Monday, September 22, 2014

North American Peoples on the Eve of European Contact

North American Peoples on the Eve of European Contact

What common values did Native American share despite their cast diversity?
Native American lived in North America for thousands of years before the Europeans. They have kept their traditions and their beliefs such as hunting, fishing and religion for a long time. The existence of many diverse languages and dialects started some new nations and tribes.  Even with these new nations and tribes, they have common characteristics. There are many common values in Native American.
Kinship and gender is one of the values that can be seen in all the Native American. They prioritize their ties to cousins, uncles, aunts which they are most part of their kinship. They believe that kinship bounds are more important than bounds with nuclear families. Moreover, in most cultures of the Native Americans, the marriage age is in their teens and they try to be within their extended family. A new husband in some of the Native American societies moved in with his wife’s extended family. Every tribes live in a small village and they have a leader or a chief to govern them and they have to follow him. Both men and women has played a major rule in the Native American societies. Men’s job was focusing on hunt, trade and make tools and weapons. Women’s job was farming, cooking and taking care of children and they shared some of the work.
Spiritual and social values is one of the common principles that Native American societies shared. They believe that there are two ways to access the spiritual world, either in sleep or by using physical ordeals to alter their consciousness. They believe that Young men become adult when “through a vision quest—a solitary venture that entailed fasting and waiting for the appearance of a spirit that would endow them with special powers”” Boyer page14”. On the girls’ side “Girls went through comparable rituals at the onset of menstruation, to initiate them into the spiritual world from which female reproductive power flowed”” Boyer page14”. The natives, despite being divided into many cultures, sub cultures and different societies, they all shared some common values and practices with slight different methods of applications.
I found a good article and video  about the Native American



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