Early in the West

Just beyond the Mississippi River where the forests of the East gave way to fertile, well-watered
prairies lived...

* Mandan, Hidatsa, Crow, Omaha -- along the Missouri River.  Hunters, permanent villages with bark or earth lodges. 

* Cheyenne, Arapaho, Dakota (Sioux) -- Minnesota lake country.  Farmers who grew corn, beans, squash. 

* Early ancestors of Blackfoot, Arapaho, Shoshone -- West to the Rockies grasslands.  Nomadic, small hunters, food gatherers.  Followed the buffalo, traveled by foot in families, peaceful.

* Bannock, Ute, Painute, Goshute, Washoe -- Great Basin, food gatherers, peaceful, nomadic, poor, always moving and wandering in search of food, little time for fighting.
Divided further into:
    
     * Pacific Northwest - Salmon fishermen, prosperous, sedentary

    * Southwest - Agricultural pueblo dwellers, isolationists

Next time...meeting the white man philosophy
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Today in Pioneer History: On July 20, 1889, homesteaders Ella Watson and James Averell are accused of rustling and hanged, after having made the mistake of homesteading on land previously controlled by a Wyoming cattle king.

The Beginning of American Civilization

By the time of the 1400s, the native Americans were divided into tribes which not only differed in location, but had grown to differ in physical characteristics, as well as culture.  The Southern Indians were darker skinned while the Northern Indians were of lighter skin.  Some were squat and muscular, while others were tall and slender.  There were nomads that followed the herds.  There were those that lived in villages, dwellings of mud or animal hides.  There were warriors and there were peace lovers. 

About this time the Indians themselves began to refer to themselves by names, used to group like Indians into groups called tribes:

* Abnakis, Penobscots, Timucuas -- from Maine to Florida along the seaboard.  Peaceful hunters and fishermen.

* Five Star Nations of Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca -- New York State, Iroquois League.  Northern coastal and interior, expert farmers, housed in apartment type buildings called longhouses.  (later the Five Star Nation became the Six Star Nation with the addition of the Tuscaroras)

* Erie, Miami, Shawnee --  Ohio Valley.  Farmers, traders and hunters.

* Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw -- Southeast.  Villages of 100 with plastered buildings around a village square, Celebrated religious and social holidays. 

Next time...Across the Mississippi
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Today in Pioneer History:  On July 17, 1889, Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of crime-solving attorney Perry Mason, is born on this day in Madlen, Massachusetts.