1.

1 The Americas
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Locate on a map the major American civilizations before the arrival of the Spanish
• Discuss the cultural achievements of these civilizations
• Discuss the differences and similarities between lifestyles, religious practices, and
customs among Native peoples

Figure 1.2 (credit: modification of work by Architect of the Capitol)

Most Native American origin stories assert that Native nations have always called the
Americas home; however, some scholars believe that between nine and fifteen thousand
years ago, a land bridge existed between Asia and North America that we now call Beringia.
The first inhabitants of what would be named the Americas migrated across this bridge in
search of food. When the glaciers melted, water engulfed Beringia, and the Bering Strait
was formed. Later settlers came by boat across the narrow strait. (The fact that Asians and
Native Americans share genetic markers on a Y chromosome lends credibility to this
migration theory.) Continually moving southward, the settlers eventually populated both
North and South America, creating unique cultures that ranged from the highly complex
and urban Aztec civilization in what is now Mexico City to the woodland tribes of eastern
North America. Recent research along the west coast of South America suggests that
migrant populations may have traveled down this coast by water as well as by land.
Researchers believe that about ten thousand years ago, humans also began the
domestication of plants and animals, adding agriculture as a means of sustenance to

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hunting and gathering techniques. With this agricultural revolution, and the more
abundant and reliable food supplies it brought, populations grew and people were able to
develop a more settled way of life, building permanent settlements. Nowhere in the
Americas was this more obvious than in Mesoamerica (Figure 1.3).

Figure 1.3 This map shows the extent of the major civilizations of the Western
Hemisphere. In South America, early civilizations developed along the coast because the
high Andes and the inhospitable Amazon Basin made the interior of the continent less
favorable for settlement.

THE FIRST AMERICANS: THE OLMEC

Mesoamerica is the geographic area stretching from north of Panama up to the desert of
central Mexico. Although marked by great topographic, linguistic, and cultural diversity,
this region cradled a number of civilizations with similar characteristics. Mesoamericans
were polytheistic; their gods possessed both male and female traits and demanded blood
sacrifices of enemies taken in battle or ritual bloodletting. Corn, or maize, domesticated by
5000 BCE, formed the basis of their diet. They developed a mathematical system, built huge
edifices, and devised a calendar that accurately predicted eclipses and solstices and that
priest-astronomers used to direct the planting and harvesting of crops. Most important for
our knowledge of these peoples, they created the only known written language in the
Western Hemisphere; researchers have made much progress in interpreting the
inscriptions on their temples and pyramids. Though the area had no overarching political
structure, trade over long distances helped diffuse culture. Weapons made of obsidian,
jewelry crafted from jade, feathers woven into clothing and ornaments, and cacao beans
that were whipped into a chocolate drink formed the basis of commerce. The mother of
Mesoamerican cultures was the Olmec civilization.

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Flourishing along the hot Gulf Coast of Mexico from about 1200 to about 400 BCE, the
Olmec produced a number of major works of art, architecture, pottery, and sculpture. Most
recognizable are their giant head sculptures (Figure 1.4) and the pyramid in La Venta. The
Olmec built aqueducts to transport water into their cities and irrigate their fields. They
grew maize, squash, beans, and tomatoes. They also bred small domesticated dogs which,
along with fish, provided their protein. Although no one knows what happened to the
Olmec after about 400 BCE, in part because the jungle reclaimed many of their cities, their
culture was the base upon which the Maya and the Aztec built. It was the Olmec who
worshipped a rain god, a maize god, and the feathered serpent so important in the future
pantheons of the Aztecs (who called him Quetzalcoatl) and the Maya (to whom he was
Kukulkan). The Olmec also developed a system of trade throughout Mesoamerica, giving
rise to an elite class.

Figure 1.4 The Olmec carved heads from giant boulders that ranged from four to eleven
feet in height and could weigh up to fifty tons. All these figures have flat noses, slightly
crossed eyes, and large lips. These physical features can be seen today in some of the
peoples indigenous to the area.

