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Learn all about Native American culture 

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Learn all about Native American culture 

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in the guise of a Native American Culture
A comprehensive and illustrated guide to Native American Culture and the culture of the Native American and the indigenous people of North America. The above picture shows a Native Indian from the Kickapoo tribe holding a Prayer Stick and the picture to the right depicts a Blackfoot Medicine Man Skinwalker. All of our articles are accompanied by pictures, paintings and many have videos - all bringing the Native American Culture to life and enabling a better understanding of each of subjects covered.

Native American Culture - What is Culture?
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings that characterizes a group of people in terms of their beliefs, practices and behavior. These patterns of behaviour and beliefs are practised across social units in a population and endure across generations of Native American tribes. The culture and history of the Native Americans of North America are referred to on most pages. Discover facts and information about the beliefs, rituals, traditions and ceremonies of the Native Americans including the mysterious Skinwalkers, Vision Quests, Power Animals, the Thunderbird and the Supreme Being referred to as the Great Spirit. Fascinating facts and information about Native American Culture. For additional facts refer to Native American History .

Blackfoot Shaman as a 'Skinwalker'

Native American Culture
This section covers a variety of different subjects with articles about Native American culture. Articles include Native American religion, beliefs, customs, traditions, dances, ceremonies, rituals and festivals.

Native American Culture - Stone Age Culture
The life styles of Native Americans ranged from nomadic, semi-nomadic to static. They lived in separate tribes across the vast continent of North America and despite this many of them shared similar beliefs and culture. The Native Americans had occupied North America for thousands of years before the arrival of the Europeans. Their North American culture and pre-historic Stone Age lifestyle and culture had never altered in all of this time. The Native Americans had never undergone the changes and transition to the Bronze Age culture or the Iron Age culture. Their weapons and tools were all made of stone, they had not experienced the use of metals, their culture was a primitive one.

Native American Culture - Religion and Beliefs - Animism
The primitive religions and traditions of the Native Americans was based on the culture of Animism. Animism was a commonly shared doctrine, or belief, of the indigenous people and various Indian Tribes of North America. Animism is a religion based on the spiritual idea that the universe, and all natural objects within the universe, have souls or spirits. In this religion it is believed that souls or spirits exist not only in humans but also in animals, plants, trees, rocks etc. This belief and culture is also extended to natural phenomena such as thunder storms and rain and geographic features such as mountains, caves or rivers also possess souls or spirits. The Native Americans had no science to explain nature which led to their belief that the sun, rain, and other forces were controlled by spirits. In religion the Native Indians worshiped animals, plants, the sun, rain, and wind refer to and Power Animals . In festivals, ceremonies and prayers they tried to gain the favor of these gods. Animal Spirits

Native American Culture - The Great Spirit
The Great Spirit is believed by many Native Indians to be a supreme being or creator of life. A divine power that created the world.

Native American Culture - The Shaman or Medicine Man
The religion, traditions and beliefs of the American Indians were also dominated by the culture of shamanism in which a religious leader, called a Shaman or Medicine Man, acted as a medium between the visible world and the spirit world. The Shamans or Medicine Men had special powers, medicine and magic to heal the sick, control the hunt, and predict the future.

Native American Culture - Traditional Religious Ceremonies and Customs The basic idea of Animism religion and culture extended further as people grew to believe that the Great Spirit or spirits were invested and interested in human life, and the Native Indians therefore performed ceremonies and rituals to worship or appease the spirits and this was included in the North American culture. The rituals and beliefs displayed in ceremonies show a blending of interest by promoting and preserving their hunting and farming and the survival of it's people with showing respect to the spirit. Interesting facts and information about culture and traditions including Animism, Totemism, Fetishism, Shamanism.

Native American Culture - Religious Festivals
Festivals were devised that incorporated this culture and these ceremonies and rituals were held at seasonal periods throughout the year and commonly occurred during important agricultural periods. The festivals often continued over several days and were accompanied by feasting, singing, chanting, music and dancing. The ceremonies and rituals followed at the festivals were handed down through the generation and the culture remained unchanged for centuries.

