Native America
Clara Sue Kidwell
Introduction
Native
American contributions to contemporary science are generally put into
environmental studies curricula.
Indians have been romanticized for their consciousness of and respect
for natural resources, but their systems of controlling those resources have
received virtually no attention.
Indians
in meso and south America are credited with the domestication of corn and
potatoes, but recent scholarship reveals that Indians in the eastern woodlands
of North America domesticated sun flowers, chenopodium, sumpweed, marsh elder,
may grass, and possibly squash.
Although these plants declined in importance as food sources when corn,
a more nutritious and stable crop, was introduced into the eastern woodlands from
mesoamerica, native people made the woodlands an independent agricultural
hearth only recently recognized.
Native
uses of plants have received attention as a source of contemporary
pharmaceuticals. Many people are
aware that aspirin is a synthetic form of natural components found in willow
bark, which was widely used by Indians in teas brewed to treat fever and
pain. Scholars have recorded
extensive evidence of pragmatic uses of plants by native people. Some have attempted to correlate the
expected outcome indicated by those uses with chemical components of plants
that can produce specific physical effects.
Some
people may be aware of the accuracy of the ancient calendar system of the Mayan
peoples of Mesoamerica, but only a relatively few scholars have examined the
complexity of its predictive powers and the sophistication of observational and
record keeping techniques that made it possible. Scholars can find evidence of native achievements in the alignment
of structures such as those in the ruins of Mayan ceremonial centers at Chichen
Itza, Uxmal, and Peten. Similar
alignments can be found in North America in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, and the
medicine wheel in the Big Horn Mountains in Wyoming, for example.
Native
American practices can be a good point of departure for discussion of what
constitutes scientific activity.
They cannot be presented as science as it is taught in contemporary
American classrooms. Native
practices reveal certain aspects of scientific activity, but there are crucial
differences. The study of these
similarities and differences is important.
The
domestication of plants, and the process of observing and recording the
positions of the sun, moon, and certain bright stars, notably Venus for the
Mayan people, is evidence of careful and systematic effort, and the cumulation
of knowledge over time. The
characteristic of systematic observation is a key element of science. The Hopi Sun Watchers in contemporary
American society continue a tradition of watching the horizon to observe the
sun's rising at specified points prior to the winter solstice. The points have been identified based
on long periods of earlier observation.
The system is now predictive, but in its inception, it must have been
based first on the assumption that the sun followed a regular path through the
sky, and secondly on the passage of knowledge from one observer to another of
the exact points along the horizon at which the sun's rising and setting
occurred. It is interesting that
the greatest accuracy in the prediction by native peoples in the Americas of
events in the natural world occurred in astronomy, which in contemporary
science is the most purely observational of the sciences.
The
basic similarity of native American understanding of the natural environment
and contemporary science is in the importance of systematic observation of
patterns in nature. The
domestication of plants occurred when native women selected the seed heads that
held the seeds most tightly, thereby providing the gatherer the greatest return
for her effort. This selection on
a regular basis favored plants which could not broadcast their own seeds and
which became dependent on humans to detach seeds from stems and plant them. The domestication of animals occurred
as hunters discovered that certain animals traveled in groups which followed a
dominant male and which ranged fairly widely rather than having a strong sense
of territoriality. It became
fairly easy for a human male to displace the male animal leader and assume
control of the herd.
The
divergence of native practices from what is now science in American science
comes in the importance of experimentation. The testing of theoretical constructs against real life
experience is a relatively recent event in the historical development of modern
science, coming in the late seventeenth century. Indian people understood natural processes because they
observed them closely. They
adapted their behavior to those processes, intervening in the behavior of
plants and animals and changing them through their actions. Having effected certain changes,
however, they established new relationships with their environments, in which
they sought to preserve continuity.
They did so through ceremony and ritual in which they expended human
energy to assure that spiritual forces in the world would act as they
desired. In other word, human
energy in the form of ceremonies was necessary to assure that natural forces
would act appropriately to fulfill human needs through the growth of crops, the
presence of animals, the movement of rain and storms. Here native practices are characterized as religion rather
than science. At this point the
awareness of native pragmatic observation and ability to predict outcomes of
events fades away.
An
understanding of native practices and the relationship of human beings to their
environments has much to contribute to students' understanding of science and
how it works. It can serve to
focus attention on distinctions between observational science, such as astronomy,
and experimental science, such as chemistry.
Films
¤ "Hopi: Songs of the Fourth World" is
available from New Day Films, 22D Hollywood Avenue, Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey
07423. It has a section on Hopi
agriculture.
