Encyclopedia of American Indian Contributions to the World: 15,000 Years of Inventions and Innovations (Facts on File Library of American History)

401 Pages·2001·6 MB·English

by  Emory Dean Keoke

American Indian Contributions
to the World
p

American Indian Contributions
to the World
15,000 YEARS OF INVENTIONS AND INNOVATIONS
p
EMORY DEAN KEOKE
AND
KAY MARIE PORTERFIELD
American Indian Contributions to the World
Copyright © 2003, 2002 by Emory Dean Keoke and Kay Marie Porterfield
Maps pages 316–327 © Carl Waldman and Facts On File, Inc.
Maps pages 328–332 © Facts On File, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission
in writing from the publisher. For information contact:
Checkmark Books
An imprint of Facts On File, Inc.
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New York NY 10001
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Keoke, Emory Dean.
Encyclopedia of American Indian contributions to the world : 15,000 years
of inventions and innovations / Emory Dean Keoke and Kay Marie Porterfield.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8160-4052-4 (hc)—ISBN 0-8160-5367-7 (pbk)
1. Indians—Encyclopedias. 2. Inventions—Encyclopedias.
3. Technological innovations—Encyclopedias. I. Porterfield, Kay Marie.
II. Title.
E54.5 .K46 2001
970’.00497’003—dc21 00-049034
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Cover design byCathy Rincon
Maps by Dale Williams
Printed in the United States of America
VB FOF 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
p
For my uncle Francis X. Hairy Chin, for starting me on this project;
for my grandson Jason Keoke, whom I hope will have a better chance
to learn about American Indians than I did; and for Glen Yellow Bird,
aman who always called me brother and whom I respected tremendously.
—EDK
For Hannah Marie White Elk and for Ward E. Porterfield,
who first taught me the difference between corn and beans.
—KMP
The information in this book on the use of herbal and other natural remedies
employed by Native Americans and others is strictly for educational purposes.
Readers should seek professional medical advice if they are considering trying any
of these remedies. The authors and publisher disclaim liability for any loss or risk,
personal or otherwise, resulting, directly or indirectly, from the use, application, or
interpretation of the contents of this book.
C
ONTENTS
p
PREFACE
ix
A TOZENTRIES
xv
APPENDIXA:TRIBESORGANIZEDBYCULTUREAREA
311
APPENDIXB: MAPS
315
GLOSSARY
333
CHRONOLOGY
336
BIBLIOGRAPHYANDFURTHERREADING
340
ENTRIESBYTRIBE,GROUP,ORLINGUISTICGROUP
344
ENTRIESBYGEOGRAPHICALCULTUREAREA
355
ENTRIESBYSUBJECT
362
GENERALINDEX
367

P
REFACE
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What follows is a collection of contributions American Indian peoples have
made to the world. The word contributionis defined in The American
Heritage College Dictionary,Second Editionas “to giveto the common fund or com-
mon purpose.” American Indians, from the Arctic Circle to the tip of South Amer-
ica, donated many gifts to the world’s common fund of knowledge in the areas of
agriculture, science and technology,medicine, transportation, architecture, psy-
chology,militarystrategy, government, and language. These contributions take the
form of inventions, processes, philosophies, and political or social systems. For the
most partuntil the late 19th century,they remained unrecognized outside of the
disciplines of anthropology and archaeology. People throughout the world enjoyed
the fruits of indigenous American invention—such as rubberized raincoats, POP-
CORN,HAMMOCKS,and the drug QUININE—without being awareof their ori-
gin. At the same time textbooks, novels, and later movies and television portrayed
the first people of the Americas as primitives who were incapable of complex
ideas or inventions.
Immediately after initial contact, Europeans from Christopher Columbus on
wrote detailed descriptions about the accomplishments of the American Indians
they encountered. Often they judged these accomplishments as being superior to
anything in the Old World. Nevertheless, as a general rule, within 20 years after
contact, conquistadores and colonists alike denied that the American Indians,
whom they had begun to call “savages,”were responsible for these discoveries. They
were so certain that Indian people were incapable of discovering the technology
they had encountered that, soon after the voyages of Columbus, they began
spreading rumors throughout Europe that the Americas were the site of settlement
for a lost colony of Christians or a lost tribe of Israelites. This rumor persisted in
popular culture until well into the 20th century.
Later colonists and missionaries in the North American Southeast speculated
that the Cherokee, whose way of life they deemed “civilized,” spoke a version of
Hebrew or Phoenician, “proving” that these people were not Indian. Early Euro-
pean settlers in what would become Virginia theorized that a Welsh prince,
Madoc, had wandered to the New World in the 13th century to give the Indian
people the technology they possessed. When non-Indians viewed the mounds at
Cahokia, an enormous city built byMississippian people that had flourished in
about A.D.1100 near the site of modern St. Louis, they refused to believethat In-
dian people had created the city. Anthropologists determined that it had been built
ix