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 Contents vii

7.2.5 The Problem of the West 143 8.4.5 Democratic Political Culture 169
Communities in Conflict: Washington 8.5 “The Rising Glory of America” 169
and the Newburgh Conspiracy 144 8.5.1 The Liberty of the Press 169
7.3 Revolutionary Politics in the States 147 8.5.2 Books, Books, Books 170
7.3.1 A New Democratic Ideology 147 8.5.3 Women on the Intellectual Scene 170
7.3.2 The First State Constitutions 147 Conclusion • Key Terms • Timeline

7.3.3 Declarations of Rights 147

7.3.4 The Spirit of Reform 148 9 An Empire for Liberty 1790–1824 173
7.3.5 African Americans and the Revolution 149 American Communities:
Conclusion • Key Terms • Timeline Expansion Touches Mandan Villages
on the Upper Missouri 173
8 The New Nation 1786–1800 152 9.1 North American Communities from
American Communities: Coast to Coast 175
A Rural Massachusetts Community 9.1.1 The New Nation 175
Rises in Defense of Liberty 152
9.1.2 To the North: British North America and
8.1 The Crisis of the 1780s 154 Russian America 176

8.1.1 The Economic Crisis 154 9.1.3 To the West and South: The Spanish
Empire, Haiti, and the Caribbean 176
8.1.2 State Remedies 154
9.1.4 Trans-Appalachia 177
8.1.3 Toward a New National Government 155
9.2 A National Economy 177
8.2 The New Constitution 155
9.2.1 Cotton and the Economy of the Young
8.2.1 The Constitutional Convention 155 Republic177
8.2.2 Ratifying the New Constitution 156 9.2.2 Neutral Shipping in a World at War 178
8.2.3 The Bill of Rights 157 9.3 The Jefferson Presidency 179
Communities in Conflict: The Controversy 9.3.1 Republican Agrarianism 179
over Ratification 158 9.3.2 Jefferson’s Government 180
8.3 The First Federal Administration 159 9.3.3 An Independent Judiciary 180
8.3.1 The Washington Presidency 159 9.3.4 Opportunity: The Louisiana Purchase 181
8.3.2 The Federal Judiciary 160 9.3.5 Incorporating Louisiana 183
8.3.3 Hamilton’s Fiscal Program 160 9.3.6 Texas and the Struggle for Mexican
8.3.4 American Foreign Policy 161 Independence183

8.3.5 The United States and the Indian Peoples 162 9.4 Renewed Imperial Rivalry in North America 183
8.3.6 Spanish Florida and British Canada 163 9.4.1 Problems with Neutral Rights 183
9.4.2 The Embargo Act 184
SEEING History: The Columbian Tragedy 164
9.4.3 Madison and the Failure of “Peaceable
8.3.7 The Crises of 1794 164 Coercion”184
8.3.8 Settling Disputes with Britain and Spain 165 9.4.4 A Contradictory Indian Policy 184
8.3.9 Washington’s Farewell Address 166
Communities in Conflict: Christianizing
8.4 Federalists and Democratic-Republicans 166 the Indian 185
8.4.1 The Rise of Political Parties 166 9.5 Indian Alternatives and the War of 1812 186
8.4.2 The Adams Presidency 166 9.5.1 The Pan-Indian Military Resistance
8.4.3 The Alien and Sedition Acts 166 Movement186
8.4.4 The Revolution of 1800 168 9.5.2 The War of 1812 188
viii Contents

SEEING History: “A Scene on the Frontiers 10.5.4 Coercion and Violence 215
as Practiced by the ‘Humane’ British and their
SEEING History: “Gordon under Medical
‘Worthy’ Allies” 190
Inspection” 216
9.6 Defining the Boundaries 191
10.6 The Defense of Slavery 216
9.6.1 Another Westward Surge 191
10.6.1 Developing Pro-Slavery Arguments 217
9.6.2 The Election of 1816 and the Era
10.6.2 After Nat Turner 217
of Good Feelings 194
10.6.3 Changes in the South 218
9.6.3 The Diplomacy of John Quincy Adams 194
9.6.4 The Panic of 1819 195 Communities in Conflict: Who Benefits
from Slavery? 219
9.6.5 The Missouri Compromise 196
Conclusion • Key Terms • Timeline
Conclusion • Key Terms • Timeline

10 The South and Slavery 1790s–1850s 200 11 The Growth of Democracy 1824–1840 222
American Communities: American Communities:
Cotton Communities in the Old Southwest 200 A Political Community Abandons Deference
for Democracy 222
10.1 King Cotton and Southern Expansion 201
11.1 The New Democratic Politics in
10.1.1 Cotton and Expansion into the Old
North America 223
Southwest201
11.1.1 Struggles over Popular Rights: Mexico,
10.1.2 Slavery the Mainspring—Again 203
the Caribbean, Canada 223
10.1.3 A Slave Society in a Changing World 203
11.1.2 The Expansion and Limits of Suffrage 224
10.1.4 The Second Middle Passage: The Internal
11.1.3 The Election of 1824 225
Slave Trade 204
11.1.4 The New Popular Democratic Culture 226
10.2 The African American Community 205
11.1.5 The Election of 1828 228
10.2.1 The Mature American Slave System 205
11.2 The Jackson Presidency 229
10.2.2 The Growth of the Slave Community 206
11.2.1 A Popular President 229
10.2.3 From Cradle to Grave 206
11.2.2 A Strong Executive 229
10.2.4 Field Work and the Gang Labor System 206
11.2.3 The Nation’s Leader versus Sectional
10.2.5 House Servants and Skilled Workers 207
Spokesmen229
10.2.6 Slave Families 208
SEEING History: President’s Levee, or all
10.3 Freedom and Resistance 208 Creation Going to the White House 230
10.3.1 African American Religion 209
11.3 Changing the Course of Government 233
10.3.2 Other Kinds of Resistance 210
11.3.1 Indian Removal 233
10.3.3 Slave Revolts 210
Communities in Conflict: Indian Removal,
10.3.4 Free African Americans 211 Pro and Con 234
10.4 The White Majority 211 11.3.2 Internal Improvements 234
10.4.1 Poor White People 211 11.3.3 Federal and State Support for Private
10.4.2 Southern “Plain Folk” 212 Enterprise235
10.4.3 The Middling Ranks 213 11.3.4 The Bank War 236
10.5 Planters 213 11.3.5 Whigs, Van Buren, and the Panic of 1837 237
10.5.1 Small Slave Owners 213 11.4 The Second American Party System 238
10.5.2 The Planter Elite 214 11.4.1 Whigs and Democrats 238
10.5.3 Creating a Plantation Ideology 214 11.4.2 The Campaign of 1840 239
 Contents ix

11.4.3 The Whig Victory Turns to Loss: 12.5.5 Early Strikes 258

The Tyler Presidency 239
12.6 The New Middle Class 259
11.5 American Arts and Letters 240 12.6.1 Wealth and Rank 259
11.5.1 Popular Cultures and the Spread of the 12.6.2 Religion and Personal Life 259
Written Word 240
Communities in Conflict: Two Mill Girls
11.5.2 Creating a National American Culture 240
Disagree about Conditions at Lowell 260
11.5.3 Artists and Builders 242
12.6.3 The New Middle-Class Family 261
Conclusion • Key Terms • Timeline
12.6.4 Middle-Class Children 262
12 Industry and the North 1790s–1840s 244 12.6.5 Sentimentalism and Transcendentalism 263
American Communities: Conclusion • Key Terms • Timeline
Women Factory Workers Form a Community in
Lowell, Massachusetts 244 13 Meeting the Challenges of the New
12.1 The Transportation Revolution 245 Age: Immigration, Urbanization,
Social Reform 1820s–1850s 266
12.1.1 Roads 245
12.1.2 Canals and Steamboats 246 American Communities:
Women Reformers of Seneca Falls Respond
12.1.3 Railroads 247
to the Market Revolution 266
SEEING History: Industrialization and Rural
Life 248 13.1 Immigration and the City 268
13.1.1 The Growth of Cities 268
12.1.4 The Effects of the Transportation
Revolution248 13.1.2 Patterns of Immigration 268
12.2 The Market Revolution 249 13.1.3 Irish Immigration 268
12.2.1 The Accumulation of Capital 250 13.1.4 German Immigration 269
12.2.2 The Putting-Out System 250 13.1.5 The Chinese in California 269
12.2.3 The Spread of Commercial Markets 251 13.1.6 Ethnic Neighborhoods 270

12.3 The Yankee West 251 13.2 Urban Problems 270

12.3.1 New Routes West 251 13.2.1 New Living Patterns in the Cities 271
12.3.2 Commercial Agriculture in the Old 13.2.2 Ethnicity in Urban Popular Culture 272
Northwest252
SEEING History: P.T. Barnum’s Famous
12.3.3 Transportation Changes Affect “Curiosity:” General Tom Thumb 272
Western Cities 252
13.2.3 The Labor Movement and Urban
12.4 Industrialization Begins 253 Politics273
12.4.1 British Technology and American 13.2.4 Civic Order 273
Industrialization253
13.2.5 Free African Americans in the Cities 275
12.4.2 The Lowell Mills 254
13.3 Social Reform Movements 276
12.4.3 Family Mills 254
13.3.1 Religion, Reform, and Social Control 276
12.4.4 “The American System of
Manufactures”254 13.3.2 Education and Women Teachers 277

12.5 From Artisan to Worker 256 13.3.3 Temperance 278

12.5.1 Preindustrial Ways of Working 256 13.3.4 Moral Reform, Asylums, and Prisons 279

12.5.2 Mechanization and Gender 257 13.3.5 Utopianism and Mormonism 279

12.5.3 Time, Work, and Leisure 257 13.4 Antislavery and Abolitionism 280
12.5.4 Free Labor 258 13.4.1 African Americans against Slavery 280
x Contents

13.4.2 The American Colonization Society 281 14.5.2 The Free-Soil Movement 307
13.4.3 White Abolitionists 281 14.5.3 The Election of 1848 307
13.4.4 Abolitionism and Politics 282 Communities in Conflict: The Sectional
Split over the Expansion of Slavery 308
13.5 The Women’s Rights Movement 283
13.5.1 The Grimké Sisters 283 Conclusion • Key Terms • Timeline

Communities in Conflict: When Women 15 The Coming Crisis, the 1850s 311
Speak Up 284
American Communities:
13.5.2 Women’s Rights 284 Illinois Communities Debate Slavery 311
Conclusion • Key Terms • Timeline
15.1 America in 1850 313
14 The Territorial Expansion of the 15.1.1 Expansion and Growth 313
United States 1830s–1850s 287 15.1.2 Politics, Culture, and National Identity 314

American Communities: 15.2 Cracks in National Unity 314

Texans and Tejanos “Remember the Alamo!” 287 15.2.1 The Compromise of 1850 315

14.1 Learning the Geography of Indian 15.2.2 Political Parties Split over Slavery 316
Country 289 15.2.3 Congressional Divisions 316
14.1.1 The Fur Trade 289 15.2.4 Two Communities, Two Perspectives 317
14.1.2 Government-Sponsored Exploration 289 15.2.5 The Fugitive Slave Law 317
14.1.3 Expansion and Indian Policy 289 15.2.6 The Election of 1852 319
14.2 American Frontiers 291 15.2.7 “Young America”: The Politics of
Expansion319
14.2.1 Frontiers of Accommodation 291
14.2.2 Manifest Destiny, an Expansionist 15.3 The Crisis of the National Party System 319
Ideology291 15.3.1 The Kansas-Nebraska Act 320
14.2.3 The Overland Trails 293 15.3.2 “Bleeding Kansas” 321
14.2.4 Oregon 294 15.3.3 The Politics of Nativism 322
14.2.5 The Santa Fé Trade 297 SEEING History: Brooks Beats Sumner 322
14.2.6 Mexican Texas 297 15.3.4 The Republican Party and the
14.2.7 Americans in Texas 298 Election of 1856 323

14.2.8 The Republic of Texas 298 15.4 The Differences Deepen 324
14.3 Origins and Outcomes of the 15.4.1 The Dred Scott Decision 324
Mexican-American War 300 15.4.2 The Lecompton Constitution 325
14.3.1 Origins of the War 300 15.4.3 The Panic of 1857 326
14.3.2 Mr. Polk’s War 301 15.4.4 John Brown’s Raid 326
14.3.3 The Press and Popular War 15.5 The South Secedes 328
Enthusiasm303
15.5.1 The Election of 1860 328
14.4 The Gold Rush Changes California 303
Communities in Conflict: The Debate
14.4.1 Early American Settlement 303 over Immigration 329
14.4.2 Gold! 304 15.5.2 The South Leaves the Union 330
SEEING History: War News from Mexico 304 15.5.3 The North’s Political Options 331
14.4.3 Mining Camps 305 15.5.4 Establishment of the Confederacy 331
14.5 Expansion and the Election of 1848 306 15.5.5 Lincoln’s Inauguration 332
14.5.1 The Wilmot Proviso 306 Conclusion • Key Terms • Timeline
 Contents xi