THE MAYA
After the decline of the Olmec, a city rose in the fertile central highlands of Mesoamerica.
One of the largest population centers in pre-Columbian America and home to more than
100,000 people at its height in about 500 CE, Teotihuacan was located about thirty miles
northeast of modern Mexico City. The ethnicity of this settlement’s inhabitants is debated;
some scholars believe it was a multiethnic city. Large-scale agriculture and the resultant
abundance of food allowed time for people to develop special trades and skills other than
farming. Builders constructed over twenty-two hundred apartment compounds for
multiple families, as well as more than a hundred temples. Among these were the Pyramid
of the Sun (which is two hundred feet high) and the Pyramid of the Moon (one hundred and
fifty feet high). Near the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, graves have been uncovered that

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suggest humans were sacrificed for religious purposes. The city was also the center for
trade, which extended to settlements on Mesoamerica’s Gulf Coast.
The Maya were one Mesoamerican culture that had strong ties to Teotihuacan. The Maya’s
architectural and mathematical contributions were significant. Flourishing from roughly
2000 BCE to 900 CE in what is now Mexico, Belize, Honduras, and Guatemala, the Maya
perfected the calendar and written language the Olmec had begun. They devised a written
mathematical system to record crop yields and the size of the population, and to assist in
trade. Surrounded by farms relying on primitive agriculture, they built the city-states of
Copan, Tikal, and Chichen Itza along their major trade routes, as well as temples, statues of
gods, pyramids, and astronomical observatories (Figure 1.5). However, because of poor soil
and a drought that lasted nearly two centuries, their civilization declined by about 900 CE
and they abandoned their large population centers.

Figure 1.5 El Castillo, located at Chichen Itza in the eastern Yucatán peninsula, served as a
temple for the god Kukulkan. Each side contains ninety-one steps to the top. When
counting the top platform, the total number of stairs is three hundred and sixty-five, the
number of days in a year. (credit: Ken Thomas)
The Spanish found little organized resistance among the weakened Maya upon their arrival
in the 1520s. However, they did find Mayan history, in the form of glyphs, or pictures
representing words, recorded in folding books called codices (the singular is codex). In
1562, Bishop Diego de Landa, who feared the converted Native people had reverted to their
traditional religious practices, collected and burned every codex he could find. Today only a
few survive.

Click and Explore

Visit the University of Arizona Library Special Collections to view facsimiles and
descriptions of two of the four surviving Mayan codices.

THE AZTEC
When the Spaniard Hernán Cortés arrived on the coast of Mexico in the sixteenth century,
at the site of present-day Veracruz, he soon heard of a great city ruled by an emperor

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named Moctezuma. This city was tremendously wealthy—filled with gold—and took in
tribute from surrounding tribes. The riches and complexity Cortés found when he arrived
at that city, known as Tenochtitlán, were far beyond anything he or his men had ever seen.
According to legend, a warlike people called the Aztec (also known as the Mexica) had left a
city called Aztlán and traveled south to the site of present-day Mexico City. In 1325, they
began construction of Tenochtitlán on an island in Lake Texcoco. By 1519, when Cortés
arrived, this settlement contained upwards of 200,000 inhabitants and was certainly the
largest city in the Western Hemisphere at that time and probably larger than any European
city (Figure 1.6). One of Cortés’s soldiers, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, recorded his impressions
upon first seeing it: “When we saw so many cities and villages built in the water and other
great towns on dry land we were amazed and said it was like the enchantments . . . on
account of the great towers and cues and buildings rising from the water, and all built of
masonry. And some of our soldiers even asked whether the things that we saw were not a
dream? . . . I do not know how to describe it, seeing things as we did that had never been
heard of or seen before, not even dreamed about.”