¤ The
Media Center at the University of California at Berkeley has a number of old
films on California Indian foods and technologies, but they are very
anthropologically oriented.
Websites
¤ www.wam.umd.edu/~tlaloc/archastro/ae13.html
— is the site for access to publications of the Center for Archeoastronomy
at the University of Maryland.
¤ indigo.stile.stile.1e.ac.uk/~rug/ar315/info/lec5.html
— is a summary of a lecture on Mayan and Aztec archeoastronomy by Clive
Ruggles, an English scholar.
¤ indy4.fdl.cc.mn.us/~isk/stars/starmenu.html
— is a home page on Native American star lore that includes images and
descriptions of Lakota knowledge of constellations, the Big Horn medicine
wheel, and some Pueblo sites.
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Day 1
Culture
and Environment
Human
beings act upon, and are acted upon, by their environments. This mutual interaction is a process
that shapes both environment and culture.
The first day should stress that native people took an active role in
shaping their environments through the use of fire, irrigation systems, and
domestication of plants. Indians
in North and South America adapted to an incredibly wide range of environments
and spoke an incredible variety of languages, and this diversity must be
acknowledged. There is no single
construct that can be called Native American science. The commonality in the Western Hemisphere, however, can be
described as a sense that the forces in the environment were powerful,
sentient, and willful beings whose actions had profound impact on human life,
but whose actions it was within the province of human beings to influence. By observing closely and noting
patterns of activity in their environments, Indian people could exercise
control over their resources.
Student
Reading
¤ Clara
Sue Kidwell, "Systems of Knowledge," in America in 1492,
Alvin Josephy (ed.) (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1991).
Extended
Reading
¤ Gary
Paul Nabhun. The Desert Smells
Like Rain: A Naturalist in Papago
Indian Country (San
Francisco: North Point Press,
1982).
¤ Prehistoric
Food Production in North America, Richard I. Ford (ed.),
Anthropological Papers, Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, No. 75
(Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan, 1985).
¤ Thomas
C. Blackburn and Kat Anderson (eds.), Before the Wilderness: Environmental Management by Native
Californians (Menlo Park, CA:
Ballena Press, 1993).
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Day 2
Agriculture
The
domestication of plants marks a signal human achievement in the advance of culture. It is based on systematic observation
and human selection of desirable qualities in plants. It also entails establishing a symbiotic relationship
between humans and plants--plants feed humans, but humans must take
responsibility for releasing the seeds of the plants and spreading them for
reproduction. Although corn is
generally considered the epitome of Indian agriculture, other plants were
domesticated and played important roles in subsistence patterns through the
eastern woodlands.
Student
Reading
¤ C.
Wesley Cowan, "Understanding the Evolution of Plant Husbandry in Eastern
North America: Lessons from
Botany, Ethnography and Archaeology," in Prehistoric Food Production in
North America, Richard I. Ford (ed.), Anthropological Papers, Museum
of Anthropology, University of Michigan, No. 75 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1985), pp.
207-217.
Extended
Reading
¤ C.
Margaret Scarry, (ed.), Foraging and Farming in the Eastern Woodlands
(Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1993).
¤ Bruce
D. Smith, Rivers of Change:
Essays on Early Agriculture in Eastern North America,
(Washington, D.C. and London:
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992)
¤ Seedhead
News, issued by Native Seeds/SEARCH, 2509 North Campbell
Avenue #325, Tucson, Arizona 85719 — contains information about growing
indigenous crops.
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Day 3
Environmental
Management
Indian
people managed their environments by fire, water, and deliberate cultivation of
stands of wild plants. Burning in
grasslands controlled the extent of forest areas. In wooded areas it provided new browse for animals. It cleared fields for agriculture
and created nutrients for the soil.
Fire had significant ceremonial association for many tribes because it
was associated with the Sun. The
Lakota saw the Sun as one of their primary dieties, and they set fire to
prairie grasses occasionally to drive buffalo to areas where they would be
killed for food. Students should
be able to think about how environmental management affects their own lives,
how people's pragmatic use of the environment affects their survival, and how
attempts to control the environment have effects on all things--plants,
animals, and humans--in the environment.
Student
Reading
¤ Gordon
Day, "The Indian as an Ecological Factor in the Northeastern Forest,"
Ecology, 34, no. 2 (April, 1953), 329-46.
Extended
Reading
¤ C.
Margaret Haury, The Hohokam:
Desert Farmers and Craftsmen (Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 1976).