16 The Civil War 1861–1865 335 16.6.5 Appomattox 357

16.6.6 Death of a President 358
American Communities:
Conclusion • Key Terms • Timeline
Mother Bickerdyke Connects Northern
Communities to Their Boys at War 335
17 Reconstruction 1863–1877 361
16.1 Communities Mobilize for War 337
American Communities:
16.1.1 Fort Sumter: The War Begins 337 Hale County, Alabama: From Slavery to
16.1.2 The Border States 338 Freedom in a Black Belt Community 361
16.1.3 The Battle of Bull Run 339 17.1 The Politics of Reconstruction 363
16.1.4 The Relative Strengths of North and South 339 17.1.1 The Defeated South 363
16.2 The Governments Organize for War 340 17.1.2 Abraham Lincoln’s Plan 363
16.2.1 Lincoln Takes Charge 340 17.1.3 Andrew Johnson and Presidential
16.2.2 Expanding the Power of the Federal Reconstruction365
Government340 17.1.4 Free Labor and the Radical
16.2.3 Diplomatic Objectives 341 Republican Vision 365

16.2.4 Jefferson Davis Tries to Unify 17.1.5 Congressional Reconstruction and the

the Confederacy 341 Impeachment Crisis 366

16.2.5 Contradictions of Southern Nationalism 341 17.1.6 The Election of 1868 367
17.1.7 Woman Suffrage and Reconstruction 369
16.3 The Fighting through 1862 342
16.3.1 The War in Northern Virginia 342 17.2 The Meaning of Freedom 369
16.3.2 Shiloh and the War for the Mississippi 343 17.2.1 Moving About 369

16.3.3 The War in the Trans-Mississippi West 344 17.2.2 African American Families, Churches,
and Schools 370
16.3.4 The Naval War 345
17.2.3 Land and Labor after Slavery 371
16.3.5 The Black Response 345
17.2.4 The Origins of African American Politics 372
16.4 The Death of Slavery 345
SEEING History: Changing Images of
16.4.1 The Politics of Emancipation 346 Reconstruction 373
16.4.2 Black Fighting Men 346
17.3 Southern Politics and Society 374
SEEING History: Come and Join Us Brothers 348
17.3.1 Southern Republicans 374
16.5 The Front Lines and the Home Front 348 17.3.2 Reconstructing the States: A Mixed Record 374
16.5.1 The Toll of War 349 17.3.3 White Resistance and “Redemption” 375
16.5.2 Army Nurses 350 Communities in Conflict: The Ku Klux
16.5.3 The Life of the Common Soldier 350 Klan in Alabama 376
16.5.4 Wartime Politics 350 17.3.4 King Cotton: Sharecroppers, Tenants,
and the Southern Environment 378
16.5.5 Economic and Social Strains on the North 351
16.5.6 The New York City Draft Riots 351 17.4 Reconstructing the North 378
17.4.1 The Age of Capital 379
Communities in Conflict: The Limits
of Civil Liberties in Wartime 352 17.4.2 Liberal Republicans and the Election of 1872 381
16.5.7 The Failure of Southern Nationalism 352 17.4.3 The Depression of 1873 381
16.6 The Tide Turns 354 17.4.4 The Electoral Crisis of 1876 381
16.6.1 The Turning Point of 1863 354 Conclusion • Key Terms • Timeline

16.6.2 Grant and Sherman 355 Appendix A-1

16.6.3 The 1864 Election 356 Credits C-1
16.6.4 Nearing the End 356 Index I-1
communities in Conflict
Chapter 1: The Origins of Foodways 6 Chapter 11: Indian Removal, Pro and Con
An Arapaho Legend
A Penobscot Legend
Chapter 2: The Debate Over the Justice of the
Conquest 28
The Indians Are Natural Slaves
The Indians Are Our Brothers
Chapter 3: The Maypole at Merrymount 48
The Lord of Misrule
Lasses in Beaver Coats Come Away
Chapter 4: Two Views of the Middle Passage
William Snelgrave Defends His Treatment of Slaves
Olaudah Equiano Describes His Own Middle Passage
Chapter 5: The Inoculation Controversy in Boston,
1721 100
There are Destroying Angels
New and Useful Discoveries
Chapter 6: The Debate over Independence 126
Will You Rebel for a Cause So Trivial?
The Sun Never Shone on a Cause of Greater Worth
Chapter 7: Washington and the Newburgh
Conspiracy 144
The Army Has Its Alternative
In the Name of Our Common Country
Chapter 8: The Controversy over Ratification
George Washington Transmits the New Constitution
to the Confederation Congress, September 17, 1787
Anti-Federalists in Massachusetts Respond,
January 25, 1788
Chapter 9: Christianizing the Indian 185
A Missionary Society Defends Its Activities
Red Jacket Defends Native Religion
Chapter 10: Who Benefits from Slavery? 219
Senator James Henry Hammond Defends Slavery
Hinton Helper Exhorts White Southerners
xii
234
Andrew Jackson’s Message on Indian Removal
Senator Theodore Frelinghuysen Responds
Chapter 12: Two Mill Girls Disagree about
Conditions at Lowell 260
Sarah: The Pleasures of Factory Life
Amelia: Some of the Beauties of Our Factory
System—Otherwise, Lowell Slavery
Chapter 13: When Women Speak Up 284
The Pastoral Letter Condemns Women in Public
Life
66 The Abolitionist Maria Weston Chapman’s Rhyming
Response
Chapter 14: The Sectional Split over the Expansion
of Slavery 308
John C. Calhoun: Let Us Be Done with
Compromises
David Wilmot Replies: Defeat Today Will But Arouse
the Teeming Millions
Chapter 15: The Debate over Immigration 329
From The Crisis, or, the Enemies of America Unmasked
Remarks by Senator William Seward during a Senate
Debate about the Know-Nothing “Creed”
Chapter 16: The Limits of Civil Liberties in
Wartime 352
The Press Supports Vallandigham
158 Lincoln Responds
Chapter 17: The Ku Klux Klan in Alabama 376
Movements of the Mystic Klan, from the Shelby
County Guide, December 3, 1868
George Houston’s Testimony, Montgomery,
October 17, 1871
Seeing History
Chapter 1: An Early European Image of Native
Americans 13
Chapter 2: A Watercolor from the First
Algonquian–English Encounter 36
Chapter 3: Seeing History 41
Chapter 4: A Musical Celebration in the Slave
Quarters 73
Chapter 5: A Plan of an American New Cleared
Farm 91
Chapter 6: The Bostonians Paying the Excise-Man,
or Tarring and Feathering 118
Chapter 7: The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis
Chapter 8: The Columbian Tragedy 164
Chapter 9: “A Scene on the Frontiers as Practiced
by the ‘Humane’ British and their
‘Worthy’ Allies” 190
Chapter 10: “Gordon under Medical
Inspection” 216
Chapter 11: President’s Levee, or all Creation
Going to the White House 230
Chapter 12: Industrialization and Rural Life 248
Chapter 13: P.T. Barnum’s Famous “Curiosity:”
General Tom Thumb 272
Chapter 14: War News from Mexico 304
Chapter 15: B
 rooks Beats Sumner 322
Chapter 16: Come and Join Us Brothers 348
Chapter 17: Changing Images of Reconstruction 373
139

xiii
Maps
Migration Routes from Asia to America 3
Native North American Culture Areas and Trade
Networks, ca. 1400 ce 5
Population Density of Indian Societies in The Fifteenth
Century 14
Indian Groups in The Areas of First Contact 15
Western Europe in the Fifteenth Century 23
The Invasion of America 26
The Columbian Exchange 30
European Exploration, 1492–1591 31
New Mexico in the Seventeenth Century 40
New France in the Seventeenth Century 42
European Colonies of the Atlantic Coast, 1607–1639 43
The Proprietary Colonies 52
Spread of Settlement: British Colonies, 1650–1700 53
The African Slave Trade 62
Slave Colonies of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries 63
Triangular Trade Across the Atlantic 76
Regions in Eighteenth-Century North America 85
Growing Use of the Horse by Plains Indians 86
The French Crescent 89
Spread of Settlement: Movement Into the Backcountry,
1720–1760 92
Ethnic Groups in Eighteenth-Century British North
America 95
The War For Empire in North America, 1754–1763 108
European Claims in North America, 1750 and 1763 110
Demonstrations Against the Stamp Act, 1765 114
The Québec Act of 1774 119
The First Engagements of the Revolution 121
Campaign For New York and New Jersey, 1775–1777 134
Northern Campaigns, 1777–1778 134
Fighting in The West, 1778–1779 137
Fighting in the South, 1778–1781 138
State Claims to Western Lands 140
North America after the Treaty of Paris, 1783 142
The Northwest Territory and the Land Survey System of
the United States 146
The Ratification of the Constitution, 1787–1790 157
Spread of Settlement: The Backcountry Expands,
1770–1790 162
Spanish Claims to American Territory, 1783–1795 163
The Election of 1800 169
North America in 1800 175
xiv
Louisiana Purchase 182
Indian Removals and Resistance, 1790–1814 187
The War of 1812 189
Spread of Settlement: Westward Surge, 1800–1820 192
John Quincy Adams’s Border Treaties 196
The Missouri Compromise 197
The South Expands, 1790–1850 202
Internal Slave Trade, 1820–1860 204
Population Patterns in the South, 1850 218
The Election of 1824 226
The Election of 1828 229
Southern Indian Cessions and Removals, 1830s 235
The Election of 1840 239
Travel Times, 1800 and 1857 246
Commercial Links: Rivers, Canals, Roads, 1830, and Rail
Lines, 1850 249
Commercial Links: The Old Northwest, 1830, 1860 253
Lowell, Massachusetts, 1832 255
Distribution of Foreign-Born Residents of the United
States in 1860 269
Reform Movements in the Burned-Over District 280
Exploration of the Continent, 1804–1830 290
Indian Territory before the Kansas-Nebraska Act of
1854 292
The Overland Trails, 1840 294
Texas: From Mexican Province to U.S. State 299
The Mexican-American War, 1846–1848 301
Territory Added, 1845–1853 303
California in the Gold Rush 305
U.S. Population and Settlement, 1850 313
The Compromise of 1850 315
The Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854 320
The Election of 1856 324
The Election of 1860 330
The South Secedes 332
Overall Strategy of the Civil War 343
Major Battles in the East, 1861–1862 344
Major Battles in the Interior, 1862–1863 344
The Turning Point, 1863 354
The Final Battles In Virginia, 1864–1865 357
Reconstruction of the South, 1866–1877 367
The Barrow Plantation, Oglethorpe County, Georgia,
1860 and 1881 (approx. 2,000 acres) 372
Southern Sharecropping and the Cotton Belt, 1880 379
The Election of 1876 382
Figures & Tables
North America’s Indian and Colonial Populations in the Cotton Exports As a Percentage of all U.S. Exports,
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries 29 1800–1860 203
Population Growth of the British Colonies in The Distribution of Slave Labor, 1850 206
Seventeenth Century 45 Slaveholding and Class Structure in the South,
Africans Imported to Mainland British North America, 1830 213
1626–1800 64 Race Exclusions for Suffrage, 1790–1855 225
Africans as a Percentage of Total Population of The The Burgeoning of Newspapers 227
British Colonies, 1650–1770 68
Pre—Civil War Voter Turnout 228
Value of Colonial Exports by Region, Annual Average,
1768–1772 78 The Second American Party System 238

Population of North America in 1750 84
Estimated Total Population of New Spain, New France,
and The British North American Colonies,
1700–1800 95
Participation of Irish and German Immigrants in the
New York City Workforce for Selected Occupations,
1855 273
Per Capita Consumption of Alcohol, 1800–1860 278

The Ancestry of the British Colonial Population 96 Overland Emigration to Oregon, California, and Utah,
1840–1860 295
Wealth Held by Richest 10 Percent of Population in
British Colonial America, 1770 97 Expansion Causes the First Splits in the Second
American Party System 307
Eleven British Measures that Led to Revolution 112
Political Parties Split and Realign 323
Postwar Inflation, 1777–1780: The Depreciation of
Continental Currency 154 The Irrepressible Conflict 328

The Trade Deficit with Great Britain 154 Comparative Resources, North and South, 1861 339

The First American Party System 166 The Casualties Mount Up 349

American Export Trade, 1790–1815 178 Reconstruction Amendments to The Constitution,