Figure 1.6 This rendering of the Aztec island city of Tenochtitlán depicts the causeways
that connected the central city to the surrounding land. Envoys from surrounding tribes
brought tribute to the Emperor.
Unlike the dirty, fetid cities of Europe at the time, Tenochtitlán was well planned, clean, and
orderly. The city had neighborhoods for specific occupations, a trash collection system,
markets, two aqueducts bringing in fresh water, and public buildings and temples. Unlike
the Spanish, Aztecs bathed daily, and wealthy homes might even contain a steam bath. A
labor force of enslaved people from subjugated neighboring tribes had built the fabulous
city and the three causeways that connected it to the mainland. To farm, the Aztec
constructed barges made of reeds and filled them with fertile soil. Lake water constantly
irrigated these chinampas, or “floating gardens,” which are still in use and can be seen
today in Xochimilco, a district of Mexico City.

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Each god in the Aztec pantheon represented and ruled an aspect of the natural world, such
as the heavens, farming, rain, fertility, sacrifice, and combat. A ruling class of warrior nobles
and priests performed ritual human sacrifice daily to sustain the sun on its long journey
across the sky, to appease or feed the gods, and to stimulate agricultural production. The
sacrificial ceremony included cutting open the chest of a criminal or captured warrior with
an obsidian knife and removing the still-beating heart (Figure 1.7).

Figure 1.7 In this illustration, an Aztec priest cuts out the beating heart of a sacrificial
victim before throwing the body down from the temple. Aztec belief centered on supplying
the gods with human blood—the ultimate sacrifice—to keep them strong and well.

Click and Explore

Explore Aztec-History.com to learn more about the Aztec creation story.

My Story

The Aztec Predict the Coming of the Spanish

The following is an excerpt from the sixteenth-century Florentine Codex of the writings of
Fray Bernardino de Sahagun, a priest and early chronicler of Aztec history. When an old
man from Xochimilco first saw the Spanish in Veracruz, he recounted an earlier dream to
Moctezuma, the ruler of the Aztecs.

Said Quzatli to the sovereign, “Oh mighty lord, if because I tell you the truth I am
to die, nevertheless I am here in your presence and you may do what you wish to
me!” He narrated that mounted men would come to this land in a great wooden
house [ships] this structure was to lodge many men, serving them as a home;
within they would eat and sleep. On the surface of this house they would cook
their food, walk and play as if they were on firm land. They were to be White,
bearded men, dressed in different colors and on their heads they would wear
round coverings.
Ten years before the arrival of the Spanish, Moctezuma received several omens which at
the time he could not interpret. A fiery object appeared in the night sky, a spontaneous fire
broke out in a religious temple and could not be extinguished with water, a water spout

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appeared in Lake Texcoco, and a woman could be heard wailing, “O my children we are
about to go forever.” Moctezuma also had dreams and premonitions of impending disaster.
These foretellings were recorded after the Aztecs’ destruction. They do, however, give us
insight into the importance placed upon signs and omens in the pre-Columbian world.

THE INCA
In South America, the most highly developed and complex society was that of the Inca,
whose name means “lord” or “ruler” in the Andean language called Quechua. At its height in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Inca Empire, located on the Pacific coast and
straddling the Andes Mountains, extended some twenty-five hundred miles. It stretched
from modern-day Colombia in the north to Chile in the south and included cities built at an
altitude of 14,000 feet above sea level. Its road system, kept free of debris and repaired by
workers stationed at varying intervals, rivaled that of the Romans and efficiently connected
the sprawling empire. The Inca, like all other pre-Columbian societies, did not use axle-
mounted wheels for transportation. They built stepped roads to ascend and descend the
steep slopes of the Andes; these would have been impractical for wheeled vehicles but
worked well for pedestrians. These roads enabled the rapid movement of the highly
trained Incan army. Also like the Romans, the Inca were effective administrators. Runners
called chasquis traversed the roads in a continuous relay system, ensuring quick
communication over long distances. The Inca had no system of writing, however. They
communicated and kept records using a system of colored strings and knots called the
quipu (Figure 1.8).