¤ Henry
T. Lewis, Patterns of Indian
Burning in California: Ecology and
Ethnohistory, Ballena Press Anthropological Papers, No. 1 (Socorro,
NM: Ballena Press, 1973).
¤ R.
Gwinn Vivian, "Conservation and Diversion: Water-Control Systems in the Anasazi Southwest," in Irrigation's
Impact on Society, Theodore E. Downing and McGuire Gibson (eds.),
Anthropological Papers of the University of Arizona, No. 25 (Tucson: University
of Arizona Press, 1974).
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Day 4
Medicine
The
uses of medicinal herbs and plants by Native Americans represent a particular
world view concerning power. The
scientific explanation involves chemical components of plants that cause
changes in the human body. Native
people attributed the changes to the sentient spirits of the plants who
responded to human appeals for assistance. Knowledge of medicinal herbs was generally esoteric in that
certain practitioners had particular things that they used. In some cases, such as the Midewiwin or
Grand Medicine Society of the Chippewa in the Great Lakes region, knowledge of
herbs was passed on as part of initiation into the Society. Medical practices among non-Indian
colonists and Native people in nineteenth century America were very
similar. White settlers brought
the tradition of medicinal simples from Europe, and they readily adopted herbal
remedies that they learned from Indians or that resembled European
"simples." Indian
practices of bleeding or cupping represented the same kind of mechanical manipulation
that European physicians used.
Pragmatic treatment of
dislocated joints involved tying a rope around the affected limb, throwing it
over a tree branch, and pulling the joint back into place. On the great plains, fractures were
splinted with rawhide, which dried and tightened around the broken limb. A small window was cut in the hide to
allow access to wounds caused by compound fractures. A typical treatment regimen for generalized aches and fevers
was that prescribed by Iroquois curers in upstate New York. The patient was put through a sweat
lodge for purification, given large quantities of willow bark tea to drink
(willow bark contains salicen, the natural source of acetyl salacylic
acid--aspirin), and then wrapped in buffalo robes and put in the corner of the
longhouse to rest for several days.
The cure was usually effective.
Medicine is more of an art than a science, but its practice depends upon
careful observation of cause and effect relationships and systematic
application of knowledge. In this
regard, American Indian medicine was as efficacious as the European medical
practices that were imported into the Americas.
Student
Reading
¤ Virgil
Vogel, American Indian Medicine (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1970), Chapters 1-2, 5-7.
Extended
Reading
¤ Daniel
Moerman, American Medical Ethnobotany:
A Reference Dictionary (New York: Garland Publishing Company, 1977).
¤ Frances
Densmore, "Uses of Plants by the Chippewa Indians," Forty-fourth Annual Report of the
Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution,
1926-27.
(Washington, DC: United
States Government Printing Office, 1928).
¤ Bernard
Ortiz de Montellano, "Empirical Aztec Medicine," Science, 188
(April 18, 1975), 215-20.
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Day 5
Astronomy
Native
observation of the sun, moon and stars produced significant physical records of
patterns in their movement and intellectual achievement in discerning the
predictive power of those patterns.
Although the most well-known systems are those of the Maya and Aztecs in
Mesoamerica, many North American people created solstice markers, and some may
have been aware of the rising points of certain bright stars or constellations
that preceded solstices. The
Pleiades had significance in demarcating planting seasons for many agricultural
tribes. The Medicine Wheel in the
Big Horn mountains of Wyoming is a solstice marker constructed by hunting
people who were probably ancestors of contemporary Shoshone people. For them, knowledge of the turning of
seasons was crucial in predicting the movements of game animals. For the Hopi in the Southwest,
ceremonial cycles were (and in many cases still are) governed by observation of
solstice points. The Hopi also, however,
had a sophisticated knowledge of the relationship of movements of the moon to
the sun. The Mayan calendar
system, which probably derived from early Olmec culture and which was
appropriated by the Aztecs along with much of the Mayan intellectual heritage,
predicted eclipses of the moon and encompassed extended cyclical patterns in
the heavens. The movements of the
planet Venus were of particular interest.
The study of archaeoastronomy is fascinating for what it shows about the
accumulation of knowledge over long periods of time. Although the pattern of movement of the sun along the
horizon that are marked by the solstices can certainly be obvious within the
span of a single human lifetime, lunar eclipses are much less frequent. Patterns in the motion of Venus are
more complex. To discern them was
probably the work of several lifetimes and the accumulation of evidence by a
number of viewers. The writing
systems of Mayan and Aztec cultures could allow for such accumulation and
recording of information.
