Native Americans

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Warfare

Notwithstanding the exaggerated European stereotype that Native Americans were extremely warlike, wars between Native American groups did take place before the European invasions. Most Native Americans fought in small groups, relying on surprise to give them victory. The large nations of Mexico and Peru sometimes relied on surprise attacks by armies, but their soldiers also fought in disciplined ranks. The Aztecs fought formal battles called “flower wars” with neighbouring peoples; the purpose was to capture men for sacrifice (the Aztecs believed that the sun would weaken if it were not fed with human blood). Other native peoples conducted war raids to obtain captives, but these captives were used as slaves. Some Native American battles were fought for revenge. The most common cause of war between Native American groups was probably to defend or enlarge tribal territory.

Before the Spanish colonizations, warfare was conducted on foot or from canoes. Both the Mexican and the Andean nations, as well as smaller Native American groups, employed hand-to-hand combat with clubs, battle axes, and daggers, as well as close-range combat with javelins hurled with great force from spear-thrower boards (known as atlatls). Bows and arrows were used in attacks, and fire arrows were used against thatched-house villages. When the Spanish brought horses to the New World, native peoples in both North and South America developed techniques of raiding from horseback.

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Languages

About a thousand distinct Native American languages are presently spoken by indigenous peoples in North and South America, and hundreds more have become extinct since the first European contact. In many areas people often spoke not only their native language but also the languages of groups with whom they had frequent contact. In various cases one language served as a common language for a multilingual region; examples include Tucano (western Amazon area) and Quechua (Andean region). Some regions had a traders' language or pidgin, a simplified language or mixture of several languages, helpful to traders of different native languages; among these were Chinook Jargon (Pacific Coast, North America), Mobilian (United States, South-east), and lingua geral (Brazil). Linguists have grouped many of the Native American languages into roughly 180 families, but many other languages have no known relatives; scholars differ in proposing more distant relationships among families. Grammatical traits, sound systems, and word formation often vary from family to family, but families in a given region often influence one another.

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Crafts and the Arts

Nearly all the major technologies known in Europe, Asia, and Africa in the 16th century were known also to Native Americans before European contact, but these technologies were not always used in the same way. For example, although the Andean nations had superb metallurgists, they made few metal tools (people used stone tools for most tasks); instead they applied their skills to creating ornaments. The result was magnificent pre-Columbian art and architecture.

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Stonework

The earliest American art known to archaeologists is flint knapping, or the chipping of stone. Between about 9000 and 6000 bc, stone spear and dart points were produced with great skill. Although flint knapping eventually declined somewhat in other culture areas, in Mesoamerica the art of chipping flint and, especially, obsidian continued to be highly prized. In the Late Archaic period, after 3000 bc, the pecking and grinding (rather than chipping) of stone developed into an art. Between about 1500 and 400 bc in Mesoamerica, the Olmec made small ornaments of semi-precious stones, as well as fine naturalistic and in-the-round stone sculptures that were close to or larger than life size.

In architecture, the pre-Hispanic Andean nations developed stone masonry to a high degree, fitting smoothed stone blocks together so expertly that no mortar was needed for walls that have stood for more than a thousand years. The Mesoamerican peoples also built in stone, and they preferred to cover their buildings in stucco plaster and adorn them with murals.

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Pottery

The earliest pottery in the Americas was made about 3500 bc. By 2000 bc several known styles of ceramics had emerged, and in the wares of the following centuries everyday cooking pottery can be distinguished from fine serving pieces. Among outstanding styles are the Maya vessels painted with scenes of royalty and mythology.