INDIANS

     When Columbus reached America in 1492, people greeted him and offered him food and gifts. Columbus called these people Indians because he believed that he had landed near India.

     The name Indians came to be used for all the people who lived in South America and North America before the white eyes came, even after it was learned that they lived a long way away from India. Usually they were called American Indians to make it clear that they were not the people of India.

     The American Indians have also been called Redskins or Red Indians, even though all Indians are not dark. In early times, may of the Indians painted their bodies red. The settler’s from Europe thought that red was the color of all the Indians skin. They found out later that the American Indian has a brown or slightly yellow skin that turns beautiful copper color when it tans. The skin of a sunburned white eye is redder than that of an Indian.

     When the white eyes arrived in America, there were thousands of different groups of Indians. The Indians had no single term to describe themselves. Each group usually called itself by a name that meant the people, the real people, or the first people. The groups were organized into tribes or groups of families related to each other’s clans.  Many of the tribes had special names. Indians spoke many different languages. Often neighboring tribes were unable to understand each other. Each tribe had its own style of clothing, its own ways of getting and preparing food and its basic rules of Totemism and customs. Even though they did not speak the same languages, they could make themselves known to each other by signing and understanding the basic laws of Totemism. Climate influenced their ways of life, a tribe that lived in a hot, dry desert, built lodges quite different from the lodges of the Cherokees who lived in a cool forest. The plants and animals the Indians found also affected their customs. The Indians hunted, while those who lived beside the salmon rivers of the northwest became skilled fishermen.

     Today, many American Indians have adopted the dress and customs of the white eyes. The influence of the ancient Indians can still be found in our everyday life. Many of our cities, states, providences, and streams have Indian names. We swing in hammocks, paddle in canoes, play the games of lacrosse, coast on toboggans and tramp over the snow on snowshoes. All are Indian inventions. Our automobiles move over roads that once were the trails of the valley Buffalo that the Indians use as trails. We enjoy clambakes and barbecues and we eat the Indian mush and succotash. At the grocery store we buy such Indian foods as corn, cranberries, celery, white turkey, wild rice, squash, beans, maple syrup, pumpkins, tapioca and gourds. Many Indian words, such as skunk, moccasin, squaw, totem and tepee have been adopted into our language of the white eyes. Doctors treat sick people with drugs known first to the Indians such as cocaine, curare and quinine. The white eye use expression as, on the warpath and burying the hatchet, reminds us of the old Indian customs. Indian art is a treasured heritage and the life of the Indian is a popular, though not always accurate, the themes in the stories of the American west as the white eyes wish to tell it.

     In general, the Indians did not keep a record of their history, except in the stories told around the story fires and on the wampum belts. The written history of the Indians dates chiefly from the time of the arrival of the white eyes. For knowledge of the Indians before that time, we depend almost entirely upon excavations and other grave stealing done by the white eyes, the archaeologists and anthropologists. How would they like it if we robbed their graves and holy grounds?

     Though there are careful comparisons of Indian relics and through scientific dating methods, these scholars can reach the wrong information. Most of the time only the white eyes wish to see and hear to judge the reason for taking the Indians lands.