1865–1870 368
Western Land Sales 193

xv
Preface
O
ut of Many: A History of the American People, eighth
edition, offers a distinctive and timely approach
to American history, highlighting the experiences
of diverse communities of Americans in the unfolding
story of our country. The stories of these communities offer
a way of examining the complex historical forces shaping
people’s lives at various moments in our past. The debates
and conflicts surrounding the most momentous issues
in our national life—independence, emerging democ-
racy, slavery, westward settlement, imperial expansion,
economic depression, war, technological change—were
largely worked out in the context of local communities.
Through communities we focus on the persistent ten-
sions between everyday life and those larger decisions and
events that continually reshape the circumstances of local
life. Each chapter opens with a description of a representa-
tive community. Some of these portraits feature American
communities struggling with one another: African slaves
and English masters on the rice plantations of colonial
Georgia, or Tejanos and ­Americans during the Texas war
of independence. Other chapters feature portraits of com-
munities facing social change: the feminists of Seneca Falls,
New York, in 1848, or the African Americans of Montgom-
ery, Alabama, in 1955. As the story unfolds we find commu-
nities growing to include ever larger groups of Americans:
the soldiers from every colony who forged the Continental
Army into a patriotic national force at Valley Forge during
the American R ­ evolution, or the moviegoers who aspired to
a collective dream of material prosperity and upward mo-
bility during the 1920s.
Out of Many is also the only American history text with
a truly continental perspective. With community vignettes
from New England to the South, the Midwest to the far
West, we encourage students to appreciate the great ex-
panse of our nation. For example, a vignette of seventeenth
century Santa Fé, New Mexico, illustrates the founding of
the first European settlements in the New World. We pres-
ent territorial expansion into the American West from the
viewpoint of the Mandan villagers of the upper Missouri
River of North Dakota. We introduce the policies of the Re-
construction era through the experience of African Ameri-
cans in Hale County, Alabama. A continental perspective
drives home to students that American history has never
been the preserve of any particular region.
Out of Many includes extensive coverage of our diverse
heritage. Our country is appropriately known as “a nation
of immigrants,” and the history of immigration to America,
from the seventeenth to the twenty-first ­c enturies, is
xvi
fully integrated into the text. There is sustained and close
­attention to our place in the world, with special empha-
sis on our relations with the nations of the Western Hemi-
sphere, especially our near neighbors, Canada and Mexico.
The statistical data in the final chapter has been completely
updated with the results of the 2010 census.
In these ways Out of Many breaks new ground, but
without compromising its coverage of the traditional turn-
ing points that we believe are critically important to an un-
derstanding of the American past. Among these watershed
events are the Revolution and the struggle over the Con-
stitution, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and the Great
Depression and World War II. In Out of Many, however,
we seek to integrate the narrative of national history with
the story of the nation’s many diverse communities. The
Revolutionary and Constitutional period tested the abil-
ity of local communities to forge a new unity, and success
depended on their ability to build a nation without com-
promising local identity. The Civil War and Reconstruction
formed a second great test of the balance between the na-
tional ideas of the Revolution and the power of local and
sectional communities. The depression and the New Deal
demonstrated the importance of local communities and the
growing power of national institutions during the greatest
economic challenge in our history. Out of Many also looks
back in a new and comprehensive way—from the vantage
point of the beginning of a new century and the end of the
Cold War—at the salient events of the last sixty five years
and their impact on American communities. The commu-
nity focus of Out of Many weaves the stories of the people
and the nation into a single compelling narrative.
Out of Many, eighth edition, is completely updated
with the most recent scholarship on the history of America
and the United States. All the chapters have been exten-
sively reviewed, revised, and rewritten. The final chapter
details the tumultuous events of the new century, includ-
ing a completely new section on the “war on terror,” and
concluding with the national election of 2012. Throughout
the book the text and graphics are presented in a stunning
new design.
What’s New to This Edition
With each edition of Out of Many we seek to strengthen
its unique integration of the best of traditional American
history with its innovative community-based focus and
strong continental perspective. This new version is no
­exception.

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REVEL enlivens course content with media inter-
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A wealth of s­ tudent and instructor resources and interac-
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Preface xvii
Learning Outcomes
New text-specific Learning Outcomes inform each chapter,
with outcomes correlated to unique chapter features and
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New text-specific videos in every chapter bring American
Communities vignettes to life, and offer section summaries.
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Special Features
Out of Many offers a wealth of special features and pedagogical aids that reinforce our
narrative and helps students grasp key topics and concepts.

• Community and Diversity. This special introductory essay begins students’ jour-
ney into the narrative history that unfolds in Out of Many. The essay acquaints
students with the major themes of the book and provides them with a framework
for understanding American History. (pp. xxiii–xxiv)

• American Communities. Each chapter opens with a story that highlights the expe-
riences of diverse c­ ommunities of Americans as a way of examining the complex
historical forces shaping people’s lives at v
­ arious m
­ oments in our past.

• Communities in Conflict. This special feature highlights two primary sources that
offer opposing voices on a controversial historical issue. With introductory source
notes and critical thinking questions, ”Communities in Conflict” offers s­ tudents
and instructors the opportunity to discuss how Americans have struggled to
­resolve their differences at every point in our past.

• Seeing History. This feature helps students use visual culture for making sense of
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of the past.

• Tables. Tables provide students with a summary of c­ omplex issues.

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tion, the Seeing History feature in each chapter highlights a stunning visual and
introduces students to the importance of visual documents in the study of history.

• Time Lines and Key Terms. A time line at the end of each chapter helps students
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xviii
For Instructors and Students
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xix
Acknowledgments
In the years it has taken to bring Out of Many from idea to reality and to improve it in
successive editions, we have often been reminded that although writing history some-
times feels like isolated work, it actually involves a collective ­effort. We want to thank
the dozens of people whose efforts have made the publication of this book possible.
We wish to thank our many friends at Prentice Hall for their efforts in creating the
eighth edition of Out of Many: Dickson Musselwhite, Vice-President, Editorial Director;
Ed Parsons, Executive Editor; Seanna Breen, Program M ­ anager; Beth B ­ renzel (rights
and permissions), Debbie ­Coniglio (digital acquisitions); Renee Eckhoff, ­Development
Editor; Wendy Albert, Executive Field Marketer; Jeremy Intal, Product Marketer.
Although we share joint responsibility for the entire book, the chapters were in-
dividually authored: John Mack Faragher wrote Chapters 1–8; Susan Armitage wrote
­Chapters 9–16; Mari Jo Buhle wrote Chapters 18–20, 25–26, 29; and Daniel Czitrom
wrote Chapters 17, 21–24, 27–28. For this edition Buhle and Czitrom co-authored
­Chapters 30–31.
Each of us depended on a great deal of support and assistance with the research
and writing that went into this book. We want to thank: Kathryn Abbott, Nan Boyd,
Krista Comer, Jennifer Cote, Crista DeLuzio, Keith Edgerton, Carol Frost, Jesse
­Hoffnung Garskof, Pailin Gaither, Jane Gerhard, Todd Gernes, Mark Krasovic, D ­ aniel
Lanpher, Melani McAlister, Rebecca McKenna, Cristiane Mitchell, J. C. Mutchler, Keith
Peterson, Alan Pinkham, Tricia Rose, Gina Rourke, Jessica Shubow, Gordon P. Utz Jr.,
Maura Young, Teresa Bill, Gill Frank, and Naoko Shibusawa. Our families and close
friends have been supportive and ever so patient over the many years we have de-
voted to this project. But we want especially to thank Paul Buhle, Meryl ­Fingrutd, Bob
Greene, and Michele Hoffnung.

xx
About the Authors
John Mack Faragher is the Howard R. Lamar Professor
of History and director of the Howard R. Lamar Center
for the Study of Frontiers and Borders at Yale University.
Born in Arizona and raised in southern California, he re-
ceived his B.A. at the University of California, R ­ iverside,
and his Ph.D. at Yale University. He is the author of
Women and Men on the Overland Trail (1979), Sugar Creek:
Life on the Illinois Prairie (1986), Daniel Boone: The Life and
Legend of an American Pioneer (1992), The American West:
A New Interpretive History (2000), and A Great and ­Noble
John Mack Faragher Scheme: The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French
­Acadians from Their American Homeland (2005).

Mari Jo Buhle is William R. Kenan, Jr. University P ­ rofessor

Emerita of American Civilization and History at Brown
University, specializing in American women’s history.
She received her B.A. from the University of ­Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign, and her Ph.D. from the University
of ­Wisconsin, Madison. She is the author of Women and
­American Socialism, 1870–1920 (1981) and Feminism and
Its Discontents: A Century of Struggle with P ­ sychoanalysis
(1998). She is also coeditor of the Encyclopedia of the
­American Left, (second edition, 1998). Professor Buhle held
Mari Jo Buhle a fellowship (1991–1996) from the John D. and Catherine
T. MacArthur Foundation. She is currently an Honorary
­Fellow of the History Department at the U ­ niversity of
Wisconsin, Madison.

Daniel Czitrom is Professor of History at Mount Holyoke

College. Born and raised in New York City, he received his
B.A. from the State University of New York at Binghamton
and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin,
Madison. He is the author of Media and the American Mind:
From Morse to McLuhan (1982), which won the First Books
Award of the American Historical Association and has
been translated into Spanish and Chinese. He is co-author
of Rediscovering Jacob Riis: Exposure Journalism and Photogra-
Daniel Czitrom
phy in Turn of the Century New York (2008). He has served as
a historical consultant and featured on-camera commen-
tator for several documentary film projects, including the
PBS productions New York: A Documentary Film; American
Photography: A Century of Images; and The Great Transatlantic
Cable. He currently serves as a Distinguished Lecturer for
the Organization of American Historians.

