How Did The Environment Affect The Native American Indians With Particular Reference To The Woodland Indians?
The environment hugely affected the Native American Indians in many different ways. This is because of the way in which the Indians used the environment and the surrounding land. The Indians were very close to nature, and so that meant that any changes in nature would be changes in the Indians.
Land
The Indians thought of land very differently to the white man. The land was sacred, there was no ownership, and it was created by the great spirit. They could not sell their land to others, whereas the white people could fence off the land which belonged to them, and sell it freely to whoever they wanted. The Europeans didn't think that the Indians were using the land properly, so in their eyes, they were doing a good favour to the earth. To the Indians, the land was more valuable than the money that the white man had brought with him, even though it didn't belong to them.
Indians lived all over America, in many different environments including the flatlands, the forests, the mountains, the deserts, the prairies, on the coast, and even in the arctic. All these Environments affected the different Indians in different ways, so that different Indians evolved over time.
Religion
Religion was a very big part in many Indians life. Almost every part of Indian life is related to religion, the land is sacred, and religion plays a part in what can be done with it, the first Indians had many different religions, and they continued to have religion for the whole of their lives. Dress was affected, many Indians wore special clothes and jewellery of religious importance. Religion often changed family life, the children respected their elders, especially their grandparents, and the Indians believed in divorce and marriage. Education was religious, the boys were taught to hunt, and the girls to treat leather and prepare food. The Indians believed all life to be sacred, but it could be hunted, as long as it was treated with respect, so this affected the way they hunted, and what food they had.
Shelter
The environment also affected the Indians shelter in many ways. Depending on where they lived, the Indian tribes had different ways of protecting themselves from the elements using the available resources, and different designs for the general climate. For example, the Indians living in the mountainous and semi-desert areas of the south west lived in light twig shacks and log huts, whereas the Inuits of the sub arctic north America built igloos, and the woodland Indians lived in bark covered houses.
...style they only used what they needed to for survival. The different lifestyles determined the different environmental uses of the land. Although, culture however, encouraged trade. The Europeans and Indians made alliances from the trade market, which changed the Indian lifestyle. The Indians now had prices for objects that never had a price before. The market trade would become damaging to the Indians way of life, which the Indians where unaware of. When the Europeans came to New England they didn’t just change the environment of the land, plants and animals, but also changed the lifestyle of the Indians already living there. Europeans turned New England into a form of global capitalist economy, changing New England forever.
To the Native Americans, the misuse of natural resources caused a disruption in the natural order of the environment. They lived in harmony
John Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902 in Salinas, California. He had a pretty average childhood with a supportive family and a decent education. While growing up his mother, Olive Hamilton, was a major factor in his education, since she was a schoolteacher and made it her duty to educate him. His mother most likely was the reason he developed a love of reading and literature and ended up going to Stanford. In his child there were only two major events that affected his writing. These were when he worked on a ranch with migrant workers, and when his father’s business failed and the family was temporarily thrust into poverty. These two events most likely sparked his interest in the poor lives of the migrant workers. His experiences on the ranch taught him about the harsh and impoverished lives of the migrant workers and his experience of being in poverty enabled him to understand what life is like when one is poor, as the migrant workers were. This understanding inspired some of his most famous writings such as: Of Mice and Men, In Dubious Battle and The Grapes of Wrath. These experiences also allowed him to add a sense of realism to the stories. After graduating from his public high school in 1919 Steinbeck went to Stanford. He went there for 5 years before dropping out without a degree and moving to New York. The following years were highly tumultuous for Steinbeck and he held many odd jobs while trying to get his writing published. In 1935 he finally got his first big break when his critically acclaimed novel, Tortilla Flats, was published. After this he became quite successful and well known although the skill in his writing seems to fall after WWII. After researching his life I decided to focus on using his most famous n...
In the 1830's the Plains Indians were sent to the Great American Deserts in the west because the white men did not think they deserved the land. Afterwards, they were able to live peacefully, and to follow their traditions and customs, but when the white men found out the land they were on were still good for agricultural, or even for railroad land they took it back. Thus, the white man movement westward quickly begun. This prospect to expand westward caused the government to become thoroughly involved in the lives of the Plains Indians. These intrusions by the white men had caused spoilage of the Plains Indians buffalo hunting styles, damaged their social and cultural lives, and hurt their overall lives. The lives of the Plains Indians in the second half of the nineteenth century were greatly affected by the technological development and government actions.
Updike, John. "A & P" Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. 6th Edition. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2002.
Meriwether, James B., and Michael Millgate, eds. Lion in the Garden: Interviews with William Faulkner 1926-1962. New York: Random House, 1968.
On September 25, 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi, a son was born to Murry Cuthbert and Maud Butler Faulkner. This baby, born into a proud, genteel Southern family, would become a mischievous boy, an indifferent student, and drop out of school; yet “his mother’s faith in him was absolutely unshakable. When so many others easily and confidently pronounced her son a failure, she insisted that he was a genius and that the world would come to recognize that fact” (Zane). And she was right. Her son would become one of the most exalted American writers of the 20th century, winning the Nobel Prize for Literature and two Pulitzers during his lifetime. Her son was William Faulkner.
The Effects of Colonization on the Native Americans Native Americans had inherited the land now called America and eventually their lives were destroyed due to European colonization. When the Europeans arrived and settled, they changed the Native American way of life for the worse. These changes were caused by a number of factors including disease, loss of land, attempts to export religion, and laws, which violated Native American culture. Native Americans never came in contact with diseases that developed in the Old World because they were separated from Asia, Africa, and Europe when ocean levels rose following the end of the last Ice Age. Diseases like smallpox, measles, pneumonia, influenza, and malaria were unknown to the Native Americans until the Europeans brought these diseases over time to them.
6th ed. New York: St. James Press, 1996. Literature Resource Center. Web. 26 Jan. 2014.
Meyer, Michael. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. 2189.
Updike, John. "A & P." Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. 6th Edition. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2002.
Many people today know the story of the Indians that were native to this land, before “white men” came to live on this continent. Few people may know that white men pushed them to the west while many immigrants took over the east and moved westward. White men made “reservations” that were basically land that Indians were promised they could live on and run. What many Americans don’t know is what the Indians struggled though and continue to struggle through on the reservations.
Faulkner, William. The Sound and The Fury: The Corrected Text with Faulkner's Appendix. Norton, 1994.
Harmon, William, and C. Hugh Holman. Handbook to Literature. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1986.
Lawrence, D.H. Sons and Lovers. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1996. :Niven, Alastair. “D.H. Lawrence.” British Writers. Vol. 7. 1984. 87-126.