Lives of Pre-Contact Indigenous Americans Research Proposal

Lives of Pre-Contact Indigenous Americans - Research Proposal Example First of all, Native Americans were not a single nation – there were more than 160 different tribes inhabiting territories from Alaska to Mexico, and they all had different languages, cultures, and lifestyles (UsHistory.org). Some were living by fishing, others – by hunting, gathering or growing food. They used to grow wheat, yams, rice, corn, potatoes, and pumpkins among other cultures in order to make their living. Everything surrounding the Natives was made of natural products: animal skins served for clothes and drums, mud, stones and wood – as a building material, bones and other animal parts – as means to make tools (University of Michigan). So, they greatly depended on nature: weather (if they were growing food) and presence of game in the territories (if they were hunting). With the highly developed technology of making spears and bows with arrows, along with developed by centuries art of hunting, Indians were very successful at hunting and fishing. However, they didn’t kill more game or catch more fish than they could consume: they had no need to "deplete the animal resources."1 The Natives practiced a "principle of least effort"2, and, consequently, were preserving the population of animals vital for their survival. Hunting for food only, they were taking care of preserving the natural resources by either "rotational use of the territories, or by an increased use of alternate resources"3 to replace animals in the ration. Understanding their dependence on natural forces, Indians had a great respect to the nature, and animals in particular. Animals, being a source of food, and, consequently, life, were revered as spirits: meat was never wasted. Totem poles were one more important part of the culture: the Natives believed each person was naturally given a spirit of a certain animal. For those