Native American Culture - Religious Dances
The culture of festivals and ceremonies included both chanting an singing which accompanied various types of dances. The Native American culture included famous dances such as the Pipe Dance, Deer Dance, Rain Dance culture , Buffalo Dance, Scalp Dance culture, Basket Dance, Dog Dance, Green Corn Dance, Doll Dance, Hoop Dance, Hopi Snake Dance culture, War Dance, Sun Dance and Ghost Dance. Most of these dances were specific to the culture of individual tribes.
Picture of a Lakota Sioux War Dance
Native American Culture
Native American culture and traditions were also related to specific individual tribes. Customs and traditions were adhered to which gave them their own distinct identity. Articles on specific customs and traditions are included in this section and provide facts and interesting information about diverse elements of their culture such as Animism, Totemism, Fetishism, Shamanism, Potlatch, Native American Feathers, Peace Pipes, the Medicine Man culture, Pow-wow, Totem Pole culture, Vision Quest culture, War Paint, Ghost Dance culture , Sun Dance, the Cry Ceremony, Dream Catcher and Medicine Bags.

Native American Culture

Native American Culture for kids

History, culture, religion and beliefs of Native Americans

Native American Animism, Totemism, Fetishism, Shamanism

Interesting Facts and information for kids and schools

Native American Life, culture and beliefs

Native American Culture and way of life

Native American Culture for kids

Pictures and Videos of Native American Culture
Discover the vast selection of pictures on the subject of Native American Culture. The pictures show the clothing, War Paint, weapons and decorations of various Native Indian tribes that can be used as a really useful educational resource for kids and children of all ages. We have included pictures and videos to accompany the main topic of this section - Native American Culture. The videos enable fast access to the images, paintings and pictures together with the information and the many facts featured on this subject. Details of all of the articles and pages contained on www.warpaths2peacepipes.com can be accessed via the Native Indian Tribes Index. We hope you enjoy watching the Native American Culture related videos - just click and play - a great educational resource for kids about American Indian culture.

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Check out this site for facts and information about Native American Culture. Comprehensive guide to Native American Culture including Religion, Beliefs, Rituals and Ceremonies. Information, pictures and facts about Native American Culture

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REAL Native American video clip from 1895!!!!

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REAL Native American video clip from 1895!!!!

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Native American inventions that change the world!

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Native American inventions that change the world!

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Indigenous cultures have created thousands upon thousands of Native Inventions that are in use today
Soon after the arrival of Columbus, detailed descriptions of the inventions of Indigenous Peoples began to make their way back to Europe. Not satisfied that "savages" would be able to generate such innovation, rumors began to spread that the Americas were simply a lost colony of Christians or Israelites. Such rumors still exist today and in fact continue to be discussed by archeologists. But all of this aside, indigenous cultures have created thousands upon thousands of innovations that are in use today in the most modern of practices, be it a tub of popcorn at the movies, the administering of medicines with surgical precision or the removal of tartar from teeth in modern dentistry. In order to give some more credit where credit is due to our ancestral innovators, here are 10 Native inventions and innovations that changed the world. These are but a few examples of indigenous ingenuity, but highlighting them serves to unswathe yet another facet of hidden history. Syringes, or Hypodermic Needles
Though Scotsman Alexander Wood is credited with inventing the syringe in 1853, in pre-Columbian times South American Indians used a type of syringe made from sharpened hollow bird bones attached to small bladders to inject medicine, irrigate wounds or even clean ears. Additionally, Indigenous healers also used larger and similar instruments for enemas.
Baby Bottles and Formula
Using similar technology as the syringe, the Seneca used washed, dried and oiled bear intestines with a bird quill attached as a form of nipple. Mothers filled them with a mixture of pounded nuts, meat and water.
Oral Contraception
An oral contraceptive is a substance taken by mouth to prevent pregnancy. Recorded instances of American Indians taking such substances date back to the 1700s, more than 200 years before the creation of a man-made substance by western medicine. One of the herbs used was the stone seed, employed by the Shoshone, while the Potawatomi used the herb dogbane.
Cigars
On a 1,000-year-old pottery vessel found in Guatemala, a Maya man is shown smoking a roll of tobacco leaves tied with string. The Maya word for smoking was sikkar, which became the Spanish word cigarro. Once settlers had learned from Indians how to cultivate tobacco, cigar factories sprung up. One of them, an early cigar factory in Pennsylvania, gave the cigar its playful moniker the "stogie."
Pest Control
To combat insects such as lice infestation, the Paiute and Shoshone of the Great Basin, for example, washed their hair in a hot infusion made from sweetroot.

