Native Peoples And Native Histories

• Main Author: Iverson, Peter
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Oxford University PressNew York, NY 1996
• Subjects: Bering Strait
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195112122.003.0002; https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/51989882/isbn-9780195112122-book-part-2.pdf

Abstract Perhaps thirty thousand years ago, the first settlers arrived in the land that would come to be known as North America. These pioneers did not travel by ship, nor did they claim territory for any monarch, but they did discover America. Migrating on foot across a land bridge that spanned the narrow Bering Strait during the Ice Age, they gradually made their way throughout the continent and down into South America, all the way to the tip of presentday Argentina. They sought not empires to swell national treasuries but new hunting grounds to feed growing populations. Of course, it took generations for these first explorers to become well established in specific locations. By A.D. 1000, or even before then, some groups occupied the territory they still claim today. Others continued to migrate, to create new homes and new customs for themselves. Even after the first Europeans made it to American shores, obviously uncertain of where they were or what the land might hold, many of the people they labeled “Indians” remained in motion. Both for relative newcomers and for more established Indian settlers in any region, the process of building communities and traditions was essentially the same. Around winter fires or on the hunt, while working in the fields or participating in religious rites, the younger members of each group learned from the older members. Their elders taught them about the creatures who shared the earth and sky with them and about the origins of their people. Through this instruction, they understood from an early age that their people belonged to the land they occupied. Creation stories often contained accounts of migration, but these stories also reassured people that the place where they lived was meant to be their home.