.880 --> 00:20:33.000 brought horses, steel, and disease into a fragile ecosystem and 283 00:20:33.039 --> 00:20:38.440 a resilient, deeply rooted network of communities. Bough Coronado's expedition 284 00:20:38.759 --> 00:20:41.880 failed to find riches, it marked the beginning of sustained 285 00:20:41.880 --> 00:20:47.039 European interest in the region. The peoples of the Southwest, adaptable, spiritual, 286 00:20:47.119 --> 00:20:50.559 and yes fiercely tied to their lands and traditions, would 287 00:20:50.599 --> 00:20:56.279 soon face an era of colonization, missionaries, and resistance, But 288 00:20:56.599 --> 00:20:59.400 as of the year sixteen hundred, they remained firmly in 289 00:20:59.440 --> 00:21:02.720 control of them their ancestral homelands, their history already long 290 00:21:02.759 --> 00:21:07.599 and complex, and their future remaining to be written. Next time, 291 00:21:07.920 --> 00:21:10.839 we finish our story of the Native American cultures of 292 00:21:10.920 --> 00:21:15.200 the early New Americas before turning back to Virginia to 293 00:21:15.279 --> 00:21:38.480 talk about continued onrest in colonial America.