To fight other pests, pre-Columbian peoples built structures with cashew wood, while the Pima sprinkled ashes on their crops to thwart squash bugs. The Pueblo have used ground buffalo gourd to fend off garden pests, and Inca cotton farmers planted lemon verbena and burned it as a pesticide.
Petroleum Collection and Extraction
Although the discovery of oil in the United States is usually credited to Edwin L. Drake, who drilled an oil well in Pennsylvania in 1859, Native Americans were known to have sunk pits into the ground more than 400 years earlier in the Oil Creek Flats of Pennsylvania. These pits, which are 15 to 20 feet deep, were walled with vertical timbers that had been cut with stone axes.

Like many historians, J.A. Caldwell-who wrote about the oil pits-assumed the work was done by "a race of people who occupied the country prior to the advance of the Indian tribes." However, the French general Montcalm, traveling to Fort Duquesne in 1750, said he observed the Seneca and other Iroquoian Indians set fire to the oil that seeped from the ground for ceremonial fires. They also slathered protective lotion (like petroleum jelly) onto their skin.
Bunk Beds
In the Northeast of the United States, the Iroquois have long lived in longhouses-long, extended buildings made of branches formed into a large half circle and covered with bark. Inside these longhouses were bunk-beds. A creation of two beds built one on top of the other. No thanks necessary, Ikea.
Pharmaceuticals
Take a step back in respect, Rite-Aid enthusiasts. According to Daniel Moerman, the foremost expert on North American Indian ethnobotany in the United States, North American Indians have medicinal uses for 2,564 plant species.

But many Native people say the actual number may likely dwarf Dr. Moerman's statistics.

Since the times of the Spanish explorers, American Indian medicines have been used to cure colds with guiacum, heart ailments with dogbane, and employ foxglove and lady's slipper as a sedative. Said Steven R. King about Brazil's well-known "slobber mouth plant," the jaborandi tree, had Europeans but listened, a dry-mouth-syndrome product may have come years earlier.
Chewing Gum
Bubbulicious-remember that gum? Well it may never have gotten its start if not for the sapodilla tree. The Mesoamerican Indians chewed the milky chicle, which became today's chewing gum. And you thought you were being sneaky, Chiclets-we caught you copying Indians!
Lacrosse
This even the Europeans acknowledged at the time, but it never hurts to be reminded that Turtle Island's Indigenous Peoples created an entire sports genre. The Iroquoian Creator's game of lacrosse has been played for centuries. Yes, it was first played by the Iroquoian tribes who honored the game as one that was played for the Creator's enjoyment. We've come a long way since the Tewaaraton awards.
Follow Vincent Schilling (Akwesasne Mohawk) - ICMN's Arts and Entertainment, Pow Wows and Sports Editor Follow @VinceSchilling. This story was originally published June 29, 2014.

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10 Native Inventions and Innovations That Changed the World - Indian Country Media Network

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Indigenous cultures have created thousands upon thousands of Native Inventions that are in use today Soon after the arrival of Columbus, detailed descriptions of the inventions of Indigenous Peoples began to make their way back to Europe.