Figure 1.8 The Inca had no written language. Instead, they communicated and kept
records by means of a system of knots and colored strings called the quipu. Each of these
knots and strings possessed a distinct meaning intelligible to those educated in their
significance.
The Inca people worshipped their lord who, as a member of an elite ruling class, had
absolute authority over every aspect of life. Much like feudal lords in Europe at the time,
the ruling class lived off the labor of the peasants, collecting vast wealth that accompanied
them as they went, mummified, into the next life. The Inca farmed corn, beans, squash,
quinoa (a grain cultivated for its seeds), and the indigenous potato on terraced land they

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hacked from the steep mountains. Peasants received only one-third of their crops for
themselves. The Inca ruler required a third, and a third was set aside in a kind of welfare
system for those unable to work. Huge storehouses were filled with food for times of need.
Each peasant also worked for the Inca ruler a number of days per month on public works
projects, a requirement known as the mita. For example, peasants constructed rope bridges
made of grass to span the mountains above fast-flowing icy rivers. In return, the lord
provided laws, protection, and relief in times of famine.
The Inca worshipped the sun god Inti and called gold the “sweat” of the sun. Unlike the
Maya and the Aztecs, they rarely practiced human sacrifice and usually offered the gods
food, clothing, and coca leaves. In times of dire emergency, however, such as in the
aftermath of earthquakes, volcanoes, or crop failure, they resorted to sacrificing prisoners.
The ultimate sacrifice was children, who were specially selected and well fed. The Inca
believed these children would immediately go to a much better afterlife.
In 1911, the American historian Hiram Bingham uncovered the lost Incan city of Machu
Picchu (Figure 1.9). Located about fifty miles northwest of Cusco, Peru, at an altitude of
about 8,000 feet, the city had been built in 1450 and inexplicably abandoned roughly a
hundred years later. Scholars believe the city was used for religious ceremonial purposes
and housed the priesthood. The architectural beauty of this city is unrivaled. Using only the
strength of human labor and no machines, the Inca constructed walls and buildings of
polished stones, some weighing over fifty tons, that were fitted together perfectly without
the use of mortar. In 1983, UNESCO designated the ruined city a World Heritage Site.

Figure 1.9 Located in today’s Peru at an altitude of nearly 8,000 feet, Machu Picchu was a
ceremonial Incan city built about 1450 CE.

Click and Explore

Browse the British Museum’s World Cultures collection to see more examples and
descriptions of Incan (as well as Aztec, Mayan, and North American Native) art.

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NATIVE AMERICANS
With few exceptions, the North American Native cultures were much more widely
dispersed than the Mayan, Aztec, and Incan societies, and did not have their population size
or organized social structures. Although the cultivation of corn had made its way north,
many Native people still practiced hunting and gathering. Horses, first introduced by the
Spanish, allowed the Plains Natives to more easily follow and hunt the huge herds of bison.
A few societies had evolved into relatively complex forms, but they were already in decline
at the time of Christopher Columbus’s arrival.
In the southwestern part of today’s United States dwelled several groups we collectively
call the Pueblo. The Spanish first gave them this name, which means “town” or “village,”
because they lived in towns or villages of permanent stone-and-mud buildings with
thatched roofs. Like present-day apartment houses, these buildings had multiple stories,
each with multiple rooms. The three main groups of the Pueblo people were the Mogollon,
Hohokam, and Anasazi.
The Mogollon thrived in the Mimbres Valley (New Mexico) from about 150 BCE to 1450 CE.
They developed a distinctive artistic style for painting bowls with finely drawn geometric
figures and wildlife, especially birds, in black on a white background. Beginning about 600
CE, the Hohokam built an extensive irrigation system of canals to irrigate the desert and
grow fields of corn, beans, and squash. By 1300, their crop yields were supporting the most
highly populated settlements in the southwest. The Hohokam decorated pottery with a red-
on-buff design and made jewelry of turquoise. In the high desert of New Mexico, the
Anasazi, whose name means “ancient enemy” or “ancient ones,” carved homes from steep
cliffs accessed by ladders or ropes that could be pulled in at night or in case of enemy attack
(Figure 1.10).

