Precontact Era
This term refers to corn, beans, and squash - fundamental crops of great significance to many Native societies.
What are the Three Sisters?
Contact brought several infectious diseases to North America -- but none more deadly or feared than this one.
What is smallpox?
After her kidnapping, this Powhatan woman was baptized and rechristened as "Rebecca," serving as propaganda for English colonization.
Who is Pocahontas (or Matoaka)?
This term refers to the idea that Native people needed to unite against European colonization and rally around shared traditions.
What is Nativism (or pan-Indianism)?
This 1830 Act of Congress set the stage for the forced removal of tens of thousands of Native peoples to territory beyond the Mississippi River.
What is the Indian Removal Act?
Consisting of five - later six - nations, this confederacy formed as a peace pact and evolved into one of the great powers of North America.
What are the Haudenosaunee (or Iroquois)?
This term refers to the accumulation of plants, animals, and microbes transferred between the Americas and the "Old World" after 1492.
What is the Columbian Exchange?
These seventeenth-century institutions were created by New England colonies to aid in the conversion of Native peoples. Their inhabitants ended up stuck between worlds, mistrusted by colonists and Natives alike.
What are praying towns?
Composed of strings of shell beads woven together, these were often used by eastern Native societies to communicate diplomatic messages over long distances.
What are wampum beads?
This term refers to the act of forced removal of tens of thousands of Native people that began in the 1830s, due to the death and suffering it entailed.
What is the Trail of Tears?
Situated on the Mississippi River Basin, this city was the center of a great chiefdom with a complex social hierarchy.
What is Cahokia?
European livestock often caused problems for Native communities, but none more so than this animal, which often ran wild and devastated crops.
What are pigs (or hogs)?
This Lenape (Delaware) prophet was instrumental in the creation of Nativism/pan-Indianism and the start of Pontiac's War, spreading teachings given to him by the "Master of Life."
Who is Neolin?
This Shawnee man worked to build an alliance based upon his brother's teachings among the Native peoples of the east - and ended up eclipsing him in historical fame.
Who is Tecumseh?
As their name suggests, this series of conflicts revolved around access to hunting grounds and rapidly depleting game in the Eastern Woodlands during the 1600s.
What are the Beaver Wars?
The ancestral home of Pueblo peoples. They migrated away between 900-1150, but they did not abandon it. Pueblos today continue to visit it as a sacred space.
What is Mesa Verde?
Initiated by French explorers in the 1500s, this exchange initially brought wealth and power to many Native communities, but culminated in ecological devastation and destructive warfare.
What is the fur trade?
One of the first Native people to become ordained as a minister, his disillusion with his mentor led him to create Brothertown, a separate community for Christian Indians.
Who is Samson Occom?
Who is Metacom (or King Philip)?
This term refers to a series of Supreme Court cases in the 1820s and 1830s. Thought they failed to prevent Cherokee Removal, they laid the foundation of federal Indian law.
What is the Marshall Trilogy?
Honoring the spiritual and cultural importance of a particular crop, the descendants of ancestral Mississippian peoples still practice this annual ritual today.
What is the Green Corn Ceremony?
This society became known for its rapid adoption of shepherding, showing how quickly societies could incorporate new elements into their traditions.
Who are the Diné (or Navajo)?
This Shawnee prophet created a community called "Prophetstown" in modern-day Indiana in 1809. His visions spoke of restoring a pre-contact paradise by purging communities of so-called "witches" under European influence.
Who is Tenskawatawa?
This structure has many uses across several Native societies, but it has become synonymous with diplomacy among the Haudenosaunee.
What is the longhouse?
Ordered by Virginia's legislature to provide men to fight in their wars, this Pamunkey leader instead made an impassioned speech denouncing the mistreatement of her people.
Who is Cockacoeske?