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Native Americans Tribes - MrNussbaum.com

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Native Americans Interactive Map and Tribes Guide "

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Cherokee Nation - Booger Masks for Kids "

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Many thousands of years before Christopher Columbus' ships landed in the Bahamas, a different group of people discovered America: the nomadic ancestors of modern Native Americans who hiked over a "land bridge" from Asia to what is now Alaska more than 12,000 years ago. In fact, by the time European adventurers arrived in the 15th century A.D., scholars estimate that more than 50 million people were already living in the Americas. Of these, some 10 million lived in the area that would become the United States. As time passed, these migrants and their descendants pushed south and east, adapting as they went. In order to keep track of these diverse groups, anthropologists and geographers have divided them into "culture areas," or rough groupings of contiguous peoples who shared similar habitats and characteristics. Most scholars break North America-excluding present-day Mexico-into 10 separate culture areas: the Arctic, the Subarctic, the Northeast, the Southeast, the Plains, the Southwest, the Great Basin, California, the Northwest Coast and the Plateau.

The Arctic

The Arctic culture area, a cold, flat, treeless region (actually a frozen desert) near the Arctic Circle in present-day Alaska, Canada and Greenland, was home to the Inuit and the Aleut. Both groups spoke, and continue to speak, dialects descended from what scholars call the Eskimo-Aleut language family. Because it is such an inhospitable landscape, the Arctic's population was comparatively small and scattered. Some of its peoples, especially the Inuit in the northern part of the region, were nomads, following seals, polar bears and other game as they migrated across the tundra. In the southern part of the region, the Aleut were a bit more settled, living in small fishing villages along the shore.

Did you know? According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are about 4.5 million Native Americans and Alaska Natives in the United States today. That's about 1.5 percent of the population.

The Inuit and Aleut had a great deal in common. Many lived in dome-shaped houses made of sod or timber (or, in the North, ice blocks). They used seal and otter skins to make warm, weatherproof clothing, aerodynamic dogsleds and long, open fishing boats (kayaks in Inuit; baidarkas in Aleut).

By the time the United States purchased Alaska in 1867, decades of oppression and exposure to European diseases had taken their toll: The native population had dropped to just 2,500; the descendants of these survivors still make their home in the area today.

The Subarctic

The Subarctic culture area, mostly composed of swampy, piney forests (taiga) and waterlogged tundra, stretched across much of inland Alaska and Canada. Scholars have divided the region's people into two language groups: the Athabaskan speakers at its western end, among them the Tsattine (Beaver), Gwich'in (or Kuchin) and the Deg Xinag (formerly-and pejoratively-known as the Ingalik), and the Algonquian speakers at its eastern end, including the Cree, the Ojibwa and the Naskapi.

In the Subarctic, travel was difficult-toboggans, snowshoes and lightweight canoes were the primary means of transportation-and population was sparse. In general, the peoples of the Subarctic did not form large permanent settlements; instead, small family groups stuck together as they traipsed after herds of caribou. They lived in small, easy-to-move tents and lean-tos, and when it grew too cold to hunt they hunkered into underground dugouts.

The growth of the fur trade in the 17th and 18th centuries disrupted the Subarctic way of life-now, instead of hunting and gathering for subsistence, the Indians focused on supplying pelts to the European traders-and eventually led to the displacement and extermination of many of the region's native communities.

The Northeast

The Northeast culture area, one of the first to have sustained contact with Europeans, stretched from present-day Canada's Atlantic coast to North Carolina and inland to the Mississippi River valley. Its inhabitants were members of two main groups: Iroquoian speakers (these included the Cayuga, Oneida, Erie, Onondaga, Seneca and Tuscarora), most of whom lived along inland rivers and lakes in fortified, politically stable villages, and the more numerous Algonquian speakers (these included the Pequot, Fox, Shawnee, Wampanoag, Delaware and Menominee) who lived in small farming and fishing villages along the ocean. There, they grew crops like corn, beans and vegetables.