xxi
xxii About the Authors

Susan H. Armitage is Professor of History and W ­ omen’s

Studies, Emerita, at Washington State University,
where she was a Claudius O. and Mary R. Johnson
­D istinguished Professor. She earned her Ph.D. from
the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Among her many publications on western women’s his-
tory are three coedited books, The Women’s West (1987),
So Much To Be Done: Women on the Mining and Ranching
Frontier (1991), and Writing the Range: Race, Class, and Susan H. Armitage
Culture in the Women’s West (1997). She served as editor
of the feminist journal Frontiers from 1996 to 2002. Her
most recent publication, coedited with Laurie Mercier,
is Speaking History: Oral Histories of the American Past,
1865–Present (2009).
Community & Diversity
One of the most characteristic features of our country is its
astounding variety. The American people include the de-
scendants of native Indians; colonial Europeans of B ­ ritish,
French, and Spanish background; Africans; and migrants
from virtually every country and continent. Indeed, at
the beginning of the new century the United States is ab-
sorbing a flood of immigrants from Latin America and
Asia that rivals the great tide of people from eastern
and southern E ­ urope one hundred years before. What’s
more, our c­ ountry is one of the world’s most spacious,
­sprawling across than 3.6 million square miles of territory.
The s­ truggle to meld a single nation out of our many far-
flung communities is what much of American history is all
about. That is the story told in this book.
Every human society is made up of communities. A
community is a set of relationships linking men, women,
and their families to a coherent social whole that is more
than the sum of its parts. In a community people develop
the capacity for unified action. In a community people
learn, often through trial and error, how to transform and
adapt to their environment.
The sentiment that binds the members of a commu-
nity together is the mother of group consciousness and
ethnic identity. In the making of history, communities are
far more important than even the greatest of leaders, for
the community is the institution most capable of passing a
distinctive historical tradition to future generations.
Communities bind people together in multiple ways.
They can be as small as local neighborhoods, in which peo-
ple maintain face-to-face relations, or as large as the nation
itself. This book examines American history from the per-
spective of community life—an ever-widening frame that
has included larger and larger groups of Americans.
Networks of kinship and friendship, and connections
across generations and among families, establish the bonds
essential to community life. Shared feelings about values
and history establish the basis for common identity. In
communities, people find the power to act collectively in
their own interest. But American communities frequently
took shape as a result of serious conflicts among groups,
and within communities there was often significant fight-
ing among competing groups or classes. Thus the term
community, as we use it here, includes conflict and discord
as well as harmony and agreement.
For decades Americans have complained about the
“loss of community.” But community has not d ­ isappeared—
it has been continuously reinvented. Until the late e­ ighteenth
­century, community was defined primarily by space and
l­ocal geography. But in the nineteenth century communi-
ties were reshaped by new and powerful historical forces
such as the marketplace, i­ndustrialization, the corpora-
tion, mass immigration, mass media, and the growth of the
­nation-state. In the twentieth century, ­Americans struggled
to balance commitments to multiple communities. These
were defined not simply by local ­spatial arrangements, but
by categories as varied as race and ethnicity, occupation,
­political affiliation, and consumer p
­ reference.
The “American Communities” vignettes that open
each chapter reflect these transformations. Most of the vi-
gnettes in the pre–Civil War chapters focus on geographi-
cally defined communities, such as the ancient Indian city
at ­Cahokia, or the experiment in industrial urban planning
in early nineteenth-century Lowell, Massachusetts. Post–
Civil War chapters explore different and more modern
kinds of communities. In the 1920s, movies and radio of-
fered communities of identification with dreams of free-
dom, material success, upward mobility, youth and beauty.
In the 1950s, rock ‘n’ roll music helped germinate a new
national community of teenagers, with profound effects
on the culture of the entire country in the second half of
the twentieth century. In the late 1970s, fear of nuclear acci-
dents like the one at Three Mile Island brought concerned
citizens together in communities around the country and
encouraged a ­national movement opposing nuclear power.
The title for our book was suggested by the Latin
phrase selected by John ­Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and
Thomas Jefferson for the Great Seal of the United States:
E Pluribus Unum—”Out of Many Comes Unity.” These men
understood that unity could not be imposed by a powerful
central authority but had to develop out of mutual respect
among Americans of different backgrounds. The revolu-
tionary leadership expressed the hope that such respect
could grow on the basis of a remarkable proposition: “We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness.” The national government of the
United States would preserve local and state authority but
would guarantee individual rights. The nation would be
strengthened by guarantees of difference.
“Out of Many” comes strength. That is the promise
of America and the premise of this book. The underlying
dialectic of American history, we believe, is that as a peo-
ple we must locate our national unity in the celebration of
the ­differences that exist among us; these differences can
be our strength, as long as we affirm the promise of the
xxiii
xxiv Community & Diversity
­ eclaration. Protecting the “right to be different,” in other
D into the country, and to force assimilation on American
words, is absolutely fundamental to the continued exis-
tence of democracy, and that right is best protected by the
existence of strong and vital communities. We are bound
together as a nation by the ideal of local and cultural dif-
ferences ­protected by our common commitment to the val-
ues of the American Revolution.
Today those values are endangered by those who use the
tactics of mass terror. In the wake of the September 11, 2001
attack on the United States, and with the continuing threat
of biological, chemical, or even nuclear assaults, Americans
cannot afford to lose faith in our historic ­vision. The thou-
sands of victims buried in the smoking ruins of the World
Trade Center included people from dozens of different ethnic
and national groups. The United States is a multicultural and
transnational society. We must rededicate ourselves to the
protection and defense of the promise of diversity and unity.
Our history demonstrates that the promise has always
been problematic. Centrifugal forces have been powerful in
the American past, and at times the country seemed about to
fracture into its component parts. Our transformation from
a collection of groups and regions into a nation was marked
by painful and often violent struggles. Our past is filled
with conflicts between Indians and colonists, masters and
slaves, ­Patriots and Loyalists, Northerners and ­Southerners,
­Easterners and Westerners, capitalists and workers, and some-
times the government and the people. War can bring out our
best, but it can also bring out our worst. During World War
II thousands of Japanese American citizens were deprived of
their rights and locked up in isolated detention centers because
of their ethnic background. Americans often appear to be little
more than a contentious collection of peoples with conflicting
interests, divided by region and background, race and class.
Our most influential leaders have also sometimes suf-
fered a crisis of faith in the American project of “liberty
and justice for all.” Thomas Jefferson not only believed in
the inferiority of African Americans but feared that immi-
grants from outside the Anglo-American tradition might
“warp and bias” the development of the nation “and ren-
der it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass.” We
have not always lived up to the American promise and
there is a dark side to our history. It took the bloodiest war
in ­American history to secure the human rights of African
Americans, and the struggle for full equality for all our
citizens has yet to be won. During the great influx of im-
migrants in the early twentieth century, fears much like
Jefferson’s led to movements to Americanize the foreign
born by forcing them, in the words of one leader, “to give
up the languages, customs, and methods of life which they
have brought with them across the ocean, and adopt in-
stead the language, habits, and customs of this country, and
the general standards and ways of American living.” Similar
thinking motivated Congress at various times to bar the
immigration of Africans, Asians, and other ­people of color
­Indians by denying them the freedom to practice their re-
ligion or even to speak their own language. Such calls for
restrictive unity resound in our own day.
But other Americans have argued for a more fulsome
version of Americanization. “What is the American, this
new man?” asked the French immigrant Michel Crévecoeur
in 1782. “A strange mixture of blood which you will find
in no other country.” In America, he wrote, “individuals of
all nations are melted into a new race of men.” A century
later Crévecoeur was echoed by historian Frederick Jackson
Turner, who believed that “in the crucible of the frontier, the
immigrants were Americanized, liberated, and fused into a
mixed race, English in neither nationality nor characteristics.
The process has gone on from the early days to our own.”
The process by which diverse communities have come
to share a set of common American values is one of the
most fundamental aspects of our history. It did not occur,
however, because of compulsory Americanization pro-
grams, but because of free public education, popular par-
ticipation in democratic politics, and the impact of popular
culture. Contemporary America does have a common cul-
ture: we share a commitment to freedom of thought and
expression, we join in the aspirations to own our own
homes and send our children to college, we laugh at the
same television programs or video clips on YouTube.
To a degree that too few Americans appreciate, this com-
mon culture resulted from a complicated process of mutual
discovery that took place when different ethnic and regional
groups encountered one another. Consider just one small
and unique aspect of our culture: the barbecue. Americans
have been barbecuing since before the beginning of written
history. Early settlers adopted this technique of cooking from
the I­ ndians—the word itself comes from a native term for a
framework of sticks over a fire on which meat was slowly
cooked. Colonists typically barbecued pork, fed on Indian
corn. African slaves lent their own touch by introducing the
use of spicy sauces. The ritual that is a part of nearly every
American family’s Fourth of July silently celebrates the heri-
tage of diversity that went into making our common culture.
The American educator John Dewey recognized
this diversity early in the last century. “The genuine
­American, the typical American, is himself a ­hyphenated
character,” he declared, “international and interracial in
his make-up.” It was up to all Americans, Dewey argued,
“to see to it that the hyphen connects instead of sepa-
rates.” We, the authors of Out of Many, endorse D ­ ewey’s
perspective. “­ Creation comes from the impact of diver-
sity,” the ­A merican ­p hilosopher Horace Kallen wrote
about the same time. We also endorse Kallen’s vision
of the ­A merican p ­ romise: “A democracy of nationali-
ties, cooperating v ­ oluntarily and autonomously through
­c ommon i­nstitutions, . . . a multiplicity in a unity, an
­orchestration of mankind.” And now, let the music begin.
Chapter 1
A Continent of Villages
to 1500

The central plaza at Cahokia, as reimagined by the artist Michael Hampshire, who based the work on archaeological investigation.
Source: Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site.

Contents and Focus Questions

1.1 The First American Settlers, p. 2 1.3 Farming in Early North America, p. 9
What events led to the migration of Asian peoples What kinds of agricultural societies developed in
into North America? North America?

1.2 The Development of Farming, p. 8
What were the consequences of the development of
farming for native communities?
1.4 Cultural Regions of North America on the
Eve of Colonization, p. 12
What important differences were there between
Indian societies in the Southwest, South, and
Northeast on the eve of colonization?

American Communities
Cahokia: Thirteenth-Century Life on the endless fields that fed the city. From almost any point peo-
Mississippi ple could see the great temple that rose from the city center.
The Indian residents of this thirteenth-century city
As the sun rose over the rich floodplain, the people of the
lived and worked on the east banks of the Mississippi
riverbank city set about their daily tasks. Some went to
River, across from present-day St. Louis, a place known
shops where they manufactured tools, crafted pottery,
today as Cahokia. In the thirteenth century, Cahokia was
worked metal, or fashioned ornamental jewelry—goods
an urban cluster of 20,000 or 30,000 people. Its farm fields
destined to be exchanged in the far corners of the continent.
were abundant with corn, beans, and squash. The temple,
Others left their densely populated neighborhoods for the
a huge earthwork pyramid, covered fifteen acres at its base
outlying countryside, where they worked the seemingly
and rose as high as a ten-story building.
1
2 Chapter 1

The vast urban complex of Cahokia, which at its height
stretched six miles along the Mississippi River, flourished
from the tenth to the fourteenth century. Its residents were
not nomadic hunters but farmers, participants in a com-
plex agricultural culture that archaeologists term “Mis-
sissippian.” Hundreds of acres of crops fed the people of
Cahokia, the largest urban community north of the Aztec
civilization of central Mexico. Cahokia stood at the center
of a long-­distance trading system that linked it to other
Indian communities over a vast area. Copper came from
Lake Superior, mica from the southern Appalachians, and
conch shells from the Atlantic coast. Cahokia’s specialized
artisans were renowned for the manufacture of high-qual-
ity flint hoes, which were exported throughout the Missis-
sippi Valley.
Evidence suggests that Cahokia was
a city-state supported by tribute and
taxation. Like the awe-inspiring public
works of other early urban societies in
other parts of the world, most n­ otably
the pyramids of ancient Egypt and the
acropolis of Athens, the great temple
mound of Cahokia was intended to showcase the city’s
wealth and power. The mounds and other colossal public
works at Cahokia were the monuments of a society ruled
by a class of elite leaders. From their residences atop the
mound, priests and chiefs looked down on their subjects
both literally and figuratively.
The long history of North America before European
colonization reveals that the native inhabitants developed
a great variety of societies. Beginning as migrant hunting
and gathering bands, they found ways to fine-tune their
subsistence strategies to fit environmental possibilities and
limitations. Communities in the highlands of Mexico in-
vented systems of farming that spread to all the regions
where cultivation was possible. Not only the Aztecs of
Mexico and the Mayans of Central America but
also communities in the Southwest and the
Mississippi Valley constructed densely
settled urban civilizations. North Amer-
ica before colonization was, as historian
Cahokia
Howard R. Lamar phrases it, “a continent
of villages,” a land spread with thou-
sands of communities.

1.1 The First American

Settlers
What events led to the migration of Asian peoples into
North America?
“Why do you call us Indians?” a Massachusetts native
complained to Puritan missionary John Eliot in 1646.
­Christopher Columbus, who mistook the Taino people of
the Caribbean for the people of the East Indies, called them
“Indios.” Within a short time this Spanish word had passed
into English as “Indians” and was commonly used to refer
to all the native peoples of the Americas. Today anthropolo-
gists sometimes employ the term “Amerindians,” and oth-
ers use “Native Americans.” But in the United States most
of the descendants of the original inhabitants refer to them-
selves as “Indian people.”

1.1.1 Who Are the Indian People?

At the time of their first contacts with Europeans at the
beginning of the sixteenth century, the inhabitants of the
Western Hemisphere represented more than 2,000 separate
cultures, spoke several hundred different languages, and
made their livings in scores of different environments. Just
A forensic artist reconstructed this bust from the skull of “Kennewick
as the term “European” includes many nations, so the term Man,” whose skeletal remains were discovered along the Columbia
“Indian” covers an enormous diversity among the peoples River in 1996. Scientific testing suggested that the remains were more
of the Americas. than 9,000 years old.
 A Continent of Villages to 1500 3

Map 1.1 Migration Routes from Asia to America

During the Ice Age, Asia and North America were joined where the Bering Strait is today, forming
a migration route for hunting peoples. Either by boat along the coast, or through a narrow corridor
between the huge northern glaciers, these migrants began making their way to the heartland of the
continent as much as 30,000 years ago.

ATLANTIC
OCEAN

PA C I F I C
OCEAN

Possible migration routes

Beringia
Glaciated areas
Land areas
Present-day coastline

No single physical type characterized all the peoples 1.1.2 Migration from Asia
of the Americas. Although most had straight, black hair
Acosta was the first to propose the Asian migration hy-
and dark, almond-shaped eyes, their skin color ranged
pothesis that is widely accepted today. Siberian and Amer-
from mahogany to light brown. Few fit the “redskin” de-
ican Indian populations suggest that migrants to North
scriptions used by North American colonists of the eigh-
America began leaving Asia approximately 30,000 years
teenth and nineteenth centuries. Indeed, it was only when
ago (see Map 1.1).
Europeans had compared Indian peoples with natives of
The migration was possible because during the last Ice
other continents, such as Africans, that they seemed simi-
Age, from 70,000 to 10,000 years ago, huge glaciers locked
lar enough to be classified as a group.
up massive volumes of water, and sea levels were as much
Once Europeans realized that the Americas were in
as 300 feet lower than they are today. Asia and North
fact a “New World,” rather than part of the Asian conti-
America, now separated by the Bering Strait, were joined
nent, a debate began over how people might have moved
by a huge subcontinent of ice-free, treeless grassland,
there from Europe and Asia, where (according to the Bible)
which geologists have named Beringia. Summers there
God had created the first man and woman. In 1590, the
were warm, and winters were cold but almost snow free,
Spanish Jesuit missionary Joseph de Acosta reasoned that
so there was no glaciation. It was a perfect environment for
because Old World animals were present in the Americas,
large mammals—mammoth and mastodon, bison, horse,
they must have crossed by a land bridge that could have
reindeer, camel, and saiga (a goat-like antelope). Small
been used by humans as well.
4 Chapter 1
Clovis spear points on display at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in
­Alberta, Canada. They are typical of thousands of stone points archae-
ologists have found all over the continent, dating from a period about
12,000 years ago. Inserted in a shaft, these points made effective weap-
ons for hunting mammoth and other big game. The ancient craftsmen
who made these points often took advantage of unique qualities of
the stone they were working to enhance their aesthetic beauty.
bands of Siberian hunter-gatherers were surely attracted
by these animal populations.
Access to lands to the south, however, was blocked by
huge ice sheets covering much of what is today Canada.
How did the migrants get through those 2,000 miles of
deep ice? The standard hypothesis is that with the warm-
ing of the climate and the end of the Ice Age, about 13,000
bce (before the common era), glacial melting created an
ice-free corridor—an original “Pan-American Highway”—
along the eastern front range of the Rocky Mountains. Us-
ing this thoroughfare, the hunters of big game reached the
Great Plains as early as 11,000 bce.
Recently, however, new archaeological finds along
the Pacific coast of North and South America have com-
plicated this hypothesis. Radiocarbon analysis of remains
discovered at several newly excavated human sites sug-
gested dates of 12,000 bce or earlier. The most spectacular
find, at Monte Verde in southern Chile, produced striking
evidence of tool making, house building, and rock paint-
ing conservatively dated at 12,500 bce. A number of ar-
chaeologists believe that the people who founded these
settlements moved south in boats along a coastal route—
an ancient “Pacific Coast Highway.”
There were two later migrations into North America.
About 5000 bce the Athapascan people moved across
Beringia and began to settle the forests in the northwest-
ern area of the continent. Eventually groups of ­Athapascan
speakers, the ancestors of the Navajos and Apaches, mi-
grated across the Great Plains to the Southwest. A third
and final migration began about 3000 bce, long after
Beringia had disappeared under rising seas, when a mari-
time h ­ unting people crossed the Bering Strait in small
boats. The Inuits (also known as the Eskimos) colonized
the polar coasts of the Arctic, the Yupiks the coast of south-
western Alaska, and the Aleuts the Aleutian Islands (which
are named for them).
While scientists debate the timing and mapping of
these various migrations, many Indian people hold to
oral traditions that say they have always lived in North
­A merica. Every culture has its origin stories, offering
­e xplanations of the customs and beliefs of the group.
A number of scholars believe these origin stories may
shed light on ancient history. The Haida people of the
Northwest Pacific coast tell of a time long ago when the
offshore islands were much larger, but then the oceans
rose, they say, and “flood tide woman” forced them to
move to higher ground. Could these stories preserve a
memory of the changes at the end of the Ice Age?
1.1.3 T
 he Clovis Culture:
The First Environmental
Adaptation
The tools found at the earliest North American archaeolog-
ical sites, crude stone or bone choppers and scrapers, are
similar to artifacts from the same period found in Europe
or Asia. About 11,000 years ago, however, ancient Ameri-
cans developed a much more sophisticated style of making
fluted blades and lance points, a tradition named “Clovis,”
after the location of the initial discovery near Clovis, New
Mexico, in 1926. In the years since, archaeologists have un-
earthed Clovis stone tools at sites throughout the continent
all dating within 1,000 or 2,000 years of one another, sug-
gesting that the Clovis technology spread quickly through-
out the continent.
The evidence suggests that Clovis bands were mobile
communities of foragers numbering perhaps thirty to fifty
individuals from several interrelated families. They re-
turned to the same hunting camps year after year, migrat-
ing seasonally within territories of several hundred square
miles. Camps found throughout the continent overlooked
watering places that would attract game. Clovis blades
have been found amid the remains of mammoth, camel,
horse, giant armadillo, and sloth.
The global warming trend that ended the Ice Age
dramatically altered the North American climate. About
15,000 years ago the giant continental glaciers began to
melt and the northern latitudes were colonized by plants,
animals, and humans. Meltwater created the lake and river
systems of today and raised the level of the surrounding
seas, flooding not only Beringia but also vast stretches of
the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, creating fertile tidal pools and
offshore fishing banks.
 A Continent of Villages to 1500 5