Student
Reading
¤ Lynn
Cesi, "Watchers of the Pleiades:
Ethnoastronomy Among Native Cultivators in Northeastern North
America," Ethnohistory, XXV, no. 4 (Fall, 1978),
301-317.
¤ John
A. Eddy, "Astronomical Alignment of the Big Horn Medicine Wheel," Science, 174
(June 10, 1974), 1035-43).
¤ Stephen
C. McCluskey, "Historical Archaeoastronomy: The Hopi Example, in Archaeoastronomy in the New World,
A.F. Aveni (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
Extended
Reading
¤ Anthony
Aveni, Skywatchers of Ancient Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980).
¤ Munro
S. Edmonson, The Book of the Year : Middle American Calendrical Systems (Salt Lake City : University of Utah
Press, 1988).
¤ Jonathan
E. Reyman, "Astronomy, Architecture and Adaptation at Pueblo Bonito,"
Science, 193, no. 4257 (September 10, 1976), 957-62.
¤ A.
Sofaer, V. Zinser, and R. Sinclair, "An Anasazi Solar Marker?" Science,
209, no. 4459 (August, 1980), 858-60.
The
primary journal for the study of archaeoastronomy is Archaeoastronomy,
published by the Center for Archaeoastronomy at the University of Maryland,
directed by John Carlson.
Film
¤ "The
Sun Dagger," available through the Extension Media Services, University of
California, Berkeley. It shows the
passage of a streak of light through a spiral carved into a rock face at Fajada
Butte, New Mexico, which has been interpreted as an ancient Pueblo solstice
marker.
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Day 6
Mathematics
Mathematics
is an essential tool of science in that it allows manipulation of information
about relationships among objects.
Mathematical systems in the Americas range from the highly developed
base 20 system of the Mayan cultures to very simple counting systems noted on
one's fingers. The Mayan system
was used for calendrical notations rather than operations such as
multiplication or division. It was
important for keeping linear count of the days in the Long Count and for
keeping track of the correlation between the 260 day ritual calendar and the
360 day Vague Year. Other systems
of recording information include the quipu of the Inka, a series
of knotted cords tied to a main cord.
The pattern of knots are thought to be a kind of numerical system to
keep track of quantities of goods for trading purposes or held as tribute by
the Inka (emperor). Unlike the
Mayan system, where scholars have made significant progress in recent years in
deciphering hieroglyphic writing, the code of the quipu has
not been broken. Contemporary
Andean people still use quipus but it is not obvious that
their use corresponds to the usage at the time of European contact when they
were first observed. It is
possible that part of their purpose was to record celestial cycles. The system of directional shrines that
encompasses the city of Cuzco in Peru today has been likened to a quipu laid
over the city and dividing it into ceremonial zones controlled by different
groups of people during different parts of the year. The shrines may mark the passage of the sun and moon and
divide the Inka universe not only into discrete units of time but also into
political or religious units.
Without readily translatable explanatory texts, contemporary scholars
must work backward from the visible results of the intellectual activities of
the precontact cultures of the Americas to try to reconstruct the origins of
those activities. What we can know
is that Native people were keen observers and recorders of patterns in the
actions of the natural environment, whether of stars, or animals, or
plants. Those patterns served as
predictors of events and allowed people to manage their physical resources in
productive ways.
Student
Reading
¤ R. T.
Zuidema, "The Inca Calendar," in Native American Astronomy,
Anthony F. Aveni (ed.) (Austin: University
of Texas Press, 1977), p. 231.
Extended
Reading
¤ Marcia
Ascher and Robert Ascher, Code of the Quipu: A Study in Media, Mathematics and Culture (Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 1980).
¤ Anthony
Aveni, Sharon L. Gibbs, and Horse Hartung, "The Caracol Tower at Chichen
Itza: An Ancient Astronomical Observatory?" Science, 188
(June 6, 1975), 977-85.
¤ Michael
P. Closs (ed.), Native American Mathematics
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986).
¤ Floyd
G. Lounsbury, "Maya Numeration, Computation and Calendrical
Astronomy," Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 15,
Supplement (New York: Scribners, 1978), pp. 759-818.
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Possible Topics For Student Research
1. Uses of
plants in a particular tribe: What
evidence is there of scientific activity?
2.
Observation of celestial events in a particular tribe and explanations
for them: To what extent are these
scientific?
3. Agricultural practices in a particular tribe: How are
they explained? What principles of
contemporary ecology are evident in these practices?
4. How do
traditional agricultural practices promote genetic diversity or uniformity in
plants?