Life in the Northeast culture area was already fraught with conflict-the Iroquoian groups tended to be rather aggressive and warlike, and bands and villages outside of their allied confederacies were never safe from their raids-and it grew more complicated when European colonizers arrived. Colonial wars repeatedly forced the region's natives to take sides, pitting the Iroquois groups against their Algonquian neighbors. Meanwhile, as white settlement pressed westward, it eventually displaced both sets of indigenous people from their lands.

The Southeast

The Southeast culture area, north of the Gulf of Mexico and south of the Northeast, was a humid, fertile agricultural region. Many of its natives were expert farmers-they grew staple crops like maize, beans, squash, tobacco and sunflower-who organized their lives around small ceremonial and market villages known as hamlets. Perhaps the most familiar of the Southeastern indigenous peoples are the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole, sometimes called the Five Civilized Tribes, some of whom spoke a variant of the Muskogean language.

By the time the U.S. had won its independence from Britain, the Southeast culture area had already lost many of its native people to disease and displacement. In 1830, the federal Indian Removal Act compelled the relocation of what remained of the Five Civilized Tribes so that white settlers could have their land. Between 1830 and 1838, federal officials forced nearly 100,000 Indians out of the southern states and into "Indian Territory" (later Oklahoma) west of the Mississippi. The Cherokee called this frequently deadly trek the Trail of Tears.

The Plains

The Plains culture area comprises the vast prairie region between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, from present-day Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Before the arrival of European traders and explorers, its inhabitants-speakers of Siouan, Algonquian, Caddoan, Uto-Aztecan and Athabaskan languages-were relatively settled hunters and farmers. After European contact, and especially after Spanish colonists brought horses to the region in the 18th century, the peoples of the Great Plains became much more nomadic. Groups like the Crow, Blackfeet, Cheyenne, Comanche and Arapaho used horses to pursue great herds of buffalo across the prairie. The most common dwelling for these hunters was the cone-shaped teepee, a bison-skin tent that could be folded up and carried anywhere. Plains Indians are also known for their elaborately feathered war bonnets.

As white traders and settlers moved west across the Plains region, they brought many damaging things with them: commercial goods, like knives and kettles, which native people came to depend on; guns; and disease. By the end of the 19th century, white sport hunters had nearly exterminated the area's buffalo herds. With settlers encroaching on their lands and no way to make money, the Plains natives were forced onto government reservations.

The Southwest

The peoples of the Southwest culture area, a huge desert region in present-day Arizona and New Mexico (along with parts of Colorado, Utah, Texas and Mexico) developed two distinct ways of life.

Sedentary farmers such as the Hopi, the Zuni, the Yaqui and the Yuma grew crops like corn, beans and squash. Many lived in permanent settlements, known as pueblos, built of stone and adobe. These pueblos featured great multistory dwellings that resembled apartment houses. At their centers, many of these villages also had large ceremonial pit houses, or kivas.

Other Southwestern peoples, such as the Navajo and the Apache, were more nomadic. They survived by hunting, gathering and raiding their more established neighbors for their crops. Because these groups were always on the move, their homes were much less permanent than the pueblos. For instance, the Navajo fashioned their iconic eastward-facing round houses, known as hogans, out of materials like mud and bark.

By the time the southwestern territories became a part of the United States after the Mexican War, many of the region's native people had already been exterminated. (Spanish colonists and missionaries had enslaved many of the Pueblo Indians, for example, working them to death on vast Spanish ranches known as encomiendas.) During the second half of the 19th century, the federal government resettled most of the region's remaining natives onto reservations.

The Great Basin

The Great Basin culture area, an expansive bowl formed by the Rocky Mountains to the east, the Sierra Nevadas to the west, the Columbia Plateau to the north, and the Colorado Plateau to the south, was a barren wasteland of deserts, salt flats and brackish lakes. Its people, most of whom spoke Shoshonean or Uto-Aztecan dialects (the Bannock, Paiute and Ute, for example), foraged for roots, seeds and nuts and hunted snakes, lizards and small mammals. Because they were always on the move, they lived in compact, easy-to-build wikiups made of willow poles or saplings, leaves and brush. Their settlements and social groups were impermanent, and communal leadership (what little there was) was informal.