Map 1.2 Native North American Culture Areas and Trade Networks, ca. 1400 ce
All peoples must adjust their diet, shelter, and other material aspects of their lives to the physical
conditions of the world around them. By considering the ways in which Indian peoples developed
distinct cultures and adapted to their environments, anthropologists developed the concept of
“culture areas.” They divide the continent into nine fundamental regions that have greatly influenced
the history of North America over the past 10,000 years. Just as regions shaped the lifeways and
history of Indian peoples, after the coming of the Europeans they nurtured the development of
regional American cultures. By determining the origin of artifacts found at ancient sites, historians
have devised a conjectural map of Indian trade networks. Among large regional centers and smaller
local ones, trade connected Indian peoples of many different communities and regions.

ARCTIC
OCEAN

Arctic

Subarctic

R.
ce

n
RO

re
Northwest

Law
CK

St.
Y

Missouri
MO

R.

S
Northeast
UN

IN

PA C I F I C Great Great
TA
TA

UN

OCEAN Basin Plains AT L A N T I C

R.
MO
INS

o
r ad h i o R.
olo OCEAN
N
IA

C
O

CH
Ar

LA

an
.
pi R

sas
k

PA

R.
Southwest
AP
Mississip

South
Culture area
Rio
Gr

Trade route
an
de

Regional center
Local center
Gulf of Mexico

1.1.4 N
 ew Ways of Living
on the Land
These huge transformations produced new patterns of
wind, rainfall, and temperature, reshaping the ecology of
the entire continent and gradually producing the distinct
North American regions of today (see Map 1.2). The great
integrating force of a single continental climate faded, and
with its passing the continental Clovis culture fragmented
into a number of different regional patterns.
The retreat of the glaciers led to new ways of find-
ing food: hunting in the Arctic, foraging in the arid
deserts, fishing along the coasts, hunting and gather-
ing in the forests (see Communities in Conflict). These
developments took place roughly 10,000 to 2,500
years ago, during what archaeologists call the ­A rchaic
period.
Hunting Traditions One of the most important
­effects of this massive climatic shift was the stress it placed
on the big-game animals best suited to an Ice Age environ-
ment. The archaeological record documents the extinc-
tion of thirty-two classes of large New World mammals.
Changing climatic conditions lowered the reproduction
­
6 Chapter 1
Communities in Conflict
myths offer explanations for the order of things, including foodways
The Origins of Foodways
One of the functions of myth is to offer explanations for the
order of things, including foodways. Native foragers told tales
that explained the origins of hunting. A myth common to many
tribes on the Great Plains, here in a tale told to a nineteenth-
century ethnographer by a Northern Arapaho of Wyoming, re-
lates the story of male culture heroes, who as a result of their
vision quests learn the essential skills of hunting, butchering,
and cooking buffalo, the all-nourishing sacred food. Farming
tribes, on the other hand, told stories in which hunting alone
An Arapaho Legend
A man tried to think how the Arapahos might kill buffalo.
He was a hard thinker. He would go off for several days and
fast. He did this repeatedly. At last he dreamed that a voice
spoke to him and told him what to do. He went back to the
people and made an enclosure of trees set in the ground with
willows wound between them. At one side of the enclosure,
however, there was only a cliff with rocks at the bottom.
Then four runners were sent out to the windward of a herd
of buffalo, two of them on each side. They headed the buf-
falo and drove them toward the enclosure and into it. Then
the buffalo were run about inside until a heavy cloud of dust
rose and in this, unable to see, they ran over the precipice
and were killed. . . .
The people had nothing to cut up meat with. A man
took a buffalo shoulder blade and with flint cut out a narrow
piece of it. He sharpened it, and thus had a knife. Then he
also made a knife from flint by flaking it into shape. All the
people learned how to make knives.
This man also made the first bow and arrows. He
made the arrow point of the short rib of a buffalo. Having
made a bow and four arrows, he went off alone and waited
A Penobscot Legend
. . . The people increased until they were very many,
and there came a famine among them; and then the first
mother grew more and more sorrowful. . . . There came
seven little children that stood in front of them and looked
into the woman’s face, saying, “We are hungry, and the
night will soon be here. Where is the food?” Then the
woman’s tears ran down, and she said, “Be quiet, little
ones; in seven moons you shall be filled and shall hunger
no more.”
The husband reached out his hand and wiped away her
tears and said, “My wife, what can I do to make you happy?”
And she answered, “Take my life.”
is not sufficient to feed the people. Thus, the spirit world pro-
vides them with the gift of corn. Such stories about the origins
of corn are widespread wherever farming was important. The
story printed here, told by the Penobscot of Maine in the early
twentieth century, explains the willing self-sacrifice of First
Mother on behalf of her children.
• What do these two myths suggest about the roles of
men and women?
in the timber at a buffalo path. A buffalo came and he shot:
the arrow disappeared into the body and the animal fell
dead. Then he killed three more. He went back to camp
and told the people: “Harness the dogs; there are four
dead buffalo in the timber.” So from this time the people
were able to get meat without driving the buffalo into an
enclosure.
The people used the fire drill. A man went off alone and
fasted. He learned that certain stones, when struck, would
give a spark and that this spark would light tinder. He gath-
ered stones and filled a small horn with soft, dry wood. Then
he went home. His wife said to him: “Please make a fire.” He
took out his horn and his flint stones, struck a spark, blew it,
put grass on it, and soon, to the astonishment of all who saw
it, had a fire. This was much easier than using the fire drill,
and the people soon all did it.
These . . . were the ones who brought the people to the
condition in which they now live.
George Amos Dorsey and Alfred L. Kroeber, Traditions of the Arapaho
(1903).
“I cannot take your life,” said the man; “will nothing
else make you happy?”
“Nothing else,” she answered, “Nothing else will make
me happy. . . . When you have slain me, let two men lay
hold of my hair and draw my body all around a field, and
when they have come to the middle of the field, there let
them bury my bones. Then they must come away; but when
seven moons have passed let them go again to the field
and gather all that they find, and eat; it is my flesh; but you
must save a part of it to put in the ground again. My bones
you cannot eat, but you may burn them, and the smoke will
bring peace to you and your children.”

On the morrow when the sun was rising the man
slew his wife; and, as she had bidden, men drew her body
all about an open field, until the flesh was worn away, and
in the middle of the field they buried her bones. But when
seven moons had gone by, and the husband came again
to that place, he saw it all filled with beautiful tall plants;
and he tasted the fruit of the plants and found it sweet,
and he called it “Skar-mu-nal,” corn. And on the place
where her bones were buried he saw a plant with broad
leaves, bitter to the taste, and he called it “Utar-Mur-wa-
yeh,” tobacco.
. . . He gave thanks to the Great Spirit and said, “Now
have the first words of the first mother come to pass, for
she said she was born of the leaf of the beautiful plant,
and that her power should be felt over the whole world,
and survival rates of these large mammals, forcing hunting
bands to intensify their hunting.
As the other large-mammal populations declined,
hunters on the Great Plains concentrated on the herds of
American bison (known more familiarly as buffalo). To
hunt these animals, people needed a weapon. In archae-
ological sites dating from about 10,000 years ago, a new
style of tool is found mingled with animal remains. This
technology, named “Folsom” (for the site of the first ma-
jor find near ­Folsom, New Mexico) was a refinement of
the Clovis culture that featured more delicate but deadlier
spear points. Hunters probably hurled the lances to which
these points were attached with wooden spear-throwers,
attaining far greater momentum than possible using their
arms alone.
These archaeological finds suggest the growing
complexity of early Indian communities. Hunters fre-
quently stampeded herds of bison into canyon traps or
over cliffs. At one such kill site in southeastern ­Colorado,
dated at about 6500 bce, archaeologists uncovered the
remains of nearly 200 bison that had been slaughtered
and then systematically butchered on a single occasion.
Such tasks required a sophisticated division of labor
among dozens of men and women and the cooperation
of a number of communities. Taking food in such great
quantities also suggests a knowledge of basic preserva-
tion techniques.
Desert Culture In the Great Basin, the warming
trend created a desert where once there had been enormous
inland seas. Here Indian people developed what anthro-
pologists call “Desert culture,” a way of life based on the
pursuit of small game and the intensified foraging of plant
foods. Small communities of desert foragers migrated sea-
sonally within a small range.
A Continent of Villages to 1500 7
and that all men should love her. And now that she is
gone into this substance, take care that this, the second
seed of the first mother, be always with you, for it is her
flesh. Her bones also have been given for your good; burn
them, and the smoke will bring freshness to the mind. And
since these things came from the goodness of a woman’s
heart, see that you hold her always in memory; remember
her when you eat, remember her when the smoke of her
bones rises before you. And because you are all brothers,
divide among you her flesh and her bones—let all shares
be alike—for so will the love of the first mother have been
fulfilled.”
Source: Natalie Curtis Burlin, The Indians’ Book: Songs and Legends of the
American Indians (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1907), 4–6.
Archaeologists today find the artifacts of desert forag-
ers in the caves and rock shelters in which they lived. In
addition to stone tools, there are objects of wood, hide, and
fiber, wonderfully preserved for thousands of years in the
dry climate.
The innovative practices of Desert culture gradu-
ally spread from the Great Basin to the Great Plains and
the Southwest, where foraging for plant foods began to
supplement hunting. About 6,000 years ago, these tech-
niques were carried to California, where, in the natural
abundance of the valleys and coasts, communities devel-
oped economies capable of supporting some of the densest
populations and the first permanently settled villages in
North America. Another dynamic center developed along
the coast of the Pacific Northwest, where Indian communi-
ties developed a way of life based on the abundance of fish
and sea mammals. Densely populated and permanently
settled communities developed there as well.
Forest Efficiency There were similar trends east
of the Mississippi. In the centuries prior to colonization
and settlement by Europeans, the whole of eastern North
­America was a vast forest. Communities of native people
achieved a comfortable and secure life by developing a
sophisticated knowledge of the rich and diverse available
resources, a principle anthropologists term “forest effi-
ciency.”
Archaeological sites in the East suggest that during
the late Archaic period community ­populations grew and
settlements became increasingly permanent, ­providing
convincing evidence of the practicality of forest efficiency.
The different roles of men and women were reflected in the
artifacts these peoples buried with their dead: axes, fish-
hooks, and animal bones with males; nut-cracking stones,
beads, and pestles with females.
8 Chapter 1
1.2 The Development
of Farming
What were the consequences of the development of
farming for native communities?
At the end of the Stone Age, communities in different re-
gions of the world independently created systems of farm-
ing, each based on a unique staple crop: rice in Southeast
Asia, wheat in the Middle East, potatoes in the Andean
highlands of South America, and maize (what Americans
call “corn”) in Mexico. The dynamic center of this devel-
opment in North America was in the highlands of Mexico,
from which the new technology spread north and east.
1.2.1 Origins in Mexico
Archaeological evidence suggests that plant cultivation in
the highlands of central Mexico began about 5,000 years
ago. Ancient Mexicans developed crops that responded
well to human care and produced larger quantities of food
in a limited space than did plants growing in the wild.
Maize was particularly productive.
Mesoamerican maize cultivation, as illustrated by an Aztec artist
for the Florentine Codex, a book prepared several decades after the
Spanish conquest. The peoples of Mesoamerica developed a greater
variety of cultivated crops than those found in any other region in
the world, and their agricultural productivity helped sustain one of
the world’s great civilizations.
Source: The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.
As farming became increasingly important, it radi-
cally reshaped social life. Farming provided not only the
incentive for larger families (more workers for the fields)
but also the means to feed them. People became less mo-
bile, built more substantial residences near their crops, and
developed more effective means of storage. Villages grew
into towns and eventually into large, densely settled com-
munities like Cahokia. Autumn harvests had to be stored
during winter months, and the storage and distribution of
food had to be managed. The division of labor increased
with the appearance of specialists like toolmakers, craft
workers, administrators, priests, and rulers.
By 1000 bce urban communities governed by perma-
nent bureaucracies had begun to form in Mesoamerica, the
region stretching from central Mexico to Central ­America.
By the beginning of the first millennium ce (common
era), highly productive farming was supporting complex
urban civilizations in the Valley of Mexico (the location
of ­present-day Mexico City), the Yucatan Peninsula, and
other parts of Mesoamerica. Like many of the ancient civi-
lizations of Asia and the Mediterranean, these Mesoameri-
can civilizations were characterized by the concentration
of wealth and power in the hands of an elite class of priests
and rulers, the construction of impressive temples and
other public structures, and the development of systems
of mathematics and astronomy and several forms of hiero-
glyphic writing. These civilizations also engaged in war-
fare between states and practiced ritual human sacrifice.
The great city of Teotihuacan in the Valley of Mexico,
which emerged about 100 bce, had a population of as many
as 200,000 at the height of its power around 500 ce. Teoti-
huacan’s leaders controlled an elaborate state-sponsored
trading system that stretched from present-day Arizona
to Central America and may have included coastal ship-
ping connections with the civilizations of Peru. Teotihua-
can began to decline in the sixth century, and by the eighth
century it was mostly abandoned. A new empire, that of
the Toltecs, dominated central Mexico from the tenth to
the twelfth centuries. By the fourteenth century a people
known as the Aztecs, migrants from the north, had settled
in the Valley of Mexico and begun a dramatic expansion
into a formidable imperial power. By the early fifteenth
century an estimated 200,000 people lived in the Aztec
capital, making it one of the largest cities in the world.
The Mayan peoples of the Yucatan Peninsula devel-
oped a group of competing city-states that flourished from
about 300 bce until 900 ce. Their achievements included
advanced writing and calendar systems and a sophisti-
cated knowledge of mathematics.
1.2.2 Increasing Social Complexity
In a few areas, farming truly did result in a revolutionary
change in Indian communities, producing urban civilizations

