The Choctaws thrived in the fertile sandy, red-clay soil, rolling hills, and dense forests, located in the Central Hills of the east-central region of Mississippi. The estimated population after early European contact was between 15,000 and 20,000 and was the second largest group of Native Americans in the Southeast (Blitz 1988:127).
The Choctaws in the Southeast were a matrilineal society. Traditionally, women preformed tasks related to domestic life. Among these responsibilities were creating pottery and utensils, food preparation, and planting and harvesting crops. The majority of their diet consisted of agricultural products such as corn, pumpkins, squash, and beans. Women would also accompany men on hunting excursions in order to provide food preparation. After the hunt, women were responsible for transporting the slain animal back to the village for processing of skins, bone, and meat (Carson 1995:495-6).
The greatest responsibilities of the Choctaw men were hunting and warfare. During the fall and winter months, their primary food source was deer. Their accomplishments on hunting adventures directly reflected upon their social status and importance within the tribe.
When a Choctaw tribal member became terminally ill, it was common practice for the medicine man to inform the family of impending death (Swanton 1931:170). Upon death, the Choctaws believed that the spirit of the dead continued on a voyage to either the good hunting ground or the bad hunting ground. This journey would take many days, which would require the proper provisions. A dog would sometimes be slain in order to accompany his master on the long journey. After the introduction of horses, they, too, were killed so that the spirit had means of t...
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...uilt or fear, and attempt to dodge the stones. Slipping from the log, he would fall into the raging river and over the waterfall, landing in rapidly swirling pool of water.
Pulling his beaten, tattered, and unclothed body from the water, the shilup, begins his journey into the bad hunting grounds. Every step is filled with the pain from briars, thorny trees, chestnut burs. The sun never shines and cold winds are always present. Every spirit encountered is an enemy with no safe place to take refuge. Food is scarce, due to unfertile soil, and hunger is constant. The bad hunting grounds are perpetually lonely, with only the joyous sounds coming from the other side of the mountains. The doomed spirits constantly struggle to climb the treacherous mountains, but to no avail. They are eternally destined to an afterlife of desolation (Campbell 1959:149-52).
The Shawnees were a patrilineal tribe meaning they are traced through the males of the family. Although men were a main part of the culture, each village had an informal group of women who governed certain tribal rituals and set dates for many activities. Women were also allowed to save captives and prisoners. This practice was foreign to the time period because women do not usually have a voice. Children are inferior and are required to learn the ways to be able to be an active part in the tribe when they become adults. After many years the Shawnees were more dependent on the outside, yet they still followed a lifestyle based on hunting and gathering.
The livestock preference for the Indians were hogs, due to their similarity to dogs, which Indians had already owned previously. The Indians used the hogs for meat, their ability to fend off predators, and could also train them like they could dogs. Swine (hogs) were also primarily used to due to the few adjustments that came along with keeping them as livestock from the native’s previous customs, unlike cattle would. Hogs also had a much higher reproductive rate than cattle did and provided an abundant protein source to the people. One prime example was King Phillips himself, the leader of the Indian tribe, and the dominant figure caught in the middle of these issues relating to livestock specifically. Phillip’s was known to keep his swine on a separate island to keep them safe from predators and take
However, in the 1830s the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, most of the Indian population was moved to Oklahoma. Now, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians is located in Philadelphia, Mississippi and the surrounding counties”. According to the same census, “Mississippi has the highest proportion of African Americans in the nation.
Nourishment was also an essential part of their everyday life and just like in the Stone Age era, the natives were classified as hunter-gatherers. The hunting was mainly done by the men and the women would be in charge of the cooking and the collection of edible plants. However; these activities were not set in stone and sometimes men would do the cooking while women made the
The Choctaw Indians is a tribe of Musksgean stock .The Choctaws were once part of a larger tribe that included the Greeks and Seminoles and are considered one of the five civilized tribes (Cherokees , Greeks, Choctaws , Seminoles, and Chickasaws) . At one time Choctaw territory extended from Mississippi to Georgia, but by the time Europeans began to arrive in North America they were primarily in Mississippi and Louisiana.