After European contact, some Great Basin groups got horses and formed equestrian hunting and raiding bands that were similar to the ones we associate with the Great Plains natives. After white prospectors discovered gold and silver in the region in the mid-19th century, most of the Great Basin's people lost their land and, frequently, their lives.

California

Before European contact, the temperate, hospitable California culture area had more people-an estimated 300,000 in the mid-16th century-than any other. It was also more diverse: Its estimated 100 different tribes and groups spoke more spoke more than 200 dialects. (These languages derived from the Penutian (the Maidu, Miwok and Yokuts), the Hokan (the Chumash, Pomo, Salinas and Shasta), the Uto-Aztecan (the Tubabulabal, Serrano and Kinatemuk; also, many of the "Mission Indians" who had been driven out of the Southwest by Spanish colonization spoke Uto-Aztecan dialects) and Athapaskan (the Hupa, among others). In fact, as one scholar has pointed out, California's linguistic landscape was more complex than that of Europe.

Despite this great diversity, many native Californians lived very similar lives. They did not practice much agriculture. Instead, they organized themselves into small, family-based bands of hunter-gatherers known as tribelets. Inter-tribelet relationships, based on well-established systems of trade and common rights, were generally peaceful.

Spanish explorers infiltrated the California region in the middle of the 16th century. In 1769, the cleric Junipero Serra established a mission at San Diego, inaugurating a particularly brutal period in which forced labor, disease and assimilation nearly exterminated the culture area's native population.

The Northwest Coast

The Northwest Coast culture area, along the Pacific coast from British Columbia to the top of Northern California, has a mild climate and an abundance of natural resources. In particular, the ocean and the region's rivers provided almost everything its people needed-salmon, especially, but also whales, sea otters, seals and fish and shellfish of all kinds. As a result, unlike many other hunter-gatherers who struggled to eke out a living and were forced to follow animal herds from place to place, the Indians of the Pacific Northwest were secure enough to build permanent villages that housed hundreds of people apiece. Those villages operated according to a rigidly stratified social structure, more sophisticated than any outside of Mexico and Central America. A person's status was determined by his closeness to the village's chief and reinforced by the number of possessions-blankets, shells and skins, canoes and even slaves-he had at his disposal. (Goods like these played an important role in the potlatch, an elaborate gift-giving ceremony designed to affirm these class divisions.)

Prominent groups in the region included the Athapaskan Haida and Tlingit; the Penutian Chinook, Tsimshian and Coos; the Wakashan Kwakiutl and Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka); and the Salishan Coast Salish.

The Plateau

The Plateau culture area sat in the Columbia and Fraser river basins at the intersection of the Subarctic, the Plains, the Great Basin, the California and the Northwest Coast (present-day Idaho, Montana and eastern Oregon and Washington). Most of its people lived in small, peaceful villages along stream and riverbanks and survived by fishing for salmon and trout, hunting and gathering wild berries, roots and nuts. In the southern Plateau region, the great majority spoke languages derived from the Penutian (the Klamath, Klikitat, Modoc, Nez Perce, Walla Walla and Yakima or Yakama). North of the Columbia River, most (the Skitswish (Coeur d'Alene), Salish (Flathead), Spokane and Columbia) spoke Salishan dialects.

In the 18th century, other native groups brought horses to the Plateau. The region's inhabitants quickly integrated the animals into their economy, expanding the radius of their hunts and acting as traders and emissaries between the Northwest and the Plains. In 1805, the explorers Lewis and Clark passed through the area, drawing increasing numbers of disease-spreading white settlers. By the end of the 19th century, most of the remaining Plateau Indians had been cleared from their lands and resettled in government reservations.

PHOTO GALLERIES

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Native Americans, also known as American Indians and Indigenous Americans, are the indigenous peoples of the United States. By the time European adventurers arrived in the 15th century A.D., scholars estimate that more than 50 million Native Americans were already living in the Americas - 10 million in the area that would become the United States.