like those in Mesoamerica or on the banks of the Mississippi
at Cahokia. It is likely that among the first social transforma-
tions was the development of significantly more elaborate
systems of kinship. Greater population density prompted
families to group themselves into clans, and separate clans
gradually became responsible for different social, political, or
ritual functions. Clans may have been an important mecha-
nism for binding together the people of several communities
into larger social units based on ethnic, linguistic, and terri-
torial unity. These “tribes” were headed by leaders or chiefs
from honored clans, often advised by councils of elders.
Chiefs’ primary functions were the supervision of the
economy, the collection and storage of the harvest, and the
distribution of food to the clans. Inequalities were kept in
check by redistribution according to principles of shar-
ing similar to those operating in foraging communities.
Nowhere in North America did Indian cultures develop
a concept of the private ownership of land or other re-
sources, which were usually considered the common re-
source of the people and were worked collectively.
Indian communities practiced a rather strict division of
labor according to gender. In foraging communities, hunt-
ing was generally men’s work, while the gathering of food
and the maintenance of home-base camps were the respon-
sibility of women. The development of farming may have
challenged that pattern. Where hunting remained an im-
portant activity, women took responsibility for the growing
of crops. But in areas like Mexico, where communities were
almost totally dependent on cultivated crops for their sur-
vival, both men and women worked the fields.
In most North American Indian farming communities,
women and men belonged to separate social groupings,
each with its own rituals and lore. Membership in these
gender societies was one of the most important elements of
a person’s identity. Marriage ties, on the other hand, were
relatively weak, and in most Indian communities d ­ ivorce
was a simple matter.
Farming communities were far more complex than for-
aging communities, but they were also less stable. Grow-
ing populations demanded increasingly large surpluses of
food, and this need often led to social conflict and warfare.
Moreover, farming systems were especially vulnerable to
changes in climate, such as drought, as well as to crises of
their own making, such as soil depletion or erosion.
1.2.3 The Resisted Revolution
Some scholars describe the transition to farming as a revo-
lution. Their argument is that farming offered such obvi-
ous advantages that communities rushed to adopt it. But
there is very little evidence to support the notion that
farming was a clearly superior way of life. Anthropologists
have demonstrated that farmers work considerably longer
and harder than do foragers. Moreover, farmers depend on
A Continent of Villages to 1500 9
a relatively narrow selection of plants and animals for food
and are vulnerable to famine.
Moreover, ignorance of cultivation was never the rea-
son communities failed to take up farming. All foraging
cultures understand a great deal about plant reproduction.
Paiutes of the Great Basin systematically irrigated stands
of their favorite wild food sources. Cultures in different re-
gions assessed the relative advantages and disadvantages
of adopting farming. In California and the Pacific North-
west, acorn gathering or salmon fishing made the cultiva-
tion of food crops seem a waste of time. In the Great Basin,
there were attempts to farm but without much success.
Before the invention of modern irrigation systems, which
require sophisticated engineering, only the Archaic Desert
culture could prevail in this harsh environment.
In the neighboring Southwest, however, farming re-
solved certain ecological dilemmas and transformed the
way of life. Like the development of more sophisticated
traditions of tool manufacture, farming represented an-
other stage in economic intensification (like the advance in
tool making represented by Clovis technology) that kept
populations and available resources in balance. It seems
that where the climate favored it, people tended to adopt
farming as a way of increasing the production of food, thus
continuing the Archaic tradition of squeezing as much pro-
ductivity as they could from their environment.
1.3 F
 arming in Early
North America
What kinds of agricultural societies developed
in North America?
Maize farming spread north from Mexico into the area
now part of the United States in the first millennium bce.
Over time maize was adapted to a range of climates and its
cultivation spread to all the temperate regions.
1.3.1 Farmers of the Southwest
Farming communities began to emerge in the arid South-
west during the first millennium bce. Among the first to
develop a settled farming way of life was a culture known
to archaeologists as Mogollon. These people farmed maize,
beans, squash, and constructed ingenious food storage pits
in permanent village sites along what is today the south-
ern Arizona–New Mexico border. Those pits may have
been the precursors of what southwestern peoples today
call kivas, sites of community religious rituals.
During the same centuries, a culture known as
­Hohokam flourished in the region along the floodplain of
the Salt and Gila rivers in southern Arizona. The ­Hohokam,
who lived in farming villages, built and maintained the
10 Chapter 1

ce in the Four Corners area, where the states of ­Arizona,

The creation of man and woman depicted on a pot (dated about
1000 ce) from the ancient villages of the Mimbres River of
­southwestern New Mexico, the area of Mogollon culture. Mimbres
pottery is renowned for its spirited artistry. Such artifacts were usually
intended as grave goods to honor the dead.
Source: Mimbres black on white bowl, with painted representations of man and woman
under a blanket. Grant County, New Mexico. Diam. 26.7 cm. Courtesy National Museum of
the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, 24/3198.
first irrigation system in America north of Mexico, chan-
neling river water through 500 miles of canals to water
desert fields of maize, beans, squash, tobacco, and cotton.
Hohokam culture shared many traits with Mesoamerican
civilization to the south, including platform mounds for
religious ceremonies and large courts for ball playing.
1.3.2 The Anasazis
The best-known ancient farming culture of the Southwest
is the Anasazi, which developed around the first century
New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado meet on the great pla-
teau of the Colorado River. Around 750 ce, possibly in
response to population pressure and an increasingly dry
climate, the residents of communities there began shifting
from pit-house villages to densely populated, multisto-
ried apartment complexes that the Spanish invaders called
“pueblos.”
Anasazi culture extended over a very large area. The
sites of more than 25,000 Anasazi communities are known
in New Mexico alone. The most prominent center was
Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon. Completed in the twelfth
century, this complex of 700 interconnected rooms is a
monument to the Anasazi golden age.
The Anasazis faced a major challenge in the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries. The arid climate became even
drier, and growing populations had to redouble their ef-
forts to improve food production. A devastating drought
from 1276 to 1293 resulted in repeated crop failures and
eventual famine. The ecological crisis was heightened
by the arrival in the fourteenth century of Athapascan
migrants, ancestors of the Navajos and the Apaches.
Athapascans raided Anasazi farming communities, tak-
ing food, goods, and possibly slaves. Gradually Anasazi
communities abandoned the Four Corners area altogether,
most resettling along the Rio Grande, joining with local
residents to form the Pueblo communities that were living
there when the Spanish arrived.
1.3.3 F
 armers of the Eastern
Woodlands
Archaeologists date the beginning of the farming culture
of eastern North America, known as Woodland culture,

Cliff Palace, at Mesa Verde National

Park in southwest Colorado, was cre-
ated 900 years ago when the Anasazis
left the mesa tops and moved into
more secure and inaccessible cliff
dwellings. Facing southwest, the build-
ing gained heat from the rays of the
low afternoon sun in winter, and over-
hanging rock protected the structure
from rain, snow, and the hot midday
summer sun. The numerous round ki-
vas, each covered with a flat roof origi-
nally, suggest that Cliff Palace may
have had a ceremonial importance.
Source: Steve Bower/Shutterstock.
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 DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI

Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely
valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace
of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several
missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its
former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A
thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn
crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the
agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe
fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier
imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller,
without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under
the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who,
as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of
course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.
 FEET MUTILATED BY THE RAVAGES OF THE “JIGGER”
(Sarcopsylla penetrans)

