Contents:
(Click on the appropriate link)
Origins of the Amerindians
Variations in Indian languages
Games and entertainment
Social and political organization
American Indian Culture areas
Spirituality
Conclusion
Bibliography
4. The California-Intermountain area & the Great Basin
This area included the arid parts of California and the dry basins and plateaus between the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada. The Indians living in there belonged to many tribes and spoke various languages. The best-known peoples of the Intermountain Great Basin area are the Paiute, the Ute and the Shoshoni.
a) Housing
As the weather was hot and dry most of the year, there was no need for substantial shelter. Thus, villages were simple, with thatched houses covered with rushes or bunches of grass. At times a family would set up a rough frame of boughs and cover it with twigs and brush. Usually the builders dug a pit about two feet deep under the house. This saved wall building and kept drafts off the floor. For the winter camp, the Indians of southern California heaped earth over the huts to make them warm. The tribes of northern California could build better houses than did tribes to the east and south.
b) Ways of life among the desert
Those peoples have been commonly called "Seed Gatherers" because seeds and roots were among their chief foods. They shared the problem of finding food in a land that was very dry, so they had to keep moving about, seeking food and could not live in villages. They did not have summer rain or a dependable water supply, so they could not grow corn or other field crops. The food hunt filled their days. Bands of relatives traveled together and each band had its own territory and would fight to keep out intruders. They moved on foot over the land, seeking spring greens, summer seeds, and autumn acorns or pine nuts. The women generally gathered berries, nuts, seeds, and roots. During their yearly march they found an amazing number of things to eat. Tribes of southern California used 60 different plants. Preparation of the food was hard work. The women ground the seeds into flour for gruel in baskets. The thick gruel could be eaten in the hand. Berries, seeds, and nuts were dried for use the following winter. Besides, the Seed Gatherers ate quite a few things which other people would think unpleasant. These included crickets, grasshoppers, insect larvae, ants ground into flour, and certain lizards and snakes. Game animals were scarce, so they added game whenever they could get it. The tribes in northern California found deer, antelope or elk. Elsewhere rabbits supplied most of the meat. The men made fiber nets to trap them and the medicine man worked his magic to make the game come. If the hunt was successful, there was food for a celebration with dances and songs telling tribal legends. In the autumn several bands might meet and camp together until no nut supply was left. In the winter they camped in a sheltered valley and lived on dried foods. On the California coast, people fished and hunted while tribes near the lakes and the salmon rivers caught fish with nets or used spears.
The Seed Gatherers found baskets ideal as containers during their constant moving : they were light and not easily broken like pottery. There was a basket for every use and they wove them so closely that they would hold tiny seeds and even water. "Some of their baskets were covered with shells, others with feathers. They not only wove baskets, but hats, trays, cooking pots, boats, and baby carriers"1.
In the warm months there was little need for clothing and children wore none at all. Both men and women were tattooed. Stripes on the chin were fashionable among the women. These marks were tattooed on a girl’s chin during the ceremony celebrating coming of age. Tribes that had buckskin learned to make clothing similar to that of the Plains Indians. In winter men would wear a furry pelt around their shoulders an in some tribes, the old men found time to twine blankets from strips of rabbit skin.
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1 California-Intermountain Culture http://www.germantown.k12.il.us/html/California.html
