Native American subsistence

Tribes affected: Pantribal

Significance: In their thousands of years of residence in the Americas, Native Americans have obtained their food by various strategies

The Asians who crossed the Bering land bridge (Beringia) and became the first American Indians were hunter-gatherers, relying entirely on the plants and animals provided by nature for their food supplies. Over the millennia, their descendants developed a great variety of ways of gaining their livelihood, some continuing to exploit nature exclusively, some domesticating and cultivating crops, some herding domestic animals, and some combining these subsistence modes. Choices regarding what modes of subsistence to follow were neither capricious nor dictated by ignorance of other options: rather, they were rational decisions based on the advantages and disadvantages of each. The option that was chosen carried strong implications for the way of life, often leading a people down a path from which later departure was difficult.

Hunting-Gathering

The hunting-gathering way of life was based on utilizing food sources as they occurred naturally. Berries were picked from the berry patches, but no berry seeds were planted to create new berry patches; deer were stalked and killed, but they were neither herded nor bred to intensify characteristics preferred by the hunter. Fish were netted, but they were not impounded in ponds for breeding and harvest.

This simplified view of hunting and gathering in Native American culture overlooks some purposeful human modification of the environment. Indians in both the Northeast and California, for example, selectively burned areas, encouraging the growth of certain plants that colonize disturbed areas. Many of the weeds that first grow in burned areas were excellent eaten as greens and often bore starchy seeds that could be made into flour. Berry bushes also entered such areas soon after burning, and hunter-gatherers could take advantage of their fruits. Most important, deer (the most common meat source for North American hunter-gatherers) would find more browsing fodder in recently burned areas, and their numbers would increase. Burning, then, provided a measure of control over the foods that nature produced, encouraging the types desired by people; nevertheless, hunter-gatherers remained basically dependent on what nature offered.

Dependence on nature did not limit the ingenuity of American Indian hunter-gatherers in designing and using technology to aid hunting and fishing. Clever traps and weirs captured game and fish while the hunter or fisher was doing something else; spearthrowing aids effectively lengthened the hunter’s arm in throwing a spear, increasing the power generated; plant poisons that stunned fish but did not render their flesh toxic to human beings were used widely in quiet stretches of rivers. In contrast, the gathering of plants remained labor-intensive, with few devices to improve its efficiency.

Hunting-gathering provided a generally good life. Except in marginal environments such as deserts, hunter-gatherers typically could obtain a day’s food for their families with only a few hours’ work, leaving much time for other activities. The wide variety of foods eaten by most hunter-gatherers provided sufficient nutritional diversity to maintain good health. Hunter-gatherers found it desirable to move with the seasons, taking advantage of the seasonal abundance of one or another food source and settling near it for the period it was available; this movement ensured hunter-gatherers of clean, new quarters on a regular basis, again helping preserve good health.

The requirements of hunting-gathering, however, placed some restrictions on American Indians following this mode of subsistence. Seasonal movements were necessary to take advantage of natural distributions of food sources over time and space; therefore, hunter-gatherers were limited in the amount of material items they could accumulate or transport. Duplicate tools could be made and stored at the different settlements in anticipation of next year’s return, but it was difficult or impossible to stockpile large quantities of food. This was a limitation in seasonal environments, such as northern regions where several months of winter saw limited food supplies and sometimes starvation. The limitation of available food for the lean season meant that populations could attain only moderate densities in most environments. The same problem meant that the number of people in a settlement could not be too large, since the surrounding locale could provide only so much food.

Hunter-gatherers usually had relatively uncomplicated ways of governing themselves. Their leaders typically served at the pleasure of the community, and leaders rarely could do more than encourage people to follow the course of action they deemed appropriate. Hunter-gatherers usually had religions that stressed individual relations to spirits, and shamans often were the primary religious functionaries. Kinship relationships usually were patrilineal (traced through the male lines).

Transition to Agriculture

While hunting-gathering was a basically desirable way of life, the limitation on the amount of food available during the lean season was a serious one. Hunter-gatherers searched for ways to increase the amount of food they provided their families, but the limitations remained. Food scarcity in the lean season resulted in higher child mortality. Rarely did children starve, and parents usually tried to protect them from the worst shortages, but undernourishment resulted in lowered resistance to disease, and children probably bore the brunt of lean-season deaths.

All peoples have realized the connection between seeds and plant growth. Hunter-gatherers doubtless turned to cultivating plants in an attempt to limit the problems of the lean season. Some of the earliest plant cultivation in the Americas is known from the Tehuacán Valley of central Mexico around 6000 b.c.e. Avocados and chili peppers were grown there by American Indians as an adjunct to hunting-gathering. These same Indians began growing corn by 5000 b.c.e. and beans and squash within the next few centuries. Not until 3500 b.c.e. or later, however, did these cultivators establish year-round settlements. Instead, they continued their seasonal movements and emphasis on hunting and gathering nature’s bounty. Eventually, however, they became dependent on agriculture and placed their primary efforts in that field, utilizing wild plants and animals only as adjuncts to their agricultural produce. At this point, their ties to fields and storage facilities became greater than the benefits of seasonal movement, and they became sedentary.

