| Long, time ago the Indians were the only people who lived in America. But they didn´t call them self Indians back then. That name was given to them by Columbus when he got there with his ship "Santa Maria" in 1492, more than 500 years ago. Columbus left Spain on the 3 Aug 1492 and had been on sea for many month, he thought he had been sailing around the world and arrived in India. So when a bunch of natives with long black hair and brown skin paddle out to his ship in their canoes, he called them Indians. And that´s what they have been called ever since. |
| When you watch the Indians in the movies and television I guess you think that they all look alike. But they didn´t do that in reality. The Indians wasen´t just one big nation. Like the people in Europe they belong to different kind of nations, or tribes. There was just as a big differens between a Sioux-Indian and a Apache as it is between the people in Sweden and the people in Italy or Spain. Nobody really know for sure how many Indian tribes there were in North America when the white man first came. But they think it was about 400 Indian tribes. The Indian spoke a different kind of language than the white man. Many of the languauges were very complicated and included many thousand words. So it´s wrong to think that the Indians didn´t say much more than "Ugh,Ugh" Like they do in movies or books. |
| The Indians also
dressed differntly and all tribes didn´t live in the same kind of
housing. How the house looked like dippended on were the Indians lived.
Those who lived in the forest made their house out of cortex and logs.
Others made their house out of dry mud and soil. In other hand, they
used they kind of materlial that they could find.
One Indian tribe that lived close to the Atlantic, called their huts for "Wigwams". A Wigwam had the shape of a globe and were coverd with cortex and carpets. When the white man meet the Indians of this tribe they learned the word Wigwam and spread it through letters and books, and soon many people thought that all Indians lived in Wigwams. North America is a big country. There are deep woods and big lakes. In the west there are a line of high mountains called the Rocky Mountains. And in the front of the Rocky Mountains is the big and widespread prairie. They only thing that grows on the prairie is bushes and grass, so the Indians that lived there couldn´t ma´ke their house out of cortex and logs like those who lived in the forest. Instead they made them out of long poles that was staniding in a ring with the top against eachother, and then it was coverd with buffaloskin. In Sioux-language a hut like this were called a "Tipi". |
| A "Tipi"
were easy to put up and to take down, and it was easy to take the poles
and skins with you when you hade to move. And that was important for the
Indians on the prairie, since they never stayed very long in the same
location. They moved with the buffalos. The buffalos ment everything to
the Indians, they ate the meat and made tools and weapons out of the
bones, and with the skin they made coats, tipis and moccasins. Moccasins
was a kind of a soft shoe that the Indians had. And that word is still
used to day when we talk about soft shoes that are made in a special
way.
Now days we often talk about developing countrys, there are a few people that are rich but moste of them don´t have the money to buy any food. Many starved to death. About 100 years ago or more, we had the same problems over in Europe. Therfore many people emigrated to America on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. They were called settlers. The settlers built houses and cultivated the land, and sometimes they got into fights with the Indians. After a wile the settlers began to tell wild stories about how wild and cruel the Indians were. They said that they were sneaking up on you in the night with their longbows and tomahawks. And they thirst for blood.They also said that they torture their prisoners to death in the most horrible ways. When you are telling a storie it´s easy to exaggerate, and as the stories continue. the wilder and ferocious the Indians became. And soon everybody thought that all Indians torture their prisoners. Which we know to day wasen´t true, only a few of the many Indian tribes in North America used torture. Two of the most known were the Apache and Irokes. The Indians thought the white man were strange in many ways. They were all pale, many had hair on their face and they had strange clothes. And they also talked a strange kind of language. They also had sticks that could make sounds like thunder, and could kill at long distance. They even had long shiny knifes and swords which they killed their enemies with. the Indians didn´t have those kind of weapons. That´s the reason why they feared the "Longknifes" as they sometimes called the white man. Almost all Indians were hunters, and every tribe had to have big hunting grounds to be able to get enough meat and skins for their people. But more and more whites came through the Atlantic Ocean in their big ships, and they built their house on the Indians hunting grounds and scared away the animals, which made that the Indians had to move further and further westward. |
| The Trappers dare to move further into Indian countrys than any other white man did. And they hunt for Otter, Beavers and other kind of animals that had valuable skins. The trapper were mostly alone and they never built any houses. Therfore the Indians mostley left them alone. |
| They almost looked like Indians them self, the sun and the wind had made their face look brown, and many of them had long straggling hair and leather clothes. Some trappers even decorated them self with feathers and shiny buttons. Some trappers even learned to speak the Indian language. And they bevame friends with the Indians, and bought skins from them. As a payment for the skins they gave them blankets, guns and other stuff they needed. But many of the white traders wasen´t honest towards the Indians. Instead they gave them worthless stuff like worn-out blankets, bad guns etc, etc. And when the Indians became awere of that they hade been cheated, their hat towards the white man got bigger and bigger, not only to them who had cheated them but to all the white people. |
"All the backgrounds on this site is my own work and may NOT be used without my permission"