Native American Culture of the West
A regional overview of the West from Khan Academy.
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Place and Time: The Diverse West
The western part of the United States today reaches from the top corner of Washington through California. It also reaches into parts of Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Idaho. Many different Native American groups lived there. They lived off the region’s rich natural resources.
It is hard to make general statements about the cultures of Native people in the West. The climate and resources varied a great deal. This created microenvironments that different groups used to their advantage. More than one hundred federally recognized tribes lived in what is now California. The Great Basin is the huge stretch of land between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevadas. It was home to the Mono, Paiute, Bannock, Shoshone, Ute, and Gosiute peoples, among others.
Food: Hunting, Gathering, and Fishing
Most Native people in the West fished, hunted, and gathered for food. Along the Colorado River, Native Americans gathered many wild foods and planted some tobacco. Acorns were a very important part of the Californian diet. Women gathered and processed acorns. They removed toxins from the pulp inside the nut. Then they made the nut into flour. This gave them a food that did not spoil as quickly. In the Pacific Northwest, people foraged for pine nuts, wild plants, and more.
American bison also roamed the Pacific Northwest. They were an easy target for hunters. Along the coast of California today, Native people hunted small mammals, snakes, and lizards. In the Great Basin, fishing kept the Native people fed. Salmon were plentiful along the Columbia and Colorado rivers. Native fishermen used large harpoons to stab the fish swimming through the rushing water. They also used complex trapping systems. But a natural disaster like a mudslide or earthquake could completely disrupt the salmon patterns.
The Great Basin natives were the first to create canoes to help with fishing. Canoes also let them gather a surplus of fish to prepare for times when food was scarce. Evidence suggests that Native Americans in the West had an extremely healthy diet, rich in protein and nutrients. It was much healthier than the diets of other groups in the Plains or Northeast, who relied on farming.
How Communities Were Organized: Distinct, Yet Connected
Salmon were the biggest part of trade networks, as well as diets, in the West. The Dalles is the area upstream of Long Narrows on the Columbia River. It became a central point for trade networks that reached to the Plains and to the Pacific. The Chumash people lived near modern-day Santa Barbara. They were known for their trade fairs. There they exchanged marine mammals for shells from the Pacific Northwest and animal hides from the Plains. Acorns were often used as money.
Many Native people in the West lived in wikiups. The wikiups were easy to move. The Acjachemen people of California are one example. In other places, where resources were rich, people lived in more permanent villages. This included parts of the Pacific Northwest. The kind of shelter often showed how reliable the food supply was. Where fish and acorns were plentiful, people were more likely to live in homes and in societies that were there to stay.
Beliefs and Social Order: Resources Decided Wealth
The great amount of resources also created strict social classes across the West. People were ranked in levels. Villages were organized by a complex social system. Men hunted and fished. Women harvested crops and prepared meat for food and trade. The Chinookan people lived in a strategic spot along the Columbia River. It brought them success in fishing and hunting. They practiced slavery to complete the hard tasks needed to process large animals like bison.
In areas with fewer people, the way groups were organized and how tribes related to each other kept changing. People usually belonged to family-based bands called tribelets. A tribelet had a few hundred to a thousand people who shared a culture. But they hunted and gathered in smaller groups of 10 to 12 people. In areas with few natural resources, groups moved around more and were less connected to others.
Even routine tasks like hunting and gathering had spiritual meaning for Native Americans in the West. Some groups prayed for good hunting luck. Others developed rituals around these tasks. In the Great Basin, Sahaptin-speaking people threw salmon bones back into the Columbia River. They did this to help renew the supply of fish for the next season.