The same process that took place in the Tehuacán Valley occurred in many other places in the Americas, though at different times. Between 3500 and 500 b.c.e. in the Southwest, the same process of using a few cultivated crops as an adjunct to hunting-gathering evolved into agricultural dependence; between perhaps 1200 b.c.e. and 800 c.e. in the Illinois Valley, a parallel process occurred.

As people became dependent on agricultural crops, they no longer were satisfied to continue growing wild plants. Instead, they modified them, choosing those with the fastest growing season, the largest fruits or seeds, or the greatest resistance to drought. By selecting the seeds or cuttings of these individual plants, the next generation would have a higher frequency of the desired trait, and gradually the plant was modified. This is the selective breeding process used in modern agronomy to establish new varieties of crops, and it achieved tremendous success in pre-Columbian America. Over thousands of years, tiny cobs of corn no larger than a little finger were converted to the sausage-sized cobs of historic times; beans became larger and more drought-resistant; squash became larger and sweeter. The process of domestication was so successful that some crops, corn included, lost their ability to reproduce themselves without human intervention.

Agriculturalists domesticated and cultivated a large inventory of crops in the Americas, including chili peppers, avocados, corn, squash, beans, sunflowers, tomatoes, potatoes, sweet potatoes, manioc, pineapples, and amaranth, a tiny seed crop eaten extensively in various places. The most important crops always were ones that could be stored effectively. In this way, American Indian agriculture helped reduce the problem of the lean season, and regional populations always grew at the onset of agricultural dependence. After a few generations, the ability to return to hunting-gathering probably was lost, since the higher population levels required the greater amounts of food that came with agriculture, especially during the lean season.

At some point as agriculture became more important, people had to settle down. Moving from one place to another with the seasons became impractical, since carrying their supply of stored foods would require unreasonable amounts of labor. With this sedentism, people could begin accumulating larger amounts of material goods, and they could live in larger communities. These communities often found it desirable to have a leader who had greater authority than any individual did under the hunter-gatherer system. In some places, populations were large enough so that the people submitted to leaders who wielded coercive power, permitting these chiefs to enforce their decisions. The ultimate in this development were the Aztecs, with their divine emperor who had life-and-death power over every member of the empire.

The relations between the sexes also changed under agriculture. Most hunter-gatherers assigned men the more dangerous task of hunting and women the more time-consuming chores of gathering plants, which typically formed the greatest part of the hunter-gatherer diet. Fishing might be assigned to either sex. As hunter-gatherers invested more in agriculture, women transferred their control of wild plants to domesticated crops. Fields often were controlled or even owned by women, who passed them on to their daughters. In this manner, the emphasis shifted in many cases to reckoning kinship primarily through women: matrilineality. A concern with the success of agriculture also began a greater focus on group-oriented religious ceremonies.

Pastoralism

For reasons that are unclear, American Indians never domesticated many animals. In South America, llamas and other camelids were domesticated for food and transportation, but in North America and Mexico, only turkeys and muscovy ducks were important domestications. (Dogs probably had been domesticated by the time they crossed over the Bering land bridge with the first American Indians.) When Europeans came into the Americas after 1492, they brought a variety of domesticated animals with them, especially horses, cattle, and sheep. These provided North American Indians with the first opportunity to begin pastoralism, the raising of domestic animals as a primary mode of subsistence.

The death and dislocations that accompanied the European conquest of the Americas kept most Indian groups from adopting pastoralism, but a few groups in the Southwest culture area have done so successfully, notably the Navajo, some Apache groups, and the Tohono O’odham.

The Navajo serve as the prime example of pastoralists, since they typically move with their flocks. They focus on sheepherding, and most rural Navajo family groups have at least a few sheep. The demands of these livestock mean that the family must maintain considerable flexibility. If the grass runs out, the sheep have to be shifted to new pasturage, and bad years mean many shifts. If circumstances are particularly bad, relatives must be called upon for assistance, and flexibility in reckoning kinship ties is important. The size of the household must reflect the size and viability of the herd, and a bad year may mean that the family splits up for a time.

Pastoralists rarely can produce all their needs, and they usually have strong trading ties with settled agriculturalists. Because of this trade, some pastoralists may be able to accumulate a fair amount of wealth, at least enough to permit them to settle in a town and live off their profits. These individuals, called “ricos” among the Navajo, often abandon their former pastoralist ways.

Culture Areas and Subsistence

In traditional times, North American Indians in certain portions of the continent shared similar lifestyles and patterns of culture. In part, these similarities were engendered by living as neighbors, interacting and communicating with one another. Other similarities, however, probably were more the result of similar modes of subsistence.