The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

some 1,600 feet lower down. The way is not only long and fatiguing,
but the water, when we get it, is thoroughly bad. We are suffering not
only from this, but from the fact that the arrangements at Newala are
nothing short of luxurious. We have a separate kitchen—a hut built
against the boma palisade on the right of the baraza, the interior of
which is not visible from our usual position. Our two cooks were not
long in finding this out, and they consequently do—or rather neglect
to do—what they please. In any case they do not seem to be very
particular about the boiling of our drinking-water—at least I can
attribute to no other cause certain attacks of a dysenteric nature,
from which both Knudsen and I have suffered for some time. If a
man like Omari has to be left unwatched for a moment, he is capable
of anything. Besides this complaint, we are inconvenienced by the
state of our nails, which have become as hard as glass, and crack on
the slightest provocation, and I have the additional infliction of
pimples all over me. As if all this were not enough, we have also, for
the last week been waging war against the jigger, who has found his
Eldorado in the hot sand of the Makonde plateau. Our men are seen
all day long—whenever their chronic colds and the dysentery likewise
raging among them permit—occupied in removing this scourge of
Africa from their feet and trying to prevent the disastrous
consequences of its presence. It is quite common to see natives of
this place with one or two toes missing; many have lost all their toes,
or even the whole front part of the foot, so that a well-formed leg
ends in a shapeless stump. These ravages are caused by the female of
Sarcopsylla penetrans, which bores its way under the skin and there
develops an egg-sac the size of a pea. In all books on the subject, it is
stated that one’s attention is called to the presence of this parasite by
an intolerable itching. This agrees very well with my experience, so
far as the softer parts of the sole, the spaces between and under the
toes, and the side of the foot are concerned, but if the creature
penetrates through the harder parts of the heel or ball of the foot, it
may escape even the most careful search till it has reached maturity.
Then there is no time to be lost, if the horrible ulceration, of which
we see cases by the dozen every day, is to be prevented. It is much
easier, by the way, to discover the insect on the white skin of a
European than on that of a native, on which the dark speck scarcely
shows. The four or five jiggers which, in spite of the fact that I
constantly wore high laced boots, chose my feet to settle in, were
taken out for me by the all-accomplished Knudsen, after which I
thought it advisable to wash out the cavities with corrosive
sublimate. The natives have a different sort of disinfectant—they fill
the hole with scraped roots. In a tiny Makua village on the slope of
the plateau south of Newala, we saw an old woman who had filled all
the spaces under her toe-nails with powdered roots by way of
prophylactic treatment. What will be the result, if any, who can say?
The rest of the many trifling ills which trouble our existence are
really more comic than serious. In the absence of anything else to
smoke, Knudsen and I at last opened a box of cigars procured from
the Indian store-keeper at Lindi, and tried them, with the most
distressing results. Whether they contain opium or some other
narcotic, neither of us can say, but after the tenth puff we were both
“off,” three-quarters stupefied and unspeakably wretched. Slowly we
recovered—and what happened next? Half-an-hour later we were
once more smoking these poisonous concoctions—so insatiable is the
craving for tobacco in the tropics.
Even my present attacks of fever scarcely deserve to be taken
seriously. I have had no less than three here at Newala, all of which
have run their course in an incredibly short time. In the early
afternoon, I am busy with my old natives, asking questions and
making notes. The strong midday coffee has stimulated my spirits to
an extraordinary degree, the brain is active and vigorous, and work
progresses rapidly, while a pleasant warmth pervades the whole
body. Suddenly this gives place to a violent chill, forcing me to put on
my overcoat, though it is only half-past three and the afternoon sun
is at its hottest. Now the brain no longer works with such acuteness
and logical precision; more especially does it fail me in trying to
establish the syntax of the difficult Makua language on which I have
ventured, as if I had not enough to do without it. Under the
circumstances it seems advisable to take my temperature, and I do
so, to save trouble, without leaving my seat, and while going on with
my work. On examination, I find it to be 101·48°. My tutors are
abruptly dismissed and my bed set up in the baraza; a few minutes
later I am in it and treating myself internally with hot water and
lemon-juice.
Three hours later, the thermometer marks nearly 104°, and I make
them carry me back into the tent, bed and all, as I am now perspiring
heavily, and exposure to the cold wind just beginning to blow might
mean a fatal chill. I lie still for a little while, and then find, to my
great relief, that the temperature is not rising, but rather falling. This
is about 7.30 p.m. At 8 p.m. I find, to my unbounded astonishment,
that it has fallen below 98·6°, and I feel perfectly well. I read for an
hour or two, and could very well enjoy a smoke, if I had the
wherewithal—Indian cigars being out of the question.
Having no medical training, I am at a loss to account for this state
of things. It is impossible that these transitory attacks of high fever
should be malarial; it seems more probable that they are due to a
kind of sunstroke. On consulting my note-book, I become more and
more inclined to think this is the case, for these attacks regularly
follow extreme fatigue and long exposure to strong sunshine. They at
least have the advantage of being only short interruptions to my
work, as on the following morning I am always quite fresh and fit.
My treasure of a cook is suffering from an enormous hydrocele which
makes it difficult for him to get up, and Moritz is obliged to keep in
the dark on account of his inflamed eyes. Knudsen’s cook, a raw boy
from somewhere in the bush, knows still less of cooking than Omari;
consequently Nils Knudsen himself has been promoted to the vacant
post. Finding that we had come to the end of our supplies, he began
by sending to Chingulungulu for the four sucking-pigs which we had
bought from Matola and temporarily left in his charge; and when
they came up, neatly packed in a large crate, he callously slaughtered
the biggest of them. The first joint we were thoughtless enough to
entrust for roasting to Knudsen’s mshenzi cook, and it was
consequently uneatable; but we made the rest of the animal into a
jelly which we ate with great relish after weeks of underfeeding,
consuming incredible helpings of it at both midday and evening
meals. The only drawback is a certain want of variety in the tinned
vegetables. Dr. Jäger, to whom the Geographical Commission
entrusted the provisioning of the expeditions—mine as well as his
own—because he had more time on his hands than the rest of us,
seems to have laid in a huge stock of Teltow turnips,[46] an article of
food which is all very well for occasional use, but which quickly palls
when set before one every day; and we seem to have no other tins
left. There is no help for it—we must put up with the turnips; but I
am certain that, once I am home again, I shall not touch them for ten
years to come.
Amid all these minor evils, which, after all, go to make up the
genuine flavour of Africa, there is at least one cheering touch:
Knudsen has, with the dexterity of a skilled mechanic, repaired my 9
× 12 cm. camera, at least so far that I can use it with a little care.
How, in the absence of finger-nails, he was able to accomplish such a
ticklish piece of work, having no tool but a clumsy screw-driver for
taking to pieces and putting together again the complicated
mechanism of the instantaneous shutter, is still a mystery to me; but
he did it successfully. The loss of his finger-nails shows him in a light
contrasting curiously enough with the intelligence evinced by the
above operation; though, after all, it is scarcely surprising after his
ten years’ residence in the bush. One day, at Lindi, he had occasion
to wash a dog, which must have been in need of very thorough
cleansing, for the bottle handed to our friend for the purpose had an
extremely strong smell. Having performed his task in the most
conscientious manner, he perceived with some surprise that the dog
did not appear much the better for it, and was further surprised by
finding his own nails ulcerating away in the course of the next few
days. “How was I to know that carbolic acid has to be diluted?” he
mutters indignantly, from time to time, with a troubled gaze at his
mutilated finger-tips.
 Since we came to Newala we have been making excursions in all
directions through the surrounding country, in accordance with old
habit, and also because the akida Sefu did not get together the tribal
elders from whom I wanted information so speedily as he had
promised. There is, however, no harm done, as, even if seen only
from the outside, the country and people are interesting enough.
The Makonde plateau is like a large rectangular table rounded off
at the corners. Measured from the Indian Ocean to Newala, it is
about seventy-five miles long, and between the Rovuma and the
Lukuledi it averages fifty miles in breadth, so that its superficial area
is about two-thirds of that of the kingdom of Saxony. The surface,
however, is not level, but uniformly inclined from its south-western
edge to the ocean. From the upper edge, on which Newala lies, the
eye ranges for many miles east and north-east, without encountering
any obstacle, over the Makonde bush. It is a green sea, from which
here and there thick clouds of smoke rise, to show that it, too, is
inhabited by men who carry on their tillage like so many other
primitive peoples, by cutting down and burning the bush, and
manuring with the ashes. Even in the radiant light of a tropical day
such a fire is a grand sight.
Much less effective is the impression produced just now by the
great western plain as seen from the edge of the plateau. As often as
time permits, I stroll along this edge, sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, in the hope of finding the air clear enough to
let me enjoy the view; but I have always been disappointed.
Wherever one looks, clouds of smoke rise from the burning bush,
and the air is full of smoke and vapour. It is a pity, for under more
favourable circumstances the panorama of the whole country up to
the distant Majeje hills must be truly magnificent. It is of little use
taking photographs now, and an outline sketch gives a very poor idea
of the scenery. In one of these excursions I went out of my way to
make a personal attempt on the Makonde bush. The present edge of
the plateau is the result of a far-reaching process of destruction
through erosion and denudation. The Makonde strata are
everywhere cut into by ravines, which, though short, are hundreds of
yards in depth. In consequence of the loose stratification of these
beds, not only are the walls of these ravines nearly vertical, but their
upper end is closed by an equally steep escarpment, so that the
western edge of the Makonde plateau is hemmed in by a series of
deep, basin-like valleys. In order to get from one side of such a ravine
to the other, I cut my way through the bush with a dozen of my men.
It was a very open part, with more grass than scrub, but even so the
short stretch of less than two hundred yards was very hard work; at
the end of it the men’s calicoes were in rags and they themselves
bleeding from hundreds of scratches, while even our strong khaki
suits had not escaped scatheless.

NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAHUTA

I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
 The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.

MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

 This is the general way of closing a house. The Makonde at Jumbe
Chauro, however, have a much more complicated, solid and original
one. Here, too, the door is as already described, except that there is
only one post on the inside, standing by itself about six inches from
one side of the doorway. Opposite this post is a hole in the wall just
large enough to admit a man’s arm. The door is closed inside by a
large wooden bolt passing through a hole in this post and pressing
with its free end against the door. The other end has three holes into
which fit three pegs running in vertical grooves inside the post. The
door is opened with a wooden key about a foot long, somewhat
curved and sloped off at the butt; the other end has three pegs
corresponding to the holes, in the bolt, so that, when it is thrust
through the hole in the wall and inserted into the rectangular
opening in the post, the pegs can be lifted and the bolt drawn out.[50]

MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY

With no small pride first one householder and then a second

showed me on the spot the action of this greatest invention of the
Makonde Highlands. To both with an admiring exclamation of
“Vizuri sana!” (“Very fine!”). I expressed the wish to take back these
marvels with me to Ulaya, to show the Wazungu what clever fellows
the Makonde are. Scarcely five minutes after my return to camp at
Newala, the two men came up sweating under the weight of two
heavy logs which they laid down at my feet, handing over at the same
time the keys of the fallen fortress. Arguing, logically enough, that if
the key was wanted, the lock would be wanted with it, they had taken
their axes and chopped down the posts—as it never occurred to them
to dig them out of the ground and so bring them intact. Thus I have
two badly damaged specimens, and the owners, instead of praise,
come in for a blowing-up.
The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially
miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the
temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here
have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to
congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even
the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala,
shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country
are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident
danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only
attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief
Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with
partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular
grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks
the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos.
Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something
of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted
solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde
bush:—
 “We shall arrive with the great master; we stand in a row and have
no fear about getting our food and our money from the Serkali (the
Government). We are not afraid; we are going along with the great
master, the lion; we are going down to the coast and back.”
With regard to the characteristic features of the various tribes here
on the western edge of the plateau, I can arrive at no other
conclusion than the one already come to in the plain, viz., that it is
impossible for anyone but a trained anthropologist to assign any
given individual at once to his proper tribe. In fact, I think that even
an anthropological specialist, after the most careful examination,
might find it a difficult task to decide. The whole congeries of peoples
collected in the region bounded on the west by the great Central
African rift, Tanganyika and Nyasa, and on the east by the Indian
Ocean, are closely related to each other—some of their languages are
only distinguished from one another as dialects of the same speech,
and no doubt all the tribes present the same shape of skull and
structure of skeleton. Thus, surely, there can be no very striking
differences in outward appearance.
 Even did such exist, I should have no time
to concern myself with them, for day after day,
I have to see or hear, as the case may be—in
any case to grasp and record—an
extraordinary number of ethnographic
phenomena. I am almost disposed to think it
fortunate that some departments of inquiry, at
least, are barred by external circumstances.
Chief among these is the subject of iron-
working. We are apt to think of Africa as a
country where iron ore is everywhere, so to
speak, to be picked up by the roadside, and
where it would be quite surprising if the
inhabitants had not learnt to smelt the
material ready to their hand. In fact, the
knowledge of this art ranges all over the
continent, from the Kabyles in the north to the
Kafirs in the south. Here between the Rovuma
and the Lukuledi the conditions are not so
favourable. According to the statements of the
Makonde, neither ironstone nor any other
form of iron ore is known to them. They have
not therefore advanced to the art of smelting
the metal, but have hitherto bought all their
THE ANCESTRESS OF
THE MAKONDE
iron implements from neighbouring tribes.
Even in the plain the inhabitants are not much
better off. Only one man now living is said to
understand the art of smelting iron. This old fundi lives close to
Huwe, that isolated, steep-sided block of granite which rises out of
the green solitude between Masasi and Chingulungulu, and whose
jagged and splintered top meets the traveller’s eye everywhere. While
still at Masasi I wished to see this man at work, but was told that,
frightened by the rising, he had retired across the Rovuma, though
he would soon return. All subsequent inquiries as to whether the
fundi had come back met with the genuine African answer, “Bado”
(“Not yet”).
 BRAZIER

Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

came across in the bush near Akundonde’s. This man is the favourite
of women, and therefore no doubt of the gods; he welds the glittering
brass rods purchased at the coast into those massive, heavy rings
which, on the wrists and ankles of the local fair ones, continually give
me fresh food for admiration. Like every decent master-craftsman he
had all his tools with him, consisting of a pair of bellows, three
crucibles and a hammer—nothing more, apparently. He was quite
willing to show his skill, and in a twinkling had fixed his bellows on
the ground. They are simply two goat-skins, taken off whole, the four
legs being closed by knots, while the upper opening, intended to
admit the air, is kept stretched by two pieces of wood. At the lower
end of the skin a smaller opening is left into which a wooden tube is
stuck. The fundi has quickly borrowed a heap of wood-embers from
the nearest hut; he then fixes the free ends of the two tubes into an
earthen pipe, and clamps them to the ground by means of a bent
piece of wood. Now he fills one of his small clay crucibles, the dross
on which shows that they have been long in use, with the yellow
material, places it in the midst of the embers, which, at present are
only faintly glimmering, and begins his work. In quick alternation
the smith’s two hands move up and down with the open ends of the
bellows; as he raises his hand he holds the slit wide open, so as to let
the air enter the skin bag unhindered. In pressing it down he closes
the bag, and the air puffs through the bamboo tube and clay pipe into
the fire, which quickly burns up. The smith, however, does not keep
on with this work, but beckons to another man, who relieves him at
the bellows, while he takes some more tools out of a large skin pouch
carried on his back. I look on in wonder as, with a smooth round
stick about the thickness of a finger, he bores a few vertical holes into
the clean sand of the soil. This should not be difficult, yet the man
seems to be taking great pains over it. Then he fastens down to the
ground, with a couple of wooden clamps, a neat little trough made by
splitting a joint of bamboo in half, so that the ends are closed by the
two knots. At last the yellow metal has attained the right consistency,
and the fundi lifts the crucible from the fire by means of two sticks
split at the end to serve as tongs. A short swift turn to the left—a
tilting of the crucible—and the molten brass, hissing and giving forth
clouds of smoke, flows first into the bamboo mould and then into the
holes in the ground.
The technique of this backwoods craftsman may not be very far
advanced, but it cannot be denied that he knows how to obtain an
adequate result by the simplest means. The ladies of highest rank in
this country—that is to say, those who can afford it, wear two kinds
of these massive brass rings, one cylindrical, the other semicircular
in section. The latter are cast in the most ingenious way in the
bamboo mould, the former in the circular hole in the sand. It is quite
a simple matter for the fundi to fit these bars to the limbs of his fair
customers; with a few light strokes of his hammer he bends the
pliable brass round arm or ankle without further inconvenience to
the wearer.
SHAPING THE POT

SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB

CUTTING THE EDGE

 FINISHING THE BOTTOM

LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

BURNING

FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

 LIGHTING THE FARTHER SIDE OF
THE PILE

TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL

NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

Pottery is an art which must always and everywhere excite the
interest of the student, just because it is so intimately connected with
the development of human culture, and because its relics are one of
the principal factors in the reconstruction of our own condition in
prehistoric times. I shall always remember with pleasure the two or
three afternoons at Masasi when Salim Matola’s mother, a slightly-
built, graceful, pleasant-looking woman, explained to me with
touching patience, by means of concrete illustrations, the ceramic art
of her people. The only implements for this primitive process were a
lump of clay in her left hand, and in the right a calabash containing
the following valuables: the fragment of a maize-cob stripped of all
its grains, a smooth, oval pebble, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, a
few chips of gourd-shell, a bamboo splinter about the length of one’s
hand, a small shell, and a bunch of some herb resembling spinach.
 Nothing more. The woman scraped with the
shell a round, shallow hole in the soft, fine
sand of the soil, and, when an active young
girl had filled the calabash with water for her,
she began to knead the clay. As if by magic it
gradually assumed the shape of a rough but
already well-shaped vessel, which only wanted
a little touching up with the instruments
before mentioned. I looked out with the
MAKUA WOMAN closest attention for any indication of the use
MAKING A POT. of the potter’s wheel, in however rudimentary
SHOWS THE a form, but no—hapana (there is none). The
BEGINNINGS OF THE embryo pot stood firmly in its little
POTTER’S WHEEL
depression, and the woman walked round it in
a stooping posture, whether she was removing
small stones or similar foreign bodies with the maize-cob, smoothing
the inner or outer surface with the splinter of bamboo, or later, after
letting it dry for a day, pricking in the ornamentation with a pointed
bit of gourd-shell, or working out the bottom, or cutting the edge
with a sharp bamboo knife, or giving the last touches to the finished
vessel. This occupation of the women is infinitely toilsome, but it is
without doubt an accurate reproduction of the process in use among
our ancestors of the Neolithic and Bronze ages.
There is no doubt that the invention of pottery, an item in human
progress whose importance cannot be over-estimated, is due to
women. Rough, coarse and unfeeling, the men of the horde range
over the countryside. When the united cunning of the hunters has
succeeded in killing the game; not one of them thinks of carrying
home the spoil. A bright fire, kindled by a vigorous wielding of the
drill, is crackling beside them; the animal has been cleaned and cut
up secundum artem, and, after a slight singeing, will soon disappear
under their sharp teeth; no one all this time giving a single thought
to wife or child.
To what shifts, on the other hand, the primitive wife, and still more
the primitive mother, was put! Not even prehistoric stomachs could
endure an unvarying diet of raw food. Something or other suggested
the beneficial effect of hot water on the majority of approved but
indigestible dishes. Perhaps a neighbour had tried holding the hard
roots or tubers over the fire in a calabash filled with water—or maybe
an ostrich-egg-shell, or a hastily improvised vessel of bark. They
became much softer and more palatable than they had previously
been; but, unfortunately, the vessel could not stand the fire and got
charred on the outside. That can be remedied, thought our
ancestress, and plastered a layer of wet clay round a similar vessel.
This is an improvement; the cooking utensil remains uninjured, but
the heat of the fire has shrunk it, so that it is loose in its shell. The
next step is to detach it, so, with a firm grip and a jerk, shell and
kernel are separated, and pottery is invented. Perhaps, however, the
discovery which led to an intelligent use of the burnt-clay shell, was
made in a slightly different way. Ostrich-eggs and calabashes are not
to be found in every part of the world, but everywhere mankind has
arrived at the art of making baskets out of pliant materials, such as
bark, bast, strips of palm-leaf, supple twigs, etc. Our inventor has no
water-tight vessel provided by nature. “Never mind, let us line the
basket with clay.” This answers the purpose, but alas! the basket gets
burnt over the blazing fire, the woman watches the process of
cooking with increasing uneasiness, fearing a leak, but no leak
appears. The food, done to a turn, is eaten with peculiar relish; and
the cooking-vessel is examined, half in curiosity, half in satisfaction
at the result. The plastic clay is now hard as stone, and at the same
time looks exceedingly well, for the neat plaiting of the burnt basket
is traced all over it in a pretty pattern. Thus, simultaneously with
pottery, its ornamentation was invented.
Primitive woman has another claim to respect. It was the man,
roving abroad, who invented the art of producing fire at will, but the
woman, unable to imitate him in this, has been a Vestal from the
earliest times. Nothing gives so much trouble as the keeping alight of
the smouldering brand, and, above all, when all the men are absent
from the camp. Heavy rain-clouds gather, already the first large
drops are falling, the first gusts of the storm rage over the plain. The
little flame, a greater anxiety to the woman than her own children,
flickers unsteadily in the blast. What is to be done? A sudden thought
occurs to her, and in an instant she has constructed a primitive hut
out of strips of bark, to protect the flame against rain and wind.
This, or something very like it, was the way in which the principle
of the house was discovered; and even the most hardened misogynist
cannot fairly refuse a woman the credit of it. The protection of the
hearth-fire from the weather is the germ from which the human
dwelling was evolved. Men had little, if any share, in this forward
step, and that only at a late stage. Even at the present day, the
plastering of the housewall with clay and the manufacture of pottery
are exclusively the women’s business. These are two very significant
survivals. Our European kitchen-garden, too, is originally a woman’s
invention, and the hoe, the primitive instrument of agriculture, is,
characteristically enough, still used in this department. But the
noblest achievement which we owe to the other sex is unquestionably
the art of cookery. Roasting alone—the oldest process—is one for
which men took the hint (a very obvious one) from nature. It must
have been suggested by the scorched carcase of some animal
overtaken by the destructive forest-fires. But boiling—the process of
improving organic substances by the help of water heated to boiling-
point—is a much later discovery. It is so recent that it has not even
yet penetrated to all parts of the world. The Polynesians understand
how to steam food, that is, to cook it, neatly wrapped in leaves, in a
hole in the earth between hot stones, the air being excluded, and
(sometimes) a few drops of water sprinkled on the stones; but they
do not understand boiling.
To come back from this digression, we find that the slender Nyasa
woman has, after once more carefully examining the finished pot,
put it aside in the shade to dry. On the following day she sends me
word by her son, Salim Matola, who is always on hand, that she is
going to do the burning, and, on coming out of my house, I find her
already hard at work. She has spread on the ground a layer of very
dry sticks, about as thick as one’s thumb, has laid the pot (now of a
yellowish-grey colour) on them, and is piling brushwood round it.
My faithful Pesa mbili, the mnyampara, who has been standing by,
most obligingly, with a lighted stick, now hands it to her. Both of
them, blowing steadily, light the pile on the lee side, and, when the
flame begins to catch, on the weather side also. Soon the whole is in a
blaze, but the dry fuel is quickly consumed and the fire dies down, so
that we see the red-hot vessel rising from the ashes. The woman
turns it continually with a long stick, sometimes one way and
sometimes another, so that it may be evenly heated all over. In
twenty minutes she rolls it out of the ash-heap, takes up the bundle
of spinach, which has been lying for two days in a jar of water, and
sprinkles the red-hot clay with it. The places where the drops fall are
marked by black spots on the uniform reddish-brown surface. With a
sigh of relief, and with visible satisfaction, the woman rises to an
erect position; she is standing just in a line between me and the fire,
from which a cloud of smoke is just rising: I press the ball of my
camera, the shutter clicks—the apotheosis is achieved! Like a
priestess, representative of her inventive sex, the graceful woman
stands: at her feet the hearth-fire she has given us beside her the
invention she has devised for us, in the background the home she has
built for us.
At Newala, also, I have had the manufacture of pottery carried on
in my presence. Technically the process is better than that already
described, for here we find the beginnings of the potter’s wheel,
which does not seem to exist in the plains; at least I have seen
nothing of the sort. The artist, a frightfully stupid Makua woman, did
not make a depression in the ground to receive the pot she was about
to shape, but used instead a large potsherd. Otherwise, she went to
work in much the same way as Salim’s mother, except that she saved
herself the trouble of walking round and round her work by squatting
at her ease and letting the pot and potsherd rotate round her; this is
surely the first step towards a machine. But it does not follow that
the pot was improved by the process. It is true that it was beautifully
rounded and presented a very creditable appearance when finished,
but the numerous large and small vessels which I have seen, and, in
part, collected, in the “less advanced” districts, are no less so. We
moderns imagine that instruments of precision are necessary to
produce excellent results. Go to the prehistoric collections of our
museums and look at the pots, urns and bowls of our ancestors in the
dim ages of the past, and you will at once perceive your error.
MAKING LONGITUDINAL CUT IN
BARK

DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG

REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

 BEATING THE BARK

WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

SOFT

MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

To-day, nearly the whole population of German East Africa is
clothed in imported calico. This was not always the case; even now in
some parts of the north dressed skins are still the prevailing wear,
and in the north-western districts—east and north of Lake
Tanganyika—lies a zone where bark-cloth has not yet been
superseded. Probably not many generations have passed since such
bark fabrics and kilts of skins were the only clothing even in the
south. Even to-day, large quantities of this bright-red or drab
material are still to be found; but if we wish to see it, we must look in
the granaries and on the drying stages inside the native huts, where
it serves less ambitious uses as wrappings for those seeds and fruits
which require to be packed with special care. The salt produced at
Masasi, too, is packed for transport to a distance in large sheets of
bark-cloth. Wherever I found it in any degree possible, I studied the
process of making this cloth. The native requisitioned for the
purpose arrived, carrying a log between two and three yards long and
as thick as his thigh, and nothing else except a curiously-shaped
mallet and the usual long, sharp and pointed knife which all men and
boys wear in a belt at their backs without a sheath—horribile dictu!
[51]
Silently he squats down before me, and with two rapid cuts has
drawn a couple of circles round the log some two yards apart, and
slits the bark lengthwise between them with the point of his knife.
With evident care, he then scrapes off the outer rind all round the
log, so that in a quarter of an hour the inner red layer of the bark
shows up brightly-coloured between the two untouched ends. With
some trouble and much caution, he now loosens the bark at one end,
and opens the cylinder. He then stands up, takes hold of the free
edge with both hands, and turning it inside out, slowly but steadily
pulls it off in one piece. Now comes the troublesome work of
scraping all superfluous particles of outer bark from the outside of
the long, narrow piece of material, while the inner side is carefully
scrutinised for defective spots. At last it is ready for beating. Having
signalled to a friend, who immediately places a bowl of water beside
him, the artificer damps his sheet of bark all over, seizes his mallet,
lays one end of the stuff on the smoothest spot of the log, and
hammers away slowly but continuously. “Very simple!” I think to
myself. “Why, I could do that, too!”—but I am forced to change my
opinions a little later on; for the beating is quite an art, if the fabric is
not to be beaten to pieces. To prevent the breaking of the fibres, the
stuff is several times folded across, so as to interpose several
thicknesses between the mallet and the block. At last the required
state is reached, and the fundi seizes the sheet, still folded, by both
ends, and wrings it out, or calls an assistant to take one end while he
holds the other. The cloth produced in this way is not nearly so fine
and uniform in texture as the famous Uganda bark-cloth, but it is
quite soft, and, above all, cheap.
Now, too, I examine the mallet. My craftsman has been using the
simpler but better form of this implement, a conical block of some
hard wood, its base—the striking surface—being scored across and
across with more or less deeply-cut grooves, and the handle stuck
into a hole in the middle. The other and earlier form of mallet is
shaped in the same way, but the head is fastened by an ingenious
network of bark strips into the split bamboo serving as a handle. The
observation so often made, that ancient customs persist longest in
connection with religious ceremonies and in the life of children, here
finds confirmation. As we shall soon see, bark-cloth is still worn
during the unyago,[52] having been prepared with special solemn
ceremonies; and many a mother, if she has no other garment handy,
will still put her little one into a kilt of bark-cloth, which, after all,
looks better, besides being more in keeping with its African
surroundings, than the ridiculous bit of print from Ulaya.
MAKUA WOMEN