However, Brown claims on how gender roles and identities shaped the perceptions and interactions of both English settlers and the Native American civilizations. Both Indian and English societies have critical social orders between males and females. In addition, their culture difference reflexes to the English and Indian males and females’ culpabilities as well. However, the Indian people put too much responsibility to their women. Women were in charge as agriculturalists, producers and customers of vital household goods and implements. They were also in control for providing much of the material culture of daily needs such as clothing, domestic gears and furnishings like baskets, bedding and household building. Native American females were expected to do a range of tasks. On the other hand, the Indian men only cleared new planting ground and constantly left the villages to fish and hunt. Clearly, Native Indian women had more tasks than the men did. Therefore, Indian males’ social and work roles became distinctive from females’ at the moment of the huskanaw (a rite of passage by which Virginia Indian boys became men) and reminded so until the men were too old to hunt or go to war. English commentator named George Percy underlines, “The men take their pleasure in hunting and their wares, which they are in continually”. “On the other hand the women were heavily burdened with”, says other commentator, John Smith. Gender is directly referential in an important sense, describing how sexual division was understood in the social order. Consequently, Native American people prescribed the gender social practice that women should be loaded with range of liabilities than the
Significantly, Welch deconstructs the myth that Plains Indian women were just slaves and beasts of burden and presents them as fully rounded women, women who were crucial to the survival of the tribal community. In fact, it is the women who perform the day-to-day duties and rituals that enable cultural survival for the tribes of...
The Cherokee lived in the southeast part of the United States. They lived in what is n... ... middle of paper ... ... train as warriors. All boys led a tough life.
Thornton, Russell, Matthew C Snipp, and Nancy Breen. The Cherokees: A Population History Indians of the Southeast. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1990.
"Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians." Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Nov. 2013. .
The Cherokee Indians lived in the south of the Appalachian Mountains for hundreds maybe thousands of years before the
The Native Americans of the southeast live in a variety of environments. The environments range from the southern Appalachian Mountains, to the Mississippi River valley, to the Louisiana and Alabama swamps, and the Florida wetlands. These environments were bountiful with various species of plant and animal life, enabling the Native American peoples to flourish. “Most of the Native Americans adopted large-scale agriculture after 900 A.D, and some also developed large towns and highly centralized social and political structures.” In the first half of the 1600s Europeans encountered these native peoples. Both cultures encountered new plants, animals, and diseases. However, the Indians received more diseases compared to the few new diseases to the Europeans. The new diseases resulted in a massive loss of Native Americans, including the Southeast Indians which had never encountered the new diseases. Three of the main tribes in the southeast were the Cherokee and the Creek. They were part of a group of southeast tribes that were removed from their lands. These tribes later became known as “The Five Civilized Tribes because of their progress and achievements.”
the Cherokee Nation. While men hunt for meat the women cultivated the crop especially corn.
Deaths were a form of social event, when families and loved ones would gather around the bed of the dying, offering emotional support and comfort. Myth, religion, and tradition would combine to give the event deeper meaning and ease the transition for all involved. The one who was dying was confident in knowing what lay behind the veil of death, thanks to religious faith or tradition. His or her community held fast to the sense of community, drawing strength from social ties and beliefs. (“Taboos and Social Stigma - Rituals, Body, Life, History, Time, Person, Human, Traditional Views of Death Give Way to New Perceptions" 1)
The Cheyenne Indians had quite an interesting life and many different customs that even live on today. The daily life of a Cheyenne always began before the sun rose. Women and men each had their own separate duties for the day. The women would prepare the meals while the men and boys would herd up the horses back to their camp. Each day, also, there were daily activities announced to everyone in the tribe. These activities included the children to go out and play for most of the day, the women would clean and have their time to converse with the other women, and the men would go out and play w...