In eastern North America, for example, Indian tribes shared considerable similarity. All tribes south of the latitude of central Maine were agriculturalists, relying heavily on corn, beans, and squash. All of these plants had been domesticated in tropical Mexico, and it had taken centuries for them to be transported this far and to be adapted to the rigors of the colder climate in eastern North America. These same plants had been adopted earlier in the Southeast, and population levels had risen, achieving higher levels there than in the Northeast. The largest towns in the Southeast before European contact were probably two or three times as large as their counterparts in the Northeast.

As a result, many of the tribes from the Southeast culture area had developed the chiefdom form of government, with a coercive leader. The Natchez, for example, had a single ruler called “the Sun,” who had total control over his subjects, though he could be removed from office for lack of bravery or other offenses. In the Northeast, government was less strong and intrusive, and leaders were more likely to lead by example than decree. The leadership of the Iroquois tribes, while more coercive than that of their Algonquian neighbors, was far less able to enforce an unpopular decree than were most leaders in the Southeast.

Before the advent of Europeans in North America, the Plains tribes were mostly similar to Eastern Woodlands tribes. They were agriculturalists, carving farms out of the tough sod of the prairies and living in villages of rarely more than a dozen families. Their leaders led by example, and religious ceremonies largely were conducted by kin groups and voluntary societies. Kinship was primarily matrilineal.

The coming of the Europeans, however, brought the horse, and it changed Plains life massively. Tribes formerly had hunted bison on foot seasonably, but the inefficiency of the process meant that this could not be relied upon as the primary means of subsistence. The horse, however, made bison hunting efficient, and most Plains tribes abandoned farming in favor of a new lifestyle based first on bison hunting and later augmented with raiding on neighbors and Europeans. As the tribes converted from agriculturalists to hunter-gatherers, they returned to reckoning kinship through the male line, and many group-oriented ceremonies became less central to the community.

The Indian tribes of the Southwest before the coming of the Europeans fell into two groups: settled agriculturalists (the Pueblo peoples and the Pima and Tohono O’odham) and the mobile hunter-gatherers (the Apache, including those that later would become the Navajo) that lived in the areas between their settlements. The matrilineal agriculturalists lived in quite sizeable settlements, practicing group-oriented religious ceremonies and recognizing leaders who ruled by example. The hunter-gatherers exploited the foods of nature, traded with the settled peoples for corn and other goods, and occasionally took advantage of their mobility to raid the settled villages for goods.

The Northwest Coast culture area is a great exception to the generalizations presented about the relationship between subsistence and way of life. Tribes of this culture area never adopted agriculture, but the Northwest Coast possessed great natural bounty, especially in terms of salmon and other fish. As a result, dense populations developed and settled into sedentary villages along prime fishing rivers. The control of fishing areas was largely in the hands of the chiefs, and they often developed considerable power over others, in part through their personal wealth, in part through the coercive power given them by the people. This is one of the few cases known around the world where coercive leadership has developed among a hunting-gathering society.

In the far northern parts of North America, the growing season was too short to permit agriculture of any kind, and hunter-gatherers were the exclusive residents of these areas. The environment dictated small group sizes, great seasonal mobility, and the uncluttered government that is desirable under these characteristics. While hunter-gatherers typically gain most of their food from plants, far northern Indian tribes and the Inuit are exceptional. In this area, plants are few and the growing season is short, so people must resort to a diet dominated by animal flesh. Such a diet is likely to be short of vitamins, but the eating of internal organs, a major source of vitamins, helps offset that deficiency.

Bibliography

Byers, Douglas S., ed. Prehistory of the Tehuacán Valley. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967. This multivolume work provides great detail on all aspects of the archaeology of the Tehuacán Valley. Articles by Richard S. MacNeish summarize changes in subsistence, plant domestication, and associated adjustments in settlement size and seasonal movement.

Flannery, Kent V. “The Origins of Agriculture.” In Annual Reviews in Anthropology 2. Palo Alto, Calif.: Annual Reviews, 1973. An excellent review of thinking on why agriculture developed and the adjustments it required from the hunting-gathering lifestyle. Emphasis is on agriculture in the Americas.

Kupferer, Harriet J. Ancient Drums, Other Moccasins: Native American Cultural Adaptations. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1988. An overview of ten Indian tribes, approached from the viewpoint of the relationship between subsistence and culture. Accessible and nontechnical, but not very detailed.

Lee, Richard B., and Irven DeVore, eds. Man, the Hunter. Chicago: Aldine, 1968. A classic collection of essays on hunter-gatherers around the world. They explode many myths—that hunter-gatherers work long hours, that they do not understand seed growth, and so forth. The articles by Suttles and Sahlins on the Northwest Coast are particularly relevant.

Steward, Julian. Basin-Plateau Aboriginal Sociopolitical Groups. Bulletin 120. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of American Ethnology, 1938. A truly classic discussion of how ecological constraints and hunting-gathering shaped the social and political structures of tribes in western North America’s desert.