Figure 1.10 To access their homes, the cliff-dwelling Anasazi used ropes or ladders that
could be pulled in at night for safety. These pueblos may be viewed today in Canyon de
Chelly National Monument (above) in Arizona and Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado.
Roads extending some 180 miles connected the Pueblos’ smaller urban centers to each
other and to Chaco Canyon, which by 1050 CE had become the administrative, religious,
and cultural center of their civilization. A century later, however, probably because of

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drought, the Pueblo peoples abandoned their cities. Their present-day descendants include
the Hopi and Zuni tribes.
The Indigenous groups who lived in the present-day Ohio River Valley and achieved their
cultural apex from the first century CE to 400 CE are collectively known as the Hopewell
culture. Their settlements, unlike those of the southwest, were small hamlets. They lived in
wattle-and-daub houses (made from woven lattice branches “daubed” with wet mud, clay,
or sand and straw) and practiced agriculture, which they supplemented by hunting and
fishing. Utilizing waterways, they developed trade routes stretching from Canada to
Louisiana, where they exchanged goods with other tribes and negotiated in many different
languages. From the coast they received shells; from Canada, copper; and from the Rocky
Mountains, obsidian. With these materials they created necklaces, woven mats, and
exquisite carvings. What remains of their culture today are huge burial mounds and
earthworks. Many of the mounds that were opened by archaeologists contained artworks
and other goods that indicate their society was socially stratified.
Perhaps the largest indigenous cultural and population center in North America was
located along the Mississippi River near present-day St. Louis. At its height in about 1100
CE, this five-square-mile city, now called Cahokia, was home to more than ten thousand
residents; tens of thousands more lived on farms surrounding the urban center. The city
also contained one hundred and twenty earthen mounds or pyramids, each dominating a
particular neighborhood and on each of which lived a leader who exercised authority over
the surrounding area. The largest mound covered fifteen acres. Cahokia was the hub of
political and trading activities along the Mississippi River. After 1300 CE, however, this
civilization declined—possibly because the area became unable to support the large
population.

NATIVE PEOPLES OF THE EASTERN WOODLAND

Encouraged by the wealth found by the Spanish in the settled civilizations to the south,
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English, Dutch, and French explorers expected to
discover the same in North America. What they found instead were small, disparate
communities, many already ravaged by European diseases brought by the Spanish and
transmitted among the Native peoples. Rather than gold and silver, there was an
abundance of land, and the timber and fur that land could produce.
The Native peoples living east of the Mississippi did not construct the large and complex
societies of those to the west. Because they lived in small autonomous clans or tribal units,
each group adapted to the specific environment in which it lived (Figure 1.11). These
groups were by no means unified, and warfare among tribes was common as they sought to
increase their hunting and fishing areas. Still, these tribes shared some common traits. A
leader or group of tribal elders made decisions, and although the leader was a man, usually
the women selected and counseled him. Gender roles were not as fixed as they were in the
patriarchal societies of Europe, Mesoamerica, and South America.

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Figure 1.11 This map indicates the locations of the three Pueblo cultures the major
Eastern Woodland Native tribes, and the tribes of the Southeast, as well as the location of
the ancient city of Cahokia.
Women typically cultivated corn, beans, and squash and harvested nuts and berries, while
men hunted, fished, and provided protection. But both took responsibility for raising
children, and most major Native societies in the east were matriarchal. In tribes such as the
Iroquois, Lenape, Muscogee, and Cherokee, women had both power and influence. They
counseled and passed on the traditions of the tribe. These complementary gender roles
changed dramatically with the coming of the Europeans, who introduced, sometimes
forcibly, their own customs and traditions to the natives.
Clashing beliefs about land ownership and use of the environment would be the greatest
area of conflict with Europeans. Although tribes often claimed the right to certain hunting
grounds—usually identified by some geographical landmark—Native peoples did not
practice, or in general even have the concept of, private ownership of land. The European
Christian worldview, on the other hand, viewed land as the source of wealth. According to

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the Christian Bible, God created humanity in his own image with the command to use and
subdue the rest of creation, which included not only land, but also all animal life. Land, and
the game that populated it, they believed, were there for the taking.

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